It is now November 16, 2020. We’ve managed to survive 320 days of this year and we’ve only got 45 days left until the ball drops into an empty Times Square where everybody used to kiss and hug each other and sing “Auld lang syne”. A literal translation of this phrase means “old long since” or in contemporary English, “for old time’s sake.” Now you know. I hope we are back to normal when 2021 ends. It’s National Button Day, National Fast Food Day, Have a Party With Your Bear Day?, International Game Day and International Day for Tolerance. Nothing in this list is very exciting but we all should be a lot more tolerant than we are. I’ll go with that. Onto the history of this day: On this day in 1676, the 1st colonial prison organized in Nantucket, Massachusetts. This is the day in 1824 that New York City’s Fifth Avenue opens for business. In 1894, 6,000 Armenians were massacred by Turks in Kurdistan. The Kurds haven’t forgotten this event. In 1901 Booker T. Washington and his family are invited to dine at the White House with Teddy and Edith Roosevelt, prompting condemnation from the South. This is the day in 1969 that the Mỹ Lai massacre of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by US soldiers is first reported. It is the birthday of Tiberius who was born in 42 BC. He said, “It is the duty of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them.” This is also the day in 1717 that the French philosopher and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d’Alembert was born. He said, “A philosopher is a fool who torments himself while alive to be talked about when he is dead.” Try your best to practice tolerance today. In a world of chaos, tolerance is a valuable commodity. Abide.
