On June 8, honor your closest and dearest friend on Best Friends Day.
The relationship between best friends is often fierce and can withstand distance, storms and silence. Whether we’ve known them all our lives or they are more recently acquired, best friends make tough times bearable, fun times memorable and memorable times priceless.
Every year on March 4th, National Sons Day honors the sons of the world and those who raise them. The day also takes a look at a son’s role and his relationship with those around him.
Around the world, slightly more sons are born than daughters. Both bring joy to families, though. Our rambunctious sons grow into adult men and forge their own independence in the world. Some are soft-spoken and gentle. Others with a spark of curiosity fill every hour with questions, some unanswerable.
Parents and family members strive to mold them into a person better than we are. Sons, like many children, test the boundaries until one day, they stand before us, grown. National Sons Day encourages parents to be role models and provide the boundaries sons need. Celebrate their successes while guiding them through their failures. Give them a foundation of skills that they will rely on for a lifetime and pass on to their sons.
Each day as a son and the parent of one is a treasure. Boys need us to model responsibility, hard work, and integrity. As they work and learn beside us, those qualities will be instilled in them. The day reminds us of the value our sons bring to our lives and others.
NATIONAL SONS DAY HISTORY
In 2018, Jill Nico created National Sons Day celebrating the importance and significance of sons and those who raise them. While there’s no single reason for selecting March 4th, the founder explains spring seemed ideal, and the date resounds with momentum when spoken. Additionally, many sons enjoy spring sports, and it’s an excellent time to spend time outdoors. Visit the Facebook page to join in the celebration.
In the late 1990s, an effort to create National Sons Day began as a counterpart to National Take Your Daughters to Work Day. By 1998, the group called National Sons Day created National Take Your Sons to Work Day. In later years, the separate observances joined forces.
Consider all the things you want your son to know and be when he’s an adult.
Take the day to teach your son something you think is important for him to know. Change a tire or balance the checkbook. The small tasks, the mundane ones are the ones that get in the way when we don’t know how to do them. Bond over the experience by letting him know you teach him these skills to clear a path for the bigger events in his life.
Join an organization for mentoring boys without male role models. Find a role model that fits the interests of your son. Teach your son something your father taught you. Offer to give a skills class at a school. Make the day unique by taking a photograph with all the sons together and share on social media using #NationalSonsDay.
The Day the Music Died Day on February 3rd remembers the unfortunate and untimely death of singers 22-year-old Buddy Holly, 17-year-old Richie Valens, and 28-year-old J. P. Richardson, aka: “The Big Bopper.” These three artists died in an airplane accident on February 3, 1959, near Clear Lake, Iowa. Their pilot, Roger Peterson, also perished in the crash.
The Day the Music Died was dubbed so by Don McLean’s song “American Pie”
Buddy Holly’s band was on tour and had played at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake. They were headed to their next destination in Moorhead, Minnesota. For this leg of their journey, they decided to take a charter plane rather than go with their tour bus. Richardson “The Big Bopper”, had swapped places with Waylon Jennings, taking the latter’s place on the plane and Tommy Allsup had lost his place to Ritchie Valens in a coin toss.
Not long after takeoff, they were no longer able to be reached by radio, and they did not reach their destination. The aircraft was reported missing. The next day, the wreckage was found less than 6 miles northwest of the airport in a cornfield. Poor weather conditions and pilot error were determined, during the investigation, to have been the cause of the pilot losing control of the plane.
Pilgrimage & Tribute
The tragic event echoed through history for over 50 years. Visitors still make the pilgrimage each year to Clear Lake, Iowa, the resort town about 110 miles north of Des Moines, as this was the point of their last concert before the fatal accident.
“The day the music died” is a line in the 1972 Don McLean hit “American Pie.” McLean’s song, which he wrote in the late 1960s and released in 1971, was in part inspired by the tragic event which took the lives of three great musicians and their pilot.
“American Pie” lyrics by Don McLean
“But February made me shiver, With every paper I’d deliver, Bad news on the doorstep I couldn’t take one more step. I can’t remember if I cried When I read about his widowed bride But something touched me deep inside, The day the music died.
NATIONAL THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED DAY HISTORY
The observance commemorates the fateful day in 1959 when four young lives were cut short. When Don McLean’s “American Pie” hit the airwaves in 1972, the world came to know the day as “the day the music died’ from the line in the lyrics. Another line in the song reflected on the music of Buddy Holly & The Crickets. In their song “That’ll be the Day” the chorus goes like this:
“Well, that’ll be the day, when you say goodbye Yes, that’ll be the day, when you make me cry You say you’re gonna leave, you know it’s a lie ‘Cause that’ll be the day when I die“
In McLean’s “American Pie” his similar line appears in the chorus as well:
“Bye, bye Miss American Pie Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die This’ll be the day that I die“
As 2023 comes to a close we reflect on the year and focus on making 2024 even better. So take some time to look back through the memories and events that shaped your year…
As we look forward to 2024, I like to think on how I can improve myself and the world around me. New Year’s resolutions can be determined by examing the journey we traveled. So keep those wonderful memories and strive for an even better future.
I for one am looking forward to a quiet 2023. I spent quite a bit of my year between the emergency room, 2 hospitals, procedures, surgeries, Covid, a care facility, and finally home nursing. Needless to say I would like my 2023 to be far less medically eventful.
So as we turn to the future here are some things to look back on.
In 2022, the world population increased to over eight billion.
