My dad owned a shoe store when I was growing up and one of the Easter traditions that developed in our home was that the Easter Bunny would leave a colored hard-boiled egg in my shoe on Easter morning. I would wake up and find it there and when I was older, my dad and I would share an Easter egg together for breakfast before going to worship.
Of course, Easter Bunnies come and Easter Bunnies go, if you catch my drift, and after I went away to college the EB seemed not to be able to find me on Easter Sunday because for many years I would wake up on Easter Sunday morning with no egg in my shoe. Understandable. Then I married a fantastic woman who, among other things, works really hard at honoring family traditions, and low and behold the Easter Bunny has found where I live and started laying an Easter egg in my shoe on Easter Sunday morning just like when I was a kid! Strange how that works.
I am thankful for thoughtful Easter Bunnies who love me and the egg they lay. That EB. What a pip (as my mama would say). Happy Easter to you and yours! Christ is risen! Alleluia!! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!! Now there’s an Easter tradition worth really embracing and preserving!
On this day 83 years ago, March 17, 1943, one week after he was inducted into the army, my dad, John Fox Maney, departed on a train from Van Wert, OH for basic training, first at Camp Perry on Lake Erie and then at Ft. Leonard Wood in Missouri. He was 20 years old at the time. What a way to spend St. Patrick’s Day!
On this day 83 years ago in 1943 my dad, John F. Maney, was inducted into the army at the age of 20 (the tree in this picture under which dad sat is outside a house in Uffculme England that was used as battalion HQ. I have a picture of that tree 40 years later when dad and I visited in June 1984). A week later he left on a train from Van Wert, OH for Camp Perry on Lake Erie. What a way to start the decade of your 20s.
Today is the 294th anniversary of George Washington’s birthday. Happy birthday, Mr. President! To our great detriment, Americans are forgetting about our first president. This is sad, in part, because without him, there would not likely be the USA that we know today. Let us hope and pray the woke crowd does not succeed in wiping his name and memory out. That would be a horrible tragedy and injustice for our nation. Do yourself a favor and learn about this extraordinary man with whom God blessed this country.
To the world’s amazement, Washington had prevailed over the more numerous, better supplied, and fully trained British army, mainly because he was more flexible than his opponents. He learned that it was more important to keep his army intact and to win an occasional victory to rally public support than it was to hold American cities or defeat the British army in an open field. Over the last 200 years revolutionary leaders in every part of the world have employed this insight, but never with a result as startling as Washington’s victory over the British.
On December 23, 1783, Washington presented himself before Congress in Annapolis, Maryland, and resigned his commission. Like Cincinnatus, the hero of Classical antiquity whose conduct he most admired, Washington had the wisdom to give up power when he could have been easily become dictator. He left Annapolis and went home to Mount Vernon with the fixed intention of never again serving in public life. This one act, without precedent in modern history, made him an international hero.
In the years after the Revolutionary War, Washington devoted most of his time to rebuilding Mount Vernon, which had suffered in his absence. He experimented with new crops and fertilizers and bred some of the finest mules in the nation. He also served as president of the Potomac Company, which worked to improve the navigation of the river in order to make it easier for upstream farmers to get their produce to market.
An excellent reflection on the Presidency and on Washington’s and Lincoln’s designated holiday that is sadly being ignored or neglected by many in our nation. For those with ears to hear, listen and understand.
Though Presidents’ Day is here, the nation as a whole does not seem to take much notice. That’s too bad, because we can learn some valuable lessons—both for our country and for ourselves as individuals—by taking time to reflect seriously on the character and actions of America’s presidents.
At first sight, it may seem paradoxical for a democratic nation to celebrate Presidents’ Day. In a democracy, after all, the people call the shots, and their elected leaders, even those of the highest rank, are just servants of the public. What is there to celebrate if the president is no more than an instrument of the people’s will? Why honor him more than any other public official? Why not have a holiday in honor of the sovereign people instead?
If we turn to the constitutional thought of our nation’s Founders, however, we find that these initial impressions do not capture their views of the presidency—nor of America’s democratic republic. The Federalist teaches us that we have a unitary executive, which makes the presidency unique among the political offices created by the Constitution. In the other branches of the federal government, the houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, power and responsibility rest with a majority of the members.
Only in the executive branch is authority vested—the executive power in its entirety—ultimately in one person at the top of the chain of command. Moreover, the matters entrusted to the chief executive, including foreign policy and national security, often involve the nation’s most important interests, which include the safety of its people. In sum, the person who occupies the presidency carries a greater weight of responsibility than anybody else in American public life. That fact alone is reason enough to dedicate one day of the year to having gratitude for those who have undertaken this mighty task.
Besides, as Alexander Hamilton reminds us in TheFederalist’s account of the presidency, the president’s job is not merely to execute the will of the sovereign people. The Founders reasoned that since the people are not always correct about what the common good entails, the president should exercise and act on his own political judgments at times, perhaps even when they run counter to what the people want.
Indeed, Hamilton judged that the office of the presidency would sometimes demand of its occupant the classical virtue of magnanimity, or greatness of soul. This means the president should have both the mind and character necessary to rise above the people and serve them, even when they come under the influence of a strong passion that is damaging to the country and to their own well-being.
According to Alexis de Tocqueville, George Washington memorably displayed this presidential magnanimity when he kept America out of the war between France and Britain, despite the strength of American public sympathy for France. “The simplest light of reason,” Tocqueville observed, showed that America had nothing to gain, and much to lose, from being drawn into a war between these two titans. Nevertheless, he continued,
The sympathies of the people in favor of France were…declared with so much violence that nothing less than the inflexible character of Washington and the immense popularity he enjoyed were needed to prevent war from being declared on England. And, still, the efforts that the austere reason of this great man made to struggle against the generous but unreflective passions of his fellow citizens almost took from him the sole recompense that he had ever reserved for himself, the love of his country.
In other words, Washington wanted no reward for public service beyond the esteem of his fellow citizens. He was willing to endure public criticism, and even abuse, to do what was right for the country.
This brings us to the two men with whom Presidents’ Day is most obviously connected: Washington and Abraham Lincoln, both of whom have February birthdays (Lincoln’s on the 12th and Washington’s on the 22nd). While many presidencies have been dedicated to the routine (but nevertheless demanding) administration of the nation’s business, the lives of these two men remind us that our country will encounter crises in which its fate depends on the virtues, exertions, and fidelity of a single person.
From Fox News. Check it out and celebrate our great country and its greatest presidents!
While the political divide in our country may seem as intense as ever, some of the nation’s greatest presidents in history have shared important advice about unity and patriotism that has resonated throughout time — and does to this day.
As we celebrate Presidents Day this year on Feb. 20, 2023, their advice and words of wisdom are worth another look.
Notable commanders-in-chief like Revolutionary War hero and first President Washington conveyed the importance of pride in the country and freedom of speech on America’s foundation.
Washington’s Birthday was celebrated on February 22nd until well into the 20th Century. However, in 1968 Congress passed the Monday Holiday Law to “provide uniform annual observances of certain legal public holidays on Mondays.” By creating more 3-day weekends, Congress hoped to “bring substantial benefits to both the spiritual and economic life of the Nation.”
One of the provisions of this act changed the observance of Washington’s Birthday from February 22nd to the third Monday in February. Ironically, this guaranteed that the holiday would never be celebrated on Washington’s actual birthday, as the third Monday in February cannot fall any later than February 21.
I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.
In regard to this Great Book [the Bible], I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.
