Speaking of new holidays…

So we were out for dinner and hoisted a glass to Gagarin, Crippen and Young. And it may have been due to the bottle of Beaujolais we polished off but we came to a decision.

(Rudder interjects: It had nothing to do with the wine. I’ve been saying for years we should do this and if I were President, if I couldn’t make an entirely new holiday I would pre-empt Columbus Day.)

“Something lost behind the Ranges. Over yonder! Go you there!”

So anyway, we’ve decided Columbus doesn’t deserve a whole day to himself, what with not even knowing what continent he was on, and there are a lot of others we want to honor. From here on out, we are celebrating October 12 as Explorers Day. Burt Rutan; Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones; These people – especially the 7 on Columbia’s last flight, the 7 on Challenger’s last flight, Sally Ride, Guy Bluford, Armstrong, Crippen and Young, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, Grissom, White, and Chafee; the rest of the Original Seven and the Next Ten; Jacques Cousteau; Tereshkova; Gagarin; Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay; Earhart; Lindbergh; Scott, Shackleton, Amundson and Peary; John Wesley Powell; Livingston and Stanley; Lewis and Clark; Darwin and Fitzroy; Captain Cook; Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh; the conquistadores (at least the ones who explored more than they pillaged); Columbus, Magellan, and the other explorers of the Golden Age; Marco Polo; Erik the Red and Leif the Lucky; the ones who first crossed the Bering land bridge; the ones who sailed rafts through Polynesia as far as Hawaii, New Zealand and Alaska; the ones who first ventured out of Africa. They all deserve honor. So, new (or at least adapted) holiday.

Gentlemen, let us keep our language noble: for we still have heroes to commemorate!

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There’s a whisper on the night-wind,
there’s a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling. . .let us go.

The other reason for adapting Columbus Day instead of the January anniversary of the Apollo fire or Yuri’s night in April is purely personal and pragmatic. I’ve always admited the custtom of an old friend who throws parties twice every year: one for Halloween and one for his birthday in July. We often have a pary to celebrate Mardi Gras, when we can. It’s in February or March. January and April are too close; when we’re settled somewhere and have a community again some day and can throw parties, late February and early October provide good spacing.

Someone please remind me a little before October 12.