WORDS TO LIVE BY: Preface from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

~ "This is what you shall do..." by Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass. Public domain.

Photo by Quincy Benton for Friday Jones Publishing

MAY DAY! MAY DAY! Happy Birthday, Friday Jones & Other Festivals Celebrated May 1

When I adopted Friday Jones as a puppy sheltered at Denver Dumb Friends League, I had no idea of her birthday. I guesstimated and chose 1 May because May Basket Day was big in my neck o' the childhood woods.

We celebrated May Basket Day by making little baskets--often of paper--and filling them with popcorn and gumdrops and maybe a twig from a blossoming tree.

Photo by Morgan Huston for Friday Jones Publishing ~ Cheery cherry blossoms on the tree at Friday Jones Publishing house

We exchanged May Baskets with schoolmates or left them on the neighbors' doorstep, rang the bell and ran away, leaving our anonymous gift to celebrate sweet spring.

Today's installment of Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac reports a laundry list of other holidays celebrated on May 1, including the following: In pre-Christian Rome it was the time of the festival of Flora, the goddess of flowers. In medieval England, people gathered flowers to 'bring in the May' and erected a maypole bedecked with garlands. It's also the date of Beltane, a Celtic calendar festival celebrating the start of summer. Beltane was known for its bonfires, and has been revived by neo-pagans all over the world as a major religious holiday. In Germany, May 1st was the date of a pagan festival that was assimilated by the Christians and turned into the feast day of St. Walpurgis. The night before -- Walpurgisnacht -- is still celebrated in parts of rural Germany as a kind of Valentine's Day, with the delivery of a tree, wrapped in streamers, to one's beloved. It's also a day to celebrate Hawaiian history and culture, and it's known as Lei Day in Hawaii."

All these holidays lead me to believe that May Day was the ideal day to mark the birth of my late great muse, Friday Jones.

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Our tagline: WAG YOUR TALE. Happy birthday, Friday Jones. And Happy May Day, all.