Welcome back to the odd and whimsical poetery of the Peeps related to holidaze! Let’s investigate what today is, because we need all the holidaze we can celebrate, right? Furtunately, our country is back to more or less normality, about which the PWBs are very happy!
Still, every day seems to be many holidays. Which is good, because we all have our favorites. So I will pick out one or two, and you can click the link above if you’re curious about the rest. This is an Open Thread, so please feel free to add your favorite pomes and photoes and holidaze for today in the Comments!
Today is National Plan for Vacation Day
For now, of course, we’re making an art of the staycation (in our household, mostly by choosing top restaurants, browsing their online menus, and selecting new dishes to cook at home). I hope this won’t trigger anyone’s frustrations with the Covid, but I’ve been using all this lockdown time dreaming about real vacations. When it’s safe to travel again, if I can manage to afford it (purrhaps because we have not spent money going anywhere for what will probably be about 2 years!), I plan to go to Costa Rica to encourage their ecotourism (yes, I wrote a diary about it; click here for some great scenery and of course a critter!). How about you?
How to Observe National Plan for Vacation Day
Celebrate the day for planning out your vacation days for the upcoming year. Project: Time Off has a vacation planning tool where you can enter the number of days you will have off and how you want to spend them. You could also check with travel organizations, as some have deals on the day. There are countless places in the United States and around the world that could be visited while on vacation. Perhaps you would rather take several smaller vacations throughout the year than one larger one. This can also easily be done as there are many places close to home where vacations can be taken.
Vacation
by Rita Dove
I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
be summoned to the gate, soon enough
there’ll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
and perforated stubs—but for now
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby’s wail and the baby’s
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
Even the lone executive
who has wandered this far into summer
with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
knocking his knees—even he
has worked for the pleasure of bearing
no more than a scrap of himself
into this hall.
He’ll dine out, she’ll sleep late,
they’ll let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a little hope, a little whimsy
before the loudspeaker blurts
and we leap up to become
Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.
Poem reprinted from On the Wing, published by the University of Iowa Press.