St. Orville's Day

August 13th is St Orville's Day.
I believe deeply in keeping your own calendar. 
It should be populated with saints and commemorations.

Orville was my father. In his youth he was wild and reckless. It is a multiple miracle that he lived to procreate. As an adult he was steady, and funny, and  observant. He had no cusswords that anyone else would recognize. He never hit a child, or a woman. In the 48 years I knew him I never heard him raise his voice, or use a racial slur, or treat any human as anything less than fully human. He was crazy about our mother. In old age he liked to prank nurses. He was musical and painted. He was an amateur botanist, geologist and astronomer. He was thrifty, but never cheap.

Appropriate ways to celebrate St Orville's Day.

• Go out and watch the Perseid meteor shower that comes for his name day.
• plant something, anything - especially a tree
• eat a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich, but only if you grow the tomato
• Indulge in a Green River Float.
• Paint in watercolors
• enjoy some bluegrass
• pull a good but harmless prank
• tell a tall tale
• read the funnies (or anything) to a child
• repair something rather than throw it out
• Tell someone you love them

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