May Thoughts

April showers bring May flowers and May flowers bring . . . . . pollen, pilgrim. Anyone who lives here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon knows all about this – windshields covered with the yellow stuff and clouds of it hovering over the thousands of acres of grass seed farms covering the valley. Growing grass for seed is a big cash crop in Western Oregon and yes, I’m talking about the yard stuff, not the plant whose profits go “up in smoke.” There’s plenty of that too in Oregon and it’s a big money maker – legal now, to boot -YAY! Oregon’s far from alone in this regard, with the list of states decriminalizing, permitting medical use, or recreational use growing all the time. But there I go digressing again.*

The first day of May is often referred to as May Day and it is the day on which most of the non-U.S. world celebrates Labor Day. May Day is also associated with the Maypole, which itself is linked to European pagan dancing in the Middle Ages. The dance, which is a celebration of fertility, involves a lot of fun and frolicking, which meant, of course, that it was scandalous at various points in history. The British Parliament banned Maypole dancing in 1644 after Oliver Cromwell described it as “a Heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness.”

Though we associate May Day today with happiness, the expression “mayday, mayday, mayday” (note the joining of the words) is used to declare dangerous situations. Why? Turns out, the ‘mayday’ comes from the convergence of radio transmission and flying. In the 1920s, air traffic over the English Channel spiked along with corresponding problems. Pilots needed a clear way to communicate they needed help. Radio-based telegraphy on ships used three dots, three dashes, and three dots – S.O.S. The problem with the letter ’S’ when spoken, though, is that it sounds like ‘F’. A voice-based transmission of SOS might thus be misunderstood, so an alternative was sought. The expression ‘mayday’ repeated three times was chosen for two reasons. First, it didn’t sound like anything else and second, it had roots in the French phrase ‘m’aider,’ which translates as ‘help me.’ Frederick Stanley Mockford, a senior British radio officer, is given unsubstantiated credit for coming up with the phrase. It also made him unsubstantiatedly famous, which may be why you’ve never heard of him.

Besides May poles, May Day, and general mayhem, this month is also important to Hallmark as occasion for sending greeting cards for the following events – World Asthma Day (May 3), World Naked Gardening Day (May 7), World Laughter Day (May 9), International Hummus Day (May 13), World Goth Day (May 22), and World Thyroid Day (May 25). Be sure to get those cards in the mail early, folks, lest the annual Post Office delays due to World Thyroid Day result in grandma thinking you overlooked her. With that, I happily conclude this column before running out of spac

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