Not All Dates Grow on Trees

All dates do not grow on trees.  Here, in So Cal, there are vast date groves in the dessert and every year in the spring they have the Date Festival.  I imagine a lot of people take dates to the Date Festival.  And not wanting to date myself, I think I went to my first festival in 1976 more or less.  All of this started me thinking about, you guessed it, dates.

​June is a month with thirty days.  If you think hard, each of those days are anniversaries of things that happened in June.  Weddings, graduations, birthdays, retirements.  So many are in June.  My parents married on June 10.  My cousin was born in June as were many friends.  I graduated along with many others, on June 13 (high school) and June 1 (college).  I retired in June.  My mother passed away in June, as did a man named Jeffery Owens whom, although I never met him, his death by hate crime here in Riverside, had a profound effect on my life.  I'm sure if you think about your life, there are a lot of these type of things that have anniversaries in June.

The granddaddy of them all as far as Big Dates that occur in June is, no, not Stonewall and Gay Pride Festivals, but of course, those are indeed extremely significant events.  No, the Big Date I refer to here is the Summer Soltice.  The longest date of the year.  The day we officially begin Summer!  Yay!  I guess, yay!  Summer is here already to So Cal with temps over 100 starting today or tomorrow.  Summer Solstice.  Celebrate!

Okay, so that's my ramble about dates, their varieties (Barhi. Syrupy rich soft date, the softest and most fragile.  Dayri. Heavy, sweet flavored soft date.  Deglet Noor. Sweet delicate flavored semi-dry date; known for its “true” date flavor. Halawy. Also Halawi. Khadrawy. Also Khadrawi. Medjool. Also Medjul. Thoory.  Couldn't resist..who knew there were so many varieties of dates?)   

But dates bring back their history while maybe we are creating new events and memories to celebrate.  If we are luck, the new events outshine the bad ones and we are consoled.  But we remember dates because to forget, well, it just wouldn't be fitting.  "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." The quote is most likely due to George Santayana, and in its original form it read, 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' The phrasing itself certainly is catchy.  Something to think about as we hurtle forward through the dates of June and the chaotic times in which we live.

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