Make Opening Day a Federal Holiday!

(Wrote this yesterday) It was back in January when I complained that it was too warm. Things just weren't right - it was creepy - and I worried about what spring would be like.

Well, here it is, March 20, and the vestiges of winter abound. The trees, normally full of buds at this time of year in DC, are barren. DC's famous Cherry Blossom Festival starts late this year. [Fading into tangents... The new Nats park, as Nats fans know, will have rows of cherry trees in leftfield. The artist's renderings of the park show the trees in their full pink glory. However, cherry blossoms only last two weeks before falling off (what a mess that will be!) Since they normally bloom the last week of March, that leaves one week during the entire season they'll be in bloom. If the Nats don't start the season at home, well, no pretty pink blossoms for us! What was I saying? Oh yeah...]Spring to me is how I get through life. I love summer - shorts, grilling, warm nights, a beach outing or two - but it is spring that is renewal. It is spring that thaws the ice and brings us longer days. It is spring when the days aren't oppressively hot, when even rainy days are pleasing, when color comes back into the world in the form of varigated flowers, green grass, and blue skies.

It's also the time when we have no days off for three months straight! Have our corporate masters who stick us in offices from 9-5 intentionally done this to us to make us suffer through the brilliance of the days and make us feel the full force of wasting most of our lives? Why must the cruel fluorescent light torture our eyes while the sunshine brings things to life? Why must we breathe the stale office air when freshness laps against the outside walls? Why can't America have ONE DAY OFF in spring?

There is one perfect day to have off, the holiest of days, a non-denominational day that can be shared by everyone. That is Opening Day (not the faux ESPN night game, but the true Opening Day.) Why not celebrate baseball, a part of our national conscience, our social fabric, a game that isn't just a game, but a symbol of what is good in life, a symbol of America itself, a game that integrated more than a decade before the Civil Rights Movement and healed us after the atrocities of that fateful September 11. When Rosie the Riveter was screwing tanks together, so too, was Dottie Henson donning the mask while the boys destroyed Hitler. Even Civil War soldiers on both sides of the conflict took a time out from their killing each other to play baseball together.

So why not celebrate baseball? Make Opening Day a Federal Holiday. Let the entire nation have the chance to watch the Reds Findlay Market festivities like it does with the Macy's Parade. Let us celebrate spring! Let us celebrate life!