I've often wondered how long it took the government to recognize December 7th as an official, observable day of remembrance. I grew up familiar with and connected to Pearl Harbor Day for reasons I won't go into here, but never really thought about how long it was before it officially became one of those notations on the yearly calendars you buy at the mall along with Columbus Day and St. Swithens Day. I'm sure at first no one needed any reminder as the date ticked by each year. But eventually, it became a notation in the history books and at some point, someone had to officially decide that we would put some reminder on the calendars. I'd always assumed that was some government designation so formed by an act of Congress. Since the knowledge box is sitting on my lap, I just decided to look it up and it appears that National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day wasn't declared an official day of remembrance by the Government until 1994.

Um... what?

Professor Google must be off today, because that can't be right. I can't find any official federal record of it before that time. Feel free to school me in the comments if I've gotten this wrong, but did it really take fifty-three years for some official federal response to this? I feel a lot better about that hole in the sky over Ground Zero now.

I've been a bit (okay a lot) maddened by the media as of late and I chose to mark this day by turning the radio and television off to avoid the fear- and hate-peddling that's been the majority of bandwidth on the airwaves recently. I can't listen to even one more second of attention given to people who do not deserve mine.

Instead, the girls and I made cupcakes and then we all took them to our local firehouse. They made cards for the "fighter fighters," as The Caterpillar calls them (of course, the rest of us all call them that now too), and they carefully selected firetruck cupcake liners, and red and yellow sprinkles -- because those are the colors of the fire truck, not because the cupcakes should look like they're on fire. Let's hope that was clear.

I have a great fondness for fire fighters. These are the guys who saved our house a few years back. These are part of the brotherhood of men that my neighbor (a retired fire fighter after thirty years on the force) has told us so many stories about. These are the people who ran toward those falling towers when everyone else was running away. These are people who put their own lives in danger daily to help save others' and protect their property. These are the people who should be getting all the attention on a day like today.





I just hope they don't notice how many times my girls stuck their fingers in the icing.