Veggies

Happy Presidents' Day everybody. When I was a child there wasn't a "Presidents' Day." Instead we celebrated two different presidents' birthdays: Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Both were born in February.

Here is what happened according to the Encylopaedia Britannica. In 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Bill, which moved a number of federal holidays to Mondays. The change was designed to schedule certain holidays so that workers had a number of long weekends throughout the year, but it has been opposed by those who believe that those holidays should be celebrated on the dates they actually commemorate. During debate on the bill, it was proposed that Washington’s Birthday be renamed Presidents’ Day to honour the birthdays of both Washington (February 22) and Lincoln (February 12); although Lincoln’s birthday was celebrated in many states, it was never an official federal holiday. Following much discussion, Congress rejected the name change. After the bill went into effect in 1971, however, Presidents’ Day became the commonly accepted name, due in part to retailers’ use of that name to promote sales and the holiday’s proximity to Lincoln’s birthday. Presidents’ Day is usually marked by public ceremonies in Washington, D.C., and throughout the country.

Here in our area, as in many, it has become a day to shop. And shop we did. But only for the same stuff we normally shop for: groceries, household stuff, prescriptions, stuff like that. We don't actually celebrate our holidays by shopping. ;-)

One of our stops today was at the Whatcom Coop where we picked up some organic fruit and a few other things we can only buy at the coop. This was their vegetable display. I had my little Sony camera along and modified the photo using the watercolor and the illustration filters. At home I added more detail with the detail extractor and posterized the photo using the poster edges filter in Photoshop. This is the result.