President’s Message – April 2019
“Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever”, Charles Lamb
Did you know that there isn’t any consensus on the origins of April Fool’s Day? According to cultural historians, it wasn’t until the 18th century that detailed references to it appeared. However, at that time the custom was already well established throughout northern Europe and it was regarded as being an extremely old custom. Earlier references can be found as early as the 1500s but these early references were infrequent, vague and ambiguous. So the origin of April Fool’s Day remains a mystery.
According to the website thoughtco.com Noah Webster who copyrighted the first edition of his dictionary in April was a “bit of an April fool. One of his dearest wishes was to reform English spelling for Americans, to make it simpler and more obvious”. His proposals included removing all double vowels so bread would be spelled bred; tuf for tough; laf for laugh; kee for key, and speek for speak. How many school children would have loved his reforms to be adopted!
Now we “older folks” need a Noah Webster to translate our grandchildren’s text messages for us.
JK, TTYL, CYA, Marnie