Celebrating Spring and the Persian New Year at the same time!

aaron-burden from Unsplash

The Persian New Year begins on the first day of Spring, which falls on March 20^th this year. It is called Norooz, which translates roughly into New Day.  Though its origin goes back to the faith of Zoroastrians, this day has been celebrated for over three thousand years, by almost every Iranian, as well as by other countries that have been influenced by this Persian tradition over the centuries.  It is considered a secular holiday, and therefore religion and ethnicity differences are put aside during this time of celebration.

Who is that masked man? Happy Purim!

image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Book of Esther, Hebrew, c. 1700-1800 AD – Royal Ontario Museum – DSC09614.JPG  Uploaded by Daderot Created: November 20, 2011

On the night of Wednesday, March 20th, after having fasted all day Jews all over the world will gather in synagogues, houses of worship, places of study, and sometimes in their own homes to hear the story of Purim.

Librarians and their “Cat Bags”

Bay Shore Library

One doesn’t have to be a librarian for long to find out that the first thing to do at a professional library conference is making a beeline straight to the Baker & Taylor table to get a shopping bag.  The very first experience will have you hooked on repeating this activity.  While this tradition falls under the things they don’t tell you in library school, you do learn about Baker & Taylor as a book distributor for libraries.  Any decent library conference will have Baker & Taylor among its publishers, but it is their beautiful shopping bags with cats on them that is eye-catching to all.  It doesn’t take long to learn that these cats are the company’s mascots.