Well, I'm going back to work, albeit not (unless I'm feeling particularly antic in the morning) in my Maidenform; the Powers That Be tell us they've somehow, miraculously, found some money to pay us, albeit for a single pay period, and in the form of a paycheck that we will, all things willing and the creek don't rise, receive sometime next month. Yee-haw.

Well, to steal a phrase from Miss Deven Green, hello there.

The fabulous Miss Dina Martina gives us her... unique... perspective on this most invented of all long weekends..

From all of us here at the Café (that is to say, the Yorkie, the Mister, and me), it's once again my pleasure to wish each and every one of you a happy and enamored Karen Valentine's Day.  May your celebrations be more successful than the ill-fated and utterly unremembered Karen...

Another one, already. Where, as the song says, has the time all gone to?

Well, not technically a holiday number, I suppose, but it's candy-colored enough to pass for one, and it does remind us of the importance of fire safety whilst celebrating...

Two formidable ladies join forces, and the result is... curious.

Just so you don't think I've gone too soft-hearted about this whole Holiday season...

(Courtesy of the ever-startling Deven Green; if you've not yet been Welcomed to Her Home, well.. you're in for an experience.)

Perhaps, just a little, I'm getting a sense of the season. As is so often the case, art helps; in this case, the ineffable and magisterial art of Miss Leontyne Price.

I'm having trouble getting into the holiday spirit this year; somehow, this little gem sums up it all up nicely.

We may not have bacchanales on the scale of yesteryear on tap today, but I'm still indulging in a favorite Hallowe'en treat...

...Columbus! I hope you've had a very pleasant weekend; it's the holiday I generally think of as "Oh, that's right - we have a day off on Monday" 'round about 3:00 p.m. on Friday.

Feel like getting a jump (possibly quite literally) on the upcoming season of scares? Herewith a little bit of Hollywood Hallowe'en, courtesy of the endlessly inventive Mr. Ed Cachianes.

... Spend a few hours on this lovely Independence Day learning at the feet of that unlikely domestic goddess, Miss Joan Crawford? Here she is, reading from her 1971 magnum opus, My Way of Life. She's a complicated lady, Joan, and the book is alternately great fun and totally bonkers - sometimes in the course of a single sentence.

- For whatever reason, even though this year's roses are ragged and untidy, it's turning out to be quite a season for hydrangeas. They're a flower that always amuses me, for one immediately thinks of Miss Ciccone's vocal dislike of them. For me, as well, that then makes me think of Mother Muscato, as it turns out to be one of the vanishingly few things I think those two women would have had in common. She thought hydrangeas, for reasons unknown, to be terribly common; I'm quite sure that the annual success of our neighbor Miss Lowrie's compared to her own had nothing at all to do with it.

I wrote this two years ago. Yesterday was Loving Day, and the fiftieth anniversary of that momentous decision. It's a complicated day, though, June 12, and I'm still unpacking what I think it might mean - if anything at all - that it's also the birthday of Anne Frank; the anniversary of the death of Medgar Evers; and, since last year, the day when we will long remember the hopes and dreams of 49 people who went out one night to dance and never came home. It's not a simple world, but with all the madness, I do still believe there's a place for simple songs. And hope. We have to hope. "That's what Loving, and loving, are all about."

Yes, it's two cute boys singing a ukelele-based cover of the Monkees' immortal "Daydream Believer." Just in case you don't think we're up on all the hipster trends here at the Café.

I wrote this in 2012. Today, the quiet, green hillside is still there, but there are, I fear, no geraniums. When we went to bury my father last summer, the little blue cottage across the street still served as the landmark by which we found mother's side of the family. The cemetery may stay more or less the same, but life moves on; I suppose a day like this helps us appreciate both the sameness and the change.

This is a holiday that always makes me just a little blue.  If you've read Ask the Cool Cookie's excellent meditation on the subject, you'll more or less know why. 

I suppose this isn't the most appropriate image one might choose to celebrate a month of fasting and sacrifice, but - can anybody with two eyes blame me?

M is for... first appeared on May 10, 2009 and has become my Mother's Day tradition. Once, again, Happy Mother's Day, Mother Muscato, wherever you are...

A very happy Easter to all, from me and from this week's birthday girl, the original Star Lady herself, the inimitable and much-missed Miss Ann Miller. Who else would have gone along with this gag, let alone carried it off?