To the Editor:
April 18 ought to be Paul Revere Day.
You can call April 21 anything you want. I call it Monday this year. Next year it will have a different name.
That aside, the preoccupation with apostrophes is hilarious. Of course, Maine has plenty of patriots, not all of them from colonial times. Spelling the key word Patriot’s Day, we could have Patriot of the Year, moving from Lt. William Cunningham of the garrison at Fort Edgecomb during the War of 1812 through Joshua Chamberlain to the latest Maine casualty from Afghanistan. Let’s open the envelope for 2014, please….
Besides, Sept. 11 has been designated Patriots Day, hasn’t it? Why do we need two such days?
Nah. Just eliminate the apostrophe. Nobody uses it correctly, anyhow. So why use it at all? It breaks its own rules, anyway. Just take a look at that “its” I just wrote. It’s a possessive, but, but, but…. possessives are supposed to use apostrophes! Ah, but then look at the “it’s” I just wrote. It is a contraction. Contractions require apostrophes to show they are contractions. Don’t they? Or does it matter?
Eliminate the apostrophe and give April 18 (not April 21) back to Paul Revere. Required celebration event: A communal choral reading of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” I can still remember most of it.
