The month of March is host to many significant events: the mailing of graduate school decisions, Saint Patrick’s Day and, of course, madness. What many people don’t know, and what I just found out this afternoon, is that March is also National Women’s History Month (WHM). I knew my uterus felt funny when I woke up this morning.

I got pretty excited when I found out about WHM, partially because I’m interested in women’s history but mostly because it occurred to me that my column would be a perfect platform for proclaiming some other month, perhaps June, to be National Elise Kramer Appreciation Month. I began dreaming up the ways in which NEKAM would be commemorated: posters, dramatic public readings of my articles, Take Your Daughter to Elise Kramer Day. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be; apparently, in order for a month to be declared the National Month of Anything, a resolution needs to be passed by Congress.

So I’ll just have to be satisfied with WHM, which shows how far our country has come. Whereas women couldn’t even vote a century ago, now we get an entire twelfth of the year! Well, we don’t get the entire twelfth of the year — that would just be greedy. We share our month with many other important issues, such as: Play the Recorder Month, National Frozen Food Month and National Umbrella Month. For too long, Americans have wandered around in the rain, getting sopping wet and thinking, “If only there were some kind of portable dome made out of waterproof material that I could hold over my head when it rained! And why does it take so gosh-darned long to make mashed potatoes?”
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