{"id":4992,"date":"2025-07-02T08:07:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T04:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4992"},"modified":"2025-07-02T07:19:55","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T03:19:55","slug":"birthdays-and-anniversaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4992","title":{"rendered":"Birthdays and anniversaries"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve heard that John Adams always insisted July 2 should be the real commemoration of our nation&#8217;s independence, not July 4, so perhaps\u00a0<em>today<\/em> we begin year number 250 in our history.<\/p>\n<p>In my family, though, the end of June and beginning of July mark several birthdays, notably Irene Gallagher, my grandmother, who was born on July 3, 1925. She&#8217;d be 100 years old tomorrow, and I think I&#8217;m going to celebrate with a Manhattan and an episode of\u00a0<em>The Golden Girls<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Irene Gallagher lived the quintessential 20th century American life, from Depression to war to homemaker to working woman to the retired doting grandmother I knew and loved into the third millennium.<\/p>\n<p>Three years ago, on what would have been her 97th birthday I aired an episode of\u00a0<em>Math and Musings<\/em> describing her life in detail, and submitted for your approval (you&#8217;ll see why that makes sense when listening to the episode), I offer it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzsprout.com\/1746819\/episodes\/10851564\">here<\/a> again.<\/p>\n<p>Enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>And happy birthday, Grandma!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve heard that John Adams always insisted July 2 should be the real commemoration of our nation&#8217;s independence, not July 4, so perhaps\u00a0today we begin year number 250 in our history. In my family, though, the end of June and &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4992\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4993,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4992\/revisions\/4993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}