Now That We're In, We Don't Want To Be Members

California, the 31st Yankee state, named after Kali, the Hindoo gawdess of "Die Like A Stuck Pig" (Kālī [...] also means "Time" or "Death" [as in time has come])* celebrates her 161st birthday today! (Because it did not exist until it became a United State!) Here's a pic of the birthday rhymes w/ witch:

In the good old days (Which, of course, sucked as much as/more than current days, just differently.) schools were closed & state gov't. & bank employees (That was us!) got a day off. Cursory Internet searching doesn't indicate if this still goes on (Banker freedom stopped sometime ago, we remember.) but there was something vaguely insulting & historical in the Times.

The demand for admission by a state of gold miners and robber barons threw Congress into a tizzy and upset the careful balance of 15 free and 15 slave states. It forced the nation into the noxious Compromise of 1850, which included the adoption of a more onerous Fugitive Slave Law and its new mandate that every federal official everywhere assist in capturing and returning any runaway slave seeking sanctuary in Northern states (thanks a lot, California); the banning of the slave trade in the District of Columbia (thank you, California!); the end of the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery throughout territories conquered in the recent war with Mexico (thanks heaps, California); a shrunken Texas (whatever); and the death knell for the Missouri Compromise line by requiring Southern, as well as Northern California, to be slave-free (thank you, anti-slavery activist Thomas Starr King, whose statue recently was ousted from the U.S. Capitol). It also probably put off the Civil War -- and made it inevitable.

More searching indicates at least some counties' offices are closed, but Superior Courts are open, as are the EDD & DMV. Whatever. At this point we're far beyond concern.

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*Shorter, illustrated: