Local Matters
Step aside, dads, grads and grooms. June is also:
National Dairy Month -- Celebrate by attending the Strolling of the Heifers Parade and Festival in Brattleboro on June 3.
National Rose Month -- The website Rose Gardening 101 offers suggestions for how to celebrate: "Give a rose plant to a nearby nursing home," and "Begin a garden blog to celebrate your rose garden."
National Hernia Awareness Month -- The website for the Hernia Resource Center warns: "A hernia can be both seen and felt. You may notice it as a lump in your abdomen or groin that may or may not disappear when you lie down. You also may be aware of a dull aching sensation that becomes more pronounced when you are active."
National Audiobook Month -- What better time for Burlington's Fletcher Free Library to wrap up its "literary classics rescue" series, a fundraising read-aloud to promote a hands-free experience with great books? The heady selection for June 2: a memorable taste of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way.
National Accordion Awareness Month -- Established in 1989 to celebrate the underrated keyboard and reed instrument. It'll be a bit of a hike to attend the 16th annual Accordion Festival in San Francisco, but find time to celebrate your local squeezemasters.
National Gay Pride Month -- The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities traditionally hold pride parades in the month of June, though Burlington's will occur this year on the first weekend in July. The celebrations commemorate the Stonewall riots, a series of confrontations between GLBT bar patrons and police, the first of which occurred on June 27, 1969 outside Manhattan's Stonewall Inn.