Green Beans: Happy National Jelly Bean Day
Sure, it's Earth Day. We know. Go watch An Inconvenient Truth for the zillionth time, then turn off the lights and eat something unbearably good for you by candlelight. And then start in on the jelly beans. Because not only is today Earth Day, but it's also National Jelly Bean Day. Which is kind of amusing when you think about it, especially if you associate the bright candies not with Easter but with Ronald Reagan.
Why National Jelly Bean Day? It's origins are somewhat obscure, unlike Earth Day, which was founded 40 years ago by Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin) as an "environmental teach-in." Okay, it's not even a real holiday, but who cares. Not Reagan, who famously served the candies at the White House and on Air Force One, which apparently had a holder specifically designed so that the jar of beans would not spill during turbulence. Not the candy makers, surely, who probably invented the holiday to encourage us to buy up all those bags of leftover Easter jelly beans. Maybe in honor of both days, somebody can make a portrait of Al Gore out of jelly beans. Green ones.
Flickr/Randy Son of Robert Ronald Reagan, in jelly beans
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