What Would Jimmy Do?

Here we are into December — the last month of the first year of this decade. Last year about this time I looked back at the 2010 decade… a lot of “good and bad” things happened, but I suspect history will record it as a fairly “normal” decade. 

As we’re nearing the end of the first year of this decade, 2020 is shaping up to be the worst year ever. You’ve heard that haven’t you? You’ve probably even said it. The social upheaval that flared after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, that led to protests, some accompanied by looting — the death and economic destruction caused by the pandemic — the government’s mismanagement of the pandemic — the constant political bickering and non-functioning government… it certainly hasn’t been the best of years, but the worst year ever?

I got to thinking about that…. I’ve been fortunate, in my 80 plus years, I can’t say that I’ve ever had a really bad year. Sure — bad things have happened, loved ones and friends have died, we’ve had some illnesses that were on the serious side, jobs that went bad and things like that. But that’s all part of life. One of my friends said that not counting the pandemic, this year reminded him of 1968. I can see his point — Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, the Vietnam war was raging, police beat protesters at the Democratic National Convention and rebellions erupted in streets all over the country. 

A number of historians claim that the worst year was 536. That year a volcano erupted in Iceland and the sun dimmed for a year and a half, leading to a catastrophic global cold spell. 

So the “worst year” is really objective, and, obviously personal. None of us lived through 536, so we can’t really make a comparison, just like most of us can’t relate to the Spanish flu pandemic or the Great Depression. 

For a lot of us, 2020 has been the worst year ever and, of course, it’s been far worse for some than others, but it’s touched us all. And it probably hasn’t been helped by the media constantly telling us what an awful year it is.

Actually, maybe worst isn’t the right word — maybe a better word would be strange. We’ve never experienced anything like it. But taken one day at a time, most of us can look around and find happiness, satisfaction or enjoyment in this “new normal.” And when we really think about it, maybe it isn’t the worst year of our lives…. 
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Every year around this time, the dictionaries come out with their “Word of the Year.” I’m always interested to see what word gets the honor every year. I remember a couple of years ago, the Word of the Year wasn’t even a “word.” It was an emoji. That just seemed wrong to me, but then I often don’t agree with the choice(s) for the Word of the Year.

This year, for the first time, the Oxford English Dictionary has chosen not to name a word of the year. They stated that 2020 turned out to be a year that cannot be neatly accommodated in one single “word.” This year the Oxford English Dictionary decided to announce its “words of an ‘unprecedented’ year.” Last week, the dictionary said that there were just too many words to sum up the events of 2020. It’s kind of ironic that in a year that left us speechless, the Oxford Dictionary couldn’t come up with a Word of the Year.

However, all is not lost — on Monday, Merriam-Webster did come up with their word of the year — “pandemic.” According to the company, the first big spike for people looking up the word “pandemic” happened on February 3 — the same day that the first COVID-19 patient was released from a Seattle hospital. Searches for the word increased by 1,621% compared to the same time the year before. But the largest spike in searches for the word “pandemic” happened on March 11 when the World Health Organization officially declared “COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.” The increase on that day was 115,806% higher than on the same day in 2019.

I’m not sure that I’d have chosen pandemic for the word of the year, but I guess I have to agree it’s appropriate — from the Greek roots of the word, pan means ‘all’ or ‘every,’ and dēmos means ‘people.’ It’s literal meaning is ‘of all the people,’ The related word epidemic comes from roots that mean ‘on or upon the people.’ The two words are used in ways that overlap, but in general usage a pandemic is an epidemic that has escalated to affect a large area and/or population. 

The Word of the Year usually defines an era, or something that a particular year is known or remembered for…. in 2008 “bailout” was the Word of the Year, in 2016, it was “surreal.” 
So pandemic is probably not a bad choice — I’m not sure I’d have picked it over something like whew, ugh or Yecch.
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Seems like I start all my blogs like this lately…. in 2020 Black Friday will look different. I’ve always been curious about the term “Black Friday,” as a descriptor for the day after Thanksgiving….

A popular myth is that  the term Black Friday stemmed from slavery. It was the day after Thanksgiving when slave traders would sell slaves for a discount to assist plantation owners with more helpers for the upcoming winter (for cutting and stacking firewood, winter proofing, etc.) — hence the name….

Just to set the record straight, before we go any further, the use of “Black Friday” has nothing to do with the selling of slaves, and the term didn’t even originate until nearly a century after the practice of slavery was abolished in the U.S.

The first recorded use of the term Black Friday was applied not to holiday shopping, but to a financial crisis — specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to drive the price of gold sky-high and sell it for big profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting millions of people. 

Another story about the Friday after Thanksgiving shopping-related Black Friday tradition links it to retailers. As the story goes, after an entire year of operating at a loss (“in the red”) stores would supposedly earn a profit (“into the black”) on the day after Thanksgiving, because holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted merchandise. It is true that retail companies used to record losses in red and profits in black when doing their accounting, so this story lends some credibility to the origin of “Black Friday.”

Another story (some say the “real story”) behind Black Friday is that back in the 1950s, police in Philadelphia used the term to describe the chaos that ensued on the day after Thanksgiving, when hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists flooded into the city in advance of the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. Not only would Philly cops not be able to take the day off, but they would have to work extra-long shifts dealing with the additional crowds and traffic. The bedlam in the stores encouraged shoplifters to make off with merchandise and that added to the law enforcement headache. 

“Black Friday” related to shopping had caught on in Philadelphia by 1961 to the extent that the city’s merchants tried to change it to “Big Friday” to get away from the negative connotations. Finally in the late 1980s retailers found a way to reinvent Black Friday and turn it into something that reflected positively, not negatively, on both the merchants and customers. They basically promoted the “red to black” concept and convinced people that the day after Thanksgiving marked the occasion when stores finally turned a profit. The Black Friday story stuck, and pretty soon the term’s darker roots in Philadelphia were largely forgotten. 

So Black Friday in 2020 will certainly be different — it’s almost completely online, it started earlier and will last longer, the stores were actually closed on Thanksgiving, many/most things will be advertised electronically and stores will experiment with and use new shipping methods. 

Someone once said, “Happiness is not in money, but in shopping.” If you subscribe to that line of thinking, 2020’s Black Friday may work out even better for you…..
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Like just about everything else in 2020, Thanksgiving will be a little (or a lot) different this year. Our holidays have become “traditional” and the fact that they’ll be different this year just makes us more aware of the constant changes in the world. 

Thanksgiving, like all our holidays, has evolved over the years to what we think of today as a “traditional” Thanksgiving. But if you look back in history, Thanksgiving at the turn of the 20th century wasn’t anything like we know today — in fact, it was kind of creepy. In many cities, children and adults would dress up in masks and host costume “crawls.” The tradition of children dressing up as poor people in New York became so popular that Thanksgiving was nicknamed “Ragamuffin Day.” So Thanksgiving back then seemed more like our Halloween does today….

I just read that Macy’s Thanksgiving parade this year will be “different.” It may even be virtual — I’m not sure how that will work, but everything else seems to be becoming virtual, so why not a parade? Anyhow, Macy’s parade has also changed over the years — up until 1932, the balloons from the parade were released into the sky when the parade was over. Macy’s offered a $50 reward to anyone that found a deflated balloon and returned it. It turned out that most of the balloons would burst before they were found….

We’ve heard a lot lately about President Trump’s effort to stimulate the economy despite the pandemic, but even the date we celebrate Thanksgiving has been moved for economic reasons. In 1941 President Roosevelt changed the date of Thanksgiving to be the second-to-last Thursday in November as a way to encourage more holiday shopping to boost the economy. It wasn’t a popular decision for Roosevelt — many people at the time compared him to Hitler….

As far as I know, one thing that won’t change this year is the Thanksgiving football games — few or no fans in the stands, but there will be football. The (professional) Thanksgiving football tradition was started by the Detroit Lions in 1934 as a marketing ploy to get more attendance at the games. The Dallas Cowboys started the same tradition in 1966. So you can always watch the Lions and the Cowboys play football on Thanksgiving…..

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621 over a three day harvest festival. The first Thanksgiving sanctioned by the government was declared by the Continental Congress in 1777 but it wasn’t consistently observed until around 1815. It didn’t become a national holiday until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it on October 3, 1863. The story is that Lincoln was convinced to make it a national holiday by Sarah Josepha Hale, who wrote letters advocating for the holiday for 17 years. Sarah Josepha Hale was the woman who wrote “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”…..

The Presidential Pardoning of the turkey was formally started by George H.W. Bush in 1989. Harry Truman is often credited with being the first president to pardon a turkey, but actually he was the first to receive a ceremonial turkey from the National Turkey Federation — he had it for dinner. John F. Kennedy was the first president to let a Thanksgiving turkey go and Richard Nixon sent his turkey to a petting zoo…..

There are at least three towns in the U.S. named Turkey — in Kentucky, North Carolina and Texas. There is a Pilgrim, Michigan, Cranberry, Pennsylvania and Yum Yum, Tennessee……

Turkey wasn’t on the menu at that first Thanksgiving in 1621 — they served venison, goose, duck, oysters, lobster, eel and fish. They probably had pumpkins and cranberries, but no pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce….

Thanksgiving will be smaller and more subdued around here this year, but it’s still a day to give thanks — just like all days. Happy Thanksgiving!!
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A lot of years ago (when I was young and foolish — as opposed to now, when I’m old and foolish) rental cars were a kind of novelty. You couldn’t necessarily rent a car at every airport, and the cars that they did rent weren’t necessarily new — they may have been several years old. 
So renting cars back then wasn’t a big deal, but it wasn’t something you just did at the drop of a hat. 

Shortly before or after (memory detail problem here) graduating from high school, three or four of us decided to take a trip. The original destination was Las Vegas, but I think we wound up down around El Paso and Juarez. Anyhow, we went to Oklahoma City and rented a car for our trip. 

In those days, there was a rental charge for the car (by the day, I think,) plus a charge for every mile driven. I don’t remember being required to return the car with a full tank of gas.

Anyhow, over a few days, we put a lot of miles of the car. When we were heading back home, it suddenly occurred to us that there was no way we had enough money to pay for what the rental bill was going to be. So — we hatched the perfect plan.

One of my friends’ parents were farmers — they had a pretty big farm with lots of farm equipment, and they had a big fuel tank to store gas that they used in their tractors, hay-bailers, etc. The gas that they used in the farm equipment was not the same as gas used in cars… it was a lower octane, no additives and it was sold only for use in “off-road” or farm equipment. It was also exempt from the road and gas taxes applied to regular gas. 

The other thing that was important to our plan, was that cars odometers were mechanical (as opposed to electronic, like most are today) and if the car was put in reverse gear, the odometer would turn backwards. 

Here’s how the plan all came together: the night before we drove to Oklahoma City to return the car, we took it to my friend’s farm, filled it with “tractor gas,” jacked up the rear wheels, put it in reverse, and let it run all night. 

The people at the rental company must have wondered what we did with the car for so long — we had backed the odometer up so much that by the time we got to the rental office, it showed we had only driven less than a hundred miles. 

I probably shouldn’t be confessing this now, but I figure the statute of limitations has run out. And they say confession is good for the soul. And — I’m glad we did it when we did, I’d have no idea how to pull something like this off now with all the high-tech in the cars…..
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A friend and I were talking about requirements a few days ago. We both worked on the same projects a couple of times over the years and what brought the subject up, was the mention of someone we both worked with that always believed that a requirement was something he wanted, not something the needed.

When I was building systems, a requirement described something that was necessary to satisfy a need. An ongoing problem that we always had was that in building something that someone is going to have to use, the user always wants to have “bells and whistles” added to make his (the user’s) job easier. That’s just human nature. The problem with it, in the real world, is that there’s never enough money to provide everything he “thinks” he needs.

It reminds me of a story about Kelly…. when she turned 16 years old, she thought she had to have a car. (Everyone thinks they have to have a car when they become old enough to drive.) At the time, she was going to Paul VI High School and her argument was that she needed a car (if I remember correctly, specifically a Mercedes or Audi) to get to school. Paul VI didn’t have any busses, so I suppose she figured she had a pretty good argument.

Since Kelly was planning on studying engineering in college, I figured this would be a good time to explain “requirements” to her, since they are very important in the engineering field — everything is built to a set of requirements.

I explained to Kelly what was wrong of her argument. She had defined her need to get to school as a “requirement.” In fact, that was exactly correct — her requirement was the need to get from our house to Paul VI. However, Kelly went further, and said she needed a car to get to school. 

Here’s the real problem — Kelly, like a lot of people, didn’t really have a requirement, she had a desirement. Her real requirement was to get to school, not to get a car. I could satisfy her requirement with a bus ticket, but not her desirement for a car.

I’m sure Kelly wasn’t very happy with my “lesson,” but life is full of lessons and I’d like to think it helped her become a better engineer.
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A few days ago, during a conversation, something came up and it was compared to the time right after “9-11.” It seemed like for a time after that event, the nation seemed united and people were just generally nicer to each other, and the word patriotism was used a lot.

Someone said that we even changed the name of french fries to freedom fries for a period of time. I remember that and it got me to thinking about french fries. 

First of all, french fries didn’t originate in France — they’re called french fries because of the cut, not the country of origin. That’s why the “f” in “french” is lower case — we’re not referring to the country. As I said, french fried potatoes didn’t originate in France, they came from Belgium.

There’s no point here, except when I mentioned the french fries not coming from France, the subject turned from patriotism to potatoes. Someone thought that the “chips” part of “fish and chips” popular in the U.K. were the same as our french fries. I often order fish and chips when we go out and I ‘d say that the “chips” are all pretty much “french fries” in just about all restaurants. I’ve had fish and chips in England and I remember the chips being more like what we call steak fries around here.

It seems like the term “french fries” has become a term used to describe just about any kind of fried potatoes — those that are cut really thin, or a little thicker like at most fast food places or the “crinkle” cut that we sometimes get from the grocery store. I think it’s even used to describe the waffle cut that is popular at Chick-fil-A or the curly potatoes at Arby’s.

I should mention one thing that I remember about fish and chips in the U.K. The Brits eat their fries or” chips” a bit differently than we do. We usually eat our fries plain or maybe with ketchup. But the Brits almost always douse their chips in vinegar, and often they dip them in mayonnaise.

In a lot of places we lived overseas, we ate rice and almost never potatoes. But today potatoes are pretty much a staple in our house — and probably a good part of the world. There’s an old Irish saying that “only two things in this world are too serious to be jested on, potatoes and matrimony.” I guess that about sums it up — potatoes are a serious subject. Personally, I’ve taken them so seriously that I’ve become a couch potato…..
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A couple of days ago, I heard someone say, “ I don’t mean to be a pest, but….” I remember when I was a kid, I was often told not to be a pest. I had forgotten that it seemed to be a common phrase at one time, but I hadn’t heard it used in a long time. 

The way that the phrase was used the other day, and the way I remember it from my childhood, the term pest referred to a bothersome person. Today when I hear the term, I usually think of a bug, or something that you’d call an exterminator for.

I looked it up and the dictionary defined pest as: a plague, pestilence, epidemic; an annoying, harmful, often destructive creature; an annoying person; one who, or that which, is troublesome, noxious, mischievous, or destructive; a nuisance. 

So “pest” usually refers to an unwanted, bothersome person, and — I suppose, it could refer to an unwanted, bothersome bug. But if you check the origin of the word, it was defined as a ”destructive or harmful insect” before it was defined as an “annoying person.”

But the latin root of the word is pestis, meaning “deadly contagious disease.” In fact, during the late Middle Ages, when the bubonic plague killed a third of all humans, it was commonly known as “the pest.”

This is just another example of how our language continues to change — today, with more than 100,000 people dying every day, we no longer call it a pest — we call it COVID-19.
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A lot of people probably dreaded to get out of bed today. Those people likely suffer from at least one, maybe two, phobias — paraskevidekatriaphobia and/or triskaidekaphobia. Just like a black cat crossing your path, breaking a mirror or walking under a ladder, a lot of people believe that Friday the 13th brings bad luck. 

Superstitions have swirled around the number 13 for centuries. Interestingly, the number 12 is associated with “completeness”  — there are 12 days of Christmas, 12 months, 12 zodiac signs, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 rides of Israel, etc. 

But the next number, 13, historically has been thought of as a sign of bad luck. Fear of the number 13 is so common, that it has been given a psychological term — triskaidekaphobia.

One story that most people that are apprehensive on Friday the 13th tell is that, according to the Bible, the Last Supper, held on Maundy Thursday, was attended by 13 people (Jesus and his 12 apostles.) The next day was Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ crucifixion. This has led to a longstanding Christian superstition that having 13 guests at a table is a bad omen. 

Friday also has negative associations with luck, and many point again to the Bible — Jesus was crucified on a Friday and Friday is said to be the day Eve gave Adam the fateful apple from the Tree of Knowledge and the day Cain killed his brother, Abel. 

So if you have a fear of Friday the 13th, you not only have triskaidekaphobia, but also paraskevidekatriaphobia. But no matter, if you’re a believer, non-believer, or genuinely fear the day — today is Friday the Thirteenth, and there’ll be more — every month that begins on a Sunday has a Friday the 13th. Personally, I’m probably not as afraid of Friday the 13th as I am of the people who are afraid of Friday the 13th…..
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