What Would Jimmy Do?

We always keep a bottle of champagne in the fridge for special occasions.
Sometimes, the special occasion is that we’ve got a bottle of champagne in the fridge.
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Today is Halloween — a Halloween like most, or all, of us have never seen before. Obviously, Covid-19 changes things dramatically, but there is a full moon on Halloween and of course today is Saturday, so you working readers can sleep in tomorrow — and — it’s also daylight saving time so we get more Halloween — or maybe less — I forget, it’s just all so confusing. 

Anyhow, even though Halloween is different this year, we only think that because it evolved to what we consider “normal” over the years. If we looked back at some of the early Halloweens, we’d think they were pretty strange, too….

The first occurrence of Halloween festivities that resemble what we consider traditional today was in ancient Ireland. It was called Samhain, and it was a pagan religious ritual practiced by the Celts. In ancient Gaelic, the term Samhain translates to “end of summer” that signifies the beginning of the darker half of the year. 

According to ancient Celtic lore, the festival of Samhain was a special day that the dead could walk on Earth. This was the beginning of the “spooky” and “undead” tradition of Halloween that we think of today. 

The practice of trick-or treating has its roots in the United Kingdom and Ireland — as a religious rite. Neighbors would visit each other to ask for “soul cakes.” Then they would pray together.

The Jack-o’-lantern is one of the better known symbols of Halloween across the world. It began with the Celts in Scotland and Ireland who used large root vegetables as lanterns. Jack-o’-lanterns get their name from a man (probably named Jack) who died and was sent to Purgatory. Once there, he walked among the living for eternity with only a single lantern to guide his way. 

The Halloween we know today comes from the original Halloween practices brought by the Irish and Scottish immigrants that became infused with the mysticism and voodoo spiritualism brought by Haitian and African Americans. 

Interestingly, in Ireland, Halloween was traditionally an evening for finding your soulmate. Bachelors and bachelorettes would gather and play matchmaking games. These games were said to be the key to finding true love. Girls in Scotland once believed that they would see their future husbands if they laid their bedsheets in front of the fire on Halloween night. 

Some animal shelters refuse to allow adoption of black cats around Halloween because they fear that they will be sacrificed, abused, or forced into a ritual of some sort. 

The colors black and orange are associated with Halloween because orange is the color of the autumn harvest, and black is the color of death, darkness or the afterlife — together, they symbolize Halloween. 

In a normal year, seven out of every ten adult Americans hand out candy to trick-or-treaters.

So how much of the trick-or-treating, attending parties, or visiting haunted houses will occur this year, no one knows. But it’s still Halloween — maybe the situation will inspire new traditions and we’ll look back on “todays Halloween” and wonder why we ever did that. Happy Halloween!
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Well, it’s going to be a busy weekend around here — it’s halloween, OTBN, there’s a full moon and Daylight Saving Time begins, or actually, I guess it ends. Anyhow, along with everything else, we have to deal with changing the clocks again.

I know we’ve talked about this before, but the credit, or blame, for DST is often credited to Benjamin Franklin. He was at least one of the first ones to propose the concept in his 1784 essay, “An Economical Project.” However, no one really took it seriously until more than a century later.

The current format for DST was proposed in New Zealand by an entomologist, George Hudson. In 1895 he recommended a two-hour time change because he wanted more daylight after work to hunt bugs in the summer.

DST was first adopted by Germany during World War I, when Germany was looking for ways to save energy. A number of countries, including the United States followed suit for the duration of the war. DST was used again during World War II as a way to save energy for war production. After World War II, the U.S. continued to observe daylight saving time, but there was no standard law about how to implement it — it didn’t become a national standard in the U.S. until 1966.

DST is considered dangerous by many people. According to supposedly reliable research, cluster headaches are more likely within two weeks of the time change, people are more prone to car crashes, the incidence of heart attacks may be higher as a result of the time change and more people seek help for depression in the weeks after the transition from the extended summer daylight hours.

The original intent of DST was to save electricity, but a lot of people wake up before the sun rises and need to turn on the lights or the heat, or both, during those cold dark mornings, probably offsetting any energy that might be saved in the evenings. And — farmers actually hate DST. It is/was popular to believe that farmers pushed for the change to more daylight hours, but they hate it because it disrupts their schedule too much. They already make the most of the daylight and wake up very early. 

Being a big fan of trains, it’s always been interesting to me the way Amtrak treats DST. Trains aren’t allowed to leave a station before their scheduled time (in order to keep to their published timetables.) So when the clocks are set back one hour in the fall, all Amtrak trains in the U.S. that are running on time (not sure how many that would be) stop at 2:00 am and wait one hour before continuing. In the spring, at the DST change, trains are immediately an hour behind schedule at 2:00 am, but they just keep going and do their best to make up the time. 

There’s been a lot of controversy lately about DST and a lot, maybe the majority, of people think it should be done away with. But for now, whether you think it’s good or bad or are for or against it — it is what it is. Like most things, if it’s left up to Washington to resolve, it’ll probably be around for a long time. Anyhow, it may not be so bad — as I heard someone say…. it lets poor people experience jet lag.
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It’s raining here today — I’m not complaining, it’s rained all around us this year but we have hardly gotten any. So I’m good with a dreary day as long as we get some rain.

That’s a  word that I heard a lot when I was growing up — dreary — pretty much always used to describe the weather. I remember my parents and grandparents using it a lot — if it was a cloudy day, or especially if it was a cloudy and cold day, it was referred to as dreary.
I don’t remember hearing it much in recent years, but Claire used the term the other day and the day was, in fact, overcast.

I did a bit of checking, and I’d say that if you describe something as dreary, you mean that it’s dull and depressing — I suppose that could even be applied to people, although I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it used that way.

If you’re into word origins, I think the term comes from the Old English dreorig, meaning sad or sorrowful. It originally meant cruel, bloody, blood-stained — from droer, meaning gore or blood.

So generally speaking, dreary isn’t a particularly happy word… maybe that’s why it seems to crop up more often these days. But at least it has lost its original sense and the notion of “dripping blood.” So I guess maybe we’re at least moving in the right direction….
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A few days ago Pope Francis endorsed same-sex civil unions. If I remember correctly, when Francis was archbishop of Buenos Aires, he endorsed civil unions for gay couples as an alternative to same-sex marriages. 

I suppose this is a controversial subject for a lot of people, but I’ve never gotten terribly excited about it. The thing that always appeared unfair to me was that if two people are sharing a life together, and they can’t have power of Attorney, in case its needed, for the other person — that just seems wrong. It seems to me that should be their legal right.

Pope Francis said, “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God. You can’t kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.”

I’m pretty sure that goes right along with my thinking. I think legal rights are important. As far as “marriage,” that’s something else altogether — it probably becomes more emotional, maybe religious and sometimes just a matter of semantics. If the “union” is legally covered, that’s what’s important — marriage is something to be resolved by the various religions or other such groups. Again, remember what I’ve said here many times — things that I ramble on about are simply my opinions. Agree or disagree, read or don’t read, the choice is yours.

Pope Francis appears to be concerned about of a lot of the right things, like the environment, income inequality, immigration and people the most affected by discrimination. That seems like a good thing to me…..
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I mentioned in this blog a few days ago that my iPhone tracks my steps — it’s been doing it all along and I wasn’t even aware it was happening. So just out of curiosity, I’ve been checking my phone to see if I qualified as a couch potato  or something else.

I mowed our lawn a couple of days ago and while it’s not extremely small, I don’t think it’s extremely large — I figured it was about average.
Anyhow, according to my iPhone (and who can argue with an iPhone) I walked about 5.6 miles while cutting the grass. I’m not sure that’s significant or insignificant, but it was more than I expected. 

I think it might mean that I’m not a couch potato, but maybe I’m not quite ready for American Ninja Warrior….
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Our grandson, Locke, is going to have a birthday soon — coming up on six years old! Claire has inquired as to what he’d like for his birthday, and at the top of the list seems to be a watch. Of course this being 2020 and well into the digital age, he doesn’t want just a regular watch — he wants a “fitbit.” Now before we go any further, let’s get this our of the way — I readily admit that I’m an old fogey and often don’t understand or appreciate modern technology. 

I’m not sure I really know what a fitbit is — I think it does tell the time (among other things) but my major problem is that it displays the time digitally. Both faithful readers know that my first watch was a Mickey Mouse watch, and of course it was analog — not digital. You can check the archives of this site if you’re interested in the details my first watch.

But back to Locke — I have nothing against “fitbit” kinds of “watches.” But — I think everyone should be able to tell time on an analog clock — just like I think everyone should be able to read and write cursive. I may be, but I don’t think so, not the only one with that opinion. 

Most everyone, including kids, love digital tech. I’m sure that Locke can read time on a tablet or maybe even on the microwave oven, but staying focused on a digital interface he misses out on the benefits that come from telling time on an analog watch.

Teachers agree that there are long-term benefits to introducing kids to analog watches early on. I think some of the “advantages” of learning to tell time on an analog watch include:
It instills the concept of the passage of time — numbers changing doesn’t, by itself, convey a progression of time, it’s just numbers changing. I think an analog watch illustrates this better.
Telling time in words is better matched with a dial — if a digital watch says 8:15 pm then it’s not immediately obvious why this is pronounced as “a quarter past.” It’s much more obvious on an analog watch. 
And — kids do need to learn to tell time the traditional way anyway, so there’s no better time than the present, for their first watch. 

So Locke’s parents and me aren’t necessarily on the same page on this. They’re thinking “fitbit,” and I’m thinking it should be a watch with 12 numbers (and 2 or 3 hands) on the face. So we’ll compromise — we’ll get him the “fitbit.”
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I was reading the other day that one of the places, besides crowded bars and restaurants, to stay out of is movie theaters. That got me to thinking about movies when I was growing up. At it’s peak growth, Maysville had two movie theaters (that was before television.) I know both readers of this blog don’t believe there was a time before television — but I’m getting off the subject. 

Something that there were a lot of when I was growing up were Drive-in Theaters. There are a few still left, but if you can find one, it’s the ideal place to go to a movie in the middle of this coronavirus thing. If you’ve never been to a drive-in movie, you park your car facing the big screen and the sound is piped into your car via a speaker.

When I was a kid, drive-ins were very popular. There was one just a few miles from our house and they often had “dollar nights.” That meant that each car was only charged a dollar to get in, no matter how many people were in the car. Normally, there was a charge for each person in the car. 

Once when I was in high school, a friend whose dad was a farmer, borrowed his dad’s truck that he used to haul hay. It was an 18-wheeler with a big flat-bed trailer. We gathered up about 30 or 40 kids (that was just about all the kids in Maysville) on the flat bed and went to the movies. They initially said that dollar night didn’t apply to 18-wheelers with almost fifty people on board, but I guess they thought it was funny, or just plain stupid, and they let us in — and posted a sign that dollar night didn’t apply to 18-wheelers. 

It was a lot of fun, and unfortunately — no, probably fortunately, the kind of fun kids today can’t experience. Imagine a flat bed truck tooling down the highway with thirty or forty kids. There were obviously no seat belts, and not even any sides on the truck. Of course that’s not the only thing we did that is totally unacceptable, or even illegal today…. I remember:
Building my own skateboard with old lumber and old metal roller skates, carrying someone on the handlebars, or the cross bar of a boys bike — no helmets, playing in the street (no supervision,) walking to school or the movies alone, and calling people on the phone asking if “their refrigerator was running,” of if they “had Prince Albert in a can.”

For those of you that don’t understand these things, ask someone that’s “mature,” or do some extensive research on your own. 
But — if there happens to be a drive-in movie theater anywhere near you, and you’ve never been — GO!
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This month is, obviously, October. There are a few traditional things we acknowledge and participate in every October, like Ten-Ten Day, Columbus Day, Halloween, etc. The past two or three years, we’ve also had another activity that we looked forward to — Grandparents Day at Emily’s school. 

While I haven’t heard anything “official,” I’m guessing we won’t be attending Grandparents Day with Emily this year. 

The regular “National Grandparents Day” is celebrated September 8th — I don’t remember hearing much, if anything, about it this year. It’s extremely difficult for grandparents and grandkids to get together on Grandparents Day, or any other day, this year.
In fact, it’s difficult to get together with anyone — just a sign of the times, I guess.
Reminds me of a Carole King song that was popular about the time we got married… I don’t remember all the words, but it went something like:

Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?
It would be so find to see your face at my door
It doesn’t help to know you’re just time away
Long ago I reached for you and there you stood
Holding you again could only do me good
Oh how I wish I could but you’re so far away.

We miss seeing our grandkids, and our friends — they all seem so far away. Maybe not physically, but we’re certainly virtually separated. Sigh….
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For someone who in the past found it necessary to keep up to date on the latest technology, I’ve found myself recently looking up technical terms and acronyms that I have absolutely no idea what they mean.

This last week, I found myself doing “extensive research” on IoT. The acronym means “Internet of Things.” I suppose that in the broadest of terms, it encompasses everything that’s connected to the Internet. My research uncovered (I’m not making this up) smart toasters, rectal thermometers and fitness collars for dogs — things I would call “dumb items” — that are being connected to the web as part of IoT.

Obviously this is the trend — if you make something, be sure it has an Internet connection. I’m not sure yet, but I think my opinion is that just because something can be connected to the Internet, doesn’t mean it should be.

At least theoretically IoT presents an opportunity to be more efficient in how we do things, saving us both time and money. Almost all electronic devices contain one or more sensors. Your iPhone has sensors to detect temperature and other things — I only recently learned that my iPhone had been tracking my steps — that capability is built in and I didn’t even know it was there.
Of course everything that’s connected to the Internet can be hacked, so the security issues that need to be addressed boggle my mind. 

So now that I know what it is, I’m not particularly comfortable having the “things” around me gathering all sorts of data and “sharing” it on the Internet. I’m just not sure our refrigerator needs to have a Facebook account…..
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