What Would Jimmy Do?

Today is Columbus Day — a day that marks Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to America. He landed on the island of Guanahani in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. 

It only became a legal holiday in 1971 but before then, many states celebrated Columbus Day on October 12. When it became a legal federal holiday, the celebration was moved to the second Monday in October — this year that just happens to be October 12. 

It was 300 years before the first Columbus Day celebration was held in the United States. That first celebration was organized by The Society of St. Tammany in New York City — on the 300th anniversary of Columbus’ landing.
A hundred years later, in 1892, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation establishing a celebration of Columbus Day on the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ landing.
The first state to declare Columbus Day a legal holiday was Colorado in 1907. 
The first federal observance of Columbus Day occurred in 1937 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 
And in 1971, Presidential  Proclamation PL90-363 made Columbus Day a legal federal holiday and set its observance always on the second Monday in October.

Many/most historians agree that Columbus was not the first person, nor the first European, to discover the Americas. It is well known that indigenous people had been living in the Americas centuries before Columbus’ arrival. 

To recognize that fact, many cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco, etc, have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Some states including Alaska, Vermont, Oregon and Minnesota also celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day. 

In this day of political correctness, the move towards Indigenous Peoples’ Day attempts to bring awareness to Columbus’ treatment of indigenous people and to celebrate and respect indigenous culture. 

Obviously Columbus left his mark in the new world — the Republic of Columbia in South America and the District of Columbia in the US are named for him, and are numerous towns, streets, rivers and public buildings. 
So whatever you’re celebrating today, it’s a holiday worth pondering — happy Columbus/Indigenous People Day.
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Well, here it is a holiday that we’ve celebrated every year for almost 50 years — Ten-Ten Day. Both the faithful readers of this blog know all about it, but if you’re new, Ten-ten, or Double Ten Day is a real national holiday in Taiwan. Why do we (Jimmy and Claire) celebrate it? 

Actually, it may be one of the most hard-to-understand days to explain to anyone not somewhat versed in Chinese history. 
Ten-Ten Day is observed on October 10 every year….
October 10 is…
Not Taiwan’s birthday.
Not the Republic of China’s birthday.
It’s the Chinese Nationalist Party’s birthday — however, Ten-ten Day is not a celebration of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s birthday. It is the celebration of the start of the Wuchang Uprising, which later led to the Xinhai Revolution. 

The Wuchang uprising marks the start of the end of the Chinese dynasties. The Manchu controlled Qing dynasty became very unpopular and a number of revolutionaries combined for the purpose of overthrowing the Qing dynasty. One of these revolutionaries was Dr. Sun Yet-Sen, who spent most of his time overseas trying to get funding for the uprising. Most of his work was overseas because he was exiled from Ching during a previous Guangzhou uprising in 1895. 

Eventually many provinces ceded from the Qing Dynasty and Sun returned to China and was elected the first president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China on January 1, 1912. The end of the Qing Dynasty was finalized with the last emperor Puyi abdicating his throne on February 12, 1912. 

For more than 30 years, the Nationalist Chinese steadily lost ground to the communist forces of Mao Zedong. On December 8, 1949 Chinese Nationalist leaders departed for the island of Taiwan, where they established their new capital. Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek left for the island the next day marking the beginning of the “two Chinas,” leaving mainland China under communist control. This also was effectively the end of the long struggle between Chinese Nationalist forces and communist leader Mao Zedong. For the United States, this posed a troubling diplomatic problem, and President Truman’s recognition of the Nationalist government on Taiwan infuriated Mao, ending any possibility for diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. 

The United States continued its support of Taiwan, while Mao’s government continued to rail against the Nationalist retime. By the early 70s, U.S. policymakers were looking to open economic relations with China and also hoping to use China as balance agains Soviet power. That led to a closer relationship with communist China and in 1979 the U.S. officially recognized the People’s Republic of China. 

Today is a big holiday in Taiwan — nearly all Taiwanese get the day off from work on Ten Ten Day. In mainland China, Ten-Ten Day is referred to as the Anniversary of the Wuchang Uprising, and various memorial celebrations are held. 

The reason we celebrate Ten-Ten Day is because in 1972, we lived in an apartment building next door to the Taiwan Embassy in the Philippines. They had a very big party on Ten-Ten Day. It looked like fun, so every year we celebrate Ten-Ten Day — and we have Chinese food. 
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Well, Halloween is on the horizon and apparently there won’t be any ‘Trick or Treating’ in Shepherdstown in 2020. Of course, everything is screwed up, different, or just plain canceled this year. 

Anyhow, that got me to thinking about Halloween and trick or treating… It seems like for a lot of years, trick or treat has only meant “treat.” Whatever happened to the “trick” part? When I was a kid, the idea was that when you said, “trick or treat” the person was supposed to give you a treat, or you’d play a trick on them. 

I don’t think my kids, and certainly not my grandkids, ever thought of ‘trick or treat’ in those terms. I remember Halloween being a day (mostly night) to “play tricks.” It was kind of like the one day (or night) in the year when it was ok to get into some mischief. In fact, we were probably masterminds of mischief. 

Admittedly, some of our “tricks” got a little out of hand on occasion but I don’t remember anyone ever getting hurt or causing any serious damage. One of the most popular “must do” Halloween tricks was to turn over people’s outhouses — I don’t think any of them were anchored to the ground and they were easy to just push over. It was certainly annoying, but they were pretty easy to sit back up and if your outhouse didn’t get turned over, you were surprised and probably wondered, “why not?” I remember some of the more common pranks that were pulled almost every Halloween included, tying doorknobs together or to something to keep the door from opening, soaping car (and downtown store) windows, taking rocking chairs from front porches and putting them on the roof, and letting pigs or chickens out of their pens, or stringing toilet paper over someone’s lawn and trees, and maybe occasionally letting the air out of tires.

When I grew up, obviously I lived in a small community and essentially knew everyone in town. Often, it was the local grouch, or two, who was the brunt of most of the kids Halloween mischief. Usually, the kids would cause trouble and the adults would just smile guiltily to themselves, and were probably mostly amused by the shenanigans. 

But the world has changed from when I was a kid — more and more people moved into crowded urban centers, full of big city problems like poverty, segregation and unemployment…. and pranking took on a new edge, becoming more destructive and moe related to vandalism. 

As homeowners grew less patient, the risks for pranksters grew to include arrest or in some instances, even being shot. Communities initiated curfews, age limits for trick-or-treating, and intensified police patrols. 

I guess today “tricks” still happen, but not regularly as I remember. The average child collecting candy on Halloween night doesn’t understand the meaning of the phrase “ trick or treat” anymore. I guess that’s not a bad thing — it’s probably a good thing.
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If you’ve been following the news, you know that COVID-19 has reached the White House. It had reached the White House before, but now it’s hit the “front office.”

In the early days of this disease’s  spread (in the United States) the President repeatedly emphasized that everything was “under control” and the virus would just “disappear” in the coming warmer months. 
It might be interesting to note that at that time, coronavirus was steadily spreading in Singapore. The average temperature in Singapore is similar to summer in the United States. 

Well, since I can’t rely on my memory so much anymore, I did some extensive research on the events leading up to yesterday — here’s what I found. The timeline and events is far from complete — these are just some of the things I found interesting……

May 2018 — The administration disbanded the White House pandemic response team.
July 2019 — The Center for Disease Control (CDC) epidemiologist embedded in China’s disease control agency left her post, and the Administration decided to eliminate the role.
January 22 — Presidential quote: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
January 28 — National Security Advisor to Trump: “This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency… This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”
February 2 — Trump quote: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 10 — Trump quote: “Looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
February 26 — Trump quote: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
February 28 — Trump quote: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
March 2 — Trump quote: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 8 — Trump quote: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
March 15 — Trump quote: “This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.”
March 30 — Trump quote: “Stay calm, it will go away. You know it — you know it is going away, and it will go away, and we’re going to have a great victory.”
April 2 — Trump tweet: “Massive amounts of medical supplies… are being delivered directly to states… some have insatiable appetites & are never satisfied (politics?). The complainers should have been stocked up and ready long before this crisis hit.”
April 15 — The U.S. death toll passes 30,000
April 23 — 26 million jobless claims
April 24 — U.S. death toll passes 50,000
May 5 — U.S. death toll passes 70,000
May 7 — 33 million jobless claims
May 16 — Trump tweet: “We’ve done a GREAT job on Covid response, making all Governors look good, some fantastic (and that’s OK), but the Lamestream Media doesn’t want to go with that narrative, and the Do Nothing Dems talking point is to say only bad about “Trump”. I made everybody look good, but me!”
May 18 — U.S, death toll passes 90,000
May 27 — U.S. death toll passes 100,000
May 29 — Trump quote: “We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization.”
June 6 — U.S. death toll passes 110,000
June 18 — Trump quote: “And it is dying out. The numbers are starting to get very good.”
June 22 — U.S. death toll passes 120,000
June 30 — The U.S. has just 4% of the global population, but 25% of global coronavirus cases and the second highest death rate per capita.
July 6 — U.S. death toll passes 130,000
July 18 — U.S. death toll passes 140,000
July 28 — U.S. death toll passes 150,000
August 3 — Trump quote: “I think we are doing very well and I think… as well as any nation.”
August 6 — U.S. death toll passes 160,000
August 16 — U.S. death toll passes 170,000
August 26 — U.S. death toll passes 180,000
August 31 — Trump quote: “We’ve done a great job in Covid but we don’t get the credit.”
September 9 — U.S. death toll passes 190,000
September 14 — Trump was asked if he is afraid of Coronavirus risk at his rallies: “I’m on a stage, it’s very far away, so I’m not at all concerned.”
September 19 — U.S. death toll passes 200,000
September 23 — Trump quote: “I think we’re rounding the turn very much.”
October 2 — Trump and First Lady test positive for Coronavirus.

There’s no particular point to all this — I found it extremely interesting to go back in time and remember how this all played out. I remember someone I play golf with telling me back in March that as soon as the weather got warm, the virus would just “die.” I guess a lot of people thought that… a lot of us didn’t. Stay healthy…. and vote.
I wish the President and First Lady all the best — nobody deserves this disease or its consequences.
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Well, yesterday we got October off to festive start by celebrating the Moon Festival. The first full Moon of fall occurred last night — the Harvest Moon. Of course 2020 being what it is, we’ll get a second full Moon this month — on Halloween, no less. That second Moon will be the Hunter’s Moon, as well as the Halloween Moon and a Blue Moon. 

October was originally the eighth month of the Roman calendar. It’s name comes from the Latin word “octo” that means eight. (It became the 10th month when January and February were added to the calendar.)

This is the second month of Autumn. When I was in school, we always had a fire drill during the month of October. I was told that October was chosen because the Great Chicago Fire occurred in October of 1871. In a normal year, the leaves usually begin to change color this month and normally the World Series would be played and the NBA and NHL usually begin their seasons. Since this is 2020 we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

And of course October has its share of wise old sayings….
When deer are in a gray coat in October, expect a hard winter.
A warm October means a cold February.
Much rain in October, much wind in December.
In October dung your field, and your land its wealth shall yield. 

So there you have it — Happy October.
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If you check your calendar, you’ll see that today is the first day of October…. what your calendar may not tell you is that today just also happens to be the Chinese Moon Festival. This is a holiday that has been celebrated for at least 3,000 years and is probably the second largest festival in China — after the Chinese New Year. The Moon Festival is also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival.

This is one of those holidays that you can’t ask your calendar app to remind you of every year — it is observed on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. It can occur in either September or early October in the Gregorian calendar, and this year (2020) it’s today.

This autumn festival falls during the full Moon nearest the fall equinox, which is said to be the brightest and roundest full moon. In China, festivities involve brightly colored lanterns, dances, games and other forms of entertainment. People celebrate into the evening to give thanks for the harvest and for being together, offering each other wishes for happiness and long life and remembering loved ones who live far away.

If you’d like to celebrate in a traditional way tonight, you can make some offerings to the Moon goddess Chang’e or share traditional mooncakes by moonlight. Mooncakes are round pastries that symbolize the full Moon and are often filled with red bean or lotus seed paste surrounding a salted egg yolk in the center. 

But no matter how you celebrate, we’re off and running into October and this year we get to kick it off with the Moon Festival.
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As painful as it was, I watched the presidential debate last night.
In my, admittedly simplistic, mind the big loser was the United States of America….
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Today is Confucius Day — in honor of Confucius. You probably know that, among other things, Confucius was an early Chinese philosopher. Confucius was born in China on October 18, 551 B.C. and if not the first, certainly one of the earliest great philosophers of the world. He was also a teacher, scholar, and a politician. I read somewhere that there are 499 famous sayings that are contributed to Confucius.

It might not surprise you to learn that Confucius wasn’t his real name — it was Kong Qiu, and he was known as Master Kong. When he was living, his views were generally received with scorn. Following his death, a handful of his dedicated followers passed on Confucius’ teaching to future generations in the book, The Analects of Confucius.

It took many years after Confucius’ death for his philosophies to be appreciated, but today, Confucianism is an ethical school of thought adopted by many “thinkers” around the world. More and more followers of Confucianism are advocating a deeper study of his philosophies.

Over the years, many comical or humorous sayings have been created and referred to as sayings of Confucius. As a rule of thumb, if the saying is humorous, chances are it is not a true saying by the scholarly Confucius. You’ve probably heard some of these attributed to Confucius:
“Man who want pretty nurse, must be patient,” or “Man who leaps off cliff, jumps to conclusion,” or maybe “War does not determine who is right, war determines who is left.” These are all funny and clever, but they didn’t come from Confucius. 

Some of Confucius’ better know sayings include:
It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
Real knowledge is to know the extend of one’s ignorance.
Life is really simple but we insist on making it complicated.

So I’d say that one of the world’s greatest philosophers deserves his day. And, in fact, Confucius Day dates back thousands of years. I couldn’t find any information as to who actually came up with the idea, or why September 29th was chosen for the date. 
But no matter — one of Confucius’ most famous sayings is, “Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself. That’s good advice for all days.
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We went to church last week and after church I was talking to a friend that I hadn’t seen in a few weeks. I had almost forgotten that the simplest conversation with him takes a long time. I think we all know people like that — they insist on giving you every nitty-gritty little step when you wish they’d cut through the chase and just give you the bottom line. All this painstaking detail makes your brain start to hurt. I’m sure there must be a lot of communication “styles.”  In fact, there is an online quiz called “What’s Your Communication Style?” If you’re interested, you can check it out and even take the quiz — it’s free. Anyhow, I though it was interesting…. according to the site, about 21% of people have Functional communication style and roughly 24% have an Intuitive communication style. The Intuitive style seems to be the style more prevalent in very senior executive roles. 

Intuitive communicators like the big picture and avoid getting bogged down in details. They prefer a broad overview that lets them skip right to the end point.
Functional communicators like process, detail, timelines and well-thought out plans. They communicate things in a step-by-step fashion so nothing get missed

One benefit of Intuitive communication is not getting bogged down in too many details, allowing greater comfortability with big ideas and out-of-the-box thinking. 
The benefit of having a Functional communication style is that the communication generally hits all the details and nothing gets missed.

Of course the important thing isn’t the style — the important thing is that there actually is communication, something that seems to be lacking too often today. Even though I prefer someone who gets to the point quickly, I’m working on being more patient with “functional communicators.” I keep reminding myself that they’re not just rambling, they’re detail oriented.

And now, I’m learning about a whole new set of communication types — I haven’t figured texting out yet, and don’t get me started on emojis…
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You all know that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol — according to the news, the first woman to ever be given the honor. Well, in this day of not believing everything (or maybe even most of) what you hear, I got to thinking… it doesn’t seem that long ago that Rosa Parks’s casket was displayed at the Capitol. After doing some checking, there are two terms that I thought pretty much meant the same thing — to lie in repose and to lie in state. Both you faithful readers know that this information just begged for some extensive research on my part.

When a member of government dies, if their casket is on display in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, they they are consider to lie in state. 
If the casket is in any other building, the government official, or former government official is considered to lie in repose.

Because Ruth Bader Ginsburg will lie in the Capitol Rotunda — to invited guests only, due to the pandemic — she will lie in state, becoming the only woman to do so. Actually, only 34 others have been honored as lying in State — all of them were men. According to my extensive research, everyone that has been given the honor of lying in state has been a distinguished government official, but there is no technical rule that requires that a person has to be a government official. The guidelines read “Any person who has rendered distinguished service to the nation may lie in state if the family so wishes and Congress approves.” So the determination as to who gets to lie in stare is determined by the House and Senate.

When Justice Ginsburg’s casket moves to be honored at the Supreme Court, she will lie in repose, with her coffin at the top of the building’s front steps. 

So — was Rosa Parks, when she was honored at the Capitol lying in repose? Nope — even though she was honored at the Capitol, she was a private citizen, not a government official or a Congress approved honorary. Therefore, she was considered to be lying in honor. Evangelist Billy Graham was also honored by lying in honor at the Capitol.

The term “lying in honor” also includes those members of government, or former members of government placed on view in the U.S. Capitol for the public to pay their respects — but not in the formal Capitol Rotunda. 

Like a lot of things, using he correct term sometimes gets a little confusing, but no matter the terminology used, it’s the “honor” that we should be concerned with — that’s not something that’s bestowed — it’s something that’s earned.
Rest in Peace, Justice Ginsburg.
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