What Would Jimmy Do?

Wow! What a week! If you’re reading this blog, that means that so far you’ve made it through a time change, a full moon and a pandemic — congratulations. So here we are ready to tackle, hopefully, our last challenge for the week — Friday the 13th.

For many people, Friday the 13th is thought to be an unlucky day. There really is very little evidence to show that Friday the 13th is unlucky — many studies have shown that the day has little or no effect on events like accidents, hospital visits, and natural disasters.

Not everyone thinks of Friday the 13th as a day of misery. In many Spanish speaking countries and in Greece, Tuesday the 13th is considered unlucky. In Italy, Friday the 17th — not Friday the 13th — is thought to be a day that brings bad luck, In fact, in Italy, the number 13 is thought to be a lucky number. Since 1995, Finland has dedicated one Friday the 13th a year to observe National Accident Day. The day aims to raise awareness about safety — on the roads as well as at home and the workplace.

Not much is known about the origins of this day’s notoriety. Some believe that the superstition or myth  started in the Bible. Jesus was crucified on a Friday, and there were 13 guests at the Last Supper the night before His crucifixion. On a Friday the 13th in 1307, a French king gave orders to arrest hundred of Knights Templar. Some think that action attributed to associating the day with misfortune. 

The fear of Friday the 13th is known as friggatriskaidekaphobia or paraskevidekatriaphobia. Friggatriskaidekaphobia comes from Frigg, the Norse goddess of wisdom after whom Friday is named and the Greek words triskaideka, meaning 13, and phobia, meaning fear. Paraskevidekatriaphobia is also derived from Greek: paraskeví translates as Friday, and dekatria is anther way of saying 13.

Triskaidekaphobia, or the fear of the number 13, is feared by enough people that many high-rise buildings, hotels and hospitals skip the 13th floor and many airports do not have gates numbered 13. In many places, having 13 people at the dinner table is considered bad luck.

All years will have at least one Friday the 13th. There can never be more than three Friday the 13ths in any given calendar year. The longest time between Friday the 13ths is 14 months. For a month to have a Friday the 13th, it must begin on a Sunday — really!!

So don’t walk under any ladders, don’t break any mirrors, don’t spill any salt and don’t let any black cats cross your path. Happy Friday the 13th!!
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Last evening, the President delivered an Oval Office Address. Traditionally, presidents use this setting as a way to communicate directly with the American people. It’s called an Oval Office Address because it’s made from the Oval Office in the White House. The Oval Office is considered to be one of the most solemn settings that the President uses to announce/address topics of major or urgent interest to the public. Topics typically include some major personnel move, major new policy initiatives, or often to assure the American people during times of a natural emergency.

Oval Office addresses are alway considered major addresses and serve as a direct connection between the public and the President of the United States.

The first Oval Office address was delivered by President Herbert Hoover, concerning peace efforts and arms reduction in the world. Eisenhower announced his decision to send troops to Little Rock to enforce school desecration from the Oval Office. Kennedy talked about and explained the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ronald Reagan grieved with the nation following the Challenger space shuttle disaster.  Last night President Trump addressed the American public concerning the coronavirus.

I haven’t been witness to a lot of the remarks from the Oval Office, but the ones that I’ve watched or heard always at least left me more informed and usually feeling a little better. This morning, I don’t feel informed — or better.
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When I was a kid, when the month of March rolled around, the stores had kites for sale. If I remember, they cost about a dime, with some of the larger “box” kites costing up to a quarter. I don’t remember buying very many kites — we usually just made our own. 

I almost never see kids flying kites anymore. Most kids’ outdoor activities today are organized, like soccer, baseball, etc. I really don’t see a lot of kids outside just “playing” anymore. I think I’ve mentioned before that neither Kelly or David ever showed much interest in kites and I’m pretty sure that none of our grandkids have even been exposed to kite flying. 

I suppose there could be (and maybe is) an entire blog about nothing but kites. But they are interesting — they have a long history and over the years they’ve been used for all sorts of unusual things and contributed to advances and discoveries in a number of fields. And a lot of famous people used kites in their discoveries.

Most people are familiar with the kite experiment performed by Ben Franklin that proved that lightning is electricity. He performed his experiment in 1752 in some amount of secrecy — the only witness to the experiment was his 21 year old son. Franklin waited until there was a storm and then flew his kite made of silk (silk tolerated the rain better than other materials available a the time.) The experiment took a long time — so long that they considered just calling it off. But before they did, Ben noticed some threads of silk tied to the key were standing straight out. He then touched the back of his knuckle to key and felt a shock, thus proving his theory. It’s amazing that Franklin wasn’t killed, as others trying to reproduce the experiment were.

No one really knows who came up with the first kite, but most people agree that the kite originated in China thousands of years ago. Since then, kites have been used to prove all sorts of theories, gather data about the weather, used in military battles and observations, and of course provided just plain fun for generations of kids — and adults.

In 1804 George Cayley developed the concept of heavier-than-air flight — his glider was a modified arch top kite. Kites have been used to pull “horseless carriages.” A kite flown by Homan Walsh ,when he was 10 years old, aided in the construction of a suspension bridge across the Niagara River. The Wright Brothers used kites to test their theories for the first airplane and Marconi used a kite to lift an antenna hight enough to make his radio link between America and Europe work. After the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, kites carried cameras aloft to take pictures to assess the damage.

So kites have been around for thousands of years and and became a part of, and influenced, our lives. Authors and poets used to write about them… its kind of sad that the kite has lost its prominence today. We can learn a lot from kites. In today’s environment, we seem to questioning rules and freedom more than ever. Someone once wrote that kites can’t really fly free — in order to soar high in the sky the string of a kite needs to be anchored. If the string breaks the kite drops back to the ground. The kite’s freedom depends on it not being as free as it thinks it is. Just some food for thought on a windy March day — and, it’s more poetic than “go fly a kite.”
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Some members of our family are absolutely convinced that a full moon alters people’s behavior. They offer up changed behavior of other family members as proof. I don’t know if the moon alters behavior or not — a lot of people have believed it for a lot of years, so there may be something to it. 

The influence of the moon and behavior has been called “The Lunar Effect” or “The Transylvania Effect.” The belief that the full moon causes mental disorders and strange behavior was widespread throughout Europe in the middle ages. The word “lunacy” meaning “insanity” comes from the Latin word for moon. If you’d like to check, you’ll find thousand of studies on the moon and behavior. If you look at them, you’ll notice that the results are inconsistent. Some studies show that a particular behavior will occur more often during the full moon and other studies show no relationship between behavior and the full moon. In my mind this inconsistency alone casts doubts on the theory that the full moon influences behavior — but if you’re someone that believes that it does, adjust accordingly around the full moon every month.

Anyhow, March’s full moon will occur in our area during the afternoon at 1:48 pm — about 13 hours before reaching perigee (the nearest it comes to the Earth during its orbit.) That will create a “supermoon,” a full moon that appears slightly larger than average. Supermoon isn’t a term used by astronomers, so whether a full moon counts as “super” depends of who’s making the call and how much “bigger” the moon appears to that person. A full moon occurs when the moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun and appears once every 29.53 days. Sometimes there are two full moons in one month. It’s possible to have a month without a full moon, but that doesn’t happen very often and can only happen in the month of February. The last time it happened was in February of 2018. 

We’re still adjusting to the time change and experiencing the full moon tonight… that gives us three days to recover and prepare for Friday the 13th. Hang in there.
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Here it is the beginning of another week… so take a deep breath, and maybe grab a bottle (or two) of wine. This morning at 2 am all the clocks jumped ahead to 3 am (actually we have few that don”t jump ahead, they have to prodded along) so we’ve already lost an hour of sleep. 
To make matters worse, tomorrow night is a a full moon — not only will it be a full moon, it’ll be the Worm Moon, and if that’s not enough, it’ll be a Super Worm Moon.
But wait, there’s more. If you somehow make it through all this until Friday…. you guessed it — it’s Friday the 13th!
So — here’s wishing everyone a good week. Next week we get back to more normal stuff, like St. Patrick’s Day.
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Well, tonight we change the clocks again — we move them ahead one hour at precisely 2 am. It then becomes 3 am. Some people like changing the clocks — most don’t. I like having more daylight in the evening, but I don’t really care what the clock says when the sun sets… I just like the light. 

Over the years, I’ve discussed daylight saving time (it’s saving, not savings) and the people like William Willett and Benjamin Franklin that were instrumental in getting it implemented. 

My grandparents never bought into the whole concept and referred to daylight saving time as “city time.” When President Wilson signed daylight saving time into law during WW I, it was commonly called “fast time.” During WW II when it was again put into effect, it was called, “war time.” 

Research has determined that daylight saving time negatively affects night owls more than morning people. Researchers also found that cluster headaches increase during the transitions into and out of daylight saving time. Speaking of researchers — many do not agree that daylight saving conserves energy. One of their arguments is that the increase in air-conditioned homes has offset any savings in lighting.

Globally, about 70 countries around the world implement daylight saving time, but different countries change their clocks at different times. The only major industrialized countries that do not observe DST are Japan, India, and China. Most equatorial countries do not observe daylight saving time because daylight hours are similar during all the seasons.

United States federal law does not require any state to observe daylight saving time. However, if a state chooses to follow DST, it must follow federal start and end dates — beginning at 2:00 am on the second Sunday in March and ending at 2:00 am on the first Sunday in November. 

In the United States, DST is not observed in Hawaii, American Somoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of Norther Mariana Islands, and Arizona. (Arizona’s Navajo Nation does observe daylight saving.)

So here we go again — tomorrow, lots of people will be confused for at least a few days. Maybe there should be some kind of a phone alert (like an Amber alert) that goes out to everyone ….
I usually just try to not think of it as losing an hour of sleep — it’s just an hour closer to breakfast. And then again, maybe with the way things are going, we didn’t really lose an hour — maybe it just fled the country…. to Canada or someplace.
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I know I shouldn’t. but sometimes when I see someone that’s “different” I say something like, “gee, he’s a weird guy.” After I say something like that, I always think to myself that it sounds derogatory even though I don’t mean it that way. There used to be a man that attended our church that reminded me of Otis, the town drunk on the old Andy Griffith TV show. His hair was never combed, and he always wore a suit that looked like he’d slept in it. I always said, “there’s that weird guy Otis.” I wasn’t intentionally being “mean” but, in fact, I was. He was a really nice man and I had no reason to judge him as being weird.

So I got to thinking about that word weird. I looked it up in the dictionary and found a couple of definitions… one said it meant suggesting something supernatural or unearthly. The other defined it as very strange; bizarre. 

When we use the word today, we’re usually referring to the second definition — “very strange.”  I think maybe everyone is weird in their own way. Really, we think of a person as weird when they’re unconventional and not like everyone else. I’ve heard it said that no two people are exactly alike, so that means there are infinite possibilities of how anyone/everyone could be different.

Even though I usually use weird in a negative context, it doesn’t have to be — it can certainly be positive. For instance if you say someone is always so incredibly happy that it’s weird, or that someone knows so much about something that it’s weird, those would be positive uses of weird.
Say what you will, weird people are usually not dull and/or unoriginal… and probably what most people consider weird is usually unjustified.

During my extensive research of the word weird, I found that the word originally meant ‘having the power to control destiny’ — that would make it pretty cool to be weird. If the meaning hadn’t changed many years ago, I wonder what we’d call someone that’s unconventional or “different” today….
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Yesterday I mentioned that Sue had visited a cemetery. I’ve touched on this topic before, and while it’s not something you absolutely must know, maybe you can impress your friends next time the subject comes up.  Ok, actually the subject probably won’t just “come up” but maybe you can bring it up and impress everyone. Always a good conversation starter around the table is, “do you know the difference between a cemetery and a graveyard?” So off we go…..

I learned the answer to this age-old question when we were on vacation in Myrtle Beach with Terry and Al. We went on a Ghost Tour, and found it to not only be entertaining, but very educational as well. 

Cemeteries and graveyards are both places we bury our dead, but (technically, at least) they’re not exactly the same. Growing up in Maysville, Oklahoma — when people died, they were buried in the cemetery. At least they were if they were buried in Maysville, because there were no graveyards. So, as unusual as it is for me… getting right to he point, a cemetery refers to a large burial ground, typically not associated with a church. A graveyard is typically smaller than a cemetery and is almost always associated with a church — and is usually part of the churchyard. 

Years ago, the ritual and process of burial was totally in the hands of the church, and burying the dead was only allowed on the land(s) near the church building. This land around the church was called the churchyard. The part of the churchyard used for burial was called the graveyard. Over the years, as more and more people died, the graveyards were filling to capacity. Eventually, there was no more room for church burials and new places for burying people had to be found — these were called cemeteries. 

The term graveyard obviously refers to a yard filled with graves. The word grave comes from old German, and means “to dig.” It’s interesting that the word cemetery comes from the old French word, cimetiere. That word means — you guessed it — graveyard. But the French word cimetiere originally came from the Greek word koimeterion. That word means “a sleeping place.”

While we’re on the subject, when I was going to school, depending on my class schedule, I sometimes worked the graveyard shift. I often wondered why it was called the graveyard shift. Actually, one of the men that I worked with on that late shift years ago, told me. It’s referred to as the graveyard shift because of the “silence” at that time of night — and — there are substantially more (serious) accidents during that shift, compared to other working hours. 

So if you want to be technically correct when you visit, use the word cemetery when you’re visiting the larger burial grounds and graveyard in the burial grounds next to the church.
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I have a Facebook account — so, I guess I’m a “member” of that community. Anyone that wants to check, will find that I don’t contribute to Facebook, and only periodically check the site. The first time I heard of it and after the first time I’d seen it, my thought was that this is a “dangerous” site. I think the idea of it is pretty cool, but even I could immediately  think of hundreds of ways it could be mis-used. My opinion hasn’t changed, but that’s not what this morning’s ramblings are about.

This morning, after checking my e-mail and reading a bit about the Super Tuesday elections, I clicked on Facebook and I found a posting by a favorite reader of this blog — Sue. Seems they had visited the cemetery and she had noticed several humorous engravings on the tombstones. It was an interesting read and was a great example of what Facebook could and should be.

Anyhow, that got me to thinking… I’ve visited lots of cemeteries around the world and I don’t remember almost anything that was engraved on the stones — except for a couple. One that I’ve seen a few times reads, “See, I told you I was sick.” I always thought that was funny. But one that I’ve always remembered, that I think is funny, thought-provoking, and and little bit sad, reads: 
“Here lies an atheist.  All dressed up with no place to go.”
Even though it’s funny, it’s sad… to think that this might be all there is.

I once read that there are very few “significant” last words spoken by someone who’s dying. I suppose that’s true. I remember hearing that Oscar Wilde’s last words were, “This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go.” Probably not significant , but memorable. But I like the way one of the Harry Potter books ended — “All was well.”
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Well, pretty much every year at this time you hear me sigh with relief — after again making it through February. Goodbye February, hello March! I know I’ve said it before, but I really think the old Roman calendars had it right. They didn’t even give January or February the dignity of naming them. When those two month rolled around, it was just “winter.” Their year began with March. 

March was named for the Roman god of war, Mars. It probably earned that name because it was typically when military campaigns resumed, after being interrupted by winter.

In my mind, it’s now spring, but the vernal or spring equinox actually occurs on Thursday, March 19, at 11:50 pm (EDT.) 
March’s birthstone is the aquamarine, it’s zodiac sings are Pisces and Aries, and it’s full moon is called the Worm Moon.This year it occurs on Monday, March 9, at 1:48 pm (EDT.)

They say that if March comes in like a lion, it’ll go out like a lamb. This falls into the folklore category, but it may be, at least a little bit, based on fact or at least past experience or observations. 

There are a few things to celebrate in March, Like St. Patrick’s — I’ll probably be talking about them as the month goes on. I suppose I should mention that March is National Umbrella Month. Seems like it should be April, but it’s March. This may call for some extensive research on my part. Happy March….
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