What Would Jimmy Do?

I try to follow the news on a daily basis, even though it’s getting more depressing most of the time. One term that appears pretty much daily is “collision.” To be honest, when the word started cropping up so often over a year ago, I had to look it up to be sure what it really meant.

“Collusion is an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal — but always secretive — to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal right, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage.”

So the definition of collusion is almost always defined as activities performed in the business world. Of course we hear the term mostly in relation to the Trump-Russia saga. That only adds to my confusion — the word just doesn’t seem to fit because the news discussions alway seem to refer to either criminal or counter intelligence activities.

Seems to me the discussions about whether or not agreements between the Trump campaign and Russia to commit crimes (e.g., election fraud) that are ongoing would be better described by using the word “conspiracy.”
But — that’s just my view…
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I read an article a couple of days ago that pretty much confirmed my belief that the United States is becoming more and more divided — along partisan political lines. Public opinion is far more divided now along partisan lines than along the lines of race, religion, age, gender and educational background.
For some reason, we’ve become Republicans or Democrats first — not Americans.

A journalist from Baltimore wrote a lot of insightful stuff that seemed a little out of touch at the time, but seems “spot on” today. H. L Mencken, known as the “Sage of Baltimore,” died in 1956 but one of the things he wrote seems appropriate today: “Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
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Well, I’m still waiting on spring (it’s supposed to snow again tomorrow) and it’s been a while since we talked about holidays, so that’s the subject for today. Tomorrow (April 7) is National Beer Day. While most any day is a good day for a beer, this is the real deal. In 1919, something called the Volstead Act became law and by January 16th, 1920 the entire United States was subject to Prohibition. This meant that the sale, production, importation, and transportation of all alcohol was banned in the USA.

After 13 years of prohibition, Senator Pat Harrison and Representative Thomas Cullen proposed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which legalized the sale of beer and wine with a low enough alcohol content that people supposedly would not get intoxicated (3.2% by weight, 4.05% by volume.) The act was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 22, 1933. (FDR apparently said, after signing the bill, “I think this would be a good time for a beer.”)
The first legally bought beer went on sale on April 7th in 1933. There were about 1.5 million barrels of beer consumed in America on that day.

Some real beer enthusiasts begin to celebrate National Beer Day today (the evening of April 6th) – known as New Beer’s Eve.

So it became legal to buy beer in 1933, but it took 76 years for the day to be marked by a holiday. It wasn’t until 2009 that April 7th became “National Beer Day.” They say every dog has their day — so does every beer, and that day’s tomorrow. Cheers!!!
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No  calling birds
No French hens
No turtle doves
No partridge in a pear tree
Just snow – still annoying me

No winter lasts forever….
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…. my true love of snow is fading fast.

No winter lasts forever….
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…. it’s still snowing. It’s gone past 12 inches, where will it stop??

Remember, no winter last forever….
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Today is the first day of spring… I always feel (at least psychologically) better when spring arrives. Today is a little different — it’s not noon yet and we have between 5 and 6 inches of snow on the ground.

Usually on this day every year, I blog about spring stuff, or at least fun stuff. If you remember last year I was excited when I thought that I had discovered that a broom would “stand alone” on the day of the vernal equinox. Even though it proved not to be true, it was something to get excited over and it was even fun to prove it not to be true.

But today isn’t a fun day — I don’t particularly like snow… well actually, I don’t mind the snow, it’s just that it always seems to come during cold weather, and I hate cold weather. I just checked and the current temperature is 30 degrees. This is the first day of spring and it’s 30 degrees and snowing.

I used to blame all these kinds of things on the Russians, but then the Cold War ended and I blamed it on whoever was in the White House, or which party controlled Congress….  I even sometimes attributed it to global warming. But I’m running out of people to blame…. maybe this time I’ll put the blame on the EPA — especially Pruitt. Seems like a nice guy to blame.
But it is what it is…. they say no winter lasts forever. So, hopefully, that’s true. I guess for now, the best advice is to keep calm. Spring is coming.
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This is St. Patrick’s Day… St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t a particularly big deal where I grew up, at least not so much as it is in other places. I remember that St. Patrick supposedly drove the snakes out of Ireland and everyone was supposed to wear green on that day or someone/everyone could “pinch” you. The dish of the day was corned beef and cabbage and all the places that sold beer always had green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. There were never any St. Patrick’s Day parades anywhere in Oklahoma, or the neighboring states — at least that I knew of.

We all think of St. Patrick as Irish but, in fact, he wasn’t… he was born to Roman parents in Scotland or Wales in the late fourth century. He introduced Christianity to Ireland in the year 432. And — not only was he not Irish, his name wasn’t even Patrick. His birth name was Maewyn Succat…. he changed his name to Patricius when he became a priest.

Even though his name isn’t Patrick and he’s really British, not Irish, St. Patrick’s Day is a big deal to the Irish and in the land where he became famous. Today is a national holiday in both Ireland and Northern Ireland.

If not even being Irish isn’t enough to discourage you — green wasn’t really his color. His color was “Saint Patrick’s blue” that is, a light shade of blue. The color green only became associated with St. Patrick’s Day after it was linked to the Irish independence movement in the late 18th century. Want more? For most of the 20th century, St. Patrick’s Day was considered a strictly religious holiday in Ireland and that meant that the nation’s pubs were closed on March 17.

Now how about the snakes… surely St. Patrick really did perform that feat. Well, it’s true that St. Patrick gets credit for driving all the snakes our of Ireland — but — it probably wasn’t much of an accomplishment given that scientists indicate that Ireland has never been home to any snakes. Through the Ice Age, Ireland was too cold to host any reptiles and the surrounding seas have staved off snakes ever since.

When I was growing up in Oklahoma, we referred to the three-leaved plants that sprouted up in our grass as clover. I don’t think they’re exactly the same, but something that looks very similar, called shamrocks, is associated with St. Patrick. According to Irish legend, St. Patrick used the three-leafed plant as a metaphor for the Holy Trinity when he was first introducing Christianity to Ireland.

A lot of people say that on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish; and… if you’re lucky enough to really be Irish…. you’re lucky enough!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
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Almost 50 years ago when I married into Claire’s family, I not only inherited a very large family, but I became a member of a club — the brother-in-law club. I’d never had a brother-in law before, so I thought it was pretty cool. When I met my brother-in-laws, they all welcomed me to the family and “club” and we exchanged pleasantries like most people do when they first meet. When I met Rich for the first time, I remember saying something like, “it’s good to meet you.” His response was, “What’s good about it?” My initial reaction was, “oh, my.” Well, maybe it wasn’t exactly “oh, my,” but I thought that maybe we better start again. On the second attempt, we had a completely normal and pleasant conversation and I think I immediately gained a little insight into Rich that many people, for whatever reason, never got to experience. It turns out that Rich wasn’t the “grouch” that he chose to portray to the world. Over the next almost fifty years, every time I saw Rich, the conversation started out with, “hey, it’s good to see you…” and his response was always, “What’s good about it?” Seemed like we just had to get that out of the way so we could talk.

Rich and myself had quite a bit in common — we both liked cars, to build models, the Cleveland Indians, and we were both into airplanes and lots of stuff that NASA did. We could spend hours and hours, probably even days, at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. We almost always went there when he came to visit. And on top of all of that, it turned out that we were both curmudgeons. We griped and complained about pretty much everything.

Seems like every time we got together, whether it was Marge and Rich visiting us, or at some family gathering in Cleveland, Rich always suggested that we go for a walk. He liked to walk, and to a certain extent, I do too. During these walks we covered just about every topic you can think of. Rich almost always relaxed and really “opened up” on these walks — it was kind of like going through a portal into a different world. We talked a lot about NASA…. Rich retired from there and over the years I did a lot of work with NASA. We solved world problems and critiqued almost everyone. One subject that almost always came up during these walks was our wives — and of course we complained about them, because — well, because that’s what curmudgeons do. Rich would always say that he wished Margie liked to do this, or that and that he wished she would walk more or something along that line. But I don’t ever remember being on one of those walks that he didn’t say, referring to Margie, “but I really do love her.” Never. Not one time can I think of that he didn’t say “…. but I really do love her.”

I’ve heard it said that the best gift any father can give their children is to love their mother. If that’s true, and I think it might be, then Rich truly gave the Kovachik kids the greatest gift.
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Today is Presidents Day — a national holiday. However, neither Congress or the President has ever declared there is such a thing as Presidents Day. Even though today is an officially observed federal holiday, it is actually on the books as Washington’s Birthday.

In 1879, under President Rutherford B. Hayes, Washington’s Birthday became a legal holiday and was observed on February 22 – George’s actual birthday. Every year, George Washington’s birthday was a big celebration — especially in the Washington, D.C. area. But then in 1968, Congress passed the Monday Holiday Law to “provide uniform annual observances of certain legal public holidays on Mondays.” The idea was that creating more 3-day weekends would bring substantial benefits to both the spiritual and economic life of the nation. At least that’s what Congress thought.

So we celebrate this third Monday in February every year as Presidents Day even though neither of the Presidents it supposedly honors was born on that day — but what the heck, we get a 3-day weekend to benefit our spiritual and economic life.

Rather than just let this matter, go let’s complicate it further…George Washington was actually born on February 11 in 1731. How can that be, you say? Well, During Washington’s lifetime, people in Great Britain and America switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. As a result of this calendar reform, people born before 1752 were told to add 11 days to their birth dates. Those born between January 1 and March 25 also had to do one year to be in sync with the new calendar. By the time Washington became President in 1789, he celebrated his birthday on February 22 and listed his year of birth as 1732.

We get a 3-day weekend today, but let’s not forget about George… I think he deserves his own day, so let’s raise our glasses to George.
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