What Would Jimmy Do?

Chinese New Year’s Day is the first day of the Chinese lunar calendar. According to the calendar we use (the Gregorian calendar) the date for Chinese New Year is different each year, but it always falls between January 21st and February 20th. This year it’s February 8th.
The Chinese usually have 7 consecutive days off work from Chinese New Year’s Eve to the sixth day after Chinese New Year’s Day.

Chinese New Year 2016 is the year of the Monkey. Chinese astrology indicates that for those people born in a year of the monkey, 2016 is considered to be a bad year. Our son, Dave, was born in a monkey year, so we’ll have to alert him to be on his guard….

Before the holiday begins, it’s Chinese tradition to thoroughly clean one’s home, both inside and out, as well as oneself. That means getting a haircut, buying new clothes and, in general beginning a period of new beginnings, renewal and rejuvenation.

Chinese New Year is a much needed winter holiday for the Chinese. The time around Chinese New Year is sometimes referred to as the Spring Festival and with it comes many traditions. You’ve probably noticed that the festivities associated with Chinese New Year invariably involve fireworks and there seems to be a lot of red displayed. Legend has it that in ancient times, there was a monster call “Nian” [year] that would come out and eat people, especially children, and animals on the eve of every New Year. To avoid the monster’s attack, people would flee into the mountains. On one New Year’s Eve, an old beggar came to Peach Blossom Village. An old lady gave him some food and told him to hide himself in the mountain to avoid the monster Nian. The old man said he could drive the monster away as long as he was put up for the night at the old lady’s house. The old lady wasn’t able to persuade the old man to hide in the mountain, so she went alone. In the middle of the night, Nian dashed into the village. He trembled and cried when he saw the red paper on the door of the old lady’s house. Just as the monster reached the entrance, there came loud sounds that prevented him from moving any further. The old man opened the door wearing a red robe and the monster was scared away. It turns out that the color red, firelight and loud sounds were the things the monster feared the most. After that, on every New Year’s Eve, every household would decorate their houses with lots of red, set off firecrackers and light candles as well as stay up the whole night to avoid being attacked by the monster. Today you see red everywhere around the Chinese New Year and there’s always lots of noise…
Happy Chinese New Year!
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Well, the results are in – put your coats away — Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow this morning, so we’re in for an early spring. I don’t put a lot of faith in groundhogs in general, and Punxsutawney Phil in particular, but this year I think Phil might be on to something.
Even though most of my Groundhog Day writings have been about Punxsutawney Phil, it should come as no surprise that my favorite groundhog is, and has always been, Jimmy the Groundhog. Jimmy resides in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin and makes predictions like Punxsutawney Phil, but the two don’t always agree — but today Jimmy also predicted an early spring.
I’m not sure if you remember, but last year when Jimmy the Groundhog appeared, he bit the mayor’s ear — another reason I like Jimmy — a groundhog with attitude.

Anyhow, just wanted both the blog readers to get the news of the early spring — it’s only the 18th time since 1887 that Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow. Now Jimmy, on the other hand is a different story…..
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Well, here it is time again for my (almost) annual Groundhog Day blog. Groundhogs aren’t particularly glamorous, or cute and are generally just annoying. On Groundhog Day they come out of their hole and see their shadow —or not. Big deal. Why they get their own day is a bit of a mystery, but if for no other reason than we’ve made it through January, February 2nd is a good day to celebrate.

Attempting to write about groundhogs and their day every year, and mention something new, is challenging at best. So if you’re thinking you’ve read this before… well, it is Groundhog Day.

Groundhogs are one of the few animals that really hibernate. Hibernation is not just a deep sleep — it’s actually a deep coma, where the body temperature drops to a few degrees above freezing, the heart barely beats, the blood scarcely flows and breathing nearly stops. During hibernation (about 150 days) a groundhog will lose no more than a fourth of its body weight due to all the energy saved by this lower metabolism.

Alaska has replaced Groundhog Day with Marmot Day. When Sarah Palin was Governor in 2009, she signed a bill proclaiming February 2 as Marmot Day — an Alaskan holiday that celebrates frontier life.

All through history, numerous holidays have marked the seasonal crossroads between  the winter solstice and the spring equinox around the early part of February. February 2nd is also Candlemas Day — a Christian holiday that celebrates Mary’s ritual purification. Early Christians believed that if the sun came out on Candlemas Day, winter would last six more weeks. The ancient Romans observed a “mid-season” festival in early February as did the pagan Irish.

So if the groundhog wants to have his day, I’ll go along with it — but for the rest of the year, I’d just like to know how get rid of them….
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Well, here it is another holiday that Congress has chosen to ignore — it’s Backwards Day. As you might have guessed, it’s a day to do everything backwards. I suppose if you properly celebrate it, you’ll have dinner as soon as you get up (oh wait – you won’t be getting up until tonight) and have breakfast before you go to bed… or get up… or — anyhow, this gets all confusing. I guess you should wear your clothes backwards and say goodbye when you meet someone and hello when one of you leaves and talk with your back to people.

A lot of people don’t know it, but Leonardo da Vinci wrote backwards. Not only did he write from right to left, he wrote his letters backwards. There are some words that can be written backwards and no one would know — like, racecar, pop, poop, dad, mom, wow, civic, madam, radar, kayak, noon, eye, nun, level and probably a lot more that I can’t think of right now.
And then, there are words that when spelled backwards turn into other words… live spelled backwards becomes evil, desserts becomes stressed, pupils is slipup, pals backwards is slap, star is rats, and warts becomes straw.
And of course, a lot of words spelled backwards just sound funny…. Park spelled backwards is krap, boobytrap becomes partyboob, welcome is emoclew, Subaru backwards is urabus, if you spell buns backwards, it’s snub.

Speaking of backward things — for years, various bands have been accused of influencing their followers with hidden messages that could only be heard by playing the record backwards. For awhile, maybe even today, some think this sort of thing is a threat to national security and at least one group insists that the practice promotes Satanic messages that can manipulate our behavior without our knowledge and turn us all into disciples of the Antichrist. Since vinyl records have pretty much gone away, I guess the threat has at least lessened somewhat.

But however you choose to celebrate Backwards Day, I hope you have fun. Just don’t forget to check my blog — or should I say glob….
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Thirty years ago today sometime close to noon I was in my office when Linda St. John burst through the door screaming that it had just blown up and they didn’t even know where they were…
The incident that Linda (a co-worker) was rightly upset about was the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

The project that I was heavily involved with at the time was dependent on the use of the space shuttle. We had become so complacent about going into space that the launches weren’t even broadcast on TV most of the time. However, this one was a little different — on board was the first “civilian” — a teacher (Christa McAuliffe.) We had somehow convinced ourselves that space missions were now routine enough to invite the public along….
Of course, that all changed 73 seconds after the shuttle lifted off from Cape Canaveral on January 28, 1986. President Reagan spoke to the Nation later that day and I remember his speech as being very consolatory and saying something about the risks of space exploration and the pioneering spirit and that we’ll continue to take risks and life will go on. I’m sure the words came from speech writers, but Reagan had a way of delivering messages that made people feel better.

I’ve lived long enough to have experienced a number of truly historic events — when all is told years from now, how they’ll stack up against the historical events of all time I have no idea. But I do know that these events that take place in our lifetime are more important to us because we were “there.” It’s fine to read about these things in textbooks, but the emotions experienced at they time they occurred just don’t come across on a printed page.

Shortly after the Challenger accident, my boss told me that our jobs just became a lot harder. I guess that was somewhat true, but what about those people whose lives became a lot harder…..
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Last week after church I wished a friend a belated happy birthday. Her birthday was during the week and I obviously hadn’t spoken with her, or sent her a card, on her birthday. Later I got to thinking about that phrase that most of us use fairly often — “belated happy birthday.”

If you think about it, it really doesn’t make any sense. A person’s birthday, or any other event, cannot be belated since it’s already happened. Seems to me that when you say belated happy birthday, you’re wishing someone to have a good day that is already in the past…
A birthday simply cannot be belated, or postponed, because a birthday is when it is — the celebration may be postponed, but not the birthday.
Oh well, I guess there are more important things to worry about — but with over 40 inches of snow on the ground, I’ve got a lot more time for these mental exercises….
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We’ve just gone through a pretty big snow storm here in Shepherdstown. The “official” total for Shepherdstown was 40.3 inches. It fell (continuously) from about 1:00 pm Friday until sometime early Sunday morning.

A lot of people made extensive preparations for the storm, many bought multiple snow shovels, bread, milk, toilet paper and just about anything else left on the shelves. We didn’t make a lot of preparations — we are always stocked for emergencies and we just went to our stash and weathered the storm very well, thank you.

So next time your are faced with an emergency situation — just follow our advice….
You don’t need a lot of “stuff.” Wine gets you through most emergencies just fine — but drink the good stuff. Now after the snow melts, we just have to re-stock for the next emergency.
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Today (January 23) is Handwriting Day. It’s celebrated every year on the 23rd — not coincidently, it also happens to be John Hancock’s birthday. His prominent signature on the Declaration of Independence has become synonymous with signatures in general. How often have you said, or been told, “put you John Hancock here?” Of course everyone knows that statement means to sign your name.

Another old saying, “the pen is mightier than the sword” may not be so true in today’s modern technology world, but its original meaning still holds today. The origin of the phrase may have been that no matter how strong and powerful a knight became, they could be “fired” by their king through nothing more than a piece of paper with the king’s signature (and probably his seal.)

Handwriting and/or penmanship were required subjects when I went to school and it was necessary because a lot, if not most, written communication was accomplished by hand-written documents. If the handwriting wasn’t legible, the document was pretty much useless. But neither of our kids were taught penmanship when they were in school and now there is a move afoot to abolish cursive writing all together.

Handwriting is unique to each person — much like fingerprints. No two people write exactly alike. Because it is unique, handwriting can be used to identify a documents’ writer. That’s one reason you see ransom notes made up of letters cut out of a magazine or newspaper.
Except for doctors, today penmanship has almost no bearing on job performance. Doctors supposedly have terrible handwriting. According to Time magazine, doctors’ sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people every year. Most of us write very little by hand. I usually wind up taking notes on my phone if I’m out and need to remember something — or — just tell Siri to remind me….

Throughout the years many have thought that there would be no need for handwriting — when the typewriter came along, the computer, fax machine and e-mails and texting would be the end of hand written communications. But so far writing by hand hasn’t been killed off. I think knowing how to write is important — for the same reason than you should know how to add, subtract and multiply and divide… What happens if your batteries run down or the power goes out?
Someone once said that handwriting enables civilization. Well, maybe not quite so much today, but it’s still important. Happy Handwriting Day….
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While sitting here waiting for the big blizzard to hit — and the blizzard is obviously the big news, I checked our local news sources and discovered that besides the blizzard there are other important issues to be worked. The following is a direct quote.

“Morgan County/Traffic Hazard/Cows in the roadway/Henry W Miller Blvd near the Potomac river bridge. Caller advising cows are in the roadway licking salt off the roadway will not move…..”

I am not making this up — Washington may have its share of problems, but we have our own difficulties here in West Virginia. Everyone hunker down and stay warm.
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I’ve been a registered voter for more than 55 years and until this week, never been called for jury duty. I was selected to serve as a Grand Juror for the Jefferson County Circuit Court in West Virginia. For some reason it never occurred to me that I would be selected for Grand Jury duty.
I was aware that there were grand juries and petit, or trial, juries but I learned some interesting things about both this week.

Grand juries are required by the US federal government for “capital or infamous cases” by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Not all states employ the grand jury process, but West Virginia is one of those that do.
I mentioned earlier a trial, or petit jury — petit is an old-fashioned name for a jury that hears a lawsuit or criminal prosecution. Petit is a French word meaning “small,” to distinguish it from a “grand” jury that performs other duties such as determining to return an indictment or not.

In general…..
A petit jury decides whether a defendant committed a crime as charged in a criminal case, or whether the defendant injured the plaintive in a civil case. A petit jury may consist of 6 to 12 people. The trials are generally public, but jury deliberations are always private. Defendants have the right to appear, testify, and call witnesses on their behalf. The final outcome is a verdict — in favor of the plaintiff or defendant in a civil case, or guilty or not guilty in criminal case.
A grand jury is presented with evidence from the prosecutor. The grand jury determines whether there is “probably cause” to believe the individual has committed a crime and should stand trial. If the grand jury determines there is enough evidence, an indictment will be issued against the defendant. A grand jury consists of 16 to 23 people. Grand jury proceedings are not open to the public. Defendants and/or their attorneys do not have the right to appear before the grand jury.

Petit juries hear cases that are criminal or civil. Criminal trials involve felonies (a more serious crime.) The law requires twelve jurors to be seated in any criminal trial — only eight jurors are required in a civil trial.  Jurors in criminal cases must find a defendant guilty or not guilty by a unanimous vote. Only three fourths of the jury must agree on a verdict in civil cases.
A grand jury hears evidence about crimes and decides whether or not a person should be indicted, or tried for committing a crime. A grand jury does not decide guilt or innocence.
All, or most, petit trials is open to the public. A grand jury is closed to the public.

Grand juries in the various states seat anywhere from twelve to twenty-three jurors. West Virginia seats sixteen — fifteen being the number required for a forum and twelve must concur for an indictment. The grand jury hears only the State’s evidence and witnesses. If an indictment is issued, the defense gets its opportunity to present it’s evidence and witnesses at the petit trial.

Someone once said that a jury consists of twelve people chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. and Groucho Marx said he was married by a judge, but thinks he should have asked for a jury.

But jury duty is one of the great things about our system of democracy. When you are called to jury duty, you shouldn’t look at it as a duty you have to perform — it should be an honor and a privilege.
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