What Would Jimmy Do?

We celebrated the Oxfort’s Wedding Anniversary with them yesterday. It was their 58th Anniversary, which means it wasn’t anything special. Of course it was special; when anyone has been married for 58 years — believe me, that’s special!!
The reason I said it wasn’t “special,” Hallmark or someone like that hasn’t given it a “name” — like the 50th is gold, 25th is silver, 60th is diamond, etc.

The historic origins of wedding anniversaries can be traced back to the Holy Roman Empire, when husbands crowned their wives with a silver wreath on their twenty-fifth anniversary and a gold wreath on their fiftieth.  Naturally the twentieth century came along and commercialism led to the addition of more anniversaries being represented by a named gift. Prior to 1937 only the first anniversary and major milestone anniversaries had “materials” associated with them. In 1937 the American National Retail Jewelry Association issued a more comprehensive list of representative materials for all the traditional wedding anniversaries for each year up to the 15th anniversary and then every fifth year after that up to the 60th. Since then, various commercial companies have continually updated the list and today someone will sell you the perfect gift for any year or month anniversary you’re willing to spend money on.

Traditionally, gifts given or exchanged in the early years of marriage tended to be practical household items to aid the couple in starting a new home together. Luxury gifts usually were given in the later years when the couple had already acquired “needed” things.

When the original yearly list of anniversaries tagged with material names was put together, someone at least gave some thought to why the names were chosen — today, that sentiment seems to have disappeared and the objective is to sell something.
The 1st anniversary is referred to as the Paper Anniversary — paper is supposed to symbolize the strength obtained from the interlocking fibers.
The 2nd anniversary is known as the Cotton Anniversary — cotton has always been associated with prosperity and durability.
The 3rd — Leather — the durability of leather being analogous to the durability of the marriage.
The 4th — Fruit/Flowers — symbolizes a blossoming and fruitful relationship.
The 5h — Wood — symbolizes a strong and long lasting marriage.
Anyhow, you get the idea…. so wedding anniversaries, like just about all special (and not so special) occasions have been commercialized.

But no matter by what name any anniversary is called, they are all a celebration of a couple’s love for one another. Happy Anniversary, Anne and Winfried — thanks for sharing it with us.
— 30 —

Seems like in the past couple of weeks I’ve caught myself saying something like, “this is just too hard,” or “things are getting too complicated” more and more. I’m sure part of the reason is me — I seem to become more annoyed at little things than in the past, if that’s possible. Anyhow, it appears that more and more simple things are being made needlessly complicated.

I ran across a term a few days ago that I especially like, coined by Scott Berkum — “complexifier.” Complexifiers are people that go out of their way to make things more complicated. For some reason, I’ve run into a lot of these people lately.

In my opinion, just about everything is already complicated enough — we don’t need to make them complicated, or more complicated — they already are. What we need to to is to make them simpler. We all encounter people every day that seem to take even the most simple task or situation and make it (needlessly) complicated. There’s a phrase, “don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.” At least one way to interpret that is that it means don’t make things more complicated than they need to be. When I was gainfully employed, people always used the term KIS or KISS (Keep It Simple [Stupid]) but they almost never did. Projects nearly always got more complicated than necessary. Some people over-communicate and complicate matters just to prove their worth to a problem. A few weeks ago, I agreed to have a drink with someone — it took 2 or 3 phone calls and several follow-up e-mails before this someone decided that the date, time and place had been clearly communicated.

In my experience, I’ve found that in the great majority of cases, the simple solution is usually the right solution. Many/most people believe that if it’s too simple something must be missing or some critical aspect is being overlooked. Some things may be too good to be true but too simple to be right doesn’t hold true.

In the past, I’ve been accused of taking the easy way out when I pick, or support a simpler solution.  The energy used to arrive at a simple solution is probably  just as great as that needed to get to a complicated solution. Rarely do you “get out” of any work when arriving at the simpler solution.

I’ve heard it said that life is only as complicated as we choose to make it. I’m not sure I totally agree with that, but I do agree with something I read about making mountains out of molehills — “We all have shovels in which we can choose to either pile dirt on our molehills or dig it away from our mountains.” Whoever said that is certainly right. I think we should all attempt to not be Complexifiers and become Simplifiers.
— 30 —

I’ve mentioned here before that we have a (pretty much) weekly get together that we call Winter Golf. It’s the part of our regular golf where we have a few libations and solve as many of the world’s problems as time permits. This past week, the meeting got off to a roaring start — there were five in attendance and within the first two minutes five completely unrelated conversations were in full swing — all at the same time.

It occurred to me that this group needed some organization and order to the proceedings. So, as I am prone to do, I employed an old Indian remedy —The Talking Stick. As luck would have it, since I didn’t have a “real” talking stick with me, the gathering was at an Irishman’s house and he had a Shillelagh. That worked out pretty well.
The talking stick has been used for centuries by many American Indian tribes as a means of a just and impartial hearing. The Talking Stick was commonly used in council circles to designate who had the right to speak. I think you can imagine how this procedure brought a bit of order to our gathering. It was also the first time anyone in the group had ever heard of a Talking Stick.
Even if you didn’t read the title, you’ve probably already guessed — this blog is going to be about the Talking Stick. I have the Stick, so here goes.

As I mentioned above, the talking stick is a tool used when a council is called. It allows all council members to present their Sacred Point of View. The Talking Stick is passed from person to person as they speak and only the person holding the stick is allowed to talk during that time period. The Answering Feather is also held by the person speaking unless the speaker addresses a question to another council member. At that time, the Answering Feather is passed to the person asked to answer the question.

Indian children are taught to listen from the age of three. They are taught to respect another’s viewpoint. That doesn’t mean that they may not agree, but they are bound by their personal honor to allow everyone their Sacred Point of View.

Anyone responsible for holding any type of council meeting is required to make their own Talking Stick. The Talking Stick may be used when teaching children, holding council, making decisions when disputes arise, holding Pow-Wow gatherings, during storytelling circles, or conducting a ceremony where more than one person will speak.

Each person making a Talking Stick makes a unique stick from a particular tree, using a particular skin and color(s) depending on what their council will be discussing.
Colors on the stick have meaning, like: Red for life, Yellow for knowledge, Blue for prayer and wisdom, White for spirit, Purple for healing, Orange for kinship, Black for clarity or focus.
The tree from which the stick is made is important: Birch for truth, White Pine for peace, Cedar for cleansing, Aspen for seeing clearly, Elm for wisdom, Mountain Ash for protection, Cherry for love or strong emotion, Oak for strength, Maple for gentlenesses.
If skins are used on the stick, they also are meaningful: Elk for physical fitness, Deer for gentleness, Rabbit for listening abilities, Horse hair for perseverance. Wrapping a snake skin around the stick prevents illnesses of the mind and spirit from adversely affecting the council.
The type of feathers used are also very important. The Answering Feather, if used, is usually an Eagle Feather, which represents high ideals and truth as viewed from the expansive eye of the eagle, and the freedom that comes from speaking total truth to the best of one’s ability. The Answering Feather can also be the feather of a Turkey, the Peace Eagle of the south, which brings peaceful attitudes as well as the give and take necessary in successful resolution of disputes. Some tribes see the Owl as good medicine, and they often use an Owl feather to stop deception from entering the Sacred Space of the Council.

As was apparent at our last meeting, many of us find listening to one another difficult — we want to jump in, interrupt or add pearls of wisdom. The Talking Stick addresses that problem in a rather unique way and teaches an important lesson — it’s a tool that teaches each of us to honor the Sacred Point of View of everyone.
— 30 —

You probably find it hard to believe that I, the self-proclaimed king of holidays, have been letting a significant holiday occasion slip by unnoticed — and uncelebrated — by me. I am of course referring to Pi (π) Day. A day to celebrate the world’s most famous mathematical constant.
March 14, when written as 3/14 represents the first three digits of pi (π), the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Coincidently, or maybe not, it’s also Albert Einstein’s birthday. Mathematically, what is apparently so attractive to mathematicians is that the number — 3 followed by a ceaseless string of random numbers after the decimal point is irrational. That means that it cannot be expressed through the division of two whole numbers — but it is also a transcendental number, which means that it isn’t the root of any algebraic number. Who wouldn’t get excited about something like that?

The Pi Day that I just missed again wasn’t just any Pi Day. It was the most perfect Pi Day that will ever happen for any of us. For the full 24 hours of 3/14/15 will be the one and only Pi Day that actually contained the first five numbers of the number pi — 3.1415.

The first official, large-scale celebration of Pi Day was organized by Larry Shaw in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Today, they have a special ceremony annually at the Exploratorium on 3/14 at 1:59 a.m. PST — that makes it 3.14159, the first six digits of pi. On March 12, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution (HRES 224) recognizing March 14 as National Pi Day.
In 1706, William Jones, a self-taught mathematician published a work titled, A summary of Achievement in Mathematics. That is where the symbol π appears for the first time in scientific literature to denote the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Jones realized that the decimal 3.141592…. never ends and that it cannot be expressed precisely. He proclaimed, “The exact proportion between the diameter and the circumference can never be expressed by numbers.” That was why he recognized that it needed its own symbol to represent it.

Circles have always fascinated people. Early on, it was figured out that a circle is always a little more that 3 times its width around. In the Old Testament, a circular pool is referred to as being 30 cubits around and 10 cubits across (1 Kings 7:23.) A ‘p’ was originally chosen (before π) to indicate the ‘perimeter’ — it turns out that in the Greek alphabet, π is the 16th letter and in the English alphabet, p is also the 16th letter; so pi must be the same in every language.
Some people believe Pi contains the answers to the universe. Pi has 6.4 billion known digits that would take approximately 133 years to recite without stopping. In 2005, Chao Lu, a graduate student in China became the Guinness record holder for reciting pi — he recited the number to 67, 980 digits in 24 hours and 4 minutes. In the Star Trek episode “Wolf in the Fold,” Spock foiled the evil computer by commanding it to compute to the last digit the value of pi.

I’m truly embarrassed that I let a holiday like this slip by with no celebration. Rest assured that it is now on my calendar and there will be the appropriate festivities here in West Virginia on all future 3/14s…
Sorry I missed it, but a belated Happy Pi Day and a happy belated birthday to my friend Albert, who always said, “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler…”
— 30 —

One of the lead stories in the news the past few days has been the furor surrounding the racist fraternity video that made its way to the social media from the University of Oklahoma. A video posted on Twitter showed Sigma Alpha Epsilon members at OU enthusiastically chanting a racial slur to the tune of If You’re Happy and You Know It while the group was on what looked to be a charter bus. The video was posted by a student organization called Unheard — described, by itself, as an alliance of black students organized for change within campus administration and atmosphere. The fraternity’s national headquarters shut down the chapter most immediately and condemned the chapter’s actions. OU President David Boren released a statement announcing that the university would cut all ties with the organization, closed the fraternity’s on-campus house and demanded that members remove their belongings from the house. He also expelled two of the students for leading the chant. Just when it seemed that things couldn’t get worse, a second video surfaced showing the fraternity’s 79-year old “house mother” engaging in a similar chant.

Football is king at the University of Oklahoma, but the incident has affected that too — the team walked out of practice while locking arms to protest the fraternity’s actions, and a top recruit from a school in Texas withdrew his commitment to play for the Sooners.
The football team is named the Sooners — what with all the controversy surrounding team names these days, it’s surprising that someone hasn’t picked up on the Sooner name; it’s the name for the settlers who went into the unassigned lands early to stake their claims. A lot of people believe that land was stolen from the Indians. Stay tuned…..

This is a sad situation all around — racism springs from ignorance, but I’m not sure only education will cure the problem. The truth is, we cannot hate each other. We have too many other people that hate us. We are a nation of diverse people — that’s what makes the U.S. so strong.
— 30 —

Well we made it into Daylight Saving Time (saving is singular, not plural) again. Personally, I’m happy about it. I like the longer daylight hours in the evening. Since I usually don’t have to urgently be anywhere early in the morning, the later sunrise doesn’t bother me. DST is just another indication of Spring to me. Of course a lot of people don’t like the practice of messing with time and there is more and more people speaking out against it. They don’t like being robbed of that hour of sleep and, probably legitimately, make the argument that the supposed “reasons” for it just don’t hold water. Daylight Saving Time started (at least on a large scale) in Germany during World War I. The reason was to reduce demand for lighting and save coal for the war effort. During World War II, the United States observed DST year-round for pretty much the same reason.

The whole idea that you gain or lose an hour actually doesn’t happen — only the government believes that you can cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket. I don’t think a lot of people have ever grasped exactly what we were doing or why we were doing it. Benjamin Franklin supposedly proposed DST as a means to save the number of candles burned, and even today, most people say we observe it as an energy savings initiative. However a number of studies dispute the energy savings. Last evening on the news, it was reported that heart attacks surge by 10 percent on the Monday and Tuesday after moving the clocks ahead an hour each spring.
Some people believe DST was adopted for farmers, giving them more daylight to work in the fields. The fact is that farmers were the only organized group to lobby against daylight saving in the history of the United States. Many/most farmers still don’t like DST, especially dairy farmers that find that cows’ natural milking schedules don’t adapt easily to a sudden shift.

Good or bad, for or against, DST generates some interesting stories every year.
To keep to their published timetables, trains cannot leave a station before the scheduled time. So, when the clocks fall back one hour in November, all Amtrak trains in the U.S. that are running on time stop at 2:00 am and wait one hour before resuming their journey. Overnight passengers are often surprised to find their train at a dead stop and their travel time an hour longer than expected. In the spring, it’s different — at the DST change, trains are instantaneously an hour behind schedule at 2:00 am, but they just keep going and do their best to make up the time.
My favorite DST story occurred in 1999. The West Bank was on daylight Saving Time while Israel had just switched back to standard time. West Bank terrorists prepared time bombs and smuggled them to their Israeli counterparts, who misunderstood the time on the bombs. As the bombs were being planted, they exploded — one hour too early — killing three terrorists instead of the intended victims, two busloads of people.

My theory when I was a member of the work force was to not futz around with Daylight Saving Time, just shorten the workday so I didn’t have to get up while it was still dark.
So the controversy will continue, DST or no DST. I still like it…. it lets poor people experience jet lag.
— 30 —

A few days ago I was headed out for our “winter golf” meeting at a friend’s house. Since we had just gotten a foot or so of snow, I called another friend and told him I’d pick him up since there was no sense in making a mess of both our cars. I told Claire that I was going to pick up Bill on the way to golf and she said, “oh good, give these to Mary” and handed me a bag. Well, here’s the problem — both the guy I was picking up and the guy whose house we were going to, both have wives named Mary. And of course I gave the bag to the wrong Mary.

Well, that got me to thinking about Mary. I know a lot of people named Mary, but I can’t think of any young people I know named Mary. Naturally my extensive research mode kicked in and I discovered that if you check the most popular names for girls in the years 1914 to 2013, Mary is number one in 42 of those years. But — here’s the interesting part — since 1961 Mary has never been in the top ten and has been falling in popularity consistently. In 2011, Mary had fallen to 112th place in popular names for girls. If you like statistics, the number of girls named Mary at birth has fallen 94 percent since 1961.

If you look up “Mary,” the definition is usually just a feminine name or a reference to the Virgin Mary, or Mary Magdalene, or some other Mary of note. In Hebrew the meaning of the name Mary is: wished-for child; rebellion; bitter. The name Mary has always been a popular name for girls and when you hear it, besides being a nice name, a lot of people associate it with religion. The name Mary appears 61 time in the New Testament in 53 different verses.

I can think of quite a few Marys off the top of my head — not counting the obvious Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Mary Queen of Scotts, there’s Mary Tyler Moore and Mary Poppins. Merrill Streep has a daughter named Mary Willa and I’ve read books by Mary Higgins Clark and books about Mary — Mary, Mary Quite Contrary and Mary that had a little lamb. Mary Katherine Gallagher was the name of a character on Saturday Night Live and I remember a movie, There’s Something About Mary. Mary Todd Lincoln was Abe’s wife and a famous silent movie stare was named Mary Pickford. I used to like Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary and I still like Bloody Marys and who could forget Typhoid Mary and Mary Anne from Gilligan’s Island, the song Proud Mary and the RMS Queen Mary.
With all those Marys rattling around in my head, no wonder I gave the bag to the wrong Mary.
Maybe there really is something about Mary….
— 30 —

A couple of months ago I read an article from an Amsterdam newspaper about the Dutch Cycling Federation conducting a study showing that 60 lives could be saved a year if air bags were installed on the hoods of cars, where cyclists are typically hit in accidents. Then a few days ago, I ran across an article indicating that a research team drawn from Hiroshima University and a municipal technical high school are mounting airbags on the exterior body panels of automobiles.
The panels, called “iSave” (really) are going to be installed on 50 to 100 cars and tested in real-world driving situations later this year. The iSave panels are integrated with interior airbags so that once an exterior bag registers an impact, the air inside it is transferred to a corresponding interior airbag to protect drivers and passengers inside the vehicle.

I can’t say this is necessarily a bad idea, but I can see a lot issues before or if it becomes practical. The scary thing is that some congressman (one that can read) will pick up on this and pass a law requiring all cars to have external air bags by a certain date — like the price of cars isn’t high enough already. I guess the idea is to make being hit by a car feel like being hit in a pillow fight, but somehow I think the car is always going to win. Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way — why not just require clothing manufacturers to make clothes with airbags in their pants and shirts….
— 30 —

My last update to this blog, talked about the use of the number 30 to indicate the end of the story. Over the years that I’ve been doing this blog, I’ve discussed a lot of numbers while covering a number of subjects. Things may have just worked out that way, but I am often fascinated by numbers — I find them interesting. I have some favorite numbers, but I think pretty much all numbers are interesting for different reasons — just like people, they’re all interesting, some more so than others, but they’re all interesting — for different reasons.

In my mind, there is no perfect number, but in number theory there is such a thing: “A perfect number is a whole number, an integer greater than zero; and when you add up all the factors less than that number, you get that number.” Well, ok — but I just find real-world numbers more interesting. For instance, there’s a five second rule — we’ve all used it — we drop a cookie or something on the floor and if we pick it up within 5 seconds, it’s ok to eat. Why is it 5 seconds? Why not 6? Or 10 Or 20?
Back in the 1980s, the Pentagon became (more) famous for spending $435 for a hammer. It grabbed a lot of headlines for government excess — I wonder if the number had been $295 it would have gotten the same attention? Was $435 the actual cost or was that just what the press reported?
Had any 100 proof alcohol lately? Alcohol “proofs” have lots of numbers, all the way up to 200. What the heck is “proof” and what do the numbers mean? Putting proof labels on alcohol was brought about by British Sailors. In the 1700s members of the British Royal Navy were given an alcohol ration of half a pint of rum a day. The sailors often became suspicious that their superiors were watering down their supply. To test the rum’s potency, they doused a small pile of gunpowder with the rum and set it on fire. If the powder lit instantly, the sailors took it as “proof” that the rum was strong enough. If the gunpowder lit right away, it was deemed “100 percent proof” that it was ok. (Today we define proof as twice the percentage of alcohol by volume, although I kind of like the gunpowder method better.)
One number I’ve never completely understood is the nine-tenths of a cent tacked to the price of a gallon of gas. Why do they end in 0.9 cents? I’ve heard that it started in the 1920s when the gasoline tax was nine-tenths of a cent. That amount was just added to the price the gas station was charging. Anyhow, it just seems to be — I don’t know why.

Numbers play an interesting, and important, role in our lives. In keeping with the educational value of this blog, did you know that the Google name came from a number? The web site was named Google because of a misspelling of the word “googol.” Googol is a very large number (the number one followed by on hundred zeros.)
Once again, that’s “thirty.”
— 30 —

A couple of weeks ago, a friend asked why all my blog entries ended with “thirty.” Given the age of my friend, I was surprised at the question.
— 30 — has traditionally been used by journalists to indicate the end of a story. Of course this all started before the computer age and has pretty much gone away in today’s journalistic world. The symbol even made its way into Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, that indicates that 30 is a sign of completion. When typewriters were used to write stories for newspapers and the paper or “copy” was carried to the printing room to be typeset, 30 was used to indicate that the story had ended and there wasn’t more of the story on another piece of paper floating around.

So where did the term originate? Like a lot of things, no one is really sure and there are a lot of interesting “theories.” Most people agree that it somehow originated with the telegraph. Most news stories were sent to newspaper offices via telegraph, back in the days of yore. Much like the “texting” language we use today, those 19th century telegraphers had their own codes to communicate, referred to as the telegraphers’ code. (You can look this up on the Signal Corps Association’s web site.) The web site contains the 1859 Western Union Code and “Woods Telegraphic Numerals” published in 1864. 73, for instance, means regards and 88 means “love and kisses.” And you guessed it, 30 means end of message.

One really plausible explanation is that the end-of-story symbol was an instruction to printers to set a 30-em dash (I use em-dashes on either side of my “30”) The 30 told the typesetters to make it very long. That chunk of lead was like a rule — a solid line that could be as long as 30 “M” letters so it filled, or nearly filled, the full width of a column. You still often see these lines as separators in newspapers.
Other theories claim that the first telegraphed news story had 30 words. Some say the mark comes from the fact that press offices closed at 3 o’clock. And then there’s the theory that 30 was the code for a telegraph operator who stayed at his post during a breaking news story until his death 30 hours later.

I use — 30 — to indicate that I’m finished with a blog entry. Some writers often use “xxx” to signify the end of their stories, and that’s ok. In roman numerals, xxx is — yep, 30….
So if any of you have been looking at that 30 and trying to find the first 29 pages of my blog entries — sorry.
That’s “30” for this edition.
— 30 —