What Would Jimmy Do?

This morning while browsing the news on my phone, I ran across an article on the Freemasons….. I thought that might be a good topic for today.

Freemasons — that mysterious secret society that does whatever it does, when those Masons go inside those temples of theirs. Who are these guys and what are they doing in there? Are they really running the world?

Freemason secrets allegedly lurk behind everything from the planning of our nation’s capital to murder. So who are the Freemasons and what do they stand for? As you might imagine, this is one of those subjects that just begs for some of my extensive research….

Freemasons belong to the oldest fraternal organization in the world. The most probable origin of the Freemasons has the organization incorporating in 1475 in Edinburg and consisting of masons (stone workers) and wrights (woodworkers.) Members from other crafts were allowed to join, starting with coopers (barrel makers) in 1489. It’s generally agreed that “modern” Freemasonry began with the creation of the Great Lodge of London in 1717. Over the centuries the organization drifted away from its original trade association and became more of a club for men of various professions and callings even though the Freemasons’ symbols and official gear (including a stonemason’s apron) bring to mind the early days. Supposedly the organization still conveys the early era’s core values, religious tolerance, thirst for knowledge and sociability. 

As for symbols, Freemasons have always communicated using visual symbols drawn from the tools of stonemasonry. The “All-Seeing Eye,” or Eye of Providence has been used by the group to represent the omniscience of God. The most well-known Freemason symbol, “The Square and Compasses,” depicts a builder’s square joined by a compass. The “G” at its center remains subject to dispute — some experts believe the “G” in the symbol’s center represents geometry, a critical field to the first Freemasons. Others believe it represents God, the “Grand Architect of the Universe.” (Another lesser known Masonic symbol is drawn from nature — the beehive. Masons were originally working men who were supposed to be busy as bees. The beehive symbolizes the industriousness of the lodge.)

Historically, the question is not who has been one, but who hasn’t. Freemasons can be found throughout history — George Washington, Benjamin franklin, Franklin Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, Winston Churchill, Davy Crockett, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, Henry Ford, Buzz Aldrin, Colonel Harland Sanders (the chicken guy,) William Howard Taft, and Michael Richards, a.k.a. “Kramer” on Seinfeld. So the group may or may not rule the world, but a number of Freemasons have had their hand on the wheel.

But the thing that makes people suspicious about Freemasons isn’t membership rolls, but the rituals that have sprung within the group over the years — the “initiation rites” and ceremonies and various “levels” that Masons can achieve by going through them. These are supposedly secret and paganistic, with one big sticking point being the Mason’s concept of a “Great Architect of the Universe” (God to most of us.) Critics of the Freemasons suggest that the “Great Architect” is not a generalized representation of a higher being, as the Freemasons claim, but a manifestation of Baal, god of Canaanites, i.e., not the same God that people go to church on Sundays to worship. It should be noted that Freemasons roll their eyes at this allegation. Freemasonry isn’t a religion, but all members believe in a Supreme Being — a “Grand Architect of the Universe.” However the Catholic Church first condemned Freemasonry in 1738 over the concern about Masonic temples and the secret rituals performed within them. In the 19th century, the Vatican even called the Masons “the Synagogue of Satin.”

So needless to say, the Freemasons have fueled a great deal of resentment over the years, and at one point even spawned a political party. In 1828, the first third party in the United States — the Anti-Masonic Party — was formed in response to fears that the group was growing too secretive and powerful. The incident that motivated  this movement was the mysterious disappearance of bricklayer William Morgan, who was allegedly preparing a tell-all book about the Freemasons’ secrets and rituals. He was never found, and the rumor was the Freemasons did him in. 

The Anti-Masonic party had some success at the state and local level, and even managed to help former United States President John Quincy Adams get elected to the House of Representatives in 1830. But as a national political party, it was a bust. 

Today, the oldest fraternal organization in the world is still going strong — if they’re sincerely dedicated to taking over the world, it’s been a long fight……
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Well, here be me most favorite holiday again — Talk Like a Pirate Day. Today everyone around here will be calling each other “me hearties,” be donning their finest eye patches and pulling the usual shenanigans that they do every year. Needless to say me and me wench Claire will host our usual Hornpipe ceremony and make our rounds for a pint or two of grog. 

Some of our neighbors still don’t get it and keep asking me why do we need a Talk Like a Pirate Day?
Well…. because we do — I can’t exactly say why, but we do need Talk Like a Pirate Day. A lot of people think that the day romanticizes pirates, but that’s not the case. I’ve said it before — pirates were, and are, bad people. I’m not for one minute suggesting that real, honest-to-goodness pirates in any way, shape of form should be “romanticized.” 

The best thing about Talk Like a Pirate Day is that it’s fun. If you’re new at it, and would like to give it a try, here are the five basic words to master — then you can move on to the “real” pirate talk.
Ahoy! — “Hello!”
Avast! — It can be used in a sense of surprise, like “Check it out,” or “No way!”
Aye! — “Why yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did”
Aye aye! — “I’ll get right on that sir, as soon as I finish my grog.”
Arr! — This one is often confused with arrrgh — the sound you make when your stump your toe. Arr! can mean “yes,” “I agree,” “I’m enjoying my beer,” “I’m happy,” or lots of other things — lots of possibilities here….

Once you’ve got the basic mastered, you can move on to expanding your pirate vocabulary with terms like Beauty, Bung hole, Bilge rat, Grog. Hornpipe, Lubber and more.
But for all you newbies, just start with adding “me hearties” to the end of any sentence, like “drink up, me hearties,” or “meet me at the pub, me hearty.” Me hearty just means my friends or mates….
So give some of these expressions a whirl today and amaze your friends.
Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties!!!
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They’ve closed a major road going through Harpers Ferry and due to the closure lots of the traffic is re-routing through Shepherdstown. There is no traffic light in Shepherdstown — only a 4-way stop, and traffic is really backing up especially during the morning and evening “rush” hours. Someone mentioned that the 4-way stop should be replaced with a traffic light.

Well….. that got me to thinking about traffic lights. Maysville, Oklahoma, where I grew up didn’t have a traffic light — except for a few months. The traffic light that they installed just had a green light and a red light — no yellow light. But it was only in operation for maybe a couple of months when a big truck hit it and it had to be taken down for repairs — and never got put back up. It was never popular anyway and people thought that the few cars in Maysville could get through the main intersection and not run into each other without a traffic light.

But my wondering about traffic lights was — why did they choose red, green and yellow for the colors, and how did they get everyone to agree to use those colors? I’m pretty sure if traffic lights were being invented today, Congress and the States wouldn’t be able to agree on a common color scheme….

Well, it turns out that when traffic lights first came into being, there was no “standard,” and there were various schemes used to control traffic around the country. The Federal Highway Administration published “The Manual on Consistent Traffic Control Devices” in 1935 to define uniform standards for all road signs, pavement markings and traffic signals — mandating them to all employ red, yellow and green light colors. 

So I guess that’s how consistency was mandated, but what about the colors? I’m not sure but I think science must have played a big part in the color choices….. If you remember, there are seven colors in the light spectrum — and the wavelengths increase from violet, the shortest, to red, the longest. Back in general science classes, we learned that longer wavelengths have shorter frequencies and tend to travel longer distances. When you look at different colors, red has the longest wavelength followed by yellow, and then green. 
So it appears that the colors with the longest wavelengths were chosen for traffic signals because they could be seen at a greater distance.

The three colors of the traffic light were assigned in priority. Red for stop because a driver should be alerted as soon as possible of danger and to come to a stop. Yellow was chosen to warn drivers, and green, for go, maybe because it’s not so urgent for driver to go as it is to stop.
So once again, science comes to the rescue……
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As I’ve mentioned before, this is one of those days that don’t get enough recognition — It’s Constitution Day. I’m not sure our constitution has ever been on shakier ground than it is today. All of us owe more than we can know to the Constitution of the United States. 

On February 29, 1952, Congress designated September 17 as Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. The day commemorates the signing of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787, and recognizes all American citizens. 

On this date in 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention met for the last time to sign the document they had created. Thirty nine men signed it, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton. 

The Constitution outlines the powers of Congress, the President and Executive Branch, the Judicial Branch, the relationship between the states, the process of adding amendments, and the oath that representatives must pledge to it. 
There are 27 Amendments to the Constitution — the first ten, the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791. 

The Constitution is a remarkable document — in more ways than one.
The U.S. Constitution has 4,400 words. It is the oldest and shortest written Constitution of any major government in the world.

There were a lot of sticking points during the Constitutional convention, but the big one led to the Great Compromise — it saved the Constitutional Convention, and probably, the Union. The Great Compromise was authored by Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman and it called for proportional representation in the House and one representative per state in the Senate (that was later changed to two.) The compromise passed 5 to 4, with one state, Massachusetts, “divided.”

The oldest person to sign the Constitution was Benjamin franklin (81,) the youngest was Johnathan Dayton of New Jersey (26.)
The word “democracy” does not appear once in the Constitution 
The only other language used in various parts of the Constitution is Latin.
Four of the signers of the Constitution were born in Ireland.

A proclamation by President George Washington and a congressional resolution established the first national Thanksgiving Day on November 16, 1789. The reason for the holiday was to give “thanks” for the new Constitution.
Take a minute today to think about the Constitution and what it means to all of us. It was a gift from our forefathers — hopefully we can pass it along to future generation intact. 
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Well, here it is September and time for Oktoberfest to begin. That’s always just seemed wrong to me — Oktoberfest should be in October, not September…. but after all these years, it’s probably not going to change.

The Bavarian Inn, here in Shepherdstown, will hold their annual Oktoberfest on Sunday, but the main, really big one begins today, September 16th at 12 pm and ends on Tuesday, October 3rd. Of course, I’m talking about Oktoberfest in Munich.

I don’t think there’s a bad day to attend Oktoberfest, but if you’ve never been before, you should make an effort to attend either the opening ceremony or the closing ceremony — or better yet, both.
The opening ceremony in the Schottenhamel tent marks the official start of Oktoberfest when the Lord Mayor of Munich taps the first keg and shouts, “O’Zapft Is!” — the Oktoberfest equivalent of a green flag being waved on a racetrack.
The closing ceremony in the Hacker-Pschorr tent is another spectacle to behold. Think about 10,000 of your (new) best friends in one big sing-along. The lights go down, the sparklers are lit — it’s kind of like New Year’s Eve. 
Oktoberfest 2023 will have all the signature events like the costume parade, family day, traditional Bavarian concerts and much more.
So if you haven’t been, should you put Oktoberfest in Germany on your bucket list? 
Abso-freaking-lutely.
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Tomorrow is World Ozone Day. The day is “celebrated” every year and every year there is a specific theme. This year, in 2023, the theme is Montreal Protocol: fixing the ozone layer and reducing climate change. 

The Montreal Protocol, finalized in 1987, is a global agreement to protect the stratospheric ozone layer by phasing out the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances (ODS.)  ODS are substances that were commonly used in products such as refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers, and aerosols. The Montreal Protocol has proven to be innovative and successful, and it is the first treaty to achieve universal ratification by all countries in the world.

In 2016, parties to the Montreal Protocol adopted the Kigali Amendment to phase down production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) worldwide. HFCs are widely used alternatives to ODS such as Hydrochloroflourcarbons (HFCs) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs,) which are already controlled under the Protocol.

The latest update from the Scientific Assessment Panel to the Montreal Protocol confirmed that ozone layer recovery is on track and ozone levels are expected to return to 1980 levels by around 2066 over the Antarctic. 

So we’re making progress, but there’s still a long way to go — hopefully, we’ll get the world to cooperate on broader climate change issues……
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There’s been a lot in the news lately about the medical profession — most of it not particularly good. We keep hearing about all the “burn-outs” due to an overworked profession and then of course there’s the occasional medical “scandal” at some hospital, the VA, or somewhere else.

Anyhow, I was thinking about doctors — when I was growing up there was no doctor in Maysville until I was maybe about in high school — then there was one doctor. I’m sure there isn’t one there today. I’ve been to lots of doctors in various countries and from my perspective, across the board they’re much better right here in the good old USA. 

We didn’t have one in Maysville, but years ago, there were the witch doctors — many years ago, most people thought illness was a result of evil spirits and preferred to take their medical complaints to the local healer. 
Then about 2,500 years ago Hippocrates came along and hung out his shingle on the Greek island of Cos — and he had his work cut out for him. But he persevered and even established a medical school where he taught his new fangled ideas to the future doctors of Greece. He’s now known as “the Father of Medicine,” and even today, all medical school graduates in the U.S. take the oath he wrote.

His biggest contribution was that he treated patients based on scientific evidence. Well, at least mostly scientific anyway.
He was one of the first doctors to believe that disease wasn’t a punishment from the gods. He thought disease was the result of lack of balance in the body. He also believed in the importance of moderation in all things — working, eating drinking, exercising, sleeping, etc. to prevent disease.

And… the use of fasts and diets to cleanse the body, the importance of fresh air and a good diet, and the danger of being too overweight.

Some of his innovations included:
Putting his ear to his patients’ chest to check their lungs.
Aligning fractures
Popping dislocations back in place
Draining pus from infections.
All this sounds pretty obvious to us but it was incredibly groundbreaking at the time.

For all he got right, we can forgive him for a few mistakes. His biggest was his belief in the theory that every living thing contains certain mixtures of four elements, called “humours:” — black bile, phlegm, yellow bile, and blood. These four humours had to be in balance or illness would result. 

His Hippocratic Oath is still taken by doctors today — the oath lists the responsibilities of the physician to the patient — to work for the good of the patient, to do him or her no harm, to prescribe no deadly drugs, and to keep confidential any medical information regarding the patient — and the rights of the patient under the physician’s care. It warns doctors against overcharging (???) overdressing and wearing perfume. It encourages a pleasing bedside manner, but not too pleasing, because it forbids the doctor to have sex with patients. 

Even though Hippocrates gets all the credit, what’s considered his discoveries and beliefs is probably the collective results of the work of many students at his medical school. And even though he was wrong about a few things, he probably earned the title “Father of Medicine.”
Many of his quotes make a lot of sense today…..
“Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods, a man should himself lend a hand.”
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
“To do nothing is also a good remedy.”
So Hippocrates had lots of good advice, but my grandmother had pretty good advice too — she always said you should never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
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As is often the case, Israel was in the news yesterday — and it included a little blurb on Golda Meir. I’m sure you know that Golda Meir was the Middle East’s first female head of state and she was one of the signers of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. She was also an important activist in labor and Zionist causes. 

But — did you know she grew up in Milwaukee? It’s true — in fact there are a number of institutions and schools in that city named after her. The University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee even named its main library for Meir.

Gold Mabovitch was born in Kyiv in what was then Russia on May 3, 1898. When she was five years old, her family moved to Pinsk, but in both places, they faced anti-Jewish persecution. Shortly after their move to Pinsk, her father immigrated to the United States to get the family our of Russia altogether.
Moshe Mabovitch worked as a carpenter to earn enough to bring his wife, Golda, and her sisters to Milwaukee. At the time, Milwaukee had a population of about 300,000 people, with a Jewish community of about 9,000.

She became one of the leaders of the Milwaukee branch of the National Committee for the Defense of Jews in Easter Europe — an organization protesting anti-Jewish programs.
She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1917, but because of her Zionist activism, she had her mind set on moving to Palestine. After getting married, the couple moved to Palestine in 1921 and lived in a communal settlement before settling in Jerusalem.

Meir was one of the 24 signers of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. She served as Israel’s top diplomat in the Soviet Union, and was elected to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament in 1949. That same year, she was named labor secretary in Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s cabinet. She rose to become foreign minister, but resigned, in 1966, amber being diagnosed with lymphoma.

When Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died unexpectedly in 1969, Meir, who was 71, was elected leader of Israel’s Labor Party and became the country’s fourth prime minister.
During her time in office, 11 Isreli athletes were massacred by Palestinian terrorist at the 1972 Munich Olympics and the 1973 Yom Kippur War occurred. She resigned in 1974, after her coalition government was not able to form a government. She died of lymphatic cancer at age 80, in 1978.
Who would have thought this all started in Milwaukee…..
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You remember back in July, I talked about the first (human) landing on the Moon. Well, today’s the anniversary of a special milestone in making that happen. As a bit of background, on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress a dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade. Kennedy’s decision was based on a number of political factors, and the timing of them. Kennedy felt great pressure to have the United States “catch up to and overtake” the Soviet Union in the “space race.”

The decision involved a lot of consideration before making it public and would require enormous human efforts and expenditures to make what became Project Apollo a reality by 1969. Only the construction of the Panama Canal in modern peacetime and the Manhattan Project in wartime were comparable in scope. 

But back to today…… On September 12, 1962, Kennedy stood in front of a crowd of roughly 35,000 at Rice University and delivered his historic speech — he declared that by the end of the decade, the United States would land astronauts on the Moon. The Rice University speech — not the one to Congress back in May — galvanized public support, and led to government investment. The U.S. government committed approximately $25 billion to the program — the NASA funding comprised 4.4% of the national budget in 1966.
Just seven years after the speech, Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon and the world celebrated. It was a historic moment, but also a global victory for the U.S.
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I know every year on this date, I write about the events that occurred in 2001, but I think it’s important. The phrase “never forger” has become synonymous with September 11 — we should never forget what happened and do our best to ensure that it never happens again…..

On September 11, 2001, terrorists linked to the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda, founded by Osama bin Laden, hijacked four commercial passenger planes and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. A third plane hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia and the passengers and crew of the fourth plane fought back, and the plane was downed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including the 19 al Qaeda terrorists. The President, George W. Bush, and his administration responded by declaring a “war or terrorism,” that included the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and led to the invasion of Afghanistan. 
Citizens of 78 countries died in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.

On December 18, 2001, Congress approved naming September 11 “Patriot Day” to commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In 2009, Congress named September 11 a National Day of Service and Remembrance. 

On the first anniversary of the attacks in New York City, two bright columns of light were shot up into the sky from where the Twin Towers once stood. The “Tribute in Light” then became an annual installation run by the Municipal Art Society of New Your. On clear nights, the beams are visible from over 60 miles away.

So today is one of those days that are etched in all our memories — a day we can never forget. Maybe President Obama said it best….”Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11.”
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