What Would Jimmy Do?

For some reason one of those pop-up “notifications” came up on my phone this morning, and it was “this day in history.” Usually I just swipe these things aside, but I happened to look at it and it said that on this date in 1909, the world’s first international overseas airplane flight was achieved by Louis Bleriot. 

Well, believe it or not, I knew that Louis was the one that made the first international overseas airplane flight — I didn’t remember the date, but I had read about it a few years ago.
I suppose I remembered it because it was kind of a cool story. If I recall the story correctly, Louis Bleriot was a French aviator and the flight was made in a small monoplane. The story goes that after he asked, “Where is England?” he took off from France and landed in England, near Dover. Upon his arrival, he was greeted by British police. 

Actually what made Bleriot famous was that this was the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier than air aircraft. (It was a 22-mile flight that took 36 minutes and 30 seconds.)
He went on to become the founder of a successful aircraft manufacturing company. In 1936, the Louis  Bleriot medal was established by the Federation Aeronautique International and is awarded for speed, altitude and distance records for light aircraft.

After celebrating Pi Approximation Day a couple of days ago, it’s appropriate that we have a day to wash down all that “Pi.” Well, today’s the day — National Tequila Day. Mexicans like to celebrate National Tequila Day — but — so do a lot of other people , all around the world. No matter that tequila can only be made in a few regions of Mexico, its day can (and really should be) celebrated by  just about everyone.

Humans have been making something like tequila for at least a couple of thousand years. As early as 150 B.C., a predecessor of tequila, called “pulque” was thought to have been made by civilizations predating the ancient Aztecs. 

Tequila is made from the agave plant. Like wine, the type of soil the plant is grown in can impact the taste of the final product. But, unlike wine or other drinks made from fruit, once the agave plant is used to make tequila, it’s finished — it can’t be reused.
To qualify as “tequila,” at least 51% of the product must be derived from the blue agave plant that is prevalent in Mexico. A lot tequila today is made from 100% blue agave. These tequilas are typically higher quality and cost more than the mixed versions.

Tequila is like some other alcoholic beverages, like champagne, cognac, bourbon, etc., in that it can only be called tequila if it is made in a certain place — in the case of tequila, this place is Mexico.
In 2018, National Tequila Day was officially recognized by the Mexican government.
Regular agave and blue agave plants have different flavors. Standard agave is used in sweeteners, but not in tequila.
Tequila can be used to create small, artificial diamonds — which are often used in the electronics industry.
More than 300 million agave plants are grown and harvested each year to produce tequila throughout Mexico.
So an alcoholic beverage that’s this interesting and tastes this good in a margarita certainly deserves its own day — Happy National Tequila Day.
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The British Open was on television this morning and the announcers referred several times to it being a links course. 
I’m pretty sure I’ve never played on a true links course. I’ve played on a few courses that claim to be links, call themselves “links-style,” or even have the word links in their name. 

The term links derives from the Old English word hlinc, meaning rising ground or ridge and refers to sandy areas along a coast. True link courses are mostly found in Scotland, Ireland and England. The course must be along the coast with sandy soil underneath. 

Links golf is where the game was founded — the sandy soil was perfect for the game and not much good for anything else. The land wasn’t of any use for agriculture, so some other use needed to be found for it. The sandy soil drains well, keeping the ground firm — which is good for a golf course. 

If you’ve watched the Open, you can see the course has plenty of dunes and pretty much no trees, and the bunkers are pot bunkers, not the larger, sprawling “American” style bunkers. And this morning’s round made it apparent, maybe because of the lack of trees and being by the water, wind plays a big factor on these courses. 
I read somewhere that some golf course designers are starting to try to replicate some of the features on their newer courses on land that, technically, doesn’t meet the definition of links.
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Pretty much every year around this time, if you open this blog, the subject will be pi (∏.) I mention Pi every year because it’s important — it’s one of the things that links math to real-world uses. Lots of real-world phenomena can be calculated using pi — the the shape of rivers, the circumference of the sun, the spiral of DNA, the pupil of the eye… and so on. 

In case you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know, Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter — for any circle, no matter what size. Pi is an irrational number, meaning its exact value is, and always will be, completely unknown. Scientist have calculated Pi to billions of digits, but no recognizable pattern ever emerges. These calculations could go on to infinity and we’d still have no idea what digit might come up next. 

Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 every year because the value of Pi is 3.14. However, Pi Approximation Day is celebrated every year on 22 July. The fraction 22/7 is an approximate value of Pi and the reason that this is the day for celebration — the numerator 22 represents the date, while the denominator seven represents the month.
The first calculation of pi was carried out by one of the acknowledged greatest mathematicians of his time, Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 B.C.)

Although March 14 really got these “Pi Days” going, today is more appropriately named…if you plug the numbers into your calculator, you’ll notice that 22 divided by ∏ provides an infinite number (until you run out of digits on your calculator.) That’s why Pi is regarded as an approximation and that’s the rationale for today. Celebrate approximately appropriately.
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A few days ago I mentioned that I had used an idiom — “you got your ears lowered” — when a friend of mine had gotten a haircut. Well, of course, that got me to thinking…. a lot of expressions that we use involve the word ear or ears.
An expression our friend Anne uses a lot is “play it on the ear.”
Of course, I’ve always heard it as “play it by ear,”  but it means to respond to circumstances, not having a fixed plan. 

Anyhow if you stop to think about it, we use a lot of ear “idioms,” like: lend an ear, in one ear and out the other, out of earshot, keep your ear to the ground, all ears, fall on deaf ears, grinning from ear to ear, and music to you ears, 
Sometimes, you give someone an earful, and are careful what you say because the walls have ears. 
And if you’re too young to recognize or remember some of these expressions, maybe you’re still wet behind the ears…..
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I’ve blogged about this several times before, but it’s the anniversary of one of the biggest events that has ever occurred during the month of July….
I won’t go into the details again, but on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.

On July 20, 1969, pretty much the whole world watched on television as Apollo 11 Astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first step onto the Moon. As he stepped onto the Moon’s surface, he said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” — inadvertently omitting as “a” before “man” that slightly changed the meaning.
But what the heck, I guess we can forgive Neil for being a little excited and making a small mistake….
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I just happened to notice that yesterday was Nelson Mandela’s birthday.
He was the son of a Tembu tribal chieftain and was born on July 18, 1918 in South Africa. He became a lawyer and joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944.

In 1964, he was convicted for sabotage as a result of his participation in the struggle against apartheid, and spent the next 28 years in jail. All that time, he remained a symbol of hope to South Africa’s non-white majority. He was released from prison in 1990 and elected President of South Africa in 1994. It was the first election in which all races participated.
Happy (belated) Birthday Nelson!
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I saw a friend at church recently and said, “Hey, you got your ears lowered.” He looked at me like I had three heads and said he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. When I was growing up, that was a common phrase — if my dad was going to get a haircut, he almost always said, “I’m going to get my ears lowered.” In fact, just about everyone said it, no one hardly ever said they were going to get a haircut.

I admit that I hadn’t heard the expression in a long time, and it just kind of popped out, but I was still amazed that my friend swore he had never heard it and had no idea what it meant. Actually, this slang term always made more sense to me than a lot of the others that I heard — when you get a haircut, it appears there’s a larger distance between your ears and the ends of your hair…. giving the illusion that your ears have been lowered.

I guess this is just something else that shows my age — it probably falls into the category of an old fashioned (i.e. corny) sense of humor. I also remember when I was a kid, when someone would ask, “D’y get a haircut?” we’d always answer “No, I got ‘em all cut.”

Of course just getting a haircut itself was a lot different than it is today. When I was a kid growing up in Maysville, we had a couple of barbershops — that’s where men got their hair cut (or “ears lowered”) and there were a couple of beauty shops — that’s where women got their hair cut, or whatever they had done to it. If it was a barbershop, it had a barber pole outside. 

I remember my dad always took me to get my ears lowered. When we went in, the barbers (usually two) both acknowledged us and spoke while they clipped away. We always just took a seat, there was no signing in or anything like that — we just looked around and saw who was ahead of us. My dad usually  talked to people and I usually looked a a comic book — I remember the barber shop always had comic books for kids. I always kind of listened to the conversation(s) because the barber shop was where ordinary farmers and businessmen solved the world’s problems. 

When the barber finished cutting someone’s hair, they left and whoever was next just climbed into the chair — everyone always knew who was next. Then they’d start a conversation with the barber about the weather, or fishing or hunting, sports (usually baseball) or maybe some town issue. 

When it was my turn, the barber put a board across the arms of the barber chair to make me taller and it was hard to sit still when the scissors and clippers got around my ears. I remember knowing when the barber was about finished, when he put some lather on the back of my neck and made a few swipes with a straight razor. 

All barbershops (at least all good barbershops) had a barber pole — and it was in good working order, with those red and white strips spinning around. When I was a kid, I don’t remember ever having my hair cut in a barber shop with more than three chairs — most only had two. And most of the good or popular shops had a deer head or a fish or something hanging on the wall. 

Today, I get my hair cut where Claire gets her hair done — it’s honestly not a “cool” place. No talk about fishing or hunting, or sports, political issues… no deer heads on the wall — not even any straight razors. 
No wonder “getting my ears lowered” has turned into just another chore to check off my list.
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I’ve always been a big fan of trains. My first trip (outside of Maysville or the surrounding towns) was by train. May dad had to go to Okmulgee on business and he took my mom and me along as a kind of mini-vacation. It was the first time I ever stayed in a hotel, too — but that’s another story. Okmulgee is only about 150 miles from Maysville, but I was only about 3 or 4 years old and it seemed like we’d traveled to another country. That was my first experience with trains and over the years, I’ve taken a lot of trains in various countries. Taking a long train trip in the U.S. is still on the agenda.
Anyhow, I thought maybe today would be a good time to think, and write about trains….

The train is often listed as one of the most important inventions that humans have come up with. History books give trains the credit for allowing the quicker shipment of both people and goods, and leading to the industrial revolution.
The earliest trains were powered (actually pulled) by horses and then along came steam power and then diesel power — Most/Many more modern trains today are powered by electricity.

I mentioned that the first trains were pulled by horses — when James Watt came along during the development of the steam engine, he invented the word “horsepower” to help sell the new technology. He discovered that prospective buyers couldn’t understand how efficient steam power was, so he used the horsepower measurement because everyone back then knew what horses were capable of.

So steam power dominated the world of trains up until about the 1940s — when diesel came along, it was pretty much the end for steam powered trains. A diesel engine performed more efficiently, propelled the train faster, and didn’t require as much manual labor. By the 1960s, steam trains were almost non-existent. 

At one time, trains in the US ran on a very precise schedule — most all train personnel carried a pocket watch that kept extremely good time. That “on-time precision”  is pretty much gone today, but in many other countries, trains still run very much on time. China, for instance, measures arrival and departure times in minutes. But I think Japan gets credit for having the most reliable train system — even a delay of a couple of minutes will get you a free voucher and personal apology.

Like most subjects, there’s a few “gee-whiz” facts about trains….
After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, his body was transported by train through 180 cities on the journey back to his home state of Illinois.
Stray dogs in Russia take the train from the suburbs into the city of Moscow each morning to scavenge for food. In the evening, they take the train back to the suburbs — to get a good night’s sleep, I guess.
The first underground railroad was inaugurated in 1863, in London. The Metropolitan was a steam engine system that operated through a series of small tunnels underneath the city. However, the system had problems with ventilation — the smoke from the steam engines caused poor visibility and disastrous breathing conditions.
“The Great Train Robbery” occurred in 1963 — a Royal Mail train traveling from Glasgow, Scotland, to London, England was taken over by 15 men. They got away with £2.6 million — the money was never recovered.
The USA has the most train tracks of any country — 125,000 miles. China is second with 99,000 miles and Russia comes in third (89,000 miles.)
The longest train route that is covered by a single train is the Trans-Siberian Express. The route is from Moscow to Vladivostok — 5,778 miles. The trip takes 6 or 7 days and makes between 74 and 145 stops.
The engineer responsible for designing the Kamikaze planes for Japan during World War II also developed the Shinkansen — the Japanese bullet train.

So trains, early on, became a part of our lives. Agatha Christie once wrote that trains are are wonderful…. to travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact to see life.
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Back on July 14th, we talked about Bastille Day in France and how the storming of the Bastille kind of kicked off the French Revolution. And we mentioned that the Bastille was built during the Hundred Years’ War to help protect Paris.

Today, I thought we might talk a little about that war. The Hundred Years’ War was, needless to say, a long struggle between England and France — over succession to the French throne. The war lasted from 1337 to 1453, so it should be called the Hundred and Sixteen Years’ War. 

Here’s how it all sort of came about….
When Charles IV of France died without a son in 1328, Charles’s first cousin was chosen to succeed him, becoming King Philip VI. But Edward III of England, as the deceased king’s nearest male relation, was considered by some to have the stronger claim to the throne. When Phillip VI confiscated the territory of Aquitaine from England in 1337, Edward III responded by pressing his claim to the French throne, beginning the Hundred Years’ War. The war began with several stunning successes by Britain and the English forces dominated France for decades. Then, the struggle see-sawed back and forth. In the 1360s, the French were winning. From 1415 – 1422, the English were winning. After 1415, King Henry V of England revived the campaign and conquered large portions of France, and won extraordinary political concessions. From 1422 onward, however, the French crown struck back.
The conflict saw major developments in military strategy and technology and the final French victory at Castillion in 1453 was the first major field engagement of the war to be decided by gunfire. 

Joan of Arc, a 19-year old peasant girl, that claimed to hear God’s commands, led the French army to reclaim much of their land. But she was captured, tried and found guilty of heresy. Joan was burned at the stake. The story goes that she cried our for a cross as she was being burned, and one was hurriedly made by an English soldier from two sticks.
Joan of Arc was later declared a saint. 
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