What Would Jimmy Do?

Well today is Dave’s and Chassie’s birthdays and that means it’s only six months until Christmas. Both  faithful readers of this blog know that I’ve referred to Dave and Chassie as “Irish Twins” (because they share the same birthday) in the past, but that’s not accurate and it’s technically wrong. I figure today is a good day to set the record straight. I know, some of you think I have too much time on my hands, but I figure this is something that I should get right….. don’t worry, it’ll still be my annual Happy Birthday wish to my kids.

To be technically correct, the phrase “Irish twins” describes two children born to the same mother within 12 months. So obviously, Dave and Chassie aren’t Irish twins — they were born on the same day, but not the same year, and not to the same mother. But there is a real term for that situation. If the date is the same but the year is different, they are “date-twins.” If they had been born on the same date and in the same year, they would be called “Astro-Twins.”

When people hear that my kids have the same birthday, most think that’s amazing…. but it really isn’t all that amazing. In one of my college math courses that turned out to be kind of heavy on statistics and probability, I first heard of something called the birthday paradox. Probability tells us that sometimes an event is more likely to occur than we think. For instance, how many people do you think it would take in a survey, on average, to find two people that share the same birthday? If you surveyed a random group of just 23 people, there is about a 50-50 chance that two of them will have the same birthday. Of course, the odds of them being married (to each other) increase the odds.

But enough of this probability stuff — The amazing part is that I have such an amazing duo as my kids.
I hope you continue to grow as two wonderful human beings. And don’t worry about what you’re called…. I just call you my son and daughter.
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Yesterday, one of the newscasters on the evening news said he was “dog tired.” I’ve heard that phrase most of my life (but not so much recently.) The expression means (to me anyway) being utterly exhausted and you just want to flop down the way a dog flops down when it has over-exhausted itself. Anyhow, I got to wondering where it came from.

A little bit of extensive research on my part came up with a couple of possibilities…. apparently dog tired is an old english phrase — when written, it’s usually hyphenated to dog-tired. It derives from an old tale about Alfred the Great who used to send his sons out with his extensive kennel(s) of hunting dogs. Whichever of his sons (Athelbrod and Edwin) were able to catch more of the hounds would gain their father’s right-hand side at the dinner table that evening. These chases would leave them “dog-tired” but still merry at their victory.

An earlier form of the expression is “dog-weary” used by Shakespeare in the Taming of the Shrew (Act IV, Scene II,) when Blondello says, “I have watched so long that I am dog-weary.”

So once again, man’s best friend has become part of our everyday language. We’ve all used phrases like every dog has its day, let sleeping dogs lie, work like a dog, gone to the dogs, in the doghouse, hair of the dog, dog eat dog, sick as a dog, mean as a junkyard dog, dog and pony show, three dog night, tail wagging the dog, raining cats and dogs, let the dog bark, that dog won’t hunt or you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
I’m sure there are many, many others, but I’m just too dog-tired to think of them right now…..
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I read an article yesterday that said that Amnesty International had released its annual review of the death penalty. According to the report, recorded executions in 2022 reached the highest figure in five years as the Middle East and North Africa’s most notorious executioners carried out killing sprees.
Among other things in the report (that I chose not to read in its entirety) included: highest number of judicial executions recorded globally since 2017; 81 people executed in a single day in Saudi Arabia; 20 countries known to have carried out executions; and six countries abolished the death penalty partially or fully.

Well, that got me to thinking about a story I read recently about Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. He was a French physician, politician, and freemason who proposed the use of a device to carry out death penalties in France with a less painful method of execution than those that were currently being used. Even though he didn’t invent the guillotine, and he opposed the death penalty, his name became associated with the machine as though he had invented it. The actual inventor of the original prototype was a man named Tobias Schmidt.

Dr. Guillotin was actually a nice, kindly man that took this one issue as his life’s work — that people convicted of a capital offense should have the right to a quick and painless form of execution. Up to that point, French commoners were executed by hanging. The nobility, of course, died a nobler death —by the sword.

The kinder, gentler beheading machine that Guillotin had in mind was already being used in Italy, England and Germany, so the French government said, okay, let’s try it. The government asked a German piano maker, Tobias Schmidt, to build the prototype — he did, and it was successfully tested on dead bodies supplied by local French hospitals. Turns out that the guillotine became generally accepted just in time to become the symbol of the French Revolution.

Nearly 3,000 men and women were guillotined in Paris during the fall and winter of 1703. Another 14,000 executions were carried out in the provinces. Most of the victims were designated “enemies of the people” because their politics didn’t agree with whichever revolutionary party held the balance of power at the time. But in many cases, innocent people were hauled off to the guillotine for the flimsiest of excuses, such as complaints of jealous or vindictive neighbors. In some cases, people were guillotined because of clerical or administrative errors. 
The guillotine stuck around for a long time — Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant convicted of murder, was guillotined at Baumetes Prison in Marseilles, France on September 10, 1977.
After Dr. Guilliotin’s death, his children tried to get the guillotine’s name legally changed. They weren’t successful, so they changed their own name instead.
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A few days ago I read an article about early pioneers in aviation and it mentioned Charles Lindbergh’s famous flight. In case you don’t remember, in 1927, Lindbergh flew his single-engine plane, named the Spirit of St. Louis, non-stop from New York to Paris. 

The flight originated from Roosevelt Field in Long Island. Roosevelt Field was used by a number of pioneering aviators like Amelia Earhart and Wiley Post. It was later used by the Army and Navy during World War II and after the war, it reverted to operation as a commercial airport, until it closed in 1951. 
Today, the site of the original airfield has become a shopping mall. 

It just seems like someplace like this that has some historical significance deserves to be something other than a shopping center…..
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Welcome to the “real” start of summer….. today is the longest day of the year — well, actually it’s the day with the longest period of daylight. But anyhow, today is the summer solstice of 2023. The solstice happens at the exact same time of all of us — everywhere on Earth — only our clocks are different. Here in West Virginia, the solstice occurs at 10:58 a.m. (EDT.)

At the solstice, the Sun reaches it’s northernmost position, reaching the Tropic of Cancer and standing still before reversing direction and starts moving south again. 
Today may be the “longest day,” but it’s not the latest sunset — or the earliest sunrise. The earliest sunrises happen before the summer solstice and the latest sunsets occur after the summer solstice. 

In case you’re interested, in India, the summer solstice ends the six-month period when spiritual growth is supposedly the easiest….

Today, the Sun rises farthest left on the horizon and sets farthest right. So today sunlight strikes places on your house that don’t get illuminated at any other time.
But I guess the important thing is that today is “the start of summer,” or if you happen to be somewhere like Australia, “the start of winter.”
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Happy Birthday to what is now my home state, West Virginia. West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, by proclamation — signed by President Abraham Lincoln.

Today is West Virginia Day and is a state holiday. On April 20th, 1863, President Lincoln issued a proclamation to formally admit West Virginia into the Union on June 20th, 1863, giving West Virginia the distinction of being the only state in the Union to have acquired its sovereignty by proclamation of the President of the United States. If my math is correct, this is West Virginia’s 160th birthday.
West Virginia almost wasn’t named West Virginia — the state was originally going to be named “Kanawha” to honor a Native American Tribe, but after its succession from the Commonwealth of Virginia, officials wanted Virginia to be part of its name. 

Here’s some more interesting things you may not know about “almost Heaven — West Virginia:”
• West Virginia is the only state completely within the Appalachian Mountain range.
• Outdoor advertising got its start in Wheeling when the Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company painted bridges and barns with “Treat Yourself to the Best, Chew Mail Pouch.”
• The first rural free delivery mail service took place in 1896 in Charles Town (through the Post Office Department’s pilot program to determine the feasibility for rural delivery for the rest of the country.)
• Cecil Underwood made history in 1956 when he became the state’s youngest governor at 34 — he made history again in 1996 when he became the state’s oldest governor — he was elected when he was 74.
• West Virginia is the third most forested state.
• The State Capitol dome is higher than the dome on the nation’s capitol — it’s 292 feet tall.
• The USS West Virginia was hit during the attack on Pearl Harbor — the mast from the ship is located on the West Virginia University campus — in front of Oglebay Hall.
• The first brick street in the world was laid in Charleston (on Summers Street.)
•West Virginia holds the record for having the most towns named after cities in other countries…. among others, they include Athens, Berlin, Cairo, Calcutta, Geneva and Shanghai.

Depending on your point of view, West Virginia can be considered as either the most northerly of the southern states or the most southerly of the northern states.
But whatever — our home state is rich in history and beauty and the people here do drive cars. We have indoor plumbing. We even use knives and forks. The sun doesn’t always shine here, but the people do.
Happy Birthday — West Virginia.
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Today is considered the “longest running African-American holiday” — it’s been called “America’s second Independence Day.”  June 19th or “Juneteenth” is an important day in African American history. Juneteenth, often called “Freedom Day,” is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.

On June 19th, 1865 Union soldiers, led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, arrived in Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that all slaves were free. If you’re paying attention, you’ll note that 1865 was 2½ years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, that became official on January 1, 1863. Obviously, the Emancipation Proclamation had very little impact on Texas. One reason is that there was a minimal number of Union troops available to enforce the new executive order in Texas — and — there were large crops that needed labor to harvest them. From the time Gen. Lee surrendered, in April 1865, until Gen. Granger’s regiment arrived with forces strong enough to overcome the resistance of white slave owners, 2½ years had passed….. it took 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation for all slaves to finally be free.

On January 1, 1980, Juneteenth became an official state holiday in Texas through the efforts of Al Edwards, an African American state legislator. The successful passage of the bill marked Juneteenth as the first emancipation celebration granted official state recognition. Edwards has since sought to spread the observance of Juneteenth across the nation. 

On June 15, 2021, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved the bill that makes Juneteenth a legal public holiday. On June 17, 2021, President Biden signed into law Senate Bill 475 (S. 475) making “Juneteenth” a federal holiday.
There is a Juneteenth Flag of Freedom — it’s half red and half blue with a star in the middle. Each year a Juneteenth Flag raising ceremony in held in Galveston.

Juneteenth is a holiday commemorating the freedom of the slaves in the United States. Some people call it Emancipation Day or Freedom Day. It was a cause of celebration and jubilation in 1865 — should still be today.
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Every time the third Sunday in June rolls around, we celebrate Father’s Day. Most people know that Mother’s Day got its start from the efforts of a West Virginian — Anna Jarvis. It turns out that West Virginia was also instrumental in the creation of Father’s Day. On July 5, 1908, a small church in West Virginia held the first public event meant to specifically honor the fathers of their community. The day was held in remembrance of the 362 men who were killed the previous December in a mining explosion at the Fairmont Coal Company. Even though that specific day didn’t transform into an annual tradition in the town, it did set a precedent of reserving a day for dads everywhere.

The next year, in 1909, Spokane resident Sonora Smart Dodd was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon at her local church when she had the idea to attempt to establish a similar day to honor the fathers of the community. Dodd was the daughter of a widower and Civil War veteran named William Jackson Smart, who raised six children on his own after his wife died during childbirth. 
Dodd contacted local church groups, government officials, YMCAs, businesses and other groups hoping to gain community support to recognize fathers around the state of Washington. Her campaign eventually culminated in the first statewide Father’s Day celebration in 1910.
Dodd originally wanted “Father’s Day” to be observed on June 5 — her father’s birthday. But the mayor of Spokane and the local churches asked for more time to prepare for all the festivities involved and it was moved to the third Sunday in June — it has remained there ever since.
Officially, the first Father’s Day celebration took place on June 19, 1910.

It so happens that not everyone was happy with the idea of having two separate days to celebrate Mothers and Fathers. In the 1920s and 30s, there was a movement to join the two days as a unified Parents’ Day. The opponents of the separate days saw the two holidays as a “division of respect and affection” for parents, especially during the time when Father’s Day hadn’t been officially recognized nationwide. The movement to combine the two days died out in the 40s, but if it had succeeded, apparently we’d all be celebrating Parents’ Day every year with the slogan, “A kiss for mother, a hug for dad.”

After Father’s Day began to be celebrated in other regions of the country, not just Washington State, Woodrow Wilson commemorated it by unfurling an American flag in Spokane using a special telegraph — all the way from Washington D.C. in 1916. It’s interesting that Wilson had signed a proclamation to recognize Mother’s Day as a national holiday — he never signed the same paperwork for Father’s Day. 

It took until 1966 for President Lyndon Johnson to make a nationwide proclamation endorsing Father’s Day across the country. But nowhere in Johnson’s proclamation did it mention anything about what would happen on Father’s Day next year. The resolution specified “the third Sunday in June of 1966.” It wasn’t until President Nixon signed Public Law 92-278, in 1972, that Father’s Day was permanently recognized by the federal government. 

Father’s Day, or some form of the holiday, exists in 111 countries around the world. Many countries align with the U.S. and celebrate Father’s Day on the third Sunday of June, some choose to honor fathers on March 19, also known as St. Joseph’s Day. In some of those countries, the idea of Father’s Day stretches back to the feast established in the Middle Ages to honor St. Joseph. The original celebrations focused on Joseph — the foster father of Jesus — and eventually turned into a day to honor the institution of fatherhood in general. 

South Korea isn’t one of the 111 countries that observes Father’s Day — the days to honor moms and dads are combined into a Parent’s Day — held on May 8. Some people in the U.S. from the 1920s and 30s would be very pleased with that decision.

So it was a long road, but today it’s officially Father’s Day.
Celebrate appropriately. 
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I played golf yesterday and afterwards we stopped for a beer and to discuss world changing things that needed our attention. I’m not sure why, but for some reason we got onto the subject of worry. It basically involved talk about a couple of people we both know that always seem to worry about the wrong — or at least unimportant — things.

It reminded me of a “story” I once heard about worrying. It goes something like this…
There are only two things to worry about — either you’re healthy or you’re sick. If you’re healthy, then there is nothing to worry about. But if you’re sick, there are only two things to worry about — either you will get well, or you will die. If you get well, then there is nothing to worry about. But if you die, there are only two things to worry about — either you will go to heaven or to hell. If you go to heaven, then there is nothing to worry about. And if you go to hell, you’ll be so darn busy shaking hands with your friends you won’t have time to worry. 

We all worry, but I’ve heard it said that worry is like a rocking chair — it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere….
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Today is Flag Day — June 14. On June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress passed the Flag Resolution, stating “the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.”

 Then, more than 130 years later, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed June 14, 1916 as Flag Day. President Calvin Coolidge did the same in 1927. It was declared a national holiday in 1949 when it was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Truman. It is not a federal holiday, but it is celebrated across the country.

The flag has changed over the years with more stars being added as new states joined the union, but it should be just as sacred and important to American today as it was in 1777…..

Although Betsy Ross is often credited with creating the first American flag (in 1776,) there is no real proof to confirm that fact. Here’s how that story became popular — almost a century later, in 1870, Ross’s grandson, William Canby stated his grandmother was approached by three men, General George Washington, her relative Colonel George Ross and Revolutionary War financier Robert Morris, and was asked to design the flag. Betsy Ross’ daughter, niece and granddaughter submitted affidavits to back up Canby’s story. Taking into account her sewing skills and her relation to Colonel George Ross, who signed the Declaration of Independence, it’s possible that Betsy Ross was given that awesome responsibility.

Another school of thought says that New Jersey delegate and signatory of the Declaration of Independence, Francis Hopkinson designed the original flag. He had experience creating seals for the U.S, government and petitioned for his payment from producing the “flag of the United States of America.” His request was rejected because “he was not the only one consulted.”

So the designer of the original flag is questioned, but we know exactly who designed the present-day flag. In 1958, Alaska and Hawaii were both likely to become the 49th and 50th states. Bob Heft, a 17-year old Ohio high school student decided to design a 50-star flag for a history project during his junior year. He cut up his parents’ 48-star flag and used his mother’s sewing machine to create his design. He only receive a B- for his project, but he sent his flag to his congressman, Walter Moeller. When both Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union in 1959, Moeller proposed Heft’s flag to President Eisenhower. Ike chose Heft’s design and invited him to Washington, D.C. for its first display on July 4, 1960.
Bob Heft’s teacher changed his grade to an A.

The colors of our flag have important meanings: red symbolizes hardiness and valor, white symbolizes purity and innocence, and blue represents vigilance, perseverance, and justice.
So today, on Flag Day, let’s remember the importance of our flag, and remember to always give it the respect it deserves.
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