What Would Jimmy Do?

Today is Veterans Day and to get this out of the way first, it’s not Veteran’s Day or Veterans’ Day, it’s Veterans Day — no apostrophe. It isn’t a day that belongs to one or multiple veterans — it honors all veterans, so lose the apostrophe.

It’s also not the same as Memorial Day — that day is a time to remember those who gave their lives for our country. Veterans Day honors all those who have served the country in war or peace — dead or alive — and it’s especially intended to thank living veterans for their sacrifices.

I’ve mentioned this in years past, but Veterans Day was originally called Armistice Day because it marked the one-year anniversary of the temporary cessation of hostilities between the Allied nations and Germany during World War I. The armistice went into effect at the 11th hour of the 11th month in 1918.

Although not widely known, there is a Women Veterans Day — on June 12. It marks the anniversary of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, that President Harry S. Truman signed into law on June 12, 1948. It’s not a nationally recognized holiday, but some states observe the day.
And March 13 is National K9 Veterans Day that honors American military and working dogs throughout history.

Arlington National Cemetery holds an observance on Veteran Day every year at 11 a.m., the time the World War I armistice was signed. During the Veterans Day commemoration at the cemetery, guards lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and veterans organizations hold a parade of colors.
Several other countries also mark the end of World War I on November 11. Canada, Australia, France and Belgium call it Remembrance Day. 
The New York City Veterans Day Parade is both the largest and oldest Veterans Day parade in the country — it takes place along Fifth Avenue.
The first celebration that was referred to as Veteran Day was held in Birmingham, Alabama, on November 11, 1947. The event was organized by a World War II veteran named Raymond Weeks.
Happy Veterans Day.
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You don’t hear about these stunts so much anymore — I guess the Evel Knievels of the world have kind of retired. Anyhow, I’m not sure how it came up, but the question is — who was the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel?

Turns out that the first person to ride over the falls in a barrel and live to tell the tale wasn’t some daredevil, or performer, but a widowed school teacher.
Annie Edson Taylor was a 63-year-old schoolteacher. After her husband died in the Civil War, Annie was strapped for cash when she learned about the popularity of two big waterfalls located on the border of upstate New York and Canada. So needing money, and looking for fame, she came up with the idea she would go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

She used an oaken barrel that was (crudely) cushioned inside. She tested the barrel by sending it over the falls with a cat inside. The traumatized cat survived the plunge — so — on October 24, 1901 (her 63rd birthday) she climbed inside the barrel and was set adrift from a rowboat upstream from the falls. Less then twenty minutes later, she was recovered from the bottom of the falls — bleeding from the head, but not seriously injured.
Unfortunately, the fame and fortune she was seeking never came — Annie died in poverty.
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There seems to have been a lot in the news lately about terrible things politicians and people related to them have (supposedly) done. There’s been all sorts of uproars about President Biden’s son, Hillary Clinton, various senators and governors, etc. But I guess these things have been going on about as long as our country has existed.

Rumors exist, even today, that Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham, was suspected of bing a Confederate Spy. I’d heard this a few times over the years and never thought much about it, but decided it deserved some of my extensive research — here’s what I found…

Abraham Lincoln is usually regarded as savior of the United States, but his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln is remembered as a shrew and ranked by historians as the worst First Lady in American history. 
Being the president’s wife is tough job — the hours are long and the demands are exhausting. Most first ladies manage to get through it ok, but for Mary Todd Lincoln, it was an agonizing experience. She was subject of relentless criticism, suffered borderline mental illness, and numerous personal tragedies. 

Mary loved her husband — she married him despite the disapproval of her family and social peers. She admired Lincoln as a good, honest, talented man and was excited that he won the presidency in 1860. But because Mary was a native of Kentucky, that meant that she was a Southerner by birth, and rumors swirled throughout the Civil War that the first lady was, in fact, a Confederate Spy.
It’s easy to see how these rumors got started — historians believe Mary sincerely agreed with and supported President Lincoln’s political beliefs and, like him, wanted the nation to become whole again. But one of Mary’s brothers, three half-brothers, and three brothers-in-law all served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Because of that, people wondered if she could truly support the Union, so not surprisingly, some people — including many of Lincoln’s political enemies —started a whisper campaign that maybe Mary wasn’t the Unionist she said she was. 

The whispered rumor that Mary Todd Lincoln was a Confederate spy was just one of many things that made her time in the White House miserable. The Belles of Washington Society considered her silly and uncouth and took every opportunity to criticize her. For example, when she hosted a large party in the White House as the war raged, she was condemned for her extravagance, and because two of her sons were sick at the time, she was castigated as being unmotherly and “cold.” All of this was made worse by Mary’s many emotional and physical issues. She suffered from excruciating headaches and she also experienced violent mood swings. These mood swings caused more than one White House aide to describe her as unpredictable and difficult to get along with.
On top of all that, she lost three of her four sons to various ailments — and — witnessed the assassination of her husband, at the hands of John Wilkes Booth. Mary Todd Lincoln never fully recovered from that incident.

After Lincoln’t death, she returned to Illinois and fell into a deep depression. Her sole surviving son, Robert, committed her to an insane asylum — she was released three months later, but never forgave him for his betrayal. She died on July 16, 1882, at her sister’s home in Illinois — she was 63.
Mary Todd Lincoln was a flawed woman that did her best under difficult circumstances. It’s probably unfair, and inaccurate, for her character to be questioned by untrue rumors regarding her patriotism.
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Rainbows are pretty cool — you can almost never see one without pointing it out to others around you. Of all the places I’ve been, Hawaii is the place I’ve seen the most rainbows — you can pretty much count on seeing one every day when you’re there. Once when on a cruise, a rainbow seemed to follows us for several days — we kept seeing it in various ports, as well as while we were at sea.

Rainbows are more than just pretty arches in the sky — they’ve been a part of mythology, science and art for I don’t know how long. 
In the bible, the rainbow is an integral part of the story of Noah’s Ark and the great flood. After 40 days and nights of continuous rain, the world was flooded. Only Noah, his family, and an ark filled with pairs of animals survived. When the waters subsided, the ark came to rest and when Noah and his family emerged from the ark, they were met with a rainbow. It’s written that God made Noah a promise that he would never again flood the Earth and He created the rainbow as a symbol of His promise to humankind.

Rainbows are (usually) symbols of luck and hope in most cultures. 
Maybe the best-known rainbow story comes from the Irish. It’s about how the rainbow leads to a Leprechaun’s pot of gold safely tucked away at the other end. One version of the story tells how faeries placed a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow and commanded Leprechauns to safeguard it.
In Asian cultures, rainbows are generally viewed as good luck omens. In Feng Shui, a double rainbow signifies meaningful and great things coming your way.
In Norse mythology, Bifröst is a rainbow bridge. The colored arc connects the Earth and Asgard (the realm of Nordic gods.) The gods travel to Earth on this bridge and Earthly warriors will eventually join the gods during Ragnarök (apocalypse) in the final battle.

But not everyone sees rainbows as good luck — some cultures view them as bad omens. Locations that suffer from periodic floods or cyclones don’t necessarily agree that rainbows are symbols of good luck. And some people believe that you should never point at a rainbow or you’ll have bad luck.

Rainbows are formed from water — whenever light (usually sunlight) hits a rain droplet, it creates a rainbow. If you have enough rain droplets, you can see a rainbow lighting up the sky. This is why rainbows often/usually form after a storm.
Rainbows are technically an arch of light. If you view a rainbow from an airplane, it looks like a circle of light. From land, you only see half of the rainbow’s arch — so rainbows really have no end….

The ingredients needed to make a rainbow are light and water. Since no planets that we know of has liquid water, Earth is (probably) the only planet in our solar system with rainbows.
Light has to be reflected twice to create a double rainbow, so you usually see double rainbows when the sun is low in the sky. The band between the rainbows in a double rainbow is called Alexander’s band — named after Alexander of Aphrodisias.

Aristotle had a theory on rainbows as part of his color theory. He thought the colors were related to the four elements — and — because Aristotle was a pretty smart guy, his theory was widely believed until Issac Newton came along. During an experiment with prisms, Newton discovered that a rainbow had sever colors in it —red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Actually, these are the only colors the human eye can see, and they are colors that make up a rainbow.

Just about everyone likes rainbows and there’s been a lot of songs written about rainbows…. I think one contains lyrics something like, somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and dreams that you dream really do come true…. so I guess it wouldn’t hurt to make a wish next time you see a rainbow.
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Today is election day. A few blogs back I mentioned that “Election Day” has become part of the month of November — and — the reason, surprisingly, is because of the farmers. I found that interesting, so I thought that today — election day — might be a good time to explore other interesting things about elections and Election Day.
Although elections are held on other days, “Election Day” is the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November.

Why a Tuesday in November? In 1792, a law officially designated this day as Election Day each year because this guaranteed that no more than 34 days could pass between the first Wednesday in December, which is when the Electoral College met to vote on the President  and Vice President. An early November date was also considered a wise idea because it enabled more voters to go to the polls. Back then, most Americans were farmers, so this date ensured that farmers weren’t trying  to find time to vote during the busy harvest season, but the date wasn’t so late in the year that voters needed to battle winter storms while they walked, rode horses or drove buggies to the polls.

America’s early elections didn’t resemble the ones we have today…. In 1758, a young candidate in Virginia for the House of Burgesses footed a huge liquor bill to woo voters on Election Day. George Washington spent his entire campaign budget — 50 pounds — on 160 gallons of liquor served to 391 voters. Buying votes with booze was already a custom in England, and Washington was also following a Virginia tradition where barrels of liquor were rolled to courthouse lawns and polling places on Election Day.

In years when federal elections aren’t held, not all states feel the need to have an election on a traditional Election Day. In 2015, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Louisiana held elections later in the month.
Felons in both Maine and Vermont are allowed to vote and have had the privilege since those states were founded in 1820 and 1872, respectively.
The legal voting age across the United States was once 21 but in 1943, Georgia became the first state to lower the legal voting age to 18. This became an official part of the U.S. Constitution when the Twenty-Sixth Amendment was ratified in 1971.
The Nineteenth Amendment was adopted in 1920, giving women the right to vote, and since 1964, more women voters have gone to the polls than male voters — during presidential election years. 
And while on the subject of elections, Gerald Ford is the only person who served as president and vice president without having been elected to either office.

So the history of elections in the U.S. is interesting, but the important thing is that today is Election Day. Go vote!! A lot of people in the world don’t have such a privilege.
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Happy Birthday to my most favorite grandson.
Locke, I hope you have the kind of birthday you deserve, with lots of presents, cake, ice cream. You make me proud every day. 
Love you lots!!!!
Poppi
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Last night is the night we “fell back” an hour. It was time for Daylight Saving Time to exit, so we can get back to Standard Time. Daylight Saving Time (DST) is the practice of moving the clocks forward one hour from Standard Time during the summer months and changing them back again in the fall. The general idea — that’s much disputed — is that changing the clocks allows us all to use natural daylight better. Moving the clocks forward one hour in the spring gives us more daylight during summer evenings, while moving the clocks back one hour in the fall gives us more daylight during winter mornings. 

Daylight Saving Time begins on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November.
Contrary to popular opinion, farmers did not/do not favor Daylight Saving Time — in fact, farmers were its strongest opponents, and as a group, stubbornly resisted the change from the beginning.

The current daylight saving period was established with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which went into effect in 2007. Most farmers’ organizations continue to lobby Congress against the practice. They prefer early daylight to tend to their fields and a standard time sunset for ending their work at a reasonable hour. 

So the argument goes on and like most things, no solution will ever please everyone. Lots of people have offered various solutions to the problem — depending on which side you’re on…
Maybe to make those unhappy with keeping Daylight Saving Time all year, we could try this… On the second Sunday of March change all schedules — church, business, schools, etc. ahead one hour. For example a business that opens at 8:00 AM and closes at 5:00 PM standard time would open at 7:00 AM standard time and close at 4:00 PM standard time. Then on the first Sunday of November they would revert to opening at 8:00 AM and closing at 5:00 PM.
Or, maybe we could….. oh never mind. Just be sure you set your clocks back an hour before you went to bed last night.
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Today is Will Rogers Day — well, not really, I guess, but it is his birthday. He was born on November 4, 1879 in what is now Oklahoma. About the only place that’s it’s really “Will Rogers Day,” is in Claremore, Oklahoma. Claremore kind of claims Will Rogers, and in fact he is probably it’s most famous resident. In 1938, Claremore opened the Will Rogers Memorial and has celebrated his birthday every year since. This year, like always, the Will Rogers Museum will host Will Rogers Days from November 1 through 4. The festivities include the Will Rogers Motion Picture Festival, whiskey tasting, wreath laying, parade and birthday party.

Will Rogers was known as “American’s Cowboy Philosopher,” or maybe “The Cherokee Kid.” He was a trailblazing actor, radio personality, author, and public speaker who, still today, is regarded as “an unofficial ambassador for the United States.”

Will Rogers was a Cherokee Indian. He left home five years before his homeland became a state and was renamed Oklahoma. He later wrote, “We spoiled the best Territory in the World to make a State.” He’s noted for his famous quote, “My ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat.”

In addition to his film career, Rogers was famous for his humor and concise phrases, like “I never met a man I didn’t like” and “A man that don’t love a horse, there is something the matter with him.” His writings were published in six books, over 3,600 newspaper columns and many magazine articles.

Will rogers died in 1935, at the age of 55, in a plane crash on the way to Alaska. The plane was piloted by Wiley Post — another Oklahoma native. 
Happy birthday Will.
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We’ve all heard something to the effect, it’s just Murphy’s Law. Well, that got me to thinking — who the heck is this Murphy and how did he get his own law?
“Murphy’s Law” states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. So is this a real law, or only a superstition? 
In the UK, Murphy’s Law is more popularly known as Sod’s Law. A “poor sod” is a term that dates back to the Middle Ages and means “an unlucky fellow.” I found along with Sod’s Law listed a corollary called Finagle’s Law that says that bad things will always happen, perhaps especially to good people, at the most inconvenient times. 

But back to Murphy’s Law….. in 1948 the Air Force was working on a research project at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The project, codenamed MX981, involved high speed rockets and deceleration to determine their effects on humans. One of the experiments was to propel a rocket sled attached to a 1.9 mile track to speeds of 200 mph and hit the brakes to stop the sled in seconds. The team of data collectors was led by Capt. Edward Murphy. Murphy was a West Point graduate and World War II veteran . Murphy assigned an assistant to wire four electronic strain gauges, or transducers, to shoulder straps to measure the G-forces on various parts of the body. When the experiment was run, all the sensors came back with zero readings — no data. When the team investigated, they discovered that each sensor had been wired backward. Cant. Murphy, disgusted at the lack of attention to detail said, “If there’s any way these guys can do it wrong, they will.”

The overall commander of the MX981 project, Lt. Col John Stapp, told a reporter during an interview that when working on projects like this, his crew operated under “Murphy’s Law, if anything can go wrong, it will.” He was explaining that the Air Force anticipated possible failures, assuming a worst-case scenario, an to address those possibilities before they happened. 

Stapp actually coined many “laws” while working on aerospace tests. Before Murphy’s Law, his most well known was “Stapp’s Law,” which was similar to Murphy’s — “The universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle.”
So Col. Stapp didn’t coin Murphy’s Law, but he was most instrumental in making it a popular expression, and it was eventually engraved on a plaque at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. 

Murphy wasn’t happy at the misinterpretation of his new “law.” Murphy intended the saying to be a way to approach experimentation with the utmost defense and preparedness for something to go wrong, in order to achieve the highest caliber of safety and success. 
Even today, Murphy’s Law is widely misunderstood and can be interpreted many ways.
But if we take a positive look at it, “anything” can be both the good and the bad.
Murphy’s Law can certainly be a catchphrase for open-minded preparedness. 
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Happy Tenth Anniversary to Locke, Rory and Ellie’s parents — and — my favorite son and his wife.Happy Anniversary, Dave and Chassie.
Love you guys!!!!
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