What Would Jimmy Do?

I heard the term “Indian giver”  the other day. I hadn’t heard it for a very long time. When I was a kid, we used it all the time and it was right up there near the top of one of the most offensive things you could call someone.

Well, of course, I got to thinking about that — where did the term come from? Was there actually an instance, when the first colonists came to America, when a white settler was presented with a gift from an Indian, only to have it taken away? I think the answer to that is no….not really. 
What white settlers thought was a lack of generosity, and rudeness, was probably a cultural misunderstanding. 

Native Americans didn’t have a system of monetary currency, so they conducted trade via barter. To an Indian, the giving of gifts was an extension of this system of trade and a gift was expected to be reciprocated with something of equal value. When the new arrivals in this country encountered this practice, they misunderstood it and considered it uncouth and impolite. They thought that trade was conducted with money, and gifts were freely given with nothing expected in return. So right off the bat, this native practice got a bad reputation among the white colonists of North America.

The term “Indian giver” made its first appearance in Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms in 1848. The term mostly faded from widespread use in the 1080s and 90s and a lot of younger people today may never have heard it.
I checked the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and it defines an “Indian giver” as “a person who gives something to another and then takes it back or expects an equivalent in return.” The dictionary does note that the term is “sometimes offensive.” I find it interesting that the dictionary only finds the term sometimes offensive.

The (true) Indian giver(s) understood a cardinal property of the gift — whatever we have been given is suppose to be given away again, not kept. Or — if it is kept, something of similar value should passed along in its place.
It’s too bad that the phrase stereotypes Indians as deceitful and un-generous. If you’ve been around Indians, you probably know that is about the farthest thing from the truth.
— 30 —

Well, once again, it’s my birthday. I guess when your birthday comes around, it represents another year of growth and lessons learned — and — the opportunity to pause, reflect and appreciate all that we are — and have been. Birthdays also serve as a convenient time to reflect on what’s been accomplished or achieved over the past year.
Growing old is a privilege — everyone is getting older, but not everyone is growing older. So since it’s my birthday I thought I’d talk about what I’d like to be when I grow old….

I guess one of the things I think is ok about getting old is that you can, in (hopefully) subtle ways thumb your nose at convention with fewer consequences than when you were younger. Maybe that’s a good goal for when I get old.
In many cultures, and in the past around here, older people were revered as the carriers of wisdom and the archivists of the group’s knowledge and experience. Today — not so much. People probably figure any knowledge old people have is outdated. I’ll try not to fall into the “dated” category.
I’ve noticed that the least interesting older people that I know are the ones that do the same things, have the same conversations and express the same opinions — over and over and over. This is a hard one, but I’ll try to stay current and not sound like a broken record from the past.
I think that generally old people are largely expected to be dignified and respectable — and usually clueless…. and not much else. I was never dignified — or respectable — so I’m not going to start when I’m old. I’ll probably continue to be clueless, but I’m not going the dignified route.

So what do I want to be when I grow old? I want to be my own person, do my own thing, try to make myself (and others) happy, make use of what I’ve learned over the years, learn new things, believe what I know to be true, surround myself with good company — and continue to have fun.
Keep checking back here to see if when I get old, I’ve achieved my goals.
But today’s only my 85th birthday — let the celebration begin.
— 30 —

Tomorrow is a very important day. I know, most of you are thinking that it’s my birthday — and I must admit that my birth is certainly a significant event to be celebrated on August 6th.
But, if you can imagine, there is an even more significant event whose anniversary comes up on August 6 every year. 

On August 6, 1945 an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people — tens of thousands more died later of radiation exposure. 
Since one of the current movie hits is “Oppenheimer,” I though it might be an appropriate time to discuss “The Manhattan Project.”

Before the outbreak of war in 1939, a group of American scientists — many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe — became concerned with the nuclear weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany. In 1940, the U.S. government began running its own atomic weapons development program. After the U.S. entry into World War II, the program came under the joint responsibility of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department. 
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with overseeing the construction of the the vast facilities necessary for the top-secret program (The project was codenamed “The Manhattan Project” after the engineering corps’ Manhattan district.)

During the next several years, the program’s scientists worked to produce the key materials for nuclear fission — uranium-235 and plutonium (Pu-239.) Those materials were sent to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer had the job of turning these materials into a workable atomic bomb. Early in the morning of July 16, 1945, the program conducted its first successful test of an atomic device — a plutonium bomb — at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico. 

By the time the plutonium bomb had been tested, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. However, Japan vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific. It became apparent to the Allied leaders that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In Late July of 1945, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused.

General Douglas Mac Arthur, and other top military commanders, favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already underway and following up with a massive invasion. He advised President Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists had moral reservations against the use of the atomic bomb. Proponents of the A-bomb, including Truman’s Secretary of State believed that the bomb’s devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world.
In the end, President Truman decided to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of reducing American casualties and bringing the war to a quick end.

Hiroshima, a manufacturing center, home to about 35,000 people and located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. The bomb, known as “Little Boy” was dropped by parachute at 8:15 in the morning and exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima. 
Hiroshima’s devastation failed to obtain immediate Japanese surrender. So on August 9, it was decided to drop the second bomb on Kokura, but that city was cloud covered, and it was dropped on Nagasaki — the bomb, named “Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning.

At noon on August 15, 1945 (Japanese time) Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender in a radio broadcast. The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.
Because of the extent of the devastation, exact death tolls from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unknown. 

So not only tomorrow, but every day, we should remember that we have the power to destroy the Earth as we know it. We should think about that every day — and maybe, especially, on election day.
— 30 —

Last night we were watching jeopardy and one of the contestants missed a question that pictured an animal — the contestant identified it as a buffalo, but the correct answer was a bison. The category, I think, was American History. I can understand the mistake — bison are often called buffalos, and buffalos are often referred to as bison. 

I grew up in Oklahoma — often referred to as the old west or maybe the wild west…. it wasn’t, of course, but when I came to the east coast, a lot of people thought I was from “way out west.” 
But anyhow, when I was growing up these animals were always called buffalos — I don’t remember hearing the word bison when I was young. 

So even though I lived in the “American West” and there was a popular song, “Home on the Range,” that had a line in it “… where the buffalo roam,” that song got a fairly important detail wrong — buffalo never roamed in the area, but bison did — and still do.

Buffalo and bison are two distinct animals. Buffalo are native to Africa and Asia. Bison are found in North America and Europe. 
I knew the answer to the Jeopardy question and I can actually tell the difference between a buffalo and a bison, but I thought maybe I’d do a little extensive research on the subject and I discovered a number of interesting things about both species….

As I mentioned, contrary to the “Home on the Range” song, buffalo do not roam in America. True buffalo are only found in Africa and Asia — bison are only found in North America and Europe.
So, admittedly, the two animals do look similar — how do you tell them apart?

Their body shapes are different — that makes it easy to tell them apart from a distance. Bison have a large hump on their shoulders, along with an oversized head that makes them look “front heavy.” Buffalo don’t have a hump and have smaller heads and shoulders — more in proportion to the rest of their bodies.
Another way to tell the difference is the horns — bison horns are shorter and sharper than buffalo horns.
And bison have a longish, unkempt beard under their chin — they’re sometimes referred to as the “plains hippies.” Buffalo do not have a beard.
Bison have a dense, two-layered coat that allows them to survive the extreme temperatures of the Great Plains. They grow a thick, shaggy coat for the winter, and that coat is shed annually each spring. Buffalo have relatively smooth and sleek thin coats and they don’t shed. Living in Africa and souther Asia, they aren’t exposed to such extremes temperatures, so they don’t need to grow a thick bison-like coat.

So if you’re out on the ranch and a big animal roams by, it’s a bison — not a buffalo. And if you’re on Jeopardy and they show you a picture of a large, bovine animal and the category is American History, the answer is bison — bison, not buffalo.
— 30 —

Well, it’s that time again — are your ready for some football? Tonight is the Hall of Fame game, played annually at the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. This is a kind of a pre-pre-season game that gets everyone in the mood for football every year. This year it’ll be the Cleveland Browns vs. the New York Jets. 

I’m a fairly passionate football fan, although I have to admit I’m not as big a fan as I have been in the past…. for a number of reasons. But I still look forward to football season, even though it’s arrival marks the end of my favorite time of year — summer. 
Where I grew up, almost everyone was a Dallas Cowboys fan. That was my dad’s and my sister’s favorite team — my mother wasn’t a real fan of professional football, but the Cowboys were probably her favorite team, too. For some reason, the Dallas Cowboys just didn’t sit too well with me. I tended to like the Packers, Browns and Raiders the best. 

But after leaving home and spending time in Washington, the Redskins became my team. I’ve stuck with them through thick and thin, and like all the teams, they’ve had an interesting history, some successes, lots of failures and a few “firsts.”
The Washington team (now called the Commanders) had the NFL’s first marching band, first radio network, and first fully televised season. 
The team was founded in 1932 as the “Boston Braves.” In 1933, the team’s name was changed to the “Redskins” and in 1937 the team moved to Washington D.C. The name Redskins stuck until 2020, when it became The Washington Football Team and was re-named the Commanders last year. 

Some of the interesting statistics the team, and its players, has racked up include:
Seasons: 92 (19320 2023)
Winningest Coach: Joe Gibbs (154-94-0)
Super Bowl Titles: 3
Playoff Record: 23-20
Most Career Yards Rushing: John Riggins (7,472)
Most Career Yards Passing: Joe Theismann (25,206)
Most Career Receptions: Art Monk (888)
Most Career Sacks: (97)
Most Career Interceptions: Darrell Green (54)
Most Career Points: Mark Moseley (1,206)
The team won the 1937 and 1942 NFL championship games and Super Bowls XVII, XXII, and XXVI.
In 1962, the team became the final professional American football franchise to integrate. Ron Hatcher of Michigan State became the first black player to sign a contract with the team.
The 1991 Washington Redskins team is considered one of the best teams in NFL history, scoring 485 total points during the regular season and only allowing nine sacks.
So it’s not “Hail to the Redskins” anymore, but It’ll be interesting to see how the “Commanders” develop under the new owner, Josh Harris.
— 30 — 

Last night August’s Full Moon appeared — but wait — this year August gives us two Full Moons. The second one will appear on August 30.
Last evening, the full Sturgeon Moon appeared and there will be a full Blue Moon on August 30 — and — it will be the closest supermoon of the year.

If you’ve been reading this blog during the year, you’re aware that I’ve mentioned that there would be four super moons in a row this year — the one last night was the second in the sequence. 
Superman is kind of a layman’s term for what astronomers call a perigean full Moon, which is when the full Moon occurs very near the exact time when the Moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit.

Near the end of the month, on August 30, a second full Moon — a Blue Moon — will make its appearance. The term Blue Moon is used when we have two full Moons in a single month. The August 30 supermoon will be the closest, biggest and brightest full supermoon of 2023. It will only be 222,043 miles from the Earth. The next time we’ll have a closer full supermoon is November 5, 2025 when the Moon will be 221,817 miles away.

Last night’s Full Moon, by tradition, was called the Sturgeon Moon because the giant sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain were most readily caught during this part of the summer.
A sturgeon is a fish that looks like it might be a dinosaur if it lived on land. They have often been referred to as “living fossils.” A little extensive research on my part found that today there are about 29 species worldwide — including the lake sturgeon found in the Great Lakes. Over the years they have evolved in size from the size of a bass to as big as a Volkswagen.
Females require about 20 years to start reproducing and they can only reproduce every 4 years. But — they can live up to 150 years.
Lake sturgeons are very rare today due to overfishing, pollution and damage to their habitat.
I guess something like that deserves to have a Moon named after them — so check it out, the Sturgeon Moon will still look full tonight.
— 30 —

Today, August 1, is Lammas Day. I mention this for two reasons: one — because it’s August 1 and two — I have always been curious about witches. The first time I heard about Lammas Day was some time ago when I was doing some extensive research about witches…. so I thought this might be a good way to kick off August.

Lammas is a pagan holiday and one of eight Wiccan sabbaths during the year. Each sabbath marks a seasonal turning point. This sabbath occurs on August 1, which is about halfway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox. The holiday celebrates the grain harvest. (In more recent times, it’s become a wheat harvest festival — and also become known as Loaf Mass Day.)

Grain was, and is, a very important crop for most civilizations. If the grain was left in the fields too long, or if the bread made from the grain wasn’t baked in time, families might have starved.
In early Ireland, it wasn’t good to harvest grain before Lammas. If you did harvest early, that meant that the harvest from the previous year ran out before the next harvest was ready. And that meant that the farmers would have failed in providing for the community. On Lammas, the first sheaves of grain were cut, and by that night, the first loaves of bread for the season would have been baked. 

The word Lammas comes from an Old English phrase that translates to “loaf mass.” In early Christianity, the first loaves of the season were blessed by the church during Mass.
Modern day pagans bake breads and cakes to celebrate the historical grain harvest (and bread making.) Some observers celebrate with a harvest ritual. The ritual typically involves decorating an alter with symbols of the season. Some rituals involve casting a circle, and saying some words that symbolize their thanks to the Earth for the harvest — usually, everyone eats some bread and probably drinks some wine to wash it down.
Like a lot of these type days, there is a lot of traditions and folklore associated with it, like the proverb: “After Lammas Day, corn ripens as much by night as by day.”
Happy Lammas Day.
— 30 —

Today we kick off the month of August — and today just happens to be an old harvest holiday — Lammas Day. As both readers already know, this year I decided to talk about each upcoming month….

August was named after a major figure of the ancient Roman World — Augustus Caesar. He was the first Roman emperor — even though he never claimed the title of emperor. He was also the grandnephew of Julius Caesar — who named the month of July after himself.
August is the last month of summer and one of the hottest months of the year.It’s also a Civic Holiday in many parts of Canada.
If you were born in August, your sign is either Leo or Virgo.

Besides being the first day of August and Lammas Day, this year it’s also August’s first full Moon — the full Sturgeon Moon will reach peak illumination tonight and it will be one of the four super moons of 2023. But before the month ends, you’ll be able to see another full Moon — on August 30. That Moon will be a Blue Moon — and — it will also be the biggest supermoon of the year. August is also the month of the Perseid meteor shower, that should reach its peak between August 11 and 13.

So we’ve got a busy month ahead of us with St. Lawrence’s Day, Cat Nights, National Aviation Day, St. Bartholomew Day, Women’s Equality Day, World Honeybee Day — and — the end of the Dog Days of Summer.
So stay tuned — we’ll be talking about these things and more during the month.
— 30 —

Well, here it is the end of July, so I though it might be a good day to talk about patents, since the U.S. Patent Office opened its doors on this date in 1790.
The United States issues patents by the millions and seems like every year they issue more than the previous year. 

The first patent issued — although it wasn’t patent number one, was issued on the Patent Office’s opening day on July 31, 1790. It was issued to Samuel Hopkins for a process of making potash, an ingredient used in fertilizer. President George Washington signed the first patent. 

If you were paying attention, even though Samuel Hopkins was issued the first patent, it wasn’t number one. Patent records prior to 1836 were unnumbered and could be accessed only by the name of the patentee and date of the patent. From 1790 to 1836, 9,957 patents were issued without a number. To make matters worse, on December 15th of 1836, most of the patent records were destroyed by a fire. Inventors had to provide proof of their patents, or create new patent documents under oath with their original drawings and specifications. These “restored” patents were given a number that ended with “X.”
U.S. patent No. 1 was issued to John Ruggles for a traction wheel for steam locomotives.
The one millionth patent wasn’t issued until 1911 — to Francis H. Holton, for a tubeless vehicle tire.

The granting of patents was made a function of the Federal Government by Article I, Section 8 of the constitution, that states….”To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries….”

Over the years, the name and agency responsible for issuing patents has changed hands. Since 1925, the responsibility has been under the Department of Commerce. In 1975, the name of the Patent Office was changed to the Patent and Trademark Office.
— 30 —

Last evening’s news talked about the uncovering of some human remains — the newscasters and police were speculating about who they might belong to. That reminded me that there seems to be a name that comes up just about every time somebody finds human remains — doesn’t matter where — someone always speculates that it might be Jimmy Hoffa. 

On this date (July 30) in 1975, Hoffa, the former Teamsters president, arrived at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan — for a meeting with reputed mob leaders. He was never seen again. 

At the time of the meeting, Hoffa had already stepped down as leader of the Teamsters —his 13-year prison sentence had been commuted by President Richard Nixon in 1971.
Since his disappearance, theories about his final resting place have spread like the Canadian wildfires. Rumors have claimed that whatever’s left of Hoffa is buried under a swimming pool in Michigan, in a swamp in Florida and even beneath the end zone of the old Giants Stadium in New Jersey. 
As of now, no remains have been found.
Seven years after his disappearance, an Oakland County judge declared Hoffa officially dead.
— 30 —