What Would Jimmy Do?

I mentioned a few days ago that growing up in the “south,” I used some phrases or expressions that seemed foreign to a lot of people after I left home and went out into other parts of the world. I remember when I first came to the Washington area, people used to ask where I was from — I’m sure I had an Oklahoma accent or “twang,” but I used terms that were strange to people living around Washington. For instance, I referred to a container you put things in as a “sack” — not a “bag.” When I was growing up, working in grocery stores, I was a “sack boy” — we didn’t have “bag boys.”

Here’s some things I remember my parents and grandparents (and other people) saying when I was growing up.
Over yonder; Fixin’to; Cotton picking’; eating high on the hog; sharp as a butter knife; cooking with gas; too pooped to pop; naked as a jay bird; skinny as a rail; raised on beans and taters; green as a gourd; scarce as hens teeth; its/he’s no count; madder than a wet hen; til the cows come home; the pot calling the kettle black; blown’ up a storm; fly off the handle; hissy fit; well, I declare; hold your horses;  too big for his britches; barking up the wrong tree;

I remember that my grandad used to say “they were cut out right — just sewed up wrong” when he was talking about a strange or peculiar person. I’ve heard “this ain’t my first rodeo,” but in Oklahoma, the saying was “this ain’t my first goat ropin.” If someone had had plenty to eat, they’d say they were “full as a tick,” and if something fell into the too little, too late category, you’d hear “it don’t do no good to close the gate after the horse is out.” When I was a kid, every summer we got to get a new pair of tennis shoes — had nothing to do with the game of tennis — I never heard the term “sneakers.” Even though I’ve heard the terms occasionally lately, we always called a bottle opener a church key. When I was little, most grocery stores didn’t have shopping carts — some of the larger ones had baskets, but usually, you just piled your purchases on the counter as you shopped…. but there were a few that did have carts and my grandmother always referred to them as a buggy — not a shopping cart.

And I remember hearing “nervous as a long-tail cat in a room fulla rocking chairs.” One of my grandmothers used “bless your heart” a lot and most people around Maysville didn’t say I think or I believe — they said “I reckon.” “If the creek don’t rise” was almost always used to describe something out of your control. I remember one of my dad’s favorite expressions when something wasn’t valuable or important —he’d say, “it don’t amount to a hill of beans.” If something was broken or not right, it was “cattywampus.” If you couldn’t remember the name of something, it was referred to as a “doohickey.” One thing that always annoyed me was when some old lady wanted to give you a kiss, they’d say “gimme some sugar.” And seems like all the old ladies always told every kid they saw, “aren’t you precious.” Carry was a popular word for “take” — people would ask someone to carry them to the store, not take them. If someone was showing off, my mom would say they were “highfalutin.” My dad would always say “sure nuff?” A lot of people said, “sho nuff?” 

A southern accent is a lot like blonds — people tend to categorized blonds a “dumb,” and if you talk with a Southern accent, it’s perceived you are slow. Of course, that’s really not true — I’ve met just as many dumb people that talk without an accent as with….
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I heard on the news last night that every living person who has served as President of the United States is descended from ancestors who owned slaves — except Donald Trump. I’m not sure why someone decided a study was needed to come up with this startling information, but apparently, it’s important. The obvious reason Trump isn’t in the group is because the Trumps arrived in the U.S. after slavery was abolished.

I find another fact even more interesting — no only child has ever become President of the United States. Some Presidents, for all practical purposes, were raised as an only child, but all have had, at minimum, one half-brother or half sister. For instance, Franklin D. Roosevelt had only one half-sibling (his father’s oldest son, James) and James was 28 years older than FDR. 

And to amaze you even more — fifteen Presidents are firstborns, and seven have been the last born, or babies, of their families. All the rest have fallen somewhere in the middle of the birth order.
Maybe because of all the smoke from the forest fires in Canada, it’s kind of a slow day around here…..
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A little while back, the subject here was the guillotine and it’s rise to prominence during the French Revolution. I didn’t mention that a famous couple were executed with the popular new execution tool. 

During the French Revolution, the French masses were in revolt — their target was the nobility. King Louis XVI, who had formerly been the absolute monarch of France, was reduced in stature during the revolution and tried to flee the country with his wife, Marie Antoinette. They were unsuccessful in their attempt and didn’t make it very far — the king was branded a traitor, so his trial was just a formality. The guilty verdict was never in doubt. Because the court proceedings dragged on and lacked any element of suspense, bored spectators in the gallery ate little snacks and passed around wine and brandy. Outside, at the local cafes, the disorderly crowd took bets on the outcome of the trial.

King Louis XVI was sentenced to death by the guillotine after he was found to have been conspiring with other countries and engaging in counter-revolutionary acts — he was found guilty of treason. On the day of his execution, Louis XVI, who had become very “portly,” walked from his prison cell to a large green carriage. The possession, that included 1.200 guards, made its way to a huge square packed with spectators. His chubbiness, the king, was guided to the guillotine that was operated by Charles Sanson, the city executioner, whose father had preceded him in the office and whose son would follow him. Apparently the king had one too many French pastries over the years and when the blade came down, his neck was so fat that his head “did not fall at the first stroke.” The crowd rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs or pieces of paper into Louis’ royal blood — I guess a perfect souvenir for such an important day.

Even before the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette, the Austrian-born queen, was the most hated person in France. She was known — and widely disliked — as a person with perverse, despicable habits. Some of which included plotting to starve the poor, sending money Austria (France’s hated arch-rival,) and indulging her unquenchable sexual appetite for both men and women. The failed attempt to flee the country with the king only served to fuel the people’s hatred and suspicion of their queen. Whether any of the charges levied against her were true or not really didn’t matter. She was found guilty of treason just like her husband and condemned to death.

Nine months after Louis’ death, Henri Sanson, the son of the man who pulled the rope on the king’s guillotine entered Marie’s cell and escorted her to a tumbril (a small cart used to carry political prisoners to the guillotine.) When climbing the scaffold, she stepped on the executioner’s foot. She apologized, saying “Monsieur, I beg your pardon. I did not do it on purpose.” They were the last words she spoke.

The guillotine remained France’s state method of capital punishment well into the 20th century — the machine’s 189-year reign only officially came to an end in September of 1981, when France abolished capital punishment for good.
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A few days ago the subject was about dog phrases or “idioms” that have made their way into our language. One that I mentioned was “that dog won’t hunt.” That’s a dismissive phrase used to mean that a particular idea or approach is going to fail or that a certain accusation is false. The first time I remember hearing that one was during the Clinton Administration. I don’t remember why he said it — probably in opposition to something, but it was a phrase that I’ve remembered. 

Clinton was from Arkansas and I think the expression probably originated in the south. I didn’t check, but I imagine it’s an old hunting expression…. for most hunters, any dog that won’t hunt is pretty useless.

Even though the people in Oklahoma usually don’t admit it — I grew up in the south and sometimes southerners don’t say things directly, but use colorful phrases that gets the idea across better than a few words.
Maybe one day I’ll blog about some of the phrases I remember from when I was growing up….. 
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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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