What Would Jimmy Do?

May 6 — In 2021 I was bemoaning the fact that even though we’d been married for 49 years, it was not considered a “special” anniversary. And now here it is 2023 and I’m bemoaning the fact that in spite of being married for fifty one years, according to the “experts,” it’s nothing special — it just counts as another year of being married. 
But I suppose rules are rules and if the experts don’t think it’s special, it must not be. So today’s blog is to my wife of 51 years….

Although 51 years have passed, some aspects of our lives will never change, they just become stronger through all the smiles — and a few tears. May this be a very special anniversary as we look back on all the happy memories we’ve shared in our marriage together.
Happy Anniversary!
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Both the readers of this blog know that Valentine’s Day is a day that we avoid restaurants — we usually go out for Valentine’s Day, but the day before or the day after — not on February 14. Today is another one of those holidays that we tend to avoid restaurants — especially, Mexican Restaurants. Today is Cinco de Mayo — but we hit the Mexican restaurants before or after May 5, to avoid the crowds.

But I do like Cinco de Mayo — it’s a great excuse to drink margaritas…. not that you need a special day for that, but it just seems to be more fun if you’re celebrating something…..
Cinco de Mayo is one of those holiday I never heard of when I was growing up — and there were a number of Mexican restaurants around where I lived. 

But this day is about more than drinking tequila — it actually has deep-seeded roots in Mexican history.
The popular belief is that Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Independence Day — of course, that’s not true. Mexican Independence Day is September 16th, not May 5th. May 5th is the anniversary of the 1862 Battle of Puebla. During that battle the guerrilla troops of General Ignacio Seguin Zaragoza fought off Napoleon’s troops during the Franco-Mexican War. The battle for the town of Puebla was an unexpected victory for the Mexican soldiers, marking a decisive win against the French invaders. 

The popularity of Cinco de Mayo in America can probably be attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt enacted the “Good Neighbor Policy,” which was meant to improve relations with Latin America countries and communities. Because of this policy, Cinco de Mayo began to pick up steam in the 1950s and 60s. 
Los Angeles has the biggest Cinco de Mayo celebration — even bigger than the festival in the Mexican city of Puebla. The Los Angeles party is called Fiesta Broadway and has been a huge celebration since the 1990s. 

I don’t think you could have Cinco de Mayo without tequila — 47% of all drinks ordered on Cinco de Mayo are margaritas and tequila sales usually double during the week leading up to the holiday. It’s interesting that long ago, tequila couldn’t be enjoyed by all Mexican people. Centuries ago, Aztec priests used to make a milky beer-like drink from the agave plant called pulque. Only the priests could consume this precursor of tequila. 

The traditional dish eaten in the town of Puebla on their big holiday is mole poblano. Invented in the late 17th century, mole is a thick sauce made with chocolate, chili peppers, and other spices. I’ve never had the sauce over turkey legs, but apparently, traditionally, that’s the way to do it.

According to what I’ve read, ten states consume more tequila than the others — New York, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, California, Arkansas and Texas. 
This year will be the 161st year of celebrating Cinco de Mayo — cheers!!
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I suppose I should start off with “May the 4th” be with you…. but you’ll probably hear that enough today.

Tomorrow, besides being Cinco de Mayo, brings this month’s Full Moon. May’s full Flower Moon will reach peak illumination at 1:36 p.m. (EDT) but will be below the horizon at that time, 

May’s Flower Moon name shouldn’t come as any surprise — flowers start to bloom across North America during the month of May.
The name “Flower Moon” is attributed to Algonquin peoples. So May’s Moon generally describes the arrival of spring….the Cree names Budding Moon and Leaf Budding Moon celebrate the awakening of local flora. The name Planting Moon (Dakota, Lakota) marks the time when seeds should be started for the farming season ahead.

Some moon names come from the activities of animals during the spring… the Cree names Egg Laying Moon and Frog Moon, as well as the Oglala term Moon of the Shedding Ponies are all names that indicate warmer weather is on the way. As I’ve said many times before, a lot of our family members believe there is something magical or at least mysterious about a full Moon. Of course a lot of people believe that and full moons have spawned folklore for centuries, so just remember….
Clothes washed for the first time in the Full Moon will not last long — but — the Full Moon is an ideal time to accept a proposal of marriage.
And this year, the Full Moon will light your way home from those Cinco de Mayo parties….
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We recently had to replace the passenger side mirror on one of our cars. The mirror cast almost $1,000!! 
Cars, just like about everything else, have gotten more complicated over the years. There was a time when cars were simpler and didn’t have lots of parts, but modern cars have an unbelievable number of parts, including all sorts of electronic components for powering high-tech accessories. 

Today, cars are more complex, and have many parts that you can see and many more that are completely hidden. Just thinking about the passenger door on our car that just had the mirror replaced…. it contains parts to control the windows, locks, side mirrors, plus all the pieces for the door latches and handles. 
I read somewhere that the average car today is built with about 30,000 parts — some of these are small nuts and bots and some parts are much larger, like the engine block. 

So why are parts for cars so expensive? Why did a “simple” mirror cost us almost $1,000? I suppose there are a lot of legitimate reasons, like rising costs affect just about everything — car parts are no different, tight supply chain problems, higher labor costs, people don’t buy parts very often, so there may be a storage fee, maybe parts cost more because more people are doing DIY repairs to save money, the parts are more complex for todays cars, some car parts are proprietary and are patented, and unless you are installing the part yourself, there’s an associated labor cost to go along with it. 

I read all the time about cars being stolen and then being sold for their “parts.” I’m beginning to see why.
If you look at car thefts, for the most part, when a car is stolen for profit — not just to take a joy ride — valuable parts are removed from the car because they are worth more individually than collectively as a complete vehicle. Also, a complete vehicle is much easier to trace than an individual part from that car, so there’s less risk of getting caught….

But again, I’ve strayed a little from the original subject…. what I was thinking when I started writing was that if you bought a car in as many pieces as possible, it would cost over a million dollars. That’s probably a bad guess on my part but my extensive research found one estimate that it would cost $125,000 to buy parts for a car that would sell for $20,000. Obviously the data was a little dated — I’m not sure you can buy a new car today for $20,000….
Anyhow, I’m glad we got the mirror replaced — I’ve always been told that the best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it…..
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Today is May Day — it occurs annually on May 1!!
May Day celebrates the return of spring and the day has its own traditions like flower baskets and maypoles and I hope you remembered to wash your face in the dew this morning for good luck.

Shepherdstown is one of the few places in the United States that still celebrate May Day. This year, Shepherdstown celebrated on April 29 with a celebration of the coming of summer with revelry to wake up the Earth from its winter slumber and induce it to fertility by singing, dancing, waving ribbons, clashing sticks, carrying wands or garlands of green and the ringing of bells. Many of Shepherdstown’s activities originated from traditional British customs. The maypole, as always, was set up on the McMurray lawn just after the sun rose.

In case you’re interested, here’s a bit of the history of May Day.  The day has its roots in astronomy. Traditionally, it was the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. In ancient times, this was one of the Celtic cross-quarter days, which marked the midway points between the (four) solstices and equinoxes of the year.

As with many early holidays, May Day was related to  agriculture. Springtime activities filled with song and dance celebrated the sown fields starting to sprout. Cattle were driven to pasture, special bonfires were lit, and doors of houses — and livestock — were decorated with yellow May flowers. In the Middle Ages, the Gaelic people celebrated the festival of Beltane. Beltane means “Day of Fire.” People created large bonfires and danced at night to celebrate. 

May Day has a long history and tradition in England, some of which eventually came to America. Children would dance around the maypole, holding onto colorful ribbons. People would “bring in the May” by gathering wildflowers and green branches, weaving floral hoops and hair garlands, and crowning a May king and queen. 

As I mentioned, Shepherdstown alway has a maypole — originally, the maypole was a living tree chosen from the woods with much merrymaking. Ancient Celts danced around the tree, praying for the fertility of their crops and all living things. For younger people, there was the possibility of courtship. If a young woman and man paired by sundown, their courtship continued so that the couple could get to know each other and, possibly, marry 6 weeks later on June’s Midsummer Day. This is how the “June wedding” became a tradition. 

In the Middle Ages, all villages had maypoles. Towns would compete to see who had the tallest or best maypole. Over time, this Old English festival incorporated dance performances, plays, and literature, and people would crown a “May Queen” for the day’s festivities. 

The strict Puritans of New England considered the celebrations of May Day to be licentious and pagan, so they forbade its observance, and the springtime holiday never became an important part of American culture as it was in many European countries.

I should probably mention that the term “Mayday!” is not related to the “May Day” spring festival — it comes from the French phrase “M’aidez!,” which means “Help me!” If you hear “Mayday!” repeated three times, it is an urgent distress call. To signal that you need help but are not in a life-threatening situation, repeat the phrase “Pan-pan!” three times when calling for assistance. 
So goodbye April — Happy May Day!
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The news has been full of lots of disasters lately…. the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the train wreck and fire in Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border, and “locally,” there has recently been a number of trucks carrying hazardous material overturn on the Capital Beltway and that’s all in addition to the wars in Ukraine and Sudan. These brought to mind one of the more bizarre disasters that I remember reading about many years ago. 

The disaster was kind of the result of one of those perfect — although bizarre, and sticky — storms. Around lunchtime on January 15, 1919, a 50-foot high tank at ehe Purity Distilling Company, located in Boston’s North End was operating full-bore. It was filled to near-capacity, containing two million gallons of steam-heated molasses that would soon be industrial alcohol. Next thing anyone knew, the tank burst, sending — did I mention two million gallons? — of warm, sticky molasses into the streets of Boston. This might have been funny if the molasses hadn’t been carrying huge, jagged sections of the tank with it. 

Part of the “perfect storm” was that it was an unusually warm day in January — the temperature was 43 degrees, well above freezing. If the temperature had been closer to normal, it might have given the soon-to-be victims time to notice the oncoming calamity. But the thick liquid poured out like a tsunami wave and reached a speed of 35 miles per hour. The molasses flooded streets, crushed buildings and trapped horses…. it eventually killed 21 people and injured 150 more. The smell of molasses lingered for decades.

Witnesses later reported a banging and tapping sound coming from the tank. The sounds they heard were the rivets that had held the tank together popping loose. More than a hundred years later, analyses have pinpointed a handful of factors that combined to make the disaster so disastrous — among them, flawed steel, safety oversights, fluctuating air temperatures and the principles of fluid dynamics.

Investigations found several fundamental problems with the structure of the tank. Designed to hold 2.5 million gallons of liquid, it measure 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter. But its steel walls, which ranged from 0.67 inches at the bottom to 0.31 inches at the top, were too thin to support the weight of a full tank of molasses. Flawed rivet design was another problem, and stresses were too high on the rivet holes, where cracks first formed. Although molasses had been poured into the container 29 times, only four of those fills were to near-capacity. The fourth top-off happened two days before the disaster, when a ship arrived from Puerto Rico carrying 2.3 million gallons of molasses. 

Both the inadequate thickness and rivet issues were signs of negligence, and structural engineers knew better at the time. But the tank had been built quickly in the winter of 1915 to meet the rising demand for industrial alcohol, which could be distilled from molasses and sold to weapons companies, who used it to make dynamite and other explosives for use during World War I.

Instead of inspecting the tank and filling it with water first to test for flaws, USIA ignored all warning signs, including groaning noises every time it was filled. There were also obvious cracks — children would being cups to fill with sweet molasses that drip out of the tank.

The clean-up crew pumped sea water from the harbor via hoses, but the molasses and saltwater didn’t mix, and the whole area was buried under brown foam. It took months before the streets of Boston were back to “normal.” 

Since this was in the past, it’s kind of funny to read about it, even though it was tragic. But even so, this seems to be a kinder, gentler, kind of disaster than we experience today….who would have thought that anything as harmless — and sweet — as molasses could cause such devastation…..
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I recently heard a politician on TV refer to the “Dark Ages.” I’ve often heard of the Dark Ages, but I guess I never really knew when they were, or how long they lasted, or really, what made them “dark.” 

Yep,, you guessed it — a topic for some of my extensive research. 
Not surprisingly, not even the experts agree on “when,” or even “what” about the “Dark Ages.”

To get right to the point, the Dark Ages started around the late 5th century, when Rome fell and ended sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, when the Middle Ages kind of semi-officially started.
There are two main reasons that period is called the Dark Ages:
1. Less is known about this time than other eras, because fewer books and writings survived, so we’re in the dark about the age.
2. That era  always seemed barbaric and chaotic to historians. Most of the folks living then were illiterate and half-starved. The phrase “Dark Ages” describes the way people were living — in the dark.

The first person to coin the term “Dark Ages” was Francesco Petrarch, an Italian scholar of the 14th century — he called it the Dark Ages because he was disturbed at the lack of good literature at that time.

To put things in perspective, remember that Rome had ruled most of Europe for about 800 years. When it collapsed, so did all the organizations that ruled Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa in its name. With no more administrators, or armies, to keep order, everything just came apart. Food couldn’t be distributed and most money was pretty much worthless. Barbarian invaders saw easy pickings and moved in. Now if barbarians weren’t bad enough, a plague started in Constantinople, spread throughout Europe and killed half the population. People moved away from the cities, abandoning the niceties like roads, baths, sewage systems and other municipal services.
They spent most of their time scrambling for food, and didn’t have time for learning or art or any of the finer things in life.

Most scholars today prefer “Early Middle Ages” to describe the period, because calling such a big chunk of time “dark” implies that nothing worthwhile was going on. That’s not true. Christianity was spreading, monasteries and churches were being built, feudalism was forming, and of course various invasions, plagues and famines occurred.

It will take time if  “Dark Ages” ever falls out of use even though it’s probably an outdated and derogatory term for a period of time when art, culture and literature did flourish across Europe.
I guess I should be more optimistic, but maybe in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
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Today is National Pretzel Day. Why? Well, when you think of all the things that have their special day, the question should be why not? 

Most everybody likes pretzels — almost every little kid likes pretzels, they go good with beer, or wine, or bourbon, or just by themselves. There are the crunchy kind you buy in a bag, and then there’s the big, soft pretzels. And like just about everything else that us purists don’t care so much for, there are flavored pretzels…. to go along with flavored, beer, wine, bourbon, etc. 

National Pretzel Day began in 1983 when U.S. Congressman Robert S. Walker declared his favorite food was deserving of its own holiday.

Some years ago, I became an official Pretzel Twister. I received the honor when we visited the Julius Sturgis Pretzel House in Lititz, Pennsylvania. I realize you have no reason to doubt me, but in case you do, my graduation certificate is pictured above:
So Happy National Pretzel Day to everyone!!
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This is one of those blogs where you’re gonna go, “oh, man, here he goes again.” But that’s just one of the things we curmudgeons do, so if you don’t want to waste your time, maybe check back later….

Yesterday, it was raining (finally) and I put a newspaper that was in our neighbor’s driveway on his porch, so it wouldn’t get wet, or at least any wetter. He gets the Wall Street Journal once a week — he never reads it, because he reads everything online.
So — that got me to thinking. A job that I had as a kid was a paperboy. In fact, just about every kid I knew was a paperboy at one time or another. The job consisted of delivering the daily newspaper around the neighborhood — either on your bike, or walking. The few papers that get delivered today are by adults… in cars.

Now I could just stop now… if I had a point, I guess I’ve made it. But, continuing to travel down memory lane, a few more jobs have become just about non-existent since I was a kid….

Newspapers have changed a lot — they used to employ typesetters, that set each individual letter and literally laid out the page for the printing press. Today that’s all done by software and computers. 
And — all newspapers had proofreaders on their staffs. I don’t remember nearly as many mistakes in the newspapers we used to get delivered as I find in the online new stories today. Maybe “spellcheck” is cheaper than hiring proofreaders, but….

Another profession that hasn’t gone completely away, but almost has, is secretaries, or administrative assistants or executive assistants or whatever you call them. Almost every mid to high level position came with some sort of assistant, to take notes, answer phones, etc….. not anymore.

When I was a kid, just about every town had at least one shoe repair shop, where you could get shoes, or just about any leather item repaired. I think these skilled workmen were known as cobblers. I don’t think there are very many cobblers left anymore.

One of my brothers-in law was a very talented photographer and specialized in weddings. With the advent of digital photos, and iPhones, people don’t hire wedding photographers much anymore and rarely go to studios to have portraits taken. I guess photography is still a viable profession, but not nearly as popular as in the past. 
And in the same vein, people used to make a living developing film for people that took pictures. Today, it’s hard to find film, let alone someone to develop it. I remember every drug store could develop film, or at least have it developed for you, and there used to be little “huts” in shopping center parking lots that would develop your film in an hour or so…. no more.

Another job I had as a kid was as a projectionist at the local movie theater. We used to load the reels of movie film in the projectors and start the second projector when the first roll of film ran out. If you hit the button just right, you never even saw a flicker on the screen. Today I doubt that there aren’t more than a handful of projectionists employed… maybe not any. Now all the projectors are digital and run by timers.

And of course there aren’t many, or any, door-to-door salesmen, or full-service gas station attendants left.
So many of those professions that once were thought to be job security for the future, are gone or almost gone — or changed…. I never would have left my neighbor’s paper out in the rain when I was a paperboy.
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I just heard on the news that the crazy/unusual weather patterns we’ve been seeing lately are the new normal — weather events are expected to be more violent from here on…. I guess those “lazy, hazy days of summer’ are gone. 

But nonetheless, today, April 22, is Earth Day. It’s also known as International Mother Earth Day.
Every year, Earth Day has a “theme.” The theme for 2023, the 53rd Earth Day, is “invest in Our Planet.” The idea being that businesses should shift towards sustainable practices. It’s interesting that this year’s theme is the same as it was in 2022. I guess maybe we didn’t make much progress last year, so we’ll try it again.

Senator Gaylord Nelson established Earth Day in the 1070s. He wanted to promote ecology and increase public awareness of issues pertaining to the environment. His move was prompted after seeing the horror of the oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, in 1969

So every year this day is set aside when humans everywhere take a minute to be grateful for our planet and the amazing natural resources we’ve enjoyed…. so far.
It’s our duty to see that our children and grandchildren enjoy those same natural resources. Let’s make every day “Earth Day.”
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