What Would Jimmy Do?

The year is winding down…. just a few more weeks and it’ll be 2022. Last year about this time, we were all thinking about how bad 2020 had been and we were all looking forward to 2021 being a better year. 

Well, in some, or many, ways, 2021 has been just as difficult, and some ways more difficult, than last year — despite how excruciating 2020 was. Thinking back, 2020 was brutal — it wasn’t just a global pandemic that made things tough. Racial injustice, rioting, political division and a complete change of life as we knew it all compounded to produce a tougher year than any of us have lived through in our lifetimes.

I figured we’d be approaching some semblance of normalcy by now, but it seems that we’re far from that. In some places in the world, lockdowns continue. But even in those areas where things have fully reopened with no restrictions, the landscape is much different than it was just a couple of years ago. People aren’t flooding back to church (at least not our church) or some of the businesses like they used to. The pandemic is certainly not “over,” and while I guess some progress has been made, racial justice is far from resolved. And then of course, we can’t seem to find a central message that we can all unite around — divisions are either static or have grown deeper. 

I hadn’t known about it until this year, but there is a global supply chain problem, and inflation is suddenly an issue — it’s just a highly unstable environment. I keep hearing about the “Great Resignation,” as lots (and lots) of people quit their jobs.

Last year, everyone, for the most part, was unified about a course of action to address the pandemic — at least for the first month or two. But before long, the pandemic became not just political, but partisan. I feel bad for our leaders…. everything they do — or don’t do — is too much, not enough or just wrong. And everyone is happy to let them know it.

I was just thinking the other day how the last two years have led to broken personal relationships and family tensions over differing viewpoints, and none of that appears to be letting up any time soon.

I hate to sound pessimistic, but normally we can endure things if we know there’s a solution coming or an end in sight. Unfortunately, I don’t see any easy solution in sight — to anything. 

Probably, for most of us, how good or bad 2022 will be is going to come down to the choices we make — the things we say yes to and the things we say no to. My personal world has never felt smaller than it has over the past couple of years. That seems a bit strange, because our world is more connected than it’s ever been. This year was full of events with global repercussions like extreme weather events, the ongoing effects of the pandemic or the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Every day there were reminders of just how significantly something happening on the other side of the world could affect us personally. Just think about how one container ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal caused the shelves in our local stores to be emptier than I ever remember. 

We all tend to be resistant to change, but the last couple of years have seen massive global upheavals that’s caused us to adjust to new ways of living — not an easy thing to do.

There’s no question that in 2022 the pandemic will continue to create huge, lasting changes that will take years to understand  — and accept. But throughout history, the world has adapted to big disruptions and survived…. I’m sure we’ll do it again. I’m looking forward to 2022 even though it’ll certainly make me find ways to create new routines. I’ve heard it said that new challenges equal new opportunities. Hopefully next year about this time, I’ll be listing all the things than made 2022 the “best year ever.”
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The other day someone mentioned something about getting older — that’s the term that I usually use. But some people say that “growing” older is the proper term, not “getting” older. So which is it? And does it really matter? 

Like most subjects I tackle in this blog, it really does’t matter — if you get old or grow old, you’re still “old.” Well, of course, this all got me to thinking…..

In the conversation I was referring to, I think “get” is the same as “grow.” But — “grow older” doesn’t mean the same thing as “grow old.”

From what I can tell, “old” today means an age greater than 60. I think 50 used to be considered “old,” but not today. Anyhow, everyone grows old — that means everyone eventually becomes 60. But “grow older” just means that someone is older than he was before. Everyone “grows older” every year, but they have not necessarily “grown old.”

But the fact is that it doesn’t matter if you are 20 or 80, every day we are all getting older — at least chronologically. But age is also a factor of our mindsets and attitudes as well as the years. Sometimes I wonder why many people let their age determine their actions, behavior — and goals. Thinking back I don’t think I ever wanted to be judged by my age.

So — what’s the difference between growing old and getting old? I’ve always believed that everyone is going to get old but they don’t have to grow old. I think I once heard it explained in a way that made a lot of sense to me:
Getting old — the years pass one by one and the older you get the faster they seem to pass.
Growing old — leaving behind the exhilaration, passion, optimism, adventure, excitement and zeal that you once lived in your earlier years. 

I’ve been told fairly often that I’m immature. I never took it as an insult… or a compliment. Immaturity, or youth, isn’t an age group — it’s a mindset. Of course being immature doesn’t mean we should behave like a child. We all grow old, but some of us grow up. I know a few people in their 50s, 60s and 70s (and older) that are still whiny brats — they grow old, but never grow up. Some even get worse as they grow older. 

Growing old happens no matter what — you can’t not get older. But growing up requires work, mindfulness and persistence. To grow up we have to learn from our mistakes, remain open to change and accept, and adjust to, the realities of life. 

When we were kids, we yearned for the time we would be grown up. Well, it’s that time for most of us. We all (me included) need to act our age and behave like an adult. Heaven knows, right now the world needs more adults….
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80 years ago today — December 7, 1941 — is the anniversary of the date that President Franklin Roosevelt said “….will live in infamy.” It is, of course, the date, in 1941, that Japanese planes attacked the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The attack is known for its overwhelming surprise, spectacular explosions and countless heroic acts. But the more you read about the event, more and more fascinating facts surface.

On November 21, 1941 a number of newspaper ads appeared — one big ad and a lot of smaller ones. The ads were supposedly about “Chicago’s favorite game,” called The Deadly Double. The headline of the ads was: “Achtung. Warning, Alert!.” Under the headline, the ad showed people in a air raid shelter playing dice.The dice is numbered 12 and seven — December 7. No dice has 12 and 7 on them. The game never existed and the company that supposedly made it never existed. Military intelligence investigated this, but everything led to a dead end. The person buying the ad space had bought the copy in person, paid in cash and no one knows what the real story is behind the creepy ad. I first heard this story on one of my visits to Pearl Harbor…. I also learned how the name “Pearl Harbor” came about…..

King Kamehameha had conquered Oahu by 1795 as western traders began to arrive regularly in the islands. The new leader of the Kingdom of Hawaii soon learned that foreigners valued the oyster pearls of the river flowing into the lagoon called Wai Momi, meaning “Waters of Pearl.” Kamehameha had native divers of the area gathering them night and day for trade with the west. Around that time, the large lagoon became known as “Pearl Harbor.” (By about 1818 the lagoon was harvested of nearly all its oysters.)

In ancient times the entrance to Pearl Harbor was also known by the Hawaiian name Pu’uloa, meaning “long hill,” named for the straight escarpment that lined the long entrance to the lagoon.

The narrow entrance to the lagoon was too shallow for larger western ships to navigate and the lagoon would not be used as a harbor until the late 1870s when the U.S. Navy dredged it to allow larger ships to enter. 

During the attack, there were 102 ships stationed at Pearl Harbor of which 60 of them received no damage at all. There were 15 ships that received minor damage and 11 more ships that sustained medium to heavy damage. There were 7 ships sunk at Pearl Harbor but only 3 were a total loss — the Arizona, Oklahoma and Utah.

The 3 ships that did not return to service (Arizona, Oklahoma and Utah) were all battleships. The battleships were the secondary target of the attack after no aircraft carriers were identified. The Utah, although it was classified as a battleship, was used for training and target practice only. It was torpedoed by young Japanese pilots after being misidentified. Attacking it was not part of the plan.

A little known second attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese occurred on March 4th, 1942 — just 3 months after the initial devastating attack. The attack, called Operation K was accomplished by two Japanese flying boats that flew across the Pacific from Japan where they were refueled by submarines before flying to Oahu. Each plane carried four 550 pound bombs. 

The mission was to perform reconnaissance of Pearl Harbor and to bomb the repair and salvage operations. The planes approached the islands around 1 am when radar stations on Kauai spotted them. P-40 Warhawk fighters were scrambled to intercept the planes but heavy cloud cover prevented them from finding the Japanese planes that were flying at 15,000 feet. On Oahu, an island-wide blackout and the thick cloud cover also prevented the two Japanese planes from identifying Honolulu and Pearl Harbor at night. 

As is customary, the President proclaimed today National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day….
“NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim December 7, 2021, as National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. I encourage all Americans to reflect on the courage shown by our brave warriors that day and remember their sacrifices. I ask us all to give sincere thanks and appreciation to the survivors of that unthinkable day. I urge all Federal agencies, interested organizations, groups and individuals to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff on December 7, 2021, in honor of those American patriots who died as a result of their service at Pearl Harbor.”

I was only three years old in 1941, but from what I’ve heard, Americans seemed to face adversary a little differently than they do today. A famous World War II general, George Patton said, “May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t.” Those words meant something back then — I’m not sure they’d tend to unite all Americans today….
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Somewhere around this time every year, various publications (usually dictionaries) announce their “word of the year.” I always, or at least usually, find their choices interesting and sometimes a little befuddling. I guess it shows my age, but sometimes i”ve never even heard of the “word of the year,” and sometimes lately, it’s not even a “word.” Just a few years ago the word of the year was an emoji — that’s more of a picture than a word to me.

Anyhow, one of the most popular/famous word of the year choosers is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED.) This year the OED word of the war is “vax.” And yes, if you type it, your computer will try to change it to “tax.”

If you remember, last year the Oxford English Dictionary didn’t come up with a word of the year — they decided there were too many new words associated with the COVID pandemic to choose a single word. Merriam-Webster did choose the word “pandemic” for their word of the year, however.

While last year “pandemic” and “lockdown” were often used words, this year OED chose vax because it highlights the medical breakthroughs and the rise of Covid vaccines across the world. According to the Oxford dictionary, the word vax has generated a number of derivatives that we now see in a wide range of informal contexts, from vax sites and vax cards to getting vaxxed and being fully vaxxed. The dictionary authors believe that no word better captures the atmosphere of the bast year than vax.

Usually, I just assume that the Oxford word of the year is good enough for me. But this year, the Cambridge Dictionary’s choice was interesting to me….

Their word of the year was looked up more than 243,000 times on their website in 2021. Their word choice is “perseverance.” Perseverance isn’t a particularly common word for most people’s vocabulary. The look-ups for the word spiked in February after NASA’s Perseverance Rover made its final descent to land on Mars. However, in the following months, perseverance continued to be looked up more frequently than before. It apparently takes perseverance to land a rover on Mars, and also to face the challenges and disruption to our lives from COVID-19, climate disasters, political instability and conflict. In some ways this is a more interesting and appropriate choice for word of the year than vax.

But back to vax — I guess it comes from the word vaccine that was first recorded to be used in the English language in the year 1799 and its derivative words like vaccination and vaccinate came into use in the year 1800. Vaccine is derived from the Latin word Vacca, which means cow. Another popular synonym for vax is jab, which was also a very popular term used this year. 

I can’t argue that vax is an appropriate word, but thinking about it, maybe I’d pick perseverance…. it certainly does take perseverance to face the challenges and disruption to our lives this year — and — it’s a good name for a Mars rover…..
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Here it is December… the 12th, and last, month of 2021. There’s lots of holidays and festivities his month. Besides Christmas, there is Saint Nicholas Day, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, St. Lucia’s Day, Bill of Rights Day, Wright Brothers Day. Boxing Day and of course, the Winter Solstice.

St. Nicholas Day (December 6) honors St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children and is celebrated around the world with various activities from nuts for presents to stockings or shoes filled with sweets.
St Lucia’s Day (December 13) isn’t as well known as St Nicholas Day, it’s long been associated with festivals of light. Before the Gregorian calendar reform in 1752, her feast day occurred on the shortest day of the year… and contributed to the saying “Lucy light, Lucy light, shortest day and longest night.”
A day that doesn’t get the recognition it deserves and usually gets lost in all the holiday festivities is the Bill of Rights Day on December 17.
December 21 is the Winter Solstice — the astronomical first day of winter (in the Northern Hemisphere.) It’s the first day of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.
December 26 is Boxing Day in the UK and Canada, and the first day of Kwanzaa.

And in December, like every other month, we talk about the weather…. frost on the shortest day is said to indicate a severe winter. But remember the old saying, December changeable and mild, the whole winter will remain a child.

So the last month of the year always seems to be busier than any of the other months, so I’m sure there’ll be plenty to blog about in the weeks to come….
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Happy 4th Birthday to my favorite Twins — Rory and Ellie!!!

The visit with Grammy and Poppi is over…. back home just in time to celebrate their 4th birthday in Fairfax. Bet it’ll be a fun day…..
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Well, here it is just about Thanksgiving already. This will be the first Thanksgiving in a long time that all our kids and grandkids are coming to our house. Obviously, we’re looking forward to their visit and having all the family together.

As is kind of my tradition, I blog something about Thanksgiving every year just because, well, it’s a tradition. 

I’m sure I’ve mentioned some of these “fun facts” before, but there’s only so much you can say a bout a single day that occurs every year…. and — repeating is part of the tradition.
Around the turn of the century, at Thanksgiving, children and adults would dress up in masks and host costume crawls in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. The tradition of children dressing up as poor people in New York became so popular that Thanksgiving was nicknamed “Ragamuffin Day.”
Three towns in the U.S. are called Turkey — they are located in Texas, Kentucky and North Carolina. Other town names that are appropriate around Thanksgiving include Pilgrim, Michigan, Cranberry, Pennsylvania and Yum Yum, Tennessee.
The first Thanksgiving was declared by the Continental Congress in 1777. but the custom fell out of use around 1815. When that happened, Sarah Josepha Hale, who wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” began petitioning presidents to make it a national holiday. She finally succeeded in 1863, when President Lincoln issued a proclamation. Even then, Thanksgiving didn’t officially have the set date as the fourth Thursday in November until 1941. 
Until 1932, balloons from Macy’s parade were released into the sky when the parade was over. Macy’s offered a $50 reward for those who found a deflated balloon and returned it. The idea never proved very successful because the balloons usually burst after being set free. 
More turkeys (44 to 46 million, annually) are raised I’m Minnesota than any other state.
President Roosevelt officially changed the date of Thanksgiving in 1941 to the second-to-last Thursday in November as a way to encourage more holiday shopping to boost the economy. That decision didn’t go over well, and earned him “the honor” of being compared to Hitler. 

So with all the activity generated by four grandkids, I’m not sure how much football will get watched, but the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys will be playing their annual games. The Lions have played on Thanksgiving since 1934 — The Cowboys didn’t start until 1966.
No matter what, this will be a memorable Thanksgiving — probably the best ever….
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Our Thanksgiving guests have arrived — Rory and Ellie chose to share a bed. I’m pretty sure this is the quietest our house will be for the next several days.
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Starting early this morning and tonight is November’s full Moon. An added bonus is that there was also a near-total eclipse of the Moon. The eclipse was supposed to be visible  from most of North America. 

November’s Moon is often, or usually, referred to as the Beaver Moon — because this is the time of year when beavers begin to take shelter in their lodges, having already laid up sufficient food for the long winter ahead. During the time of the fur trade in North America, it was also the season to trap beavers for their thick, winter-ready pelts. 

For years, the monthly full Moons were given names tied to early Native American, Colonial American, and European folklore. I’ve noticed that some newspapers and Internet stories are referring to this month’s full Moon as a “Blood Moon.” Since (believe it or not) I wasn’t sure what a “Blood Moon” really was, I did some checking — not extensive research, but just checking.

This month’s eclipse is a near-total eclipse — the Moon will be 98% obscured during the eclipse, so technically it won’t be a total lunar eclipse, or a true Blood Moon. A total eclipse of the Moon is often called a “Blood Moon” because the Moon turns reddish when it’s completely submerged in the Earth’s shadow. 

“Blood Moon” is not a technical term used in astronomy. It’s more of a popular phrase, maybe used because it sounds so dramatic. It simply refers to a “total lunar eclipse” — that’s all. 

Actually, a fully-eclipsed Moon really becomes orange or coppery like a penny, not red like blood. So even though we don’t technically get a true Blood Moon, if the clouds got out of the way, it was still be a sight to behold if you got out about two in the morning. 

An while we’re on the subject of the Moon…. the spin time of the Moon on its own axis is identical to the time it takes the Moon to evolve around the Earth, which is why the Moon always keep almost exactly the same face toward us. 

And — if you’d like to know how much you’d weigh on the Moon, just multiply your weight by 0.165. You’d weight about 80 percent less than on Earth.
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Love potions have been the stuff of history and legend since ancient times. These elixirs, designed to allure, played a major role in both Greek and Egyptian mythology. The potions have long been credited with having magical influences over the whims and woes of human attraction.

In the second century A.D., Roman writer and philosopher Apuleius allegedly concocted a potion that snagged him a rather wealthy widow. Relatives of the widow brought Apuleius to court, claiming the potion had subverted the woman’s true wishes. Apuleius argued that the potion (supposedly made with shellfish, lobsters, spiced oysters, and cuttlefish) had restored his wife’s vivacity and spirit — and the court ended up ruling in his favor.

Today, if you’re looking for love, most people probably turn to Facebook, but some people do believe that love potions are for real. The ancient Greeks ground up orchid, which they regarded as a powerful aphrodisiac, into a powder and added it to wine. They believed that this concoction could inspire passionate love in whoever consumed it. 

Most people can’t think of love potions without remembering the popular song, “Love Potion No. 9,” that was recorded by The Clovers in 1959 and made popular again in 1963 by The Searchers. 

The song was written by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and according to the song, the potion’s ingredients “smelled like turpentine and looked like India Ink.” Doesn’t sound very good, but it apparently helped a guy who was “a flop with chicks” — at least until he “kissed a cop down on 34th and Vine.”

But all serious-ness aside, if you’re really interested in a love potion, in the mid 1990s, Leiber and Stoller (the song writers) and a couple of other people developed a trademarked cologne spray bearing the name of Love Potion No. 9.

According to the label, Love Potion No. 9 is made with water, SD40B alcohol, isopropyl myristate, isopropyl alcohol, and the fragrances of citrus and musk. Sounds like this concoction could really heighten you passion and arousal and make you attractive to the opposite sex. Of course, there is a disclaimer on the bottle….”No guarantee of success is granted or implied.”
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