George Washington birthday

Growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, Feb. 22 was always a holiday.  It is George Washington's birthday and we always had no school that day.  Sometimes, Boy Scout troop 30 had an overnight trip walking the Appalachian Trail that day, depending on how the holiday fell in the week.

A previous blog post tells how the Eagle patrol managed to spill supper into the coals and ashes.  (Blog post for 2/22/2023)

As time goes by, we get new presidents added to the list and it becomes inconvenient to try to celebrate for each one.  Not to mention our Justices, Speakers of the House, leaders of the Senate, administrators of government departments.  And what about state governments, and city managers?

2/3 of winter over

In a month, a short one, too, it will be spring.  Actually, not only a short month but the first "day of spring" is on March 20, not the 21st.  Not only that but the equinox is early in the day.  All to the good.

Back from an overnight

We rode a bus to Chicago overnight with UWSP's Adventure Tours.  We saw "The Outsiders" and toured the extensive underground system of walkways that people can use to get to major stores and offices without being in winter weather.  Lynn predicted it might be more walking than we could manage.  What?  Pooh!  

She was quite right, as usual.  Guess which one of us got exhausted to the point of staggering?  She wants me to include the tour of the Museum of Science and Industry so I am.  I ended up staggering along, looking evidently as though I might die.  I haven't.  We are both slowly recovering, even more fully grasping that we are genuinely elderly.

Blog pause

Don't expect a blog post for the next two days.  I am going to be too busy.  Read some of my older posts, write a letter to a good relative, start your own blog, read that book you have been meaning to get to.

Presidents Day

I am a fan of Alexandra Meeks Banner, a woman often listed as writer of CNN Five Things AM.  She has a way of explaining what happened fully, succinctly and respectfully. She wrote this morning that

Depending on the state, it may be known as Presidents' Day, President's Day or Presidents Day — a subtle shift in apostrophe placement that has fueled decades of debate.

I take the simple plural without really knowing what my state is doing.

Despite having read that and liking it consciously, I went to the bank today.  Guess what I found.  The place was closed!  Because it is Presidents Day!

My aging memory

If something makes me think back 10 or so years to a person I haven't thought of for quite a while, I may not be able to recall the person's name.  I know I used to know it but I cannot make it come to mind.  That is more or less a classic aged memory problem.  I try to find a way around needing to recall, using old records or vague language.

But things that repeat are a little different.  I have breakfast every morning.   I make dinner every other night.  I often have trouble remembering the last time and not confusing it with other recent times.

It is Valentine's Day!

It is a good day to tell people you care.  Maybe more than "care".  For some people, this is a good time to tell a partner that you are grateful for all they do, including providing chances for you to perform supportive, loving deeds.  It could be the right day to ask someone to dinner.  What about memories and thoughts and kindnesses you have ?  What about what you have received?

How is your intertragic notch?

 

Don’t know?  Didn’t know you have one? You probably do, right between your tragus and your antitragus.  You probably have two of them actually, one in each ear.

I went to the doctor and she had a chart hanging on the wall show parts of the external ear.  The folds and channels have names that people who deal with ear health use.   Like this:

"Same Time, Next Year"

We watched "Same Time, Next Year" with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn.  It is a 1978 film available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and Apple TV.  I guess the movie was much like the play that ran before it.  I thought the dialogue was especially good, appropriate and clever.  It is true that the film is about meeting a person of the opposite sex for a weekend in a motel room annually so if you can't stand watching sweet sinners, you might not like it.  

Storks and babies

Just to get to the bottom of the matter, I asked the internet if storks bring babies.  We were considering various stories that have been used to explain the occurrence of babies, money that appeared after the loss of a tooth, and gifts delivered on Christmas.

Yahoo reported 45, 800 answers to my inquiry but the first one listed was composed by artificial intelligence:

"To clarify the myth about storks bringing babies, consider these points:

• Storks are often depicted in folklore as baby deliverers, but this is a myth.

• The origin of this myth may stem from ancient cultures associating storks with fertility and new life.

• In reality, babies are born through human reproduction, not delivered by birds.

• Storks do care for their own young, which may have contributed to the legend.

• The stork myth is often used in children's stories to explain where babies come from in a gentle way.

• Understanding the real process of childbirth can help dispel this myth."

We see many babies but we have never seen a stork around here.