Coming Seasons

This time of the year the seed catalogs really start to pile up. You might of done a few things during the cold, dark months to prepare for the coming seasons, but you realize preparation time is running out and action time is coming soon. You need to order seed, get equipment ready, and in days gone bye you would need to burn the tobacco bed if you haven't already. That was one of the first things you had to do for the tobacco growing season, but growing tobacco is a topic for another day.

Valentine Day

I'm not sure what this holiday is really all about (martyred saints?, Roman Lupercalia fertility festival?, Chaucer's tales?...);except today, it has become commercialized into another multi-billion dollar event. I keep it simple by sending a card.

Evolution

      

12 Feb 1809

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin. He published "Origin of the Species" on 24 Nov 1859. After nearly 160 years of debate, research and validation it is hard to believe that there are those who still try to deny the most basic tenets of evolution. Even if you don't understand basic biology or ardently believe in some religious text, it is hard not to see the results of "artificial selection" (example below) in plants and animals. From there it should be easier to accept the concept of "natural selection" and evolution.

Many of the doubters want to "cherry pick" biblical quotes and propose them as literal proof that the earth is a certain age or that humans are superior to other species. While I don't hold much with the literal interpretations of any religious text, I do think some contain very poetic points of wisdom. Here is one of my favorites: Ecclesiates 3:19-21 NIV

"19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath ; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”

This point is even more eloquently and more cosmologically made by Carl Sagan stating we come from "starstuff" and will return to "starstuff". 

A final note on Charles Darwin's birthday is that it is shared by another notable bearded man - Abraham Lincoln.

12 Feb 1809

Beatles Come to America

Fifty five years ago on February 9, 1964, the British Invasion began with the Beatles playing live on the Ed Sullivan Show in front of an estimated 73 million Americans. To many of us "baby boomers", coming of age in the '60's, it is kind of like President Kennedy's assassination or the first Lunar Landing in that we can remember where we were and what we were doing. I was at Lowry AFB in an old WWII, 2 story, coal-fired barracks awaiting training. It was a cold winter night with a bunch of new airman huddled around a small black and white tv. The music changed then, as did I.

Fifty Four Years Ago

Fifty four years ago on 6 February while I was on temporary duty at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, I was hurriedly tagged as part detail to go unload a C-130 that had just taxied up. By the time we got to the aircraft, ambulances started screaming in and we were assigned to help carry litters of bloody bodies to the ambulances. Afterwards, we were told to grab our gear and boarded a C-130 (I don't think it was the same one we unloaded). Somewhere in the process we were told that the bodies were from Camp Holloway, Pleiku, Vietnam and that we were in route to Danang Vietnam. It was late that night or early the next day (didn't really know what time it was except dark) when we landed and were dumped out on the taxiway. 
The next day we would launch our first airstrikes against North Vietnam as part of Operation Flaming Dart.

F-100s at Danang AB Feb 1965

That was a long time ago in a place far away. Only the vague memories and the lost innocence of youth persist. This is the same posting as eight and nine years ago, but you can't forget.

Chinese New Year

The lunisolar Chinese calendar determines the date of Lunar New Year. The Chinese Calendar defines the lunar month with  the winter solstice as the 11th month, which means that Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice. On the Gregorian Calendar, the Lunar New Year begins at the new moon that falls between 21 January and 20 February. 

2019 is the Year  of the Pig - the twelfth zodiac animal sign. There is much more astrology and meaning to the Year of the Pig than I know or understand, but it is a very important time to a substantial portion of the world's population. 

All I can say is Happy Chinese New Year of the Pig!

Groundhog Day

According to Wikipedia: "The Groundhog Day celebrations of the 1880s were carried out by the Punxsutawney Elks Lodge. The lodge members were the "genesis" of the Groundhog Club formed later, which continued the Groundhog Day tradition. But the lodge started out being interested in the groundhog as a game animal for food. It had started to serve groundhog at the lodge, and had been organizing a hunting party on a day each year in late summer." Later the groundhog became weatherman Punxsutawney Phil.

Groundhog Stew

I ate groundhog once. I was not impressed. Nor, am I impressed with the groundhog weatherman. By most statistics he is wrong more than he is right (much like all weathermen); and, regardless of his forecast we will still have 6 more weeks on the winter season on the calendar and more than likely more bad weather than that.

So the only good thing I can say about groundhog day is that we have made it halfway through the winter calendar season.