Yesterday's gone, sweet Jesus, and tomorrow may never be mine

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. Doddering old 2023 is on its last legs and will soon be replaced by a brand new year, 2024. Accordingly, we have just the thing for your listening and viewing pleasure while you attempt to navigate this always-treacherous transitional period. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to:

A Festival Of Auld Lang Syne Performances

Our first number will be on the musical saw with accordion accompaniment, plus there is a bit of the human voice. From 2006, here is someone named Nicki Jaine on both the saw and the vocal, accompanied by Roy Ashley on accordion, with Auld Lang Syne #1 (2:43).

Next, we travel through both time and space to Detroit, Michigan, in the year 1987 to hear the young Aretha Franklin and Billy Preston sing a Motown version of our festival theme, Auld Lang Syne #2 (2:07). For some unknown reason there is a brief appearance by comedian David Brenner at the end of the performance.

As we continue to mellow and chill and let the old year slip away, here with Auld Lang Syne #3 (4:52) is saxophonist Kenny G -- you may skip this video only if you majored in jazz saxophone in college and feel that Kenny G sold out for commercial success.

To close our Festival we reach all the way back to 1953 and the old master himself. Here are Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians with what must surely be the schmaltziest version ever recorded -- Auld Lang Syne #4 (2:10), complete with chromatic runs.

Our Festival is now at an end. If we have done our work properly, your transition from 2023 to 2024 will be a smooth one. You may now return to your normal life, where you are free to choose any kind of music that helps you get through your day.

Now go forth and multiply get one for the Gipper hold your head up high and face tomorrow with confidence.

Lord, for my sake, teach me to take one day at a time.

[Editor's note. I have published this post several times over the last 16 years of blogging, and it fairly begged to be brought out again from the archives for newer readers. I have edited it slightly so that the dates are current. For all of 2023's disturbing headlines and armed conflicts, it had some special high points for our family -- our oldest grandson and his wife presented us with our first great-grandchild, our two youngest grandsons both got married, and still another of our grandsons became engaged and completed college. Mrs. RWP (the lovely Ellie) and I pray that everyone who comes here will enjoy good health, happiness, and prosperity in the coming year. --RWP]

Backward, turn backward, O Time in thy flight

I don't know whether you have noticed (yeah, right) but I am a curious person. I don't mean that other people find my ways curious (I can hear some of you saying, "Oh, yes, we do") but that I was born with enough natural inquisitiveness that I like to know answers to questions that other people aren't even asking. "Curiosity killed the cat" is an old saying, but as Mrs. RWP often says, finding out brought it back.

When I wrote the line in the previous post about the earth proceeding in its orbit around the sun at just the right pace, it made me wonder how many miles forward in its orbit around the sun does the earth move in one day? I suppose I could look it up somewhere, but I wanted to try to figure it out by myself using facts we were taught in school.

Here are the facts one must know to determine the answer to my question:

1. Earth's orbit around the sun is not circular, it is elliptical. However, we will treat it as a circle so as not to confuse ourselves further.

2. We need to determine the circumcerence of the circle, that is, the length of Earth's orbit in miles.

3. You may have heard the term πr² (pronounced "pie are square". My dad always insisted that pie are not square, pie are wedge-shaped, but I digress.) Since πr² is the formula for determining the area of a circle and we want to determine the circumference of a circle, πr²
is of no use to us. We need a different formula. The formula we need to use is 2πr where r is the radius of the circle.

4. It just so happens that the distance from Earth to the sun, 93 million miles, is also the radius of the circle whose circumference we are trying to determne. This distance is also what astronomers have dubbed an Astronomical Unit (1 AU), but this bit of trivia is irrelevant for our purposes today.

5. Pi, as we all should know, is 3.14159

We are now ready to do the math/maths, which is/are:

2 × 3.14159 × 93,000,000

and we find that the distance the Earth travels in its year-long orbit around the sun (that is, the circumference of a circle with a 93,000,000-mile radius) is 584,335,740 miles.

It is then a siimple matter of dividing this number by the number of days in a year (use either 365 or 365.25, whatever floats your boat, it doesn't matter to me one iota) to find that our planet is hurtling forward through space about 1.6 million miles every single day.

That is an interesting fact, but here's one that is even more interesting: our movement along the path of orbit around the sun is in a counter-clockwise (British, anti-clockwise) direction.

I don't know why, but learning this astounded me in the same way earlier peoples must have been astounded to learn that the sun does not rise in the east and set in the west, but that our planet is spinning from west to east.

Heretofore I have assumed that clockwise is the natural direction of things. Clocks move forward for a reason, to keep track of the passage of time. And though we can move mechanical timepieces backward, time itself cannot move backward. It keeps moving forward regardless of our actions. We cannot reclaim past moments but nowadays we can record them as they occur using fairly modern inventions the ancients never dreamed of and preserve them for future generations to peruse and, hopefully, enjoy. Maybe that's the lesson of Earth's orbit. Even though its motion runs counter to our feeble understanding, time itself keeps moving forward.

That's all I can drum up for today, folks. I hope each one of you has a merry Christmas and, in case I don't post anything in the next few days, a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

Has anything astounded you lately?

Today is…

...the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere; that is, the first day of winter and first day of summer, respectively, in those two parts of the world. Here in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, USA, where I live, near 34°N latitude, the sun rose at 7:40 a.m. and will set at 5:31 p.m., giving me slightly less than 10 hours of daylight and leaving me with slightly more than 14 hours of darkness (night). It is the shortest day and longest night of the entire year. Everything north of the Arctic Circle has 24 hours of darkness. At the same time, in the suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, where kylie lives, near 34°S latitude, the opposite happened; the sun gave her about 14 hours of daylight, leaving her with about 10 hours of darkness. It is the longest day and shortest night of the entire year. Everything south of the Antarctic Circle has 24 hours of sunlight.

There is a word that describes everything I have told you so far.

Normal.

Fot earthlings, terrans, creatures like us, that is. Any Martians or Venusians or Jupiterians who happen to be visiting among us would find it abnormal. Their normal is a whole different kettle of fish set of circumstances.

In case you hadn't noticed, today is also the first day of the rest of your life. Cherish it. Be thankful for it. Spend it wisely, as it will never come again.

The earth will do its part by continuing to spin at just the right speed, tilt at just the right angle, and proceed in its orbit around the sun at just the right pace so that conditions are right for you to do likewise tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

"While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." (Genesis 8:22)

Here they are at last, multiple Brunhildas

During December in other years I have blogged about St. Nicholas (Dec. 6th), St. Lucy (Dec. 13th), Beethoven's birthday (Dec. 16th), Hanukkah (date varies), and, of course, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year's Eve (dates do not vary). This year those are all out the window, gone with the wind as it were, and I find myself blogging instead about multiple Brunhildas.

Yes, Virginia, there are multiple Brunhildas (some with alternate spellings).

I was not aware of this phenomenon until I revealed that one of the answers I knew that no other contestant knew on Jeopardy! on November 30th was "Who is Brunhilda?" and reader Emma Springfield commented, "As far as Brunhilda, there are more than one of them, so I would like to know the clue." I replied that the clue mentioned valkyries.

I was going to include all the gory details here in one post but that made for a very long post. So I decided instead to include links and ignore the fact that I did the heavy lifting and all you have to do is tap your finger.

To read about Brunhilda the bird species, CLICK HERE .

To read about Brunhilda the valkyrie of Norse mythology and Wagnerian opera fame, CLICK HERE .

To read about Brunhilda the ship (SS Brunhilda), CLICK HERE.

To read about Brunhilda the Frankish queen, CLICK HERE .

To read about Brynhild the novel by H. G. Wells, CLICK HERE .

To read about Brunhilda the asteroid (123 Brunhilda), CLICK HERE .

There is also a comic-strip witch character named Broom-Hilda, but I'm not going to go there. You can look her up yourself if you are interested.

If you are the type of person who never clicks on links, at least check out the bird species and maybe the asteroid. And if there are still more Brunhildas, I ask Emma Springfield to tell us about them in a comment. I'm officially exhausted.

Attention: Graham Edwards

I want to assure you, Graham, that I did not check your maths (in the U.S. we say your math) because I was aware instantly that the difference between 2023 and 1907 is 116. No calculations were necessary, either mentally or with benefit of paper and pencil, and if a mental calculation did occur it happened so rapidly and automatically that the result obtained bordered on what some might call intuitively obvious, except perhaps to children in primary school.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I have better things to do than sit around fact-checking everything I read, and if you give me a few minutes I'm sure I will think of some of them.

P.S. - A very happy what-would-have-been-his-birthday to your father.

I can’t get to multiple Brunhildas just yet

...because something else, or rather someone else, caught my attention. Since I have never been one to leave a rabbit trail unexplored, off we will now go into the wild blue yonder (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) at least for a little while.

Although I like to think I am a fairly observant person who is fairly well-read, I have now reached the age (82 years, nine months) where every day makes me more aware of how little I really do know, the occasional Jeopardy! answer notwithstanding. This time the someone else who caught my attention, thanks to a fellow blogger named Rachel, was Umberto Eco. I had never heard of him even though he has been famous in certain circles for 40 years, ever since his book The Name Of The Rose was published.

Rachel mentioned that she was reading another of his works, How To Write A Thesis. Here is an excerpt from Rachel's blog:

"I wrote the introduction to my essay this morning between Wordle and breakfast or it may have been the other way round. I happened to read Umberto Eco's essay on How to Write a Thesis before breakfast and Wordle and the timing was good where he told me to get all the silly things out of the way in my first draft, read through, and then write the serious version. If I want to throw my chances of a good degree on to the fire, and by all means do so if I want to, then use the silly first version. If I am actually going to give it the respect it deserves then write the serious version now I've got the first out of the way. So that's what I did. And the serious introduction and outline of what I am going to write about looks much more professional and that of a serious MA poetry student. Thanks Umberto. (I wrote the silly version last night. Slept on it and morning came). Umberto Eco is an Italian writer and philosopher."

I thought Eco's advice to write your silly version first, then write your serious version was good advice indeed, advice that I wish I had encountered before writing Billy Ray Barnwell Here: The Meanderings Of A Twisted Mind that I converted into a blog at www.billyraybarnwellhere.blogspot.com (q.v.).

I decided to look Umberto up, found several articles about his How To Write A Thesis, and opened one. The first words actually written by Umberto Eco tbat I ever read besides the ones referred to in Rachel's blog hit me in the face like a wet dishcloth:

"You are not Proust. Do not write long sentences."

My alter ego Billy Ray Barnwell could have benefited from reading Umberto Eco. It is great advice, right up there with the famous "Omit Needless words" section of Strunk and White's The Elements Of Style. The fact that Eco also wrote "You are not e. e. cummings" will be left to another day to be dealt with.

Our foray into this part of the wild blue yonder is now ended. If anybody decides to check out my other blog (it's a Rolls-Royce), it will have been worth it.

Multiple Brunhildas will have to wait

...because Mrs. RWP and I watched the 1980 film Somewhere In Time the other night on the freevee (formerly IMDb) movie channel and I need to discuss something with you.

It starred Christopher Reeve (fresh from his 1978 success as Superman) and Jane Seymour (born Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg and still more than a decade away from being selected for the title role in the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman).

Somewhere In Time is the unlikely story (warning; spoiler ahead) of a handsome young playwright who manages to travel back in time from 1980 to 1912 in order to pursue a romance with a beautiful and talented actress. This unlikely scenario requires complete concentration and self-hypnosis on the part of the playwright, who divests himself of all modern inventions, clothing, and accoutrements in order to achieve his not-to-be-denied desire, except, oddly enough, the cassette-tape player that plays his self-hypnosis spiel over and over. Lo and behold, wonder of wonders, he succeeds. The audience is required to suspend disbelief and go with the flow. After an all too brief but highly amorous night spent in each other's arms, the young playwright is snatched from his lover's presence and hurled back to the present (1980} when he finds a 1979 Lincoln-head penny in a pocket of his turn-of-the-century suit.

Okay, I get that it is pure fantasy and I understand how the spell was broken by the presence of a coin from the future. What I don't understand, however, and this is what I wanted to discuss with you, is why a music box playing "Eighteenth Variation on 'Rhapsody on a Theme By Paganini', Opus 43" by Sergei Rachmaninoff (and repeated by a full orchestra at several emotionally-charged moments) did not rip Mr. Reeve from Ms.Seymour's presence long before the offending penny showed up. The reason for my suspension of my suspension of disbelief in this particular instance is that Mr. Rachmaninoff did not compose that piece of music until 1934, which, unless I am sadly mistaken, was 22 years after 1912.

Do you agree or disagree? Please tell me in a comment and give reasons.

Footnote. That music by Rachmaninoff has been included in weddings all over America in the decades since the film because Somewhere In Time has been loved by so many impressionable young and not-so-young brides-to-be.

We will get to multiple Brunhildas eventually unless we are distracted by Field Of Dreams or Purple Rose Of Cairo or Big Fish or....