A whole lot of nothing sets one to thinking

In the last 24 hours alone, my email inbox received 172 new messages, 171 of which held no interest for me. All but three or four of them were political in nature (enough already, the election was nearly five monhs ago). and the remaining except for one were hoping to interest me in their products or services for an exchange of money from my pockets into theirs. The lone email I considered legitimate and not junk was a receipt for an onlne payment I had recently made.

There were also 17 new messages in my email's "spam" folder. I could detect no discernible reason why these particular incoming missives were singled out for this special treatment. All of the 171 mentioned in the preceding paragraph could have been designated as spam as far as I'm concerned.

i deleted the 171 and the 17 and continued with my day. I think all of the continuing political folderol is generated based on the fear that the old saying "out of sight, out of mind" is true. Someone should remind the senders that there is also truth in two other old sayings, namely "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "don't wear out your welcome."

How one is to achieve a balance between the conflicting truths in a myriad of old sayings is an ongoing, nay, a never-ending task.

If there are any old sayings you have found to be either true or false in your own life, please tell us what they are so that we may benefit from (or avoid the pitfalls of) your experience.

The birdies that sing 🎶 in the spring, tra la

...may commence as of 5:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) today, as that is, or was, this year's moment for the vernal equinox to occur. It is one of two days each year -- the other is the autumnal equinox in September -- when all latitudes have 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of datkness, and an egg set on end will not fall over.

I wonder if people in the Southern Hemisphere call this the vernal equinox too when it is so clearly autumn there. Kylie, please let us know.

When I was a boy we called March 21st the first day of spring. It also is, or was, the birthday of my maternal grandfather, Nathan Silberman (1875-1970) of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, who would be turning 150 tomorrow.

I wonder if he was one of the 2.8 million people who, according to Elon Musk at the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE), were shown in the Social Security tecords as being over 120 years old, still alive, and possibly (if not probably) still being paid monthly benefits. Until this week, that is, when their status was changed to deceased.

I hope not.

I do know one thing for certain. His money wasn't coming to me.

Maybe life is not like a box of chocolates

The most stupid thing I've seen in a very long time is a comment someone left on someone else's Facebook page a couple of days ago. It is so stupid that I have put it in a special box composed of asterisks to highlight just how stupid it is:

**************************************************************
* As Forrest Gump said, stupid does as stupid is. *
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Speaking of Forrest Gump, did you know that the actor Tom Hanks is a third cousin, four times removed, of President Abraham Lincoln? Well, he is. Lincoln's mother was Nancy Hanks. Also, singer Pat Boone (remember him?) is a great-great-great-great-grandson of the American pioneer Daniel Boone. I'm not claiming that there is any connection between Tom Hanks and Pat Boone.

That would be stupid.

84

Today is my 84th birthday, which Wikipedia tells me is the number following 83 and preceding 85. I go to great lengths to bring you such invaluable information.

I didn't need to go to Wikipedia to know the following facts:

• 84 has 12 divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 21, 28, 42, and 84)
• George Orwell wrote the novel Nineteen Eighty-four (not 1984) in the year 1948 and just inverted the last two digits of the year in which he wrote it to come up with a date in the not too distant future for his title
• It takes 84 earth years for Uranus to make one trip around the Sun (please, no wisecracks from readers in Yorkshire)

Having been trained as a computer programmer since 1962, I also know that 84 decimal is 1010100 in binary (base 2), 124 in octal (base 8), and 54 in hexadecimal (base 16).

I figure that most of us know that 84 in Roman numerals is LXXXIV or lxxxiv. I have no idea when uppercase or lowercase is appropriate to use, or whether it even matters.

One thing I did learn from my foray into Wikipedia is that 84 in Greek numerals is ΠΔ or πδ (take your pick).

And now you know it too.

Bonus factoid: Greek numerals are also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals.

You are most welcome.

To be precise, today is the 84th anniversary of the day I was born. Yesterday was the last day of my 84th year on earth so far. Today is actually the first day of my 85th year.

Let the festivities begin!

Put them all together, they spell MOTHER

In alphabetic order, here are the 2-character abbreviations that are recognized by the United States Postal Service (USPS) for the 50 states of the US:

AK AL AR AZ CA CN CO DE FL GA
HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD
ME MI MN MS MO MT NC ND NE NH
NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC
SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY

I will not identify them all here, but can you name all 50 states from their postal abbreviations only?

Here are six more 2-character codes for one district and five territories that also are part of the United States:

DC AS GU MP PR VI

They are, in order, the District of Columbia (the national capital city of Washington); the three Pacific territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands; and the two Atlantic territories of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

The people of both the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have voted to become states but to date the US Congress has not agreed to let them do so.

Here are the 2-character postal abbreviations for the 10 provinces and three territories of the nation of Canada, which if Donald Trump gets his way (I hope he doesn't) would become the US's 51st state:

AB BC MB NB NL NS NT NU ON PE QC SK YK

They are Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Northwest Territorirs, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Yukon.

I know very little about Mexico, our neighbor to the south. At one time its capital, Mexico City, was called Mexico DF (for Distrito Federales) but I believe that is no longer the case. According to various sources there are 30 or 31 or 32 states in Mexico. I can't begin to name them all but I can tell you a few of them: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca, Sonora, Veracruz, Yucatan.

You are hereby invited to share with your fellow RRs (rhymeswithplague readers) some equally boring but potentially fascinating details about political subdivisions or postal abbreviations in your vicinity in the comments.

How not to win friends and influence people

I remember watching television in 1968 as anti-Vietnam War protesters yelled, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill toda?"

In 2025 we watch television as pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, antisemitic protesters yell on university campuses in New York, "NYPD, KKK, IDF, they're all the same."

Really? The New York Police Department, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Israeli Defense Forces are all the same? I think not. And this ridiculous statement comes from antisemitic cowards who cover their faces with masks to hide their identities. I think it is clear who is most like the Ku Klux Klan in the current scenario.

Here's something else to think about:

In "Song Of Myself" (1892 version), poet Walt Whitman said, "I am large. I contain multitudes". In the New Testament books of both Mark and Luke, a Gadarene man who cut himself and lived among the tombs naked said, "My name is Legion, for we are many". In the former case the world applauded. In the latter case the world shuddered (except for Jesus, of course, who commanded the unclean spirits to come out. The expelled demons entered immediately into a herd of swine which promptly ran violently down a steep place into the sea and were drowned).

On the surface, the two statements are eerily similar, the obvious difference between them being that Walt Whitman was merely expressing his identification with humanity at large and the man from Gadara was possessed by demon spirits (and there are such things) that had taken up residence in his body and were controlling his actions.

It took the presence and power of Jesus Christ to put and end to the Gadarene man's torment and bring calmness to the community. In my humble opinion, that is the only thing that will end the torment in the present-day cities of America.

You may not agree with me, but I do hope you will continue to read my posts.

Deep in the heart of somewhere

I grew up in Texas. I had to. My parents moved there from Rhode Island when I was six. In other years I have posted about March 2nd being Texas Independence Day (from Mexico in 1836) and about March 6th being the anniversary of the battle at the Alamo in San Antonio where nearly 200 people were slaughtered, including such heroes as Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William B. Travis.

This year it never crossed my mind until today. I must be slipping. Senility must be rearing its ugly head. Already I am drooling occasionally.

I do apologize to lovers of bluebonnets everywhere.

Say what?

The following commercial currently appears on television in the US:

"Hi, folks, your buddy John Rich here, and if you love God, family, and America as much as I do you should be doing all of your online shopping at MammothNation dot com, and while you're at MammothNation be sure to get some Redneck Riviera whiskey, 100% blended right here in America and proudly supporting Folds Of America. God bless you and God bless America."

If that is not an exact quote of what Mr. Rich said, it is close enough that I don't hesitate enclosing the statement in quotation marks (British, inverted commas).

To my way of thinking, loving God and America has absolutely nothing to do with buying a particular brand of whiskey or even any whiskey at all, for that matter.

An old spititual song comes to mind:

I got shoes, you got shoes
All God's children got shoes
When I get to Heaven gonna put on my shoes
I'm gonna walk all over God's Heaven
Heaven, Heaven
Everybody talkin' 'bout Heaven ain't goin' there
Heaven, Heaven
Gonna walk all over God's Heaven

In a second verse of the song, the singer gets a robe and looks forward to shouting all over God' Heaven, and in a third verse the singer gets wings and looks forward to flying all over God's Heaven. However, after receiving shoes, a robe, and wings and rejoicing at the prospect of walking, shouting, and flying all over God's Heaven, the subtext of the song remains clear: Everybody talkin' 'bout Heaven ain't goin' there.

I do understand that "loving God" might not be the same thing as "talkin' 'bout Heaven" but my point is this: What does buying (and, one supposes, consuming) 100%-American-made Redneck Riviera whiskey have to do with one's patriotism or eternal destination?

Exactly nothing, that's what.

If you think otherwise or wish to rake me over the coals for having a Puritanical streak, please leave a comment.

It has ever been thus

In the previous post I expressed shock that Ron Howard who as a child played Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show and as a teenager played Richie Cunningham on Happy Days is now 71 years old.

i suppose it has ever been thus, the shock I mean. In my parents' generation, one minute Shirley Temple was singing "On The Good Ship Lollipop" and the next minute Richard Nixon was appointing her to be a delegate to the United Nations and Geral Ford was appointing her to be ambassador to Ghana and George H.W. Bush was appointing her to be ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

One minute Mrs. RWP and I were walking down an aisle at our daughter's wedding to light our family's side of the unity candle while Alan Payne and Lisa Klausman sang "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler On The Roof:

Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older
When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he grow to be so tall?
Wasn't it yesterday
That they were small?

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

and the next minute the bride and groom have been married for almost 33 years and not only have two grown sons but also have two grandchildren.

Time indeed marches on, and I am told on good authority that it waits, along with tide, for no man.

Case in point: Czechoslovakia does not exist any more. It split into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, not to be confused with Slovenia, home of Melania Trump.

Speaking of Trump, here's your factoid for the day: Calista Gingrich, third wife of former Speaker of the House of Representatives during William Jefferson Clinton's administration Newt Gingrich, was appointed by Donald Trump to be ambassador to the Vatican during his first term and ambassador to Switzerland during his second term. I thought you would want to know.

When I first typed the preceding paragraph I mistakenly wrote Calista Flockhart. What a boo-boo! Calista Flockhart is the wife of actor Harrison Ford, not the wife of Newt Gingrich. Appointing Calista Flockhart to be an ambassador two times over would make about as much sense as appointing, say, Shirley Temple.

Tempus, as the Romans used to say, fugit. Time flies. And I can tell you without fear of contradiction that the older you get, the faster it will fly.

I remain, as ever, your roving correspondent,
Rhymeswithplague

Time marches on

Yesterday was the birthday of Ron Howard, the actor-producer-screenwriter-director who played Opie on The Andy Griffith Show and sang "Gary, Indiana" in The Music Man.

He is now 71 years old.

I am in a state of shock.