Calling all scientists, geeks, nerds, and short-order cooks

Today is special. Today is one of two days each year when, if you wish, you can balance an egg on end.

Today is the autumnal equinox. The other time is the vernal equinox in March.

Do people in the Southern Hemisphere refer to the equinoxes the same way people in the Northern Hemisphere do? I mean, what we call the autumnal equinox occurs in their spring and what we call the vernal equinox occurs in their autumn. Also, their water swirls the other way around in their toilets. Perhaps Katherine and/or Helsie will explain to us why this is so.

The equinoxes are distinguished from the solstices in that while on an equinox you can, if you wish, balance an egg on end, on a solstice you can only fry an egg on the sidewalk (if it happens to be the summer solstice) or freeze and egg on the sidewalk (if it happens to be the winter solstice). Except, of course, if you happen to be in the Southern Hemisphere. In some years, of course, you can do neither because the day may not be, on the one hand, hot enough or, on the other hand, cold enough, to perform the aforementioned astounding scientific feats.

But today, trust me, you can, if you wish, balance an egg on end.

The tipping point

Today, people in the northern hemisphere find themselves at the midway point between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice (you people in the southern hemisphere find yourself somewhere else). With fall half gone and winter not quite here yet, last week’s big snowstorms in the northeastern part of the U.S. notwithstanding, some of us don’t know whether we’re coming or going, weatherwise. We’re between Scylla and Charybdis, between the devil and the deep blue sea, between a rock and a hard place, climatalogically speaking.

It’s a delicate balance. One is never sure how to dress, for example. Today's high temperature is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit but tonight’s low is expected to be in the 20s. Our sasanqua camellias and encore azaleas are still blooming their guts out profusely today but they could all be dead by tomorrow.

For that matter, so could we. We could lay our heads on our pillows tonight and just not wake up in the morning.

No one likes to think about death and dying, but it happens to us all. One day you’re here and the next day you’re not, just like the contestants on Project Runway. At some point in every person’s life cycle, there comes a time when it’s all downhill from there. Or uphill, depending on whether you're a glass-half-empty or a glass-half-full sort of person. That time, that place from which there is no recovery, is called the tipping point. [Editor’s note. Okay, so maybe it’s not, but work with me, people, I’m trying to sound profound here. --RWP]

I’m sure you younger people don’t waste a minute thinking about your eventual demise and just want to get on with the partying, but for us old codgers the thought of it (our eventual demise, not yours) occupies more and more of our waking hours.

I want to see my grandchildren grow up, get married, and have children of their own. If it were possible, I’d like to see my great-grandchildren grow up, get married, and have children of their own as well. But it’s just not possible, unless the scientists make some really great advances quickly.

I am hoping to be around for the U.S.’s semi-quincentennial celebration in 2026. I’ll be 85 then. By the year of our country’s tercentennial in 2076, though, the likelihood of my being here to help celebrate is slim to none since I would be 135 years old.

Some of you reading this may make it. Take Punk Chopsticks, for example. She’s a 17-year-old girl who once lived in Brooklyn but now lives in Malaysia who reads this blog. In 2076 she’ll be, let’s see, divide by 7, carry the 4, a mere 82 years old.

I’m 70 now and grateful to have lived this long. I hope to be around for quite a few more years. My grandfather lived to be nearly 96 and I want to beat his record.

But I could go to sleep tonight and not wake up tomorrow, and so could you.

I’m not trying to be morbid, just realistic.

Each and every last one of us has a tipping point.

The earth gets to go around its orbit over and over and over. You and I get to go around ours just once.

Make it count.

And Punky, if you’re still here in 2076, raise a glass for me. You’ll recognize my glass. It’ll be the one that’s half-full.

[Editor’s note. Reader Elizabeth S. from England expanded my words “make it count” in her comment and said just what I was trying to convey: “Make it count. Shout it from the rooftops. Live every moment with abundance,never fail to tell people how much you care about them, to appreciate this beautiful, amazing world and the astounding people within it, each with significant, special, individual stories to tell, to build meaningful memories in the hearts of both yourself and those who will be left behind and to celebrate every precious, valuable second as though it was your last. Make it count.” Thank you, Elizabeth. --RWP]

Equinoctial Hodgepodge

I am old and getting older every day, and I can’t remember whether I showed you these photographs before. It may have something to do with today’s being the autumnal equinox, but then again, it may not. If I did show the photographs to you before, please be advised that I am about to show them to you again.

Here are 17 members of the Class of 1958 of Mansfield High School, Mansfield, Texas, at the class’s 50th-year reunion in 2008. Forty-some of us received our diplomas together on a May evening 53 years ago, but some have died and some, like me, weren’t able to attend the reunion. I can name every single person in the photograph. If you click on the photograph, though, you can see them better -- Linda Lee Harrison and Johnny Paul Howard and Roland Cope and Ona Faye Russell Roberts and Patsy Joan Hudson and Glenda Vincent Franks and Johnie Mac Day and Darrell Rayburn and Judith Crawford and John Galloway. and Alene Bratcher (standing) and Patsy Darlene Rawdon and Barbara Ann Pigg and Carol Daugherty and Brenda Sue Harrison and Sally Bratton and Jimmie Sue Raines (seated).

(Click photo to enlarge it)

And here, from either the fall of 1954 or the spring of 1955, is the Mansfield High School Tiger Marching Band, a motley crew if there ever was one. I can’t even begin to name everyone in this photo, but I do remember many of them.

(Click photo to enlarge it, then click on the enlargement to enlarge the enlargement)

At the left is the band’s founder and first director, Miss Sally Pearce of Rochester, New York. Trumpet was her major instrument, but she had come to Texas to get her master’s degree at TCU in Fort Worth and write a thesis about The History of the Double Bass Viol (which she also played). She organized the band the year I was in seventh grade and stayed with us for three years (I was in ninth grade when the photo was taken). She was succeeded by a Mr. Thomas McDonald of Arkansas who also became the choir director at the local Methodist Church where I was organist. After two years with Mr. McDonald, the band’s director during my senior year was Mr. Richard Weir, who would get so angry on the practice field that he would curse out loud and kick people’s behinds. I don’t suppose he could do that today.

In my junior year, the band finally acquired brand-new uniforms to replace those ancient black ones, which not only had looked like police uniforms but also were already quite well-worn by the time we acquired them. Our new uniforms were a sight to behold: gold jackets, black trousers with gold stripes down the sides, and tall black hats with white plumes and silver chain chinstraps.

Unfortunately, we looked better than we sounded. Mansfield’s band in those early days had about 45 members, and during our halftime shows at the Friday night football games, if even a few band members were absent no one in the visitors’ stands could tell what our formations were supposed to be. Everyone in the home stands always knew what our field formations were supposed to be, because we could make only two: A big M for Mansfield and a football with laces down the middle.

The saxophone section in the lower right of the photo were all members of the class of 1958, as were the three people behind them. In front are Diane Phillips and Marshall Tyson and Bruce Hornell, and behind them are Johnie Mac Day (he’s also in the reunion photo in the middle of the back row, wearing a red shirt), Jerry Willis and another Judith, Judith Glaze. It pains me to have to tell you that Marshall, Bruce, and Judith are all dead now. Bruce was the first member of our class to shuffle off this mortal coil. A Methodist minister, he drowned during a flood while trying to help rescue people.

I can’t quite make out the sousaphone player behind Judith, but standing next to him is none other than your correspondent at age 14.

One other person in the reunion photograph is in the band photo as well. John Galloway, the tall fellow third from right in the back row of the reunion photo, is near the left end of the middle row in the band photo.

All my memories are a far cry from this band, the JSU (Jacksonvile State University) Marching Southerners (12:44), in which two of my children marched during their college years. The clip is from 2010.

To conclude our time together, let us all sing "Marching to Pretoria"....

Now go make an egg stand on its end.

All things being equal, the sun can be mean, but it does have its ups and downs.

Today or tomorrow (depending on where you live) is the autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere and, I suppose, the vernal equinox in the southern hemisphere. It occurs at 11:09 p.m., September 22nd, in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone, which is already September 23rd in most of the rest of the world.

For your cultural enrichment and equinoctial reading pleasure, here are some little-known facts. Note that I do not call them trivia:

* The traditional East Asian calendars divide a year into 24 solar terms (节气, literally “climatic segments”), and the vernal equinox (Chūnfēn, Chinese and Japanese: 春分; Korean: 춘분; Vietnamese: Xuân phân) and the autumnal equinox (Qiūfēn, Chinese and Japanese: 秋分; Korean: 추분; Vietnamese: Thu phân) mark the middle of the spring and autumn seasons, respectively. In this context, the Chinese character 分 means “(equal) division” (within a season).

* In Japan, (March) Vernal Equinox Day (春分の日 Shunbun no hi) is an official national holiday, and is spent visiting family graves and holding family reunions. Similarly, in September, there is an Autumnal Equinox Day (秋分の日 Shūbun no hi).

* Wiccans and many other Neopagans hold religious celebrations of “Ostara” on the spring equinox, and “Mabon” on the autumnal equinox.

* The September equinox marks the first day of Mehr or Libra in the Iranian calendar. It is one of the Iranian festivals called Jashne Mihragan, or the festival of sharing or love in Zoroastrianism.

* In Korea, Chuseok is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday celebrated around the Autumn Equinox.

* The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, oftentimes near the autumnal equinox day, and is an official holiday in China and in many countries with a significant Chinese minority. As the lunar calendar is not synchronous with the Gregorian calendar, this date could be anywhere from mid-September to early October.

* The traditional harvest festival in the United Kingdom was celebrated on the Sunday of the full moon closest to the September equinox.

* The September equinox was “New Year’s Day” in the French Republican Calendar, which was in use from 1793 to 1805. The French First Republic was proclaimed and the French monarchy was abolished on September 21, 1792, making the following day (the equinox day that year) the first day of the “Republican Era” in France. The start of every year was to be determined by astronomical calculations following the real Sun and not the mean Sun.

Thank you, Wikipedia. After reading all of that, I feel like going off on a tangent, so I will, in a manner of speaking.

Here, from 1931, is Ruth Etting, star of stage and the silver screen, singing “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”

Finally, here is your science lesson for today. We all know that the moon does not shine at all; it just reflects sunlight. But if this is the earth (and it is):


and the little boy in the picture below represents where the sun is directly overhead at noon on the first day of autumn, that is, the Tropic of Capricorn, and the little girl represents where the sun is directly overhead at noon on the first day of spring, that is, the Tropic of Cancer, then the seesaw, if it were horizontal, would represent the equator, and the children would represent the first day of summer and the first day of winter.


Aren’t you glad I cleared that up?

The autumnal equinox came and went and I didn't even notice.

It’s true. I must be slipping, because I usually notice such things. I shall now try to make up for my inexplicable neglect by referring you to the Wikipedia article on the equinox.

Here is the Wikipedia article on the equinox.

I said I would, didn’t I?

For those of you who are too jaded to bother to expand your horizons by reading an article on a subject you have absolutely no interest in whatsoever, let me tantalize you by revealing that not only does the article contain a table that contains the UTC date and time of every solstice and equinox between the years 2004 and 2017, but it also contains the following irresistible subheadings:

Names
Length of equinoctial day and night
Heliocentric view of the seasons
Geocentric view of the seasons
Day arcs of the Sun
Celestial co-ordinate systems
Cultural aspects of the equinox
Myths, fables, and facts

and the ever-popular References and External Links.

It also contains a photograph of a bas-relief in Persepolis and one of the Chichen Itza pyramid, as well as the astounding fact that boatyard employees and sailboat owners in Annapolis, Maryland, USA, celebrate the spring equinox with the Burning of the Socks festival.

If these few teasers don’t inspire you to take a peek at an article about the equinox, nothing will.

Sumer is igoin out

Lhude sing cuccu!

On Monday, September 22, 2008, at 15:44 UTC (more on this below), the autumnal or fall equinox will occur in Earth’s northern hemisphere. Strange as it may seem, the vernal or spring equinox does not occur simultaneously in Earth’s southern hemisphere, although spring will begin at that time in Earth’s southern hemisphere. No, the terms “autumn” and “spring” in relation to equinoxes is based on whether the sun is crossing the equator from north to south or from south to north. According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, the equinox that will occur on September 22 is known as the fall or September or autumnal or Libra or Virgo or southward equinox, as opposed to the other one (there are two per year) that is known as the spring or March or vernal or Aries or Pisces or northward equinox.

If you have a burning need to know even more about an equinox, here is another interesting paragraph from the Wikipedia article:

“On a day that has an equinox, the center of the Sun will spend a nearly equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on Earth and night and day will be of nearly the same length. The word equinox derives from the Latin words aequus (equal) and nox (night). In reality, the day is longer than the night at an equinox. Commonly, the day is defined as the period that sunlight reaches the ground in the absence of local obstacles. From Earth, the Sun appears as a disc and not a single point of light; so, when the center of the Sun is below the horizon, the upper edge is visible. Furthermore, the atmosphere refracts light; so, even when the upper limb of the Sun is below the horizon, its rays reach over the horizon to the ground. In sunrise/sunset tables, the assumed semidiameter (apparent radius) of the sun is 16 minutes of arc and the atmospheric refraction is assumed to be 34 minutes of arc. Their combination means that when the upper limb of Sun is on the visible horizon its center is 50 minutes of arc below the geometric horizon, which is the intersection with the celestial sphere of a horizontal plane through the eye of the observer. These effects together make the day about 14 minutes longer than the night at the equator, and longer still at sites toward the poles. The real equality of day and night only happens at places far enough from the equator to have at least a seasonal difference in daylength of 7 minutes, and occurs a few days towards the winter side of each equinox.”

All righty, then. Let's push on.

In honor of Ruth Hull Chatlien’s new Bulova watch, which her husband Michael gave her as a fiftieth birthday present (hers, not his), I would like to turn now to the subject of Coordinated Universal Time (which is abbreviated UTC even though it looks as though it ought to be abbreviated CUT and which in French is known as Temps Universel Coordonné which looks as though it ought to be abbreviated TUC but is still referred to as UTC), which Wikipedia says is International Atomic Time (TAI, not IAT) with leap seconds added at irregular intervals “to compensate for the Earth's slowing rotation” which sounds a bit alarming because a slowing implies an eventual stop but apparently is of no great consequence. I would like to, but I dare not, as the Wikipedia article on the subject is confusing enough to make your head spin and have an equinox of its own, depending on your axial tilt.

It must suffice to report to you the fascinating information that the Earth’s rotational speed is very slowly decreasing due to tidal deceleration, causing the mean solar day to increase in length, which requires the occasional insertion of the aforementioned leap second by people who know exactly how and when to do it.

Perhaps Ruth should link to them so that she will know when to adjust her new Bulova watch.

Update: I left out a really important fact about UTC or CUT or TUC or TCU (no, that's Texas Christian University): It's the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), the time at the Royal Observatory in England, the time along the Prime Meridian, zero degrees longitude. So the autumnal equinox will occur in the United States at 11:44 Eastern/10:44 Central, as they say on television, on Monday.