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.

When did March 20th become the first day of spring?

Your Honor, I place into the record Exhibit A:


When this photograph was taken, this dapper gentleman was 71 years old. A decade earlier, when he was in his early sixties, the doctors discovered that he had cancer of the colon. They performed a colostomy and told him he had six months to live.

Oh, he lived. He lived for almost 35 more years. He outlived all of his doctors.

Finally, just three months and one day before his 96th birthday, he died on December 20, 1970.

He is Nathan Silberman, my maternal grandfather. He was born in 1875. I am now two years younger than he was when the photo was taken in 1946.

We always said my grandfather was born on the first day of spring. For several decades now the vernal equinox seems to have occurred on March 20th, not March 21st. When it changed, and why it changed, and whether the earth is speeding up or slowing down or merely sliding a little backward or forward in its orbit like a yo-yo on a string or possibly tilting a little more or less on its axis than it used to, I do not know. Perhaps it is related to the reason a leap day was not added in century years 1700, 1800, and 1900 but one was added in 1600 and 2000. I wish someone would explain it to me.

But this I know. Today, March 21st, the real first day of spring, is my grandfather’s birthday. He would be 135.

Your Honor, here is Exhibit B, a photograph of him with my grandmother and my mother around 1930.

"Spring forward, fall back" and other March trivia

Ah, March, the time of spring, when a young man's fancy turns to what the young ladies have been thinking about all winter. March is the month that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, unless it comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion. Actually there are two more choices: March might come in like a lamb and go out like a lamb or come in like a lion and go out like a lion. Someone should apply for a federal grant to study what the weather in March has actually been like for the past umpteen years and then write an article about how the findings either totally prove or disprove global warming, or, as it is now being called in some quarters, climate change.

As it happens, the climate is always changing, thanks to the tilt of Earth's axis. Two of the most intriguing events caused by seasonal climate change occur each year in the month of March. On or about March 19, the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano, California. On or about March 15, the buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio. One seems sublime; the other seems ridiculous. Both are true.

On March 9th this year, we turned our clocks one hour ahead to start the annual Daylight Saving Time period, which has been steadily lengthening. Now we have eight months of Daylight Saving Time and only four months of Standard Time. This nonsense, which is very confusing to dogs and cows and chickens, started back in the 1940's and was originally called British War time. The British War may end someday. We can only hope.

Julius Caesar was killed by his pal Brutus on the Ides of March (the 15th) in the year 44 B.C., which was not called 44 B.C. at the time except by the most clairvoyant citizens of the Roman Empire and a few prophetically gifted people living at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. The first part of the previous sentence is true, but the last part is only conjecture.

March 17th is the feast day of St. Patrick in the Roman Catholic Church. There may be a reason why that particular day was chosen to honor Patrick, but I have not been able to find it. It doesn't seem to be the date of his birth, the date of his death, or the date when he drove all the snakes out of Ireland. You must decide for yourself whether the statement made in the last part of the previous sentence is true. As for myself, I think of Ireland every time I look out our back door, because when I look out our back door, I see (wait for it, here it comes) Paddy O'Furniture (groan).

The vernal equinox occurs in March, and it was the date of my grandfather's birth in 1875. Somehow, the vernal equinox seems to have shifted since 1875, because his birthday was March 21st and nowadays the vernal equinox occurs on March 20th. Go figure. Maybe we have accumulated too much Daylight Saving Time since the British War.

This year Easter comes early too; it occurs on March 23rd. For some reason known only to the people who decided to do it that way, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (except in the Eastern Orthodox churches, which calculate the date differently). Speaking of calculating dates, I must have been conceived around the time of a solstice, because I was born around the time of an equinox. We could get into a lengthy discussion here about equinoxes and solstices and how much the Earth's axis is tilted, and why, or we could discuss John Philip Sousa, who was called the March King for an altogether different reason. Let's not, though, because my head is already swimming. It must suffice for now to tell you the most interesting terrestrial phenomenon of all, one that should be obvious in March or any other month: Love makes the world go 'round.