Tick Tick, Bong Bong

Most of us are probably familiar with the depiction of the New Year as a baby, often brought in by a stork. The idea is that once the clock strikes midnight on Jan. 1, something brand new arrives, along with infinite possibilities. A clean slate.

Really? Of course, we know that the dropping of the ball at Times Square, the chimes of midnight by Big Ben, and, in this case, the change in the final digit of the calendar year don’t really clean much on our slates. Most likely, the same set of circumstances we face at 11:59 p.m. will still largely be there at 12:01 a.m. – the bad along with the good.

To further complicate matters, we all don’t observe this change in digits at the same time. The champagne corks start popping in New Zealand, and the sound works its way around the world to Hawaii. Calendars and clocks are human inventions. It was only fairly recently that the world agreed on which calendar to follow among numerous choices. Clocks only became critical in the 19^th century, triggered by the rise of the railroad. And even now, time is subject to human decision-makers. Arizona doesn’t recognize Daylight Saving Time (nor do some of my older electronic devices, since Congress changed the opening and closing dates for DST).

They say our brains are wired to remember the bad things more vividly than the good, and as the New Year reminds us we’re not getting any younger, we consider some of the less-than-brilliant decisions we’ve made, occasionally at critical times. If we could only go back, we think, and undo that thing we did, or failed to do, life would be much better today. Would it? I don’t necessarily believe in “God’s plan,” but I do believe in chains of events. You can’t pull a link out of the chain and assume that all the links that followed would necessarily have been any better. Different, yes. But we are always forging new ones.

A young friend changed her life in 2013, selling her home in one state and moving to another where housing is cheaper, taxes are lower, and most important for her, the people seem more genuine. There was also a unique set of circumstances that allowed her to do it. That said, you can’t discount her courage in moving to a destination where she knew nobody. I often tell her that while there was wind beneath her wings, she’s the one who did the flying, often through storms.

But even she couldn’t change everything -- and how could she? The slate is never “clean.” At this moment in time, we are all the sum total of our experience. The changes we make ourselves, good or bad, are only possible because of previous events. We are all the product of our past, whether we like it or not.

Are the possibilities before us truly infinite? More so, it would seem, for some than for others. Infinite or not, we can all agree that possibilities are out there for all of us, and there’s something uplifting in that at seasons such as this.

But that’s always the case – not just at midnight on 1/1.

The Solstice Isn't Simple

Here in the West Coast city where I live, the winter solstice is supposed to arrive a little after 9 a.m. tomorrow (Saturday 12/21). The summer solstice is about my favorite time of the year – the time of the longest days. The winter solstice is also a favorite, but only because the nights will finally start to get shorter. But which is exactly the shortest day – and conversely, the longest night? The online charts don’t seem to agree on that issue. If tomorrow is the shortest day does that make tonight (Friday) the longest night of the year? As I write this, it’s too early in the morning to do math. For you solstice celebrators, at least it’s a weekend, so you can begin and end it when you want. Just go easy on the mead if you’re driving, OK?

North of the Arctic Circle, the sun doesn’t rise at all – and won’t until the first week in January. The town of Inuvik in northern Canada actually has a festival every year to mark the return of the sun, which will have been a no-show for about a month.

Scholars seem to agree that it’s tied in with Christmas. December 25 is the traditional day of Jesus Christ’s birth – but was he actually born on that day? The evidence seems to point to the holiday being related to pagan solstice festivals – it may actually have been created as religious competition for those older celebrations. And does our annual orgy of Christmas lighting figure in? At the most basic level, the lights fight the darkness, here in the Northern Hemisphere at least, so there’s a similar principle at work.

However it happens, the behavior of the sun – or more precisely, the Earth wobbling on its axis -- is something we count on. For us, it’s the universal constant in what is otherwise an uncertain existence.

There is no better way to end this discussion than to leave you with one of the most beautiful songs in American musical theater, from “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opened on Broadway in 1964, and later became a movie:

Sunrise, Sunset 

TMI

The first two bullets fired in what could become one of the biggest legal battles in American history have struck a target. A federal judge has ruled that the NSA’s massive collection of phone data on millions of us appears to violate the Constitution, and ordered it to stop doing so on two plaintiffs.

A big section of pavement has been laid on Edward Snowden’s likely road to sainthood. If it weren’t for him, of course, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. But if it weren’t for the government taking on private contractors to operate this system, there probably wouldn’t be an Edward Snowden, either. How many other private contractors are there, with access to information on us, who just might not be as interested in the greater good?

When a sitting federal judge throws around terms like “Orwellian,” it tends to get your attention. Personally, I have no problem with the use of modern information systems to prevent terrorism. But does this massive NSA program actually work? As critics have pointed out making the haystack bigger only makes it harder to find the needle.  

I have this creeping suspicion that while our lives are becoming more transparent to government (and Google, Microsoft et al, BTW), government operations are becoming more and more opaque. Is it really all about safety and security? Do you think sometimes, when government power is exercised, it’s just because it’s there and justifies someone’s job?

Of course, these issues are not as black-and-white as the Snowden fans would have us believe. But 9/11 happened in large measure not because the dots weren’t already there, but because nobody connected them, which seems to be a factor in many high-profile man-made tragedies, such as school shootings. Can we have a reasonable discussion about what information the authorities need about us and what they don’t – and what government operations need to be secret and what don’t? The deep end isn’t all that far away, and I’d really hate to see us go off it.

Skin in the Game

We’ve been having a lot of fun – at least I think it’s been fun – about Fox anchor Megyn Kelly’s assertion a while ago that Santa Claus was white – kind of like Jesus. I hope the comedians and satirists out there send her thank-you notes for this great holiday gift. Saves paying writers for it.

Let’s start with the hard one first (or is it the easier one?). Scholars have debated this for a long time, but to my mind, there’s a much better-than-even chance that Jesus was Semitic (BTW, a designation that could apply to other Middle Eastern ethnicities besides Jews). Which means he likely had dark, curly hair and olive skin. Fine. Many classical artists, on the other hand, have depicted him as white. Why? I don’t think they were making political statements – more likely, that’s what they were surrounded by and were used to. It seems doubtful, given the difficulties of travel in his day, that Jesus would have been either white or black. But he didn’t do selfies, and the Shroud of Turin isn’t going to shed any light on this one, either.

Seems artists have had similar problems with the Virgin Mary. Images of her as a white woman seem to predominate in our culture, but unlike Jesus, she’s apparently been “coming back” over the centuries on a semi-regular basis, and doesn’t always look the same. Hispanics in this hemisphere have depicted her as one of them – based, I suppose, on one of her regional appearances.

Santa? Well, he would seem to be a Northern European invention – snow, reindeer, etc., so the depiction of him as white does not seem to cause too much pain, at least for me. As a young man, he may have even been blond before his beard turned white. But hang on a minute: If Santa Claus is actually based on St. Nicholas, who was a real figure, there might be a problem. St. Nicholas was Greek or Turkish. There’s a good chance, then, that he had olive skin and curly hair as well, right? (And while we’re dealing with popular symbols, is Santa, as commonly depicted, sending the wrong message to kids about obesity? Just wondering…)

Even the reindeer have their secrets. From what I heard yesterday, male reindeer shed their antlers in the winter, while females, who also grow them, hang onto theirs until after they give birth in the spring – meaning all of Santa’s reindeer, according to the depictions of the season, have to be girls. So what does that make Rudolph? A “transgen-deer”?

I think the Muslims may have a point. They forbid depictions of Allah. No white guy with a beard sitting on a cloud hurling lightning bolts at them. This has allowed those of that faith to move on to other issues. Shouldn’t we?

Language Barriers

In just a couple of weeks now, 2013 will be history – for some, it will be more historic than for others. It was especially so for a friend who was summing up her life events of the past 12 months. I commented that for her, it was an historic year – unaware that I had just stepped on a verbal land mine.

Not long ago, she and I were part of an industry that required working with words, so for us, stepping on such explosive devices is a more likely occurrence, perhaps, than with most people. Anyway, my use of “an historic” was called into question. What’s the “n” doing in front of a hard “h”? she wanted to know.

OK! Well I have always written it that way out of habit, and as far as I knew, it was still accepted usage – which brought back the equivalent of ,”Oh yeah? Where?” And I was double-dared to Google it – which I did, and found several discussions which led me to believe that the issue wasn’t entirely settled. The most reasonable explanation was that certain English words that were derived from French, in which the “h” was silent, as in “histoire,” could take the “an” in front. While my former colleague was willing to accept the explanation, she still didn’t accept the usage itself. Pet peeve, she said.

Still awake here, folks? In any case, this wasn’t a battle I felt like fighting to the death. I have to admit that she has a point, in the sense that only snots who have read too much English literature (like me) write that way. You can be sure that in writing to her, I won’t go THERE again.

But when it comes to language, we all have things that make our blood boil. A TV anchorwoman in the city where I used to live would end lists of items with “and etcetera.” That makes me almost homicidal.

Fortunately, publishers and media companies have developed style books for both the written and the spoken word. Otherwise, the murder rate in newspaper offices and TV newsrooms would be much higher than it is today. 

But language evolves, and we all have to evolve with it. I still occasionally call the big white (or chrome or brushed stainless) thing you put food in to keep it cold an “icebox”. Didn’t people stop using those most of a century ago? I think it’s an Eastern thing. Or maybe my former colleague is right – I need a good dose of evolution.

 After all is said, written, and done, isn’t the goal just plain old getting your point across? If your usage interferes with that goal, then “…what we have heeahh…” to quote the warden in Cool Hand Luke, “…is a failyuh to communicate.”

Watt's New?

Holiday lighting is cheery…up to a point.

Like everything else in America, it has been turned into an Olympic sport.  A few white lights on the tree outside used to be sufficient. Now, every other house is Disneyland. At the newspaper where I worked, the photographers went out to shoot the most spectacular displays, and we published a different picture or group of pictures for several weeks. Fortunately, we stopped short of awarding prizes.

A few spiders, skeletons and cobwebs got the job done for Halloween. Why do you need 500 lighted reindeer on your front lawn? I’m very glad to know there’s a happy – and well-heeled -- family living in your house, but geez Louise, when does artistic decoration turn into actual light pollution?

Is Dad outside on a ladder stringing these lights along the roofline himself? Of course not, there are companies that do this, and it’s a growing business.

Now I’m not a complete Scrooge. There are homeowners on certain streets who deliberately choose to go all-out and light everything up, publicizing it ahead of time, and welcome parades of cars through the neighborhood. I assume new homebuyers have to be told what’s expected of them if they move in. But if this is the way that street wants to share holiday cheer, have at it.

On the other hand, there are homeowners’ associations that turn into little police states. If you want to put colored lights on your outside tree, that’s a no-no, “We don’t do that here at Snotty Acres, white lights only, please.”

The good thing about this holiday season in the Northern Hemisphere is that thanks to the lights, we can see where we’re going in the dark, which is two-thirds of the day in the dead of winter. Anything that keeps us from slipping on black ice.