Naturalist's Almanac

FEBRUARY 28: FEBRUARY'S 28 DAYS

2000-02-28T09:29:00.004-05:00

Why does February have only 28 days? You’d think with seven 31-day months, it would have been easy enough to give February 30, but calendars have never been easy. When the Romans first began working on the one that has become ours, February didn’t even exist.

The problem from the beginning was to reconcile the moon’s 29 1/2 day month with the sun’s 365 1/4 day year. The Romans’ first effort, supposedly devised by their founder, Romulus, included 10 months that added up to only 304 days. Clearly, Romulus had not conceptualized the problem.

The legend continues that King Numa Pompilius added January and February. The days now added up to 355, approximately the number in 12 lunar cycles but still 10 to 11 days short of a solar year. So Numa invented an extra month called Mercedinus that would be added to February every other year.

Numa’s calendar was getting closer to a system that would work, but its lingering attachment to the lunar cycle made it unwieldy. Julius Caesar decided to ignore the lunar cycle and get rid of Mercedinus by arranging the number of days in the twelve months to add up to exactly 365 1/4. February wound up with 29 days plus an extra every fourth year.

Julius Caesar’s calendar, which is referred to as the Julian calendar, is essentially the one we use today — with a few minor adjustments. It may have been Augustus, or maybe his admirers, who made the final adjustment to February. February 29 got shifted to August, which had been named in honor of Augustus, because August needed an extra day to be equal to July, which had been named in honor of Julius.

So that’s how February came to be only 28 days. Interestingly enough a recent proposal for calendar reform suggests that all months should have 28 days and that there should be 13 of them. This fixed calendar would add up to 364, requiring only one extra day— two in leap years — to make the calendar dead simple.

If math were all that mattered it might work, but our current calendar’s luni-solar roots are deeply embedded in our religious, cultural, and even business lives. The irregular civil calendar that governs our days remains our most enduring connection to these ancient roots.

MORE INFORMATION

Early Roman Calendar
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-roman.html

Lots of interesting information arranged in an question-and-answer format with some interesting reproductions of old Roman calendars.

Roman Calendar
http://www.highdown.reading.sch.uk/highdown/pupil/time/calendars/earlyrom.html

Bill Hollon, the author of this Web site, has put together a lot of information on calendars and calendar history. For a glimpse of what’s available, visit his Site Map. His discussion of the Roman calendar includes an explanation of February, its addition to the calendar, and Mercedinus. If what he says sounds familiar, it’s because he gave the Web Exhibits site permission to borrow much of his text. For Hollon’s explanation of why February has only 28 days, visit the next link.

Octavian's Changes
http://www.highdown.reading.sch.uk/highdown/pupil/time/calendars/octavian.html

Hollon offers a substantial discussion of Octavian (the emperor we call Augustus) and his adjustments to Julius Caesar’s calendar.

Romans' Messy Calendar
http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/node3.html#SECTION00380000000000000000

That's 16 zeros! This link will take you directly to the section of Claus Tondering's FAQ's that discusses the Roman calendar. Tondering questions how much we really know about early Roman calendars and Augustus' adjustments to the Julian calendar. Tondering also made major contributions to the Web Exhibits' information on the Early Roman Calendar.

Calendar Reform
http://personal.ecu.edu/mccartyr/calendar-reform.html

This Web site offers lots of background information on calendar reform. Scroll down to the bottom of the introductory text, and look for links to the various 13-month calendars that have been proposed. This site takes no sides. It is devoted to history rather than advocacy.

JUNE 30: LEAP SECOND

2000-06-30T12:22:00.001-04:00

On June 30 some years a leap second is added to the most precise clocks the human species has yet succeeded in devising. Why? Think of leap year, when we add an extra day to keep our human calendars aligned with the solar year. A leap second involves adding an extra second — or possibly subtracting one — to keep our human clocks aligned with the solar day.

Neither of these fine-tunings was necessary during the earliest period of our evolution when we, like the plants and animals around us, responded directly to the sun. The problems arose when our ancestors began thinking it was important to tell, measure, and keep time.

Early sundials were good at telling time, and hourglasses could measure short periods of it, but neither kept track of its continuous passage. So scientists invented clocks. While calendars required only that the number days agree with the solar year, clocks introduced smaller time units: hours, minutes, and seconds. And as the time units became smaller, precision became more important.

Clocks have been refined over the years, resulting in today's extremely precise atomic clocks. The problem now is that these atomic clocks are too precise. The Earth wobbles and fluctuates as it rotates on its axis and is in fact slowing down. So atomic time can differ from the Earth's rotation time by what can accumulate toward a second.

Because we can't adjust the Earth's rotation, we have to adjust our atomic clocks. A group of extremely attentive observers working at the International Earth Rotation Service decide exactly when we need to add — or subtract — a leap second.

Since June 30, 1972, we’ve added 22 leap seconds, nine of them to June 30 and thirteen of them to December 31. A June 30 leap second is added right after what we in Vermont experience as 7:59 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. At the Greenwich Observatory it is 23:59:59, then 23:59:60, then 00:00:00 of July 1. A December 31 leap second works the same way, only it’s a tad more exciting because it happens on New Year’s Eve.

June and December are both such busy months for me that I don’t really have time to celebrate a leap second. But I’m grateful to the Earth for making my clocks give me those extra seconds every once in a while to do with what I will.

MORE INFORMATION

National Institute of Standards and Technology
http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/pubs/bulletin/leapsecond.htm

This link will take you to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Physics Lab in Boulder, Colorado. Their Time and Frequency Division is the keeper of official time for the United States. Their explanation of the leap second is short and sweet. It includes a list of the leap seconds that have been added since 1972 as well as a notice about whether or not one is expected soon. Once you’re at this site, you might want to check out their link to CURRENT TIME, where you will learn the exact time in your time zone to within two seconds, and their FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS section just to see if they’ve answered any questions you’ve been asking.

One-Man Web Site
http://www.leapsecond.com

This is a one-man Web site full of information about time. His home page includes several interesting links: <http://www.leapsecond.com/notes/whyls.htm> takes you to his brief discussion of leap seconds. <http://www.leapsecond.com/java/nixie.htm> takes you to a clock that’s counting down to the next leap second. And <http://www.leapsecond.com/java/gpsclock.htm> takes you to a page that uses your computer’s time to generate five different kinds of time. This page also offers numerous links to other Web sites that have information about leap seconds.

U.S. Naval Observatory's Time Service
http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/leapsec.html

The U.S. Naval Observatory’s Time Service Department offers the most detailed and authoritative discussion of leap seconds.

NOVEMBER 1: SAMHAIN

2000-11-01T08:56:00.000-05:00

Samhain — the Celtic ancestor of today's Halloween — was both the last of the four seasonal celebrations that divided the Celtic year into quarters (see Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasa) and the first of their new year. The word samhain means the end of summer, but the time of year meant the beginning of winter. The Celts chose this celebrational but ominous turning point as their New Year.

Their harvest was in, their livestock were back from summer pastures, and their families were as ready as they could be for the long winter ahead. To celebrate the New Year, the Celts spent a long eerie night honoring their dead, who might be wandering around cold and lonely at this transitional time of year. They lit bonfires and prepared food for any of the dead who might come to call. Other more negative spirits might also be abroad, which added an element of fear to the occasion.

As far as today's Halloween is concerned, we have the Celts to thank for the skeletons, ghosts, goblins, and other scary or supernatural elements. We can also thank them for the the fact that we celebrate Halloween at night. Because Celtic days began at sunset, their festivals always began in the evening and lasted until well after dark.

When the Romans invaded Celtic lands, they added their own November harvest festival to Samhain. So Halloween's harvest elements — especially apples and nuts — came from the Romans. Later, when the Christians began to dominate Roman and European cultures, they added the church's celebration of dead saints and martyrs — All Hallows — to Samhain. So it was the Christians who gave us the name we now use: All Hallow's Eve modernized to Halloween. Finally, during the 1840s, the Irish fleeing their potato famine added the jack-o'-lantern to customs evolving in this country. In Ireland, children had carved rutabagas, turnips, or potatoes, but our native pumpkins made much bigger and brighter jack-o'-lanterns.

Of the Celts' four seasonal celebrations, only Samhain has persisted with some of its original power still intact. Imbolc has degenerated into a somewhat ridiculous Groundhog Day, Beltane has become an international labor day, and Lughnasa has been forgotten altogether.

But Samhain survives as our massively popular Halloween — a Celtic, Roman, Christian, Irish, and now thoroughly American celebration. It invites us, as it did the ancient Celts, to take an eerie but festive break between the ease of summer that's now behind us and the rigors of winter that loom ahead.

MORE INFORMATION

Samhain and Halloween
http://www.utah.edu/planetarium/CQHalloween.html

Not many scientists write about the Celtic cross-quarter days, but this one does. As the former director of the Hansen Planetarium in Utah, he knows his astronomy — and also his weather, his natural history, and other cultures’ practices with respect to the solar year. He writes a newspaper column called “Looking Around” from which this very readable essay is adapted.

Samhain - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

The Wikipedia offers a substantial article on Samhain with cross-references to Halloween.

DECEMBER 24: NORTH POLE

2000-12-24T19:51:00.000-05:00

It's no wonder that during the Christmas season Santa Claus wants to leave home and travel around a bit. In December, the North Pole has to be one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.

For starters, it's three months into the six-month darkness that reigns from the fall equinox in September until the spring equinox in March. Just a few days before Christmas, at the winter solstice, the sun never even peeps above the horizon, making that particular day one long night.

It's also cold — as in totally frozen. Because there's no land at the North Pole, Santa had to build his workshop on ice. The polar ice pack is a jumbled mass that cracks, jams, melts a bit, and refreezes, creating a surface that's difficult to navigate.

But at least Santa doesn't have to worry about falling through. When the first submarine, the U.S.S. Nautilus, traveled under the polar ice pack to reach the North Pole by water, it measured thicknesses of up to fifty feet.

In addition to being dark and cold, what Santa called the North Pole yesterday might not be the North Pole tomorrow. That's because the polar ice pack floats, moving with the currents of the Arctic Ocean.

So Santa has to keep relocating his workshop to be sure he's where he's supposed to be — at the geographic North Pole, the point where the Earth's axis would emerge if it were a metal rod as our familiar globes imply.

Furthermore, if Santa gets lost, he can't use a compass to find his way home. A compass would point him to the magnetic North Pole, which is different from the geographic North Pole. Magnetic north is not a fixed point but a shifting region that's currently about a thousand miles from where Santa wants to be.

If Santa ever became totally disoriented in the darkness on his floating ice pack, with a shifting magnetic pole trying to lure him off in the wrong direction, the best thing for him to do is probably what he already does at the end of his Christmas travels: point his trusty reindeer directly toward the North Star and count on them to find their way home.

MORE INFORMATION

Arctic Theme Page
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/education.html

When you first see the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic theme page you may think you’ve hit a dud because there are no pictures or graphics or anything else to attract your visual attention. But if you look more closely you will see what a wealth of information is available from this starting point. First, check out their own offerings by visiting their Gallery (which includes archival photos of Robert Peary in 1909), their Essays (which include Ask an Expert answers to intriguing questions) and their Frequently Asked Questions (which include answers to most of the common questions you might be asking). They also list 30-some links to other Web sites that invite further explorations of the arctic.

Magnetic North
http://geo.phys.uit.no/articl/roadto.html

One aspect of the North Pole that fascinates me is the existence of two of them: geographic and magnetic. This Web link will take you to a substantial essay on the history of magnetism, compasses, and the discovery of the magnetic north.

DECEMBER 21: WINTER SOLSTICE

2000-12-21T20:15:00.000-05:00

The winter solstice occurs around December 21-22 every year and confronts me with a night that lasts so long that some primitive part of my brain wonders if the sun is ever going to rise again. At this time of year I walk up and down my road, looking at the sun from various angles and at different times of day, trying to understand textbook explanations of what’s happening.

The best I can do is envision a simplified solar system with the sun a big ball at the center and the Earth a smaller ball orbiting around it. If I freeze-frame this simplified solar system, drive a rod through the center of the Earth, and tilt the rod away from the sun, I see exactly what happens at the winter solstice: the tilted Earth’s Northern Hemisphere points as far away from the sun as it’s going to point all year.

But why are the days so dark and the nights so long? The textbooks invite me to imagine a flat horizon with clear views both east and west. They show the sun rising later and farther south every morning, traveling lower across the daytime sky, and setting earlier at the end of a shorter arc. No wonder that primitive part of my brain worries that it’s going to disappear altogether.

Recently, one of my elderly farm neighbors, who was sitting quietly at his kitchen window watching the sun itself while I was pacing up and down the road, gave me a special gift. He loved to watch the sun come up every morning and decided to draw an extended picture of how the sunrise moves along the horizon he could see from where he sat.

Because this horizon includes a distinctive mountain called Camel’s Hump, his drawing shows clearly what the sun does between the summer and winter solstices. It rises well to the left of Camel’s Hump on June 20 and well to the right on December 21. If he had also included how high the sun travels above the horizon, it would show exactly what my textbook graphics with all their intersecting planes and arcs were trying to explain.

I am grateful to have a copy of my neighbor’s “horizon calendar,” which he gave me shortly before he died. I framed it and keep it on the wall above my desk to remind me that despite my continuing efforts to understand the whole solar system, my daily life takes place right here on Earth. My own horizon, if I attend to it, will teach me what’s important about the sun — that it will indeed rise again after the longest night, reverse direction, and start its six-month journey back toward the longest day.

MORE INFORMATION

Windows to the Universe
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/the_universe/uts/winter.html

This Web site offers about as clear an explanation of the winter solstice as I’ve found. It includes colorful graphics to illustrate the concepts I wrestle with whenever I try to think about the Earth as a planet rotating on a a tilted axis and traveling in an elliptical orbit around the sun.

U.S. Naval Observatory
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/EarthSeasons.html

If all you want to know is the date and time of the winter solstice, this link will take you to the U.S. Naval Observatory’s list for 1992-2005.

Horizon Calendar
http://www.clarkfoundation.org/astro-utah/vondel/suncalendar.html

This link takes you to a newspaper column written by an astronomer who happens to be the retired director of the Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake City. This particular column talks about creating a horizon calendar like my neighbor's.

Winter Solstice Celebrations
http://www.clarkfoundation.org/astro-utah/vondel/solsticewin.html

In this column the same astronomer talks about how various cultures have observed or celebrated the winter solstice over the centuries. He mentions the Zoroastrians, Zuni, Hopi, Romans, and Christians.

Festivals of Light
http://www.clarkfoundation.org/astro-utah/vondel/FestivalsOfLight.html

In yet another column this same very interesting astronomer discusses why we turn on so many lights during December and why we have chosen to make the transition from one year to the next at this particular time of year.

OCTOBER 10: THE METRIC SYSTEM

2000-10-10T19:29:00.000-04:00

National Metric Week occurs every October during the week that includes the 10th. So look for some discussion of the metric system every year about then.

The metric system, which is based on the meter and the number 10, has a 200-year history, but it’s still a relative newcomer to the world of measurement. Long before exact measurements became culturally important, human beings just used their body parts to approximate sizes and distances.

Native Americans, for instance, used their fingers, hands, forearms, and arms. The Greeks used their feet, and the Romans subdivided a foot into 12 units called unciae, from which the English word inches is derived.

When the Romans invaded northern Europe, they brought the 12-inch foot with them, and the northern Europeans added it to their own evolving yard. The yard was originally based on the size of a king’s waist, but King Henry I redefined it as the distance from the tip of his nose to the end of his outstretched thumb.

Later King Edward I defined the foot as one-third of a yard and the inch as one-thirty-sixth of a yard. And that’s the complicated British imperial system — which is actually based on the Romans’ attachment to the number 12 — that our ancestors brought with them to this continent. We still cling to this system as if it were our own invention.

The French were actually the inventive ones. After their revolution, the new leaders wanted a completely new system of measurement that would be based on scientific principles rather than Roman inches and British body parts. They came up with the metric system as a totally simple, internally consistent set of measurements based on the size of the earth.

The original meter was to be one ten-millionth of the distance between the North Pole and the equator — by way of Paris, of course. French astronomers spent six years measuring that distance and deriving the exact length of the standard meter. Other metric units were based on the meter divided by or multiplied by the number 10.

In 1790, Thomas Jefferson proposed that we adopt a similar system, but over 200 years later we’re still clinging to the old British imperial system that even the British have now abandoned. National Metric Week might indeed be a good time to reconsider the metric system. It seems to work for everybody except us.

MORE INFORMATION

Google Calculator
http://www.google.com/

One of the simplest ways to convert U. S. measurements to metric or metric to U. S. measurements is to type the conversion you want into the Google search box. For example, if you want to know how many centimeters there are in an inch, type 1 inch in centimeters into the search box, click on search, and the answer appears like magic: 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters. 1 meter in inches produces: 1 meter = 39.3700787 inches.

Conversion Tables
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Miscellaneous/ConversionTables/conversion_table.html

If you’d rather use math to do your conversions, this Cascades Volcano Observatory site offers a convenient table of all the formulas you’ll need.

Chronology
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/dates.htm

This U. S. Metric Association site offers a detailed chronology of the history of the metric system, starting in 1585 and ending with deadlines that will occur in 2009.

History
http://www.cftech.com/BrainBank/OTHERREFERENCE/WEIGHTSandMEASURES/MetricHistory.html

If you want to read a substantial history of measurement and how the metric system fits in, this long essay will provide you with lots of background information.

OCTOBER 4: POPE GREGORY'S CALENDAR REFORM

2000-10-04T20:31:00.000-04:00

Imagine that you went to bed the night of October 4 and woke up the next morning to find that it’s October 15. That’s exactly what happened in 1582, thanks to Pope Gregory XIII’s reform of the calendar that now governs our daily lives.

Pope Gregory XIII was faced with three major problems: Julius Caesar’s faulty leap year formula, the church’s decree that March 21 would always be the date of the spring equinox, and the perpetual challenge of determining when Easter would be.

The leap year problem began back in 46 B.C., when Caesar’s astronomer, Sosigenes, told him that a solar year had 365.25 days. That figure was 11 minutes 14 seconds too long, and the regular addition of an extra leap day every four years caused Caesar's calendar to drift away from the solar seasons.

At first the extra days didn’t make much difference. But by A.D. 325, when church leaders met at Nicea, there were observable problems. The spring equinox, which occurred on March 25 in Caesar’s day, had drifted to March 21.

Instead of solving the leap year problem, the Council of Nicea merely decreed that henceforth the spring equinox would always occur on March 21. So the extra leap days kept accumulating, and by 1582, the real spring equinox had drifted all the way to March 11.

Pope Gregory decided to address himself to the leap year-equinox-Easter problem once and for all. His astronomers, Aloysius Lilius and Christopher Clavius, had estimated that a solar year actually lasts only 365.2425 days. Therefore, they decided the calendar should omit three leap years every 400 years to stay in sync with the sun.

But first Pope Gregory had to get rid of the 10 extra days that had accumulated since the Council of Nicea. He decided to drop the 10 days between October 4 and 15 because that block of days was conveniently free of church holy days.

Then he had to correct the leap year formula, which he did by omitting leap years in the century years that cannot be divided by 400. So 1600 was a leap year, 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not, and 2000 was again.

Modern astronomers have determined that Pope Gregory’s reformed calendar is still based on an imprecision of about 26 seconds a year. Taking into account the additional reality that the solar year is decreasing in length, these astronomers estimate that a new adjustment will be necessary in about A.D. 3719.

By then, maybe the world will be ready for another calendar reform — or maybe just a special day-with-no-date to keep Pope Gregory’s 1582 calendar aligned with the sun.

MORE INFORMATION

Catholic Encyclopedia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03168a.htm

This basic article includes all the important details of what Pope Gregory was up against and what he did about it.

Calendar Reform
http://personal.ecu.edu/mccartyr/calendar-reform.html

This site offers a history of calendars and calendar reform plus current proposals for new reforms, including the World Calendar, which would have equal-length quarters and be the same every year. It offers numerous links to other information on calendars and calendar reform.

Gregorian Calendar - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

The volunteer author of this entry seems to know about as much about calendars and calendar reform as anyone else I’ve encountered in my researches. The article is long, includes lots of internal and external links (plus a list of “See Also’s”), and offers some interesting graphics and useful charts.

JANUARY 15: SNOWFLAKE BENTLEY'S FIRST PHOTOGRAPH

2000-01-15T10:58:00.000-05:00

On January 15, 1885, Snowflake Bentley of Jericho, Vermont, took his first photograph of a snowflake. He was just shy of 20 years old, but he had already been studying snowflakes for five years. He had gotten hooked on them at age 15, when he first saw one through a microscope his mother had given him.

He spent three winters trying to draw snowflakes, but they melted before he could capture all the details. So he talked his parents into buying him a special camera-microscope combination that he theorized could take photographs of snowflakes. It took him two more winters, but he finally got that first photograph.

Forty-six years and more than 5,000 photographs later, Wilson Alwyn Bentley, who died at age 66, had established himself as a world authority on snowflakes. One way to appreciate his accomplishment is to go outdoors during a snowstorm and try to catch, magnify, and examine some snowflakes yourself.

You'll find that it's challenging. But I've discovered a quick and easy way to get a look at some occasional snowflakes. I just turn my binoculars upside down, which changes them from long-distance magnifiers to close-up magnifiers, and look at the snowflakes that fall on the dark sleeve of my winter jacket.

One of the first things I learned from my own observations is that Snowflake Bentley wasn't photographing whole snowflakes. He was photographing individual snow crystals from the groups of crystals that we call snowflakes. A snowflake is an amorphous clump, while a snow crystal is an exquisite six-sided structure.

According to the experts who followed Bentley, snow crystals come in seven different shapes, but the shape I notice most often is the one Bentley himself saw most often. It's a stellar crystal — as opposed to a plate, column, needle, spatial dendrite, capped column, or irregular crystal. A stellar crystal looks like a child's paper cut-out — a lacy, six-pointed star.

For me it's enough to see a few transient snow crystals through reversed binoculars, but Bentley wanted to study as many as he could, compare them, and learn from them. In the process, he created permanent images that all of us can share.

If you'd like to see some of these images, look for a copy of Snow Crystals, a collection of over 2,000 of Bentley's photographs that was published shortly before he died. They represent Bentley's work at its best — science so good it's art.

MORE INFORMATION

Snowflake Bentley
http://snowflakebentley.com

This is the Jericho (Vermont) Historical Society's Web site. Snowflake Bentley lived in Jericho, and the Historical Society has quite a bit of archival material by or about him. Their attractive Web site includes excellent photos of Bentley and some of his snowflakes. Under Resources you will find the text of articles written by Bentley himself 1910-1925, a list of books about him, numerous links to other Web sites, and answers to Frequently Asked Questions. They offer online shopping for many--some of them unique--snowflake-related items from their gift shop, plus a virtual tour of their museum, plus an online newsletter, plus a lively and interesting message board.

Bentley Snow Crystal Collection
http://bentley.sciencebuff.org/index.htm

This Buffalo Museum of Science site offers a digital library of Snowflake Bentley’s original images just as they were taken. It also includes a biography, an explanation of his photographic process, and other resource material. I found the background on how this digital library was produced quite interesting.

Wilson Bentley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley

The Wikipedia article on Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley includes a brief biography with several links to related Wikipedia articles. The ones I found most interesting were MICROSCOPES (especially HISTORY OF), the year 1885, and WILLIAM D. HUMPHREYS, a physicist who helped Bentley get his photographs published. It also offers several snowflake photos, plus a bibliography, plus a link back to the Jericho Historical Society’s Web site. At the very bottom of the page are links to the categories Bentley is included in, the most fascinating of which is AUTODIDACTS....

SEPTEMBER 21: HURRICANE OF 1938

2000-09-21T11:29:00.000-04:00

Many older Vermonters still remember the Hurricane of September 21, 1938. One friend told me her grandmother gathered the family around her, assigned parts, and conducted a dramatic reading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Another friend remembers trees being down on all the roads that led to his school.

According to the National Weather Service, the Hurricane of 1938 was the most powerful and destructive storm to hit New England during the 20th century. And David Ludlum, in discussing Vermont’s weather disasters, ranks this hurricane second only to the Flood of 1927.

This hurricane was even more devastating than it might have been because it arrived without warning. The National Weather Service was quite certain that it would blow out to sea before it made landfall. Only one junior forecaster predicted that it was headed straight toward Long Island and New England.

So when the hurricane made landfall on Long Island in the middle of the afternoon on September 21, it caught people enjoying a warm fall day at the beach. They noticed large whitecaps and saw what they thought was a fog bank rolling toward them, but they had no idea a hurricane was about to hit.

The “fog” turned out to be a huge wave of water — the hurricane’s storm surge. Survivors of that initial surprise thought the worst was over when the sky cleared and the sun came out, but about an hour later the storm came back. The calm within the hurricane’s huge eye had merely deceived them and then dealt a second surprise.

By 6 p.m., the hurricane had roared from Long Island to Vermont. The center blew through Marlboro and followed a track from Weston to Rutland, Brandon, Middlebury, and Vergennes. At about 9 p.m. it left, headed toward Montreal where it damaged one last city before dissipating over Canada.

The Hurricane of 1938 damaged all of New England’s forests, but according to David Ludlum, Vermont’s “suffered most severely.” Hundreds of thousands of trees went down. You can still see evidence of the wind in the remains of the trees or their root mounds. All point to the northwest, indicating a hurricane.

The Hurricane of 1938 remains one of the worst weather disasters ever to strike New England. But if a similar storm struck today, it would do even more damage because so many more people live in its track. Case studies show that a repeat could be the greatest weather disaster in U.S. history — which should keep us Vermonters respectful of the occasional hurricanes that blow our way.

MORE INFORMATION:

American Experience | The Hurricane of '38 | Maps
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/hurricane38/maps/index.html

The Hurricane of 1983 made landfall on September 21. This PBS site includes a map of the hurricane's route, historic photos, and descriptive text.

The Great Hurricane of 1938 - The Long Island Express
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/38hurricane/

A professor at the State University of New York at Suffolk produced this comprehensive history of the hurricane New Yorkers know as the Long Island Express.

THE GREAT NEW ENGLAND HURRICANE of 1938 (CAT 3 - September 21)
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/er/box/hurricane1938.htm

The National Weather Service offers this brief official history of the hurricane.

AUGUST 10: THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

2000-08-10T12:08:00.000-04:00

With the school year about to begin, August 10 might be a good time to think about the "increase and diffusion of knowledge." Thanks to a wealthy English scientist who died without heirs, we've had a national institution dedicated to that purpose since August 10, 1846.

James Louis Macie Smithson, whose fortune made the Smithsonian Institution possible, actually died in 1829, but the first part of his will left his estate in trust to a nephew. When that nephew died childless, the last sentence of Smithson's handwritten will suddenly became significant.

In the event that Smithson had no surviving heirs, his will, in what seems like an idealistic afterthought, bequeathed everything "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge ... ."

Smithson's fortune, when it was shipped across the Atlantic and reminted into American coins, amounted to $508,318.46. From that nest egg, the Smithsonian has grown into sixteen museums and galleries plus a zoo in Washington, D.C., two museums in New York City, and several research stations elsewhere. One of the oldest of the Smithsonian's collections — and the one that would have been of most interest to Smithson himself — is housed in the National Museum of Natural History. This collection includes over 100 million specimens, only a small percentage of which are on display. The rest are stored behind the scenes for scientific study and reference.

Some of the natural history treasures that Smithson, who was a chemist and mineralogist, would have especially enjoyed are the world's oldest fossil, some moon rocks, and the Hope Diamond. There are also thousands of plant and animal specimens collected by some of our earliest naturalists plus several game animals shot by Theodore Roosevelt specifically for the Smithsonian.

One of of my own Smithsonian favorites is the external architecture of the original building — the Castle — which was completed in 1855. In 1977, a pair of Barn Owls — named Increase and Diffusion in honor of Smithson — nested in one of the towers. Today the Castle houses offices, including the Information Office, which I still sometimes call to ask questions.

MORE INFORMATION

The Smithsonian
http://www.si.edu

The Smithsonian’s Web site is full of interesting material. They explain their history in detail under About the Smithsonian. The two features of this state-of-the-art Web site that are most visually stimulating to explore are their Online Photo Collections and The Virtual Smithsonian. The Virtual Smithsonian showcases 340 artifacts, including great photos of a few of their butterflies and beetles.

Encyclopedia Smithsonian
http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/

Choose a topic from Art to Zoology and explore what the Smithsonian has. This is a rich and interesting resource. I’ve been to the Smithsonian several times, and I would have never guessed that they had so much to offer.

Smithsonian - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_Institution

This substantial article offers a color photograph of the Smithsonian on the first page and another one later on. It includes a list of all the Secretaries so far plus all the museums it runs plus all its research centers. The author of the article mentions some controversial matters that sound intriguing, and at the end of the article there’s a list of external links to help with further research.

AUGUST 1: LUGHNASA

2000-08-01T19:42:00.000-04:00

The ancient Celts, who were more closely attuned to the natural year than we are, celebrated four annual festivals. These festivals fell at times we now think of as February 1, May 1, August 1, and November 1. Each festival launched a new phase of the agricultural year. Having celebrated the beginning of the growing season around May 1, they were ready to celebrate the beginning of the harvest by August 1.

They called their early August festival Lughnasa in honor of a god named Lugh. Lughnasa rituals involved a hilltop gathering of the whole community and a feast centered on the newly ripened crop. The hilltop had to do with looking down on the landscape that provided the community with its food, and the main food at the original Lughnasa feasts was the local grain.

Interestingly, two of the Celts' four seasonal celebrations made it by way of England all the way to America. February 1's Imbolc became the English Candlemas and then our Groundhog Day, and November 1's Samhain became the English All Hallow's Eve and then our American Halloween. But Beltane, which became the English May Day, was pre-empted by the Socialists, who declared May 1 an international labor day. And Lughnasa, which became the English Lammas, got lost somewhere between our American Fourth of July and early September Labor Day.

To keep our modern American selves in touch with the seasonal rhythms that the Celtic festivals honored, maybe we should reclaim at least the main themes of Lughnasa. Early August is a great time to climb a local hill or mountain and look down on where we live. An annual appreciation of our local landscape seems like a worthwhile way to spend an early August day.

For the food component of a modern Lughnasa, why not stop at a local farm stand on your way home from your hike and buy enough newly ripened sweet corn for a corn feast? When you think about it, it seems even more important to remember the beginning of the harvest — ancestrally, the feast after the long hunger of waiting for the new crop to ripen — than to remember the end of it, which modern Americans need no help with because of our own Thanksgiving celebration in late November.

MORE INFORMATION

Crossquarter Lammas
http://www.clarkfoundation.org/astro-utah/vondel/crossquarterlam.html

Not many scientists write about the Celtic cross-quarter days, but this one does. As the former director of the Hansen Planetarium in Utah, he knows his astronomy — and also his weather, his natural history, and other cultures’ practices with respect to the solar year. He writes a newspaper column called “Looking Around” from which this very readable essay is adapted.

Lughnasadh - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lughnasadh

The Wikipedia article on Lughnasa is brief compared to its articles on the other cross-quarter days, but it does offer background information and links to related Wikipedia articles.

JULY 16: HEGIRA (THE ISLAMIC CALENDAR)

2000-07-16T12:05:00.000-04:00

The Islamic New Year is scheduled to begin at sundown on April 5 in the year 2000. I have to specify 2000 because in 1999 it began at sundown on April 16, and in 2001 it will begin at sundown on March 25. The Islamic New Year changes by about 11 days a year because it's based on a purely lunar calendar.

The mathematics are quite simple. If you subtract the 354+ days of a lunar year from the 365+ days of a solar year, you get approximately 11 days. Therefore a continuous series of lunar new years will begin about 11 days earlier every year on a fixed solar calendar.

Most of the ancient religions and cultures that used lunar cycles to determine the dates of their key festivals, fasts, and celebrations learned to include an extra month some years to keep their lunar calendars in sync with the solar seasons. But the early Islamic leaders wanted to break with old traditions.

They wanted to start a new calendar to mark the beginning of their new religion, and they wanted to make it purely and continuously lunar to differentiate it from the solar and lunisolar calendars that already existed.

They chose to start their new calendar on July 16, 622 A.D. — or, technically, since Islamic days begin at sunset, at sunset on the date the Gregorian calendar calls July 15 — because that was the first day of the lunar year in which the key Islamic event called the Hegira took place.

The Hegira was Mohammed’s emigration from Mecca to Medina to assert his new religion. Between July 15-16, 622 A.D. and April 5-6, 2000 A.D., the Islamic calendar worked its way through 1420 consecutive lunar years, with a few mathematical adjustments along the way.

Basically, a lunar calendar needs to alternate 29 and 30 day months to reflect the approximately 29.5 day lunar cycle. But because the moon actually takes a fraction more than 29.5 days to complete its cycle, a lunar calendar needs an occasional extra day to keep its months in sync with what the real moon is doing.

The Islamic calendar adds that day to the last month of their lunar year in 11 out of every 30 years. With these regular additions, their calendar has become as precise with respect to the moon as the Gregorian calendar is with respect to the sun.

Now all we need is a major world calendar that's precise with respect to the stars, and we modern, calendar-driven human beings might be almost as aware of the sky as our primitive, pre-calendrical ancestors were.

MORE INFORMATION

Islamic Crescents' Observation Project (ICOP)
http://www.icoproject.org

If you’re really into moon watching and want to participate in an extremely interesting global project, visit the Islamic Crescents’ Observation Project (ICOP)’s Web site. The project was organized by the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Sciences and the Jordanian Astronomical Society. It aims to gather information about the visibility of new moons at the start of each lunar month. Anyone can participate, regardless of his/her location, nationality, or religion.

U.S. Naval Observatory
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/islamic.html

The U.S. Naval Observatory offers the most reliable information on what the moon is doing astronomically, which isn’t always visible. Their essay on “Crescent Moon Visibility and the Islamic Calendar” explains the challenges inherent in trying to actually see the first thin crescent of the new moon. At the end of the essay are three links to USNO’s information on the moon and its phases.

Web Exhibits
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-islamic.html

If you’re more interested in the Islamic calendar than in moon watching, this attractive Web site offers clear explanations in an easy-to-read format.

Helmer Aslaksen
http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/calendar/islamic.shtml

The author of this Web site, Helmer Aslaksen, is a Norwegian mathematician currently teaching in Singapore. He has a special interest in Chinese, Islamic, and Indian calendars, and has done more research than anyone else I have encountered on the Web. Here he offers a detailed discussion of the Islamic calendar along with 11 links to other Web sites he has found useful, interesting, and reliable.

JULY 4: THOREAU'S MOVE TO WALDEN POND

2000-07-04T21:24:00.000-04:00

On July 4, 1845, just eight days shy of his twenty-eighth birthday, Henry David Thoreau moved to Walden Pond. The book he wrote about the experience became a classic, but I’ve often wondered just what Thoreau was thinking about when he moved there.

In Walden he makes bold statements as if he knew exactly what he was doing from day one, but his journal entries reveal a more tentative and exploratory human being, a person I can identify and sympathize with.

Thoreau didn’t write in his journal on July 4, so we have no record of his thoughts on the day he moved. But on July 5, he wrote, “Yesterday I came here to live. My house makes me think of some mountain houses I have seen, which seemed to have a fresher auroral atmosphere about them as I fancy the halls of Olympus.”

On July 6, he began to articulate why he had moved to Walden: “I wish to meet the facts of life — the vital facts, which were the phenomena or actuality the Gods meant to show us — face to face, and so I came down here. Life? who knows what it is, what it does? If I am not quite right here I am less wrong than before ....”

A month later, he remembered his first childhood look at Walden. He says, “Twenty-three years since, when I was five years old, I was brought from Boston to this pond, away in the country which was then but another name for the extended world for me — one of the most ancient scenes stamped on the tablets of my memory ....”

He then describes Walden as his spiritual home: “That woodland vision for a long time made the drapery of my dreams. That sweet solitude my spirit seemed so early to require that I might have room to entertain my thronging guests, and that speaking silence that my ears might distinguish the significant sounds.”

Looking back now that he was actually living at Walden, he could see that even as a child his spirit “at once gave the preference to this recess among the pines where almost sunshine & shadow were the only inhabitants that varied the scene, over that tumultuous and varied city — as if it had found its proper nursery.”

I’m glad Thoreau kept voluminous journals for those of us who want to know more about him than he chose to share in his published works. I find the particular journal entries that refer to his July 4, 1845 move to Walden among his most appealing.

MORE INFORMATION

Walden National Historic Landmark
http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=599&ResourceType=Site

On December 29, 1962 Walden Pond was designated a National Historic Landmark. In 1990, a non-profit organization called The Walden Woods Project, committed itself to preserving Walden Woods as an open space and as a tribute to Henry David Thoreau. It raised funds to buy 96 additional acres to protect the Walden Pond area from development.

Thoreau’s Cabin 1945
http://www.uky.edu/AS/Anthropology/PAR/thoreau.htm

Roland Robbins attended the Thoreau Centennial held at Walden Pond on July 4, 1945 and decided to find the exact site of the original cabin. He excavated, produced detailed drawings, took photographs, kept log books, and collected artifacts. He managed to identify and document the cabin's stone chimney foundation, stone corner piers, and root cellar. His book, Discovery at Walden, explains his project and what he learned.

Photos Past and Present
http://thoreau.eserver.org/pondpics.html

This page offers links to numerous photos of Walden Pond and Thoreau’s cabin site, including one of the stone posts marking the cabin’s exact location as determined by Roland Robbins.

Walden - The Place
http://thoreau.eserver.org/waldenplace.html

This essay explains the natural and cultural history of Walden Pond, its importance to Concord, and its current significance to admirers of Henry David Thoreau.

Thoreau’s Walden Years - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau#Civil_Disobedience_and_the_Walden_Years:_1845.E2.80.931849

This long article on Thoreau includes a short overview of Thoreau’s time and achievements during his two years and two months at Walden.

JUNE 1: HURRICANE SEASON

2000-06-01T11:41:00.000-04:00

The Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1. It builds toward a peak sometime between mid-August and late October — with the historical date of greatest hurricane activity on September 9 — and ends November 30. Hurricanes begin as tropical storms, but they don't attract much attention until they get named.

A tropical storm gets a name when its winds hit 39 mph, and it becomes a hurricane if the winds hit 74 mph. The alphabetical naming began in 1953 and at first included only women’s names. But in 1979 men’s names were added. Every letter of the alphabet— except Q, U, X, Y, and Z — has six different names because the lists repeat themselves after six years. For a complete list of hurricane names, go to: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml

The tropical storms that sometimes become named hurricanes originate in Africa. When hot, dry air over the Sahara desert encounters cooler, moister air over the area south of the Sahara — called the Sahel — the collision produces a low-pressure system that drifts out over the ocean.

Storm clouds form and if they cluster, the earth's rotation causes the system to spin counterclockwise. The warm, humid air above the ocean rushes upward into it and starts it spinning faster and faster. When the winds reach 20 mph, the cloud cluster becomes what's known as a tropical depression, which is the precursor of a tropical storm.

While the system is developing into whatever it's going to become, it's also moving westward and northward thanks to the easterly trade winds that predominate in the latitudes between the equator and 30 degrees north. If you look on a globe, you'll see that these storms travel right toward the southeastern United States.

When the first tropical storm gets strong enough to warrant a name, we start hearing about hurricanes in the media. It's always interesting to see which hurricanes are going to do what. A hurricane that's damaging enough might even have its name retired from the six year list.

So far we’ve lost almost fifty names. The letter C has lost the most, with eight hurricanes warranting retirement. Only the letters N, P, S, T, V, and W have survived intact. For a list of all the names that have been retired, go to: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/retirednames.shtml

These names are no longer available for current or future hurricanes, but they are not lost. They — and the storms they named — have achieved a permanent place in hurricane history.

MORE INFORMATION

USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/huricane/whhistry.htm

USA Today’s Web site offers quite a bit of its own information on hurricanes plus links to numerous other hurricane sites. Their history section has a long list of links to historical information.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
http://hurricanes.noaa.gov

The government is, of course, responsible for informing us of and protecting us from hurricanes. They take their responsibility quite seriously, offering several Web sites designed to help people learn about hurricanes. "Hurricanes" is the main site, and it offers numerous links to other government sites. The one I find most interesting is the National Hurricane Center’s Tropical Predication Center http://www.nhc.noaa.gov. I also like Christopher Landsea’s answers to Frequently Asked Questions http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s hurricane site for kids http://www.fema.gov/kids/hurr.htm

William Gray
http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu

This is William Gray’s Tropical Meteorology Project Web site. Gray and his team forecast the number and severity of hurricanes we will experience each season, and they’re usually pretty close to right. Their forecasts get a lot of press when they first come out. If you want to beat the newspapers, you can go directly to their forecasts at http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/forecasts

MAY 1: BELTANE

2000-05-01T14:11:00.000-04:00

If you think of the solar year as a circle, the solstices and equinoxes divide it neatly into quarters. But those quarters need to be divided again to reflect seasonal and agricultural realities. That's exactly what the northern Europeans known as Celts did long before the Romans and Christians arrived with their twelve-month calendars.

The days that divided the four solar quarters became known as cross-quarter days, and they occurred at key times in the agricultural year. Samhain, which was the Celtic New Year, occurred after the harvest was in, in early November. Imbolc occurred as lambs were born in early February. Beltane occurred at the time cattle were ready to be moved to summer pastures in early May. And Lughnasa occurred after the first harvest of grain in early August.

The modern calendar's date for Beltane is May 1, and May 1 still seems worth celebrating. The Celts considered Beltane the beginning of summer, which is why they — and Shakespeare after them — thought of the summer solstice as midsummer. They also began their celebrations at night because their days began at sunset. So a modern Beltane should actually begin on April 30.

The ancient Beltane rituals included hilltop bonfires, which can be dangerous and are illegal without fire permits today. But the positive symbolism of these fires can be simulated more modestly right in your own back yard. Beltane fires were new fires ignited from scratch, and they symbolized fresh starts at the beginning of the new season. They also had the symbolic power to exorcise old ills and protect against new ones.

I like the idea of ritualized seasonal renewal, so my own modest Beltane celebration consists of cleaning my stone fire ring, picking up a few of the twigs and small branches that have fallen during the winter, and lighting my first campfire of the season with a brand new box of matches.

Others might choose to clean their grills, light them with a certain amount of ceremony — including new matches — and cook their first outdoor meal. Such modest celebrations may not seem very Celtic, but they are safe, legal, and easy ways for us modern types to greet the glories of May.

MORE INFORMATION

Crossquarter May Day
http://www.clarkfoundation.org/astro-utah/vondel/crossquartermay.html

Not many scientists write about the Celtic cross-quarter days, but this one does. As the former director of the Hansen Planetarium in Utah, he knows his astronomy — and also his weather, his natural history, and other cultures’ practices with respect to the solar year. He writes a newspaper column called “Looking Around” from which this very readable essay is adapted.

Beltane - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane

The Wikipedia article offers background information on Beltane including etymology, orgins, neopagan practices, and links to other information including an extract from Sir James George Frazer's book The Golden Bough.

APRIL 1: APRIL FOOL'S DAY

2000-04-01T19:26:00.000-05:00

I'm an easy mark for anyone looking for some fun on April 1. I'm gullible, and I'm so busy looking for returning birds right then that I never remember it's April Fool’s Day until I've been duped. Why is it that people try to make fools of each other on April 1?

As with many of the traditions we've inherited from one set of ancestors or another, historians don't know the exact origins of April Fool’s Day, but it dates back to at least 1582. That was the year Pope Gregory XIII reformed Julius Caesar's calendar to realign it with the natural year.

Pope Gregory's most significant reforms had to do with getting rid of the extra leap days that had accumulated and devising a more precise formula for future leap years. But he also changed the date of the New Year back to Julius Caesar's original January 1.

Christians had been celebrating the New Year on March 25 as part of their Feast of the Annunciation, and their New Year's activities lasted for a week, culminating on April 1. To common folk, habit and tradition seemed more real than a calender that could be changed by a Pope, so some clung stubbornly to their March 25-April 1 celebrations.

According to folklorists, the people who resisted the change — or forgot about it — became likely targets for practical jokes. They were the original April Fools, who were limited to parts of Europe at first because only some European Catholics adopted the Gregorian calendar right away.

The English didn't adopt Pope Gregory's changes until 1752. By that time, everyone had forgotten why April 1 was April Fool’s Day, as evidenced by a 1760 poem in Poor Robin's Almanack: "The first of April, some do say,/Is set apart for All Fools' Day,/But why the people call it so,/Nor I nor they themselves do know."

If the English were confused, their American colonists had even less of a notion about why they should try to fool each other on April 1. But the practical jokes that had become the mainstay of April Fools' traditions must have been appealing to winter weary New Englanders because even after a revolution and two hundred plus years, my friends are still April Fooling me.

MORE INFORMATION

Elaine's April Fool's Day Page
http://homepages.tesco.net/derek.berger/holidays/aprilfool.html

Elaine offers an attractive page full of quotations, different practices in different countries, A Fool's Dictionary, poems, and ideas for harmless pranks.

April Fool's Day
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/modern/aprfool_1

This Library of Congress site offers a short, kid-friendly explanation of April Fool's Day. It includes old photos plus a video showing an old-fashioned prank.

Google Technology
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

Google had some fun creating this spoof for April Fool's Day 2002.

April Fool's Day - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fool's_Day

The Wikipedia offers more information about April Fool's Day than most of us want to know. But it does include a long list of famous hoaxes and related links.

MARCH 20: VERNAL EQUINOX

2000-03-20T13:26:00.000-05:00

Around March 20-21 every year, we experience something called the vernal equinox — “spring’s equal night.” Night feels equal to day at this time of year because we are halfway between the longest night, which occurs at the winter solstice, and the longest day, which occurs at the summer solstice.

On a perfect Earth, night and day would indeed be equal at the equinox. But as human calendar makers and timekeepers have learned over the centuries, the Earth refuses to be perfect by our definitions. And that’s the problem: our definitions. They cause day to last longer than night on the equinox.

We define the equinox by what the center of the sun is doing and day and night by what the top of the sun is doing. On the equinox, the center of the sun is above the horizon for 12 hours everywhere on Earth. But because day starts when the top of the sun appears above the horizon, we start counting day a few minutes early.

And day doesn’t end until the top of the sun disappears, so it gets a few extra minutes at the other end too. Therefore the night of the equinox is doubly shortchanged. It comes closest to being equal a few days before the vernal equinox — March 16 or 17 where I live at a latitude of about 44.5 degrees north.

As if being shortchanged by our human definitions of sunrise and sunset weren’t enough, the night of the equinox loses yet a few more minutes to something called refraction. The Earth’s atmosphere bends the sun’s rays in such a way that it appears to be above the horizon before and after it actually is. At my latitude the total loss is nine or ten minutes.

But the exact lengths of day and night as defined by human beings are less important than what the Earth and sun themselves are doing. At the moment of the vernal equinox, the Earth is at a place in its orbit where it tilts neither toward nor away from the sun. But after the equinox the Northern Hemisphere begins to point ever so slightly back toward the sun.

The sun rises earlier and earlier, travels higher across the sky, and sets later each day. The result is yet longer days and shorter nights, resulting in more sunlight and warming temperatures, all of which combine to accelerate the season we define as spring.

MORE INFORMATION

U.S. Naval Observatory
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/EarthSeasons.html

If all you’re interested in is the date and time of the vernal equinox, this link offers the U.S. Naval Observatory’s official dates and times.

Windows to the Universe
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/the_universe/uts/equinox.html

This brief article doesn’t go into much detail, but there’s a color graphic that shows what’s going on at the equinox and what it looks like from the solar system and from Earth.

U.S. Naval Observatory on Equinoxes
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/equinoxes.html

The U. S. Naval Observatory offers the most detailed and authoritative explanation of why days are longer than nights at both equinoxes.

USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wequinox.htm

USA Today's Web site is big and busy and cluttered, but it offers the best graphic to illustrate why days are longer than nights at both equinoxes Their text, however, is a bit muddy. In their effort to paraphrase what the U.S Naval Observatory says, they misstate some key points.

Bad Astronomy
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/egg_spin.html#badegg

This Web site explains away the popular misconception about being able to balance an egg on its end only at the vernal equinox. It offers fact-based information written by an astronomer whose life mission is to replace “bad astronomy” with good.

MARCH 15: IDES OF MARCH

2000-03-15T22:10:00.000-05:00

“Beware the Ides of March!” Everyone who has read or seen a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar knows that warning, but not everyone knows what it means. According to one authority, the word Ides probably means something like “divider,” from the Etruscan verb iduare, meaning “to divide.”

The Ides divided Roman months approximately in half. In Julius Caesar’s time they occurred on the 15th day of 31-day months and the 13th day of the others. So Caesar’s Ides of March was March 15, the day on which he was assassinated in 44 B.C. If Caesar had been warned to beware of March 15, however, or even the 15th day of March, he would not have known what day to prepare for.

In 44 B.C., the Romans numbered their days according to an ancient system that derived from a primitive lunar calendar. They called the first day of each month the Kalends, which means “to proclaim.” It refers back to a time when priests proclaimed the beginning of a new month at the first visible crescent of the new moon.

In Caesar’s time, priests still proclaimed a new month on the Kalends, but months were no longer based on the moon. The priests merely announced how many days it would be until the next important day of the new month. This next important day was the Nones, which may once have been the day of the moon’s first quarter but by Caesar’s time was always scheduled for the ninth day before the Ides.

In the old lunar calendar, the Ides had been the day of the full moon, but by Caesar’s time it was simply the midpoint of the month. Because the lunar calendar was always looking forward to the next phase of the moon, its days counted downward to the anticipated day. Caesar’s days still counted downward too.

Therefore, the last few days before his assassination would have been numbered V Ides, IV Ides, III Ides, Day Before Ides, and Ides — not March 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15. When you think about it, this way of counting time has its merits.

We still count down to days that excite us — our birthdays, holidays, the last day of school. Maybe when we started counting upward, we lost a significant vestige of lunar influence that the Roman calendar still clung to — days that looked forward to the future rather than days that merely added up the past.

MORE INFORMATION

Bill Hollon on Calendars
http://www.12x30.net/calends.html

Bill Hollon’s Web site on calendars includes a substantial discussion of the Calends, Nones, and Ides, with graphics and footnotes.

Web Exhibits
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-roman.html

Web Exhibits answers nine questions about the Roman calendar, two of which have to do with the Ides: What were the Roman weekdays? and Beware the Ides of March! If you recognize some of Bill Hollon’s material, it’s because he’s given Web Exhibits permission to use his text, but the format and graphics are different.

Claus Tondering on the Roman Calendar
http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/node3.html#SECTION00380000000000000000

That’s 16 zeroes! This link will take you fairly close to Claus Tondering’s discussion of Kalends, Nones, and Ides. You’ll have to scroll through his answer to Frequently Asked Question number 2.8 (What is the Roman calendar?) to get to number 2.8.1: How did the Romans number days?

FEBRUARY 14: VALENTINE'S DAY

2000-02-14T19:38:00.000-05:00

Every year on February 14, we celebrate Saint Valentine's Day. Who was Saint Valentine, and why do we celebrate love on his feast day? There are several theories, but the one I find most intriguing attributes the love connection to birds.

Scholars aren't sure exactly who the historic Valentine was, but he's remembered as a martyr, not a lover. His feast day has since been dropped from the church calendar, so his only lasting contribution to today's Valentine's Day is his name.

As for the birds, medieval Christians observed that some of them were mating at the time of Saint Valentine's feast. They therefore decided to believe that all birds chose their mates on February 14. In the early 1380s Chaucer offered a written record of this belief in his long love poem, The Parliament of Fowls: "For this was on St. Valentine's Day/When every fowl cometh there to choose his mate."

From the medieval folk belief about birds, it wasn't much of a leap to decide that human beings should choose their mates on Saint Valentine's Day too — or at least engage in games and rituals associated with mating. Actually, this birds/Valentine's Day connection is not too far-fetched. Even in snowy Vermont, several species of birds have begun to mate by February.

If you go outdoors on Valentine's eve, for instance, you might hear owls hooting. The owls I hear most often, the eight-hooters known as barred owls, can be courting loudly by mid-February. Eastern screech-owls can be courting too. The largest of our common owls, the great horneds, might already be sitting on their eggs.

After sunrise on Valentine's Day itself you might hear black-capped chickadees practicing their territorial fee-bee songs and hairy woodpeckers drumming on hollow trees to re-establish their pair-bonds. But perhaps the most observable of these early birds is the plain old pigeon. Vermont's pigeons are often in the advanced stages of courting by Valentine's Day and have been known to have young in their nests by early March.

So as you're thinking about Valentine's Day, alert yourself to subtle shifts in bird behavior. For birds, this time of year has nothing to do romantic love. Their behavior is a very real biological response to the changing seasons, with some species already bonded or forming the bonds that will produce, protect, and launch their young.

And isn't that probably what our human Valentine's Day — whatever its various roots — was originally all about?

MORE INFORMATION

History Channel
http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/valentine/

The History Channel offers interesting background information, attractive graphics, and some nice love stories about couples like the Trumans, the Brownings, and the Jackie Robinsons.

Catholic Encyclopedia
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15254a.htm

New Advent offers the Catholic Encyclopedia online. Their entry on St. Valentine tells what is known about who he might have been with links to additional historical information. They mention Chaucer and the connection between St. Valentine’s Day and birds.

Valentine's Day - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day

The Wikipedia entry on Valentine's Day will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about Valentine's Day.

FEBRUARY 4: CHINESE SOLAR CALENDAR

2000-02-04T21:16:00.000-05:00

The Chinese solar calendar is less familiar than the Chinese lunar calendar, which is the one that gets all the press during Chinese New Year celebrations. But I find the solar calendar more useful because it divides the year into 24 mini-seasons with names descriptive of what’s going on in the natural world.

These mini-seasons, each of which lasts for 15 or 16 days, are called solar terms, or more poetically, “joints and breaths.” The year begins with the solar term called “Spring Begins,” which occurs halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox — on February 4 in the year 2000.

Using dates based on Universal Time — the time at the Greenwich Meridian — to avoid the confusion that can be caused by different time zones and the international date line, the solar terms for 2000 are:

Spring Begins (Feb 4-Feb 18)
Rain Water (Feb 19-Mar 4)
Excited Insects (Mar 5-Mar 19)
Vernal Equinox (Mar 20-Apr 3)
Clear and Bright (Apr 4-Apr 18)
Grain Rains (Apr 19-May 4)
Summer Begins (May 5-May 19)
Grain Fills (May 20-Jun 4)
Grain in Ear (Jun 5-Jun 20)
Summer Solstice (Jun 21-Jul 5)
Slight Heat (Jul 6-Jul 21)
Great Heat (Jul 22-Aug 6)
Autumn Begins (Aug 7-Aug 21)
Limit of Heat (Aug 22-Sep 6)
White Dew (Sep 7-Sep 21)
Autumn Equinox (Sep 22-Oct 6)
Cold Dew (Oct 7-Oct 22)
Hoar Frost (Oct 23-Nov 6)
Winter Begins (Nov 7-Nov 21)
Little Snow (Nov 22-Dec 5)
Great Snow (Dec 6-Dec 20)
Winter Solstice (Dec 21-Jan 5)
Little Cold (Jan 6-Jan 19)
Great Cold(Jan 20-Feb 3)

These 24 solar terms helped ancient Chinese farmers remember their way through the agricultural year, and they could easily be adapted to help modern naturalists remember their way through the natural year.

Because the solar terms are based on the sun rather than complicated, sometimes compromised solar-lunar systems that underlie most civil and religious calendars, they offer the purest, most natural calendar I’ve found.

MORE INFORMATION

The Friesian School
http://www.friesian.com/chinacal.htm

This Web site offers detailed information on the Chinese calendar with a clear explanation of the solar terms. There are also a number of links that lead to additional information. For consistency, I use this Web site’s translations for the names of each solar term and its dates for the year 2000.

Chinese Fortune Calendar
http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/FAQ.htm

This is a Chinese astrology Web site, but it’s written by a mathematician/computer scientist who has spent over a decade researching solar and lunar dates. His explanation of the Chinese solar terms is clear and simple, and the rest of his Web site is full of fascinating information.

Lichun - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichun

This Wikipedia article is written partially in Chinese, but it also includes some good information in English. A solar terms graphic and a chart of dates offer useful references.

FEBRUARY 1: IMBOLC

2000-02-01T19:20:00.000-05:00

By February 1, the world begins to feel brighter. Daylight has expanded to almost ten hours, and the sun is almost halfway to the spring equinox. With electric lights, this solar progress doesn’t attract much attention anymore, but Groundhog Day does. And Groundhog Day harks back to an ancient solar celebration called Imbolc.

Imbolc meant the beginning of spring for the Celtic peoples of northern Europe and the British Isles. Lambs were born and with them came the promise of new life and the beginning of a new agricultural year that would proceed through Beltane (May 1), Lughnasa (August 1), and Samhain (November 1).

Our American Groundhog Day doesn’t derive directly from the Celtic Imbolc but rather from a Christian celebration that chanced to coincide with Imbolc. Early Christians evolved a church ritual to be celebrated forty days after Christmas — February 2 on their calendar. It was called Candlemas because it involved blessing candles to be used in the new year.

As the Christian church moved into northern Europe and the British Isles, it encountered the Celts who were already celebrating Imbolc in early February. As these Celts were converted, they associated the new Christian Candlemas with their old Imbolc — and therefore with the beginning of spring. Because to them spring meant planting, Candlemas became the day they looked for a sign of how soon they would be able to plant. They came to believe that if it was sunny enough on Candlemas for an animal to cast a shadow, there would be six more weeks of winter. Stormy or overcast weather on Candlemas meant an early spring.

This Celtic/Christian weather belief got superimposed on North American groundhogs by European farmers who came to this country. So we now have Groundhog Day every February 2 to remind us — like the ancient Celts — to think about spring. If you’d like to combine several of these historic beliefs and rituals into a modern Imbolc/Candlemas celebration, you can start by paying attention to the sunrise and sunset on February 1 and enjoying every minute of daylight.

After sunrise on February 2, you can go outdoors and look for your own shadow to see how much longer we’re going to have to wait for spring. And maybe after sunset you can light a candle and think about spring. Then you can spend the next six weeks much as the ancient Celts did, observing subtle changes in the natural world as the days lengthen and the weather warms. When your local soil is finally workable enough to plant a seed, you'll know it's really spring.

MORE INFORMATION

Cross Quarter Days
http://www.clarkfoundation.org/astro-utah/vondel/crossquartergrd.html

Not many scientists write about the Celtic cross-quarter days, but this one does. As the former director of the Hansen Planetarium in Utah, he knows his astronomy — and also his weather, his natural history, and other cultures’ practices with respect to the solar year. He writes a newspaper column called “Looking Around” from which this very readable essay is adapted.

Imbolc - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbolc

Th Wikipedia article covers the Celtic origins of Imbolc and modern practices related to February 1. It offers internal links to Wikipedia articles on other Celtic celebrations and external links to several Web sites.

SEPTEMBER 1: LABOR DAY

2000-09-01T12:26:00.000-04:00

Labor Day occurs every year on the first Monday in September. It's a good time to think about the natural history of work. Having recently retired, I am exploring what work means, and I find myself wondering where something as fixed and unnatural as the standard 8-hour, 5-day, 40-hour work week came from.

For primitive hunters and gatherers, there's really no such thing as "work" that's separate from the rest of life. Men, women, and children do what they need to do to survive, and they do it when it needs to be done. Day, night, and the seasons — not the time clock and calendar — govern everyone's activities.

With agriculture came change. Subsistence agriculture still involved working as long and as hard as necessary to survive, but larger scale agriculture began to dictate new ways of doing things: work now became something that workers had to do for someone else, not just themselves, their family, or their tribe.

Individuals no longer owned what they produced, and everyone became dependent on others for the various things they needed. Workers had to stay on their assigned jobs from sunrise to sunset, performing tasks that were only indirectly connected to their personal survival.

The industrial revolution introduced yet new complexities. Sunrise to sunset was too long to expect people to work indoors at tasks that were now totally disconnected from personal survival. Factory workers became unhappy and began to push for shorter hours.

First they asked for a limit of 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. During the 1800s, they asked for 10 hours, 6 days a week. Labor Day was introduced in 1882, when most Americans were still working 60 hours a week and only dreaming of a 48-hour week, which didn't become the norm until World War I.

It wasn't until 1938 that the Fair Labor Standards Act started the final countdown: 44 hours in 1938, 42 hours in 1939, and 40 hours in 1940. So the 8-hour, 5-day, 40-hour work week has only been with us for about as long as an early retiree like myself has been alive.

Certainly I can unlearn a concept that has been around for such a brief period. I'd like to spend at least the early stages of my retirement exploring how work, once detached from clock and calendar time, might once again be more directly connected to survival — in a much altered world.

MORE INFORMATION

U.S. Department of Labor
http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/laborday.htm

This is the Department of Labor’s History of Labor Day. It tells us that the first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882 in New York City. In 1884, the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, and by 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers. Finally, in 1894, Congress passed the legislation that made it a legal holiday everywhere.

PBS News Hour Special
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/september96/labor_day_9-2.html

This PBS Online News Hour special offers an interesting introduction to Labor Day, focusing on the Pullman (railroad sleeping car) strike in Illinois that led to the legislation that made Labor Day a legal holiday. It includes links to other News Hour materials related to labor.

USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/history/labor-day-hurricanes.htm

Elsewhere among USA Today’s hurricane materials is this discussion of hurricanes that have hit during the Labor Day weekend since 1935. They list six hurricanes, with links to more information about some of them.

MAY 7: BEAUFORT WIND SCALE

2000-05-07T13:29:00.000-04:00

Sir Francis Beaufort, who spent much of his life sailing tall ships and charting distant bodies of water for the British Navy, was born on May 7, 1774. He’s not famous enough that anyone celebrates his birthday, but he’s worth remembering at this time of year for his close observations of the wind.

He entered the navy at age thirteen and by 1805 had risen to the rank of captain. When he became responsible for his own ship’s log, it occurred to him that a uniform reference system for classifying different winds would offer more concise and useful log entries. So he began to observe his ship’s behavior.

Beaufort distinguished thirteen different levels of wind based on how his ship with its many sails responded. Zero meant too calm to sail. One through eleven meant winds from just strong enough to sail to winds almost too strong to bear. Twelve meant a wind “no canvas could withstand.”

In Beaufort’s day there were no instruments for measuring wind speed. So his observation-based system offered sailors the best way to at least rank the winds they encountered. It was so clear and simple that in 1838 the British Navy required all ships to use it in their logs.

Then, in 1846, came the first anemometer — an instrument that could measure exact wind speeds. It didn’t take long for wind watchers to see that if the speeds of Beaufort’s observed winds could be quantified with an anemometer, his scale could be used as a shorthand for wind speeds.

But there were several problems. Not everyone knew sailing ships as well as Beaufort did, so there was a need for new descriptions based on surface features of the sea. Then, of course, there was a need for descriptions that would work on dry land.

Furthermore, because the Beaufort scale was observation-based, its numbers depended on human judgments, making exact wind speed equivalents difficult to quantify. It took until 1926 to get a uniform set of equivalents accepted.

With the high-tech wind instruments available today, the Beaufort scale doesn’t get used much anymore. But it still works. Even a child who can describe what’s happening to wood smoke and trees can use Mr. Beaufort’s scale to estimate the speed of a local wind.

MORE INFORMATION

NOAA Storm Prediction Center
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/beaufort.html

The Storm Prediction Center offers a reference chart that includes descriptions of the observable effects of Beaufort’s different winds both at sea and on land.

Stormfax Weather Almanac
http://www.stormfax.com/beaufort.htm

The Stormfax Weather Almanac offers a simplified master chart that includes the Beaufort number, the wind speed in both knots and mph, the wave height in feet, the World Meteorological Organizations’s description, the effects observed on the sea and the effects observed on land.

The Weather Doctor
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/history/beaufort.htm

Keith C. Heidorn, a Canadian meteorologist who calls himself the Weather Doctor, has written a substantial history of Beaufort’s contributions to weather observation and record keeping. He puts the Beaufort Wind Scale in historic context, including an illustration of a British frigate, the vessel Beaufort used to describe the effects of different winds on a ship’s sails.

JANUARY 17: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S BIRTHDAY

2000-01-17T20:43:00.000-05:00

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706. During the next 84 years he engaged in so many activities, it’s difficult to decide what to call him. One thing I haven’t heard him called is a naturalist, but he actually spent quite a bit of time observing the natural world.

The most sensational of his observations involved flying a kite in a thunderstorm, but he wasn’t always so foolhardy. One of his safer interests was astronomy. In a journal he kept while he was sailing across the Atlantic at age 20, he describes a night rainbow caused by the moon, a partial solar eclipse, and a partial lunar eclipse.

Seventeen years later Franklin was still paying attention to eclipses. At 9:00 p.m. on November 2, 1743, he went outside his home in Philadelphia to observe a lunar eclipse, but he missed it because of a storm. Soon the storm itself began to interest him.

Shortly after he missed the eclipse, Franklin read an account of clear viewings in Boston. He decided to write to fellow observers throughout the Northeast to determine the path of the storm, its speed, and its direction. Franklin was the first to describe the typical track of northeastern storms.

In addition to astronomy and meteorology, Franklin was also interested in botany. He shared his observations of plants with his friend John Bartram, who had established the first botanical garden in the colonies. Franklin eventually became a botanical middleman, procuring seeds of rhubarb, oats, barley, peas, cabbage and kohlrabi for Bartram to experiment with in his garden.

Franklin crossed the Atlantic six times between 1757 and 1785, which got him paying close attention to the ocean. He spent much of his last three voyages observing the Gulf Stream, which he had earlier named and mapped. He kept detailed records of air temperature, water temperature, and wind direction, and also noted the weed content and color of the water.

Calling Franklin a naturalist would be stretching it, but perhaps we could call him a polymath—a lover of learning—which is what he called himself during the twenty-five years he published Poor Richard’s Almanack. Benjamin Franklin was indeed a polymath—a polymath with a special fondness for learning about the natural world.

MORE INFORMATION

Franklin Institute
http://www.fi.edu/franklin/rotten.html

The Franklin Institute offers a wealth of information on Benjamin Franklin. They have separate pages devoted to his contributions as a scientist, inventor, statesman, printer philosopher, musician, and economist. They also answer a long list of Frequently asked Questions.

Thinkquest - Benjamin Franklin
http://library.thinkquest.org/22254/mainframe.htm

This award-winning, student-created site is full of well-researched information about Benjamin Franklin. It includes a biography, a discussion of his inventions, a list of quotations, a page of interesting facts, and other information.
Benajmin Franklin - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

Wikipedia’s long article includes some good graphics including several famous portraits of Benjamin Franklin, a statue of him, his autograph, the one hundred dollar bill, and his grave. The article is followed by a list of sources and references plus numerous external links.

MARCH 17: ST. PATRICK, SHAMROCKS, AND SNAKES

2000-03-17T14:30:00.000-05:00