More about Bill
View larger

Blogs

March 31, 2010

In our part of the world, the sudden blossoming of daffodils proclaims spring more effectively than most anything else, with the possible exception of forsythia. Pushing their way through still frosty earth early in the year, daffodils stubbornly gather strength in weather that would seem lethal to the tender shoots. Then they race for the sky and ... wait.

Suddenly one day you notice a slight tinge of yellow at the tips, then more and more until some morning the first one opens. Then the other follow in a mad rush.

We have a number of different kinds in our backyard, including my favorites - yellow-petaled with an orangey-yellow bell in the center. We cut them and share them with our friends and offices.

Of course, the most famous daffodil of all is William Wordsworth's:

"Daffodils" (1804)
I Wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

A tip on raising daffodils: Let the green stalks die back completely before cutting them. Yeah, it makes the patch look messy, but those stalks are making food for the bulbs, so you will have more and better daffodils the next year!

March 14, 2010

The warning to "beware the ides of March" originated from the assassination of Julius Caesar on March 15 in 44 BCE, but what the heck is (are?) ides anyway?

Ides is an old Roman calendar term used to denote a full moon, so every month had an ides, not just March. (In rare cases, what we call Blue Moons, some months would have had two ides.)

The Romans at first based their calendar at first on the phases of the moon: Kalends started on the new moon, Nones began on the first quarter, and Ides started on the day of the full moon. A lunar year has some drawbacks, though, not least of which is that it doesn't match up evenly with a solar year. So it didn't take long for seasonal events like festivals to be seriously out of whack with the official calendar.

Julius Caesar implemented calendar reform, setting the length of the year at 365 days (plus a leap day every 4 years) and fixing the lengths of the months and setting the ides of March, May, July and October on the 15th and the other months, on the 13th.

In the Christian era, the Julian calendar eventually eas replaced by the Gregorian calendar, in large part to make calculating the date of Easter somewhat simpler. Like Passover, the date of Easter is related to lunar cycles, which is why it jumps around on the calendar so much. Further adding to the confusion is the fact that Eastern Churches and Western Churches calculate Easter differently, so their celebrations only rarely coincide.

February 24, 2010

For the United States Marine Corps, February 23 is a hallowed day. On that date in 1945, Marines in two separate actions raised the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi on a desolate little Pacific island called Iwo Jima.

The first flag-raising was captured by Marine photographer Lou Lowery. It's a gritty, stark image that shows a rifleman guarding the detail and conveys a sense of the desperate danger that hung over the battle which had begun on 19 February and would last more than another month.

But this flag was too small to see well from below where it could be worth your life to raise your head, so a second detail was sent up the peak to raise a larger flag.

The second flag raising was photographed by Joe Rosenthal, and it gave the Corps an icon for the ages, and a thrill of hope to America and a war-weary world. The photo showed five Marines and a Navy Corpsman struggling to drive the flagpole into the stony ground.

Soon, the image flashed around the world; it won the Pulitzer Prize and has become one of the most reproduced photos of all time and was the basis for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, VA.

For Marines, the image is a solemn reminder of all Leathernecks who have fought and died, from the American Revolution to Marjah in Afghanistan. Those WWII battles in the Pacific were all bloody, vicious affairs but Iwo Jima still ranks as the bloodiest in the Corps' proud history.

The March-April issue of Semper Fi Magazine which we produce for the Marine Corps League salutes League members who fought on those black sand beaches. Now in their 80s and even 90s, they are becoming an increasingly rare national treasure.

If you know an Iwo Jima survivor, perhaps he will tell you something of his experience there. Many do not choose to recall those days, however, and their silence in itself speaks volumes. In any event, thank him.

November 24, 2009

November 17, 2009

October 27, 2009

Sunday Nov. 1 marks the resumption of what the old folks at home used to call "God's Time" - that is, the end of Daylight Saving (not Savings!) Time.

Being a morning person, I will rejoice to wake up to dawn, and to do my outside chores without aid of a headlamp. But I'll still feel that sense of tempus fugit when I look out the window at 4 p.m. and it's getting on toward dusk and I still have all this work to do!

October 20, 2009

A Facebook friend linked to this hilarious and squirm-inducing column in the New Yorker on the new face of marketing in the publishing world.

Or maybe I shouldn't say face, as many of the barbs point to how faceless it has become. And how much many authors are cast onto their own resources to flog their work, such as Michael Perry, a longtime friend and occasional contributor to some of the titles I have edited. (Note: humorist Dave Barry calls it "strumpeting," and who are we to disagree?)

October 4, 2009

At the recent Modern Day Marine Expo at Quantico, VA, I happened to see one of those typos so easy to make - hit the key next to the one you mean to and oops! This one was a reminder that, with the military using more and more robots to carry out all sorts of tasks, the machines are only as good as the people programming and directing them.

This reminded me of a non-typo that was still an unintended slip - a sign directing patients at a hospital to the adjacent Medical Office Building read "MOB Entrance."

September 26, 2009

Bill Hudgins

Editor

o: 615.690.3403

Subscribe