Agnes by Tony Cochran for December 30, 2019

Agnes, I believe that’s called a circular definition. You can do better.

I’ve found that anything that’s written down in the snow is really hard to take home with you for later study.

Trout’s in denial! She knows New Years Day is “Mom Recovery Therapy Day”!

Somehow this reminds me of a crossword clue I used to run into when I was a lot younger….

It was waaay before the internet, at least the public internet, or the world wide web…

when we relied on those big books with small print…. I think they’re called “dictionaries” … remember those?

There would sometimes be a clue that was simply “Signe.”

I looked it up.

Zilch.

Another clue, in a different puzzle, might be “Hasso.”

No dictionary definition.

But I finally figured out, from crossing letters, that if the clue were “Signe”, the word in the puzzle was “Hasso”.

And vice versa.

Apparently…. a signe is a hasso, a hasso is a signe….. but what were they?

I asked my mother, my father, a teacher or two…. nobody knew.

Gradually, both words disappeared from puzzles.

Imagine my surprise, one day, to be reading the credits of some rerun 1980’s TV show…. and seeing the name… “Signe Hasso.”

Signe Hasso was an actress!

She was mostly seen in early 40’s films, but still had roles on television for years while I was still trying to look up those “words.”

I’d never heard of her, and I guess neither had my parents or teachers….

But her names must have offered useful letter configurations for crossword puzzles.

I’ll never forget her now.

They are rugged adventurers this morning. That’s quite a trudge through the country.

I kind of hate to wade back into this… but I didn’t get back in time yesterday.

But I want to say that as far as I’m concerned, “the 2020’s” start on Wednesday.

I like to think I’m neither stupid nor ridiculous…

I don’t get duped or “fall prey” to ideas.

And I do know that when you count 10 apples, you start with 1 and end on 10.

But calendars are not math… they’re a social construct.

Start with the year “1” … OK, what was that?

Not the beginning of the universe, or of time, or of human civilization.

A religious event, that not everyone agrees actually happened, but a date was chosen and a count begun.

Eventually most of the western world tagged along.

Other civilizations had started long before.

The Julian calendar miscounted… the numbering was incorrect.

A big chunk was removed from September of 1752… anybody who’d been counting along and just kept going was suddenly wrong.

We also agree on days for holidays that may or may not have anything to do with reality.

And we’ve moved many to Mondays that didn’t happen on Monday.

The decades are also just labels.

We’re not actually counting years lined up in a row like fence posts ever since the mythical year one.

If we started there we’d have ended up in the wrong place anyway, because of the Julian calendar, and the year 1752, which can’t be counted straight through.

Most of us don’t call 1991 to 2000 “the 90’s”… “the 90’s” is only a LABEL that most of us have agreed to place on the years labelled 1990 to 1999.

Would you really say 1980 was in the 70’s?

That’s just as illogical and counterintuitive to most people as saying a decade ends on a 9 is to other people.

Whatever this one is labelled…the teens?

Will 2020 be a teen?

People like celebrate zeros.

If you’re going to give a party, you may as well do it when the most people agree to come.

The answers are tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

i had someone ask me when cinco de mayo is

I’m going to play Sheldon Cooper here. Answer to “So when is New Year’s Day this year?” It already happened this year back on January 1.

Couple of weeks ago I saw a sign in front of a local church, advertising their “Christmas Eve Service at 4 PM.” Couldn’t resist pointing out to my wife that they’d left off the date.

She thought it was funny (sort of). We’ve been married a long time.

Actually, New Year’s Day would be NEXT year.