830. What's in a Zero?

The New Year should necessarily involve making new choices, taking new chances.  

Most of you all know my drink of choice other than Red Wine - Ale-8-One.  I've been drinking Ale-8-One since some time in 1978.  Here's a paragraph taken from a post made on this blog on December 2, 2007, after a drive out in the the commonwealth:

"Ky 169 leads to KY 33, which is South Main Street in Versailles, the county seat of Woodford County. I was anticipating stopping at a little corner market in Versailles which for years has boasted an Ale-8 vending machine, 12 ounces for 50 cents or 75 cents of the Kentucky based soda in little green bottles.

The vending machine has stood in a small nook of that building for as long as I can remember. It was there last year when I attended the funeral services for my aunt Margaret Collins, the former governor's mother-in-law. This I know since I stopped and bought a bottle. But, upon arriving in downtown Versailles, the little green bottle vendor was gone. Utter dismay."

So there I was a few days ago, New Year's Eve to be exact, in the soft drink aisle of the Lower Brownsboro Kroger, pondering both a purchase of my beloved soft drink as well as the pounds I had added over the holidays and it was at that point I spied the "Ale-8-Zero" six pack of bottles.  And for the first time since 1978, I chose something other than the Ale-8-One.  I picked up the six bottles of Ale-8-Zero in the Christmas packaging - maybe it was Holiday packaging - and decided to check it out.

As of today, a few minutes ago, I've finished the sixth of the six bottles.  However, I had decided by the second bottle on New Year's Day that this new product wasn't all that bad.  Actually it isn't a new product.  Rather, it's an eighteen year old product recently rebranded with a new name.  Diet Ale-8-One was introduced in 2003.  I've avoided it for eighteen years.  It was rebranded as Ale-8-Zero on February 2, 2021 and took me just under eleven months to pick up a six-pack.

On New Year's Day, on the Ale-8-One Facebook page, I made the following comment about their diet soda:

After drinking Ale-8-One religiously since 1978, yesterday I bought a six-pack of Ale-8-Zero. It's 97% better than I was expecting and 98% as good as the original. I have some decisions to make in 2022.  

It really is pretty good.  I think I'm going to stick with it.  I'm completely surprised.

  

Also, Happy Tenth Day of Christmas!

© Jeff Noble, Louisville, Kentucky, January 3, 2022.

829. January's New Moon

The first New Moon of 2022 arrives very shortly, at 1:34 p.m. EST.  New Moons hold power according to some, especially the power of renewal, appropriate for the second day of a new year.

So, light a candle, make a list, start a ritual, start anew.  It's time.

© Jeff Noble, Louisville, Kentucky, January 2, 2022.

828. 2022 - A New Year. Hopefully a new commitment.

Happy New Year's Day! New Year's Day, for most of us, tends to fall in the middle of the actual year in our minds, which in the U. S. of A. runs from about Labor Day to about July 4th (or honestly, to about the next Labor Day).

Over the millennia, different cultures have begun the year at what would now be considered "days other than New Year's Day." Most of those celebrations are tied to a New Moon, a Full Moon, an Equinox, or a Solstice. Later religions created their own holidays and Holy Days around those same days. Thus we get the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah tied to the Passover which is related to both a New Moon and an Equinox. Christians mark our most important day, Easter, by the first Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox. And the Bible tells us that the death and resurrection of Christ happened during the week of the Jewish Passover. So there's potentially a double calculation involved, which then requires church synods to "set the date" for the Resurrection much as they did for Christmas.

Nations have created their own laws as to when the New Year begins although January 1st has come to be accepted as the most universal date. Until 1752, the British Empire used March 25 as the beginning of the New Year, which seems like an arbitrary date. Some earlier Roman kingdoms used the birthday of the Emperor Caesar Augustus, the great ruler during the times of the Pax Romana, which coincided with much of the life of Christ, as New Year's Day. Emperor Augustus was born on September 23, a singularly important day in my life, and one often associated with the Autumnal Equinox.

As my regular readers know, this page marks the Full Moons as well as the Equinoxes and Solstices. Full Moons are a monthly occurrence and the words "moon" and "month" ultimately derive from the same linguistic root, -me-, meaning "to measure." Other words in that family of words include meter, dimension, meal, menopause, Monday, commensurate, and the musical metronome.

Pictured is the calendar for this year's Full Moons, the first of which will mark another important date in my family, my brother's 60th Birthday.

Happy 2022.

© Jeff Noble, Louisville, Kentucky, January 1, 2022.

826. McConnellian.

Linda Blackford, writing in the Lexington Herald-Leader, uses the word McConnellian, writing

"McConnell's vote to acquit, shortly followed by a fiery speech denouncing Trump is McConnellian hypocrisy, coming right after his next best in saying he couldn't convict Trump after his presidency was over when he delayed the trial until his presidency was over.  That's a lot of contorting."

What a great adjective. Until now, there hasn't been a good word to fully describe the betrayal of Mitch McConnell to Kentucky, the memory of Henry Clay, the U. S. Senate, and the United States. Now we have one.  It occurs to me that "McConnellian" sounds remarkably like "Machiavellian." 

© Jeff Noble, Louisville, Kentucky, February 14, 2021.

825. The Wolf Moon: January's Full Moon, 2021, in Lower Clifton Heights

The snow is still falling here in Lower Clifton Heights*. There are about 2.5 inches of the fallen flakes on my deck. The snow will eventually come to an end in a few hours and when it does we're in for even more magic in the wintry firmament.

To borrow a few lines from Clement Clarke Moore, "The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow, gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below." That luster will be from the first Full Moon of 2021, cresting tomorrow afternoon at 2:16 p.m., but go out tonight and see the wonder!

It's the Wolf Moon, the most appropriate night of the year to Howl at the Moon!

(* - Lower Clifton Heights. I live in a neighborhood called Clifton Heights, named for the hills above the Clifton neighborhood along Frankfort Avenue and overlooking the Muddy Fork of Beargrass Creek and in the distance, the Ohio River. But I live at the foot of the hill. Leaving from where I live is uphill in any direction, albeit to the west or east not a terribly hard incline but to the north or south, the grade is quite steep, including the driveway of our condos leading back to our carports. Thus I've decided to christen our little section of town, which lies along "Lower" Brownsboro Road, as Lower Clifton Heights.)

© Jeff Noble, Louisville, Kentucky, January 27, 2021.

Between 819 and 820. I intend to start blogging again.

I haven't regularly blogged in a while and it is my intent to do so again.  It may take me a minute to get back in the habit.  I haven't posted a picture in years - literally years.  But, we'll see what happens.  Stay with me.  Thanks.

818. The Winter Solstice, 2019

When the sun sets tonight, it will end the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Here in Louisville, sunset will occur at 5:25 p.m. I have four friends vacationing in Key West (Ken, Josh, Bobby, Javier (and I wish I was with them)) and for them the day won't end until 5:43 p.m. My friends in Washington, D.C. can witness the sunset at 4:49 p.m. For a friend I am truly missing who lives in LA, sunset over the Pacific, a wondrous sight, occurs at 4:48 p.m.

Later this evening, at 11:19 p.m. EST, 8:19 PST, our Earth will cross a cardinal point on its annual journey drawing to a close these shortened days marking the Winter Solstice and with it ending autumn and beginning winter. With winter, new light and life slowly reveal themselves back into our world as the days lengthen leading to trees budding and gardens flowering.

Happy Solstice.

817. The Hunter's Moon, 2019

The Hunter's Full Moon arrives tomorrow afternoon at 5:08 p.m. EDT so tonight's view will be great. The moon is currently about 250,000 miles away from the Earth, about as far as it gets. Its furthest measured distance away is 252,622 miles (so far).

The full moon tonight is accompanied by the chance for a frost across nearly all of Kentucky and much of southern Indiana, reminding me of James Whitcomb Riley's poem, "When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock." Go outside and enjoy the lunacy.

Moonrise at the intersection of Dickinson Road and Davis Mill Road, near Trenton, Todd County, Kentucky, this evening, October 12, 2019. Photo by Wayne Addison II. Trenton is in the southwestern part of Todd County, which is in the southwestern part of the Commonwealth.

812. Posting to be posting and a bit about the Election with a promise of more to come.

I keep promising to get back to the blog - but I haven't.  But I feel I should post something just to say "This is mine, Jeff's blog," in much the same tone as Hamlet did in Act V when he proclaimed " This is I, Hamlet the Dane."  Of course, everyone died after that but that is immaterial.  I grow concerned that someone will jump in here and claim my work if I don't go back to it now and again.  Thus entry #812 is just that - going back to it every now and again.

I'll be back soon.  I want to discuss much more fully the work the Yarmuth for Congress Campaign did in certain parts of the Third Congressional District in this last election earlier this month.  I had handled a schematic to follow and from that schematic devised a field plan which I believe was very well executed.  However, we won't really know that until the voters who actually voted are recorded, or dumped as we say, into the Votebuilder system.

At that point we can see if the people we talked to in the 7th and 17th Metro Council Districts, the 29th, 32nd, 33rd, 37th, and 48th House Districts, and the 20th, 26th, and 36th Senate District, actually turned out to vote.  We know that some of the people running in districts where we walked won their districts and some won their district within the 3rd Congressional District but lost elsewhere. 

As I said, I want to discuss this more fully as I believe it was a well designed plan and credit is owed to a number of people.

Until then, Happy Belated Thanksgiving.

P. S.  If you are reading, please let me know by leaving a comment.  Thanks.  jtn

811. Betrayal.

July 16, 2018 will be recorded in the history books of future decades as the day an American president betrayed the 61,000,000 people who voted for him and the 74,000,000 who didn't, and every other American, by telling the president of Russia that he favors and believes him, a tyrant and dictator, over our own American intelligence and military agencies. It's an incredible day; the day the music died.

810. NPR and Soybean Futures

I listen to NPR News because I believe it has an intellectual bias I don't find elsewhere. Nonetheless I chuckled as I listened earlier to a report on the Chinese tariffs retaliation and the journalist trying to sound fully knowledgeable on "soybean futures." 

I do not remember "soybean futures" being mentioned on NPR in the past. It made me think of Barney Arnold and Jack Crowner and those early morning reports on the radio when I was a little kid.

809. Summer Solstice, 2018

About ten hours from now, at 6:07 a.m. tomorrow morning, we will pass one of those cardinal points on our annual journey around our personal star, the Sun. The Summer Solstice marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. In Louisville the period between sunrise and sunset will be 14 hours, 49 minutes, and 48 seconds, the longest day of the year. We're scheduled for some thunderstorms in between those two markers. 

Happy Solstice. 

I think it calls for naked dancing or something.

808. A little journey - figure it out.

So here was the path having left from my mother's house. South Park Road, Louisville to KY1450W to KY1526W to I-65S to KY245N to KY61S to KY733S to US62E to N. 5th Street, Bardstown to KY1430E to US31E N to KY245S to US150E to BG Parkway E to KY555S (a note on this later) to KY433S (where I piddled around a bit in Mackville - they have a really cool old bank building) - to KY152E to KY442S (the narrow highway full of cattle farms) to KY1920S to the park.

Leaving the park on KY1920S to US150E (where I piddled around a bit in Perryville - I had come across a house for sale online a few weeks ago that I remembered and found it at 216 S. Bragg Street) to US68E to US127N to US127BYP N to US127N (these last two changes require no turns) to I-64W to US42E to US42W to US60W to the Noble Abode in Butchertown.

807. If you think the GOP is conservative, you're not paying attention.

U. S. Senator Rand Paul has shut down the government, not over DACA, but over deficits.

He said, "If you were against President Obama's deficits, and now you're for the Republican deficits, isn't that the very definition of hypocrisy?" This is the same guy who just voted in December to give the rich and the corporate a huge tax break adding immediately to the deficit and long term to the debt. He represents the very meaning of hypocrisy as does the entire GOP crowd these days.

They claim the mantle of evangelicals yet support a president who paid off a whore shortly after the birth of his fifth child by his third wife. And they claim to be conservatives and libertarians yet the tax cut they passed in 2017 mostly helps the rich and the corporate and will add debts for future generations in the same manner that the wars and destruction of the American economy including the automobile and banking industries of George Bush, Jr. were paid for by the excessive borrowing of Barack Obama.

If you remain a conservative, and it is fine if you do, you need to go and form a new party because the Republicans in Washington are in no way conservative. They are big government spenders, big government borrowers, and huge, huge hypocrites. All of you know I am a big government tax-and-spend liberal in the form and image of LBJ and Richard Nixon.I am not a centrist such as Bill or Hillary Clinton or what Barack Obama proved to be, nor am I a borrow-and-spend Republican in the form and image of Ronald Reagan, both George Bush's, and Donald Trump.

806. Once in a Super Blue Full Moon with a Lunar Eclipse.

Once in a Super Blue Full Moon with a Lunar Eclipse.

Yeah, tomorrow morning's sky has it all, the triple header.

A super moon, the one when the moon is really close if 224,000 miles can be considered "really close" along with the Full Moon, the Snow Moon, arriving at 8:27 a.m. in the Eastern Time Zone, and since this is the second full moon in a calendar month, this is the Blue Moon that comes along "once in a Blue Moon." The last Blue Moon was July 31, 2015. The next one, however, will be two months from tomorrow so maybe they aren't that special after all. But the next one after that doesn't show up until Hallowe'en of 2020. I'll be 60 for that. The last time we had a Blue Moon on Hallowe'en I was 14. I think I remember that, I really do.

But on top of all this there will be a Lunar Eclipse just as the Moon is setting about the time the chickens are rising. At 5:51 a.m. Eastern Time look up and watch as the Moon enters Earth's penumbra (the lighter, outer part of its shadow). The penumbra slightly darkens the Moon, though only a little. It will touch the umbra, the darker part of the shadow which creates an eclipse beginning at 6:48 a.m. However, we'll miss the entire event as the Moon sets at 7:04 a.m.

All this early in the morning to start your Wednesday, end your January, and begin the campaign season in earnest here in Kentucky.

802. It's a new year and a full moon, and some other stuff. 2018 begins.

Fellow Moon Lovers, tonight's the night. The First Full Moon of 2018, a supermoon presently rising as a larger than usual orb in the eastern skies, occurs about three hours from now, at 9:24 p.m. E.S.T. It is known by some as the Wolf Moon for the sounds of wolves howling, communicating with each other on the cold lonesome nights of January. Find a fellow Moon Lover and do some howling! Tonight's the night!

I was prompted by a friend today to start posting more on the blog. Today's entry marks the eleventh anniversary of the blog so we are entering the twelfth year. At least for the next four and half months, it will be an interesting year due to politics. I'll explain in a subsequent post. 

For now, this is a start. Welcome back.

800. Wow. An appropriate number to think about where to go next.

Is anyone still reading?  I'm just curious.  The blog is now over ten years old and I rarely post anymore.  Please leave a comment.  Let me know who is out there, please.  -- Jeff

798. Trump's one solid rock - Putin.

Next weekend President-Elect Trump becomes President Trump. It will be interesting to see what else he flip-flops on between now and then. Since the campaign there have been a number of things. He's flipped on prosecuting Hillary. "Lock her up" was just for show. He's flipped on Obama going from "he's the most ignorant president in history" to "I have great respect and will seek his counsel." He's flipped on gay marriage changing his mind as to appointing justices who might flip the current law. He's flipped on illegal immigrants from throwing out all 11 million to working on the 3 to 4 million who are proven criminals, something I agree with him on. He flipped on his feelings for the Electoral College calling it "a disaster" before the election and, well, afterwards understandably calling it "genius." He flipped on settling the Trump University case, saying in March "I won't settle" but settling nonetheless for $25M in September. He's even flipped on Obamacare, going from "It has to go on Day One" to agreeing with Sen. Rand Paul that it should not be repealed until there is something to replace it with. Incidentally, Day One was last week. And the big one, the Wall. Mexico was going to pay for the Wall - not just a fence, but a Wall, a big Wall. Now Americans are going to pay for it at a cost of about $10.7M a mile and we're going to beg Mexico to reimburse us. Oh brother. But there is one thing the President-Elect has never wavered on - his undying support and alliance with Vladimir Putin and the Russian state. He continues to defend Russia even against our our intelligence and military officials. As Andy Rooney would say, "Why is that?"

795. It's Been An Interesting Day on the GOP Side

It's been an interesting day on the GOP side. Mr. Trump gave a "foreign policy" speech mostly about Hillary Clinton. He also offered an olive branch of sorts to Muslims - he wants to be their friend now that he's going to be the nominee as opposed to banning them from Ellis Island and other points of entry to the Republic. And he didn't mention "The Wall" down there along the Mexican border he’s been proposing to build for most of the Primary season. Suddenly he is "presidential." He didn't say much else either other than "we're going to be great." No real specifics, just regular Donald stuff. Then Ted the Canadian chose Mrs. Carly Fiorina, HP and Compaq’s destroyer-in-chief, as his running mate, the sort of Hail Mary pass Ronald Reagan, the conservative icon, threw ahead of the 1976 GOP convention, naming liberal Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker as his running mate in the hopes of salvation at the 11th hour. It probably lost him the convention as conservatives, particularly from the South, then switched to the far more moderate incumbent Gerald Ford who up to that point had been struggling. Ford locked up the nomination but lost the election. Finally, did I mention Governor Matt Bevin, the alleged Tea Partier who lives in a nice mansion on Louisville’s east side, is on a taxpayer-funded junket to Europe? Life is otherwise okay.

793. Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

There's an old saying, "Everything in moderation, including moderation."  It's been attributed to many people including Ben Franklin and Oscar Wilde.  It comes to mind of late when thinking about the Duke Boys and their car, the General Lee.  I'm just not all that clear that taking the Duke Boys off the air accomplishes much.  Understand, this doesn't affect me.  I stopped watching TV in 1984, about six months before the Dukes of Hazzard series came to an end.  Then I think about places like Gettysburg and Perryville, both of which I've visited and both of which are celebrating battle anniversaries today.  People from Kentucky on both sides of a war fought and died acting mostly on orders well above their rank. In my post of June 28th I mentioned my unsettled and unsettling self-to-self discussion on the Old South, revisionist history, censorship, and the potential of book burning.  I'm still having that discussion.  Censorship is a big problem for me.  Book burning, deleting history from our history, is also a big problem for me.  How can we learn from the past if we have relegated it to the rubbish heap?