I Had a Birthday

Birthday is the name given to the date of the anniversary of the day of a person's birth. People in many cultures celebrate this anniversary. In some languages, the word for birthday literally translates as "anniversary". Birthdays are traditionally marked by celebrations including a birthday party or, in some particular cases, a rite of transition.

It is thought the large-scale celebration of birthdays in Europe began with the non-Christian cult of Mithras, which originated in Persia, and was spread by soldiers throughout the Roman Empire. Such celebrations were uncommon previously so practices from other contexts such as the Saturnalia were adapted for birthdays.
Because many Roman soldiers took to Mithraism, it was distributed widely and its influence was spread throughout the empire until it was supplanted by Christianity.

The birthday cake is traditionally highly decorated, and typically covered with lit candles when presented, the number of candles signifying the age of the celebrant. The person whose birthday it is may make a silent wish and then blow out the candles. After that, the person can open their presents. It is also common for the person celebrating their birthday to cut the initial piece of the cake as a newlywed couple might with a wedding cake.
Birthday cakes date back as far as the Middle Ages when the English would conceal symbolic items such as gold coins, rings and thimbles inside their cakes. Each item was associated with a prediction. For example, a person finding a gold coin in a birthday cake would supposedly become wealthy; a person discovering a thimble would never marry.
Sometimes special candles are substituted for the many individual candles in the shape of a numeral. For example, on the fifth birthday, there may be one candle on the cake in the shape of the numeral five, and on the fiftieth birthday there may be two candles on the cake, one in the shape of the numeral five followed by the other in the shape of the number zero.

Yesterday I turned 60. I don't feel 60, and that number seems SO HIGH. I think I will start counting backwards....so next year it'll be 29 Again.......and Again........

Texas Signs of Spring

Spring has come to Northeast Texas and is Popping out Everywhere! I have already mowed and weed eated the yard twice, so the yard work chores have begun. Got a new mower this year, and it is making the work so much easier. I did not realize the old 12 year mower was such and Antique! All the trees have not budded out, and when the Pecan and Bois D' Arc do, then we are assured of no more frosty freezes. They are on the verge!

St Patrick

Saint Patrick (Latin: Patricius, Irish: Naomh Pádraig), said to have been born Maewyn Succat (Latin: Magonus Succetus), was a Roman Britain-born Christian missionary and is the patron saint of Ireland along with Brigid of Kildare and Columba. When he was about sixteen he was captured by Irish raiders and taken from his native Wales as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After entering the church, he later returned to Ireland as a missionary in the north and west of the island, but little is known about the places where he worked and no link can be made between Patrick and any church. By the eighth century he had become the patron saint of Ireland. The Irish monastery system evolved after the time of Patrick and the Irish church did not develop the diocesan model that Patrick and the other early missionaries had tried to establish.
The available body of evidence does not allow the dates of Patrick's life to be fixed with certainty, but it appears that he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the fifth century. Two letters from him survive, along with later hagiographies from the seventh century onwards. Many of these works cannot be taken as authentic traditions. Uncritical acceptance of the Annals of Ulster (see below) would imply that he lived from 340 to 460, and ministered in what is modern day northern Ireland from 428 onwards.

Most modern studies of Saint Patrick follow a variant of T. F. O'Rahilly's "Two Patricks" theory. That is to say, many of the traditions later attached to Saint Patrick originally concerned Palladius, a deacon from Gaul who came to Ireland, perhaps sent by Pope Celestine I (died 431). Palladius was not the only early cleric in Ireland at this time. Saints Auxilius, Secundinus and Iserninus are associated with early churches in Munster and Leinster. By this reading, Palladius was active in Ireland until the 460s.

Prosper of Aquitaine's contemporary chronicle states:
Palladius was ordained by Pope Celestine and sent to the Irish believers in Christ as their first bishop. Prosper associates this with the visits of Germanus of Auxerre to Britain to suppress the Pelagian heresy and it has been suggested that Palladius and his colleagues were sent to Ireland to ensure that exiled Pelagians did not establish themselves among the Irish Christians. The appointment of Palladius and his fellow-bishops was not obviously a mission to convert the Irish, but more probably intended to minister to existing Christian communities in Ireland. The sites of churches associated with Palladius and his colleagues are close to royal centres of the period: Secundus is remembered by Dunshaughlin, County Meath, close to the Hill of Tara which is associated with the High King of Ireland; Kilashee, County Kildare, close to Naas with links with the Kings of Leinster, is probably named for Auxilius. This activity was limited to the southern half of Ireland, and there is no evidence for them in Ulster or Connacht. Although the evidence for contacts with Gaul is clear, the borrowings from Latin into the Old Irish language show that links with former Roman Britain were many. Saint Iserninus, who appears to be of the generation of Palladius, is thought to have been a Briton, and is associated with the lands of the Uí Cheinnselaig in Leinster. The Palladian mission should not be contrasted with later "British" missions, but forms a part of them. Saint Patrick went under the gaelic second name of Daorbae (meaning - He was enslaved) so, he was known as Patricius Daorbae, during his Irish ministry.

March 17, popularly known as St. Patrick's Day, is believed to be his death date and is the date celebrated as his feast day. The day became a feast day in the universal church due to the influence of the Waterford-born Franciscan scholar Luke Wadding, as a member of the commission for the reform of the Breviary in the early part of the 17th century.
For most of Christianity's first thousand years, canonisations were done on the diocesan or regional level. Relatively soon after the death of people considered to be very holy people, the local Church affirmed that they could be liturgically celebrated as saints. As a result, St. Patrick has never been formally canonised by a Pope; nevertheless, various Christian churches declare that he is a Saint in Heaven (he is in the List of Saints). He is still widely venerated in Ireland and elsewhere today.
St. Patrick is also venerated in the Orthodox Church, especially among English-speaking Orthodox Christians living in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland and in North America. There are Orthodox icons dedicated to him.
On March 17, 1776, the day that British forces under General Sir William Howe evacuated Boston during the American Revolutionary War, the password of the day at General George Washington's Continental Army encampment was "Saint Patrick". The date is observed as Evacuation Day, an official holiday in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, USA. Massachusetts has the most Irish ancestry of the United States in terms of percentage of total population.

Daylight Saving Time

Benjamin Franklin

William Willett

Daylight Saving Time

(DST; also, summer time in British English; is the convention of advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour near the start of spring and are adjusted backward in autumn. Modern DST was first proposed in 1907 by the English builder William Willett. Many countries have used it since then; details vary by location and change occasionally.
The practice is controversial. Adding daylight to afternoons benefits retailing, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours but causes problems for farming, entertainment and other occupations tied to the sun. Traffic fatalities are reduced when there is extra afternoon daylight; its effect on health and crime is less clear. Although an early goal of DST was to reduce evening usage of incandescent lighting, formerly a primary use of electricity, modern heating and cooling usage patterns greatly differ, and research about how DST currently affects energy use is limited and often contradictory.
DST's occasional clock shifts present other challenges. They complicate timekeeping and can disrupt meetings, travel, billing, recordkeeping, medical devices, and heavy equipment. Many computer-based systems can adjust their clocks automatically, but this can be limited and error-prone, particularly when DST rules change.

Origin

Although not punctual in the modern sense, ancient civilizations adjusted daily schedules to the sun more flexibly than modern DST does, often dividing daylight into twelve equal hours regardless of day length, so that each daylight hour was longer during summer. For example, Roman water clocks had different scales for different months of the year: at Rome's latitude the third hour from sunrise, hora tertia, started by modern standards at 09:02 solar time and lasted 44 minutes at the winter solstice, but at the summer solstice it started at 06:58 and lasted 75 minutes. After ancient times, equal-length civil hours eventually supplanted unequal, so civil time no longer varies by season. Unequal hours are still used in a few traditional settings, such as some Mount Athos monasteries.

Benjamin Franklin suggested firing cannons at sunrise to waken Parisians.
During his time as an American envoy to France, Benjamin Franklin, author of the proverb, "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise", anonymously published a letter suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight. This 1784 satire proposed taxing shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise. Franklin did not propose DST; like ancient Rome, 18th-century Europe did not keep accurate schedules. However, this soon changed as rail and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklin's day.
The prominent English builder and outdoorsman William Willett conceived DST in 1905 during a pre-breakfast ride, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through a large part of a summer day. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk. His solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later. He lobbied unsuccessfully for the proposal until his death in 1915. Germany, its World War I allies, and their occupied zones were the first European nations to use Willett's invention, starting April 30, 1916. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year; and the United States adopted it in 1918. Since then, the world has seen many enactments, adjustments, and repeals.

Get READY!. Set your clocks forward one hour this Sunday, March 7, 2009 at 2:00 AM.

SPRING FORWARD!