Harold Eppley's Blog
January 19, 2013
New Year
I need a new calendar. And by that I mean a whole new way of observing the earth’s 365.256363-day revolution around the sun. I understand that the ancient Romans originated the idea of beginning each new year shortly after the winter solstice, so I’m blaming them for the frustration I invariably feel in January. Of course, it might also have something to do with living in Wisconsin.
I learned long ago not to make specific New Year’s resolutions. Still there’s a part of me that can’t help envisioning the beginning of a new year as an opportunity to take on new challenges and improve my life. Try as I might, I can’t get myself to think of January 1 as just another ordinary day.
It is a holiday, a special day, every single year, just like Independence Day and Valentine’s Day. On July 4, I always feel patriotic. On February 14, I always (repeat: always) remember to buy my wife a gift. And on January 1, I always think Today is the day I finally get my act together. By the time I’ve finished my morning coffee all sorts of unbidden thoughts have rolled through my mind. Thoughts like This would be a good time to start exercising more often, and Now’s the time to take on a new writing project, and Less beef, more kale.
So I grab my workout clothes and head to the Y. Later I pull out the novel I’ve been “working on” since 1987 and compose a few paragraphs. Then I sit down to watch the Rose Bowl, foregoing my usual beer for one of my wife’s tasty homemade kiwi-asparagus smoothies. And I feel good. I can do this, I think. I can finally become the person I’ve always wanted to be.
Except that it’s January. And did I mention that I live in Wisconsin? January 2 rolls around and it’s 10 degrees below 0 and there’s a blizzard coming. Can’t go out in that kind of weather. Guess I can skip the Y. And it’s cloudy and gray and I suffer from seasonal affective disorder. My mind is fuzzy. Can’t concentrate on the novel. Melancholy settles in. Maybe I should have a couple of beers. Oh yeah, and I might as well finish off that bag of Fritos.
Then there’s the fact that I always get sick at this time of year. By January 3, I’ve come down with some kind of virus and can barely drag myself out of bed. And why would I want to-- since it’s still dark at 7:30 am and the sun goes down by 4:00 pm?
I can’t think of a worse time than the beginning of January for someone who lives in Wisconsin to make an effort at improving his or her life. Curse you—New Year’s Day!
And so I have taken a look at some other calendar options. The Chinese New Year begins on February 10, which is still a bit premature for me. The Islamic calendar begins the year in November, which would be fine if I lived in the southern hemisphere. Of course there’s the Mayan calendar- but we all know how that turned out.
The Bah’ai calendar begins on the vernal equinox and consists of 19 months of 19 days. That sounds kind of attractive to me since after the 23rd day of most months I can’t remember what day it is without consulting a calendar. But 19 months might be too many. Is this Jalal or Jamal? And Valentine’s Day would fall on the 7th day of Mulk. That doesn’t sound right. Baha showers bring Azamat flowers? Doesn’t work for me.
I recently learned that the original Roman calendar consisted of only 304 days and ten months, March through December. The days after the end of December and before the beginning of March were not assigned to any month. So, in essence, January and February did not exist. I like that idea. This is fallow time for me, the sunlit hours so few that the days all seem to flow together into one big uneventful passage of time. It’s like I take a long winter’s nap and wake up around the beginning of March, when the sun shines higher in the sky and the earth comes alive all around me.
I have concluded that there is only one calendar that fits my lifestyle and moods perfectly. It begins gently sometime at the end of February, in a rather provisional manner, but it doesn’t really count until the beginning of April. I like the idea of having a number of weeks to practice and warm up before I actually try in earnest to get my life together. April and May are full of hope, and in June and July there’s still time to make up for any mistakes made in April and May. By the end of August it’s clear whether it’s been a good year or not, and it all culminates with a burst of glory in October.
So you’ll have to excuse me while I return to hibernation and dream about the day when I’ll hear the crack of the bat once again. Go Brewers!
I learned long ago not to make specific New Year’s resolutions. Still there’s a part of me that can’t help envisioning the beginning of a new year as an opportunity to take on new challenges and improve my life. Try as I might, I can’t get myself to think of January 1 as just another ordinary day.
It is a holiday, a special day, every single year, just like Independence Day and Valentine’s Day. On July 4, I always feel patriotic. On February 14, I always (repeat: always) remember to buy my wife a gift. And on January 1, I always think Today is the day I finally get my act together. By the time I’ve finished my morning coffee all sorts of unbidden thoughts have rolled through my mind. Thoughts like This would be a good time to start exercising more often, and Now’s the time to take on a new writing project, and Less beef, more kale.
So I grab my workout clothes and head to the Y. Later I pull out the novel I’ve been “working on” since 1987 and compose a few paragraphs. Then I sit down to watch the Rose Bowl, foregoing my usual beer for one of my wife’s tasty homemade kiwi-asparagus smoothies. And I feel good. I can do this, I think. I can finally become the person I’ve always wanted to be.
Except that it’s January. And did I mention that I live in Wisconsin? January 2 rolls around and it’s 10 degrees below 0 and there’s a blizzard coming. Can’t go out in that kind of weather. Guess I can skip the Y. And it’s cloudy and gray and I suffer from seasonal affective disorder. My mind is fuzzy. Can’t concentrate on the novel. Melancholy settles in. Maybe I should have a couple of beers. Oh yeah, and I might as well finish off that bag of Fritos.
Then there’s the fact that I always get sick at this time of year. By January 3, I’ve come down with some kind of virus and can barely drag myself out of bed. And why would I want to-- since it’s still dark at 7:30 am and the sun goes down by 4:00 pm?
I can’t think of a worse time than the beginning of January for someone who lives in Wisconsin to make an effort at improving his or her life. Curse you—New Year’s Day!
And so I have taken a look at some other calendar options. The Chinese New Year begins on February 10, which is still a bit premature for me. The Islamic calendar begins the year in November, which would be fine if I lived in the southern hemisphere. Of course there’s the Mayan calendar- but we all know how that turned out.
The Bah’ai calendar begins on the vernal equinox and consists of 19 months of 19 days. That sounds kind of attractive to me since after the 23rd day of most months I can’t remember what day it is without consulting a calendar. But 19 months might be too many. Is this Jalal or Jamal? And Valentine’s Day would fall on the 7th day of Mulk. That doesn’t sound right. Baha showers bring Azamat flowers? Doesn’t work for me.
I recently learned that the original Roman calendar consisted of only 304 days and ten months, March through December. The days after the end of December and before the beginning of March were not assigned to any month. So, in essence, January and February did not exist. I like that idea. This is fallow time for me, the sunlit hours so few that the days all seem to flow together into one big uneventful passage of time. It’s like I take a long winter’s nap and wake up around the beginning of March, when the sun shines higher in the sky and the earth comes alive all around me.
I have concluded that there is only one calendar that fits my lifestyle and moods perfectly. It begins gently sometime at the end of February, in a rather provisional manner, but it doesn’t really count until the beginning of April. I like the idea of having a number of weeks to practice and warm up before I actually try in earnest to get my life together. April and May are full of hope, and in June and July there’s still time to make up for any mistakes made in April and May. By the end of August it’s clear whether it’s been a good year or not, and it all culminates with a burst of glory in October.
So you’ll have to excuse me while I return to hibernation and dream about the day when I’ll hear the crack of the bat once again. Go Brewers!
August 17, 2012
Indulge Me, My Children
Every so often my children ask, “What was life like in the old days, Dad?” They’re talking about that time in history when I was alive but they did not yet exist. As I am now advanced in years, the early 1990s are usually as far back as I can remember. It was a dark, dark time when we struggled through life without the Internet, iPods and stuffed crust pizza.
Maybe I’m getting nostalgic in my old age but despite the inconvenience of having to walk across the room to answer the phone, I cherish those pre-technological years with an ever-increasing fondness. When I tell my children that, in certain ways, life was better in those days, they stare at me incredulously.
It’s like I’m a pre-Neanderthal and we’re all sitting around the fire on a frosty Metazoic era night and I’m rambling on about how great life was in the dark ages.
“Oh, yes,” I grunt. “I sure do miss those good ol’ days before Gronk discovered fire. Well sure, we were always freezing our asses off, and breaking our incisors on the extra rare mastodon meat, and we couldn’t see a damn thing after sundown . . . but life was so much better back then.”
Poor Dad. When will he get with the program? How could life possibly be better without the Internet?
And so for the 500th time I tell them the Richard Scarry story, and watch them roll their eyes. Indulge me, my children, one more time.
As a child I spent countless hours reading a book entitled “Busy, Busy World.” Filled with delightful illustrations by Richard Scarry, it contained stories about the experiences of various anthropomorphic animals around the globe. Some time in my teenage years I misplaced or tossed my cherished book. I remembered it again as a young adult, and yearned to find a copy.
In the first years of our marriage my wife and I lived in a small town in western Pennsylvania, where we had fire and electricity but no Internet and bad cable. As avid readers, we enjoyed frequenting independent bookstores in towns large and small, where I spent countless hours searching the shelves for a copy of Busy, Busy World. (For those born after 2000— bookstores were stores where people sold and purchased books.)
Richard Scarry’s masterpiece had become for me a lost memento of my childhood, my own mythic Rosebud. It took several years and visits to dozens of stores before I finally came upon a tattered copy of my cherished book, which, of course, I promptly bought.
Now if I wanted a copy of Busy, Busy World in 2012, I would Google it, point and click, type in a credit card number and wait a few days for the book to be delivered to my door. With little time and effort, I could accomplish a task that 20 years ago took me two and a half years and numerous inquiries to finally achieve.
And so my children don’t understand why I miss life in the years before the Internet. I try to explain to them that I miss the adventure of the quest. Poring over the shelves of bookstores, blowing the dust off old books, turning the corner, perusing more shelves, in hopes of finding my elusive treasure. And finally, the thrill I felt when after hours and hours of searching, I found it.
The problem with the Internet is that it makes everything too easy and renders many of my most cherished memories obsolete.
Another example. I love to reminisce about all the nights I used to spend with my college buddies, downing beer and arguing about sports trivia. I’d usually get things started. “Remember 1965? I’m sure Tony Oliva was the American League MVP that year.”
“No, you jackass, it was Zoilo Versalles,” my friend Kip would say.
Brad would chime in, “Yeah, Oliva for sure.”
“You’re all wrong!” Nick would shout. “It had to be Harmon Killebrew.”
We’d all argue our points, rattling on for hours, knowing that the matter would not be resolved because none of us had immediate access to a sports almanac. Before the evening was finished we vowed we’d look up the answer the next day. But a few more beers and by the next morning, we couldn’t remember what we’d been arguing about.
I got together with those same college buddies a few months ago. For old times sake, I tried to start one of our cherished sports trivia arguments. “Hey, didn’t Larry Csonka score 3 touchdowns in Super Bowl 8?”
Kip took the bait, “No, you jackass, that was Super Bowl 9.”
Before I could take a second sip of my beer, Brad and Nick pulled out their Blackberrys. “Super Bowl 8. Two touchdowns for Csonka,” said Brad, quicker on the draw than his counterpart.
End of argument. It didn’t leave much to talk about. We spent the rest of the evening checking out Nick’s latest apps and watching cute kitten videos on YouTube.
Now I’ll admit that if we had the Internet back in college we wouldn’t have wasted all those hours with our silly arguments. Let’s face it—our days on this earth are numbered and every second wasted is time we’ll never get back. If we had the Internet back then we could have resolved our arguments promptly and then used that extra time to do something more fulfilling with our college years-- like playing World of Warcraft or surfing the web for porn.
Yes, dear children, that was sarcasm.
Please, don’t get me wrong. I love the Internet almost as much as you do. But sometimes you need to indulge your old man. I’m just asking you not to snicker when I wax nostalgic about life before Facebook and MP4s. Hey kids, stop rolling your eyes.
Maybe I’m getting nostalgic in my old age but despite the inconvenience of having to walk across the room to answer the phone, I cherish those pre-technological years with an ever-increasing fondness. When I tell my children that, in certain ways, life was better in those days, they stare at me incredulously.
It’s like I’m a pre-Neanderthal and we’re all sitting around the fire on a frosty Metazoic era night and I’m rambling on about how great life was in the dark ages.
“Oh, yes,” I grunt. “I sure do miss those good ol’ days before Gronk discovered fire. Well sure, we were always freezing our asses off, and breaking our incisors on the extra rare mastodon meat, and we couldn’t see a damn thing after sundown . . . but life was so much better back then.”
Poor Dad. When will he get with the program? How could life possibly be better without the Internet?
And so for the 500th time I tell them the Richard Scarry story, and watch them roll their eyes. Indulge me, my children, one more time.
As a child I spent countless hours reading a book entitled “Busy, Busy World.” Filled with delightful illustrations by Richard Scarry, it contained stories about the experiences of various anthropomorphic animals around the globe. Some time in my teenage years I misplaced or tossed my cherished book. I remembered it again as a young adult, and yearned to find a copy.
In the first years of our marriage my wife and I lived in a small town in western Pennsylvania, where we had fire and electricity but no Internet and bad cable. As avid readers, we enjoyed frequenting independent bookstores in towns large and small, where I spent countless hours searching the shelves for a copy of Busy, Busy World. (For those born after 2000— bookstores were stores where people sold and purchased books.)
Richard Scarry’s masterpiece had become for me a lost memento of my childhood, my own mythic Rosebud. It took several years and visits to dozens of stores before I finally came upon a tattered copy of my cherished book, which, of course, I promptly bought.
Now if I wanted a copy of Busy, Busy World in 2012, I would Google it, point and click, type in a credit card number and wait a few days for the book to be delivered to my door. With little time and effort, I could accomplish a task that 20 years ago took me two and a half years and numerous inquiries to finally achieve.
And so my children don’t understand why I miss life in the years before the Internet. I try to explain to them that I miss the adventure of the quest. Poring over the shelves of bookstores, blowing the dust off old books, turning the corner, perusing more shelves, in hopes of finding my elusive treasure. And finally, the thrill I felt when after hours and hours of searching, I found it.
The problem with the Internet is that it makes everything too easy and renders many of my most cherished memories obsolete.
Another example. I love to reminisce about all the nights I used to spend with my college buddies, downing beer and arguing about sports trivia. I’d usually get things started. “Remember 1965? I’m sure Tony Oliva was the American League MVP that year.”
“No, you jackass, it was Zoilo Versalles,” my friend Kip would say.
Brad would chime in, “Yeah, Oliva for sure.”
“You’re all wrong!” Nick would shout. “It had to be Harmon Killebrew.”
We’d all argue our points, rattling on for hours, knowing that the matter would not be resolved because none of us had immediate access to a sports almanac. Before the evening was finished we vowed we’d look up the answer the next day. But a few more beers and by the next morning, we couldn’t remember what we’d been arguing about.
I got together with those same college buddies a few months ago. For old times sake, I tried to start one of our cherished sports trivia arguments. “Hey, didn’t Larry Csonka score 3 touchdowns in Super Bowl 8?”
Kip took the bait, “No, you jackass, that was Super Bowl 9.”
Before I could take a second sip of my beer, Brad and Nick pulled out their Blackberrys. “Super Bowl 8. Two touchdowns for Csonka,” said Brad, quicker on the draw than his counterpart.
End of argument. It didn’t leave much to talk about. We spent the rest of the evening checking out Nick’s latest apps and watching cute kitten videos on YouTube.
Now I’ll admit that if we had the Internet back in college we wouldn’t have wasted all those hours with our silly arguments. Let’s face it—our days on this earth are numbered and every second wasted is time we’ll never get back. If we had the Internet back then we could have resolved our arguments promptly and then used that extra time to do something more fulfilling with our college years-- like playing World of Warcraft or surfing the web for porn.
Yes, dear children, that was sarcasm.
Please, don’t get me wrong. I love the Internet almost as much as you do. But sometimes you need to indulge your old man. I’m just asking you not to snicker when I wax nostalgic about life before Facebook and MP4s. Hey kids, stop rolling your eyes.
