20 June 25

Grandson Joel chose pink and purple stripes and diamonds to celebrate his birthday!

17 June 25

Happy Birthday, Gary Kuhnhenn! Gary is a donuts comrade and geology professor at Eastern Kentucky University. Besides serving in the geology/geography/physics/astronomy department, he has served many roles in other areas of the university, including the Honors Program and Enrollment Management. Gary and I are both now retired but we see each other almost every Friday morning. 

Two years ago Gary gave me several ties from his collection, including this one featuring the art of Edward Gorey, as presented on Masterpiece Mystery! on PBS.

Recently Beth and I were very happy to help Gary and his wife adopt a tiny orange kitten who showed up in our neighborhood in Berea. At first they called him Orange Crush, but he quickly became "CRASH" due to his boisterous exploits in their house in Winchester.

15 June 25

For Father's Day 2025 I'm wearing my tie that I think resembles one my father Arthur Jeremiah Kleppinger (1916-2004) wore. He wore ties to work every day at Bethlehem Fabricators, which became part of Whitehead & Kales. Today also marks 85 years since Arthur married Ethel Howland York. My tie clip says "Papa Seeds," what my grandchildren call me!

13 June 25

I think this tie has great potential for celebrating electricity -- I see the dots as electrons and the stripes as wires or charged plates. I'm currently honoring the birthdays of James Clerk Maxwell (today) and Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (tomorow). James Clerk Maxwell FRSE FRS (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish scientist in the field of mathematical physics. His most notable achievement was to formulate the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, bringing together for the first time electricity, magnetism, and light as different manifestations of the same phenomenon. Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism have been called the 'second great unification in physics' where the first one had been realized by Isaac Newton. (Wikipedia). Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736-1806), for whom the unit of electrical charge is named, was a French physicist who wrote Coulomb's Law of electrical charges and invented the torsion balance. I might also mention the shocking event on 10 June 1752 when Benjamin Franklin used a kite to demonstrate that lightning is, in fact, electricity.

8 June 25

Wearing RED for Pentecost Sunday, celebrating the birthday of the Christian church (around 30 CE), and sporting my Web-addresses-and-symbols tie, to honor the birthday of Tim Berners-Lee (1955). In 1989 he created the standards for hypertext transfer protocol (http) as the language (or "tongue"?) for what became Internet communication.

6 June 25

The first Friday in June is always National Donut Day. You and Krispy Kreme® may prefer the spelling "doughnut" but Dunkin'® and many other makers use the shorter word. It is based on the donut event created by The Salvation Army in Chicago in 1938 to honor those of their members who served donuts to soldiers ("doughboys") during World War I. Today I am enjoying donut holes!

5 June 25

My niece Kirsten (Huizenga) Caminiti celebrates her birthday every year on 5 June! This time she asked me to wear this Zambia animals tie. It features a lion, a secretary bird, some elephants and a nyala (spiral-horned antelope). She chose this design "out of my affection for animals, fascination with sun/clouds, and in honor of Zambians and other people of color around the world." Happy Birthday, Kirsten!

1 June 25

Once again we have reached Pea Day, on the French Republican Calendar (Pois, 13 Prairial). I''m happy to show the grinning French Peas and Junior Carrot on this Veggie Tales® tie. I hope you have visited the French Republican Calendar to see which crop, animal or farm tool they honored on your birthday or other special days!

25 May 25

Mom Wilma Wollenweber asked me to wear my Zambia letters tie today. It's one of the ties she and Dad brought back to me from their 2000 short term mission trip to that country. Yesterday (24 May) was Dad's birthday, and he would have been 100 years old! We have a family tradition of celebrating "Soup Sunday" near his birthday every year, to remember one of his most loved foods. This time we are preparing cheesy corn chowder, using a very easy recipe from the More With Less Cookbook.

23 May 25

My Looney Tunes jumble tie honors this illustrious mixture of birthdays on 23 May: Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Margaret Wise Brown (1910-1952), Franz Mesmer (1734-1815), Robert Moog (1934-2005), Ken Jennings (1974), Reuben Shiffert (1811-1893) and William Kester (1787-1866). Shiffert and Kester are two of my 16 great-great-great-grandfathers. I hope the others are familiar names for you!

22 May 25

Today is Aimee Moiso's birthday! She is my niece-in-law, married to my nephew Nolan Huizenga. They live in Louisville, KY. Aimee is celebrating completing her first half-century! Because she is thinking a lot about "circles of life," we settled on this tie featuring multicolor rings with a peaceful, centered feeling. I added a tie tack with a nice silver-blue center.

18 May 25

Today is a "pick your holiday" Day! My tie is simply a plaid one that I like but haven't worn since July 2022. Here's a list of occasions for 18 May:

• Bertrand Russell's birthday (1872-1970)
• Other birthdays
• I Love Reese's Day
• NATIONAL NO DIRTY DISHES DAY |  
• TAKE YOUR PARENTS TO THE PLAYGROUND DAY |  
• NATIONAL CHEESE SOUFFLE DAY |  
• NATIONAL VISIT YOUR RELATIVES DAY |  
• NATIONAL HIV VACCINE AWARENESS DAY

16 May 25

The 16th of May (16/05) is Chartreuse Day! In the year 1605, the Chartreuse monks in Paris received a manuscript of an Elixir, soon to be known as "the Elixir of long Life." This minty liqueur had a distinctive in-your-face-neon-green color, forever named for the monastery. So the date of 16/05 gets associated with the liqueur and its color, and I get to wear this bright tie. 

 My personal interest in chartreuse comes from memories of analytical chemistry labs where we used the vibrant color of fluorescein as an indicator in some titrations for trace metals. 

More recently, we've been listening to the Louise Penny novel "The Grey Wolf" in which the recipe for chartreuse liqueur plays a very important role for Inspector Gamache in the mysteries surrounding a potential catastrophe for the citizens of Montreal, Quebec.

15 May 25

I've been retired for 16 months and all is well. My tie says "I'm retired -- I'm free to do whatever I want!" On Wednesday evening I attended a retirement party for Jenn Spock, one of my colleagues in the Department of History, Philosophy and Religious Studies at EKU. She noticed that I had no tie for that occasion, and we agreed that I should wear this one for her today. Jenn's specialty is in the history of Russia and its neighbors in eastern Europe. We have shared some good times in our Friday morning donuts group!

13 May 25

When you have a necktie featuring frogs on lily pads, you have to wear it on a great holiday called National Frog Jumping Day! It occurs annually on 13 May, and it is related to the four-day-long  International Frog Jump, at the Calaveras County Fair (in California). Legend has it that Mark Twain overheard a story in a local tavern that inspired his first published work, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Our own stuffy green frog jumped into our home through the book "It's Mine!" by Leo Lionni.