5 December 25

Here's my International Santa, wishing you a very Merry Christmas! This tie was a gift in 2008 from my friend Beth Blanchard (who was then working at EKU, in the International Services office). She got the tie (which is labeled Made in Italy) while on a trip to the United Kingdom.

Note about 5 December: Today marks the birthday of physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976), famous for the uncertainty principle. It expresses the law in subatomic science that the more precisely you measure the velocity (momentum) of a particle, the less precision you can have for its position at that moment. So, on a grander scale, we can know with great precision that Heisenberg was born on 5 December but we may not be able to know exactly where that occurred. Haha!

4 December 25

On the French Republican Calendar (used briefly from 1793 to 1805), the date we know as 4 December was named 14 Frimaire, "Sapin," to honor the fir tree. Each day in that calendar was named for a plant or crop, a farm tool, or a farm animal. My tie with many decorated trees has a secret button that chirps "Silent Night." Happy Fir Tree Day!

3 December 25

With nothing special to note for 3 December, I am choosing to celebrate peppermint candy, a holiday favorite for many people. A recipe for making striped peppermint candy was first published in 1844. The red-and-white twisted canes became popular in the early 1900s, and soon showed up as a traditional Christmas decoration.

2 December 25

Our central Kentucky December weather kicks off with a winter storm watch and overnight snow. We didn't get enough to build a snowman but the ones on my tie are happy anyway.

1 December 25

For the first weekday in Advent 2025 I'm wearing my tie featuring Christmas bells and holly! My calendar shows that December is National Tie Month, so I'm starting it in good fashion. Two trivia in trademark history: Mr. Peanut was registered on this date in 1925, and the Scrabble board game was registered in 1948.

30 November 25

The theme for the First Sunday in Advent is HOPE. I hope you can enjoy this tie featuring Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger, looking forward to Christmas with the words "Time For A Little Holiday Something"!

I am challenging myself to share lots of Advent/Christmas ties between now and Epiphany. I may wear some just long enough to take my photos! I hope you will have a good holiday "something."

29 November 25

Happy Thanksgiving, again! Today we are gathering the family (14 of us) at Ben's house for our traditional turkey fest. My shiny tie hasn't been out of the closet since May 2021. It was a gift at my 50th birthday celebration (2003), and it clearly deserves to be seen! 

 Calendar note: 29 November is "Electronic Greetings Day," celebrating the creation of emailed greeting cards, 1994. I enjoy making animated, personalized e-cards at JibJab.

27 November 25

Happy Thanksgiving! I am very thankful to all who have helped me celebrate neckties. This one was a birthday present (in August) from grandson B. M. My tie bar celebrates the birthday of temperature-scale-creator Anders Celsius (1701-1744).

I have not tried to count the friends and family who have given me ties, but it must be scores. Since April 2008 I have tried to share my joy with you and others (including my students at EKU) through my blog reflections. Today I'm also thankful for the joy in seeing new growth from the garlic I planted in early October'!

23 November 25

We're having lunch today (as usual) with Mom Wilma Wollenweber. This family tradition has been followed roughly weekly since mid-2008. My purple shirt and purple-patterned tie were a birthday gift to me from Mom and Dad in August 2009!

21 November 25

Great moments in Internet history: In November 1977, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) published the first official protocols (rules) for email messages. The ARPANET had 63 connected "nodes" at that time; it became the backbone for what would become the global Internet. My tie celebrates computers, email and the Internet; my tie clip is a small chip of circuit board.

19 November 25

 I'm sporting a new tie created for me by our good friend and cat-godmother Pam Corley. It's hand-dyed with genuine indigo! We know Pam from cat rescues and from her work at Silver Creek Animal Hospital. She is a "frequent liker" of my ties.

17 November 25

August Ferdinand Möbius was born on 17 November 1790. He was a mathematician whose fame circles around the strange properties of the "Möbius loop," portrayed by my tie and by the paper band I'm holding. It's peculiar because the loop has exactly one side. What look like two sides of paper actually form a single surface; if you draw a line around the loop, your pencil will travel twice the "length" of the loop and you will see that there is no "inside" or "outside." If you work to cut a Mobius loop in half (lengthwise), you get another single loop! The original loop has a single twist, and the new loop (which has two surfaces) has two twists.

The curious features of Möbius surfaces have applications in mechanical engineering, manufacturing, chemistry, entertainment and art. All of my students in Beginning Philosophy and Beginning Ethics had fun (?) making Möbius loops and learning about their properties.

16 November 25

Yesterday (15 November) marked the birthday of Otha Dell Brigance (1922-2000), grandfather of our daughter-by-inclusion Rachel Haskins. My tie originally belonged to him and is one of Rachel's favorites! My shirt and the coordinating color on my tie celebrate Orange Day (24 Brumaire) on the French Republican Calendar, which was on Friday 14 November. My tie bar says that I am PAPA SEEDS.

14 November 25

Today, Peter Norton is 82 years old! Norton was famous in the 1980s-2000s for producing great software like Norton Utilities and Norton AntiVirus. I remember using Norton Utilities frequently to repair floppy disks and hard drives; if your disk crashed, it was often possible to recover at least parts of your files. Norton AntiVirus was one of the earliest products to detect and remove viruses (etc.) from personal computers, and it is still available today. My tie shows one of the NORTON corporate logos.

9 Novermber 25

My calendar for 9 November points to the first known recording of classical music, a performance of Handel's "Israel in Egypt," in 1889. It was made on a wax cylinder, using Thomas Edison's invention. The date for this event was actually 29 June 1888, and I am correcting my calendar appropriately. But it's always appropriate to celebrate music, so I'm wearing my eighth-notes tie today.

The small eighth-note pin on my collar is engraved with the letters "E. S.," standing for the name East Siders, a high school singing group from Allentown, PA, which I was part of from 1967-1971. We were sponsored by the Lehigh Valley chapter of Youth for Christ. We sang at churches and schools in eastern Pennsylvania, and our summer tours took us to many churches in Florida, Texas, and Ontario, Canada. YFC had an annual conference in Ocean City, NJ, and in 1968 our mixed quartet (with me as tenor) won that singing competition.