Happy Birthday, Carter Rae Beatty! Carter and Matt Lang (my nephew) live in Asheville, NC, where they survived the monthslong disaster in 2025 following massive flooding. Carter works at Southern Highland Craft Guild, on the Blue Ridge Parkway. She asked me to wear my constellations tie!
I wore a tie every day in December for National Tie Month, Advent and Christmas. January is my Happy-Birthday-est month of the year, and I've started off with six on seven days!
My O.N. (Original Nephew) C. Nolan Huizenga is celebrating his birthday today! He is the pastor at Highland Presbyterian Church in Louisville. I met him when he was a few days old (and I was a young teenager). He loves astronomy and chose this tie because "On my birthday I celebrate the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory and all the discoveries that it will make possible. Hope we humans keep working to understand the universe, as well as each other." I've been wearing a tie to honor his special day almost every year since 2008.
My calendar shows no special occasions for today, but yesterday marked 153 years since Mark Twain received the first of his three patents for suspenders. Today's tie is a great new gift from David and Rachel Haskins; I'm wearing its nice display of stars, constellations and eclipses for our Friday morning Zoom "donuts" meeting, which includes astronomy professor Jessica Lair!
