16 January 25

Happy Birthday, Ben Kleppinger! He wanted me to wear a dark green tie, for his favorite color, and we settled on this nice paisley design. I'm including a photo from 2008 when Ben had dreads and I was working in Case Hall Annex at EKU.

26 June 23

On this day without a celebration I am choosing to wear this wonderful paisley tie, shiny gold on green!

20 May 21

While working with my family tree at ancestry.com I recently noticed the curiosity that Beth's maternal grandmother Marie (Eggers) Lange was born on 20 May 1890, while my maternal grandmother Sophie Ethel (Kinner) York was born on 21 May 1878. We think they both would have liked this green/gold paisley tie, so I'm honoring both of them today. I never knew Sophie York; she died when my mother was 15. About all I know about her is that she kept house and family for her school-teacher-and-principal husband Lorenzo, in various locations on Long Island, and later near Rochester, New York. Beth's mother Wilma remembers Marie Lange as "a very courageous woman who had to deal with some great challenges in her life." One important family story is that Marie, who was living in Hamburg, Germany, boarded a ship in 1926 to come to America because a childhood acquaintance named Albert Jurgen Claus Lange asked her to marry him! They hoped to wed on the Friday she arrived but it was too late so they had to wait until Monday! Beth remembers her Granny living with their family until her death in 1962.

Photo from 1957: Granny Marie Lange at right.
Photo from 1924: Sophie York, middle of back row.

7 July 19

I discovered that today is the birthday of Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), a French weaver and merchant. He is credited with developing the programmable loom, and the Jacquard name has long been associated with repeating patterns woven into fabric. My tie's repeating paisleys represent a modern product based on Jacquard's work. His programming for the loom was based on a sequence of punched cards, directing the operation of hooks to guide the yarn. This idea eventually became the basis for all sorts of calculating machines, down to the 20th-century "modern" computers receiving their instructions from decks of punched cards.

18 September 18

Today marks the birthdays of mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752) and physicist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1819). The swirling paisleys on my tie are reminders of Legendre's famous  polynomials and Foucault's investigations into the effects of earth's rotation on swinging pendulums.

9 April 17

I'm waving green-and-gold paisleys for Palm Sunday.

2 September 15

No great occasion known for today, so I'm wearing a great tie that has not been seen for nearly two years!

18 September 13

Birthday of mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752-1833) and physicist Léon Foucault (1819-1868). Both were enamored of swirls, lemniscates, parabolas and hyperbolas.

10 February 13

My sister Gloria chose today's green/gold paisley tie to honor her birthday (yesterday). She said it has a "rather restrained energy and subtle palette," which she hopes will characterize her next decades!

23 March 11

Hail to the forecasters who reign over those isobar and isotherm maps! Whether you knew it or not, today winds up being World Meteorological Day. I hope the swirling pattens on my tie will precipitate some up-front smiles from you.

03 September 09

Today is the anniversary of our friend/brother Clyde David Burberry's birth, in 1941. He chose this tie for me to wear today because its curves and intricate figures symbolize so well the classic work of the cosmologist Loren Eiseley, a hero to both of us, who was also born on September 3 (1907). By the way, the laptop logo on my shirt was custom embroidered by Susan Burberry.

03 September 08

Today marks the birthday (in 1907) of Loren Eiseley, a respected science writer, ecologist and poet. He died in 1977. His interpretations of the "literary" and "poetic" features in nature were excellent. This tie includes swirling images from nature and art.

Repeating from 5 August

05 August 08

One day into my new year, and today I got "crowned" for the fourth (and final) time by our excellent family dentist, Dr. Larry Daugherty. This is probably my most "regally resplendent" tie, in greens, silver and gold.