27 March 23

I'm wearing my birch trees tie today to honor Birch Tree Day (Bouleau, 7 Germinal) on the French Republican Calendar. It was created after the French Revolution, expressing deep connections to nature by correlating each day on the calendar with a plant (a crop, flower or tree), a farm animal or an agricultural tool. Yesterday marked the birthday of Robert Frost (1874-1963). My birch trees tie is related to his wonderful poem Birches. We have large river birch trees which we planted 26 years ago.

25 March 26

Our tortoiseshell cat Portia Anne joined our family in 2022, as a two-year-old neighborhood wanderer. She adopted our porches as her territory, and so on 8 April 2022 we called her in "from the porches" and named her Portia. She enjoyed almost four years with our other cats Andrew, Esther and Muffin, and with our dog Belle Pepper. She liked us too, often sleeping right over our heads early in the morning. Recently she ran out of energy and appetite (due to feline leukemia), and today she crossed the Rainbow Bridge. We will miss her!

24 March 26

My tie today features IBM "AT" desktop computers, which were sold from 1984-1987. The letters "AT" stood for Advanced Technology. The typewriter-style keyboard from 40 years ago is essentially the only component that is directly related to our current hardware. I last wore this tie in November 2021. My calendar shows three historical events for 24 March: in 1980, Roman Catholic Archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated in San Salvador; in 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach dedicated his Brandenburg Concertos to his patron, Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt; and it is National Chocolate-Covered Raisin Day.

22 March 26

Today marks the coincidental birthdays of Beth's grandmother Helen Anna (Bukowske) Wollenweber (1892-1976) and her great-grandmother Anna Margareta (Schacht) Eggers (1848-1928). Beth asked me to wear this fruity tie, which originally belonged to her father -- Helen and Fred's only son -- Robert Wollenweber. Beth remembers visiting Helen and Fred in Dearborn, Michigan! Anna Margareta lived in Hamburg, Germany. Helen was born in Germany and emigrated to Missouri as an infant.

20-21 March 26

The third Saturday in March is National Quilting Day! My patchwork quilt tie was a gift from a resident at the Telford Terrace nursing home in 2012, where I was a weekly visitor from 2000-2020. My Sunday evening visits began when my father moved into assisted living in Allentown, PA, much too far away for frequent contact. The director at Telford Terrace suggested that I could visit with those residents instead, and so I read Bible stories and shared hymns with them for twenty years, until the COVID-19 pandemic closed those meetings down.

19 March 26

Today marks the first round in this year's "March Madness" NCAA basketball tournaments. The men's and women's teams from the University of Kentucky are dancing again! My brackets culminate in championships for other teams, but we will be watching UK and hoping for major successes. You can expect us to be cheering for whoever is playing against Duke or Tennessee or Louisville. On my tie, Bugs and Daffy and Taz are just having fun.

17 March 26

The Kleppinger name is not Irish, but we think my mother's York ancestors include some connections to the Emerald Isle. Of course on St. Patrick's Day "everyone is Irish." Today we also want to help celebrate the 26th wedding anniversary of our children-by-inclusion David and Rachel Haskins! 

16 March 26

Today is Lips Appreciation Day, created by Tom and Ruth Roy of Wellcat Herbals and Wellcat Holidays. It's simply a day to pay attention to our lips! "Coming in different shapes and sizes — thin, thick, pouty, and plump — the human lips are the two dainty fleshy folds of tissue surrounding the mouth and covering the teeth. The lips are naturally mobile and play a role in eating, sucking, whistling, and the articulation of sound and speech. Particularly in humans, the lips are a pinkish, hypersensitive sensory organ that forms an integral part of facial gestures like pouting, smiling, scoffing, and grimacing. Thanks to their suppleness, the lips are also used for erogenous and intimate acts like kissing." Three bits of historical trivia: Cleopatra (ca. 40 BCE) used beeswax and olive oil for lip and skin care; in 1650, the British Parliament proposed banning lipstick; and around 2018, companies began offering lipsticks enhanced with cannabis.

14-15 March 26

Wearing my cherry-pie tie to continue celebrating Pi Day on 14 March (3-14). I'm sure I learned about π as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter by fourth grade but I did not grasp its significance as a fundamental universal constant until studying trigonometry and calculus in high school, and then later in complex variables and quantum mechanics in college. You can find links to the first billion, and hundred billion, digits of π at MIT's Web site. I'm happy to remember seven, 3.14159.

12 March 26

The World Wide Web was "born" on 12 March 1989, when British scientist Tim Berners-Lee created a proposal titled "Information Management: A Proposal" while working at the CERN high energy physics lab. It was an idea for sharing among computers that became real with public Web pages in 1991. My tie shows Looney Tunes characters scampering across strings of letters and numbers that resemble Web addresses.

8 March 26

Some baseball greats born on 8 March:

• 1942 - Dick Allen, American baseball infielder (7 × MLB All-Star; NL Rookie of the Year 1964, Philadelphia Phillies; AL MVP 1972, Chicago WS), born in Wampum, Pennsylvania (d. 2020)
• 1953Jim Rice, American Baseball Hall of Fame left fielder (AL MVP 1978; 8-time MLB All Star; Boston Red Sox),born in Anderson, South Carolina
• 1939 - Jim Bouton, American baseball pitcher, author and broadcaster (NY Yankees), MLB All Star 1968, "Ball Four"), born in Newark, New Jersey (d. 2019)

6 March 26

Ghana celebrates its independence (in 1957) on 6 March. My friend Beth Blanchard brought this red/gold/green/black tie back to me after a short mission trip there in 2007. It features the colors on Ghana's flag.

5 March 26

Happy Birthday to my friend and “old” EKU comrade Beth Blanchard! She gave me this tie in 2013 and I don’t recall the story. I call the design “gray and blue mountains.”

2 March 26

Dr. Seuss (Theodore S. Geisel) would be 122 years old today! My tie is inspired by "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," and it can be reversed to show "The Cat in the Hat"! I'm quite certain that The Cat will Come Back next year on this date. Besides "Green Eggs and Ham" and "Horton Hears a Who," one of my personal favorites from Dr. Seuss' stories is "Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!" which was completed after his death by others, using his drawings and story outline.

1 March 26

March 1 Independence Movement Day is a major holiday in South Korea. "The Korean Independence movement was an ongoing campaign to liberate Korea from Japan since 1910. The campaign reached a high point on March 1st, 1919." My tie is covered with letters from the Korean alphabet. It was a gift to me from EKU comrade Beth Blanchard after her trip to visit EKU's sister university in Korea.