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.

7 November 25

"Poppin' Fresh!", the Pillsbury Doughboy, turned 60 years old on November 7th! He appeared in his first television commercial in 1965. The background on my tie has the words "Dough Cool" because he's wearing his cool sunglasses. Today also marks the birthday of nuclear physicist Lise Meitner (1878-1968), who made significant discoveries in that field in 1930-1960. She was nominated many times for the Nobel Prizes in chemistry and physics but never won the award. She is now memorialized with the naming of meitnerium, element 109.

29 October 25

Happy Birthday, Jennifer Fairchild! Jennifer is a professor of communications at Eastern Kentucky University. We had shared experiences with Blackboard, and we crossed paths when my office was in the Combs Classroom Building. She asked me to wear my UK Wildcat tie because . . . 

• I received my MA and my Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Kentucky.
• Also, our dear family friend, Malachi Moreno, who we have known since his birth, is a freshman at UK and a member of the men’s basketball team. I never thought I would personally know a member of the men’s basketball team at UK.
• As a lifelong fan of UK basketball, and a family friend of the Morenos, I am so proud of Malachi, and look forward to this year’s basketball season. So, I think the UK tie is a perfect choice for my birthday this year.

 I share Jennifer's history at UK and have been a fan since the 1970s!

27 October 25

For today's Berea Home Village committee meeting, I'm dressing up with red and silver diagonal stripes. I hadn't worn this tie since August 2022. It came to me in 2020 from Jennifer Woodruff Tait, when she gave me several ties from her uncle's collection.

26 October 25

We are celebrating grandson B. M.'s birthday with a party at a pumpkin patch farm today! He asked me to wear these bright, friendly popsicles. I've added a pin from CASA of Lexington, where Ben is the Director of Communications.

24 October 25

Grandson B. M. chose my neon green tie for me to wear on his seventh birthday! His favorite color has long been green, matching my own favorite.

23 October 25

October 23, or 10-23, is always Mole Day! It celebrates the number 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd power, which is known as Avogadro’s Number. In chemistry it counts the number of atoms or molecules in “one mole” of a substance, equal to the atomic weight or molecular weight in grams. One mole of copper weighs 63.5 grams, which is about 22 pennies (minted before 1982). One mole of water weighs 18 grams, which is a little more than one tablespoon.

My tie for today celebrates the periodic table of elements. Hidden inside my shirt, a T shirt celebrates Mole Day, with a cartoon mole and the words “Proud to be a Chemist”! On the back of the T shirt you can read a long list of all the chemical elements and compounds in the human body!

20 October 25

On International Sloth Day, I'm wearing my sloth tie! It says "don't hurry . . . be happy." You can see some sloth activity (maybe) at the EXPLORE.org webcam.