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.

26 May 21

 On this day in 1967, EMI released the magical album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in Great Britain. It would arrive in the U. S. on 1 June. Today is National Paper Airplane Day, which caused me to recall the old Macintosh game "Glider," where you piloted a small plane through a house, avoiding obstacles by obtaining lift from air ducts, etc. You can play a version of Glider through your Web browser at the ClassicReload site. Meanwhile, my tie for today has a simple classic design of silver and blue crossing stripes. It has not been out of the closet since April 2019.

23 April 19

Methinks I shall celebrate William Shakespeare's birthday by adorning myself with a tie not worn for yea nearly two sun-cycles. He was born on this date in 1564 and died around the same date in 1616. The Chicago Shakespeare Theater sponsors "Talk Like Shakespeare Day" every 23 April. He coined or adapted thousands of words with new meanings, including one I just learned today: "congreeing," to mean "agreeing with itself, in all its parts." Thus far today my body congreeth well, forsoooth.

27 November 17

I'm wearing this cool blue-and-silver-striped tie to honor the birthday of Anders Celsius (1701-1744), the Swedish scientist who devised the temperature scale named for him. In the spirit of the metric system, the Celsius (or "centigrade") scale divides the range between the melting point and boiling point of water into 100 degrees. (One degree on the Fahrenheit scale is exactly five-ninths of a Celsius degree. The Kelvin scale -- where zero is the lowest possible temperature, called absolute zero -- uses degrees equal to the Celsius standard.) My tie is also quite appropriate for my Honors Freshman Seminar class today, where we welcome our university's President as our special guest!

23 August 16

As an unwavering pacifist, I cannot ever "celebrate" war in any form. But my blue-and-gray tie today recognizes the impact of war in the history of the region I call my home. The "Skirmish of Big Hill" on 23 August 1862 took place about 20 miles from my house, near McKee, KY, and was a "prelude" to the larger Battle of Richmond six days later. Kentucky was regarded as neutral territory between the North and the South, but that did not mean the absence of violence as the rival troops needed to "practice" and "reconnoiter" for their major battles. You can read details about the Skirmish of Big Hill at http://www.visitjacksoncountyky.org/#!civil-war/c1is3.

9 March 15

Time to play my chess board tie, on the birthday of grandmaster Bobby Fischer (1943-2008). Just to keep my documentation up to date, I'll note that I wore my "gilded stripes with silver and blue" yesterday, when we attended the installation of nephew C. Nolan Huizenga as associate pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, Nashville, TN.

1 October 13

Today is the International Day of Older Persons, a United Nations-sponsored celebration of wisdom and other great things about aging. I am not an old person, and with my family's help I never will be. This tie has been in my collection for ten years, ever since it was presented to me on my 50th birthday. I hope to keep getting older so I can wear it when I'm 100 or more.

1 August 12

Happy Birthday, Jonathan Albert Kleppinger! He turns two dozen today. He asked me to wear my "steel-est" tie, because he is presently on a week-long youth group mission trip to Pittsburgh, PA. This tie has strong lines of silver and steel-blue.

09 April 09

This is the anniversary of the 1945 execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who participated in an (unsuccessful) assassination plot against Adolf Hitler. In his heart he was a pacifist, and he knew that he was consciously going against both his own principles and his understanding of sin. But he felt that the failure of "the church" to stand against Hitler was a far greater communal sin, and so he was willing to sacrifice himself and "plead with God for mercy." His most famous book is The Cost of Discipleship.

I don't know what kind of tie would be suitable to honor Bonhoeffer. This one seems to sparkle with silver and blue.

31 August 08

This "relatively normal" tie was given to me by my relatives for my 50th birthday (in 2003). It has no special significance for today except that I'm wearing it. In the background you see one of very closest relatives, by marriage.