31 January 21

Repetition is a hallmark of Philip Glass' music, so I'm repeating my text for this date from 2019: Celebrating the birthday of composer PhilippilihPPhilip GlassGlassssalG (1937-). His music was originally tagged as "minimalist," due to the practice of taking a short sequence of notes as the fundamental structure for a full musical score, with constant repetitions and perturbations. I like to  play with "minimalist" techniques whenever I type his namenameemaneman.  He prefers to describe himself as a "classicist" and as a composer of "music with repetitive structures." My minimalist tie shows a repeating pattern of dark lines that form "boxes," with flecks of pink and silver where the lines intersect at what we interpret as the "corners" of the "boxes."  You can listen to an excerpt from Philip Glass' piano composition "Glassworks" here. And here's a tweet where you can hear him playing for you today, for his birthday!

10 September 19

If you can't find something today, you can Blame It On The Large Hadron Collider. The LHC, which is the largest machine in the whole world, opened on this date in 2008, and is located near Geneva, Switzerland. Its primary feature is an enormous underground cylindrical tunnel ring with a diameter of 5.3 miles. Since it can create miniature black holes, it makes a handy excuse when anything disappears without a trace. My tie has tiny dots looking lost amid a grid of dark navy squares.

12 September 17

Today's tie choice was triggered by this curious description of an event on 12 September 1758: "French astronomer Charles Messier mistakenly identifies the Crab Nebula so begins his Messier Catalogue." I had to investigate that "mistake" . . . the explanation is that Messier was using his telescope to search the sky for the predicted return of Halley's Comet, and found a "new object" whose fuzzy appearance led him to classify it as a comet. After further observations, Messier could tell that the fuzzy object did not move like a comet, and so it became Object Number 1 in his catalog of new heavenly bodies. More advanced telescopes later revealed the spectacular, detailed composition of what we now call the Crab Nebula. This tie has tiny dots scattered across a dark navy blue background, like the night sky.

22 February 17

Some of today's famous names in television, born on 22 February: Gale Gordon (1906), Robert Young (1906), Sheldon Leonard (1907), Don Pardo (1918), and Pebbles Flintstone (1963). Remember "Mr. Mooney," "Father" (Jim Anderson) and "Marcus Welby," "Nick" (from It's a Wonderful Life), and "the voice" on Jeopardy and Saturday Night Live? One interesting fact about Gordon, Young, Leonard and Pardo: Each had a single spouse for over 50 years. I'm not sure what to say about the "birth" of Pebbles Flintstone. My shirt and tie resemble what Gale Gordon wore for one of his publicity photos.

31 January 16

Today marks 79 years for Philip Glass, master American composer. He is known as part of the "minimalist" movement, though he prefers to describe himself as a "classicist" and as a composer of "music with repetitive structures." You can hear a sample of "Glassworks" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meGPgvLcpWk. My tie has a very minimal repetitive structure!

3 September 15

Clyde David Burberry said that I should pick a tie to honor his birthday today. When pressed, he suggested something blue. So I found this navy blue tie which I haven't worn since March 2014! And my shirt and hair tie are also blue. (CDB is a great family friend, beloved former pastor, and "adopted brother" of my wife Beth.)

30 March 14

Our environmental-activist daughter Amanda Wheeler celebrated her birthday on Friday, a non-tie day for me. She suggested honoring Earth Hour, which was last evening (29 March, 8:30-9:30 p.m. local time), when many people all over the world turned off the lights and other "electrics," to see how to enjoy life without consuming electricity for at least one hour. So my tie today is very dark with specks for stars in the night sky. During Earth Hour we sat together in candlelight, and Beth read part of a "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" book to me. Earth Hour 2015 will be celebrated on Saturday, 29 March, 8:30-9:30 p.m. local time.

17 November 13

A little "twisted" humor today, to honor the birthday of August Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868). He is most famous for exploring the geometric properties of the "Möbius strip," a two-dimensional surface that has only one side. My tie is looped in Möbius fashion (haha), and at Beth's suggestion I have attached a paper Möbius loop!

4 November 12

According to NBC Nightly News anchorman Brian Williams, we were to experience an "extra hour of darkness" very early this morning. I changed the time on my alarm clock but I didn't notice the darkness lasting longer because I did so.

25 July 12

X-ray crystallography detects the positions of atoms within crystalline solids. My tie with tiny flecks of cherry-red and silver against a navy background captures the idea of atoms in a lattice, and so I am celebrating the work of Rosalind Franklin, born this day in 1920, as she did the grunt X-ray work behind the discovery of the structure of DNA, often credited only to James Watson and Francis Crick.

31 January 12

ppphhhphphphphphiiiiiiiiiiiliilllllilililipppppppglglaglgaglassssssssssssssssss
(1937)(1937)(1937)(1937)(1937)(1937)(1937)

06 May 09

The word for Wednesday in German is Mittwoch, meaning middle-of-the-week. Today is the middle of two celebration weeks, National Pet Week and Be Kind to Animals Week. Annie is the security chief at our house, and she is usually very kind to us.














I couldn't match any special occasions with ties earlier this week. Monday was Stars Wars Day--"May the Fourth Be With You"--and I wore my navy blue tie with colored flecks. On Tuesday I decided to celebrate Spring by wearing my "flowers on dark green" tie.

3 June 08

Today marks our friend Joice Burberry's birthday. Several years ago, she and her husband Keith gave me this tie. You may not be able to see it clearly in the photos but the tie contains flecks of color that match the orange/red of my shirt. Happy Birthday, Joice Burberry!