Thursday February 3, 2022

Welcome to February. In our calendars, February is the odd month out – although it has an odd number of days only every fourth year. If months had feelings, February would surely feel discriminated against. The shortest in class, for example. The exception to the rule. The lonely one.

Thirty days has September,

April, June, and November.

All the rest have thirty-one

Except for February alone…

            That simple rhyme is a mnemonic – a way of helping people remember. 

            Not many people remember the rest of the verse. It wanders off into convoluted explanations of when, and why, February has more days some years than other years. It has more mutations than the coronavirus.

            One published in 1555 offered this summary:

…All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year. 

            Or this version, from 1827:

…Excepting February alone. 
To which we twenty-eight assign, 
Till leap year gives it twenty-nine. 

            Or yet another variant, from 1844:

…Excepting February alone, 
Which has twenty-eight, nay, more, 
Has twenty-nine one year in four. 

            Some sources claim the little memory-aid has origins farther back, into the 1400s, when people apparently still counted in Roman numerals

XXX dayes hath Nouember,
Aprill, Iune and September.
February hath XXVIII
And all the rest have XXXI. 

            I have doubts about the authenticity of that last one. Roman numerals don’t rhyme well. And rhyme is crucial in mnemonics. Even if you can’t remember a line, you know it has to rhyme with the line next to it. 

“I before E, except after C…”

“A red sky at night is a sailor’s delight…”

            It may well be, as some argue, that all poetry originally used rhymes to help people retain the words in their heads, in the days before printing put the words into their hands. 

            Mnemonics also use another mainstay of poetry – alliteration, the repetition of sounds:

“Waste not, want not .”

“Faint heart never won fair lady.”

“Look before you leap.”

“Neither rhyme nor reason.”

“Through thick and thin.”

            The poetry of the Bible (typically, the Psalms) applies a different mnemonic tool -- repetition of an idea:

“Day unto day pours forth speech/Night after night declares knowledge.”

“He makes me lie down in green pastures/He leads me beside still waters.” 

“Enter his gates with thanksgiving/Enter his courts with praise.”

            If you know one line, you know that the next must  be like unto it. Or, alternatively, unlike unto it.

            There are dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other mnemonics, everything from silly sentences to help you remember the order of the planets in the solar system to code words that are harder to remember than the mathematical operations they represent.

            But they all have the same purpose. To help us remember. Even everyday things like the length of months on calendars.

            I wonder, though, if mnemonics may  be phasing out of favour. Why bother remembering something, if you can l instantly look it up on your cellphone? 

            Easy come, easy go?

            I wonder if the day will come when mnemonics themselves are no longer remembered. Would that be a kind of collective dementia?

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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

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Your turn

Last week’s column was about the way we measure things, including life. 

Tom Watson and John Shaffer focussed on the temperature analogy. 

            Tom wrote, “I recently spent five weeks in southwest Manitoba and ten days in Edmonton. As if it wasn't cold enough in Edmonton, we went to Jasper where it was -34 to -36 Celsius. Three people wanted to go skiing but the ski lifts in Jasper don't run when it's colder than -30C. That's -22 Fahrenheit if you wish to convert it, but either way it's cold!”

            And John wrote, “I have visited Fairbanks, Alaska, when it was -30F and I have been caribou hunting (also in Alaska) when it was -50 F.  Never tried to figure out where C & F met.” 

Bob Atlee thought of another famous mixup over measurement scales: “Funny you didn't mention the infamous Gimli Glider incident. Call up YouTube for the ‘Mayday Mayday’ TV show episode about that crash and watch the segment about the poor guy fuelling the plane in Montreal.  He had such a schmozz of calculations to go through, from Imperial gallons on his tank wagon meter, to litres, to the density of the jet fuel in kilograms (or something even more roundabout), no wonder he screwed up and fuelled the plane with almost exactly half the amount of fuel it needed.

            “In my career as an engineer the cardinal rule was: stay within the paradigm.  If it's in British Imperial, do the calculation in British Imperial.  Likewise for metric. Just don't mix it up half way through.

            “In a way that's a metaphor for what I think you're getting at.  In almost any field of human endeavour there are sets of languages, measurement units, belief systems, etc.  And within each one's context, the units, the social mores, and whatever mesh perfectly.  But woe betide you when you start to mix and match.”

Ray Shaver wondered what scales we use to measure daily life: “For example I thought, what is my scale to measure my state of ‘happiness,’, and has that scale changed at various stages of my life?  It is obvious that the measuring scale has changed, probably many times, when I think of my very young years, my teen age years, then when I started working, then married, followed by life with a young family….  I could go on and on through those heartbreaking times like when my dear wife died.  Then when I moved from the seniors’ home into my condo and the new personal relationships that developed around that time.

            “Considering all the above, I’m convinced that for me, at least, the measuring scale of my happiness’ has definitely changed.  But there is one application that always remains most important for me, the degree of love and caring that I feel I have for others and myself, and the love and caring that I receive from others. 

            “It’s only the ‘units’ of these scales that are difficult to assign.”

Isabel Gibson remembered “trying to explain to Guatemalans about the 60-degree temperature range at home in Ottawa (from plus to minus 30) -- in poor-enough Spanish that they didn't entirely trust my rendering of the numbers! They were also surprised that Canadians use Celsius, since they were used to American students who thought in Fahrenheit.

            “As for measuring scales, the more we get out & about from home (physically and metaphorically), the broader our scales -- and, maybe, the less need we have to measure.”

Steve Roney: “But most interesting is your reference to God as a ‘bearded old man in the sky.’ You have referred to this concept before, as if it were the common conception among Christians. It is contrary to the Christian conception of God, and contrary to the Jewish conception as well. It seems to be common only among atheists. If, as you say, this idea gets in the way of any other conception of God, it is actually satanic, an anti-Christ, in Christian terms.

            “For Christians, the proper way to conceive of God is as a man of thirty or so with Semitic features, living not in the sky but in the Middle East.”

Bob Rollwagen moved the scales to current pandemic measures: “For the last two years we have received varying measures of the impact of the pandemic. Age seemed to be a factor, and whether the news was good or unforgivable. Do we really know why we were not prepared, why certain groups died while others did not believe the data or measurements? What measure should we use to see at a glance if any change is occurring. As a retired business leader, I have always believed that if something is important, it must be measured in a transparent fashion for all to see.”

Jim Hoffman took and overview: “As Steven Covey stated in one of his Seven Habits of Successful People, ‘Seek first to understand, then to be understood.’  If we want to improve relationships, we must be willing to listen attentively, compare our measuring stick to someone else's, and be willing to discuss the differences.  Challenging our paradigms is not necessarily a bad thing.”

Thanks also to Randy Hall, Robert Caughell, and Art Hildebrand for their input. 

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Psalm paraphrase

Once upon a time, people prostrated themselves on the ground before their ruler, affirming HIS ownership of the land beneath faces. Psalm 138 reflects that expectation.

1          This is your turf, your home, your territory.
I am so glad to be here, God, that I kiss the earth you walk on.

2          I press myself into your soil, I inhale the sweet moistness of humus, I extend my arms to embrace your earth.
But you lift me up from my humble position. You take me in as your guest.
You have made me one of your family;
you have even given me your name!

3          You have taken me under your wing.
When I cry out, you cover me;
I benefit from your strength. 

4          Foxes may lord it over the chicken coop,
and squirrels over the sparrow's nest,
But no creatures challenge the eagle's rule;
They cower before the eagle's eye and ruthless claws.

5          As the eagle soars above field mice,
so do you, God, rise above us mortals. 

6          Daily duties keep us scurrying close to the earth.
But you keep watch over us;
you can see danger long before it draws near. 

7          Troubles grow around us like tall grass
But in the shelter of your outspread wings, predators scatter
like leaves before an autumn wind.

8          There is a place for me in your plans.
You will never abandon me.
You will work out your purpose for me, no matter how long it takes. 

You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF…

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)

               Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.

               I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/

               Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE

               The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns.