Five years. (And 602 posts.) Literally a handful of years. (And a heartful.) There is a theory that the Roman numeral V represents a human hand, and the numeral X symbolizes two V hands set point-to-point. It seems obvious that “prisoner’s hash marks” — counting the days in groups of five — owes much to our five-fingered hands.
Five is a human number. Small enough to seem fundamental; big enough to be interesting (two and three are so boring; four is kinda square). Five puts the prime in prime! It’s also part of an easy trick for making large right angles (for laying out fields and building pyramids), and it’s the first substantial anniversary gift (paper, cotton, leather, silk, wood).
Five years ago I started this blog…
“Four score and seven…” (Ahem.) Excuse me, I meant… “Four years and seven (or more — it’s gotten hard to keep track) lifetimes ago, I brought forth upon this WordPress (dot com) a new blog, conceived in lunacy, and dedicated to the proposition that all blog readers would subscribe eventually.”
Today, of course, is Fireworks Day for USAnians. It’s an important summer day we celebrate with picnics, sunburn, maybe some swimming, maybe some baseball and — always — a lot of fireworks. I always wonder how many reflect on how those fireworks echo a war we fought to become who we are today.
Sixteen years ago, on this day in 1998, I got married. On a riverboat. With balloons and cake. And fireworks that seemed appropriate at the time. But the anticipated life-long path came to a dead-end by 2003, and that, as they say, was that. My experiment with marriage had an unexpected result, and the echoes of that result linger yet today.
Twenty-Two years ago, on this day in 1992, my uncle — my dad’s only brother — died. He was a really cool uncle, and we had a lot of fun in years past discussing quantum physics and theology. He was a theology professor at a local college, and he was very interested in the scientific world. He found out the answer to the great experiment we call life: what (if anything) comes next? He might have enjoyed this blog; I miss him still today.
Two-hundred-and-thirty-eight years ago, on this day in 1776, some famous guys ratified an important contract — the United States Declaration of Independence. Then they went to a picnic and maybe some swimming. That was the beginning of an experiment that, for better or worse, is still with us today.
Ten years ago today I was at work, and the world was largely as it had always been: sometimes difficult, sometimes easy, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful. As it had always been.
Logos con carne 