March 15
15/03/13 05:26
A bit of background is in order. The phrase, “Beware the Ides of March,” is not something that a soothsayer actually said to Julius Caesar warning him of his death. It is what a character playing the role of the soothsayer says to a character playing the role of Julius Caesar says in a Play by Shakespeare. It is a fictional scene from a play that portrays an idealized vision of history. Prior to 1601, the date was not particularly associated with death. Shakespeare was just such a good playwright that he was able to shape our culture. These days, March 15, has a particular connotation that comes, not from the murder of Caesar, but from the play that introduced that historic event to popular audiences.
And, therefore, an additional bit of background is in order. In Roman times, people did not number the days the way we did. They didn’t count 1 through 28 or 30 or 3l. Instead they counted backwards from three fixed points of the month: the Nones, the Ides, and the Kalends. The Nones was the 5th or the 7th day of the month, depending on the length of the month. The Ideas was the midpoint – the 13th or the 15th. The Kalends was the 1st day of the next month. So in the Roman way of counting, tomorrow would be 14 days before the Kalends, and the count would go backwards for the rest of the month. It is even more confusing than that because the original Roman calendar was completely lunar. On the earliest Roman calendars, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the New Year.
And we don’t use the Roman calendar. We use the Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII by a decree signed on 24 February 1562. The Gregorian calendar shifted the dates of Easter slightly and added leap years to keep the calendar in sync.
If you want to get more technical, this means that the Gregorian calendar is based on a year that is 365.25 days long. It works most of the time for us, but in fact that assumption is almost 11 minutes long than the actual length of a year. That means that the calendar will drift about 3 days every 400 years. That drift is corrected by not observing leap year in centennial years, but even that practice doesn’t quite work, so leap year needs to be observed in one out of every four centennial years. If you aren’t confused by now, you’re better than I. I just trust the numbers on my cell phone these days.
The point of all of this is that when we try to figure out precise dates of historic events, we can be off by a day or two. When we try to figure out precise dates of events prior to 1562, we can be off by more than that. Often attempts at establishing dates are in the wrong season and even in the wrong year. We don’t really know precisely which day Caesar died. It was recorded as the Ides of March, 44 B.C. We observe the date based on Shakespeare’s play. We probably don’t even have the year correct on Jesus’ birth, but that is a story too long for this particular posting of my blog.
What I do want to say is that March 15 is a very important day in my personal calendar. On March 15, 1981, we became parents with the birth of our son, Isaac. We don’t follow Shakespeare’s association of death with the day. In our house it is a day of celebration and joy. I have a lot of good memories of March 15.
And there were plenty of good things that happened on March 15 before our son was born.
On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to urge the passage of legislation guaranteeing voting rights for all. The Congress and the nation were sharply divided. Just over a week earlier, racial violence erupted in Selma Alabama. Rev. Martin Luther King and over 500 supporters were attacked while planning a march to Montgomery to register African-Americans to vote. Despite deep divisions in the country and strong disagreements in Congress, the legislation was prepared, debated and voted. On August 16 of the same year, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act which made it illegal to impose restrictions on elections that were designed to deny the vote to people because of their race.
In case you didn’t notice, in 1965, Congress tackled a controversial issue, made a new law and passed it in 5 months. If our Congress could do anything in 5 months, we’d be elated.
On March 15, 1968, construction began on the Eisenhower/Johnson Memorial Tunnel on Interstate 70 in Colorado. At the time the tunnel that is above 11,000 feet in the mountains, was the highest vehicular tunnel in the world. Over a million cars passed through the tunnel in its first four months of operation, which began in 1979. It took a while to complete the construction. Today 10 million vehicles pass through the tunnel each year. If you are a trivia buff, the North Tunnel which today handles east-bound traffic is named for Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th President of the US. The South Tunnel (west-bound) is named not for President Johnson, but for Edwin C. Johnson, a Colorado governor and US senator who was a big supporter and promoter of the interstate highway system.
March 15, 1941 was the date of the surprise blizzard in North Dakota and Minnesota. Temperatures dropped more than 20 degrees in 15 minutes. Fifty-mile-per-hour sustained winds were topped by gusts up to 85 mph in Grand Forks, ND. Drifts up to 7 feet tall piled up.
March 15, 1820 was the date that Maine was admitted into the union as the 23rd state. It was part of the Missouri Compromise between the North and South. You’ll note that a deeply divided Congress was not immobilized by controversy that year either. There may be a theme to my remarks. I’m OK with that. Wouldn’t it be nice of Congress decided to take some action this year?
Sigh . . . In the meantime, March 15 is a day of celebration in our home.