2020 Life Logs, Day 60: Leap Day
Date: Saturday, February 29, 2020
Weather: Partly Cloudy, Windy; High 37 degrees, Low 27 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Every four years we get an extra day tacked onto the short 28-day month of February. This is due to a miscalculation in the former Julian calendar first implemented by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. Evidently, he miscalculated the length of the solar year by 11 minutes. Leap forward to 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII introduced his version of a calendar. All of Europe was still using the Julian calendar and it took another almost 200 years to get to our current Gregorian calendar. On Wednesday, September 2, 1752, much of the world leaped forward to Thursday, September 14, and henceforth the majority of the countries in the world starting using the new Gregorian calendar as their official civil calendar. But we still have to add an extra day every four years to keep our calendar in tune with the solar year. I hope you enjoyed your extra day in 2020.
This morning I went to the District Science Fair. This year only one of the Goldpebbles had an entry and it was Sam. 
He and his good friend Robert did an experiment to determine the favorite color of fish, specifically zebra fish. They thought that zebrafish would prefer green light over white, yellow, and light. The machine they used couldn’t record yellow light preferences, but from their visual observations, this was definitely the color they went to and were most active in. This is not backed by other research, but over and over they found the same results. Their results lead to further research. As goes scientific research. I was not successful in getting Sam to pose for me in front of their poster, but Robert was busy explaining their project to their science teacher while I was there. From the Science Fair, I took Shadow for a walk on Falmouth Heights Beach and then joined the Goldstones for lunch at the British Beer Company just across the street from the beach. Then the Goldpebbles and I left Heather and Jed at home to paint the play room while we were off to a People Training for Good Dogs class with Shadow. Then home to watch the results of the South Carolina Primary. It was a busy Leap Day.
No word today from the Mount Kilimanjaro climbers. I started reading The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead last night and continued early this morning. It didn’t take long to understand why Oprah’s review said, “Kept me up at night, had my heart in my throat, almost afraid to turn the next page.” Whitehead has a way with words that puts you right in the moment, and the moments in a slave’s life are not comfortable moments. I’ve only just started the book, but if it continues as it has started, I think this should be required reading for all American History students. You can never really walk in the footsteps of others, but Whitehead certainly puts you right in the moment.
