Category: Law

New Zealand Rips a Big One

On By Sarah AngletonIn Animals, Current Events, Law23 Comments

Those of you who have followed this blog for a long time may have noticed that rarely does it venture into topics that could be considered very serious. You may have even wondered at times why a thoughtful writer such as myself would mostly avoid using my platform, which includes tens of people, to discuss the things that really matter.

Well, thanks to the nation of New Zealand and its necessary and impactful attention to a dangerous problem facing the entire world, I have reconsidered. That’s right, the time has come for us to have a critical conversation in this space about farts.

This cow clearly smelled it. And we all know what that means. Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay

While absent through much of this blog’s own history, passing gas has been on the minds of humanity for millennia. This truth was revealed by the 2008 discovery of an ancient fart joke carved upon a Sumerian tablet that dates to around 1900 BC, making it the oldest joke so far discovered.

Other notable moments in the history of flatulence include a god in the mythology of the Innu people of Eastern Quebec and Newfoundland who communicates exclusively through the breaking of wind, the alleged Pythagorean belief that a careless person could accidentally fart out his soul, and a series of Japanese art pieces from the early 19th century depicting, probably satirically, battling samurais cutting a lot of cheese.

But Samurais were far from the only people to have killed with a good toot. Both first century Roman Jewish historian Josephus and the Ancient Greek writer Herodotus, known as the Father of History and Some Stuff He Mostly Made Up, attributed large, deadly battles to the offensiveness of well-timed flatus.

St. Augustine had a slightly more positive view of gaseous emanations, suggesting in his 5th century work The City of God that evidence of perfect bodily control as would have been enjoyed before the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden is that some people can produce song through their flatulence. We probably all have that one friend.

This is what it looks like to have the power to destroy the world. Image by Frauke Feind from Pixabay

For the most part, passing gas has always been a little bit funny and kind of rude and, apparently incredibly destructive. At least that is what New Zealand law makers have decided. It’s long been rumored that livestock farts are one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases and in New Zealand, where people are outnumbered by cows two to one and by sheep more than five to one, the best way to combat the problem is, obviously, to tax the livestock. And so that is the plan, according to Climate Change Minister and apparent savior of Planet Earth James Shaw.

Now, I can almost hear the objections of you naysayers out there whining about the financial burden on farmers and ranchers. You may even go so far as to suggest that the effects of this move will certainly trickle out through the economy, transforming the industry into something much less sustainable and, as other nations follow New Zealand’s bold lead, ultimately contributing to the problems of already threatened global food supply chains.

To that I say that ridding the world of farts was never going to be easy. It was always going to require determination and sacrifice. Like all things worth doing, and most things that aren’t worth doing at all, it will come only at great cost. I’m sure we can all agree that it’s time for the cows to pay up.

Dreaming of the Island Nation of Angletonia

On By Sarah AngletonIn History, Law4 Comments

On September 2, 1967 Englishman Roy Bates set the bar remarkably high when he gave a pretty extravagant birthday gift to his wife. That was the day he bestowed upon her the title of Princess Joan and made her the sovereign of a new nation called Sealand, which today celebrates the fifty-fourth anniversary of its establishment.

Don’t tell the Sealanders, but technically, it is what’s known as a micronation, basically meaning that as far as the international community is concerned, it’s not a real thing at all. But Sealand was created from a defensive platform fortress built during World War II in what was then international waters by Great Britain, and over the years it has achieved a modicum of legal recognition.

Looks like a nice place, I guess? See en:Talk:Sealand/emails, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Bates occupied what was known as Fort Roughs Tower with the intention of running a pirate radio station from about seven or so miles off the coast of Suffolk and beyond the interference of the BBC. He never did establish the radio station, though. Instead, he consulted with a lawyer, and declared The Principality of Sealand.

The primary question, it seems to me, is why? Sealand doesn’t seem to me like an especially pleasant place to live, and at any given time, according to its current head of state Michael Bates, its in-country population is “normally like two people.”

It’s also taken the Bates family a significant effort to maintain through the years. When England began destroying several similar platforms off its coast in the late 1960s, Sealanders fired warning shots toward approaching vessels. Bates faced legal ramifications, but the British courts decided they had no jurisdiction in the case, which its prince took as legal justification for his “nation’s” existence.

Sealand has a flag, national anthem, currency, and stamps. You can even become a member of the nobility if you want. Zscout370, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Later, in 1978, Sealand faced an invasion by German and Dutch mercenaries, resulting in Prince Michael being held hostage. The prince eventually managed to use some of the resources at his disposal on Fort Roughs to overwhelm his captors, one of whom was in possession of a Sealand passport and so was tried and imprisoned for treason. Because a German diplomat entered into eventually successful negotiations on the man’s behalf, Sealand could then claim German recognition as a nation. Kind of.

The whole thing sounds exhausting to me, but then I think I also might kind of get it. At least a little bit. Because even though the Bates family are British citizens who primarily reside on land in Great Britain, they have a place to retreat to when their government leaders go and do really, really stupid things. As government leaders so often seem to do.

The rest of us are left uselessly yelling at our television screens, computer monitors, phones, messenger pigeons, or however we get our news, and trying to invent more creative swear words to post self-righteously on social media because the old ones no longer seem adequate. Meanwhile, the royal family of Sealand, and “normally like two” of its citizen caretakers, can escape to their weird North Sea micronation haven where they can make their own decisions and Grandma Joan’s head is on the coins.

For now, Angletonia exists only in the unclaimed territory in my brain, where it looks something like this. Image by Todd Kay from Pixabay

It sounds kind of nice, actually. At least once in a while. And apparently other people think so, too, because micronations have been popping up all over the world for at least a century. Some exist on little (or quite large) bits of unclaimed land within the borders of recognized nations, some on islands, some in cyberspace, and even one in outer space. It boasts more than 160,000 citizens.

Most don’t tend to last too long, and few receive even as much sort-of recognition as Sealand has managed. As the spunky North Sea micronation celebrates fifty-four years of well-imagined existence, it’s not entirely clear how long it will continue.

The Bates family seems determined to fight for their little chunk of the world, but since England’s borders expanded in 1987 to include twelve miles out into the sea, Sealand does now technically exist within the country whose citizenship its royal family still holds. If there’s ever reason for a legal battle again, I’m not convinced, in all my vast (totally made-up) understanding of law, that it will survive. I think I’m rooting for them, though, and dreaming of my own island nation of Angletonia.

Life Stinks. Deal with It.

On By Sarah AngletonIn Law23 Comments

In the 6th century BC, the Greek city Sybaris banished both noisy tradesmen and roosters to beyond the city walls. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar restricted the times during which clattering wagons could be driven down city streets or through residential districts. And in 1595, a Londoner could face charges for disturbing his neighbors with noise while beating his wife in the middle of the night.

In 1595, Londoners were expected to conduct their wife beatings during daylight hours. Like civilized people.
By © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66185487

It’s not hard to imagine that as cities grew and industry rose that noise followed, and I doubt anyone would argue with me that todays’ cities with their incessant honking, street musicians, police whistles, and general milling about of thousands of people doing whatever it is that thousands of people do are not exactly peaceful places to be. And then there’s the smell.

As a suburbanite, at least for the last eight years or so, I can assure you that it’s noisy and smelly here, too. For one thing, my neighbors have windchimes that tinkle away in the breeze seemingly right outside my office window. In addition to that there’s an interstate not too far away with plenty of traffic rushing by, a train track well within loud whistle blowing distance, and this one black dog that barks and barks and barks.

Seriously, this dog barks all the time. And he leaves stinky poops in my yard, too. Then he sleeps in my house. Because he’s my dog.

So, I understand why city-dwellers would occasionally wish to seek escape in the countryside where the air always smells sweet and there is absolutely no noise at all. Or at least that seems to be the expectation in France, where tensions between country and city folk have been on the rise in recent months.

With the pressure to socially distance during the pandemic has come a surge in those city dwellers who can afford to do so investing in getaway properties in the French countryside. And that has led to complaints. And lawsuits. Truly ridiculous lawsuits.

In the fall of 2019, one farmer was sued for $5,000 because her ducks had the nerve to be quacking too loudly. Another suit sought to silence a rooster who liked to greet the morning earlier than his new neighbors preferred. A small-town mayor received a request to exterminate the local cicadas because of their droning. He opted instead to erect a six-foot tall cicada statue, because I suspect he is my kind of guy.

In other cases, the plaintiffs were more successful. A pond was ordered to be drained because of excessive frog croaking. A horse was handed a restraining order because his poop was too smelly. It was getting beyond ridiculous.

You do you
You French rooster you.
Cock-a-doodle-doo.
And this, my friends, is why I don’t write poetry.
Image by miniformat65 from Pixabay

And that’s when French lawmakers stepped in. Without amendment and with unanimous support, the Senate passed a bill from the National Assembly on January 21 that protects the “sensory heritage of the French countryside.”

Secretary of Rural Affairs Joël Giraud is pretty psyched about the move calling it a “real victory for rural communities.” And I suppose it is, though certainly not one this practical historian would have thought necessary to proclaim. Essentially, what the French government just did, what the city dwellers of France just forced its own government to do, was to deal out a little tough love and tell its citizens in no uncertain terms (well, maybe a little uncertain, because who really says things like “sensory heritage”) that if one wishes to enjoy the French countryside, then one should expect to take a good whiff of France’s fresh dairy air.

In other words: Life stinks. Deal with it.

Facebook to Ban Benjamin Franklin for Inciting Violence

On By Sarah AngletonIn Current Events, Journalism, Law11 Comments

On October 22 of 1730 The Pennsylvania Gazette ran a truly incendiary story. It was an account of a good old-fashioned witch trial, and it displayed a great deal of unforgivable misjudgment on the part of the newspaper to run it at all.

Two defendants, a male and female stood accused, but were clever enough to willingly subject themselves to the trial on the condition that two of their accusers stood with them. The four, then, were first weighed against the largest Bible anyone could find. As everyone surely knows, the Bible will outweigh any soulless witch. Of course, it didn’t. Not even the smallest of them.

That’s a witch if I ever saw one. Or at least one of these people probably is. unattributed, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The next part of the trial, before six hundred peers of the accused, took place at the mill pond since, logically, witches float. The two men and two women were bound and dunked. If they drowned, then they clearly couldn’t be witches. If they managed to surface, they’d best be burned at the stake.

But that didn’t go exactly as planned, either. The first to surface was the male accuser who explained that if he was a witch, he certainly had no knowledge of it. It’s hard to fault a guy for that. And then there were the ladies whose flimsy shifts must surely have made them more buoyant, as 18th century women’s clothing tended to do. The appropriate decision was made to postpone the trial for a warmer day when the ladies could be presented naked, just to reassure the crowd of highly proper Puritans that nothing improper was going on.

Because the article was clearly entirely factual, not satirical in the least bit, and inflamed such violence against, well someone, probably, Facebook decided to take it down and immediately suspend any ability for The Pennsylvania Gazette to share content on its massive and far-reaching platform.

Yes, that Benjamin Franklin. He was much funnier than he looks. By David Martin – The White House Historical Association, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9390044

Obviously, I jest. As far as I know Facebook never did any such thing to The Pennsylvania Gazette or to the author of the satirical “A Witch Trial at Mount Holly.” That author happened to be the young polymath Benjamin Franklin who would go on to help birth a nation, invent bifocals, and make questionable choices regarding electricity and poultry. He also was fond of writing satire and of making a little fun of the hypocrisy in Puritan culture.

And in 1730, Facebook could take a joke.

But apparently not in 2020.

This past week, Facebook removed a post by the Babylon Bee, a publication that, to the best of my knowledge, has never electrocuted a turkey and has only ever been known as a satire site. We’re talking really silly stuff here, like the recent articles: “Senators Vow to Hold Big Tech Accountable by Flying them to D. C. and Saying Mean Things to Them” and “Embarrassed Pope Realizes He’s Been Reading the Bible Upside Down this Whole Time.”

To be fair, neither of those is the really disturbing article that made Facebook demonetize the Babylon Bee’s page with cries that their article incites violence. The truly dangerous post was about the entirely factual senate confirmation hearing for supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett in which she was accused of being a witch by Senator Hirono of Hawaii, who is wise in the ways of science, and who insisted the nominee’s soul be weighed against a duck.

Oh wait, that can’t be right. That’s a schtick from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You know, I bet Senator Hirono didn’t even say anything about Amy Coney Barrett being a witch just because she has so much poise and apparently no need for notes in order to answer hard-hitting questions that she literally legally cannot answer.

Huh. I see what they did there. That’s clever. It’s probably even worth a chuckle. And violence. So much violence. Actually, I am feeling a little incited here. Thank goodness for Facebook’s censorship, or who knows what I might do.

Well, what I might do is get put into Facebook prison for this post, which frankly, would be a badge of honor. So feel free to share away, and let’s just see what happens.

Beer, Pumpkins, and Other Blue Things

On By Sarah AngletonIn Law9 Comments

In 1781, Connecticut-born Episcopalian Loyalist Samuel Peters found himself fleeing persecution from his American Liberty-loving neighbors to seek safety across the pond in Great Britain. There he received a warm welcome, an audience with King George III, and the time to write about the peculiarities of his one-time neighbors, basically hacking off the entire state of Connecticut forever.

photo credit: jjbers I-84 via photopin (license)

Because that’s when he penned his General History of Connecticut. A biting work of satire, outlining the somewhat outlandish “rigidly moral” Puritan laws of a fanatical and bigoted people, the book included a list of what came to be known as the Connecticut Blue Laws, probably the second biggest thing Connecticut is known for, the first being Lyme disease.

Blue, in this 18th century sense is a disparaging term for strict moral codes or for a person who would adhere to them, like the blue stocking-clad supporters of Oliver Cromwell from the previous century. And it turns out, Peters wasn’t entirely out of line in making reference to the laws.

The General Court of Connecticut did adopt the First Connecticut Code in May of 1650, and it did include some fairly rigid guidelines addressing the religious and moral order of the colony. But it didn’t go as far as the General History of Connecticut, which included a mandate that mothers not kiss their children on Sundays and the requirement that men receive weekly Saturday haircuts around a round cap. In case no round caps were available, there was an allowance made for using half a pumpkin instead.

photo credit: Miss Barabanov Jack Reads via photopin (license)

Even real blue laws (or Sunday laws) can at times seem a little ridiculous, particularly in a society as heterogeneous as the US, but over the years such laws have been upheld as constitutionally acceptable by the US Supreme Court and have been routinely supported by labor unions. The idea, of course, is that the laws serve to protect the religious liberties of workers and at the same time provide protections from overwork from a more secular perspective as well.

While most states have gotten rid of the more restrictive ones, thirty of the fifty states still have some form of blue laws on the books. Until this past weekend, I didn’t actually know that my own great state of Missouri is one of them.

In this era of social distancing, one of the adjustments that our family has had to make is “attending” church online on Sunday mornings. This has allowed for a more casual and unhurried start to the day, and recently led me to engage in a little early Sunday morning gardening. I’m pretty sure there is no current Missouri law against that.

No, I’m not planting beer bushes. My neighbors probably think I’m crazy.

While tending my otherwise thriving garden, I discovered slugs in my squash plants. Apparently, slugs have no moral code whatsoever and are unbothered by working on a Sunday morning. But it’s okay, because I have a simple solution for garden slugs, which has been working pretty well for many years, and has, strangely enough, even been previously featured on this blog that is sort of usually a little bit about history.

The solution is beer. Slugs love it, especially the morally deficient ones that would eat innocent squash plants on a Sunday morning. They will happily slime their way into a partially filled, mostly buried bottle of it and drown themselves. It’s not cruel because they’re drunk enough not to feel a thing. Also, they are slugs.

So, I donned my face mask and hustled off to the grocery store to pick up a six pack of beer for the garden only to discover that Missouri, where I have lived for seven-and-a-half years without ever noticing before, has at least one active blue law. The aisles containing alcohol were roped off. Surprised, I assumed I could just come back after noon to buy my weapon of choice. I picked up a few other needed items and made my way to the checkout by 9:06 AM, with plenty of time to spare before virtual church.

I’m just imagining the awesome haircuts in our future.

When the clerk asked me whether I found everything I needed, I said something about not realizing there were blue laws in Missouri. The kindly lady looked at her watch and said, “It’s after 9. You can buy it now.”

Now, I’m no theologian, but I’m really not sure why buying beer before 9:00 AM on a Sunday morning is any less moral than buying it at 9:06, but I hustled back to the newly opened beer department and grabbed some cold ones for the slug garden party. Then I did less than five minutes of research and discovered that in Missouri, slugs can’t buy beer between the hours of 1:30 AM and 6:00 AM on Monday through Saturday and can only purchase it between 9:00 AM and midnight on Sundays. Sunday sales also require an additional license fee.

Anyway, the beer is placed. The traps are set. And I’m sure glad the grocery store I chose has the Sunday liquor license extension. Because some of those squash plants are pumpkins, and if we should ever misplace all our round hats, those will definitely come in handy.

Let’s Just Call Those the X-Days

On By Sarah AngletonIn History, Inventions, Law16 Comments

What I really need is a do-over. At the start of the summer, all those sunny weeks and lazy days ago, I had visions of happy kids and chore charts and nutritious picnics, followed by well-sunscreened adventures to swimmin’ holes, bike trails, or the ballpark. During the long, relaxed evenings, we were going to harvest the latest offerings from our garden and work together to prepare a nice meal followed up by a pie we made with the abundant fruit we picked at the local orchards.  Of course, even in my fantasy my children wouldn’t eat said pie because fruit is NOT dessert. Sigh.

But you get the idea. This was supposed to be a highly organized, smooth running summer to remember. And it was all to start with that Day 1, when the biggest thing on our agenda, before all the fun could officially begin, was the organizing of all the random junk they brought home from school at the end of the year.

office floor
An actual picture of my actual office floor. Well, or what you can almost see of it.

Scheduled to take place in what is, throughout the school year when I have more time, my writing office, Day 1 never quite happened the way I hoped it would. The boys did follow my instructions and dump their well-worn backpacks, scribbled-on notebooks, and eraserless pencil nubs in the middle of the floor so we could sort the reusable supplies from the detritus. Somehow that’s as far as we got.

Each had his own idea of how he wanted to spend his first day of summer, and this was definitely not it. And so the pile of school year castoffs remained.

From there it was all downhill. We had a packed June with a fabulous family vacation and then camps and VBS and a mission trip for my oldest, and somehow that summer chore chart never got posted or enforced. I still can’t see the floor of my office. We haven’t been to the orchard or baked a pie my children won’t eat. And the math workbooks I bought so my children’s brains wouldn’t turn to mush over the summer break? Filled with nothing but unsolved problems and the best of intentions.

I feel like I just let the whole thing run away from me to become a disorganized mess, like the pile of crap in my office, or even like the US Patents office prior to 1836. That’s when Maine Senator John Ruggles formed a bill designed to revolutionize the US patent system, which until then had been kind of a hot mess and was in definite need of a do-over.

Prior to the 1836 act, patents required signatures from the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the POTUS, in the age long before a simple fax between these extremely busy people might have done the trick. Patents weren’t issued for months after they were filed, weren’t tracked effectively enough to protect an inventor from having his idea stolen, patented by someone else, and marketed falsely, and were limited to US citizens.  These patents weren’t widely available to the public, held in duplicate, or even issued an identification number.

Patent_Office_1877_fire
The 1877 fire in the new and improved fireproof US Patent Building. By Timothy H. O’Sullivan original photographer – Library Of Congress Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The new act set up a Patent Office, run by a designated Commissioner of Patents. It required newly filed patents to be a matter of public record throughout libraries in the nation, allowed anyone to apply for a patent in the US, and demanded that applications be submitted in duplicate. The new patents were to be assigned identification numbers, with Patent Number 1 awarded to Senator Ruggles for his unique take on train wheel design. The previous patents were then retroactively numbered with “X” placed at the beginning, earning them the name “X-Patents,” and a new fireproof building was commissioned to house the records, which turned out to be timely since a few months after the act passed, the temporary patent office burned to the ground.  

There was a lot of great history lost in that 1836 fire that swallowed nearly 10,000 records, including the original patent for the fire hydrant. The majority of the X-Patent records weren’t recovered. The new building, not entirely completed until 1867, didn’t catch fire until 1877. Models and records (including that of an improved fire hydrant system) went up in that blaze as well. But by then the Patent Office had gotten its act together and no records were entirely lost to history.

school supplies
As many of my friends are lamenting the presence of school supplies in stores, I’m considering just torching all the X-supplies and starting fresh.

Now when I say I want a do-over, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that our summer has been a complete bust so far. We had a great family vacation and we’ve done a lot of fun things. We have ridden our bikes and done lots of swimming and made some delicious meals with the harvest from our garden. We’ve caught lightning bugs and completed summer library reading logs and been to the ballpark and gotten together with friends. I don’t want to burn the memory of those things.

But with about a month until school starts up again, I am feeling the need to start fresh. So today, on the 181st anniversary of the issuance of US Patent Number 1, I’m going to declare this Summer Day Number 1, the beginning of a refocused, more organized summer break. Everything that came before, I’m just going to call those the X-Days.

And That’s Why You Shouldn’t Mess with a Babylonian Pig

On By Sarah AngletonIn Astronomy, History, Law5 Comments

This year my oldest son began middle school. It’s going well, for the most part. He’s thriving in the world of increased social opportunities, having found a group of buddies that all seem to get one another pretty well. And despite the increase in workload, he’s enjoying the academic challenges middle school is bringing. He’s even almost a little more organized and responsible than he used to be. Well, he’s working on it anyway.

We’ve had a few hurdles to jump, but it’s more or less off to a good start. Or at least I thought it was until he came home the other day and as he ran down his list of homework and other tiny scraps of information he occasionally lets slip out, he casually mentioned that his classmates had sentenced him to death.

big-pig
Actually I’m pretty impressed with his skills if he managed to run off with one of these things. photo credit: jpellgen Largest Boar via photopin (license)

As you can imagine, a number of follow-up questions flashed though my mind. The answers to some of them were that he stole a pig, his accuser was a landowner, much wealthier and more important than he was, and that she tried to shoot him as he fled the scene, but the law didn’t seem to care about the attempted murder. Just the pig thief, even though he requested leniency and so did a number of character witnesses who swore he would never do such a thing unless he were starving. And, you know, he’s a middle school boy, so he might feel like he’s starving most of the time.

Finally, after enjoying my mystified expression for a moment, he went on to explain that his social studies class had been studying Hammurabi’s Code. Just in case it’s been as long since your middle school social studies days as it has since mine, I’ll explain.

stele_du_code_dhammurabi
What a constitution looked like in 1754 BC. CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=818801

In 1901, while working on a site in the ancient city of Susa (in modern day Iran), Egyptologist Gustave Jéquier discovered a stone stele, over seven feet tall, covered in cuneiform script. When translated, the 44 columns and 28 paragraphs were shown to contain a total of 282 laws, which, dating to somewhere around 1754 BC, form one of the oldest written codes of law known.

Established under the Babylonian king Hammurabi, the laws cover a wide range of issues, including contract terms, liability, fraud, divorce, and the theft of a pig by a starving sixth grader in social studies class.

The code is also the first good example history has thus far offered up of a system of presumed innocence, with court proceedings that allow for both prosecutor and defendant to present evidence. Of course it’s not all rosy, because the code also spells out a hierarchical application of the laws. For instance, a doctor successfully treating the injuries of a high-ranking man will make more money than if he successfully treats a slave, but he will also face a much stiffer penalty for unsuccessful treatment of a wealthy man, and if it’s say, your run of the mill freed man, well, it officially just doesn’t matter.

And if a landowner steals livestock from another landowner, he is required to pay ten times the value of the stolen property to rightful owner. If, on the other hand, a starving middle school boy steals a pig from the rich girl who owns the desk next door, the punishment is unquestionably death.

As his mother, I might complain about this sad injustice, perhaps start a tablet writing campaign to the Babylonian elders, or petition the king for a pardon. But, I suppose the law is the law, and I’m completely thrilled that my kid has such a great social studies teacher. At least for the few days he has left.

Give Me My Seventeenth Day!

On By Sarah AngletonIn History, Law1 Comment

Today is the sixteenth day of my children’s school year. Sixteen days of getting to know their teachers, running from the bees that invaded to school playground over the summer, re-establishing homework and study routines, and deciding that maybe summer isn’t as long and boring as they thought it was sixteen days ago.

Okay, maybe not THAT creative. photo credit: Lunchbots bento for 5th grade boy - puzzle cheese for autism via photopin (license)
Okay, maybe not THAT creative. photo credit: Lunchbots bento for 5th grade boy – puzzle cheese for autism via photopin (license)

I’ve been pretty busy, too. I’ve packed a variety of creative lunches (not just the slapped together peanut butter sandwiches my children can expect every day by late March), signed and returned every form that’s come home wadded up in the bottom of a backpack, and filed away roughly a billion flyers, making note of PTA fundraiser dates and soccer practice schedules.

And since I work from home, which means that when my children are home, I don’t really get to work (or at least I do a very different kind of work), I’ve had a remarkably productive sixteen days without the constant interruption of, “MOM!”

I have submitted two new short stories, added another 12,000 words to my current novel project, posted to my blog two Thursdays (and now three) in a row, attended my weekly critique group meeting three times (where I both gave and received both brilliant and terrible advice), and disappeared down several research rabbit holes. I’m even getting a start on my reading list.

You could say I’m on something of a sixteen day roll. Sixteen glorious days! That makes two entire weeks, and it would be three tomorrow.

If they had school tomorrow.

They don’t because it’s Labor Day weekend. Monday is a national holiday and all that and our school district, like many, decided to put a teacher planning and in-service training day on Friday, giving students a four day weekend. It’s probably a good idea. Families can travel or whatever. And I certainly don’t begrudge teachers their planning and in-service days. I realize those are important.

But I feel like we were just starting to hit our stride.  I want my day back!

I imagine this is kind of how the people of Great Britain felt when they woke up on the morning of September 3, 1752 and realized the day didn’t actually exist. That year, British citizens (including those in the American colonies) went to bed on September 2 and woke up on September 14, skipping over eleven days in the process.

The calendar change was proposed by Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield whose birthday is on September 22. Guess he got to open his presents a little bit earlier in 1752. Portrait by Allan Ramsey. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The calendar change was proposed by Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield whose birthday is on September 22. Guess he got to open his presents a little bit earlier in 1752. Portrait by Allan Ramsey. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

It was probably a good idea. Great Britain had been following the Julian calendar, introduced in 46 BC. That would have been all well and good except that the calendar was based on a solar year that had been miscalculated by 11 minutes. What wasn’t such a big miscalculation in 46 BC, had after a while become a very big deal, sending the calendar completely out of sync with the seasons and wreaking havoc on the Catholic feast schedule.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII decided he’d had enough and proposed the Gregorian calendar which is much more accurate as long as you add a day every few years and a second or so once in a while. While Catholic nations were quick to adopt the new system, Protestant nations were less enthusiastic.

But in 1750, Parliament decided that doing business with the rest of Europe was somewhat difficult when no one could figure out what day it was, and the plan was set in motion. Two years later September got the shaft.

Rumors have swirled across the pages of history books that the people rioted in the streets because their government had the audacity to steal 11 days of their lives. The source of that rumor, as it turns out, is probably a satirical work by William Hogarth. During the next election season in which the Tories drummed up distaste for the Whigs by publicly blaming them for cancelling the first half of September and ruining everyone’s year, Hogarth produced a painting depicting the rioting horde with placards that read: “Give us our 11 days.”

An Election Entertainment by William Hogarth. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
An Election Entertainment by William Hogarth. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And history was invented.

I may be no William Hogarth, but...nope, I got nothing. I'll just stick to writing.
I may be no William Hogarth, but…nope, I got nothing. I’ll just stick to writing.

I imagine the change did make some people grumble for a while (especially those with birthdays in early September) but others didn’t seem to mind so much. In America (where people were evidently less prone to riot for no real purpose than they are today), Benjamin Franklin wrote of the calendar change, “It is pleasant for an old man to go to bed on September 2, and not have to get up until September 14.”

So as the school district steals what should have been my seventeenth productive day, I will try to channel my inner Ben Franklin and tell myself that it is pleasant for a mom to pack creative school lunches on September 3 and not have to do it again until September 8.

The Certainty of Death and Taxes

On By Sarah AngletonIn Fashion, Law6 Comments

As of yesterday, another income tax season has come to a close here in the US. CPA’s who haven’t been home in months can finally return to the family dinner table. And at long last city sidewalks are free from the invasion of creepy sign-spinning Statues of Liberty beckoning to us from the side of the road.

The Statue of LIbertry wearing a fur-lined hood is creepy enough. In my town where it's been warm the last few days, one Mr. Liberty has been wearing shorts under his robe. I hope. photo credit: Income tax of liberty via photopin (license)
Actually it might not be a bad idea to tax Statue of Liberty hats. photopin (license)photo credit: Income tax of liberty via photopin (license)

No matter how we feel about the way our taxes are collected and spent and whether some of us should be paying more or some of us less, I’m guessing none of us particularly enjoys the income tax process. The laws are complicated, and growing more so all the time. The effort expended in calculating it all expands from year to year at an unbelievably stupid rate.

But as Benjamin Franklin famously said, “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except for death and taxes.” It’s something we have to deal with. Failure to file will net us fines and legal battles. So any readers out there who are law-abiding US taxpayers, I want to offer a hearty congratulations for successfully slugging through another year and getting it done. You may be tired. A few of you may have even been up past your bedtime so you could sneak in just before the deadline. If so, rub your blurry eyes, grab a cup of coffee, draw a deep breath, and realize it could be worse.

Because in 1798, for Englishman John Collins, it was much worse. Collins was busy at work with a printing plate, producing linen hat labels for anxious customers when he learned just how serious the business of taxation could be. The plate was readied, the linen damp and awaiting its impression, and Collins’s hand was covered in ink. That’s when he was arrested for forgery.

What he had been trying to pull off was a sneak around England’s tax on men’s hats. Introduced by Parliament in 1784, it was designed to be a kind of income tax because in theory, the wealthy would own several expensive hats, while the poor may own one cheap hat, if any at all.

Ladies' hats were tax exempt. Even those made of fruit. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Ladies’ hats were tax exempt. Even those made of fruit. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
To sell hats required a license that cost two pounds in London (or five shillings in the countryside) and gave the seller the right to post a sign reading: “Dealer in Hats by Retail.” A hat costing up to four shillings carried a tax bill of three pence and as the cost of the hat increased, so did the tax, with hats greater than twelve shillings demanding a hefty 2-shilling tax. Penalties for hats without a tax labels affixed to the linings fell both to the seller and the wearer.

No hat is worth that. photo credit: The End of the Line via photopin (license)

The hat tax was perhaps better than the window tax, the disastrous effects of which can still be seen in the large number of bricked-up windows gracing English buildings, but it turns out Englishmen were almost as fond of the hat tax as the citizens of the former British colonies in America had been of the English tea tax just a few years earlier. Removal and reuse of stamps was common and punishable. In the early days of the law, retailers attempted to change the language they used to refer to their wares, causing revisions that broadened the definition of a hat. Still the unpopular hat tax was widely ignored, hard to enforce, and was finally repealed in 1811.

Unfortunately that came after John Collins was caught forging tax labels. He got more than a fine or a legal battle. To forge a hat tax label in England in 1798 was a capital crime. Poor John Collins learned that there were certainties he couldn’t escape when he evaded taxes and met with death.