C Becomes B Today

In that strange title above  my reference is to the year’s Dominical Letters. 2016 is a leap year, and all such years have two such letters. 2015, more modestly, was simply a D; 2016 is, more self-promotingly, CB.

A paragraph such as the one above would have been totally incomprehensible to me on February 1st, the day on which I wrote a post on the year 1932 to mark Brigitte’s 84th birthday. In that process I discovered that 1932 was also a CB year, like 2016; Wikipedia tells you such things. I discovered what a Dominical Letter was, where it fits into the scheme of things, and, furthermore, that 84 is meaningful because it is a multiple of 28, and every 28 years the days of the week in a year begin repeating. Therefore 1932, 1960, 1988, and 2016 are all CB years. If you were 0 years of age in 1932, you will be 84 in 2016, and you can prove it by calculating 3 x 28. Check.

In the medieval scheme of things it was important to know on which date in January the first Sunday of the year fell—or to predict on which day it will fall in future years in order to prepare future calendars for Easter and other Church festivals. The ecclesiastical Latin for Sunday was dies Dominica, or simply Dominica, hence “dominical,” the Sunday Letter.

Now it so happens that the Dominical Letter, once you know it, automatically tells you the date in January. In the following tabulation are all the letters (note that there are seven) with their actual number:

A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1	2	3	4	5	6	0 or 7

Thus if the first Sunday of the year falls on January 1, the DL is A. If on the 7th, DL is G. In mathematical algorithms devised to determine the Dominical Letter, the result for G will always be 0 but must be transformed into 7 before applying its results to an actual calendar. Incidentally, once you know the Dominical Letter, the weekday of January 1 can also be determined by a simple formula: If DL=1, the Day of Week (DW) is 1; in all other cases, DW is 9 minus DL. Taking a G year, the DL is 7; that means Sunday, January 7. January 1 will be 9-7=2, a Monday. The Days of the Week, are numbered thus:

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
1	2	3	4	5	6	7

In 2016, where DL is CB, we use the first letter for Sundays in January and February, the B for Sundays the rest of the year. Therefore Sunday is on January 3 (C in the first table) and January 1 will be a Friday; 9-3=6, that 6 being in the table immediately above.

The fact that Days of the Week have a fixed number whereas Dominical Letters have a variable number depending on the year illustrates the maddening confusions that can surround learning this subject.

Let’s next turn to the reason why leap years have two Dominical letters. Lets take as an example 2010 and 2016. 2010 was a C year, meaning that its first Sunday fell on January 3. All other Sundays in the year were therefore designated by C. 2010 is a common year, not divisible by 4. 2016 is a leap year, also a C year at the beginning. It has the same exact days in January and up to the 28th of February. In March, however, its Sunday designation shifts “back” by one.

February-March 2010 - a Common Year starting on a Sunday "C"
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	…
February-March 2016 - a Leap Year starting on a Sunday "CB"
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29
		1	2	3	4	5
6	5	6	7	8	9	…

Notice how in 2016 the first Sunday in March “falls back” by one—compared to 2010. The March pattern shown is that of a B-year (e.g. 2011), thus one starting on a Saturday, its first Sunday being January 2nd. Therefore the B is shown next to the C to indicate that in 2016 C only applies to January and February, not to the year as in and after March.

Quite wondrous algorithms have been devised to calculate the Dominical Letter for any year—in the Gregorian or the Julian calendars. The only input needed is the number of the year. The sleekest of these was devised by Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855). The process, on the surface, is simple enough. One counts the total days in target year – 1, 2015 in our case, minding leap days. The total is then divided by 7; the remainder is the number of the Dominical Letter.

Here’s a threat. One of these days I will discuss how that is done. Meanwhile this rather rare February 29 must be lived more fully while the sunshine still lasts.

Liberal Education

When the Kentucky governor, Matt Bevin, suggested last month that students majoring in French literature should not receive state funding for their college educa­tion, he joined a growing number of elected officials who want to nudge students away from the humanities and toward more job-friendly subjects like electri­cal engineering.

   [New York Times, “Rising Call to Cut Funding for Liberal Arts Degrees,” 2/22/2016]

Isn’t that interesting? The majority rules. And the values of the majority—and the quality of its thought—will invariably come to be mirrored at every level of a society, not least its governing circles. Here is democracy’s Achilles’ heel. It is a laudable structure of governance, but its quality will reflect the people.

“Liberal” means free. It was the province, long ago, of those who could both fund the costs and take the time to get educated. “Liberal Education” has never meant  “cost free.” It was the education of the leadership class: wide, general, and elevated—over against vocational education which was for the lower elite of the laboring masses, the craftsmen. And the laborers got none at all.

He who funds also calls the shots. State funding, sooner or later, also means direction of the curriculum. State education is, therefore, regardless of its content, never liberal: the student isn’t “free” of State interference.

Interesting, isn’t it. The more we laud freedom, the less of it is actually available. I used to ponder that when I was young and came to the conclusion that, so long as I wasn’t independently wealthy, I was only “free” to seek a job. And to vote—if that even mattered when far outnumbered by those who do not think. And to drive—provided I bought some insurance.

Someday some few will again have liberal education—but democracy must first decay and its pieces must slowly be absorbed back into the soil of history.

Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday came yesterday and Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) the day before. Therefore we are now in the Lenten Season. That season, measured on the calendar, is 46 days long—or is it 36 or 40? On that subject I’ve written earlier here (here). Suffice it to say, that days of fasting are on weekdays, and Sundays are not counted, therefore 40; but counting Sundays, 46. Easter will fall on March 27 in 2016.

Now Easter is a movable feast, being based on a lunisolar calendar, one that combines the features of the solar (Gregorian) and of the lunar calendar. The earliest that Easter can fall is March 22; the latest is April 25. The earliest Easter was celebrated last in 1818 (with Ash Wednesday on February 4) and will next appear in 2285. The latest was last celebrated in 1943 (Ash Wednesday on March 10) and will occur again on that late date in 2038.

The ash used yesterday to mark the foreheads of believers, so the Catholic Encyclopedia tells me, was made by burning palm leaves blessed on Palm Sunday of 2015. Palm Sunday? It is the Sunday before Easter.

Now, what with this being a Christian nation (or so we’re told by multiple presidential candidates), the food industry will presumably soon begin reporting a catastrophic decline in sales and profits—with the WSJ angrily demanding that the Federal Funds Rate be lowered in compensation. We’ll all be fasting on weekdays. Therefore, last Tuesday, we had our last indulgent weekday Eating Jamboree—Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras.

A penultimate (look it up) comment. The Muslims also have an extended religious fasting season, Ramadan. It last 29 days, so we fast more. Moreover, we were first—which I add to encourage our presidential contenders. But the Muslims use a lunar calendar—hence their feast really moves about the year. Their religious calendar has 10.87 days fewer than ours. One of our presidential candidates will no doubt fix that—and have the Muslims bear the cost.

The ultimate comment is that this post owes everything to Jeb Bush. He showed up at a rally with an odd mark on his forehead. Brigitte asked what that odd blur on his forehead was. My role is to know it all. “It must be Ash Wednesday,” I said. Then I looked up the date and then Jeb’s religious affiliation. He is a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism. There must surely be a woman behind that shift…