We take a page from the people at Easily Amused and try to find some levity in whatever comes our way.
Plutonic Relationship:
No, he wasn’t an oilman. But he was a New Mexican, and a famous one, and one who chose to live his life in (or very near, as in Las Cruces) the region we regard as Permian country. Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of the planet Pluto, was born this month (Feb. 4) in 1906. His discovery came in 1930. He lived to be 91, passing away in 1997. You’ve heard that Pluto was downgraded from planet to “dwarf planet.” That happened in 2006. Since then, February 13 has been designated “Pluto is a Planet Day” in New Mexico and elsewhere.
Never Enough Awareness:
The people at easilyamused.org have declared that February is National National Awareness Month Awareness Month. Did you get that? Maybe it works better in quotation marks. February is “National ‘National Awareness Month’ Awareness Month.” A month in which to be aware of the various National Awareness Months. February is also Sinus Pain Awareness Month (some wag asked: “March wasn’t good enough for them?”). Oh, there are weeks, too: Through with the Chew Week starts on the 16th. Our favorite: National Engineers Week (What?? Not a full month?) also begins on the 16th.
They Said It:
“So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment, and technology.” —Daniel Yergin
“That’s the way I got along in life. I don’t ever remember being particularly jealous of anybody, because I figured if I can’t do it myself, I don’t deserve to get it.” —Clyde Tombaugh
“You’ll never get mixed up if you simply tell the truth. Then you don’t have to remember what you have said, and you never forget what you have said.” —Sam Rayburn
“I think there’s a supreme power behind the whole thing, an intelligence. Look at all of the instincts of nature, both animals and plants, the very ingenious ways they survive. If you cut yourself, you don’t have to think about it.” —Clyde Tombaugh
“A jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.” —Sam Rayburn
“There’s no such thing as a foreseeable future.” —Historian David McCullough
Word of the Month:
FAIRWAY: n., any unobstructed passage, way, or area (dictionary.com); (Golf:) the mowed part of any hole between the tee and the green; (Geology:) the trend along which a particular geological feature is likely, such as a sand fairway or a hydrocarbon fairway.