Show autumn offers many joys for the faithful beholder by BAUKHAGE news analyst and commentator washington D C you are reading these lines I 1 trust not too long after the autumnal equinox which I 1 hope you celebrated with he proper ceremonies the word equinox is latin for equal night which implies equal day all over the earth there is that kind of equality at this time thus the creator established equality of such nice perfection that neither the strongest telescope nor the most accurate micrometer can question it equality was some thing that had no 7 measure of weight until the pliers proclaimed it and until it was preached to the western world by a lowly carpenter a 3 son of nazareth we worked near ly 2 years be fore a political goal embodying this philosophy was written into amal the constitution baukhage hage of a nation the united states it Is an unachieved goal but one more nearly reached here than anywhere ele in the world fellow travelers to the contrary notwithstanding strangely enough the one idea chiefly associated with equality of day and night the equinox has been proved utterly unfounded for a long time it was generally ac cepter and is still believed by many that violent storms which were given the name eq gales are prevalent at this season suppose you were to approach the 10 men or twenty or thirty who he have spent the most time 6 tidying this particular subject gathering all the facts check lag ing all the records available as long as authentic records have existed if jou asked them if it Is true that there are especially bad storms at this time of year hey would answer in carefully wa worded crded and virtually understandable stan dable sentences I 1 that is the bunk at the equinox the sun sim is in the pr process icess of crossing the celestial equator that is the circle paral el to our equator which it if expanded would touch the sun the sun does this in the spring vernal equinox and in the fall fail autumnal equinox at this season it if you live in my neighborhood or within several hundred miles thereof you will heed this piece of advice in the hagerstown Hagers town md Al manack which lays says the ravages of the tent caterpillars er go unnoticed by many persona persons until the leaves are eaten from a tree naturally it makes extra work for the tree to produce another set of new leaves which weakens the tree mid ind after a lew years of this extra work the tree is la in danger of dying the greatest natural enemy of the tent caterpillar is the common bouse house wren these are valuable birds to have in your gardens during the growing season and now after that piece of ad vice which is not seasonal for my friends down under where the autumnal equinox heralds the corn com ing of summer and not fall and win ter let us return to our meteoro meteors logical mutton I 1 will not become technical but I 1 think it is just as well to get better acquainted with the phenomena natural and otherwise which sur round us there is no reason why if one rises late in the night to let the cat in or out he need crack a shin on a chair onee once he lie understands why and in what position his wife has moved it since he last noticed its location and the stars are just celestial furniture I 1 what Is this thins thing retrograde motion 9 there is a certain retrograde motion from east to west of the equinox equino ial lal points which I 1 wont won t go into in detail for several reasons one being that I 1 haven t the slight est idea what the phrase means nevertheless I 1 will mention that retrograde motion was discovered by a gentleman by the name of Hip in the year about before christ experts say this mo tion accounts for the changes in the position of the pole star the north star as it is usually called some people think the pole star doesn doean t change A number of im people since Hip have thought so take one william shakespeare remember in act III of julius caeser when a petition for repeal of the disenfranchisement of publius cimber is presented 9 cassius drops to his knees to beg far the repeal but caeser says I 1 I 1 could be well moved if it I 1 were as you if I 1 could pray to move prayers would move me but I 1 am constant as the north era ern star of whose true fix d and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament J the skies are painted with un number d sparks they are all fire and every one doth shine but theres but one in all doth hold his place VP perhaps shakespeare had never read Hip some say he couldn coulden t read but if so where did he get his plots anyhow hipnar chus said and nobody has dis proved his theory that the position of the pole star does change from our viewpoint one authority ex plains it this way the pole of the earth is swing ing slowly as if it were the axis of a top or as if the earth rotating were a kind of gyroscope the study of what Is called the pre cession of the equinoxes their moving backward in relation to the constellations Is fascinating but I 1 have no intention of reading a lee ture on astronomy here for sev eral reasons including the one mentioned before but I 1 do want to mention some things which george stimson with whom I 1 have just been talking brought up you remember george he comes from anamosa iowa where he has just been spend ing a wonderful vacation with his hi mother who at 77 does her own cooking because she likes it bet ter and according to george for good reasons than anyone s else george to whom most wash ington ians fans turn when they want the right answer says that records for a period of 50 years show that there were actually fewer storms during the period between september 20 and 25 which overlaps the equinox than there were immediately preceding september 25 the same he says is true of the vernal equinox the me notion about ial storms in one form or another says george dates back to at least 1748 and probably originated among seafaring people all this information Is in his book about a thousand things and if I 1 had thought to look it up first I 1 wouldn t have interrupted him in his work on his book about a thousand or more things regard ing mg american history which will be his next opus and which I 1 m willing to say in advance at of publication is going to be good so much for the equinoxes with whom since we meet them twice a year we ought to get better ac quainter quain ted blackjack life and times speaking of books col frederick palmer sent me his latest book en titled general john J pershing it was written some time ago re bently brought up to date after pal mer s last interview with pershing but in accordance with the author s stipulation was not published until after pershing s death it was not to be submitted to him or to appear in the light of an official biography or 0 one ne authorized by his heirs this is stated in the foreword and palmer elaborated on his attitude to me during a luncheon shortly before the book appeared colonel palmer Is the elder statesman of the war correspond ants but years are of small ac e count to him he Is pert active and his memory Is phenomenal I 1 knew of him in connection with the busso russo japanese war although at the time of that conflict my military expert ence was limited to playing with a painted ge if ef warships the warships were a christmas present received while I 1 was still building budding with blocks and shooting indians with bows made of umbrella ribs and drill ing in an infant cadet corps later I 1 came to know a colleague of if palmer a in that war which gave japan the toe hold in the far east that made her the power she was in world war II 11 his colleague was photographer jimmy hare the dean of his clan for many decades I 1 the pershing book I 1 have not ead read at this writing but as soon as I 1 do I 1 U tell you about it what a wonderful three point landing said the little kangaroo to its mother m aher although the special session ol 01 congress on gress was mad at the presidents president tl for or calling them back they gave the reading of his proc lamat on 0 n assembling them a tribute rare in history they stood up while I 1 was read they got up because bec became aue ta ley l ey thought the invocation was about to be made and they didn dian tj t ike like to sit down and revea reveal I 1 their error there may be a new king ol 01 spain nice work il if you can get way away with it 4 i SUM t in |