May Day! Happy May Day, which I think traditionally includes flowers. (Then why do captains of planes and ships yell “MAY DAY!” when they are about to crash?)
A few days before I left for Texas, I spent a day working in the yard. Whoooo-eeee, it was hard to leave home.
Tucker joined me in the herb garden. He likes to meet me there for coffee in the mornings.
Good thing it was almost dark when I left home because otherwise I might have been tempted to cancel the trip.
6 Comments
Your yard is soooo beautiful!!!
Thanks, Virginia! It was beautiful when I left, but it will probably be brown when I get home.
Probably more than you want to know, but according to Wikipedia . . .
Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice-procedure radio communications. It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency primarily by aviators and mariners, but in some countries local organizations such as firefighters, police forces, and transportation organizations also use the term. Convention requires the word be repeated three times in a row during the initial emergency declaration (“Mayday mayday mayday”).
The “mayday” procedure word was conceived as a distress call in the early 1920s by Frederick Stanley Mockford, officer-in-charge of radio at Croydon Airport, England. He had been asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the air traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the term “mayday”, the phonetic equivalent of the French m’aidez (“help me”) or m’aider (a short form of venez m’aider, “come [and] help me”). The term is unrelated to the holiday May Day.
Following tests, the new procedure word was introduced for cross-Channel flights in February 1923. The previous distress call had been the Morse code signal SOS, but this was not considered suitable for voice communication, “[o]wing to the difficulty of distinguishing the letter ‘S’ by telephone”. In 1927, the International Radiotelegraph Convention of Washington adopted the voice call “mayday” as the radiotelephone distress call in addition to the SOS radiotelegraph (Morse code) signal.
Great information, Sharon! Can we trust Wikipedia? Sometimes I look things up, but I’m always happy to let you do it for me.?
Wikipedia can be a good source (because it’s editable/correctable by member readers), but it also can be an iffy source (because it’s editable/correctable by member readers). I signed up, but I rarely correct any entry unless/until I absolutely am certain that my correction is true. Which isn’t often ’cause I don’t know much. Hmmmm, I wonder if there is a Wikipedia entry for Mineral King? Must look that up!
And I’m happy to look up stuff for you from whatever source!
Great information, Sharon! Can we trust Wikipedia? Sometimes I look things up, but I’m always happy to let you do it for me.?
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