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Ooo...I probably haven't even mentioned that I've spent most of my professional life in data processing. Computers and all that, you know. Of course, you can do that for a while without becoming completely out of touch or eccentric. However, you shouldn't forget to do something else, at least as a hobby. For me, the best thing to do was to work my way up in the computer club I'd joined and one day become editor-in-chief of the club's newsletter.
Well, it wasn't really that bad.
There wasn't a club newsletter yet; a double-sided, hectographed sheet was sent out two or three times a year, listing the most important events of the past year and upcoming dates, etc. Then the current president had the idea of asking me for a short contribution for the next issue, which I did. Unfortunately, I couldn't manage to write one that was less than 12 pages long. Now we were in a real bind, but we were able to help the good man: that's how the newsletter came about.
Perhaps the president at the time thought I would publish great programming tricks or masterful coding examples; presumably he hoped I would put together 8 to 10 pages of them.
He soon knew better.
Month after month, I filled the pages from then on, sometimes only 48, but usually a full 64. Among other things, I had stipulated that I could give free rein to my pen. Whether it was an announcement of a conference or lectures by IBM luminaries, I neatly wrapped it all in short, readable stories, believing that this was a better and more humorous way to present the dry facts to the readers. I always wrap my dog's pills in a special sausage wrapper, too, of course, right? So you don't need to worry that you'll get bogged down in incomprehensible technical jargon in the following stories; it's perfectly sufficient to know that computers exist, that there's a computer manufacturer called IBM, and that this very IBM produced one of the world's best computers, the legendary AS/400.
The rest follows logically: a club of computer geeks who meet in various major cities for conferences or other lectures; an editor-in-chief who has to entice them to attend the conferences and meetings; and a president who spends nights brooding over unpaid printing bills for the newspaper produced by the prolific editor-in-chief...
The hot topic of 1996 was, of course, the year 2000, which was supposed to bring about the biggest computer system change worldwide. Thousands of newsrooms around the globe wrote themselves into a frenzy, as a disaster, perhaps even chaos, was widely feared.
Not so in our small, one-man editorial office. We (or rather, I) had taken precautions well in advance and didn't have any Y2K problems at all. Nevertheless, the editorial team had to address the general concerns and nervousness and published a simple, lighthearted article on the topic of the year 2000 and the upcoming congress; but unfortunately, the editor made a typo on page 3, which did not go unnoticed. The former (the lighthearted article, of course, not the congress) earned me a multi-page, complimentary letter to the editor, the praise of which culminated in a flattering comparison to the works of the famous Israeli humorist Ephraim Kishon.
The joy over this and the annoyance over the many complaints concerning the stupid typo that had so shamelessly exposed my overly lax research were initially swirled around with plenty of cognac, then my name swirled around to become a pseudonym; and all these swirls then led to the following melancholy reflection (and more cognacs, of course).
May EK forgive me!
Ornella Muti, who longingly stretches her arms towards me, bursts into a thousand pieces when the wretched cucumber starts chirping. I grope hastily in the dark for the device (the cucumber, as you've surely noticed, is my mobile phone) and simultaneously try to decipher the luminous numbers on my wristwatch: '3! What an idiot...
"Yes, please?" I whisper, glancing anxiously towards the other side of the bed, where Ornella's predecessor stirs briefly, then falls back asleep. "This is Ephraim K., the famous humorist," croaks the voice on the other end of the line, "I'd like to speak to the editor-in-chief!"
A cold sweat breaks out instantly. Taxi to Vienna Airport, plane to Tel Aviv, hotel room, three suitcases. How on earth...?
"The editor-in-chief and my wife have already retired for private business, so I can't possibly disturb them, Your Excellency," I say hoarsely, and add just to be safe: "I'm only the First Secretary. But how did you come to the conclusion that we're in Israel today?"
In my mind's eye, I see Ephraim K., the famous humorist, smiling slyly: "I have some connections there. No, seriously: my friend Jossele saw him, along with his wife and luggage cart, at Tel Aviv airport this evening."
"That was the AUA cabin steward," replied the baggage handler, "who accompanied my best friend and us to the hotel; we are here for the Annual Meeting, which will take place in Jerusalem in June."
"I know, I know! So what is it, can I speak to the so-called editor-in-chief now?"
"Unfortunately not, Your Grace, I really can't disturb you right now." A pleasantly warm wave of power washes over me, the subjugated creature. "But I could certainly do something," I add vaguely, in a fit of magnanimity and peasant cunning. The bait always works—at least with Viennese local politicians.
"All right, take a note," growls Ephraim K., the famous humorist, and I fumble around on the floor for the cigarette pack, among socks, beer cans, and remnants of the Jerusalem Post. "In the last issue, the great master made a huge blunder; he apparently not only didn't understand the whole leap year thing, but also published misleading information on page 3. If that isn't an embarrassment! So, I want to lend him a hand—colleague to colleague, so to speak—even though he apparently has never heard of me, the greatest humorist," he adds, somewhat piqued.
"Are you even listening to me?" he asks, and I hurry to hum "Hmm-Hmm" into the phone while my eyes greedily wander around searching for the damned lighter.
"Go ahead, Your Eminence, I just quickly grabbed my notepad," I lie cheerfully and blissfully take a deep, first drag.
"So, you don't need to say goodbye to February 29th for the next eight years, as mentioned in your rag. The year 2000 is a leap year!" I'm about to blurt out that he's the eleventh caller about this embarrassing matter, but then I manage to keep my mouth shut. "Perhaps you should do some explaining about leap years," says Ephraim K., the most famous humorist between the Elbe and Euphrates rivers, condescendingly.
"The first thing you need to do is get rid of 'Pope Julian'; that gaffe is simply too embarrassing. There was a Pope Julian around 300 AD, and then another one around 1700, so forget it. Tell your people that the term 'Julian calendar' is named after Julius Caesar, and that it was the great Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) who, returning victorious from campaign in 46 BC, found a miserably inaccurate military calendar in Rome, stolen from the Persians, and was annoyed that his victory, which he had won six weeks earlier, would actually only take place in three days. Furious, he decreed that this year (46 BC, mind you) should have 455 days, and thus 15 months. Then he smashed the curtain against the door and had himself rowed to Egypt in a galley. - Do you have that?" "Of course, that's truly interesting news," I pretend, yawning and watching with interest the tiny beetle that is kicking across the bedsheet on six legs.
"So, Julius not only courted Cleopatra in Egypt, but also rummaged around in the pharaonic archives (one needs breaks now and then, haha). There he actually found the decree of Pharaoh Ptolemy III from the year 238 BC, in which the gifted astronomer Canopus calculated the tropical solar year as 365.2422 days and the synodic lunar month as 29.5306 days, and from this deduced with razor-sharp logic that every three years with 365 days must be followed by one with 366 days. Julius was delighted with this discovery and immediately ran to Cleopatra, the beautiful one, and together they devised his new Roman calendar: 11 months with 30 or 31 days, a 12th month, February, with 28 days, and every fourth year with 29 days, as well as a bright boy named Caesarion, were the result of this." "Fruitful cooperation, hahaha." I don't know why he laughs like that every now and then, but older citizens find some things so funny.
"But was this calendar accurate enough?" I interject, feigning interest, while I leaf through the Hebrew Gideon Bible I found in the hotel room's bedside table in frustration, trying to at least figure out which end was which. Besides, I'm sick of all this calendar nonsense: as if the Roman Christian calendar were the only one! There's the Jewish, the Islamic, and who-knows-what calendar, why doesn't he bother with them too?
"Young man," the humorous figure continued, "you have no idea what Julius left behind in Rome. No, it wasn't just the ill-fated year 46 with its 455 days. Many years earlier, the Romans had already completely overhauled the Persian war calendar; the year ended on February 24th with the festival of the god Terminus (not related to 'train station,' but the originator of our New Year's Eve fireworks) and began, still sensibly Persian, on March 1st, but continued with solar and lunar months of varying lengths, ending in a February with 22 or 23 days. The months themselves had three fixed points: the 1st day (the calendar), the Nones (the 5th or 7th day), and the Ides (on the 13th or 15th day). The other days were specified in relation to the next fixed point (the 11th was 'two days before the Ides'). In doing so, the Romans also invented something like an intercalary month (the Mercedonius)." (began after February 23rd) to compensate for inaccuracies. These leap days between February 24th and March 1st (Latin "bis sextum ante calendas martias") are still found today in French (année bissextile) and Italian (anno bisestile) for the leap year. Furthermore, after Caesar's assassination, the Romans moved the beginning of the year in 43 BC to January 1st, the day the consuls took office (as the Viennese local politicians were called in ancient Rome), where it remains to this day. Nevertheless, even this ingenious Julian calendar had a flaw that would not be corrected until a millennium and a half later: the annual average was 12 minutes, or more precisely 11 minutes and 12 seconds, too long. Ephraim K., the famous humorist, takes a short, weary break, which allows me to gently place the miniature Hebrew, who had fallen off the bed, back onto the bedsheet so that he can continue to wander around on the yellowed lettering of HOLIDAY INN JERUSALEM.
"Now it's coming!" "Write that down verbatim!" exclaims the master of humor. "In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII (the Thirteenth, EK adds didactically) had finally had enough of having lunch served at 9:30 in the morning, hearing the Angelus bell ring at 2:45 instead of 5:00, and, even worse, having to pay extra interest annually at the Banco di Roma for 11 minutes and 12 seconds. So, one day, while he was just casually watching the chubby-cheeked, blond-haired Roman altar boys sack-racing in the Sistine Chapel and Maestro Michelangelo painting frescoes, he had a sudden epiphany: a division hastily scribbled in the centuries-old dust showed the correctness of the papal flash of inspiration: one only needed to make every fourth of the centennial years (the turn of the century) leap years, and there one had approximately..." Twelve minutes (including interest) were saved or gained. Thus, the rules were immediately refined in 1582: Every fourth year of a century is a leap year, but not the centennial years (those ending in 00, you cultural pigs), unless they are evenly divisible by 400. Thus, 1600 became a leap year (Gregory XIII financed a small weekend campaign with the interest to give the Pisans a good thrashing), and 2000 will also be one.
"Then everything's fine," I say, turning the squirming little baby onto his back and trying to numb him with cigarette smoke, "so we've had a flawless calendar for a good 400 years now..." But the eloquent champion of humor immediately interrupts me: "What are you thinking! Nothing's fine! Of course, this is just a patchwork solution; this four-hundred-year rule doesn't really solve the problem, because as early as the year 4300, an extra leap day will be needed to correct this papal amendment again! Besides, what do you mean, 'for 400 years'? Oh, you and your AS/400 number game! No, in reality, this calendar regulation only applied to the papal sphere of influence from 1582 onwards; the Swiss canton of Valais, for example, only followed suit in 1583, the Japanese in 1873, and the Greeks not until 1923. And your editor-in-chief probably only in 2012." The humor grandee quips, laughing briefly and grumblingly, as if it were a joke.
So we gossiped for a while longer about whether Canopus was just an advisor and astronomer, or perhaps even a brother of the Pharaoh, etc. yawn-yawn-yawn, then I let the cucumber slowly slide to the floor with sleepy eyes and think of Ornella, her slanted green-gray eyes, her full lips, how she lisps through her sweet little gap in her teeth: "...let the old year be the old year, sweet little Russty..." and the voice of the greatest humorist of all time continues to squawk from the cell phone, quieter and quieter and quieter....
Rust van Idas,
First Editorial Secretary
Instead of this epically broad feature article, a four-line sentence would have sufficed:
"Correction: In our last issue, page 3, a small error crept in regarding the year 2000: the Julian calendar was developed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. The correction of the annual difference of 12 minutes was made in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII: every year divisible by 400 is also a leap year, period."
MMG, editor's wife
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Ooo...