Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty-one, excepting February alone, and that has twenty-eight days clear, and twenty-nine in each leap year.
Angelkeep remembered learning a jingle something to that effect while being educated at Lancaster Central School. Teachers never taught beyond sing-song knowledge.
Today is the seventh Leap Year for Angelkeep. The house and pond started in 1999, habituated in 2000, the first Leap Year. Back in 1900, the year fell in the four year rotation, but was not a Leap Year. This writer will not see it, but year 2100, also a four year rotation date, will not, repeat, not, be Leap Year. Why? Lancaster math never taught this kind of stuff.
The year must be divisible by 4 evenly, and not divisible by 100 or 400.
1900 ÷ 400 = 4.75 thus not Leap Year.
2000 ÷ 400 = 5 = an even number = Leap Year.
2100 ÷ 400 = fractional 5.25 = no Leap Year.
Got it! After 75 years, Angelkeep’s got it.
Who do we blame for this confusion? Julius Caesar arranged it in BC 45. No wonder Brutus stabbed him. Pope Gregory XIII, “improved” Ceasar’s calendar in 1582 and adjusting for the annual eleven minutes each year, began borrowing from the future. The Pope’s solution was a “divide by 400” rule. The Pope adjusted 1582, and ordered October 5 to become October 15.
Angelkeep wonders what Protestants thought about that. Amish, set in their old ways? Atheists?
It proved horrendous for anyone born between October 6 and the 14th, 1582. The days simply didn’t exist.
Angelkeep was just getting over the struggle to understand 12th Night. It had nothing to do with the drum corps of the chosen twelve at all.
Do the critters of Angelkeep observe Leap Year? Instead of red winged blackbirds strutting feathers to choose a mate, will brown females fluff dingy colors to grab themselves their choice of lover? Do the does go running through the forest on Leap Year looking for a buck? Are Leap Day does more industrious than a human deer hunter looking for the ten-tined-kind?
In 1904, do the math, a Leap Year in Indiana, Bluffton noted a distinct reduction of marriage applications from the previous year. By Christmas the girls, who had the right to do the proposing, left the county with a deficiency of 78 due to what, shyness? It was nearly a 30 percent drop in weddings. Think of the tax burden for that next generation with reduced taxpayers. Was the Pope to blame in 1904? Doubtful.
Blame the British again. One if by land, two if by sea, once cometh Leap Year, set the ladies free.
The parliamentary record of 1228 literally reads, “Ordonit that during ye reign of her maist blessed Majestie, ilka maiden, lade of baith high and lowe estait, shale hae libertie to speak ye man she likes. Gif he refuses to tak her to bee his wyf, he shale bee mulet in ye sum of ane hundridty pundes, or less, as his estait may bee, except an always gif he can make it appeare that he is betrothit to another woman, then he shale be free.”
Angelkeep offers any man or beast a hiding place should he be accosted on Leap Day by hordes of unwed womenfolk desiring a change of marital tax status. Of course by saving such a man the cost of getting out of the proffered proposal, a sum of an hundred pundes, Angelkeep will require the payment of half a hundered pundes for providing the escape route.
One can’t have too many pundes these days with inflation skyrocketing, gas prices rising, pizza soaring, and deer corn kernels so costly.
Bluffton’s newspaper deduced the reason few 1892 Leap Year parties were taking place fell due to girls trying to square accounts by boycotting young men for being stingy with money during the preceding three years.
Indiana Supreme Court in 1883 decreed “the added day of leap year and the day immediately preceding, if they shall occur in any period so to be computed, shall be reckoned together as one day.”
So by Indiana law, Happy Wednesday/Thursday Leap Day.
Mr. Daugherty is a Wells County resident who, along with his wife Gwen, enjoy their backyard and have named it “Angelkeep.”
