Autumnal start, drinking, poetry, Internety stuff

Elizabeth asked, in response to Ask Roger Anything (and YOU still can):

Why do they call the Autumnal Equinox the beginning of Fall when it is already Fall? Likewise the Winter Solstice isn’t the beginning of winter but well along into winter?

Why do “they” say anything? Why do they still use foot/pound? From the Wikipedia: “Some cultures regard the autumnal equinox as mid-autumn, others with a longer lag treat it as the start of autumn. Meteorologists (and most of the temperate countries in the southern hemisphere) use a definition based on months, with autumn being September, October and November in the northern hemisphere, and March, April and May in the southern hemisphere.

“In North America, autumn is usually considered to start with the September equinox. In traditional East Asian solar term, autumn starts on or around 8 August and ends on about 7 November.”

The answer, therefore, is

The Lydster, Part 98: A Poem

My daughter wrote a poem and wanted to publish it. Isn’t a blog a form of publishing? So with her permission:

Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes

Today would have been the 110th birthday of James Mercer Langston Hughes, “an American poet, novelist, playwright, and columnist.” When he died on May 22, 1967, I wasn’t that familiar with his work, but I knew that someone important had passed. He was born into abolitionist stock, had both black and white critics, but eventually became a leading light of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Roger Answers Your Questions, Eclipse and Uthaclena

Eclipse, who I have visited through ABC Wednesday, asks:
Regarding the “music playing in the head” I’ve just thought….Have you ever try to write poetry?
Would you?

Before I answer that question, I’ll answer a question you didn’t ask.

When I was roughly 15 to about 23, I had made some effort to try to write songs. I should rephrase; I wasn’t TRYING so much as tunes and lyrics came to me. I kept them in a notebook, which unfortunately, I’ve since lost.

But as I think back on them, most of them weren’t very good. Oh, a couple of them might have potential in the right setting. And one in particular isn’t bad at all, but expresses values I no longer have: David Lee Roth should have recorded it. But most of them, I recognize, are cribbed in the way George Harrison unintentionally purloined He’s So Fine for My Sweet Lord. Because I literally grew up with music, I feel I can clear-mindedly evaluate them.