April 15.

No, I am not trying to predict the future here, even though in the United States that is the date your federal tax return is due to be filed. And state, if you file one. It's still hard here for me in North Dakota to get into that mindset, for I grew up in Florida which is one of nine states that doesn't have a state income tax. The others are Alaska, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming while New Hampshire and Tennessee only tax income from dividends and interest. I wouldn't advise moving just to get out of paying state though -- they make up for the revenue in other ways.


So see, you've already learned something coming here!











Today's title also refers to the in-show birthday of Zelena, the Wicked Witch of the West played by Rebecca Mader on Once Upon A Time. Not sure where the producers got the name Zelena, but on Sunday's episode titled "Our Decay" we're given more of her and Hades' back story which gets intertwined as they both seek the components for a supposed-to-be-impossible time travel spell, and the necessary ingredients are representatives of brain, heart, courage, and innocence. Zelena wants to go back to prove she and not her half-sister Regina deserves their mother's love (whom Hades tortured to find out the birthdate) while Hades wants to get the favor his brother Zeus did.




And that's just in flashback!


One of the best-written episodes this season if not in the whole five seasons the show's been on, "Our Decay" spends time between the Oz of the past (and the writers  READ The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, hence the references to Boq -- in the book he's the Munchkin farmer who first welcomes Dorothy (still don't get the warrior transition she's made) into his family's house -- and the Quadlings) and present day Storybrooke and the Underworld. In my scant recall of Greek mythology, I remember Cronus' sons Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades tossed dice for what parts of the world they'd rule, and Hades got the underworld, the land of the dead.


Zeus got Olympus and Poseidon got the seas.




I'm almost seeing this current saga end with Emma, Hook, or someone in that company standing over Hades a la Thor over Hela when Walt Simonson had the run of that Marvel comic ... but I'm really digressing now. Let's see ... picked up the kids last night at my in-laws' house where their great aunt Shirley was visiting (she does that once a month coming by bus from Garrison about an hour south of us in Minot) and THEY have seen their cousin, mine and Martha's nephew Patrick, who was released from jail yesterday morning. I haven't, and I don't believe Martha has either.


Eh, my memory really needs work!




There wasn't that great a disconnect between Star Wars: The Force Awakens when I saw it at the movies with my family last Christmas and Alan Dean Foster's novelization of it (ISBN 9781101965498), but again my memory needs work! Defecting (or would you say defective?) stormtrooper Finn and scavenger Rey meet on a desert planet and find themselves guiding roly-poly droid BB-8 to a Resistance -- think the rebel Alliance of the New Republic base to find Luke Skywalker, whose absence after the events of Return of the Jedi thirty years before has led to the rise of the Galactic Empire's successor the First Order, and old and new generations converge.


Chewie, we're home.




Along with the most nondescript death scene I've read since Staggerford, the latest Star Wars movie has its good points, many good points (and at least one flaw some critics point to, that it seems too much like the original 1977 movie with Luke, Leia, and the Death Star -- I think that's the point!) but yeah, I can see how it can be tiring. All that running about and avoiding one speeding object after another is enough to make for a very bad day.


But that's when I know to let go of my conscious self and act on instinct.


Marmaduke Multiply's Merry Method of Making Minor Mathematicians. Say that five times fast! And that's just the title of this 1841 teaching book Dover Publications printed a facsimile of (ISBN 0488227731) and I couldn't resist getting earlier this week. Finished it after having pepperoni pizza for dinner; it's a quick read and its teaching tries to stick the facts like "Twice 1 are 2. Twice 2 are 4." etc." in pupils' heads with rhymes and woodcuts. "This book is something new. Pray hasten on before." Evidently there are some differences between mid-19th century and early 21st-century pronunciations; some rhymes are off to my ears, but I can appreciate the learning.


And I'm learning more every day,


David