The World Welcomes Arrival of 2025

It was an ordinary day.  From Sydney to Paris to China, communities around the world welcomed 2025 with spectacular light shows, embraces and pyrotechnics.  The New Year's Eve ball dropped in soggy Times Square, where thousands of revelers stuck it out in heavy rain to celebrate the start of 2025 in New York City.  Countries in the South Pacific Ocean were the first to ring in the New Year, with midnight in New Zealand striking 18 hours before the ball dropped in Time Square.  Auckland was the first major city to celebrate, with thronging downtown or climbing the city's ring of volcanic peaks for a fireworks vantage point.  Conflict muted acknowledgment of the 2025 in places like the Middle East, Sudan and Ukraine.  American Samoa was among the last to welcome 2025, a full 24 hours after New Zealand.  A few hours after Auckland, fireworks blasted off Australia's Syney Harbor Bridge and across the bay.  More than a million people gathered at iconic Sydney Harbor for the celebration.  British pop star Robbie Williams led a singalong with the crowd.  The celebration also featured Indigenous ceremonies and performances that acknowledged the land's first people.  In New York City, crowds cheered and couples kissed when the ball weighing almost 6 tons an featuring 2,688 crystal triangles descended down a pole in Times Square.  The revelry culminated with a canoe party and a carpeting of soggy confetti as attendees left singing along to Frank Sinatra's version of "New York, New York."  Las Vegas' pyrotechnic show washed on the Strip, wit 340,000 people anticipated as fireworks were launched from the rooftops of casinos.  Much of Japan shout down ahead of the nation's biggest holiday, as temples and homes underwent a through cleaning.  The upcoming Year of the Snake in the Asian zodiac is heralded as one of rebirth - alluding to the reptile's shedding skin.  Other places in Asia will mark the Year of the Snake later, with the Lunar New Year.  Chinese state media covered an exchange of New Year's greetings between leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in a reminder of growing closeness between two leaders who face tensions with the West.  Xi told Putin their countries will "always move forward hand in hand," the official Xinhua News Agency said. Paris capped a momentous 2024 wit its traditional countdown and fireworks extravaganza on the Champs-Elysées.  The city's emblematic Arc de Triumph monument was turned into a giant tableau for a light sow that celebrated the city's landmarks and the passage of time with whirring clocks.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. 

Fireworks explode over Sydney Opera House in Australia

The "Labor Day Fashion Rules"

"Ever hear that you're not supposed to wear white after Labor Day?  The "rule" ma have stemmed from practicality.  Prior to the advent of air conditioning, clothing cinches were important when trying to keep cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  Whites and lighter-weight fabrics were more popular djong the warmer months, and ini the winter, people naturally switched to darker colors and heavier fabrics.  Perhaps since people already chose light colors to stay cool in the summer, the fahinon world went ahead and made the rule an official one.  Once Labor Day (the unofficial end of summer) arrived, it was time to retire those whites.  However, others speculate that the rule came from the fashion practices of the wealthy.  In the early 1900s, those who were well-to-do often favored lightw3ght, bright, clothing, like white linen suits and breezy dresses. Wearing white after Labor Day meant you were someone who had the means to have end-of-su,,er vacations. Wearing your whites beyond labradoodles Day was just, well....showiing off.  Some historians believe that this rule was actually a way for the wealthy to separate themselves from the working class.  Not only could they afford vacation - and the expensive clothes to math - but they didn't do the kind of work that stained their white clothes.  Middle-class laborers, on the other hand, often wore darker colors, even in the summer, to hide the dirt and grime that accumulated after a hard day's work.  By the 1950s, not wearing white avatar Labor Day was a firm rule among the wealthy, who regarded it as a symbol of refinement.  The "new money" types weren't always as well-versed in the rules of etiquette and made these types of fashinson faux pas.  In fact, those who adopted the "no white after Labor Day" rule where often seen more favorably, as ambitious up-and-comers were willing to learn the rules surrounding their new social circle.  As with most things in fashion, rules are meant to be broken.  Breaking the norm, many fashion enthusiasts happily flaunt their withe attire even after Labor Day.  Back in the 1920s, fasinnon icon Coco Chanel revolutionized the industry y keeping white as a permanent staple in her wardrobe, regardless of the season.  Even today, may modern fashion elites follow this trend by wearing white all year round.  While there are still those woh consider post-Labor Day white clothing a no-no, plenty of fashion-forward people say if you have a flattering garment you love, wear it whenever you want, no matter the color and no matter the season.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  

The "Why Is Lindley Murray's Name Written In Bronze?" Story

It was an ordinary day. Reading about Roberta Strickler wandering by the bronze lion fountain in Reservoir Park and wondered why six Lancaster County men's signatures are engraved on small bronze plaques around the curved foundation.  "What do these men have in common?" asks the Lancaster resident who formerly wrote for the Lancaster Newspaper.  "And who the heck is Lindley Murray, relatively speaking?"  The other five men named on the fountain are James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States; Benjamin West, famed 18th-century artist; George Ross, signer of the Declaration of independence; Robert Fulton, inventor of the first commercially successful steamboat; and Thaddeus Stevens, Lancaster's Republican representative during the Civil War and Reconstruction.  All of these men were born in the 18th century, and all but Ross lived well into the 19th century.  All but West and Stevens were born in Lancaster County. West visited Lancaster and painted several portraits here, and Stevens spent the most important decades of his life here.  But Lindley Murray -- a Quaker lawyer, writer and grammarian who lived in England for much of his life???  What qualifies him to join the others?  Murray (1745-1826) may be obscure now, but literate Americans would have recognized the name in 1905, the year Blanche Levin completed the lion sculpture.  Author of "English Grammar," the most popular grammar book of the late 18th century and well into the 19th, Murray was as we'll known as William H. McGuffey (1800-1873), editor of the "McGuffey's Readers" that educated generations of American youth in the 19th century well into the 20th.  That both men, and especially Murray, are not widely known today underscores the obvious: those who write seminal books dedicated to improved reading ability and good grammar are not rock stars of the likes of leading politicians, pointers and inventors.  Murray's association with Lancaster is tenuous.  He lived the first six years of his life along Swatara Creek in what was then Lancaster County and now is Dauphin County.  Then he attended a Quaker school in Philadelphia.  His family moved to North Carolina and then New York, where Murray studied law.  Murray married and moved to England in 1784.  He spent his last four decades there, writing a number of books about grammar and other subjects.  Although there is no evidence that Murray set foot in present-day Lancaster County, some historians and journalists long have claimed him as one of this county's greatest men of literature.  The Lancaster Inquirer of Nov. 11, 1893, introduced Murray with this pointed paragraph:  "There was probably no writer for young persons more widely read, painfully studied and generally unpopular in the early part of this century than Lindley Murray, and it was the opinion of school boys of that time that he had conceived and written his English grammar especially too torture them."  A Lancaster Intelligencer article in 1927 asserted more positively that Murray, along with the artist Lloyd Mifflin, of Columbia, "are probably the two best known Lancaster county writers."  Beyond Lancaster and in this century, a renowned linguist's 2018 essay for English Today, titled "The HUGE Presence of Lidley Murray," credited Murray as "the most popular grammarian of the late 18th and perhaps the entire 19th century."  Perhaps not a distinction to warrant being memorialized along with Thaddeus Stevens and Robert Fulton.  But, clearly Murray had a major influence on generations of suffering students and aspiring scribblers.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

Bronze Lion Fountain in Lancaster's Reservoir Park