Welcome to Spring and Alien Abduction Day
Read on and be the smartest person in the room -- or the Zoom!
It’s March 20, which means Spring has sprung and now the full story behind Alien Abduction Day can be told.
I have all this and more in my latest column in Florida Weekly, which you’re getting an early look at because you’re a subscriber to my Substack account. And thank you for that.
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But back to Springtime and aliens.
The Vernal Equinox—the first date in 2025 when there is an equal number of hours of daylight and darkness—marks the start of astronomical springtime. Ask meteorologists, and they will tell you Spring actually started on March 1. That’s because they base the seasons on average temperatures, not hours of daylight. It can be a little confusing, so here are some helpful questions and answers:
Does Daylight Saving Time change the total hours of sunshine?
No. It changes how we set our clocks. As it turns out, humans messing around with their timepieces do not influence the sun.
Why does the sun change the number of hours it’s in the sky?
The sun doesn’t actually change. It’s our topsy-turvy planet, tilting on its axis by a wobbly 23 degrees, which is responsible for the sun’s apparent movement as we orbit our home star.
Are you saying the Earth is not the center of the universe? That the sun does not revolve around the Earth? By extension, wouldn’t that mean that Punxsutawney Phil’s predictions are nonsense?
To paraphrase my favorite Vulcan, Spock, your logic is irrefutable.
Final question: This all refers to weather in the northern hemisphere, right? Isn’t it different below the Equator?
Right again. People in Australia, being upside down, have the opposite weather patterns and today is their Autumnal Equinox, the start of their Fall.
About those space aliens
Today, as noted, is also Alien Abduction Day. To be clear, this refers to humans being abducted by space aliens, not Earthlings making off with innocent visitors from outer space.
People have claimed to have seen space aliens for centuries, but the most famous abduction story was told by Barney and Betty Hill in 1961 when they said they were snatched by extraterrestrials from rural New Hampshire. Their story became a bestselling book, The Interrupted Journey. A movie was made of it as well.
But here’s the secret and heretofore untold story:
While abducted, Barney and Betty were cloned by the space aliens and sent back in time, where they changed their last names to Rubble.
Their adopted son, Bamm Bamm, would go on to invent the wheel.
So, while kidnapping the Hills may have inconvenienced them (and while they may have objected to all those experiments performed on various parts of their anatomy), the aliens, really and truly, were trying to help.
After all, where would we be today without the wheel?
Now you know.
Coming Up
In the week ahead, mark your calendars for World Poetry Day (March 21), National Goof Off Day (March 22), and, my favorite, Live Long and Prosper Day (March 26) celebrating the life of Leonard Nimoy, the original Spock, who was born on this day in 1931. Through the original TV series and movies, he portrayed the Vulcan science officer for 50 of his long and prosperous 84 years.
You can read more about all this and more in my Florida Weekly column here:
J.C. Bruce is a journalist and author of The Strange Files series of mysterious novels (available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, other online booksellers, and at selected libraries). He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and Florida. His latest novel, Strange Timing, was recently named Book of the Year in the Royal Palm Literary Awards where it also won Gold Medals in the Sci-Fi and Thriller categories. When he’s not writing, he’s in training for the World Underwater Ping-Pong Championships.
Sponsored by TROPIC PRESS, publisher of The Strange Files Series of Mysterious Adventures.
