OF BLUEBIRDS AND FOOLS

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The greatest weak point of binoculars is that they do not magnify enough to see the globes and details of the planets. With the Saturn show occurring all year (and Jupiter displaying its mysterious new dark band caused by last summer's comet crash), this is a great year to get a telescope. But be sure to try at least some of the preliminaries I've suggested above before plunking your money down for a telescope. I hope to write more about what features to look for in telescopes in an upcoming issue—by which time you may be ready to buy one of these marvelous instruments.

April and Fools

April 1 is the day when practical jokes run rampant, when you'd better stop and consider whether that improbable assertion someone just made was made in earnest or in jest. The date is, of course, All Fools' Day. But why does it occur on this particular date?

The origins of April Fools' Day are obscure. Even back in 1760, Poor Robin's Almanack confessed: "The first of April, some do say, is set apart for All Fools' Day; But why the people call it so, Nor I, nor they themselves do know" But the explanation may lie in the date's connection with spring equinox festivities that also used to be New Year festivities in some cultures.

Up until the sixteenth century, when Pope Gregory enacted a reform of the old Julian calendar, European societies started their year around the time of the spring equinox (some non-Catholic countries resisted the change much longer—England until 1752, Russia until 1917). In France it had been the custom to send New Year cards and gifts to friends but when the New Year switched from April 1 back to January 1, some people continued to send them on April 1 as a joke. And this, perhaps, was the origin of All Fools' Day as we now have it.

Even the name of what is now the fourth month is not as simple as you might think. Perhaps it is the month of Aphrodite. Some experts, however, connect the Latin name of the month, Aprilis, to "aperture"—an opening.

Does this refer to April as the opening of the year, or as the time when flowers and the leaf buds of trees are opening? And a fool is not always as foolish as he seems. We can find examples of different kinds of wise fools all the way from the Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear to last year's movie hero, Forrest Gump.

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