One Hand in My Pocket (#98)

A quick note on leap year (with animated explainer and suspension bridge photos as illustration). Carpe diem, baby.

The entrance to Yeoman’s Footbridge in Titusville, a suspension bridge running over the Hammond River. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2024)

Every spring, I hang up my thick red anorak for the final time of the season. It may still be chilly, but the ground melts and the weather no longer demands the bulk of winter wear. (Actually, winter has barely existed at all; it has been jumped over entirely.¹)

We - us, the world around us - shed layers.

I reach for my jean jacket (with a scarf, my preferred spring armour), and stuff my hands into the pockets. More times than not, I find spare change: a couple of quarters, or a loonie. Money that I’ve had all along, but also didn’t have until I uncovered the lint-covered treasures.

Such, too, is the leap year.

/lēp/. verb. accept (an opportunity) eagerly.

Peering out over the river; he wishes he was in it, but not at this temperature. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2024)

Technically, it’s not really an extra day - it was there all along: “It takes Earth 365.24 days to make a complete orbit around the sun…our calendars, however, assume that a year is exactly 365 days. In order to correct for the imbalance that our time construct has created, we simply add a day every four years.”²³ This simple accounting keeps our days aligned with the seasons - so we can keep summers in June and winters in January.⁴

And really, while we are inclined to focus on the anomalies - I think back to this time last year, when I was preparing to make a giant leap - the truth is, every day comes with hops and skips into new connections, new partnerships, new creations.

Every new day is a gift, because we’re not owed anything, and we’re certainly not owed a set number of days. Our account balances vary; cosmic forces rolling the dice and crediting or debiting our accounts before we even get a seat at the table to begin playing the game. And we rarely, if ever, know if we’ll find an extra dollar in our coat pockets.

So, carpe diem, baby. Are you ready to take a leap?

View of the Hammond River from the suspension bridge. Not even frozen over. Did we leap right over winter this year? It sure seems like it. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2024)

---

This Week in SciArt

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve had an animated GIF in the notebook.

During the last leap year, Dr. James O’Donoghue shared his animated explanatory short to illustrate why our calendar years are misaligned with the Earth’s orbit, thus necessitating the leap year. Click the link in the caption to watch the video - it’s a simple yet effective illustration of why we need leap years if we want to keep our calendar year as is.

Animation of how leap year works, by Dr. O’Donoghue (2020)

---

1. Thanks, Obama/woke climate mobs.

2. Michaels C. (2024, Feb 23). EXPLAINER: Why do leap years happen every four years?

3. But not every four years: “The rule is that if the year is divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400, leap year is skipped. The year 2000 was a leap year, for example, but the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not. The next time a leap year will be skipped is the year 2100.” Craddock B. (2020, Feb 27). The Science of Leap Year.

4. “This would be annoying if not devasting [sic], because over a period of about 700 years our summers, which we’ve come to expect in June in the northern hemisphere, would begin to occur in December!” Craddock B. (2020, Feb 27). The Science of Leap Year.