Air Date: Week of February 25, 2000

In response to last week’s almanac about the temple of Ramses the Second, a listener questions our placement of the spring equinox in February.

Transcript

CURWOOD: And a final note. Last week we described a temple in Egypt where twice a year the rising sun shines through a narrow opening to illuminate statues of Egyptian sun gods. We said the phenomenon, which falls on February 22nd, coincided with the spring equinox. That error prompted this response from Michael Charney, who listens to WBUR in Boston. "If February 22nd is the spring equinox," Dr. Charney wrote, "which planet Earth is Living on Earth living on? Here on the far side of Harvard Square the sun equinox is precisely one month later, in March. Is this a cosmic Y2K bug, a new proof of relativity, or is one of us suffering from eastern Egyptian equinoctial encephalitis?" While we could find no reference in the medical literature to this rare diagnosis, of course we agree with Dr. Charney. The vernal equinox is in March. Perhaps we were suffering from a touch of New England post-Valentine, spring-over-anticipation syndrome.

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