I’ve been distracted by my weird illness, discussed in the prior blog, and by the necessity to collect information for accountants on both sides of the pond, so that our taxes can get filed. Making this latter effort more complicated is the fact that that the British tax year ends on April 5th, which makes absolutely no sense to me. I looked it up and it is a predictably strange story:

In the old days, the new year in Britain and Ireland began on March 25th. It was called Lady Day and was supposed to commemorate the day that the Angel Gabriel advised the Virgin Mary that she was going to give birth to Jesus. Lady Day, Midsummer, Michaelmas and Christmas were the four most important dates on the old calendar, came along roughly quarterly and evolved to be the dates when debts needed to be settled and rents paid, etc. Lady Day eventually came to be seen as the beginning of the financial year.

In 1582, the rest of Europe switched to the more accurate Gregorian calendar, replacing the Julian one, which had lost ten days over the years. However, the British decided that they weren’t going to let the Pope tell them what their calendar should be (you may recall that they were not getting along), so they kept the Julian calendar. Fast forward to 1752, when the British finally decided that they had to switch over the Gregorian calendar. By this time, they were 11 days off, so to make the correction, September 2 of that year was followed by September 14th. The people were justifiably unhappy (to the point of rioting) about having to pay the same taxes on a year that was 11 days shorter, so to insure revenue collection, the British Treasury just moved the end of the tax year up 11 days to April 4th. And then in 1800, they moved up another day to the 5th, since there was no leap day that year and they wanted to be consistent. They have since dropped that practice.

The use of April 6th as the beginning of the new tax year was formally adopted in 1900. Oddly, the British government’s own fiscal year now begins on April 1st, which is also the beginning of the fiscal year for most businesses here. Curiously, April 1st is the beginning of the tax year for corporations and the 6th only seems to apply to individuals. (The Irish sensibly just had a shortened year at one point and have switched to January 1st.) You cannot make this stuff up!

New Painting: Georgian Skye: As you make recall, I was inspired by the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at Tate Modern and decided that I wanted to try painting a landscape in her Ghost Ranch style. I picked a scene from the Isle of Skye. Like New Mexico, it is wild and bleak, but wet rather than dry. It was an interesting experiment and the top half of the painting went fairly well–not Georgia O’Keeffe, but pleasant looking. When I reached the bottom, I kind of lost my way. I tried a few things and didn’t like much of it. I finally gave up working on it. When I started painting some other things, I went back to this and made a few corrections. The last thing I did was add the sheep, which are decidedly not O’Keefe-like, but are quite Lewis-like. It would be cute to say that I learned how hard it is to paint like O’Keeffe, but I really already knew that. From the beginning, and increasingly  as I went along, I was drawn to the thought that I was not copying her, but trying to get some inspiration from her and adapt it to my style (such as it is). I still like the top more than the bottom, but I think I turned out OK. Here it is.

Tales of the Undead-The New York Mets: I gave up the Mets for dead about three weeks ago. It was the middle of August and they were even behind Miami, not to mention the Pirates and Cards and Giants and Dodgers. Wright, Duda and Harvey were out for the season. Cespdes, Cabrera and Walker were all hobbling around (and it turned that Walker was done for season). Matz was pitching with a big bone spur in his elbow and Syndegaard with a little one and Neise hurt his knee and went on the DL with Matz. The bullpen was exhausted. Bruce, brought over from the Reds wasn’t producing. They weren’t hitting in the clutch (last in baseball with runners in scoring position), had little team speed and were not great defensively. It seemed like one of those baseball seasons when, unlike the absurd run of 2015, the baseball gods were frowning on my Metsies. I figured, well at least I’ll get to sleep this October.

Then, out of the blue, Jose Reyes starts playing like it is six years ago, Wilmer Flores is hitting like I always thought he might, Cespedes comes back, Cabrera gimps around hitting home runs, and guys like Bruce and d’Arneau and Granderson finally show signs of life. Familia and Reed continue to be a shutdown bullpen at the end of games. Incredibly, even as de Grom joins Matz on the DL, minor league nobodies named Gsellman and Lugo and the failed prospect Montero are thrown into starts and pitch great. Bartolo Colon continues to defy time and even draws the first walk of this career at the age of 43. There is really no way this team should be winning, but they have somehow won something like 12 of 16 and are now a game out of a playoff spot with a month left. I’d still be skeptical, but it turns out that the Mets hardly play anyone decent for the rest of the year. Most of their games area against the Phillies and Reds and the Braves and Twins, and the final two are battling for the worst record in baseball and the #1 pick. It could happen. Hell, it should happen. Ya gotta believe. Terry Collins for Mayor!