August 4, 2007, approximately 2:30am EST
The day the world changed.
What a dramatic statement for such an innocuous date, no? Honestly, most people might only know they passed the day based only on the fact that they’re here, now, and they passed through 2007 on the way to this point in time.
Here are a few bits of tid to go along with August the fourth, that might make you give this date a second or third thought…

• August 4th is the 216th day of the year (217th in those pesky years that leap about every four sets of 52 weeks….) at least, for those of us who use the Gregorian calendar
• my niece might be quick to point out this means it’s 140 days until her birthday, and 142 until Christmas – my nephew, at the age of 4, would probably just perk up at the mention of the word, “Christmas”
• the Christian Feasting Day for Saint Sithney, the patron saint of mad dogs, making a toast of MD 20/20 completely appropriate
• 1060: Henry I of France passed on
• 1693: Dom Perignon invented champagne on August 4th
• 1789: the National Constituent Assembly (the formalized grouping of the blokes keen to obtain a set of French Royal heads, after the storming of the Bastille, in the early days of the French Revolution) end feudalism in France
• 1790: the tariff passed this day in history created the Revenue Cutter Service, the forerunner to the United States Coast Guard
• 1792: Percy Bysshe Shelley was born
• 1821: saw the first publication of the weekly Saturday Evening Post and the birth of Louis Vuitton
• 1873: Custer clashed with the Sioux for the first time in Montana
• 1875: Hans Christian Andersen became a true ghost writer of children’s tales
• 1892: Lizzie Borden‘s acts of extreme “domestic violence are discovered
• 1901: Jazz legend Louis Armstrong entered the world
• 1914: Germany invaded Belgium, prompting the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany and prompting the US to be busy doing its hair, and thus unavailable for the war at that point
• 1944: Anne Frank and her family were found by the Gestapo, in Amsterdam
• 1955: Billy Bob Thornton was born
• 1958: The Billboard “Hot 100″ is founded, and musicians would forever after be very interested in the Billboard standings
• 1961: President Obama – sans the titular office – was born
• 1971: Jeff Gordon entered the world within acceptable speed limits, which he’d later shed as a Nascar driver
• 1977: President Jimmy Carter signed legislation that created the US Department of Energy
• 1985: American Idol Crystal Bowersox began hearing lullabies for the first time
• 1993: Los Angeles cops Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell got off easy with 30 months in prison sentencing for “violating Rodney King’s rights”
• 1995: Operation Storm began in Croatia
• 2005: Michaëlle Jean was named as Canada’s 27th Governor General, the first black GG in Canadian history (you go, girl!)
• 2007: NASA launched the Phoenix into space….in an odd bit of Cosmic Coincidence…to send the Phoenix into flight – the creature of myth long associated with death and rebirth through death….
• 2007: …. Judi Greene slipped the grip of cancer, and free of this mortal coil….and my world forever changed.

Judi Greene was – no, IS – my Mom.

She introduced me to the joys of music at an early age. Indulging my early propensity for … well, strangeness, honestly …. she urged me to “try the priest”, allowing me to not only watch, but mentally devour, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, when it was broadcast on HBO in the early ’80′s. To this day, I can’t listen to the music, sing along or watch one of myriad film and stage productions of Sondheim’s classic musical without thinking of Mom. Yes…singing about mass murder, meat pies and linnet birds always makes me think of her and smile. Like I said…I am strange and unusual, but I came by it naturally.

Speaking of strange and unusual… As a very young child I began drawing these funny little fellows that were mostly lots of fur, with big googly eyes and knobby knees. My Mom and I began to call them Furbles. As I got older, I kept drawing these guys, and my Mom delighted in them as much when I was 30 years old and sculpting them as Yule gifts for family, as when I was 4, and drawing them for the first time. As I’ve been playing around with design software, informally prepping myself for my return to college later this month for my Design Technology degree, I created a digital version of a Furble. Well, most of a Furble; I haven’t quite got the legs right…yet. Now, my purple, green and teal Furbles grace my personal correspondence and even my Zazzle shop, acting as one more visual reminder of Mom, every day.

I did not develop my love of cooking until later in life, however….My Mom had despaired of me ever learning how to do anything more difficult than scramble eggs and grill up cheese between a couple slices of bread. When I did move into the kitchen, and found not only was I passably good at the “food thing,” but I adored cooking, my Mom was my most ardent cheerleader. In the process of learning that experimentation in the kitchen can be fun, I developed my own guacamole recipe (Avocados, the gods’ gift to humanity, seriously) which became one of my Mom’s favorite foods from my repertoire. I could not make it without delivering a serving … or 6 … to her, with a bag of fresh chips. So….you guessed it, making guacamole became something much more than just making a tasty dip; it became a way for me to commune with Mom’s memory, after she died. I made a fabulous batch, last night and had the leftovers an hour ago….right around 2:30am, August 4, 2010.

This is my virtual “raising of the glass,” a pixelated shot in Mom’s name….

I love you, Mom. And I miss you, every day. But I feel your love with me every day, too.

Judi Greene, 25 years old