What Would Jimmy Do?

We talked with our grandson, Locke a day or so ago and he had big news. A loose tooth. I’m sure he is a little apprehensive, but he’s also excited — this will be his first encounter with the Tooth Fairy.

I asked Dave what the going rate for “tooths” is these days. He said he wasn’t sure and was a little concerned that he might have to take out a loan to meet the upcoming financial obligations. 

I remember the tooth fairy leaving me money when I was little, so the tooth fairy custom has been around a long time. Of course, the idea is that when children lose one of their baby teeth, they place the tooth under their pillow and while they are asleep, the tooth fairy will come and exchange the tooth for money.

No one really knows the answer as to why the tooth fairy wants your teeth in the first place and is willing to pay cash for them. One theory is that the tooth fairy gives the teeth to babies that don’t have any teeth. I’ve also heard that the teeth are crushed to make fairy dust.

I’ve seen pictures of Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny that I’d recognize right away. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture that I’d immediately identify as the Tooth Fairy. I guess if I was trying to imagine the tooth fairy, it would be a “she” and she’d look something like Tinkerbell from Peter Pan.

And while we’re on the subject — is the tooth fairy a boy or a girl? You now know what I think — girl. But I figured this question was worth some extensive research. A survey conducted in 1984 revealed that 74 percent of those surveyed believed the tooth fairy to be female, while 12 percent believed the tooth fairy could be neither male nor female and 8 percent believed the tooth fairy could be either male or female. I might add that some people claim to have seen the tooth fairy, but there is no independent confirmation of whether these sightings were real or whether they looked like Tinkerbell or  took some other form.

But back to the original reason I started on this subject today. The tooth fairy doesn’t seem to consistently leave an exact amount of money per tooth. It also appears that the tooth fairy is more generous in some areas of the country. But based on a national survey of 1,000 people, the average price paid for a tooth in 2020 is $4.03. As a point of reference, the average for a tooth in 1998 was $1.30. If the trend keeps up, by the time Rory and Ellie start losing their teeth, Dave may indeed need to schedule that trip to the credit union. 

A lot of what I’ve written is speculation, so I should probably conclude with something more concrete — a quote from the Tooth Fairy. When the Tooth Fairy was asked to weight in on the cost of collecting teeth, he/she reportedly said, “Kids need to be brushing and taking care of their teeth. I tend to pay more for healthy teeth so let’s keep brushing those teeth for two minutes two times a day, and don’t forget to floss!”
Good advice from the expert on the subject — the Tooth Fairy.
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I read somewhere that the first 12 minutes in a church dramatically influences whether you’re coming back or not. This is before you’ve heard the music or the pastor speak or even decided where’s the “best place” to sit during the service. When we moved to Shepherdstown, we checked out a few churches, trying to decide which one might be best for us. St. Agnes was an old, very small building and it offered essentially no parking. 

When we entered the church, it didn’t take anywhere close to 12 minutes — we knew almost immediately this was the place for us. As soon as we met Fr. Mat, the decision was easy. 

Over the years, I’ve attended all kinds of churches in many, many places around the world. I’ve been exposed to, and in some cases, gotten to know many members of the “clergy.” (I used the term clergy, but I think that technically refers to “christian” religious personnel — some of those religious orders weren’t “christian.”) But over the years, I’ve come to know many, or at least some, of this group fairly well. It would be easy to rank my top five — after that, it would become a little more difficult. But Fr. Mat would be at the top of my list every time.

This past Sunday, Fr. Mat celebrated his last “official” Mass at St. Agnes in Shepherdstown. He now embarks on, hopefully, many years of a much deserved retirement. A few years ago St. Agnes had a stewardship initiative entitled GIFT. Even now, I’m not sure how I viewed that initiative or felt about it at the time. The bottom line of the undertaking was to improve out relationship with God by the act of giving — I certainly never had any issues with the concept — giving is one of the central themes of the Bible — gifts, giving, etc. are mentioned hundreds, if not thousands, of times and the giving and receiving of gifts brings joy to most people. I’ve heard it said that God’s greatest gift to us was Himself. But I think His greatest gift to St. Agnes was Fr. Mat. 

So on this auspicious occasion, congratulations and thanks to Fr. Mat — and along with those wishes we should probably include an apology. We often only think of him as the true Shepherd that he is, and we forget that he has his own problems — probably because he is so good at putting his own situations aside and making us feel as though we matter to him more than anything else. He never tells us to call him later when he’s busy, when we suffer the loss of a loved one, when we have trouble in our lives or homes, when we are sick — he’s always there. Very few parishes are so fortunate to have the gift of God we’ve had in Fr. Mat. Happy retirement!!
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As you know, just about all the news you hear, watch or read is all about politics — even subjects that shouldn’t be, and have never been in the past, are now political. Even when I was young, I was alway kind of fascinated by politics. I remember really enjoying the political conventions — when they weren’t just the formality of nominating a candidate for the presidency. I always considered them entertaining , as well as educational. It never occurred to me that that wouldn’t be the way we always determined our candidates. 

I saw a map of the United states the other night and some of the states were colored blue and some were colored red. The news person was explaining what one party needed to do turn a red state blue (or a blue state red.) When I was a kid, the Republican party was represented by an elephant and the Democratic party was represented by a donkey. I don’t remember any “color” being associated with either party. 

Well, of course that got me to wondering, and my extensive research mode kicked in. 
The first published reference I found to red states or blue states was in the Boston Globe on October 15, 1992 in a column written by David Nyhan. He referred to red states as Democratic and blue states as Republican. That is exactly opposite of what we see today. Further research uncovered that in 1976, NBC identified states won by Gerald Ford in blue and Jimmy Carter’s states in red. And on election night in 1980, ABC News showed Ronald Reagan votes as a series of blue lights on a map — Carter’s votes were shown in red. It turns out that Time magazine assigned red to the Democrats and blue to the Republicans in its election graphics in every election from 1988 to 2000. The Washington Post’s election graphics for the 2000 election were Republican-blue and Democrat-red.

So it looks like prior to 2000 it was more common to associate red with Democrats and blue with Republicans.
In the 2000 election, NBC, CBS, CNN and USA Today all coded their maps blue for Gore and red for Bush. Why was there a color switch from 1996, when Clinton states were colored red? One explanation I found indicated that since the advent of color TV, there was a formula put in place to avoid charges of giving any party an advantage by painting it a “better” color. The formulas is: the color of the incumbent party alternates every 4 years. If you’re really interested, you might want to check this out, but looking back, it seems to make some amount of sense to me.

There appears to have been a lot of confusion over colors for a number of years, but by 1992, news networks seemed  to have mostly settled on red-for-Republican, blue-for Democrat. One interesting fact that my extensive research uncovered was that NBC was not the first to broadcast election night in color (many articles I found indicated that that was the case.) The NBC broadcast was in 1976. Actually, it was CBS in 1972 that broadcast the first color election night coverage. I couldn’t find a lot of details, but it appears that Nixon, who won, wore “blue” that night.

Before almost all television stations began broadcasting in color, map colors didn’t matter, since the picture was black-and-white. It may be hard for the “youngsters” to believe, but there was no television at all for the first 40-plus presidential races — people got their news from newspapers, or via the radio.

During the Cold War, red was associated with communism and the Soviet Union — so there was some reluctance to associate that color with either political party. 

But back to the color decisions made by the networks every four years — most Americans probably weren’t paying very close attention and likely didn’t associate the colors with the parties as we do now. 

What really changed things was the election of 2000. Al Gore won Florida, and then he didn’t, and then George Bush won Florida, and then he didn’t, and for a while we had no idea who the next president would be. The debate over who was finally going to become president went on for a long time and the commentators kept referring to blue states and red states — even comedians got in on the act suggesting that Gore could be president for the blue states and Bush president for the red states. Because this debate/discussion lasted for so long, red designating Republican and blue designating Democrat seems to have sort of “stuck.”

There’s no reason for the choice of red and blue, of course — two other colors could just as easily be used. But blue and red offer good contrast and are good for the television display. 

With politics constantly in the news and the fact that it has become so polarized, being able to refer to clusters of votes, or states, it probably makes sense to use a “color” as a kind of shorthand. I suppose that for completeness, I should mention purple. Sometimes states aren’t red or blue — they’re purple. A purple state is a “swing” state — where both Democratic and Republican candidates have strong support, but there is no overwhelming majority for either party. 

So I guess that’s about enough about red states and blue states — of course it would be nice if we could just talk about the united states… sigh.
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Summertime
And the living’ is easy,
Fish are jumping’, and the cotton is high
~ Ira Gershwin

A few days ago when discussing schools, I mentioned that a one-room school near Maysville always started school during the summer and then was dismissed for two or three weeks in the fall so the students could help on the farms — usually picking cotton. 

If you’ve read this blog over the years, you’ll remember that I’ve mentioned that Lindsay, Oklahoma, just a few miles from Maysville (and Story) billed itself as the broom-corn capital of the world. Broom-corn was, in fact, a very big crop in the area when I was growing up, but the other very big crop was cotton. A lot, if not most, farmers in the area around Maysville planted cotton. 

Actually, cotton has been a major agricultural commodity in Oklahoma since the five tribes arrived in what was then “Indian Territory, the Choctaws being the first to plant cotton. Cotton was very profitable until the Civil War came along bringing devastation to farms, large and small, along with general impoverishment and halted any significant cotton production.

After the Civil War, cotton production picked up — while tribal law forbade American Indian citizens to lease their lands to outsiders, many got around the law by “employing” noncitizens for tenants who eventually cultivated 80 percent of the cotton farms in Indian Territory. Indian Territory was “opened” in the late 1800s/early 1900s and called Oklahoma Territory — that led to an influx of even more cotton farmers. 

Cotton farmers began each season by tilling the soil and planting the crop in late April or early May. Once the plants sprouted, workers with hoes thinned the rows once to prevent overcrowding and again later to control weeds. You heard the term “hoeing cotton” a lot around Maysville when I was growing up. At harvest time, normally beginning in late September, family members and other workers put the hand picked cotton in cloth bags (or “sacks” as they were called in Oklahoma.) The sacks were weighed when full — workers got paid by “the pound.” The crop was dumped into a wagon and delivered to nearby gins. 

When I lived in Maysville, one of the major “industries” was the cotton gin. Most everyone knows that the cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney — the term “gin” was derived from “engine.” Cotton is easily grown, and since it isn’t a “food” crop, its fibers can be stored for long periods of time. The problem is that cotton plants contain seeds that are difficult to separate from the soft fibers. Before the cotton gin was invented, the cotton had to be cleaned by hand. The average cotton picker could remove the seeds from only about a pound of cotton per day. The cotton gin can quickly and easily separate the cotton fibers from their seeds, increasing productivity dramatically. The fibers are are then processed into various cotton goods, usually textiles like clothing. The separated seed can be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil. The cotton gin in Maysville turned out the cotton fibers in 500 pound bales and I think the seed was loaded into trucks. The bales from Maysville were sent to compressing plants in either Ardmore or Oklahoma City. I remember that at certain times of the year there was a lot of “dust” hanging over Maysville because of the cotton gin. 

When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, all but three Oklahoma counties raised cotton. At the time there were approximately three hundred cotton gins in the state — I don’t know how many there are today, but it’s nowhere near three hundred. Today, there isn’t all that much cotton grown around Maysville and none of it is “hand-picked.” Cotton picking is now done by machinery.

Anyone that’s picked cotton or is familiar with the process knows the difference between “pulling bolls” and “picking cotton.” For those that have never been in a cotton field… cotton picking means you reach around the cotton ball and pull the fiber from the cotton burr — pulling bolls means you cup your fingers around the cotton burr and pull the whole thing, burr and cotton ball, off together. Again, this operation has been automated. No one pocks cotton — or pulls bolls anymore. If school returns to normal, I wonder if Story will still get some time off in September/October….
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Today is July 4th — every year we celebrate American Independence Day on the Fourth of July. July 4, 1776 represents the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States of American as an independent nation. 

It’s a nice day for a party, but July 4, 1776 is not the day that the Continental Congress decided to declare independence — they did that on July 2, 1776.
July 4, 1776 isn’t the day we started the American Revolution — that happened back in April of 1775. 
July 4, 1776 isn’t the day Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence — that was in June of 1776.
July 4th, 1776 isn’t the day the Declaration of Independence was delivered to Great Britain — that didn’t happen until November of 1776.
July 4th isn’t the day the Declaration of Independence was signed — that was August 2, 1776. 

So what happened on July 4th, 1776 that makes it worthy of such a grand celebration?
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence. They’d been working on it for a couple of days after the draft was submitted on July 2nd and finally, on July 4th, agreed on all the edits and changes. July 4, 1776 became the date that was included on the Declaration of Independence — the fancy handwritten copy, signed in August, is the one displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Printed copies of the Declaration (with the date July 4, 1776) were circulated throughout the new nation. So it turns out that when people thought of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 was the date they remembered. 

This may not come as a surprise, but it took Congress almost a hundred years, after the Declaration of Independence was written, to declare July 4 to be a national holiday. I guess based on the Washington of today, that would be considered pretty expedient action. But a national holiday it is — happy Independence Day to everyone.
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In the year 2020, things are not normal. Today, July 3, 2020 is the first July 3rd in many years that I haven’t had a terrific view of a porty-potty when I stepped out my front door. Apparently the annual gathering across the street that would have violated every “safety” rule ever release by our “leaders” is not going to happen. 

I know some of you will feel bad for me, knowing how I look forward to the porta-potty every year. It’ll be an adjustment, but I’ll do my best to make it through the holiday and try to enjoy myself.  We all have to make sacrifices in these trying times — hopefully, next year things will be back to normal. We’ll miss you porta-potty, but it’s still America’s birthday — happy 4th!!
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There’s been a lot in the news lately about schools — how they’re going to handle things when school resumes in the fall. Obviously, it’ll be very different. All the changes will make it hard on both the students and teachers — and parents. For now, the kids are in the midst of summer vacation, although even “summer vacation” ain’t what it used to be.

I got to thinking about what school was like when I went to school — or at least what I remember it being like. Maysville had two schools — Maysville Grade School — and, yep, you guessed it — Maysville High School. When you got to be six years old, you started school in the first grade — no kindergarten, pre-school or any organized activities to teach kids to “socialize” prior to going to school. I’m pretty sure that no one back then had ever even heard of “day-care.”

Everyone went to Maysville Grade School until they finished sixth grade. There weren’t two or three, or more, first grades, fourth grades, or any other grade. When you went to first grade, you went to the first grade classroom and were taught by the first grade teacher. The only time you left your classroom was for recess, lunch and to go home after school. School started at 9:00 in the morning and ended at 4:00 in the afternoon. We got vacation from school at Thanksgiving and Christmas and I think there was one Friday during the year that the teachers all attended a “teachers meeting” in Oklahoma City. There were not spring or fall breaks, and there was no time off between “semesters.” Actually, I’m not sure they even had semesters.

After finishing sixth grade, everyone went to Maysville High School. Even though the building housed seventh and eighth graders, they weren’t in high school — and they weren’t in junior high. When we finished the eighth grade, we graduated from “the Eighth Grade” or “Grade School.” 

High school consisted of the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12 grades. It was the first time we weren’t called 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. “graders” — the classes had names — Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior. It was also the first time we didn’t have the same teacher for every subject — there were math teachers, english teachers, etc., and we didn’t stay in the same room all day. The teachers stayed in their rooms and the various classes went to them. Some of this isn’t probably that much different than schools (until now) operated recently. 

But a couple of miles down the road from Maysville, was a community called Story. Maysville schools educated those living within Maysville and a lot of the surrounding “farm kids” were bussed into Maysville. However those living a little further outside of town went to community schools like Story. 

Going to school in Story was different than attending Maysville schools — Story was a one-room schoolhouse. Everyone in the school shared only one teacher and one classroom. That single teacher taught students in the first through the eighth grades. The youngest students sat in the front , while the oldest students sat in the back. The curriculum probably only included reading, writing, arithmetic, history and geography. The Story school year started in August, at least a couple of weeks before schools in Maysville started. Then for about two weeks in September, the school was closed. This was because the children were needed on the farms — mostly to pick cotton.

I was only in the Story schoolhouse a couple of times, but it wasn’t much bigger that a large living room. The teacher’s desk was at the front on a slightly raised platform, and there was a “potbelly” stove. I’m not sure if they burned wood or coal. The bathroom was outside — an “outhouse.” ( I probably should have noted that the Maysville Grade School I attended didn’t have indoor bathrooms either — there were “girls” and “boys” facilities located ‘way’ out back.)

After the students finished the eighth grade at Story, they had to go Maysville for high school — or some other nearby town that had grades nine through twelve. 

Since we’re on the subject of schools and you’ve read this far, here’s an added bonus….
Originally (I’m not sure when, but a long time ago) schools and schoolhouses were established by the local church. They divided the town into school districts, built the schools and hired the teachers. The whole point of education was to teach reading so students could read the Bible. When the country was under English rule, there was only one official religion. But when that changed, a new system was needed to run the schools. Initially, groups of parents, called School Societies, took over, but those were soon dissolved and schools were run by the state governments. School districts were established and the parents paid tuition. In the early 1900s, the states had the towns take over schools and establish Boards of Education. 
This is an interesting subject, maybe we’ll visit it again in the fall….
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Well here we are approaching that great American Holiday, the 4th of July — America’s Independence Day and with it all the associated pageantry of parades, hot dogs, barbecues, picnics, fireworks and porta-potties. 

Both faithful readers know that I get excited every year about this time because a few days before America’s Birthday, a porta-potty arrives across the street for us to admire for a few days to a week or more. 

When I mention to friends that I’m looking forward to the arrival of the porta-potty, they usually just ignore me, or remind me that it was my choice to move to West Virginia. 

Obviously a lot of traditions have gone by the wayside in the past few months, so it could be that we will have no porta potty for the 4th. I know some Independence Day celebrations have been cancelled, but not to have the porta potty here on Field Crest Court just somehow seem un-American… stay tuned. The porta-potty watch is on.
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I just read an article that was a few days old, but it was no less disturbing….
“The Trump administration, in twin actions to curb environmental regulations, moved to temporarily speed the construction of energy projects and to permanently weaken federal authority to issue stringent clean air and climate change rules. 
President Trump signed an executive order that calls on agencies to waive required environmental reviews of infrastructure projects to be built during the pandemic-driven economic crisis. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a new rule that changes the way the agency uses cost-benefit analyses to enact Clean Air Act regulations, effectively limiting the strength of future air pollution controls.
Together, the actions signal that Mr. Trump intends to speed up his efforts to dismantle environmental regulations as the nation battles the coronavirus and a wave of unrest protesting the deaths of black Americans in Georgia, Minnesota and Kentucky….”

I know I’ve quoted him before, but I’m liking Theodore Roosevelt more and more as time goes by — obviously he didn’t read the article, but if he had, he might have responded with one of his own quotes:
“Here is your country. Cherish the natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”
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A lot of things that the CIA does and has done in the past remain secret or even “unknown” and for good reason. Some of these “things” are pretty amazing — hopefully, a lot of them will never be revealed. 

Then again, some things are inadvertently exposed — to at least some extent. One of the truly remarkable stories that became “public” a few years ago is that of the Glomar Explorer — an “underseas mining” ship. You can check the Internet or old newspapers for more details, but briefly the story is this….

In 1968 a Russian Submarine sank due to some kind of on-board explosion. Since the Russians apparently didn’t know the location of the sunken sub, the CIA decided to recover the vessel. The problems that had to be overcome probably number in the hundreds, if not thousands. No one had ever attempted anything like this — considering the size and weight of the sub and the incredible depth where it came to rest made recovery seem impossible. A special ship had to be constructed to attempt the “impossible.”

It took several years to build such a ship and of course because of the size, it couldn’t be built in someone’s basement. So the agency needed a smokescreen, or “cover” and they pretended to be exploring the possibility of deep sea mining. A huge campaign was publicized that indicated the project was to recover manganese nodules from the ocean floor. Because this was obviously an expensive undertaking, CIA needed a frontman — someone rich (and eccentric) enough to make the story plausible. The reclusive billionaire inventor Howard Hughes agreed to play the role.

A unique ship was designed using his name — the Hughes Glomar Explorer. Publicly, it was fitted with everything needed to dig up the seabed. But covertly, the ship was also built with ingenious devices — think about things you might see in a James Bond film.

The undersea mining cover was so good that it prompted US universities to start courses in deep sea mining and it raised the share prices of the companies involved. The revelation that the deep sea mining project was a fake was a sudden shock to other mining companies — and — to diplomats at the UN who were in the middle of negotiating future rights to ocean minerals.

Now the sad part — After twenty years in mothballs, Global Marine (the term Glomar came from Global Marine) that has since been acquired by an offshore drilling corporation, Transoceanic, leased the Glomar Explorer and gave it a $180 million makeover to convert the Glomar into an oil drilling ship. From 1998 through 2013, the Explorer enjoyed a second career as a deep sea drilling ship. However, because of declining petroleum prices and competition from on-shore production, the ship was taken out of service. 

Transoceanic announced in 2015 that the Glomar Explorer would be scrapped. That’s a shame, if for no other reason than its amazing history. But additionally, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers had designated the technologically remarkable ship a historic mechanical engineering landmark. 

I guess all good things have to come to an end — it’s just too bad the old lady’s legacy had to end that way… may she Rest In Peace.
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