Today is a very special day for Chassie and Dave — their second wedding anniversary. It was good to see them a little while today. They say a successful marriage requires falling in love many times — always with the same person. Seems like so far they’ve achieved that. Happy Anniversary to a very special couple!!
— 30 —
I’ve always heard that no two snowflakes are exactly alike. Most people have probably heard it and if you asked then what they know about snowflakes, I bet the thing most people would say first is that, “no two are exactly alike.” But is that really true? In all of time and in all the snowstorms that have hit the earth, has there never been two snowflakes alike?
Now the fact is, if you’re like most people, it’s not a big deal to you and you’d just as soon leave well enough alone and assume it’s true — or not true.
Although snowflakes are one of the things I wonder about occasionally, I’m not really concerned enough to do my usual extensive research on the subject.
But I got to thinking — snowflakes seem to get a lot of credit for being unique in that there aren’t any two alike. I’m thinking there are other things that fall into this “not alike” category.
If “no two alike” means exactly — then that includes almost everything. Almost nothing in nature is exactly alike. I don’t ever remember seeing two leaves or two trees or flowers that are exactly alike. And I’m told that no two people have the same fingerprints….
Actually no two situations are alike and no two people are exactly alike and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under normal or abnormal conditions.
I think that’s a good thing — even though I admire certain attributes in others, I prefer being my own unique person — kind of like a snowflake, I guess….
—30—
Back in March, I rambled on about why I use the number “30” at the end of each blog entry. If you really don’t know, and are interested, you can check it out in the archives. Thirty is an interesting number, not just because I use it to end my blog… Before most clocks became digital, the number 30 was very important to a clock… a clock face is divided into 12 sections (hours) around the circle that makes up the face. The circle is 360 degrees. If you divide 360 by 12 you get — 30. Thirty is also half of 60, the number of minutes in an hour and the number of seconds in a minute. They say you can’t trust anyone over 30 and even the Bible weighs in on the importance of the number — Christ was 30 when he began his public ministry on earth and Christ was sold out by Judas for 30 pieces of silver. Noah’s Ark was 30 cubits high. There was a 30-year war (from 1618 to 1648.) And if that’s not enough, the atomic number of Zinc is 30.
As important and impressive as 30 is, my favorite number has always —well, maybe not always but for at least a long time — been 33.
During the Vietnam War, the local beer of South Vietnam was Ba Moui Ba or Biere 33. The label had a big “33” on it. And while on the subject of beer, the Rolling Rock Beer Co. uses what they call “The 33 Mystery.” The number 33 appears on all their bottles and supposedly means 3 things. You can check their web site or call the company and find out that the 3 things refer to the repeal of prohibition in 1933 and there are 33 words in the paragraph on the bottles — and — there are 33 letters in the list of ingredients. This isn’t where I originally was headed with this blog, but I find it interesting that there is a huge disagreement over the 33 on the Rolling Rock bottle. Some of the theories are:
• The reservoir that was used by the brewery for its main water source was fed by 33 streams.
• The brewery workers were members of the Local #33 union.
• There were exactly 33 steps from the brewmaster’s office to the brewing floor.
• The Rolling Rock brewery was started with money won at the horse track (the winning bet was placed on #33 and that’s why there is a horse and the “33” on the bottle.)
• It was the 33rd version of the recipe that became what is now Rolling Rock.
Anyhow, back to 33 — the Hershey company has the capacity to make about 33 million Hershey’s Kisses a day.
Groundhog Day occurs on February 2, the 33rd day of the year — that means there are 332 days left in the year, so if you count backwards from the year’s end, it’s the 333rd day.
The U.S Air Force’s first jet trainer was the T-33 Shooting Star.
The Russian alphabet has 33 letters.
The State of Texas Constitution states, “The Senate shall consist of 33 Senators, and no more.”
The chicken in the background of the “The Simpsons” has the number 33 as its wing. Baseball’s longest game (Rochester Red Wings vs. Pawtucket Red Sox – April, 1981) lasted 33 innings.
••• Roswell, New Mexico is located at 33ª [37’] N latitude. •••
California has 33 state prisons. The Republic of China has 33 regions. Mexico has 33 states.
The BBC World Service news website offers news in 33 languages.
The first Powerball jackpot over 1 million dollars — the Powerball number was 33. Michelangelo was 33 years old when he started work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
33 is the atomic number for arsenic. Jesus was 33 when he was crucified in 33 A.D. and 33 is the numerical equivalent of AMEN — 1+13+5+14 = 33.
Possibly my fondness for 33 can be traced back to Indian heritage. According to Apache belief, “… from the time of the Harmonic Convergence (1987) until 2020, we’ll be in the chaos of the world, like a red ray leaving and a purple ray trying to get a foothold… There will be such imbalance that everyday will be a juggling act — a challenge to remain in harmony and not be thrown off by the chaos of these two powerful energies, war and peace. This is a 33-year cycle.”
So we just need to hang in there for a few more years.
And if all that isn’t enough to make my favorite number double 3’s, We got married when I was — 33.
— 30 —
As both faithful readers know, I celebrate a lot of holidays. This year I intended to celebrate a holiday that I usually don’t — National Punctuation Day. As I said, this isn’t a day usually celebrated by me — not because I don’t think its important, but I have come to celebrate a lot of holidays and I have to leave some days free to just not celebrate.
But I thought I’d talk a bit about it this year because like all subjects, there are some things about punctuation that annoy me — lately, the most annoying thing is the lack of punctuation in text messages and even e-mails….
I often say that Claire talks without any punctuation — she just goes from one subject to another without inserting a period, or even a comma.
But before this becomes all about me and my thoughts on punctuation, we should all remember that this holiday is to celebrate the importance of proper punctuation. However, punctuation, like everything else it seems, is changing — what used to be proper isn’t anymore. It used to be that when punctuation was discussed, it would be about the proper use of commas, periods, hyphens, question marks, exclamation marks, and things like that. Today, something called emoji(s) are being touted as punctuation. Emoji are basically little pictures that supposedly express emotions, like a smiley face (remember when everyone thought it was cute to end a sentence with :)? In my mind that was bad enough, but now you can use an actual smiley face, or frownie face, or whatever.
The younger generation, that knows how to text things, but doesn’t know how to write anything, are apparently of the opinion that punctuation isn’t even needed. Young people, or “text-ers” of any age, don’t believe there’s any confusion by omitting the punctuation. But one thing I’ve noticed — text-ers seem to use a lot of exclamation marks — all over the place, not where people who write would think they’re appropriate.
Hyphens are another punctuation mark that is disappearing — a lot of words we use today used to be hyphenated, like today used to be written to-day. Same for lots of words. You may have noticed that I use a lot of dashes (not hyphens) in my writing. You may or may not be wondering why — probably not, but I’ll tell you anyhow…. When I took Freshman English, we had to write a theme every day. If you made a comma error by placing a comma where one didn’t belong, it earned an automatic “F.” The professor didn’t read any further, it was just and F. So — I figured out that if I wasn’t sure about the use of a comma, I used a dash. The professor might knock off a point or so for it, but no automatic fail. From that time forward, I’ve been fond of the dash and I use and over-use them all the time.
But back to the day itself — it was on September 24th. Since I intended to celebrate it, I wondered about how to celebrate it, since I’d never celebrated it before. I thought since it’s a holiday, I’d sleep late, maybe go out for breakfast, check the Internet and count all the punctuation errors I find in the first couple of pages, and maybe make an entry in the blog that is completely punctuation error free. But since I missed it this year, I’ll have more time to plan for it next year.
Before I leave the subject of punctuation and start planning for next year’s celebration, what is the correct name for (!) — is it Exclamation Mark or Exclamation Point? Just wondering…
— 30 —
My sister visited recently from Oklahoma. Sometime during the course of her visit, the term “Broomcorn Johnny” came up. When I was growing up, every year Maysville had an influx of “Broomcorn Johnnies.” They set up camp just outside town and of course were a boon to the Maysville merchants. They bought groceries, clothing, and other stuff and went to the movies. (Yea, Maysville, at one time, had two movie theaters.)
I’m sure both my faithful readers don’t even know what broomcorn is…. first of all let’s get some facts straight — broomcorn isn’t corn at all, although if you saw it growing in a field, you’d think it was corn. It very much resembles regular corn, except it doesn’t have — well, ears of corn. “Broomcorn” is actually a type of sorghum — knowing that, it sort of looks like cane sorghum, or sugar cane, but to the un-initiated, it looks like corn. I was well into adulthood before I knew that broomcorn wasn’t really corn.
Anyhow, before the “broom” was invented, people used bundles of twigs, corn husks and things like that to clean. There is at least one reference to some sort of a broom in the Bible….”Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?” Well, ok, maybe this doesn’t actually reference a broom, but it might….
Early brooms were usually made at home from whatever materials were at hand — they basically bundled together whatever they were using to sweep with to a wooden stick with rope or twine. Of course these devices didn’t do a good job or last very long and had to be replaced fairly often.
So — eventually someone (possibly Levi Dickinson in Hadley, Mass.) got the bright idea to make a broom from a species of tasseled grass (sorghum vulggare) that resembled sweet corn. Turns out that the plant’s fibers made an excellent broom. Previously, the sorghum plant’s seeds and fibers had been used as animal feed and not much else. Dickinson’s broom was a round bundle of broomcorn tied to a stick with some weaving around the top and proved to be very effective and durable. As word spread, demand for the brooms increased and Dickinson and his sons went into business making and selling their brooms.
But back to today — a lot of people don’t remember when brooms were made of straw since most are now plastic or some other synthetic fiber. Back when I was a kid, growing broomcorn was a major business. A town about 10 miles from where I grew up christened itself “the broomcorn capital of the world.” I’m sure it wasn’t, but try telling that to the Lindsay, Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce.
The downside of broomcorn production was that harvesting it was hot, dreary work. Like so many undesirable jobs, this task was mostly accomplished with migrant labor. These migrant workers that worked the broomcorn fields around Maysville were called “Broomcorn Johnnies.” Like probably most migrant workers, Broomcorn Johnnies got a bed rap. They often looked raggedy, not well dressed and a lot of people considered them “dirty.” They probably looked “dirty” because they worked in the fields in the hot sun all day and didn’t have ready access to showers, as most lived in tents. I remember the women, most of whom worked in the broomcorn fields along side the men, were sometimes referred to as Broomcorn Sallies. Probably in most places, these people would have been referred to as Gypsies, but in Maysville, they were Broomcorn Johnnies.
Today, most people use vacuum cleaners or the new-fangled “swiffer” thing that looks kind of like a dirty napkin attached to the end of a stick. I’m not sure most households still have brooms around, but I’d bet that a lot do. Of course most of these brooms came about without the help of Broomcorn Johnnies.
— 30 —
We recently went to a restaurant to celebrate Anne Oxfort’s birthday. We sat in a room with a long table occupied by elderly ladies obviously celebrating something. When they were getting ready to leave, some of them were taking pictures, so Claire asked if they’d like her to take a picture of the whole group — and they agreed.
When the group had all gathered for their picture, Claire said, “say cheese.” Well, I got to wondering why the heck do I say “say cheese” when I take someone’s picture or why do they say it to me when I’m having my picture taken?
After doing some extensive research, I’ve decided it’s a mystery plagued with rumors, myths, assumptions and mis-information with no factual information available.
If you’ve ever looked at old pictures, you’ve probably noticed that people didn’t smile in photographs. There’s probably a number of reasons — bad dental care, the long exposure time to take the picture and just that’s the way you’re supposed to look when having your picture taken. At some point, the serious look went away and slowly the smile became the standard facial expression for photographs. The early photographers used a mechanical birdie, usually held just above the camera and the phrase “watch the birdie” became popular — but it was more effective for kids, getting their attention, giving them something to look at and at the same time making them laugh.
Somewhere along the way, “say cheese” began to be used to let adults know the picture was about to be taken. From what I can tell, no one knows who first said it or why. One theory is that the double “e” of “cheese” creates a baring of the teeth and produces an almost automatic smile. And some people think the absurdity of saying cheese for no reason makes you laugh or smile naturally….
So once again, I’ve asked myself a question that I can’t answer — even after extensive research. I think today “say cheese” is used not so much to make one smile, but as a cue signal that the photo is about to be taken. A race is started with “ready set go,” so I suppose a picture can start with “say cheese.”
Wonder what cheese says when it gets its picture taken?
— 30 —
A little while back, I blogged about a discussion with a friend about the word amen. During that same discussion, while we were defining terms, begotten or begot was mentioned. My friend was of the opinion that begot essentially meant to create. To be honest, I wasn’t sure but I thought the two must be different because of the phrase used in church, “begotten, not made.”
Well, of course this called for some extensive research on my part. Turns out that “begotten” and “created” do not mean the same thing at all. Create means to make something out of nothing. Begot, on the other hand, comes out of another thing that already exists. Any begotten thing has to have a source from which it stems. That source cannot be nothing, as in creation.
One explanation that I found, that I thought was pretty good, is that to beget is to become the father of; to create is to make. When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs that turn into little birds. When you make something, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a table. The explanation goes on to point out that what God begets is God; what man begets is man. What God creates is not God, just as what man creates is not man.
There’s no point here, I just found this interesting while keeping up my extensive research skills. So until next time, I’m done with this blog — made, not begotten…..
— 30 —
Since my last update was about cats, and I don’t even especially care for cats, I thought I’d give equal time to something I do care about — dogs. There have been a number of dogs in my life. In fact, I can’t remember them all. We had big dogs, little dogs, black dogs, white dogs, dogs with spots, indoor dogs and outdoor dogs — they were all special in their own way.
Lots has been written about dogs and one thing that strikes me, is that almost all writings about dogs are complimentary and positive — not so with cats (remember a book, “100 Things to do with a Dead Cat?”)
The term dog has made equally as much headway into our language as cat. Maybe I should just let sleeping dogs lie, but here’s some phrases most of us use mentioning man’s best friend:
My dad used to say he was going to see a man about a dog, and we’ve all heard that his bark is worse than his bite and if you’re married, or even if you’re not, you’re sometimes in the doghouse. What kid hasn’t tried the old favorite — the dog ate my homework, and we all know that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Right now we’re in the midst of the dog days of summer in this dog-eat-dog world and it’s been so dry here lately, I’d like to see it raining cats and dogs.
Just like we do with cats, we often use dog idioms in our conversations that have nothing to do with dogs. With the elections gearing up, we’ll probably hear crooked as a dog’s hind leg a lot, and if you’re like me, just listening to the politicians makes me sick as a dog. Some of us tell shaggy dog stories, put on the dog and think we lead a dog’s life because we have to work like a dog. And I often wonder who let the dogs out?
Again, like cats, there are a lot of old wives tales about dogs — like if a dog’s nose is cold or wet, the dog is healthy, that dogs eat grass to induce vomiting or feeding a dog raw eggs gives him a shiny coat. Most people believe that one human year equals seven dog years — according to my extensive research, after a dog reaches 2 years of age, he ages about five dog years to every human year. Also something to keep in mind is that if a dog wags his tail, it’s not necessarily a sign that he’s friendly.
There sly dogs, shaggy dogs, bird dogs, dirty dogs, dog collars, hot digity dogs, hot dogs, lucky dogs, prairie dogs, top dogs, mad dogs, junk yard dogs, hound dogs, and of course hush puppies that will probably be the subject of another blog…..
I’ve heard it said that the world would be a nicer place if everyone had the ability to love as unconditionally as a dog…. hard to argue with that — I’ve always thought the average dog was nicer than the average person, but don’t let your dog’s admiration for you convince you that you’re wonderful.
— 30 —
We have a cat that lives next to us. I’m surprised he’s still alive considering all the potentially life-ending experiences he’s gone through just since I’ve known him. Maybe there really is something to the saying that a cat has nine lives. Thinking about that old saying that cats have nine lives got me to thinking about cats… I’m not a big fan of cats but it occurs to me that we do have a lot of phrases in our language about cats. There are alley cats, cat burglars, catcalls, catgut, catnaps, cat o’nine tails, cats eye marbles, the cat’s meow, catty remarks, catwalks, cool cats, tomcats, copycats, hellcats, scaredy cats, and people often fight like cats and dogs, act like sourpusses, sit in the catbird seat and let the cat out of the bag. Of course there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and remember that curiosity killed the cat. And if you’re not talking about this blog to someone, maybe the cat got your tongue. When I’m given a task or attempt to do something that’s futile, I often use the phrase, “like herding cats.”
There are a lot of old wives tales about cats — I heard my grandmother say numerous times that you should never let a cat be around a baby because cats suck the breath from a baby and the baby will die. There are a lot more “wives tales” about cats, like pregnant women shouldn’t ever clean a cat’s litter box, or that cats cause schizophrenia, or that cats can see ghosts.
There are a lot of theories about how these old wives tales came about — the myth that cats have nine lives may have been started by a book in England written in 1854, that stated that a witch could only take on a feline form nine times. Probably as good a theory as any. Cats, especially black cats, are often associated with witchcraft. As for cats sucking the breath from babies, cats probably get close to the baby’s mouth because they like the milky smell.
So anyhow, our neighbor cat continues to do whatever it is he does and if the proverbial curiosity doesn’t get him, I don’t know what will. But I suppose he’s nice to have around — he reminds me that not everything in nature has a purpose…..
— 30 —
We went out to dinner at one of the nicer restaurants here in Shepherdstown a couple of nights ago. I ordered a glass of wine and was asked for ID. Actually, it kind of made my day. It turns out that just any kind of ID won’t work, it has to be a photo ID. At least in a case like this, why is a photo so important? If you look at me, I got wrinkles and gray hair. If I’m old, why would I pretend to be someone else that’s old — any fake ID would have to have a picture of another old person….
But, to finish the story — I can understand the need card me, I’m only 77, but we were with another couple, both in their 80s. We all had to produce IDs to have a glass of wine.
Anyone that thinks I’m 51, 41 or 31, let alone 21 is obviously brain dead.
The explanation we got was something like, “we apologize for the inconvenience, but we’re required to ask all customers for ID…” Of course, there’s a simpler explanation — some people are stupid. It’s hard to believe that anyone at our table needed a card to prove they are over 21. But — to determine that, it would take something called common sense.
One argument is that since “profiling” has become a discussion point, mostly to those that think they’re being discriminated against, or picked on, it’s become necessary to implement the card everyone procedure. If a young person is asked for ID and old people are not — that’s profiling.
I know I said earlier, that being asked for ID made my day, but when you think about it, you are basically being accused of lying….
There are laws that tell us when we’re too young to drink, I suppose the day is coming when there will be laws telling us when we’re too old to drink. Sigh…..
— 30 —
