What Would Jimmy Do?

The news has been full of lots of disasters lately…. the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the train wreck and fire in Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border, and “locally,” there has recently been a number of trucks carrying hazardous material overturn on the Capital Beltway and that’s all in addition to the wars in Ukraine and Sudan. These brought to mind one of the more bizarre disasters that I remember reading about many years ago. 

The disaster was kind of the result of one of those perfect — although bizarre, and sticky — storms. Around lunchtime on January 15, 1919, a 50-foot high tank at ehe Purity Distilling Company, located in Boston’s North End was operating full-bore. It was filled to near-capacity, containing two million gallons of steam-heated molasses that would soon be industrial alcohol. Next thing anyone knew, the tank burst, sending — did I mention two million gallons? — of warm, sticky molasses into the streets of Boston. This might have been funny if the molasses hadn’t been carrying huge, jagged sections of the tank with it. 

Part of the “perfect storm” was that it was an unusually warm day in January — the temperature was 43 degrees, well above freezing. If the temperature had been closer to normal, it might have given the soon-to-be victims time to notice the oncoming calamity. But the thick liquid poured out like a tsunami wave and reached a speed of 35 miles per hour. The molasses flooded streets, crushed buildings and trapped horses…. it eventually killed 21 people and injured 150 more. The smell of molasses lingered for decades.

Witnesses later reported a banging and tapping sound coming from the tank. The sounds they heard were the rivets that had held the tank together popping loose. More than a hundred years later, analyses have pinpointed a handful of factors that combined to make the disaster so disastrous — among them, flawed steel, safety oversights, fluctuating air temperatures and the principles of fluid dynamics.

Investigations found several fundamental problems with the structure of the tank. Designed to hold 2.5 million gallons of liquid, it measure 50 feet tall and 90 feet in diameter. But its steel walls, which ranged from 0.67 inches at the bottom to 0.31 inches at the top, were too thin to support the weight of a full tank of molasses. Flawed rivet design was another problem, and stresses were too high on the rivet holes, where cracks first formed. Although molasses had been poured into the container 29 times, only four of those fills were to near-capacity. The fourth top-off happened two days before the disaster, when a ship arrived from Puerto Rico carrying 2.3 million gallons of molasses. 

Both the inadequate thickness and rivet issues were signs of negligence, and structural engineers knew better at the time. But the tank had been built quickly in the winter of 1915 to meet the rising demand for industrial alcohol, which could be distilled from molasses and sold to weapons companies, who used it to make dynamite and other explosives for use during World War I.

Instead of inspecting the tank and filling it with water first to test for flaws, USIA ignored all warning signs, including groaning noises every time it was filled. There were also obvious cracks — children would being cups to fill with sweet molasses that drip out of the tank.

The clean-up crew pumped sea water from the harbor via hoses, but the molasses and saltwater didn’t mix, and the whole area was buried under brown foam. It took months before the streets of Boston were back to “normal.” 

Since this was in the past, it’s kind of funny to read about it, even though it was tragic. But even so, this seems to be a kinder, gentler, kind of disaster than we experience today….who would have thought that anything as harmless — and sweet — as molasses could cause such devastation…..
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I recently heard a politician on TV refer to the “Dark Ages.” I’ve often heard of the Dark Ages, but I guess I never really knew when they were, or how long they lasted, or really, what made them “dark.” 

Yep,, you guessed it — a topic for some of my extensive research. 
Not surprisingly, not even the experts agree on “when,” or even “what” about the “Dark Ages.”

To get right to the point, the Dark Ages started around the late 5th century, when Rome fell and ended sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, when the Middle Ages kind of semi-officially started.
There are two main reasons that period is called the Dark Ages:
1. Less is known about this time than other eras, because fewer books and writings survived, so we’re in the dark about the age.
2. That era  always seemed barbaric and chaotic to historians. Most of the folks living then were illiterate and half-starved. The phrase “Dark Ages” describes the way people were living — in the dark.

The first person to coin the term “Dark Ages” was Francesco Petrarch, an Italian scholar of the 14th century — he called it the Dark Ages because he was disturbed at the lack of good literature at that time.

To put things in perspective, remember that Rome had ruled most of Europe for about 800 years. When it collapsed, so did all the organizations that ruled Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa in its name. With no more administrators, or armies, to keep order, everything just came apart. Food couldn’t be distributed and most money was pretty much worthless. Barbarian invaders saw easy pickings and moved in. Now if barbarians weren’t bad enough, a plague started in Constantinople, spread throughout Europe and killed half the population. People moved away from the cities, abandoning the niceties like roads, baths, sewage systems and other municipal services.
They spent most of their time scrambling for food, and didn’t have time for learning or art or any of the finer things in life.

Most scholars today prefer “Early Middle Ages” to describe the period, because calling such a big chunk of time “dark” implies that nothing worthwhile was going on. That’s not true. Christianity was spreading, monasteries and churches were being built, feudalism was forming, and of course various invasions, plagues and famines occurred.

It will take time if  “Dark Ages” ever falls out of use even though it’s probably an outdated and derogatory term for a period of time when art, culture and literature did flourish across Europe.
I guess I should be more optimistic, but maybe in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
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Today is National Pretzel Day. Why? Well, when you think of all the things that have their special day, the question should be why not? 

Most everybody likes pretzels — almost every little kid likes pretzels, they go good with beer, or wine, or bourbon, or just by themselves. There are the crunchy kind you buy in a bag, and then there’s the big, soft pretzels. And like just about everything else that us purists don’t care so much for, there are flavored pretzels…. to go along with flavored, beer, wine, bourbon, etc. 

National Pretzel Day began in 1983 when U.S. Congressman Robert S. Walker declared his favorite food was deserving of its own holiday.

Some years ago, I became an official Pretzel Twister. I received the honor when we visited the Julius Sturgis Pretzel House in Lititz, Pennsylvania. I realize you have no reason to doubt me, but in case you do, my graduation certificate is pictured above:
So Happy National Pretzel Day to everyone!!
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This is one of those blogs where you’re gonna go, “oh, man, here he goes again.” But that’s just one of the things we curmudgeons do, so if you don’t want to waste your time, maybe check back later….

Yesterday, it was raining (finally) and I put a newspaper that was in our neighbor’s driveway on his porch, so it wouldn’t get wet, or at least any wetter. He gets the Wall Street Journal once a week — he never reads it, because he reads everything online.
So — that got me to thinking. A job that I had as a kid was a paperboy. In fact, just about every kid I knew was a paperboy at one time or another. The job consisted of delivering the daily newspaper around the neighborhood — either on your bike, or walking. The few papers that get delivered today are by adults… in cars.

Now I could just stop now… if I had a point, I guess I’ve made it. But, continuing to travel down memory lane, a few more jobs have become just about non-existent since I was a kid….

Newspapers have changed a lot — they used to employ typesetters, that set each individual letter and literally laid out the page for the printing press. Today that’s all done by software and computers. 
And — all newspapers had proofreaders on their staffs. I don’t remember nearly as many mistakes in the newspapers we used to get delivered as I find in the online new stories today. Maybe “spellcheck” is cheaper than hiring proofreaders, but….

Another profession that hasn’t gone completely away, but almost has, is secretaries, or administrative assistants or executive assistants or whatever you call them. Almost every mid to high level position came with some sort of assistant, to take notes, answer phones, etc….. not anymore.

When I was a kid, just about every town had at least one shoe repair shop, where you could get shoes, or just about any leather item repaired. I think these skilled workmen were known as cobblers. I don’t think there are very many cobblers left anymore.

One of my brothers-in law was a very talented photographer and specialized in weddings. With the advent of digital photos, and iPhones, people don’t hire wedding photographers much anymore and rarely go to studios to have portraits taken. I guess photography is still a viable profession, but not nearly as popular as in the past. 
And in the same vein, people used to make a living developing film for people that took pictures. Today, it’s hard to find film, let alone someone to develop it. I remember every drug store could develop film, or at least have it developed for you, and there used to be little “huts” in shopping center parking lots that would develop your film in an hour or so…. no more.

Another job I had as a kid was as a projectionist at the local movie theater. We used to load the reels of movie film in the projectors and start the second projector when the first roll of film ran out. If you hit the button just right, you never even saw a flicker on the screen. Today I doubt that there aren’t more than a handful of projectionists employed… maybe not any. Now all the projectors are digital and run by timers.

And of course there aren’t many, or any, door-to-door salesmen, or full-service gas station attendants left.
So many of those professions that once were thought to be job security for the future, are gone or almost gone — or changed…. I never would have left my neighbor’s paper out in the rain when I was a paperboy.
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I just heard on the news that the crazy/unusual weather patterns we’ve been seeing lately are the new normal — weather events are expected to be more violent from here on…. I guess those “lazy, hazy days of summer’ are gone. 

But nonetheless, today, April 22, is Earth Day. It’s also known as International Mother Earth Day.
Every year, Earth Day has a “theme.” The theme for 2023, the 53rd Earth Day, is “invest in Our Planet.” The idea being that businesses should shift towards sustainable practices. It’s interesting that this year’s theme is the same as it was in 2022. I guess maybe we didn’t make much progress last year, so we’ll try it again.

Senator Gaylord Nelson established Earth Day in the 1070s. He wanted to promote ecology and increase public awareness of issues pertaining to the environment. His move was prompted after seeing the horror of the oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, in 1969

So every year this day is set aside when humans everywhere take a minute to be grateful for our planet and the amazing natural resources we’ve enjoyed…. so far.
It’s our duty to see that our children and grandchildren enjoy those same natural resources. Let’s make every day “Earth Day.”
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A few days ago, we went to Costco and we picked up some toilet paper for our friend Anne. Like just about everything you buy at Costco, there was a lot of toilet paper. I don’t know how many rolls, but I could barely get my arms around the package. After I finally got the toilet paper loaded onto the cart, and Claire was continuing to shop, I got to wondering…. this toilet paper reminded me of something we don’t have in our houses anymore. I know that includes lots of things, like phone books, typewriters, etc., but what came to mind was colored toilet paper. I remember around the time I was in high school that you could buy toilet paper in various colors, like blue, green, pink, yellow, and so on. I’m not sure why some marketing guy thought people needed colored toilet paper, but I remember it being fairly popular for a while. Apparently you can still buy colored toiled paper, but I don’t remember seeing it in any of the local stores. 

When I was in high school, Maysville, Oklahoma alway had a big homecoming parade every year — usually sometime in September or October, corresponding the homecoming football game. Even though Maysville was a very small town and the high school wasn’t large (there were 22 students in my graduating class) for some reason they went all out for this annual parade. It was usually attended by many from neighboring towns. Each class had a float as did various organizations and businesses. Back then the way to build a float, was to make a frame out of (usually) “broomcorn slats” and use chicken wire to finish the “shape” of whatever the float was supposed to be. Then toilet paper was punched through the holes in the chicken wire to finish the design. Most floats used various shades or colors of toilet paper. I don’t know if Maysville sill carries on that homecoming tradition, but if they do, I wonder how they mange without colored toilet paper. 

I think I heard once that colors went away because someone decided that the dye used for coloring was bad for your skin — but I suspect it just went the way of colored appliances… you don’t see bright red toasters much anymore.
So somewhere between the 1950s and today, colored toilet paper faded away. If it hadn’t, I imagine 2020 would have done it in. Buying any toilet paper that year was a challenge — imagine trying to find pink… or blue… or yellow?
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Back in the 1960s I was in Monrovia, Liberia and found myself waiting for equipment to arrive from the United States to finish a project I was working on. Since I had a few days of slack time, I visited A Firestone Rubber Plantation just a few miles outside of Monrovia. It was the first time I’d ever seen rubber trees and the handful of Americans that were in charge of the operations hadn’t seen anyone from “home,” for quite some time so I was welcomed with open arms and given a very extensive, personalized tour of the facility. 

The history of rubber is fascinating. Like a lot of things, the stories of how rubber was discovered vary depending on who is telling the story. One story tells of a Mayas Indian woman who was walking through the rain forest gathering edibles when she came across a crying tree. She took a sample of the tears back to the tribe’s chief who found the latex substance unique. 
But I like the story that Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover rubber. When he was in Haiti, he noticed some boys playing with a rubber ball. The local people took Columbus into the forest and showed him how, when they cut the bark of certain trees, a milky white liquid bled from the cut. When the material (latex) dried, it was solid and spongy. Besides the balls the kids were playing with, the Indians also made waterproof shoes and bottles from the strong substance. But if Columbus brought some back with him to Spain, he never mentioned it. 

In the 1730s, two French scientists made an official report to the French Academy of Sciences on rubber’s characteristics and properties. After that, Europeans were curious enough to mount expeditions to the Amazon to try to find some more.
In 1770, an English chemist discovered that the substance rubbed out marks from a pencil — that marked the discovery of what the English came to call a “rubber,” and what Americans call an “eraser.”  But Rubber remained nothing more than a curiosity because of the way it reacted to the elements — cold made it extremely brittle, and heat made it sticky. 

All this changed in 1839 when American inventor Charles Goodyear accidentally spilled a mixture of rubber and sulfur onto a hot stove. Now the rubber stayed firm, whether it was hot or cold. This process of mixing and heating rubber was called vulcanization, after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.The “miracle” of vulcanization made rubber a hot commodity. At first, almost all the latex was harvested in the Amazon. Brazilian merchants were making a fortune, while the rest of the entrepreneurial world watched them.
This went on until 1876, when an English botanist, Sir Henry Wickham, brought some back to England. He told Brazilian customs officials that the 70,000 rubber tree seeds he was bring to England were botanical specimens for the royal plant collection, and fortunately they (were dumb enough?) believed him. 
But when the the rubber tree seedlings were old enough, the English government sent them to Ceylon and Malaya, where they were plunked into the ground. By the turn of the 19th century, large rubber plantations in the Pacific Rim supplied most of the world’s natural rubber. 

During World War I, when the allied blockage prevented Germany from getting the rubber it needed for tires, German scientists set to work on an artificial substitute. By the time World War II broke out, rubber was even more strategically important, but good synthetics were still prohibitively expensive. When Japan seized control of most of the rubber-producing islands of the Pacific Rim, effectively cutting off the U.S. supply, the search for synthetics was fast and furious. Within a few years, good synthetics made from petroleum were in wide use. Today, it’s hard to find the real thing.
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248 years ago today, a respectable Boston silversmith made a fateful ride….
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
I’m sure we all “remember” those opening lines of “Paul Revere’s Ride” — maybe some of the most remembered words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The story of Paul Revere’s ride is part of American Folklore — the signal lamps in Boston’s Old North Church (“one if by land, and two if by sea,”) and then Revere’s riding like a madman, shouting, “The British are coming!” Is that really how it happened?

Well,, Longfellow’s poem about Paul Revere’s urgent ride on the eve of the battle of Lexington and Concord was inspired by local places and historic events, but he took significant poetic license with the historic facts. 
Paul revere was certainly a hero and a patriot, but the honor of warning the countryside needs to be shared with a few other riders. Revere’s ride was actually prompted by Dr. Joseph Warren, who sent him to warn Concord of the impending attack, but also asked him to stop in Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that British troops were planning to arrest them. Warren had already sent one messenger, Williams Dawes, to Lexington — Dawes and a third messenger, Samuel Prescott aren’t mentioned in Longfellow’s poem.

Anyhow, here’s what (maybe) really happened…..
In 1775, Paul Revere was a respectable silversmith — by day, and he was also part of a rebel group that gathered intelligence on British troop movements (whenever they could.) Boston was crawling with British soldiers — not too unusual because the colonies were considered part of England at the time. But a revolution was brewing, and tension between the British soldiers and the Americans was high.

Two days before the fateful ride, Revere and his friends designed a warning system using lantern signals so they could communicate in case the British blocked the roads between towns. Turns out they’d need the warning signals sooner than they knew. The British found out that the rebels had a store of munitions near Concord and intended to march on the town, and do exactly what the Americans were afraid of — set up patrols along the road to keep messengers from spreading the news. 

On April 18, 1775, Revere and a compatriot, Dr. Joseph Warren, heard about the British plan. Dr. Warren called a secret informant (rumor has it that the informant was actually the American wife of British General Gage) and verified that the British intended to burn the mutations at Concord and arrest some of the leaders of the budding revolution. Warren asked Revere to ride to Lexington to warn the leaders, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, of the danger.

Knowing that the soldiers might stop Revere, Dr. Warren also sent Williams Dawes and and Samuel Prescott with the same message, by different routes. Revere stopped by the Old North Church on the way, to tell the men there to hang two lanterns in the church steeple as a signal — the British were taking the shortcut across Boston Harbor to Cambridge, the quickest way to get to Concord. Revere crossed the Charles River in a small boat, mounted a speedy horse, and raced off. He was chased by redcoats, but he managed to outrun them. He arrived at Lexington around midnight and delivered his message to Adams and Hancock — not “The British are coming!” but “The Regulars (i.e., British troops) are coming out.”

All along the way from Boston to Lexington, Revere sent other messengers wherever he could find them. They spread the word in every direction, and by early morning, church bells, drums, and guns were sounding the alarm throughout the colony. 

But after Revere had delivered his message in Lexington the night before, he had no way of knowing how far the word might spread, so he continued on, aiming straight for Concord — and the British army. He was joined by Dawes and Prescott. The three visited every house along the way, knocking on doors, asking the men inside to send riders down other roads to spread the news — the British soldiers were on their way.

Halfway to Concord, some “Regulars” stopped them — Dawes was thrown by his horse, Prescott vanished into the night and Revere was captured. Since Paul revere was something of a patriot celebrity, his captors recognized him. They questioned him — at gunpoint — and he told them the truth, about the British secret mission and the American militia response. The British soldiers rode Revere along with several other captured rebels back to Lexington, but as they neared the town, they heard gunfire and realized they’d better warn their commanders about the militia — they released the prisoners and took off. 

Paul Revered arrived back in Lexington just as the local militia was forming up to meet the British troops. So he made it just in time to hear that famous “shot heard ‘round the world.” The first shot of the Revolutionary War.
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I think I’ve mentioned before that our niece and nephew, Sue and Mike, have taken up Archery. I thought of them when I recently noticed a documentary on the longbow — I think it was maybe on PBS. I didn’t get to watch all of it but it was pretty interesting…. the program indicated that back in its day — roughly the 13 to 16th centuries — the longbow wasn’t just a weapon, it was the weapon, the supreme tool of any serious arsenal. It was probably invented in Germany or Scandinavia, it traveled to Wales, then England and made that country a superpower in Europe. 

Historians disagree on the original length of a longbow, but it was generally considered to be no less than five feet. Ideally, the bow was as tall, or maybe just a little taller than the person using it, and made from yew, a type of wood known for its elasticity. 

It was not an easy weapon to master. The “pull” of a longbow — the amount of force needed to stretch the bowstring back to where it needed to be, was between 80 and 110 pounds. Skeletons of longbow archers show signs of deformation consistent with the use of the bow. A spine curved in the direction of the pull arm, arm bones thick with compression, and coarsened bones in the fingers used to yank back the bowstring. The good news is that all that work of becoming a longbowman is that if he was experienced he could hit a target with killing force 200 yards out. And, he could fire six to ten times a minute — a firing rate that no practical weapon could match until well into the 19th century.

One thing that caught my attention was when in battle with a knight, wearing armor, the longbow arrow didn’t just bounce off the armor — it went right through, spearing the knight inside.

The longbow first rose to prominence during the Battle of Crecy, between the English and French. Edward I’s force of 8,000 men was led by his son, the Black Prince. The French forces had a firing rate of 3 to 5 volleys per minute — that proved to be no match for the English bowmen who could fire 10 to 12 arrows in the same amount of time.

The longbow’s military service came to an end at the end of the 16th century, not because it was obsolete as a weapon — even in the late 1500s there was still no weapon that could beat its combination of power, accuracy, and rate of fire — it was retired because there were too few people taking up archery as a profession. Someone once said, the longbow didn’t fail us — we failed it.
Maybe Mike and Sue can bring back its popularity and we’ll need to have “longbow control laws.”
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A few days ago, I mentioned some people think that if a full Moon falls on certain days of the week, it’s lucky — or maybe unlucky.
I know I’ve blogged about this before, but since ancient times, moons and full moons, especially, have been associated with bizarre happenings of all kinds. As far as I can tell these notions fall into the superstition or folklore category, but a lot of people, including some members of our families absolutely believe there’s something to them….
For some, a full Moon is romantic, but for others, it evokes madness. But people have always been bewitched by the full Moon and are convinced it influences the human mind or spirit and the rhythms of nature. 

A full Moon only occurs about 12 times a year, give or take. so the repeating phases of the Moon have intrigued people for centuries. The Moon is regular in its cycle, but not exactly regular — so it took people some time to figure it out. 
Even the origin of the terms we use when discussing the Moon gives us some insight into our perception of the Moon — the words Lunacy, lunatic and loony all have their origins in the word “lunar.” And the persistent belief that werewolves morph into their canine incarnations when the Moon is full leads to the belief that it is a time of transformation and magic.

For years, many doctors and mental health professionals believed there was a strong connection between madness and the Moon. Hippocrates, considered the father of modern medicine, wrote in the fifth century that “one who is seized with terror, fright and madness during the night is being visited by the goddess of the Moon.”
In 18th century England, people on trial for murder could campaign for a lighter sentence on grounds of lunacy if the crime occurred under a full Moon. Even today, contrary to scientific evidence, some people think full Moons make everyone a little loony. 

In the 1820s, the Bavarian astronomer Franz von Paula Gruithuisen claimed to have glimpsed entire cities on the Moon with his telescope. He wrote that the “lunarians” who live there had built sophisticated buildings, roads and forts. Most of his colleagues scoffed at his assertion, but he eventually got a small luna crater named after him. 

One theory that still exists today is that full Moons cause an uptick in births, flooding maternity wards with mothers-to-be in labor. Studies have turned up little statistical evidence for Moon-induced baby booms.

Several science-fiction books of the early 20th century, including H.G Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, take place within a hollow Moon inhabited by aliens. In 1970 two Soviet scientists took this seemingly whimsical premise a step further, proposing that the Moon is actually a shell-like alien spacecraft built by extraterrestrials with superior technology and intelligence. 

After World War II, rumors circulated that German astronauts had traveled to the moon and established a top-secret facility there. Some even speculated that Adolf Hitler faked his own death, fled the planet and lived out the rest of his days in an underground lunar hideout. 

Legends from various traditions around the world, including Buddhism and Native American folklore, recount the tale of a rabbit that lives on the moon. This shared myth may reflect common interpretations of markings on the lunar surface — an alternate take on the famous “man in the Moon.”

There is actually a bit of logic to the myths linking the Moon and human behavior. Earth, much like the human body, is composed mostly of water. If the Moon’s gravitational pull can affect ocean tides, so the reasoning goes, couldn’t it also affect a person’s body? Some American Indian tribes considered the full Moon to be the best time to detox and take part in “sweat lodge” rituals. Their thinking was that “at that point, the Moon’s pull is going to pull more out of you.”

Even today some people consult the lunar calendar when deciding when to have surgery. Each part of the zodiac corresponds with a part of the body. As the Moon moves through the different signs, the superstitious caution against medical intervention on that body part or region.
And farmers who’s livelihoods depend on the health of their crops — planting by the phases of the Moon is still common in some rural areas.
So the Moon always has, and will probably continue to fascinate us in her simplicity, but remember that we’re all under the same sky, looking at the same Moon….
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