What Would Jimmy Do?

Both you faithful readers of this blog know that I often wonder about various things. A couple of months ago, an announcer was interviewing a football player prior to one of the playoff games and the player said, “this is not my first rodeo.” I’d heard the phrase before and I know that “This ain’t my first rodeo” is pretty much telling a person that you’re more prepared for a given situation, and maybe even that it doesn’t offer much of a challenge. 

I did some checking and it appears that the phrase can be traced back to the movie Mommie Dearest, in which a character says, “This ain’t my first time at the rodeo.” But what made me wonder is why the term “rodeo?” Why use rodeo to tell someone that you’r not a novice to a situation, that you have experience or that you are competent? I’d venture to say most people have never even been to a rodeo. Why didn’t the football player just say, “This ain’t my first football game (or playoff game?)” 

I’ve also heard the term, “My last rodeo.” That’s usually used when someone is in the latter stage of their career, or about to finish something. Why not just say “my retirement?”
I remember Hearing Peyton Manning saying something like, “this might be my last rodeo, so it sure has been a pleasure” after he won a Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos. Why didn’t he just say this might be my last game?

Besides not my first rodeo, and my last rodeo, I’ve heard that been to the rodeo, that means something like been exposed to conmen or hucksters, or being experienced. And I’ve often heard the phrase straight out of the shoot, which means something done immediately, or from the beginning. That phrase is taken from the rodeo terminology — a bucking bronco, or bull is kept in a narrow pen, called the chute, until it is released.

Anyhow, my question hasn’t been answered — how did the word rodeo become part of American slang, especially in parts of the US where “rodeo” is almost a foreign term…
Rodeos have been part of cowboy culture in America for centuries — they were very popular where I grew up, but Claire had never been to a rodeo before we were married.

Maybe I’ll just never know….. I’ve heard the phrase that the opera isn’t over ’till the fat lady sings. Where I grew up, it was more like, the rodeo ain’t over till the bull riders ride.
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Tonight should be a sight for sore eyes — weather permitting, of course. Five planets — Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and Mars — will all line up near the Moon. 

According to NASA, you should look to the western horizon right after sunset. The planets will stretch from the horizon line to around halfway up the night sky. 
Both Mercury and Jupiter will dip below the horizon by about half an hour after sunset, so the spectacle will only last a short time. 
The five-planet spread can be seen from anywhere on Earth — as long as you have a view to the west, and clear skies. 
Happy planet watching!
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The ninth century Pope John VIII was brilliant, kind, musically talented ….. and female. Well, probably not, but that’s what some historians say — and others think it is pure myth.
The object of this blog is not to tell you what to believe. Here’s the story — it’s up to you to believe…. or not.

The story is about Pope Joan — yep, Joan, not John. According to legend, Pope Joan served as pope during the middle ages.
Although the story of the female pope has several versions, here’s how it usually goes. An English woman named Joan ( or Jeanne) resented the fact that she wasn’t allowed to get an education. At the time, book-learning was thought to be unnecessary, and even harmful, for a woman. So Joan disguised herself as a man — probably a monk — and called herself John English (in some versions of the story, John of Mainz.)

She went to Athens to study, where she impressed everyone with her scholarship.After her studies, she moved to Rome, where she taught science, became a secretary in the Curia (the central administration arm of the Roman Catholic Church,) and eventually was made a cardinal. Once again, her abilities attracted the attention of scholars — and — her conduct was also considered flawless.

So Joan, still in disguise, was elected pope. Over the next two years, five months, and four days, she handled the position very well. But then, she gave herself away — during a solemn procession through the streets of Rome, the pope got down from her horse — and — gave birth to a child, then and there.

Now here’s where the story diverges…. some versions say she died in childbirth or soon afterward. Others say a furious mob tied her to the tail of a horse, dragged her through the city, and finally stoned her to death. And another version has her immediately deposed as pope, but living out a long life, and doing penance — lots of penance. Some versions say her son grew up to be a bishop.

A female pope was first mentioned during the ninth century by a historian called Anatasius the Librarian. Actually, Joan’s name turns up in some early lists of the popes. Several versions of the story were written down by Dominican record keepers during the 13th century. In a report written by Martin of Troppau, a Dominican friar from Poland, in 1265 named names, gave deaths, and placed Joan’s papacy in the 9th century. Since he’d served in the Curia as chaplain to a pope, his story was widely believed. 

So was Joan real? Probably not. Does it matter? Probably not. Maybe the story tells us something important about the attitudes toward sex and gender back in the middle ages.

It’s generally agreed that Joan didn’t exist. According to Vatican records — and there are a lot of them — all the popes are accounted for and there’s no Joan among them. The John VIII that their records list has a very complete biography — he was born in Rome, served as pope from 872 to 882, involved himself heavily in politics, bribed the Saracens to keep them from invading Rome, and was assassinated by his own relatives. A story about him would make a pretty good “pope story” — but I don’t think it could top Joan’s story.
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A few weeks ago, some of us were doing some work at our church and  one of the guys said he had a “gut feeling” about something. I’ve heard the phrases “gut feeling” or “trust your gut” almost my entire life. But thinking back, I’ve rarely been in a situation where I “trusted my gut.” In fact, I’m not sure I know what a gut feeling even feels like.

Google provided the following explanation…. A gut feeling (or intuition) is an immediate physical response you feel that suggests the best decision when presented with two or more choices. Common sensations associated with a gut feeling include a sinking feeling or butterflies in your stomach, sweaty palms, prickling on your neck, goose bumps, muscle tightness or tension, increased heart rate, or an overwhelming sense of calm or clarity. 

In scientific terms, gut feelings come from the enteric nervous system, a web of neurons in the gastrointestinal tract that some neuroscientists call the “second brain.”
I’ve had those feelings, but I never associated them with decision making. I guess I can maybe believe that following your gut or instinct can often direct you down the best path, but I’ve always tried to follow the “do what’s best” path — I’m not sure there’s much difference. I think logic and reason are the two most important things in play to make good decisions, but science suggests that intuition can be a valuable tool in some circumstances. 

From what I’ve read, gut feelings produce some of the same physical sensations as anxiety, so I’m not sure how you tell them apart. And then of course, there’s paranoia…. how do you tell the difference? Gut feelings tend to pass once you make a decision, while anxiety is more than just a passing feeling — it lingers, like maybe you made the wrong decision. And paranoia is an irrational suspicion, not based on fact.

So maybe those gut feelings do mean something, and they can often help you make good decisions — sometimes we can all use a “second brain.”
Someone said that prayer is telephoning to God, and your gut feeling is God telephoning to you. Maybe it’s better to not let that call go to voice mail…..
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Since we’ve been on the subject of bread lately — discussing sandwiches and sliced bread, I should probably re-visit the subject of wrapping or bagging that bread.
Way back on November 18, 2018, this space was filled with a discussion of the Burford Company that’s located just outside my hometown of Maysville, Oklahoma. If you’re interested in the history of the company you can refer back to that 2018 entry. 

The reason I bring it up again is that the great majority of bread wrapping machines are made by the Burford Company. They’ve expanded over the years and now have offices internationally — but their headquarters remain just outside of Maysville. Their invention of the first twist-tie machine for bread wrappers revolutionized the packaging of bread and today they are still the acknowledged innovators and suppliers for the baking industry — around the world.
I’m still proud to say that me, Wiley Post and the Burford Company put Maysville on the map…..
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Yesterday we talked about the “invention” of the sandwich. What could make the sandwich even better? Sliced bread, of course.  
Bread has been being baked in some form for maybe 30,000 years — but sliced bread has only been around since the early 20th century. 

Around 1920 most bread was made in people’s kitchens — at home. But by about 1930, the majority of Americans were eating commercially made bread. Those factory produced loaves were designed to be softer than those made at home, because the bread-buying public had come to equate “squeezable softness” with freshness.
So the timing seemed right for an automatic bread slicing machine — the “softer” loaves had become almost impossible to slice neatly at home.

The first automatically sliced commercial loaves were produced in Chillicothe, Missouri. The machine was invented by Otto Rohwedder — an Iowa-born jeweler that lived in Chillicothe. His bread slicer was put into service at his friend Frank Bench’s Chillicothe Baking Company.

Rohwedder’s contraption received a warm welcome in Missouri — the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune ran an article that noted while some people might find sliced bread “startling,” the typical housewife could expect a thrill of pleasure when she first sees a loaf of this bread with each slice the exact counterpart of its fellows. So neat and precise are the slices, and so definitely better than anyone could possible slice by hand with a bread knife that one realizes instantly that here is a refinement that will receive a hearty and permanent welcome. 
The article also recounted that “considerable research” had gone into determining the right thickness for each slice— slightly less than half an inch.

Sliced bread didn’t take long to become a hit around the United States, even though some bakers claimed it was just a fad.
One of the first major brands to distribute sliced bread was Wonder — it originally appeared in stores in Indianapolis, where it was manufactured by the Taggart Baking Company. (An executive for the company dreamed up the bread’s name after being “filled with wonder” while watching the International Balloon Race at the Indianapolis Speedway.) The Taggart Company was bought by the Continental Baking Company who sold Wonder bread nationwide.

A note of interest…. during World War II, factory-sliced bread, including Wonder, was briefly banned by the U.S. Government in an effort to conserve resources, such as the paper used to wrap each loaf to help maintain freshness.

We’ve all said, or heard someone say, “the best thing since slice bread.” I guess now would be a good time to explore the origin of that ….
The Chillicothe Baking Company, when advertising it’s sliced bread included the sentence: “The greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.” Subsequent advertising in the baking industry compared their developments to the “invention” of sliced bread.
But some sources say the first use of the idiom was in 1952 when Red Skelton said in an interview, “Don’t worry about television. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
Anyhow, if you use that phrase today, you’re probably dating yourself…..
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Most trivia buffs know that the sandwich was invented by someone called the Earl of Sandwich. Who was this genius? And did he really invent the sandwich? And how do you become an Earl of something like a Club or BLT?

Well, as you might imagine, this is all complicated, but here goes….
Let’s get this our of the way right away — Do we call a sandwich a sandwich because of the 4th Earl of Sandwich? Yes. Was he the first person to come up with the idea? Not by a long shot. The truth is, we don’t know who invented the sandwich, but it has existed in various forms for thousands of years.
[One of the earliest known sandwich-eaters was Hillel the Elder, a rabbi and scholar who was born in Babylon and lived in Jerusalem during the first century B.C.]

Flatbreads have a long history in the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. In particular, the idea of rolling bread with a filling is very old in Turkish culture. During the mid-17th century, the 4th Earl of Sandwich traveled to Turkey and other regions in the Ottoman Empire, which may explain where he allegedly got the idea to ask a server to make him a sandwich back in England.

Sandwich is a borough in southeast England. In medieval times, and before, Sandwich was a main port in the county of Kent on the River Stour. Before the river dried up, it was wide and deep enough for big sailing ships. Today those ships have been replaced by smaller craft, but the ancient buildings make Sandwich one of the best preserved medieval towns in England. The name of the town is, most likely, Saxon in origin, and means something like sandy place or the place on the sand. 

But getting back sandwich — the kind we eat. It’s not totally clear why the English politician John Montague, a.k.a. the 4th Earl of Sandwich became the namesake of the food we call a sandwich. I should clarify that hereditary English titles can be confusing. The family of the Earls of Sandwich has no real connection to the town itself — it’s just their title. The 1st Earl, Edward Montagu, originally intended to take the title of the Earl of Portsmouth. So I suppose had he done that, we’d be eating a portsmouth.

Since the 1st Earl decided on the name sandwich, the 4th Earl of Sandwich carried it on — he became a member of the House of Lords, served as Britain’s first Lord of Admiralty (the department of British government that once administered the Royal Navy,) and enjoyed an active social lifestyle. When he wasn’t busy with the affairs of government or his mistress, he loved to spend his time gambling. The story goes that it was during a 24-hour marathon gambling session that the hunger pangs — and world-changing inspiration hit him. Rather than interrupt his gambling, he thought to put some kind of filling between two slices of bread, so he could hold the concoction in one hand and his cards in the other. Some speculate the story may have been a rumor or adverse propaganda put forth by his rivals. But people may have started ordering “the same as Sandwich,” and the name stuck.

The sandwich isn’t the only thing that carried his name — Hawaii was originally knows as the Sandwich Islands. When Captain James Cook landed there, he named them after the 4th Earl, who was his financial sponsor.

Anyhow, after the word sandwich became popular, new words and phrases were needed to describe different types, like Sloppy Joes, Club and of course Peanut Butter and Jelly. The first known recipe for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich appeared in 1901 in The Boston Cooking School Magazine of Culinary Science & Domestic Economics.

So today the 4th Earl of Sandwich isn’t much remembered for his service in the House of Lords — but he’s certainly left his mark “in-deli-bly” at places like Subway.
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I’m not a particularly big basketball fan, but every year around this time I become more than just a casual spectator. The NCAA basketball tournament, called “March Madness” always gets my attention. 
The tournament that is in progress now originated in 1939, making it almost as old as I am. But the term didn’t become synonymous with the tournament until much later. 

March Madness was originally a high school basketball tournament in Illinois. The University of Illinois’ Huff Gymnasium drew sellout crowds to the high school tournament which started in 1908 and seemed to get bigger every year. 
The Illinois High School Association (IHSA) assistant executive secretary, wrote an essay titled “March Madness” in the Illinois Interscholastic in 1939 to commemorate the tournament. Other publications and news media embraced the term and the tournament continued to thrive in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1973, the IHSA officially started using “March Madness” in its programs and on merchandise. 

In 1982, Brent Musburger used the term “March Madness” when covering the NCAA Tournament for CBS, and it kind of “stuck.” People started using the term to refer to the NCAA Tournament. 
The term “March Madness” was trademarked in 1989 by Charles Besser who worked for Intersport, the company that produced March Madness for TV. For a few years, the NCAA and IHSA both used the phrase “March Madness.” But in 2010 the NCAA paid the IHSA $17.2 million for for exclusive use of the term. 

So every year March Madness pretty much always lives up to its name. If you lose one game then you’re out, so every game has high stakes. The tournament truly captures the spirit of competition, excitement and tradition….
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Today is the first day of spring — specifically, it starts at 5:24 p.m. EDT. That is the exact time for the arrival of the Vernal Equinox (I have a brother-in-law that possibly/probably refers to it as the “First Point of Aries.”) Traditionally, we celebrate the first day of spring on March 21, but astronomers and calendar manufacturers now say that the spring season starts on March 20th, in all time zones in North America. So no matter what the weather may be doing outside, the vernal equinox marks the official start of the spring season.

Vernal translates to “new and “fresh,” and equinox is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night.) So what does that mean? The daylight hours have been getting longer since December — the vernal equinox marks the turning point when daylight begins to win out over darkness. I’ve always heard that on the first day of spring and autumn, the day and night are equal to exactly 12 hours all over the world. But — that’s not true. On the days of the spring and fall equinox, the daylight is actually longer than darkness by several minutes. 

As you probably know, there are a lot of myths and beliefs associated with the equinox….
Maybe the most famous myth is that you can stand a raw egg on end — supposedly due to the Sun’s position in the sky, and its gravitational pull on the Earth, you can stand an egg on end during the precise moment of the vernal equinox. But that’s something you can do any day — providing you have the patience. Equinoxes won’t make it any easier.

One of the more interesting beliefs is that you won’t have a noontime shadow on the day of the equinox. This is technically kind of true, but if you go outside at noon, you’ll see your shadow (assuming the sun is shining.) Since the Sun is always at an angle to you, you always cast a shadow. In order to not cast a shadow, the Sun must be directly overhead, and because the Sun is situated over the equator at the equinox, you’d have to be standing at the equator precisely at noon on the day of the equinox  to not have a shadow.

Some people believe the equinox is a day-long event. Again, not true — it doesn’t take all day, it’s only a moment in time. The true equinox is the exact moment in which the Sun passes over the equator. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss it.

Some people believe that, just like a full Moon, the spring equinox can alter your mood. Again, not really true — the Sun moving across the equator has no real effect on emotions — but — seasonal changes can, and do, often play a big part in moods. Around this time of year, you may experience a little bit of “spring fever.”

So welcome to spring — I don’t often get a chance to quote my friend Sitting Bull, but here’s something he said at an Indian council in 1875, that seems appropriate for today…. “Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the Earth has gladly received the embraces of the Sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love.”
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Listening to the news the past few days, I kept hearing that Coronavirus is now believed to — possibly — have come from raccoon dogs. Now even though I’m a pretty worldly guy, I had never hear of a “raccoon dog.”
So I did what I must in situations like this — I did some extensive research.

In simple terms, raccoon dogs are wild dogs whose face looks like a raccoon’s. They are a member of the canid, or dog family with fur markings and head shapes similar to those of raccoons. They’re more closely related to foxes than to domesticated dogs. Their diets consist of both plants and animals and they are native to  East Asia — including parts of China, Korea and Japan. Their population exploded due to breeding from the fur farming industry and they are now a widespread “invasive species” throughout northern and western Europe.

Growing up in Maysville, Oklahoma, a popular dog was the coon dog — everyone called them coonhounds. They were nice dogs with long floppy ears and kind of sad eyes. They were popular hunting dogs. Those dogs are in no way related to raccoon dogs — they’re a completely different species.

But to get back to the day’s subject — raccoon dogs were (and probably still are) sold for food in live animal markets in China. They are wild animals, not domesticated pets. They need lots of space and are difficult to manage in enclosures or small spaces. They also have a strong odor because they use scent to communicate, so they wouldn’t a desirable animal to have indoors. If a raccoon dog escapes or is released into parts of the world it isn’t native to, it can threaten native wildlife. 
So — even though they’re kind of cute, you wouldn’t want one for a pet.
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