by Paula Johnson
Oh my, July is here and school supplies will be available everywhere. Time to sharpen our minds as well as our pencils.
Questions:
1. What was Memorial Day first named?
2. Which two foods can you mail without a box?
3. Dame Judith Dench was “M” in James Bond movies; who is the real new “C?”
4. Why was the escalator invented?
5. Where is the Ice Age Trail?
6. How many species of spiders have been discovered?
7. Which cheese is meant to be eaten fresh, not matured?
8. What drug is named after the Greek god of dreams?
9. Besides Abraham Lincoln which other US president was an appointed postmaster?
10. What sea creature is named after a pancake?
Answers:
1. In 1868, following the Civil War, Union soldiers wanted to honor their fallen comrades. The GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) chose May 30 as the day to decorate those graves. Thus, May 30, 1868, was the first Decoration Day to honor all fallen soldiers. By 1890 every state in the Union recognized and staged ceremonies for men lost in battle. May 30 was chosen because it was believed most flowers would be in bloom for Decoration Day. Shortly, Memorial Day became a term that was also widely used. In 1967 Memorial Day became the official name, and in 1968 under the Uniform Holidays Bill, it along with other observances were moved to Mondays.
2. Ben Franklin would be proud of today’s USPS. Many objects can be sent through the mail “so long as they’re paid for and don’t endanger the carrier.” When I first came to Rolling Hills, we mailed day-old chicks around the continental USA. Before that, Curt even mailed chicks to Puerto Rico. They were sent in special cartons with enough air holes for ventilation. Food? When a pheasant chick is hatched, it has enough from the egg to live for 3 days before requiring food or water. Two foods you can mail without a box are coconuts and potatoes. Either write the TO and FROM directly on the object or affix a label. The PO will weigh, affix postage and send it off like any other package. I can’t guarantee how it will be handled along the way, but the concept is interesting.
3. In real life the head of British Secret Intelligence Service M16 is called “C.” For the first time in its 116-year history, “C” is held by a woman (not Judy Dench). Blaise Metreweli has been the Director General “Q,” the technology and innovation division (keeping identities of secret agents secret and ways to elude enemies) – very James Bond-like. She has been with the service for 26 years.
4. Although Curt might like a network of escalators throughout the house to save him from walking and maybe falling, the first useable and prototype of today’s escalator was introduced at Coney Island in 1896 moving people from the subway to above ground. It wasn’t the individual step segments of today, but did have handrails and platform grooves allowing for a seamless top landing.
5. Hiker Alert! Although Michigan has areas of moraines, landforms dating back to the ice age and glacial retreat, the Ice Age Trail is in Wisconsin. Moraines from the glaciers extend from the Kalamazoo area through southern Wisconsin sculpturing the landscape into kames (mounds and hills shaped by meltwater), lakes, drumlins (elongated mounds shaped by glaciers), tunnel channels (subglacial valleys shaped by meltwater) and more. Whether you want a day or a backpacking trip or the Thousand-Miler Recognition, this area is beautiful. I especially have enjoyed Delevan, WI.
6. If you suffer from arachnophobia, you have good reason. Personally, I don’t like them, but I can kill my own. Realizing that there are spiders ranging from a Daddy Longlegs to a tarantula, I figured maybe a few thousand species. In April 2022 scientists announced their find of the 50,000th spider species, Guriurius minauano. Now this gives me the willies because it is a member of the family of jumping spiders. A few weeks ago, I was dust mopping the office floor when I felt something land on my jaw. I brushed it off, and a Daddy Longlegs fell to the floor – instant death!
7. I love cheese – real cheese. Don’t try to pawn off those American slices as cheese. I see them as plastic as the wrapper they come in. Give me a good gouda or gruyere or Havarti. These are all matured cheeses. The one cheese that is sold fresh and meant to be eaten fresh is cream cheese. Like many other wonderful things, it was created accidentally. In the 1870s, dairyman William Lawrence added too much cream to his recipe for the French cheese, Neufchâtel. The result was a more spreadable and richer flavored cheese we now call cream cheese.
8. Nope, not Aphrodite. She is a goddess, and the goddess of love, beauty, and pleasure. The Greek god Morpheus is the god of dreams. Morphine is a potent sedative and can have hypnotic effects that may appear sleep-like. Hypnos was the Greek god of sleep (hypnotic), and Morpheus was his son who was known for appearing to mortals in various forms delivering messages from the gods.
9. Ben Franklin was never president, though he was our first Postmaster General. Abe needed the money in 1833 and earned himself a reputation of a man with high integrity as postmaster of New Salem, IL. Another president-to-be nearly 100 years later was appointed postmaster in Missouri. He already was a milliner in town and had a farm down the road, so he passed both the duty and the paycheck to a widow in town. She needed the pay to support her family, and Harry Truman said in his biography that he could have used to salary to “have paid two farmhands.”
10. Off the northwestern coast of Australia and about 5,000 feet deep a new species of octopus was discovered. It was named the Carnarvon flapjack octopus because it can flatten itself like a pancake to avoid predators.
Ok, teachers, don’t dismay. Not a time to worry yet. Enjoy the month ahead and soak up all the rest and revitalization you can. Maybe jumping spiders could be a new unit. You need something to look forward to doing.
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