Happy Easter!

Once upon a time there was a small, rather isolated village nestled among rolling green hills and wildflower meadows. It was a place that time had seemingly forgotten where traditions were treasured and life was simple and uncomplicated. Everyone knew everyone and greeted each other warmly as they went about their tasks each day. The children gathered to play each day in the center of the little village, in the tidy park like square that was bordered by the village hall, a small grocery, a tailor’s shop, a single chair barber and beauty salon, and a small bakery. Of course every idyll has its strange side (think rolling green hills dotted with silent wind turbines, bunnies, and flowers with a cooing baby faced sunrise that just so happens to also shelter hideous creatures also known as Teletubbies). In this story the village baker, Bartholomew East was the town oddity. He was different from all the rather small in stature, clean shaven villagers. He towered over all (at least a full foot taller than the mayor), had a deep voice to match. He also had unruly hair sprouting from almost every uncovered part of his body, including his ears and especially his arms and the knuckles on the backs of his hands. Among the children he was known behind his back as Beast, because of course, not only his looks but the name on his mailbox was B. East. His baked confections were delectable enough to help the villagers overlook his strange looks and sometimes slightly stranger proclivities. The baker had one display case off to the side in his bakery that held sweet rolls and buns in the shape of different body parts. What started out as a variation on bear claws had taken on a whimsy all its own. In that case were displayed sweet roll ears, noses, donut hole toes and eyeballs, etc. You get the picture?  But under all that hairiness Mr. East was not only a good baker, he was a genuinely kind and generous villager too. On Saturday mornings the village children could always count on receiving a small free treat at his bakery, each in its own white bakery bag, along with an admonishment to remember not to litter by leaving those bags on the ground in the square because if the children did there would be no more Saturday treats. Mr. East knew the bags would quickly be emptied, so tasty were his treats and the children seemed to relish eating lady fingers and such. But one fine Saturday the inevitable occurred, a crumpled white bakery bag was discarded on the ground rather than the trash can and it stood out very obviously in contrast to the bright green grass of the village square. Mr. East was very sad and the following Saturday he knew the children would be too. He took a picture of it with his IPhone where it lay then picked it up and disposed of it properly. When the children arrived the following Saturday with great expectation Mr. East showed them the photo on his phone and sadly took in the disappointed looks on the faces of the children for Mr. East was not one to go back on his word. There were no treats on that sad Saturday. As the children filed out looking longingly at the sweets in the display cases they passed by the baker had an idea. Come back tomorrow after church, he told the children and he knew they would because Sunday mornings were his busiest. On Sunday morning, instead of bags he had a row of brightly colored baskets lined up on the top of the children’s favorite display case, each with a special treat nestled carefully inside. The children’s faces lit up with smiles as he handed each one of his special baskets and admonished them to bring the basket back next Saturday for another treat. Finally there was only one small boy left in the line and he hesitated to come forward and claim his basket. The baker knew this was the litterbug, and when he stuttered his apology and promise to do better he was forgiven and given a basket too. As the boy dug into the basket a look of pure joy came over his face and he exclaimed, “B..B..B…East your bun knees are the b..b..b..est!”

Happy Easter!

Toenail Clippings

I’ve heard about finding arsenic in the hair of the deceased when poisoning was suspected, and on another note, I’ve heard of strange collections like belly button lint, but collecting toenail clippings was a new one for me. My husband suggested toenail clippings as a blog topic and this is what I found out.

In New Jersey, in an area designated by the EPA as a Superfund site, researchers are collecting toenail clippings from residents to try and measure hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen, exposure. Lots of people reside above an underground (in groundwater and soil) plume of this toxic waste. It is the same stuff that sickened Californians whose story was told in the movie "Erin Brockovich." As many as 600 structures and 3,600 residents are at risk of exposure and the data from slow growing toenail clippings can help determine where the exposure is having the greatest impact.

I am thinking for many of these folks the wait for results will be a (toe) nail biter. I hope the toxins don’t turn their homes into a toe away zone and the test results all come out toe-tally negative.

Aerogel

Aerogels are some of the world’s lightest solid materials because they consist of 99.98% air by volume. It was first created by Samuel Stephens Kistler in 1931but its usage in mostly more modern when in the 80s carbon aerogels were developed. Despite being a light weight material, aerogel has some pretty heavyweight uses. It is used in all sorts of ways from undersea piping and thermal insulation to solar dust collectors on the International Space Station. Aerogel is derived from a gel that has had the liquid part replaced by a gas. It’s translucent, nicknamed frozen smoke, solid air, or blue smoke, and feels like Styrofoam to the touch.

I have a feeling aerogel and its derivatives probably have many more uses than I have discovered searching with Google. And I wonder about its carbon footprint and how it degradable it might or might not be. I wonder about its impact on the natural world and how much its benefits weigh in the big picture of things.

Being on Andros, surrounded by alternately crashing or gently lapping ocean beneath starry skies at night, waking to birdsong before the dawn, and trekking dusty roads to town in the heat of the day sometimes sends my mind wondering and wandering. Just some thoughts...

Aliens Among Us

Apparently Andros is thought to be the Area 51 of The Bermuda Triangle, a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The triangle does not exist according to the US Navy which is interesting because the US Navy also has a home away from home on Andros. Popular culture has attributed various ship and aircraft disappearances to the paranormal and/or activity by extraterrestrial beings (also known as ALIENS). Documented evidence indicates that a significant percentage of the incidents were spurious, inaccurately reported, or embellished by later authors. There are some that would disagree with that assessment. After all the legend of the Chickcharney lends itself to belief in a visit from an alien presence, and it’s a belief that persists today. Not to mention that when I get off the plane here (in the Bahamas) I too am an alien…..and I found this coin here too….

Double B. S….Bull Shark with Two Heads!

A couple of blog posts (about pupfish) back I mentioned bull sharks in the waters surrounding Andros Island, Bahamas. Serendipitous? I don’t think so because the word serendipity evokes a pleasant aspect and for me a bull shark just doesn't  A fisherman off the Florida Keys caught a bull shark complete with a living double headed fetus. It is a specimen now, (no longer a living fetus), that has been examined by scientists and pictured and written about in the Journal of Fish Biology. It is a rare occurrence (the unfinished splitting of the embryo into twins that result in two headed critters) and this fetus represents the first known specimen for the bull shark. The good news here is that the two headed bull shark probably wouldn't have survived (except maybe in a Jaws sequel of prequel) because the body was stunted and the shark wouldn't have been able to move with enough speed to avoid predators. That is some consolation, I guess since I would prefer not to meet any bull sharks this weekend (or any weekend) while splashing in the shallows of the turning basin at CCBeach in the Bahamas with a visiting grandson who just happens to be on spring break. It’s eerie enough knowing that my grandson’s name happens to be the same as the Chief’s last name (played by Roy Scheider) in the movie Jaws! Cue Twilight Zone music…

St. Pete

This one of the reasons I love to come to St. Pete, to spend time with my grandsons. When you get five of them together they find ways to have a great time out in the backyard with a couple of balls. When they fart they blame it on the dog and laugh. They love to hug you when they’re sweaty. They play hard and leave a bathtub ring.  

St. Pete’s motto, Be prepared to be pleasantly surprised, is a good one. We tried out a restaurant that was new to me called PDQ and the food was plentiful, tasty, and inexpensive. The bonus came when one of the staff passed out free t-shirts to all our boys and wished them a happy spring break.

We visited Lowry Park Zoo (technically in Tampa) and were pleasantly surprised there too. In addition to getting to see the animals, they have some fun rides and we didn’t have to purchase any tokens to ride them. Even though there was a little chill in the air the kids enjoyed the splash of the log ride. I rode the tiger rollercoaster (once) and the kids went a couple of times more. My youngest grandson rode a pony, a zebra, and an ostrich (and a couple of others- maybe the manatee and gorilla) on the merry-go-round. He loved it when he was really little and called it the me go round. I am glad he still loves it and it was fun to see him wave to his older cousins every time we went around. The flying bananas were a blast too. We engaged in a spirited discussion about how penguins can shoot their poop 4 feet while we watched the African penguins line up for feeding time.

We squeezed in trips to two parks too, Fossil Park and Crescent Lake. That’s why I love St. Pete. It’s filled with pleasant surprises.

Ghost Marriage

I have always been of the mind that funerals and memorial services were more for the living left behind than they were for the loved one deceased. But then I read about ghost marriages arranged by the living for the deceased (that were unfortunately single at the time of their deaths), so they won’t suffer loneliness in the afterlife. This is a centuries old Chinese practice that persists even today though it was officially banned in 1949. Families arrange and celebrate the weddings of the deceased much like any other wedding except they usually disinter the new bride and move her to a new eternal resting place beside the groom. Of course this means grave robbing of sorts (since its usually family doing the digging) and in my mind evokes images that one might expect to see in a zombie movie or meme. In China there have been some instances of grave digging entrepreneurs selling brides (corpses) on the black market for as much as $30,000.  There is even among the legitimate (but still illegal) ghost marriages, a bride price or dowry to be paid by the family of the groom to the family of the bride. The customary betrothal gift for a ghost wedding is typically between $4,500 and $5,500.

The last thing mentioned in the article is the thing that really pushed my imagination into overdrive, "Ghost marriage between two dead people is stable and lasts forever. There is no such thing as divorce." Maybe this has something to do with why a lot of exes don’t want to be buried beside each other. What if the ghost couples have unhappy marriages in the afterlife (without the recourse of divorce)? Might be an interesting version of going to h--- (you know, opposite of Heaven’s Pearly Gates)? That brought me to thoughts of my own divorced parents, who both were single at the times of their passing 10 years apart to the day. Nah, I think for them until death do we part might be interpreted as in death remain parted and I figure they’d both want to keep it that way, no ghost marriage for them, at least not to each other!

“Rather than wait for government aid, we have to do it ourselves.”

This is a quote from a survivor, not of Hurricane Katrina or Sandy or even more recently the Sequester, but a survivor of Japan’s Tsunami that occurred 2 years ago. These days he could be anybody. He is still living in temporary housing in his island village off the coast of Japan after 2 years but he isn’t waiting on the government to help him get his and his fellow oystermen’s livelihoods back on track. Instead he went to the internet. There he found funding and help from many including Operation Blessing (.org), a nonprofit that helps people here and abroad. I don’t particularly like oysters but I like his quote and his spirit. And though I haven’t overcome and survived the kind of disaster he and many others have, there is something about his quote that spoke to me.

Then today I read that finally after four years of stop gap measures the Senate has passed a budget. Of course it won’t pass the Republican controlled House of Representatives but it has put an end to the government shutdowns that we were heading for at the end of this month (only days away, as usual). I think the word gridlocked (the current favored political descriptor) should be changed to constipated because our elected officials are having a hard time passing anything. In the article, the word Sequestration was unspoken like the name Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldermort. Instead of the name that must not be said it was the word that I couldn’t find anywhere. I am likening sequestration to global warming, is it or isn’t it?

Still there are a lot of people needing help here and feeling the pinch of governmental constipation. To those who have had their own disasters (credit card debt, old age, bad health, bad habits, joblessness, lack of savings) slowly sneak up on them and attempt to overwhelm them, I say, “Rather than wait for government aid, we have to do it ourselves.” 

St. Marys

St. Marys is definitely one of those places that, to me, hasn’t lost its small town appeal. The truth is that over the past 30 years it’s grown in leaps and starts, but somehow still maintains its cozy small town feel. It’s my home anchor because a large contingency of my grandkids live here and within close proximity.

St. Marys is known as the second oldest city in the U.S. with St. Augustine being the oldest. Allegedly as the Spanish were exploring the area around St. Augustine, an encampment was established here also with almost direct access to the ocean. Some other sources say the city was established as a result of lands confiscated after the American Revolution (we even have a tree stump left from the live oak tree that was planted in honor of George Washington at the time of his death). And then there is evidence that the town was actually built on an abandoned Native American village. Their shell mounds still remain undisturbed by time in Crooked River State Park. Why Native Americans would abandon such a lovely place is anybody’s guess but I’m thinking they may have been run off by bloodthirsty sand gnats. There is also information that would indicate that French-speaking Acadians or Cajuns settled in the area after fleeing the Caribbean where they’d been deported to from Canada. Since returning from the Caribbean yesterday, I wonder if today, they’d be scratching their heads wondering, what was I thinking? (Like I am this morning!)

Yet St. Marys has withstood the test of time – captured by the British, shelled by the Union Army during the Civil War, an Army Ammunition repository during WWII, and now home to Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base (captured by the Navy?) and home to many families some transplants and some with roots that go all the way back to colonial times. 

Sometimes we live in a place and don’t take the time to appreciate its real value and history.  In our fast paced society with internet and social media we stay too busy looking at what our friends are doing to think about where we are and what we’ve got. The irony there is that those same tools can be used to discover all kinds of interesting things about the history of the places we live. We make more every day. St. Marys has a rich and colorful past filled with tales of ghosts and horses in the church steeple, and an ever changing present that makes this sleepy little town more than just the place I live. It makes it more like home. Hence today’s to do list: Give thanks, refill pills, pay bills, pat the pooch, make bunny hats…

Small Hope Bay, Bahamas’ Hidden Treasure

Anyone who has cruised to Nassau in the Bahamas knows of and perhaps has visited Senor Frog the Pirates’ Museum. The Bahamas in fact does have a rich history of being frequented by various pirates and buccaneers during the late 1600s and 1700s, Andros Island included. In 1713 the Bahama Islands were declared a Pirate’s Republic. Pirates that raided the Spanish treasure galleons out of Cuba maintained settlements on Andros. Morgan’s Bluff and Morgan’s Cave are both named after the infamous privateer-pirate, Henry Morgan. He also has a brand of spiced rum named after him (Yo-Ho-Ho). Henry Morgan is also credited with giving the Andros settlement called Small Hope Bay its name because he once claimed there would be “small hope” of anyone finding the treasure he had hidden there. 

The First Day of Spring  2013

So go ahead and spring it on me at 7:02 AM. The birds on Andros are noisily raiding bird feeders and one of our neighbors gave us an orchid that it has just the right pinks to compliment the conk shell it’s tucked into on our table. It came from one of the numerous orchid trees that grow everywhere you look around here and since space inside is at a premium and space outside is quite lovely most any time of day this time year, especially early in the morning or later in the evening you can find lots of outdoor table setups. On the first day of spring the subtle fragrance of plumeria scents the morning air, and competes with the aroma of the coffee in my cup. WIFI and a good computer battery make blogging plein air quite enjoyable. Plein air is a French term usually refers to painting outdoors (another thing I like to do) but here I stretch the meaning to include painting with words. Yesterday’s storm washed away the traces of potting soil left on the patio as a result of my tomato transplanting and it’s rumbling thunder growled March’s exit as it simultaneously heralded spring’s entrance. Across the way I spot a potcake and companion out for their morning walk and bicyclists heading off to start their day with a wave or a nod as they go by.

Welcome Spring.

Chicken lays miracle eggs!

Cue announcer voice, “Isn’t that amazing!” (One of my husband’s many talents, the voice, not laying eggs.)

Squawk All About It!!

Just when I thought I’d exhausted the topic of chickens (at least blogging about my own little backyard flock) along comes Super Chicken (and no, he’s not everywhere, not everywhere). She is in China and she lays amazing eggs. I have a chicken that occasionally lays a double yolker but the Chick from China’s egg not only contained a double yolk but additionally contained another egg. When they cracked the inner egg (on video) it was regular with single yolk, but still and all there was definitely more than enough for a paltry poultry breakfast for two from one sitting. The news article also contained a tongue in cheek reference to how unsurprising this chick really was in the light of how well-known the Chinese are for their productivity.

Somehow after laying that giant egg I figure that poor hen squawked loud and long and not just with the pride of accomplishment. At least, I figure she has finagled out a way to stay out of the stewpot.

The Joke’s on…

AFE, Armed Forces Entertainment, sent a group of comedians to do their thing on Andros (on a Sunday night, no less) and they were pretty entertaining. My husband informed me up front if they weren’t funny we would be making an early exit and we stayed for the whole show so I wasn’t the only person chuckling at a bunch of off color jokes. The comedians had fun poking fun at people in the audience (two guys in particular, Frank for his crocs and sweatpants and an18 year old dressed in neon green) and they were good sports about it. The comedians also made jokes at their own expense, even the one with the red raccoon sunburn that he probably got at CCBeach.

Probably my favorite joke of the evening (that I can describe here) was about a tattoo one of the comedians was going to get when he turned 80. It would be his first because when he was 80 he planned to do everything he never did and he didn’t have a tat yet because he was still afraid of his Dad. Anyway he was going to get a Tramp Gramp Stamp (just below the belt on his backside) of a loaf of bread on fire and since his skin would probably be so loose he could fold it over, he would when he wanted to change the tat to look like a totally different thing.

And I learned something too, other than the fact that any word can be used to describe how drunk you were last night, depending on the emphasis. My new fact was that there’s a height minimum for sperm donors. This info was part of a joke but still I figured I’d Google it and sure enough donors can be no shorter than 5’9”.

Grandparents in the News Again

Maybe it’s because the Baby Boomers are getting older (and older) or because I too am an aging grandparent, but I seem to notice there are a lot of grandparents in the news lately. There were two online news items that caught my eye recently, both disturbing for different reasons.

First the grandfather that was fired from his job after his employers saw him wrestle a shark away from some children at a beach in Australia on You Tube. Apparently he was on a sick leave of absence and the bosses that be figured if he wasn't too sick to go on vacation (and save the lives of some kids on the side) he wasn’t too sick to be at work. His job, from which he and his wife were both fired, was with a children’s charity also. How’s that for irony?

The second story involved a grandmother standing trial for killing her grandson. Apparently he had been living with her when his parents moved away. He fell in with a bad drug using crowd and traces of the over-the-counter drug, Spice, a powerfully addictive synthetic designer drug was found in his bloodstream at autopsy. The grandmother shot and killed him after he kicked her in the stomach and head demanding $2000 and her car. I am sure more details have come out during the trial but regardless of how the trial ends, this is truly a tragedy for this family.

In the meantime I am just planning on continuing in my search for some good grandparent news items. 

Ambergris

This is one more thing I’m planning to start looking for on my morning beach walks here on Andros. It comes from sperm whales (either pooped out or barfed out) and can sometimes be found washed up on the beach. And most commercially collected ambergris comes from the Bahamas, so why not get in on it? A kid, walking along the beach in the U. K., found a one pound rock that was discovered to be ambergris and was worth $63,000.

Ambergris is stinky when freshly pooped or vomited, with a smelly fish feces odor. As it ages, the odor changes to a scent likened to the fragrance of rubbing alcohol. Ambergris was at one time used as a fixative in perfumes but has long been replaced by synthetics, however in some places it is still used in perfumes and lotions because of its potential as an aphrodisiac. Ancient Egyptians burned ambergris as incense and in medieval Europe people carried a ball of ambergris around to ward off the plague. Historically Ambergris has been used as a food flavoring and a medication for headaches, colds, and even epilepsy.

So if you should see me tossing a living starfish or sand dollar back in the water, collecting a few shells, or sniffing an occasional lump of seaweed or rock, don’t be concerned. I’m just looking for an opportunity to supplement my 401k.

Pupfish

No, I spelled that right and no, a pupfish isn't a baby dogfish, but he is an interesting little fellow. Once again my husband and I were tossing around ideas for this blog and the pupfish popped up, because according to my husband, a pretty smart guy, the pupfish is the only endemic freshwater fish in the Bahamas. That word only tugged at my doubt trigger so I let the research begin.

First a little info on the pupfish, they are tiny and can survive in salty water. Their 50 similar looking species can be found across North, South, and Central America. Most pupfish eat algae and detritus. The pupfish that live in the lakes in the Bahamas however, are an exception and have evolved special jaws to eat the scales of other fish, snails, and clam shrimp. Other fish, so the pupfish is either feasting on other pupfish or perhaps he isn't the only after all! (My husband might accuse me of mincing words like the tiny pupfish minces through tough scaled and shelled critters for dinner.) Pupfish in the Bahamas have been evolving up to 130 times faster than other pupfish and researchers want to know why. (I just want to know if they are the only endemic freshwater fish in the Bahamas.)

So I went to Google and typed in freshwater fish in the Bahamas. And I found a list of 36. Among those listed was one that immediately caught my eye, the fat sleeper, I should’ve figured Google would know I've been sleeping in while Arnie goes to work! They have that tracking app! Then I looked a bit closer and saw the Bull Shark on the list and through further research I found that Bull Sharks do upon occasion travel up freshwater rivers, and I just figured all sharks stayed in the ocean. I next noticed several aquarium fish listed, (sailfin molly, green swordtail, and southern platyfish), which got me looking further at a column labeled STATUS, where I confirmed that the previous 3 aquarium fish were, as I’d already figured, introduced (probably by someone emptying their aquarium). Among the 36 (mostly fish like snapper, sharks, and mullet that I figured would also be listed as salt water fish) there was only one other than the Bahama Pupfish listed as endemic. That honor goes to the Bahama Gambusia, a mangrove swamp minnow. I figured with salt water intrusion, the freshness of the water in the mangrove swamp could be debated.

I finally found the Living National Treasures website (where my husband got his info) and according to that my husband is correct, there is only one endemic freshwater fish in the Bahamas and it is the Bahama Pupfish. The word to mince here is endemic, unless you are a scale biting pupfish, in that case feel free to go mince and munch on any non-native fish you can get your tiny jaws on.  

Nabbin’ Napkins

Couple of things got me thinking of blogging about this, first, on a spaghetti night (or two ago) I was out of napkins so I hastily tore off, folded, and tucked into the napkin basket (some people have napkin holders but we have a predominantly placed basket) some paper towels from the kitchen. Steph, a good friend and guest, mentioned that she had the exact same kind of napkins at her house with a chuckle. Then on another evening while enjoying a delish dinner of goulash at the invitation of convivial friends, Jim and Shannon, Jim instructed Addison (their son and fellow goulash connoisseur) to get JoMomma a napkin, and he brought a couple of the brown paper variety that either came from Panera or Taco Bell, the latter I found out later. Yes, I am the kind of eater that requires a couple of napkins, but that is not my focus here. I am actually blogging about the fact that I rarely buy paper napkins because I usually keep my basket filled with napkins nabbed from other eateries and how nice it is that although you have to pay to super-size your order you don’t to super-size your napkin quantity. I just ask for extra napkins when I get to the window at the drive through unless I am going in, and avoiding dashboard dining by opting for the sit down at the restaurant dining experience. I have also noticed that my daughter Nicole is a napkin nabber with her own basket of purloined napkins at her place and when my granddaughter, Madison, notices my basket is low she goes out to her Daddy’s car and brings some nabbed napkins in to replenish my supply. I try to keep a few nabbed napkins in my car too for the occasional unexpected sneeze or spill.

Lastly here is a quick rundown on nab-able napkin quality. Several establishments offer the brown napkins (no different from the bleached white, except color) and if you don’t mind the extra advertising you can nab extra napkins that are the next size up from Subway. I have it on good authority that the best nab-able napkins can be found (and nabbed) at Lambert’s in Orlando. The worst (least absorbable so you need more of them to do the job, especially when eating a burger and Cajun fries) in my opinion, are at 5 Guys, but you never have to ask for extras because the napkins are readily available in a towering dispenser at the pickup end of the counter. I never leave 5 Guys without one pocketful of napkins, the other pocket full of peanuts, and a happy tummy.

P.S. Happy Pi Day! There’s a napkin for that too!

Be Careful What You Wish For Write About!

I was having a hard time deciding whether to title this post, My Close Encounter with the Gallinipper or The Almost Revenge of the Gallinipper, when I opted for neither. I only mention the timely appearance of the Gallinipper because what I thought was a flapping piece of rubber from my windshield wiper blades darting across my less than optimal night vision as I drove through the rain toward West Palm Beach on my way back to the Bahamas in yesterday’s wee hours. Instead of being on the outside of the windshield, the dawn’s early light revealed the Gallinipper himself, in the car with me. If it wasn't the Gallinipper it might have been his twin because it looked just like the one on MSN, that or he was a regular mosquito hyped up from sipping from the open can of Red Bull (or was it a Monster Energy drink) that Rhonda left in my car a couple of days ago. Either way I was able to avoid his bite (that feels like being knifed-and I am relieved to say, I have also avoided actually being knifed) but the people of Viera, Florida (exit 191 on 95) should be on the lookout because that is where the Gallinipper made his exit. MSN wasn't lying when they said the Gallinipper was set to invade south Florida.

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers Gallinippers

Grass is to hoppers as Galli is to nippers. This analogy works as long as you are not the Galli! In this case the gallinippers are giant mosquitoes set to invade Florida. This is not a blog post about a science fiction movie like The Fly or Teenage Mutant Zombie Mosquitoes either. These monster mosquitoes are the size of a quarter and have a painful bite. They are voracious feeders and can bite through clothing and have been known to attack not only humans but other animals, including pets, livestock, and even fish. They feed (on blood-for the Twilight fans) all day and night unlike regular mosquitoes that are most active at dawn and dusk. Their eggs lay dormant for years waiting for flood waters to enable them to hatch. The up side of this (possible invasion if Florida has an unusually rainier rainy season) is the fact that the gallinippers are not known for carrying diseases like other mosquitoes and the larvae of the gallinipper is also a voracious eater of nuisance mosquito larvae and even tadpoles and other small aquatic critters. Scientists don’t know if insect repellents will work to protect people from the adult gallinipper, but I, for one, hope they do because that fancy net gnat proof suit I bought isn't going to be sufficient. In any case the gallinipper is at least big enough for you to see it coming. Speaking of the coming of the gallinippers, I’m thankful that they aren't migrating to Georgia or the Bahamas soon, although I have a sneaking suspicion (cue scary movie music) they may eventually. 

99 Cent Azalea

Around thirty years ago when our house was still brand new we had 10 pine trees removed from our yard. You might wonder where in our current yard full of trees, pines included, ten more might have fit, but I guess the trees that remained just took over. Back then after we had the stumps ground, we went to Hall’s nursery on Blanding Blvd. and bought a bunch of 99 cent azaleas. They were in gallon buckets and just past blooming so we weren't really sure what colors the following spring would bring. We planted them pretty randomly under the trees that remained and near the ground stumps of the trees we had removed. They all bloomed lovely shades of pink, the predominant azalea color, the next spring and for many springs to follow.

Anyway I am adding a photo of one that we really gave us our 99 cents worth on the first official “spring ahead” daylight savings day of 2013. 

Mother Facing Charges of Trying to Get her Children to Kill their Grandparents

Scary headline, I thought. Yes, I did have a sign when my kids were younger that stated, Now I Know Why Ferrets Eat their Young, but it was a joke despite it sounding rather like back handed humor. After my grandchildren came along I got a new sign that said, Grandchildren Are God’s Reward for Not Killing Your Kids, a sentiment that implies how sweet it is enjoy a pleasant relationship with your grandchildren, while deriving a secret sense of satisfaction knowing their parents (those kids of yours referred to in the two previous sayings) are facing the less than all the time rosy dispositions of those same children, your grandkids. I’m thinking about that what goes around comes back around kind of thing that I remember my own mother wishing upon me too.

But back to the headline that was a twisted opposite of my silly signs. I read more of the article online and found out that a Lakeland, FL mother was in a Pitt County, N.C., courtroom to face charges of trying to get her children to kill their grandparents. The mother sent her 7 and 9 year old kids a knife (by mail) with which to do the deed. The mother lost custody of the kids in 2007 due to a history of drug offenses and the grandparents have permanent custody of the children. Reading about this was disheartening. I thought about all the compromises the grandparents must have made in order to commit to raising their granddaughters, and then something like this happened. I guess a knife in the mail beats a knife in the back but the level of hate involved in this scheme is pretty frightening. The children’s stability and security must have been shaken and the grandparents' too, not to mention the mother’s intentional attempt at skewing the children’s sense of right and wrong. The children’s father wasn't mentioned.

And I found it tough to come up with a good quote to end this on. But here goes…  

Grandchildren give us a second chance to do things better because they bring out the best in us.            ~author unknown

In this case it seems like there is a possibility for second chances (especially for the grandkids). I hope everyone finds a way to make the best of it.

Why did the man throw his cellphone out the window?

I have a self-imposed rule I created about writing about random acts of kindness in this blog: I am committing 96 for others this year and once a month I blog an update about one act of kindness performed for me. Basically I am not writing about any of the acts I do but focus, instead, on the random acts of kindness I catch others in the “act” so to speak of doing. To date this has been working for me but the other day I saw an older man (nicely dressed-though not for the weather because it was cold out and he was in shirtsleeves) walking down the off ramp from St. Marys Road to Hwy 40 and I decided to offer him a ride (in case he was a nursing home escapee or silver alert person of interest or as a random act of kindness opportunity). Anyway he declined the offer (so I figure this doesn’t count toward my 96 acts, hence I am blogging about it) as I held up traffic. He called out that he’d dropped his cell phone and that he’d found it and continued walking to the traffic signal where a nice late model hybrid was parked on the shoulder waiting for him, much nicer than the car full of grandkids, I sometimes refer to as G’ma’s taxi, that I was driving when I stopped.

So I kept going but the incident got me thinking about why the man threw his cell phone out his window in the first place. I came to the conclusion that he must have tossed it because it wasn’t near any residence or business when he found it so it was unlikely that it fell off the roof of his vehicle. I thought back to the time I drove off with my purse/diaper bag on the roof, forgotten there in the confusion of making sure all passengers, including those in infant car seats, were properly buckled. Even then my bag fell off rather quickly and after some fellow motorists honking and a toddler informing me about it, I was still near civilization and unlike a cellphone it was easy to spot in the rearview mirror. I was able to quickly pull off and gather it up. My next thought was about the time I threw the Bakugan toy out the car window. Two boys wouldn’t quit arguing over it and were they shocked after handing it over only to watch it sail out the window, over the guard rail, and into Dark Entry Creek. But the man didn’t have any passengers in the car to settle an argument over a phone with and it was too cold out for him to have accidently dropped it while conversing with the window down. Maybe he was angry or tired of talking to someone on the other end of a cellphone conversation. And so, pondering the mystery of that moment, I was left to wonder, why did the man throw his cellphone out the window? It would have been a lot less complicated to have just hung up.

Steganography

Steganography is one of the words my husband tossed to me in one of our frequent blog idea discussions. Unlike him I did not immediately expose my lack of knowledge about this term by asking “Huh?” or in any way admitting that I didn’t know or had never heard of it. I guessed it was something about handwriting analysis or dinosaurs but jotted it down for further investigation either way. Although steganography has been around since the time of the ancient Greeks it isn’t as old as the dinosaurs and has nothing to do with stegosaurs, my apologies to any paleontologists reading this blog. It was not my intention to mislead. I also got to thinking that other than at school or in attaching signatures, not that much handwriting is going on these days (at least in my case). Even signatures can be digital and the majority of my pen in hand time is when I am making lists, mostly I keyboard on this computer. Handwriting analysis does include and rely heavily on a handwritten signature though but steganography isn’t that either.

Steganography defined is the science of hiding information. Secret messages are hidden in physical objects and known only to the sender and intended receiver. It is considered the dark cousin of cryptology.  Though on the surface these two terms seem similar, the purpose of cryptology is privacy and the purpose of steganography is secrecy. With computers it’s possible to create hidden messages that are even less noticeable and require software programs to reveal them. Today steganography is used in combination with cryptology to supplement encryption. An encrypted file may still hide information using steganography, so even if the encrypted file is deciphered, the hidden message can remain unseen.

In case you were wondering, there is no steganography (hidden message) in this blog post even though it would be really cool if there was. I have enough problems finding things in plain sight, like an unopened container of grated parmesan on the shelf before my eyes in my own pantry. 

Horsemeat for Human Consumption

I've been thinking about this topic for a while because I am conflicted about it. As a child I clearly remember seeing horsemeat in the meat cases at the A&P (grocery store). And a while back I blogged about the special connection horses have been known to make with autistic kids and the use of horses in a therapeutic setting. My own experience riding a horse is limited to a single event as a teen riding through a truck patch, stealing green tomatoes, outside Chicago and is probably best saved for another blog. Suffice to say when a police car cruised through a vacant neighboring subdivision (still under construction), the horse identified my panic and got me safely away. The evidence (purloined green tomatoes) was fried up nicely and disappeared but in the heat of the escape (I don’t think the cop ever saw us) my shoe disappeared too. That’s the short version of my limited horseback riding adventure.

Back to the horsemeat for human consumption issue, restrictions on slaughtering horses and processing them for human consumption were lifted in 2011.  So even though it’s legal to slaughter and process horsemeat, I can still think of plenty of reasons not to eat horsemeat. There are not restrictions on the drugs given to horses to enhance their performance (in racing or pulling carriages) or ease their arthritis and these chemicals stay in their flesh and can be poisonous to us if we eat it. What if Mad Horse disease accompanies the consumption of horsemeat like Mad Cow is related to eating beef? How humane is it to kill and eat companion animals? I have chickens (with names) that I couldn't kill for food (but I still eat chicken). In other countries people eat insects and other animals that I wouldn't and in this country we eat animals (pork comes to mind) that other cultures find taboo.

On the plus side eating rare (uncooked) horsemeat is supposedly healthier than eating beef prepared rare. Horsemeat is supposedly sweeter than beef. I guess I am using supposedly in my writing as an indicator (to me and you) that eating horsemeat is something I have no intention of doing. I already avoid red meat, and after thinking about my chickens and writing this post I am seriously considering going combat vegetarian with my grandson, Jonas!   

Kudos for Crooked River State Park

Crooked River State Park (at the end of Spur 40 AKA Charlie Smith Sr. Hwy beyond and beside the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base) received the GA Department of Natural Resources most outstanding park operation award. The regional manager for the GA State Parks and Historic Sites in region 2 says, “Crooked River is a park that does all things well.” On that I must agree. They manage and maintain the grounds, save money by doing things that might be done by outside contractors in other parks, and keep and maintain equipment that is shared among other parks in the area. They assist local law enforcement in training and search and rescue operations.

In previous blog posts I have mentioned the park’s miniature golf course and gopher tortoises. Crooked River State Park also plays an important role in the setting in my book, Play on Words, and again in the setting of another project I have in the works.

The article in the Georgia Times Union mentions that Crooked River State Park is known for its nature center, bird blind, birding and other nature programs, and guided kayak trips but there is much more to enjoy there. The park has several trails, two favorites of mine are the Semper Virens and marsh trails. Hiking in through the woods deep into the canopy where you are surrounded by the sounds of nature, transports you away from civilization where and you can discover shell mounds of earlier native cultures and trees that have survived from those times to the present. Depending on the tide you can find fiddler and Dungeness crabs and an occasional fisherman sitting on a cooler along with a beautiful view of the marsh grasses and the wildlife that frequents the marsh and spy dolphins in the river and an occasional manatee. The camp grounds, cabins, and pavilions screened or open, and the playgrounds round out the experience with plenty of paved and unpaved places for bicycling too.

Crooked River State Park is also a partner in education to the public and the schools in our county. They organize and host educational experiences for visiting school groups on field trips through-out the year and take their expertise on the road to the schools bringing animals and artifacts out to the schools when asked.

So kudos to Crooked River State Park, another part of what makes St. Marys a great place, a quiet treasure well deserving of this award.

Provocateur Rodman, an Unlikely Ambassador

Last night I was bugging my husband for blog ideas again. What follows is an excerpt (that includes an idea) from our discussion on Skype last night.

[8:42 PM] A. Mount: You could write about Dennis Rodman's visit to North Korea. A more unlikely ambassador than him is not likely to be found. Guess he's trying to get peace talks to rebound and bring everyone back onto the court without either side fouling out before they get started. It was interesting that in the field of play, Kim asked Rodman to pass "the ball" to Obama since Obama likes basketball and told him to take "shot" at restarting the peace effort by giving him a call to talk about the round ball game.

[8:43 PM] Jo Mount: I agree about Rodman being an unlikely ambassador.

And I immediately rejected the idea of blogging about Dennis Rodman. I remembered seeing a woman trying to sell one of Rodman’s autographed jerseys on a pawn show on the history or one of those channels (before I ditched the dish) and when the guys asked her how she got it she said she was one of his exes. That got a laugh but I don’t remember if she made the sale or not.

Eventually my husband and I signed off from Skype for the night. I flipped on the TV and who did I see on Celebrity Apprentice (the All-Star version), none other than Dennis Rodman, defending another accused villain, Omarosa, rather calmly and rationally in verbal scuffle with Piers Morgan in the boardroom.

Third time charmed, I figured Rodman was worth a Google. I found out he spent two days in North Korea with the Harlem Globe Trotters. Apparently Kim, recent heir apparent of North Korean political prestige, is a basketball fan. There was also an exhibition game played with two Americans, each on opposite teams of North Koreans, and the game ended in a tie 110-110, interesting. The media and our own State Department has definitely painted Kim in more villainous shades than the reality show personality, Omarosa. In North Korea there are human rights issues and underground nuclear testing, among other things that are much more real than reality TV to consider.  But Rodman says that Kim is not his father or grandfather and held out the possibility of Kim and Obama sharing a love of basketball as “common ground.” For a moment I thought about how things might be different if politics was more idealistic like sports. That thought was countered by all the cheating and scandals trending in sports today. Maybe sports and politics are too alike.

And a more unlikely ambassador than Dennis Rodman is not likely to be found. 

The Buzz on Bees

I recently read about how, due recent episodes of colony collapse, bees, when they decide to set up shop in areas where they are seen as a nuisance, are being moved by beekeepers and environmentalists rather than removed by extermination. These attempts to save bee colonies are a bonus for the bees and the rest of us who either depend on them for pollination or have a sweet tooth for local honey (like me). The added bonus of ingesting local honey is the possibility of desensitizing oneself to some common allergies, specifically the pollen related ones. Bees collect 66 pounds of pollen each year per hive (that much less to invade my nasal passages!).

At the Saturday Community Market (9 AM to 1 PM downtown in front of the pavilion) in St. Marys this weekend was the first time this winter that I didn’t see Honest Dan the Honey Man (and his dwindling wares) downtown. I fortunately still have some of his locally produced golden sweetness and hope it lasts till his return to the market later this month because it is a staple for us on fresh warm biscuits most weekends. Dan is also my go to local expert when I have questions about bees. In St. Marys bees don’t produce honey all year round but they do eat honey all year to survive. In the winter the hive is quite inactive and bees cluster together for warmth maintaining a temp of 93 degrees Fahrenheit in the cluster’s center year round.

Here is a fact, recently unknown at least to me that I found out in my discussion with Dan; sometimes you have to feed your bees (especially if you've harvested a lot of their honey). How I came to find this out began with the behavior of bees in the Bahamas. On Andros, a place I enjoy frequenting, Cuban emeralds (iridescent green hummingbirds) and bananaquits (tiny blue and yellow bird acrobats) abound and visit numerous hummingbird feeders strung among the residences there. There’s even a hummingbird feeder hanging in the tree in front of my husband’s 711along with a seed feeder, wind chimes, etc. You might wonder what that has to do with bees, well shortly after a hurricane passed by last season the local bees kept in hives by some of the beekeepers in the neighborhood began visiting the hummingbird feeders too, much to the chagrin of some of the local bird watchers (and feeders). Apparently the high winds blew the blossoms (and subsequently the pollen) off the foliage on Andros forcing the bees to go looking for other sources of food. I also found out that bees like even the smallest blossoms (think clover and others I always thought of as weeds) and if the beekeepers on Andros had fed their bees they could have headed off the need for the bees to make a run on an alternative source of sweetness, the hummingbird feeders.

That’s my buzz for today on bees. 

Seeking Middle Aged Couple for trip to Mars

Private project would send middle-aged couple to Mars was the headline I read in the paper last month. I jotted it down on my blog idea list. I skimmed the article but and set it aside thinking it might be hard to come up with a perspective because I am past middle-age (and into old age). The idea sat there on the list and in the back of my mind percolating. So last night when I booted up my laptop I figured I’d go to Google and find out just what the age range for middle-age is. There I found in one definition I am just one year out of middle-age and in a couple others I am still middle-aged (albeit still close to the old age end). That’s when I decided to go dig through the recycling and find that article again. Maybe I could come up with a perspective on spending sixteen months in a confined space capsule with my husband after all.

Private project would send middle-aged couple to Mars, why not, I asked myself as I began to read. And here are some of the article’s salient points.

1.    .  The capsule is only half the size of an RV.

2.    .  There are no showers and limits on toilet paper and clothing.

3.      Drinking water is made from crew members’ recycled urine and sweat.

4.      There’s almost no privacy (but on the plus side author of the article mentions sex in zero gravity).

5.      The couple will need piloting skills and skills like McGyver to fix things on the fly.

6.      And last of all, the mission is at least five years away yet.

Upon reflection, I have come to the realization that this trip is probably not for me for almost all of the above reasons.

Then I asked my husband on Skype what he thought of the idea and what follows is part of our conversation (I’m leaving out the zero gravity sex stuff).

[9:09 PM] A Mount: You would have to put up with my crap.

[9:10 PM] Jo Mount: They didn't mention that. 16 months of nasty dumps.

[9:11 PM] A Mount: Remember the movie Joe Dirt? He carried a huge crystalized turd around in a wheel barrow that he though was a meteorite.

[9:12 PM] A Mount: We could be sending turds where no turds have gone before to explore new worlds and new civilizations and we'd be going where no one has gone before - near Mars. 

Thank goodness in five years we’ll be in the wrong age category, for sure. 

Palindromes

Today’s date in digits is a palindrome, 3-1-13, which simply means the digits 3113 read the same forward or backward (not as cool as the date in a sequence but the next coolest thing, to me). Any series of numbers can be reduced to a palindrome by taking the number (sequence of digits) and subtracting the same digits in reverse sequence. Continue repeating the reverse and subtract process and eventually you will end up with a numerical palindrome (or sequence of numbers that read the same backwards and forwards). I like to do it on this computer’s calculator, the easy way. But here is an example that is easy and only takes a single subtraction, 221. 221-122 (221digits in reverse) = 99 and 99 is a palindrome. Now (if you have time) try it with the year you were born. It takes one side of a piece of notebook paper to get a palindrome from mine (complete with regrouping or as I remember it being called borrowing) using the handwritten method (and human brain vs. the calculator).

Not a math person? Well words can also be palindromes like the name, Hannah or racecar and phrases can also be palindromic, just look on Google. Then there are songs that come very close to being palindromes. The song I heard way too often while traveling with kids is the one about the Hole in the Bucket, Dear Liza where Henry can’t fetch water for obvious reasons and in the end cannot repair the hole in the bucket because he cannot fetch water in it too. Cat’s in the Cradle is another song that tells a story that comes full circle.

Here are a couple of palindromes as my final words in this post…

Sex at noon taxes…So, Ida, adios!