Posts Tagged ‘Change’
Ruts Of The Past
Four Feet, Eight and One-Half Inches. That is the distance between the rails of a standard gauge railroad in the United States. What an odd number. There is a very specific reason for that measurement. US railroads were built by English expatriates, and that’s the way they built them in England. The English used that…
Read MoreImperfectly Happy
Champagne was “invented” in 1531 by Benedictine monks in the Abbey of Saint-Hilaire near Carcassonne, France. They bottled wine before the initial fermentation had ended, causing the byproduct of the fermentation, carbon dioxide, to be trapped in solution in the bottled wine. It would be a century before Christopher Merret detailed what is now called…
Read MoreCars & Coffee
I attended Cars & Coffee with my youngest son Chris this past Saturday. This is an informal gathering of car enthusiasts in the parking lot of a local shopping center. I would guess more than 200 cars are there on a typical first Saturday of each month. My son drives a late model Honda Civic Sport EX. He…
Read MoreOf, By, and For
On July 4, 1776, thirteen American colonies declared themselves to be the United States of America and claimed freedom from the tyranny of the British Crown. It was a dangerous and bold move. They went on to say that they “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are…
Read MorePulley Bones Of Life
Most of us have taken a turn with a friend or sibling trying to be the one who ends up with the large piece of the wishbone after a chicken dinner. The furcula (“little fork” in Latin) or wishbone is a forked bone found in birds and some other species of dinosaurs and is formed…
Read MoreRed Flag
Sunday, September 6, something happened at the Italian Grand Prix that has not happened in an F1 race in eight years. Under the sun at Monza, the podium (first three places) did not include Mercedes, Ferrari, or Red Bull drivers. Third place was a driver who had only been on the podium once before (in…
Read MoreA Hole In The Dam
In 1865, American author Mary Mapes Dodge published “The Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland.” You may or may not have heard of this novel, but you have almost certainly heard of one of the sub-stories in the book: the story of the little boy who saved Holland by putting his finger in…
Read MoreMice And Men
But Mouse, you are not alone, In proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes of mice and men Go often askew, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy! I broke my elbow this weekend. It’s an embarrassing story that involves a skateboard, a slick garage floor, and me having no business being on a skateboard.…
Read MoreNo Use Going Back To Yesterday
The other day, I was watching a butterfly busily fliting from one pansy blossom to the next in a flowerbed next to where I parked my car. It was a Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly, common to Oklahoma and most of the eastern and southern United States. For a moment I was transported back to the still…
Read MoreRound Up
Recently I had the opportunity to visit a ranch, owned by a friend here in Oklahoma, during their spring branding. I was fascinated as I watched the cowboys (and girls) work the cattle much the way it has been done for decades. By the time I arrived, the cowboys had already rounded up the calves…
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