2. In the 1920's there were four to six million members of the Ku Klux Klan in the U.S. depending on your sources. Today there are 3,000 members.
3. 40% of all births in U.S. now occur outside of wedlock, up from 10% in 1970. Source: DNT
4. "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
5. There's a shrinking of the world's population coming as women's fertility rates decline.
6. Some people speak only after they know what they want to say. Other's talk in order to figure out what they are trying to say. No wonder the former sometimes misunderstands the latter.
7. The actual length of a day is 23 hours 56 minutes and four seconds. Over a period of four years these increments are assembled to create the leap year adjustment known as February 29th. (To be absolutely precise there are also occasional "leap seconds" added periodically to keep things tidy. I'd bet you didn't know that.)
8. A board foot is a unit of volume for measuring lumber. Bored feet is what you get when you're not dancing.
9. Which is faster, a glacier or a snail. You may be surprised. (Details here.) For the record, slower than both is a piece of legislation working its way through congress.
11. When Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic his total flight time was 33 hours, 30 minutes, 29.8 seconds. Foolishly, instead of sleeping before staying awake that long Lindbergh chose to go see a Broadway play. From his last nap to his landing in France he had not slept in 55 hours. When was the last time you stayed awake for 24 hours? 48 hours anyone?
12. Amazon decided to create two new headquarters out east. Not hard to quibble with their decision. They are seeking to fill 50,000 high-paying positions. They'd be hard-pressed to find them in Duluth.
13. I just finished an article titled Five Reasons People Hate Advertising which will appear in the December issue of Business North.
14. Do you remember how the Beatles' cartoon film Yellow Submarine ended? Ringo, I believe, says, "I've got a hole in me pocket." He'd evidently picked it up from the Sea of Holes earlier in the film.
With that, I believe it's time to start our day. Make it a good one.
EdNote: TONIGHT Kris Nelson (Chairs by Kris), who is aiming to paint 1000 chairs before she leaves this mortal coil, will be at Magnolia Salon tonight, at Oldenburg House in Carlton. It's Free, but you can RSVP at oacc.us
ALSO, there is an artist reception at the Tweed for the Intersections show from 6 - 8 p.m. tonight. It's also Free.
In January 1998 I was up close to 40 hours. I left Texas after having been up for a good part of the day, and on the way back I got caught in a blizzard in northern Missouri and all through Iowa and up to about Hinkley.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have enough money with me to stop and get a room, just barely enough for gas, so I had to drove through.
It took me 7 hours to get through Iowa where the freeway wasn't plowed. I bought gas once, and just barely got up the entrance ramp to get back on the freeway, where there were very few vehicles still moving. Any time I got near one, there was white-out, which was terrifying.
I had to go as fast as I dared going down the rolling hills, to get up enough speed to make it to the top of next rolling hill. On several of the uphill climbs I had to downshift, and was spinning and fish-tailing before I made it to the peak ... and then back down again.
The freeway was plowed in Minnesota. By that time I was nearly hallucinating, trying to keep myself awake to get to the first rest area so I could take a short nap. I thought I saw tree branches reaching down to grab me, but forced myself back wide awake enough to make it to that rest area, just a few miles ahead.
I turned the truck off to save gas, and woke up as soon as it got too cold to sleep, which was about 20 minutes later.
I continued north, and fought my way through the storm in Minneapolis. It was the time it normally would have been rush hour, but there weren't many cars on the road, just lots of snow.
I got to Hinkley, just about out of reach of the storm. Just in front of me on the overpass, though, a pickup truck hit some ice and spun out of control, and bounced back and forth off the guard-rails. I didn't dare hit the brakes because my tail-light wires had been tearing off with the snow-load. I'd patched them at least a couple of times in Iowa, but wasn't sure if I'd have brake lights or not, and there were vehicles behind me. Also, I didn't know where the ice started.
So, I slowed down slightly without hitting the brakes, and hoped that the truck in front of me would leave me enough room to get through.
He did. His bumper had come off and was in the left lane, and he was stopped off on the right shoulder facing straight into the highway, but there was a wide enough path for me to squeeze through. I looked at him and he looked OK in the cab, and there were people stopping behind me to help him, so I just kept on going.
I got to Twig Store with just a baggie full of Farmer's Market nickels left for money, but it was enough to buy a six-pack of beer.
I got home 29 hours after I left Dallas. It was nice and sunny, in Twig, and in the 20's. Bobby asked me what took me so long.
I drank a can or two of the beer as I told Bobby the story of the ride home. Then I went to bed.
When I woke up a few hours later, I thought I was still in Texas, and didn't recognize my own house. I couldn't figure how the floor could be brown, when Sandy's carpet was blue. I walked around a little and got my bearings, before the memory of the drive back came back to me.
It was a nightmare, but it was real.
I wouldn't have wanted to do Lindbergh's trip in an airplane. But he was younger than I was.
Quite a story. Susie and I had a similar challenge when we returned to MN from Mexico 37 years ago this week... around Thanksgiving. Not the long hours without sleep but the shift from warmer to colder weather. We were driving North on 35 through heavy rain and when in Iowa the temps had been dropping so that the rain was now turning to ice on the highways.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, there are always signs ahead of bridges that say "Bridge freezes before road surface" and sure enough, this is a true statement.
We were driving a 1972 Ford station wagon pulling a U-Haul trailer with all out possessions in the world in it. We came to a bridge that was sheer ice and on the other side there were five or six cars in the ditch. We kept going because there was no exit and the next one we came to had six or eight cars spun out on both sides of the road.
The highway was still ok so I kept going but each bridge had the same issue and I was unsure how far to the next exit. Obviously the trailer helped keep us straight though each bridge became harder to navigate.
ALL of them had spun out cars at the end.
Fortunately we made it to an exit, found a motel and went the next day. We were in Iowa and the next morning, when the roads were deemed ok we headed North. As we passed through Mnpls, we saw the strangest site. The Minneapolis Metrodome had collapsed due to ice damage to the cloth roof...
That event marks the day of our return from a year in Mexico.
Thanks for the note, Lloyd.. which triggered my own memory.