Sarah Angleton's Blog, page 7

Better than Bloodletting and Mercury Poisoning

It’s been a little bit of a long week around these parts, first with the internet woes that have been finally more or less resolved. Judging by the general complaints of nearly everyone I know who uses the same provider, their technicians and maintenance crews have had a couple of even longer weeks than I have, but I am grateful for their efforts.

At our house, the week has mostly been long because we have been nursing a sick kid. He wasn’t scary sick, just persistently so. What started as mild cold symptoms quickly turned into crazy swollen tonsils and a fever that wouldn’t quit. He was tested for all the things, and came up empty, leading to the conclusion that what he had was just a run of the mill miserable virus. Yuck.

So, he traded spending time with grandparents and a visiting cousin for time shivering on the couch and working up the courage to swallow. Meanwhile, I spent my time following him around sanitizing everything he touched and forcing preventive doses of zinc and vitamins C and D on the rest of the family.

British Library, London. Scanned from Maggie Black’s “The Medieval Cookbook,” but not nearly as tasty as a nice chicken soup. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

We’ve been lucky with our kids in regards to childhood sicknesses. They’ve always been pretty healthy and nothing has ever kept them down for long, so it was unusual when nearly a week later, he was still fighting a fever. I did what any good mom would do and turned to the real experts, those who lived long before the age of modern medicine.

Don’t worry, I didn’t bleed him to balance his humors or force him to take mercury pills. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. Instead, I went with the suggestion of twelfth century Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides and made a pot of chicken soup.

Maimonides wrote that the cure for asthma and leprosy and pretty much everything that ails you is chicken soup, and he wasn’t the first to say it. The 2nd century Greek philosopher Galen, with whose work Maimonides was surely familiar, suggested chicken soup as a cure for migraine, constipation, and fever. And Chinese culture has held chicken soup up as restorative for even longer than that, notably adding noodles to the mix, a brilliant move that wasn’t popularized in western culture until Campbell’s did it in 1934.

Maimonides, whose mama probably made a really good chicken soup. Blaisio Ugolino, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I decided to give it a try. The trouble is, my kiddo is not a huge fan of soup. If I were to give him a made-from concentrate Campbell’s chicken noodle from the can, he probably wouldn’t find it worth the painful effort to swallow, even if his throat didn’t hurt.

And so, I made it from scratch. Now, before you get all impressed with me (actually, go ahead and be impressed if you want), it turns out, chicken noodle soup is not really that hard to make. I have made my own broth plenty of times by throwing the picked-clean parts of a rotisserie chicken into the pressure cooker with some onion, celery, carrot, and seasonings. I figured it wouldn’t be hard from there to make it into a soup by adding more vegetables and chicken. And because I sometimes like to be that mom who is a little bit extra, I decided to add some homemade egg noodles as well.

I admit part of the motivation here is that there is currently a list circulating on Facebook that asks how much of a cook you are, to be determined by how many of the things on the list you have ever made from scratch. The list includes things like cooking a pot of beans (which I have done) and making your own noodles (which I had not). And, you know, I like to feel superior. Also, my mom used to make homemade egg noodles and they always tasted a little bit like love.

I don’t mean to brag (except that I kind of do a little bit), but this is a really tasty homemade chicken noodle soup.

It turns out homemade egg noodles aren’t nearly as impressive as they sound, either (but you can still feel free to be impressed). They are, however, pretty much medical magic, because after nearly a week of my otherwise healthy teenage son’s fairly rock solid immune system fighting off a viral infection, he got better right around the time he ate his mama’s homemade chicken noodle soup.

Yes, that could have almost certainly been a coincidence, except that researchers at the University of Nebraska have taken the time to study the effects of chicken soup on illness. This groundbreaking study from back in 2000, suggests that chicken soup may in fact possess some as yet unidentified properties that might legitimately reduce inflammation in the body and make a sick person feel temporarily a little bit better. Or at the very least it’s better than bloodletting and mercury poisoning.

My son did enjoy the soup, and only partly because it was the first thing he’d been able to swallow without pain in several days. Regardless, he’s fully recovered now and this is shaping up to be a much better week.

How’s it Going?

This week began with jury duty. Now it seems to be ending with widespread intermittent internet outages, severely limiting my ability to put together a blog post. So…how are things going in your corner of the world?

Maybe We Should Taco ‘Bout It

In 1632, Italian scientist Galileo Galilei published his book Dialogue Considering the Two Chief World Systems. Produced under a license issued by the Inquisition, the work presented a discourse between different points of view on a wide range of scientific topics of his day.

One of these conversations involved the competing theories of 2nd century Egyptian mathematician Ptolemy who believed the earth to be the stationary center of the solar system, and that of 16th century Prussian mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus who said, “Nuh-uh.”

Clearly this is heresy. Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

It turned out that Galileo, a devout Catholic who was clearly well versed in the arguments of each, and pretty handy with a telescope, kind of sort of agreed a little bit completely with Copernicus. In the course of his Dialogue, it started to sound that way to his readers, too. Among those readers was Father Vincenzo Maculano who was appointed by Pope Urban VIII to suss out the truth behind Galileo’s potential heresy, general bigotry, and absolute hatred of puppies. Probably.

And he did just that, because three hundred and ninety years ago today, under the threat of torture, Galileo made a public statement denouncing his ridiculous, data-fueled suspicion that Earth revolves around the sun.

The Catholic church at the time, supported by the questionable literal reading of several verses of Scripture, was thoroughly convinced this was an error that had been inappropriately and willfully spread by Galileo’s heretical work. Also that Galileo most likely had other incriminating documents locked up at his house, or possibly in a box tucked behind his Corvette.

Although, the man really did know his way around a telescope. Justus Sustermans, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s not hard to imagine why Galileo, sixty-nine years old at the time and not in the greatest of physical health, went ahead and stated for the record: “. . .with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error, heresy, and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Holy Church. . .”

The book was banned, which made the world much safer from thinking. That was a good thing since the world was already pretty busy revolving around the sun. Galileo himself was sentenced to penance and imprisonment that was soon softened to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

And it served him right, because troublemakers who float theories that go against the grain of societally accepted truth, and who are consequently bigots and puppy-haters who have obviously broken all the laws, deserve to be harshly judged and silenced.

Except that three-hundred and ninety years later, I think it’s safe to assume most of us would agree the trial and forced recantation of Galileo was wrong. It only took the Catholic church three hundred and fifty-nine years to officially come to that conclusion, remove his book from the list of the banned, and pardon the man so he could leave the house and get a taco. Tragically, he didn’t live long enough to see the day.

I’d probably be happy listening to any of your crazy ideas over a taco. Also, I might be a little bit hungry. Kurt Kaiser, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Still, it’s nice to know that given enough time, humans will listen to and consider the ideas of fellow humans without automatically assuming the person presenting those ideas hates puppies, which I should add, it’s entirely possible that Galileo did not.

I’d like to think we might even be able to swallow our pride enough to make an effort in fewer than three hundred and fifty-nine years, even though I know it can be pretty uncomfortable to listen to someone challenge a widely held idea that you personally think is pretty spot on.

But it might just be worth the effort to listen, because maybe the person on the other side of that discussion really is a bigot who hates puppies. Or it’s also possible that person actually shares most of your beliefs, but just has a telescope and some pretty good evidence that should also be considered. And that person would probably really like to go get a taco.  

Brought Low by Cherries

It’s been a pretty nice spring around here so far, a little drier than ideal, but the temperature has been mostly mild and with a little strategic watering, the garden is doing well.

I’m kind of a clumsy gardener, but I keep trying. So far this year, I think it’s going pretty well.

A few days ago, I harvested my first (admittedly late) lettuce for a salad, and the locusts I call my sons devoured all the pea pods, strait from the plants. Last week, I pulled radishes that I promptly gave to my mother once I remembered that radishes are gross.

Now I’m watching the formation of green tomatoes, tiny peppers, blossoms that will someday soon become cucumbers, and the crazy growth of squash and melon plants that will eventually battle the potatoes for an epic garden takeover.

The blueberry bushes are producing, and the young strawberry plants are coming along. The blackberry brambles we planted last year are progressing nicely, and our apple trees are looking to be as productive as they ever have been. That means we have an awful lot of applesauce to eat still between now and harvest time. 

Nothing says spring quite like this.

But the one thing we don’t have this year is cherries. With the exception of only a few years in my life, I have always lived with at least one cherry tree in my yard. Their beautiful pink and white blossoms against a storm blue sky is one of my favorite sights of early spring, and I know that spring has truly arrived when I begin fighting the robins for the bright red fruit.

Then come the pink-stained fingertips from endless seeding, followed by a thick slice of tart cherry pie smothered with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream. Add in a buttery ear of sweet corn, and this midwestern gal just tasted summer.

But not this year. Because as mild as our weather has been, we did have one unfortunate cold snap that brought us a night of freezing temperatures just as those beautiful blossoms were fully developed and ready to turn the corner into juicy orbs of deliciousness. We watched anxiously to see what would happen, and slowly admitted the cherry harvest wasn’t going to happen.

Our tree, that only a few weeks earlier had been so full of promise that I went ahead and used up the last two cups of last year’s frozen harvest to bake chocolate chip cherry bread, had no more than a handful of fruits on it. And the birds ate those.

Now there’s a man who appreciated a good cherry. Until he didn’t. James Lambdin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s okay, though. I’ll miss the homegrown pie, but at least I’m comforted knowing we won’t go the way of US President Zachary Taylor, who died sixteen months into his presidential term at the age of 65. Taylor, a hardened war hero known as “Old Rough and Ready” because of his rugged, unstoppable nature, may very well have been brought low by cherries.

That’s not the only theory floated by historians and physicians. His own doctors believed he died from cholera, not uncommon in Washington DC at the time. What is known for sure is that on July 4th of that year, the president attended Independence Day festivities at the construction site of the nation’s favorite phallic monument, and while there, ate quite a large number of cherries, which he chased down with a good quantity of iced milk.

That sounds like a pretty great 4th of July to me, but it didn’t work out so well for Old Rough and Ready. Evidently it was a warm day and President Taylor took a stroll along the Potomac before heading back to the White House. Once there, he ate more cherries and enjoyed a lot of ice water to cool down.

America’s favorite phallic monument, the Washington Monument, and cherry blossoms. Sjgdzn, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Then that night, the president got sick. Like really sick, with full on abdominal cramping, nausea, and diarrhea of the variety that, I assume, makes you regret your life choices.

It’s possible, of course, the water was contaminated, as Washington DC is well known for containing an awful lot things that are difficult to stomach, or perhaps the iced milk was at fault. But another theory is that the acidity from the cherries Taylor consumed, combined with the acidity of the milk, caused the severe abdominal distress from which he never recovered. He died on July 9th, 1850, leaving Millard Fillmore, of unearned bathtub fame, in charge of the nation.

It is true that Taylor had made some political enemies during his brief stint in the White House. His support for the Wilmot Proviso, which would have excluded slavery in territories acquired from the Mexican-American War, along with his strongly worded promise to personally bring the hurt to anyone who attempted succession, have led some historians to suspect assassination.

I’m not convinced there’s very strong evidence for that, though I admit assassination by cherries would be awfully clever. I know of at least one blogger who may want to use that in a story sometime.

Regardless of whether assassins, or cherries, or bacteria, or all three are to blame for President Taylor’s early demise, the whole story does make me feel a little bit better about our own lack of cherry harvest. Still, I sure could go for a slice of homegrown cherry pie about now.

Orca-strated Attack

These past few weeks, or maybe months, I have fallen out of the blogosphere a little bit. Life has just been really busy. Fortunately, it has calmed down a little now, and I’m hoping to reestablish the routine of a weekly post, because apparently when I turn my back for just a couple of minutes, the killer whales go to war with humanity.

To be fair, this might not be entirely unexpected behavior. In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder refers to the orca as “an enormous mass of flesh armed with teeth” that is “peculiarly hostile” to whales, often ramming them until they manage to kill them, “dash[ing] them to pieces against the rocks.”

This man knew a storm was brewing. Pliny the Elder, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Humans have had a varied relationship with these animals throughout history. While Western culture has often feared orcas, most Indigenous American cultures have, through various mythologies, regarded them as powerful rulers of the sea, sometimes depicted living in houses and cities beneath the waves, and generally benevolent toward humans.

It turns out that both perspectives might reflect a little bit of the truth, because one thing that’s pretty clear is that orcas, which are more closely related to dolphins than to whales, are pretty smart. Reading about their natural behavior, one comes across words like clans, matriarchs, and friendships. Orcas have highly organized social structures. Throughout the world, though they may “speak” different dialects and enjoy different dietary habits, they still seem to communicate pretty well with one another.

An enormous mass of flesh armed with teeth. But it’s also pretty cute, as long as you don’t make it angry. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And a growing number of them are angry. It turns out that a global pandemic isn’t the only thing that 2020 brought us. It also saw a rapid uptick in orca attacks on boats, particularly off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Some researchers trace the attacks to a single female orca they’ve named White Gladys who after experiencing some unknown trauma at the hands of humans, started rallying the troops to get her revenge.

Now, I’ve grown up in the era of Free Willy, rather than the horror film Orca. I’ve enjoyed watching these beautiful creatures play in the wake of a ferry in the Pacific Northwest, and my adorable little niece (now grown) dubbed them “Er-Ers” because to her that is what they sounded like. I’ve always kind of liked orcas, and so it has been a little shocking for me to discover that they are vengeful, and organized, and seem to have a solid working knowledge of the mechanics of boats.

Because the behavior Pliny the Elder described in 70 AD is more or less exactly what the orcas are now doing to boats. They ram them in a particular and consistent fashion, targeting the rudders until the boats are disabled in the water. These are not boats that have provoked the creatures in any way, though they certainly seem to be getting the blame for something terrible.

I mean, if the orcas have declared war on the humans and their boats, I don’t know that it’s entirely unjustified. Charles Eden Wellings (1881-1952), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Often the animals have lost interest once the boats are rudderless, but there have been recent cases in which the orcas have followed, continually ramming the boat and pretty much terrifying the people on board as it’s towed back to safe harbor. In at least three instances now, boats have actually been sunk by orca attack.

Since July of 2020, there have been more than seven hundred reports of orca encounters in the same part of the world, five hundred of which resulted in engagement and damage to boats. Some observations suggest that adult orcas have been teaching younger ones how to efficiently take out rudders. The behavior is spreading.

One solution on offer is to tag and track several of the adult orcas we know to be instigators so that we can better predict where attacks might occur and boats can more easily avoid troubled waters. The problem is that the tagging process can be fairly traumatic for the animal, which is clearly already a little disgruntled with humans. It could make the problem worse.

Personally, I’m not terribly concerned as I live something like seven hundred miles from the nearest coastline. I’m unlikely to encounter an angry killer whale in my neighborhood. And not to be a traitor to my species, but I also would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little impressed with the orcas.

Obviously, people who do spend a fair amount of time on the ocean are going to have to figure out a good way to avoid conflicts, and marine biologists need to determine how best to stop the problem from spreading across the world. Then again, in a fast-paced world in which the biggest new problem facing humanity feels like artificial intelligence, it’s kind of nice to know that good old fashioned animal intelligence can still be threat.

Shaking the House

In 1864, abolitionist and women’s rights activist Lydia Maria Child wrote in what is known as a drudgery journal that she “swept and dusted the sitting room & kitchen 350 times. Filled lamps 362 times. Swept and dusted chamber & stairs 40 times.” I assume she did not do this all at once, although I’m sure that some days it felt like it.

Lydia Maria Child taking a much deserved break from the drudgery of shaking up her house. See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ll be the first to admit I am not a great housekeeper. I do attempt to at least clean the bathrooms regularly and keep the kitchen surfaces more or less sanitary, but beyond that it’s a little bit of a battle. Because there’s always something more interesting to do or write about or both.

I am, however, a spring cleaner. And it turns out I’m in really good company because a recent survey found that about 74% of Americans engage in deep cleaning in the springtime. Psychologists tell us that may be because with the return of longer days, our natural melatonin levels decrease and we are more energized. What better way to spend that extra energy than by laundering the drapes or mopping behind the refrigerator?

Historians tend to believe that this compulsion to clean every spring is rooted in an awful lot of human tradition that reaches back thousands of years to at least three distinct cultures. First, there is the Iranian celebration of Nowruz, or New Year that occurs on March 21, and includes a cleaning tradition called khane tekani, which translates as “shaking the house.” This strikes me as pretty much a perfect phrase for the occasion.

I mean, it’s still drudgery, but once in a while it’s just got to be done. Image by svklimkin from Pixabay

Another possible source of the tradition is found in the Jewish remembrance of Passover. Also in the springtime, this involves the purging of leavening agents from the home and tends to include a great deal of cleaning. And then in Chinese culture, it’s pretty common practice to scrub and sweep any potential bad luck from the home before it can carry into the new year in late January or early February, when the days are just beginning to noticibly lengthen.

It doesn’t seem like there’s a particularly strong case that any of these traditions is totally responsible for inspiring the human habit of spring cleaning. Instead, they seem to be evidence that it’s just a thing that we humans, or at least 74% of us or so, like to do.

I think for most of us, the day-to-day process of keeping a clean-ish home probably feels a lot like drudgery. I for one can’t even recall the last time I filled the lamps or dusted the sitting room. But over the last few weeks I have been shaking my house, and I gotta say, it feels pretty good.

Are you a spring cleaner?

Creativity Plays Opossum

A few days ago, as I was driving through the City of St. Louis and scanning the local radio stations, my brain caught on a conversation about ChatGPT and dead opossums. If you have been paying much attention around the water cooler lately, you’ve probably heard about ChatGPT. It’s the AI app that will quickly compose an email for you or help you solve that tricky math problem. It can give you the illusion of companionship, tell you a joke, write an essay for your English class, and offer useful advice like that you probably shouldn’t cheat on your English essay.

Which is, of course, exactly what I would say if I were a robot. Image by Janos Perian from Pixabay

I’m told it can even put together a blog post, but as the creative mind behind this blog has been artificially intelligent for years, I’m not sure there’d be much call for it in my little corner of the blogosphere. And yes, though I didn’t catch enough of the conversation to know why one might want this, ChatGPT can also compose lyrics for a song about dead opossums, or presumably also live opossums that are playing dead. It can even do it in a much shorter time period than your average folksinger, most of whom would likely never attempt to write one in the first place.

Personally, I’ve never used the app, and at this moment in time, I believe I never will, but it’s fascinating to listen to people talk about it. For most, it seems to be a bit like watching a horror movie. It’s super creepy and it makes your heart pound and your stomach hurt as your mind gnaws on the notion that human creativity appears as dead as an opossum. But on the other hand, it’s also kind of cheesy and entertaining and pairs well with popcorn.

There’s no doubt that AI is exploding onto the scene, but it’s been on the rise for years, beginning in the 1950s when computers were first able to store and retrieve data in addition to simply running through a program. The concept of artificial intelligence stretches back even further than that to at least 1872 to English writer Samuel Butler’s Erewhon.

This is kind of how I’m currently feeling about AI. Image by Roy Guisinger from Pixabay

The novel tells the tale of protagonist Higgs who discovers a hidden Utopia filled with people who are remarkably concerned about his pocket watch. It turns out that three hundred years before Higgs’s arrival, the Erewhonians gave up all technology, including pocket watches, for fear that it would evolve to eventually overcome the human race.  

At the time the novel was published, and for many years after, it was assumed to be a commentary on the evolutionary work of Charles Darwin. It probably was, but from the perspective of 2023, it might read a little more like an incredibly insightful horror novel that is difficult to get through because it was written in the 19th century and as a result probably seems sort of dull to most 21st century readers.

I bet it could be nicely modernized by ChatGPT if anyone wanted to give it a try. Throw in a nice song about dead opossums, and you might just have a great work on your hands.

Prairie in Progress

In May of 1675 or so, Father Louis Hennepin set out with fur trapper and explorer Robert de La Salle to explore some of the vast western lands of New France. The expedition set off from Quebec to explore the Great Lakes, find a couple of pretty impressive waterfalls, and wind its way through a good portion of the Mississipi and Illinois Rivers, to see what it could see.

What the explorers saw was, according to Father Hennepin, mostly a lot of grass. He wove together some good stories of adventure as well, many of which have made him a little suspect as far as trustworthy historians go, but about the grass, he was absolutely right. There was a lot of it, and he was perhaps the first writer to refer to the middle of what would become the United States as “prairie.”

Depending on who you ask, the tall grasses of North America once covered anywhere from 142 to 200 million acres across what would become fourteen states, where it provided homes for abundant wildlife, occasionally caught fire, and swayed in the wind causing a fair few settlers to feel a little seasick. I realize there is a pretty wide gap between 142 and 200 million, but one thing we can pretty much all agree on is that there’s a lot less of it now.

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

Roughly one third of my own Great State of Missouri used to be covered by prairie grass. Today, the state contains only about 1% of its original grassland, about 70,000 acres in total. Obviously, a lot of that is inevitable because the land got more densely settled and people built cities and suburbs filled with suburban houses that have suburban yards and suburban homeowners associations that don’t like tall grass.

Spring is firmly upon us here in Missouri which means so is lawn mowing season and unlike previous years, this one has found me doing a lot of back and forth and back and forth through my lawn, cutting down the very same plants I am attempting to grow. I have done this maybe four or five times so far this year. As of this moment I am the only one of my household to have completed this task.

That’s not because no one else in my household would willingly take on this job, but it’s because of an unfortunate set of circumstances that include the complicated timing of rainy weather, minor injuries and illnesses, busy activity and work schedules, and one fairly substantial grass allergy. In a normal year, I might mow the grass twice, because my husband actually loves to mow the yard, and is almost always the one to do it.

He’s also a lot stronger than I am and has a strange devotion to his old non-self-propelled push mower. It’s difficult to maneuver, at least for me, through our yard which is fairly large, oddly shaped, terribly uneven, and extremely hilly. Oh, and it also has some areas of really poor drainage. Mowing it is not fun. And it takes a long time. And I am, objectively, really bad at it.

I can’t say for sure that the fact that I don’t like to do it isn’t a factor in my ineptitude, but I am not intentionally bad at mowing. I do try to work in straight lines when I can and I even attempt perpendicular lines from one cutting to the next, but the lot includes curvy landscaping, and big trees, and garden boxes, and even a footbridge to nowhere. There’s a lot going on. In my head, my neighbors are watching out the windows snickering and shaking their heads at the number of times I go back over the same strip of grass for the third time and completely miss the one next to it.*

To my husband’s credit, he has not said a word about how poorly I mow the lawn, and really seems grateful that I have been doing it while he hasn’t yet been able to. If either of my sons were responsible for the sloppy work, I know he would have some thoughts to share. That’s probably why they are both better at it than I am.

But I assume he knows that he needn’t bother offering me constructive yard mowing criticism. I can see he is itching to take over the job again, and I am itching to let him. Because if that doesn’t happen soon, then I’m just going to put up a sign. I’m not sure the homeowners association will much like it, but the Great State of Missouri is fixing to regain a little more prairie. 

*My neighbors are all lovely people who probably have better things to do than snicker at my poor grass cutting skills. Though I’m sure they will also be relieved when the hubs is back on the job.

Keeping Eggstra Busy

Lately I have discovered that life as the mother of a burgeoning adult about to graduate from high school and head off to college is busy. It involves college visits and research into housing options and fraternity opportunities. It requires increased organization and skillful prodding as the end looms ever closer and senior-itis casts long shadows over deadlines that threaten derailment of plans if allowed to pass by unanswered. There’s also the financial planning and the dogged encouragement to apply for just one more scholarship and the editing of essays penned by a person with little interest in revising yet one more time.

This was the egg hunt I provided for my children last year. Not long ago one of my sons asked if we were doing the same fun thing again this year. Mom for the win!

At our house it also includes long hours and dedication to a robotics team that will soon travel to compete for the second year in a row on the world stage, and the fundraising efforts that allow said team to take advantage of such an honor.

There are smaller senior trips as well and an upcoming last high school prom to prepare for. Graduation announcements need sending and a party needs planning and there’s family summer that needs scheduling around a new set of obstacles. And then there are all of the Easter eggs that need to be stuffed with treats.

This last one I thought was behind me as my children are both teenagers now and are not generally all that concerned about the Easter bunny. Alas, being the mother of a senior and also apparently somewhat of a sucker, I have found myself volunteering on the parent committee to throw a Grad Night celebration for the graduates.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Grad Night, it’s an over-the-top fun, all-night, drug and alcohol-free lock-in event designed to help burgeoning adults with not-yet-fully-developed brains celebrate and also avoid making stupid decisions that may get them hurt or worse on the night of graduation. Similar events are held all across the United States, including several very large ones at the Disney parks in both Florida and California.

Ours is not taking place at Disney World, but it will be fun. And it does take a lot of planning and an enormous fundraising effort to make it happen, which is why I find myself among a small group of moms, who are also suckers, busily stuffing thousands of candy-filled plastic Easter eggs.

Ozzie is not going to be helping deliver eggs, but he does make a super bunny ear model.

Because Easter eggs are a big deal.

People have been decorating eggs for millennia, predating Christ by a long shot, but the tradition of hunting for decorated eggs as part of an Easter celebration is generally traced to 16th century Germany, and possibly even to Martin Luther. Maybe. It does at least seem that eggs became a celebratory Easter treat largely because they were forbidden during Lent, and that Easter egg hunts, then, as now, were fun.

The tradition spread to England via the German-born mother of Queen Victoria who later continued egg hunts with her own children. In the United States, too, it was German immigrants who brought with them the egg hunt, which quickly spread across the young nation where eventually people figured out that eggs, while enjoyable to eat, are just eggs, but that hollow plastic eggs can contain candy, which is even more fun.

And then the idea for the Egg My Yard fundraiser was born. It’s turned out to be a really popular idea that finds me spending a lot of time mindlessly stuffing eggs so that my senior and I can don bunny ears and join with lots of other bunnies this Saturday to provide a fun Easter surprise for hundreds of families throughout our school district and surrounding area.

Image by Cindy Parks from Pixabay

It should be a great event. Grad night will be, too, and so will prom, and the robotics world championship, and the upcoming craft fair and two trivia night fundraisers that still stand between me and the end of the school year.

It’s a lot. But with the end of the year rapidly approaching, and the day looming when my burgeoning adult son will become a recent high school graduate moving into student housing and onto bigger and better things, I find I don’t really mind keeping busy.

Godspeed, Ben!

On April 30, 1904, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition opened to the world on the grounds of Forest Park in St. Louis. To walk through Forest Park today, nearly one hundred and nineteen years later, you almost wouldn’t know the fair had been there at all. The only structures that remain are the Art Museum building and a large, elliptical, walk-through birdcage that forms part of the St. Louis Zoo.

Pub. by Chas. M. Monroe Co. “Tichnor Quality Views,” Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Made Only by Tichnor Bros., Inc., Boston, Mass., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The aviary wasn’t originally intended to be a permanent structure. It had been erected by the Smithsonian Institute to house the birds it would display as part of the fair. When the fair was over, the city of St. Louis, which had long wanted a zoo, purchased the structure and by 1913 had erected a seventy-seven-acre zoological garden around it.

In 1916 the school children of the city donated enough pennies to acquire the zoo’s first elephant, Miss Jim, and the same year, St. Louis voters approved a special tax to support their new zoo, which today remains one of very few community-supported zoos in the world, offering free admission to visitors.

In 1921 came bear pits; in 1924, a primate house; and in 1927, a reptile house. The 1960s brought an aquatic house, a children’s area and railroad, and a significant renovation to the original aviary. Over the years the zoo in Forest Park has been improved a great deal, has expanded to cover ninety acres, and welcomed around three million visitors per year. It currently houses about eight hundred different species, including 9,200 animals.

Too cute to be contained. (not Ben). Alberto Apollaro Teleuko, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

But there’s about to be one less critter among them because on February 7, 2023, a four-year-old Andean bear named Ben escaped his enclosure. Fortunately, this happened in the morning before the zoo had opened to the public and Ben was tranquilized and secured without incident. Zoo staff added stainless steel cargo clips with 450 pounds of tensile strength to the steel mesh through which Ben had found his way to freedom. All was well.

Then about three weeks later Ben forced his way through the new cargo clips and escaped again. This time, the zoo was open. Visitors were ushered indoors while Ben was once again tranquilized and secured. With the exception of the cargo clips, no real harm was done.

Evidently, like so many St. Louis residents these days, with skyrocketing crime rates, a district attorney under fire who can’t even seem to keep the zoo animals behind bars, and yet more negative national media attention, Ben the Andean bear doesn’t want to be in the city. He’s moving to Texas.

And who can blame him, really? This delightful Houdini has been described by zoo staff as a fun and playful character. Soon he’ll get to trade his steel mesh in this currently struggling city for a moat at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas, right next to the Mexican border where thankfully there is little crime, a well-functioning system in place for keeping everyone well-organized and contained, and almost no media attention whatsoever.

Godspeed, Ben!