My hot-stone massage therapist Rosa asked in heavily-accented English:
"Are you in the service?"
I paused, smiled and leaned in for my response:
"Air Force."
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Sunday, July 08, 2007
On Squirrels
The fall of 1902 found budding New York naturalist Francis Fogg on a mission to prove a rather remarkable theory: The common grey tree squirrel is the only mammal in North America that does not urinate.
Fogg conjectured that the tree squirrel's diet of bark and thistles, coupled with the relatively low humidity levels of its habitat range, allowed the arboreal mammal to secrete its waste in the form of wooden pellets from its salivary glands.
Laughed out of the offices of National Geographic, Fogg spent seven years raising funds for a four-month expedition to the wilds of Delaware. The money finally raised, he spent another six months assembling a 50-man team of drunkards, beggars and thieves. Fogg, an experimental cobbler by trade, knew he had neither the skill nor the emotional wherewithal to lead his men into darkest Delaware. There was only one man for that task: Stuart Longrain Coffee, the finest guide in Staten Island.
Fogg knew that Coffee would take some convincing and the price for his services would be high. So on a muggy September morning, Fogg arranged a meeting with the wizened old tracker. Fogg, hoping to appeal to Coffee's sense of adventure and hatred of immigrants, was struck down and killed by a motorized tramsicle not 50 feet from his door.
Fogg conjectured that the tree squirrel's diet of bark and thistles, coupled with the relatively low humidity levels of its habitat range, allowed the arboreal mammal to secrete its waste in the form of wooden pellets from its salivary glands.
Laughed out of the offices of National Geographic, Fogg spent seven years raising funds for a four-month expedition to the wilds of Delaware. The money finally raised, he spent another six months assembling a 50-man team of drunkards, beggars and thieves. Fogg, an experimental cobbler by trade, knew he had neither the skill nor the emotional wherewithal to lead his men into darkest Delaware. There was only one man for that task: Stuart Longrain Coffee, the finest guide in Staten Island.
Fogg knew that Coffee would take some convincing and the price for his services would be high. So on a muggy September morning, Fogg arranged a meeting with the wizened old tracker. Fogg, hoping to appeal to Coffee's sense of adventure and hatred of immigrants, was struck down and killed by a motorized tramsicle not 50 feet from his door.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
On Whittling
In his self-titled autobiography, Harry Hearnstable recounts with characteristic clarity his surprise at the difficulty in getting whittling recognized as an Olympic event: "Where am I?" 1
Yet, for the time-crunched urbanite, whittling combines the time honored enjoyment of woodwork with cardio benefits of macramé. Indeed, an hour of even casual whittling can burn up to 4 calories.
The current whittling renaissance has been fueled by such celebrity devotees as Harrison Ford and Kelly Rippa, whose DVD "Whittling My Way," is available on amazon.com.
1 Whittling first and last appeared at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Haute-Savoie, France. Hungarian-born Bennett Canvas, representing the Ivory Coast, was awarded the Gold medal after he whittled a five-foot elm branch into splinters in under seven hours. 2
2 Canvas was posthumously stripped of his medal when his cadaver tested positive for cornmeal.
Yet, for the time-crunched urbanite, whittling combines the time honored enjoyment of woodwork with cardio benefits of macramé. Indeed, an hour of even casual whittling can burn up to 4 calories.
The current whittling renaissance has been fueled by such celebrity devotees as Harrison Ford and Kelly Rippa, whose DVD "Whittling My Way," is available on amazon.com.
1 Whittling first and last appeared at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Haute-Savoie, France. Hungarian-born Bennett Canvas, representing the Ivory Coast, was awarded the Gold medal after he whittled a five-foot elm branch into splinters in under seven hours. 2
2 Canvas was posthumously stripped of his medal when his cadaver tested positive for cornmeal.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
On Irony
Although the Common Fig is the national fruit of Malta, the tiny yet densely populated archipelago of Mediterranean islands produces and consumes fewer figs per capita than any nation in the Northern Hemisphere.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
On Anti-Bacterial Soap
Though popularized by the dramatic writings of Sir Peirce Noël Coward, the origins of unscented anti-bacterial soap can be traced back to 19th century Finland and the prodigious work of the noted astrobiologist and Arctic theologian, Heinz Carlsbad.
Carlsbad, whose lifelong dream of becoming the first amateur sous-chef to reach the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility was shattered by a freak dogsled accident in the summer of 1892, was experimenting with the thermal properties of common legumes when he stumbled across a startling paradox: When pressurized to 98.0665 kilopascals and combined with paraffin wax, peanut oil separates into two compounds — arginine, an amino acid that the body uses to produce nitric oxide, and hydrojuglone, a sweet-smelling bio-toxin which kills approximately 99 percent of all household germs.
Blinded by love and crippled with a rare form of social anxiety disorder, Carlsbad misjudged the cultural significance of his discovery and poured his lifesavings into the development, manufacture and distribution of the wildly unpopular, arginine-based soft drink of his own design, Virvoitusjuoma.
Carlsbad died penniless and alone at the age of 52.
Carlsbad, whose lifelong dream of becoming the first amateur sous-chef to reach the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility was shattered by a freak dogsled accident in the summer of 1892, was experimenting with the thermal properties of common legumes when he stumbled across a startling paradox: When pressurized to 98.0665 kilopascals and combined with paraffin wax, peanut oil separates into two compounds — arginine, an amino acid that the body uses to produce nitric oxide, and hydrojuglone, a sweet-smelling bio-toxin which kills approximately 99 percent of all household germs.
Blinded by love and crippled with a rare form of social anxiety disorder, Carlsbad misjudged the cultural significance of his discovery and poured his lifesavings into the development, manufacture and distribution of the wildly unpopular, arginine-based soft drink of his own design, Virvoitusjuoma.
Carlsbad died penniless and alone at the age of 52.
Monday, May 14, 2007
On Hummingbirds
Contrary to popular belief, the hummingbird (Thecostraca Cirripedia), neither hums nor is a bird.
Incorrectly classified in 1823 by Lars Pridbjørn, last surviving member of the aptly named and ill-fated HMS Pettycoat, "hummingbird" is a trans-literal translation of the Danish "hommingbaerd" -- "bearded marsupial."
The name stuck however and became increasingly popular with sailors of the day, who kept the winged marsupials aboard their vessels for their milk.
Incorrectly classified in 1823 by Lars Pridbjørn, last surviving member of the aptly named and ill-fated HMS Pettycoat, "hummingbird" is a trans-literal translation of the Danish "hommingbaerd" -- "bearded marsupial."
The name stuck however and became increasingly popular with sailors of the day, who kept the winged marsupials aboard their vessels for their milk.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
On In-Flight Magazines
According to amateur historian Harold Wilmington, commercial aviation unofficially began in the United States in 1925 when German emigre J. Dorfman ferried Texan robber baron Madison Moore from Salem, North Carolina to Princeton, New Jersey, in his single-engine Schmidt-Ridder biplane.
During a brief refueling stop in rural Virginia, Dorfman, an early adopter of the Hermetic Reformation movement that would sweep the Midwest following the Great Depression, gave Moore a copy of his rambling manifesto, Der Armsessel, which laid out the basis for the redistribution of wealth according to strict astrological mechanics.
Though Moore would later describe the screed as "incomprehensible," he credited his 17-hour trip with Dorfman with opening his eyes to the future of air travel and, in 1946, the oil magnate purchased a struggling regional airline, Fremont Air Transport.
Slim profit margins, ironclad union contracts and a woefully short-sighted business model (based mostly on optimism) kept Moore from turning Fremont around; the airline folded six months after its acquisition. Yet, a simple marketing device saved the Fremont story from the ashcan of aviation history and ensured its place in aeronautical literary lore.
Desperate to separate Fremont from the competition, Moore sought to build a sense of community among the consistently inconsistent passengers of Fremont Air. One such innovation was the introduction of a free, bi-weekly literary supplement. "Cloud Nine," whose layout, tone and typeset were remarkably similar to Der Armsessel, was hailed by New York Times' literary critic Theodore Elms as the "third most influential publication of the age."
Soon, complimentary in-flight magazines were gracing the seat-back pockets of continental and transcontinental airlines alike.
And the man Moore hired to as the first groundbreaking editor of "Cloud Nine"? You guessed it: none other than Chilean-born Poet Laureate Lazlo Tate.
During a brief refueling stop in rural Virginia, Dorfman, an early adopter of the Hermetic Reformation movement that would sweep the Midwest following the Great Depression, gave Moore a copy of his rambling manifesto, Der Armsessel, which laid out the basis for the redistribution of wealth according to strict astrological mechanics.
Though Moore would later describe the screed as "incomprehensible," he credited his 17-hour trip with Dorfman with opening his eyes to the future of air travel and, in 1946, the oil magnate purchased a struggling regional airline, Fremont Air Transport.
Slim profit margins, ironclad union contracts and a woefully short-sighted business model (based mostly on optimism) kept Moore from turning Fremont around; the airline folded six months after its acquisition. Yet, a simple marketing device saved the Fremont story from the ashcan of aviation history and ensured its place in aeronautical literary lore.
Desperate to separate Fremont from the competition, Moore sought to build a sense of community among the consistently inconsistent passengers of Fremont Air. One such innovation was the introduction of a free, bi-weekly literary supplement. "Cloud Nine," whose layout, tone and typeset were remarkably similar to Der Armsessel, was hailed by New York Times' literary critic Theodore Elms as the "third most influential publication of the age."
Soon, complimentary in-flight magazines were gracing the seat-back pockets of continental and transcontinental airlines alike.
And the man Moore hired to as the first groundbreaking editor of "Cloud Nine"? You guessed it: none other than Chilean-born Poet Laureate Lazlo Tate.
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