July 19 '03
Volume 372
Moon Pies
Honoring van Gogh
If you're a
typical Southerner, you're familiar with Moon Pies
or MoonPies. They are a sweet treat consisting of a creamy marshmallow filling
between two graham cookies, all of which is wrapped in a coating of chocolate.
The Continental Baking Company of Chattanooga, TN has made them for the better
part of a hundred years. I ate them in my youth and now in my adulthood.
I'd eat more often than I do, but they're hard to keep around my house, what
with a wife, two kids, three grandkids, and other relatives helping consume
them. However, this article is not about a Tennessee original food item.
It's about a different sort of moon pie.
My sister, Sarah, works part-time at the local hospital in the Business Services
Department as an Admissions Clerk for the Emergency Room. Being somewhat
intrigued by a recent article in this newsletter regarding a painting by
van Gogh, she verbally shared some of the article with a few of her friends
at work. However, Sarah got the date wrong regarding the return of the moon
to the same place in the sky as depicted in van Gogh's Moonrise, and
had her friends thinking the occasion would be on July 11th instead
of July 13th.
Sarah decided to celebrate the occasion by baking a pie. Being the sort of
creative soul that she is she set about making a dozen individual coconut
meringue pies using tart-sized pie shells. In honor of Vincent van Gogh,
she told everyone the treats were van Gogh moon pies. They were a big hit
on the eleventh, and as she described the pleasure with which the pies were
received, I almost hated to tell her she had the wrong date.
Sarah doesn’t get in a cooking mood often, but when she does it's normally
a good time for all of us. Knowing how much Barbara and I enjoy coconut meringue
pie, she repeated her cooking feat the next night and brought the pies to
our house while they were still hot. They were delicious and we had enough
leftover to eat on Sunday night, too.
Rain moved into Pontotoc County as I tried to nap Sunday afternoon. Had it
not been for the thunder and wind, I might have slept throughout the whole
afternoon, but after an hour and a half of interrupted sleep, I gave up the
nap idea.
By dinnertime, it was apparent the cloud cover would be around for at least
the early evening. Around nine o'clock, I walked outside and was dismayed
to see an overcast sky. My plans had been to sit in the driveway and watch
the moon rise in the southeastern sky. Silently, I wished van Gogh a happy
anniversary and thanked him for his Moonrise painting.
Back inside, I heated one of the leftover coconut meringue pies for a few
seconds in the microwave, and while it wasn't as good as one fresh out of
the oven, I had no trouble eating it.
Once Felicia returned from her trip to Jackson and found out about the moon
pies, she insisted Sarah make some for her. Sarah complied with the request
on Tuesday and brought over several, fresh from the oven, for us to enjoy.
I don't think Sarah's son, Brett, likes anything with coconut so I doubt
he'll request any moon pies, but then maybe his wife, Kathy, will.
It takes nineteen years for the moon to reappear in the same phase in the
exact same place in the sky and at the exact same time it was on July
13th, 2003, but I hope it's not nineteen years before Sarah is
inspired to make more moon pies.
Unemployed
More Time To Visit
In our present global economy, small towns across the United States have
seen factories close their doors as more and more corporations turn to cheaper
labor overseas or in nearby Mexico. In Northeast Mississippi, garment or
clothing factories were hard hit several years ago. Furniture manufacturing
has long been a mainstay of the local economy in this area. I've noticed
that whichever firm is dominant this year is not guaranteed dominance for
long. Some plants expand; others are bought by a larger competitor, and some
just close their doors.
For American consumers, cheaper labor overseas often translates into cheaper
retail prices here in the states, but cheaper prices don't always come cheaply,
as many communities suffer whenever jobs are lost to foreign competition.
I see more and more items marked, "Made in China," and I have to wonder how
many laid-off workers around here would rather have their old job back even
if it meant having to pay a little more for the same item marked "Made in
U.S.A."
For several years, my daughter, Rayanne, has been employed by a furniture
manufacturer in Belmont, MS. In recent years, the Schnadig Corporation has
introduced a number of items produced in China. That, and the fact that the
furniture business seems to run in cycles of boom and bust, has resulted
in a number of layoffs at the Belmont plant. Rayanne worked in the payroll
department, and, since she was the employee with the least seniority in her
department, she was told that her job would be eliminated. She was offered
a different job, but after considering the opportunity to be a stay-at-home
mom she decided to allow her termination from Schnadig to proceed.
As I understand it, Rayanne never intended to just stay at home with her
two girls. She reasoned she could earn some money by continuing to sell Mary
Kay products on a part-time basis and she might even offer her services as
a piano teacher.
The only problem I foresaw with her being at home was that it would give
her more opportunities to visit Mom and Dad in Pontotoc. Since moving to
Belmont a few years ago, Rayanne has been good to visit us regularly. By
regularly, I'd estimate her trips to Pontotoc would average three times a
month. Now, with her not working at Schnadig, that frequency has risen to
about twice a week.
I don't mind the visits, though the grandkids do wear me out some days or
is it the nights that they wear me out? I don't even mind her complaints
that we never cook anything her girls will eat. I'm sorry, but macaroni and
cheese is not a menu item at Dad's house. I figure if the box of macaroni
and cheese is in the pantry, Rayanne can fix it for her two persnickety eaters.
Instead, the worrisome part of Rayanne coming to visit us resides in her
desire to continually rearrange the furnishings of our home. For me, once
I get accustomed to a rearranged room, it would do me for several years,
if not for the rest of my life. Yet, it's not so with Rayanne. She seems
to thrive on change.
Therefore, it came as good news, my learning that Rayanne would return to
the labor force this fall. She has accepted a teaching position at the
Kindergarten/ Day Care service provided by First Baptist Church, Belmont,
MS.
Who knows, now that I'm used to Rayanne coming by twice a week, I may miss
her when she gets back to a more typical workweek. We'll see.
Engineering
Blame The Romans
Powell Prewett, Jr. graduated two years after I did at Pontotoc High School.
He finished his undergraduate studies at Ole Miss with a degree in Engineering
(mechanical, I think). Shortly after graduation the folks at Redstone Arsenal
in Oak Ridge, TN, hired him. He worked there until his retirement a couple
of years ago.
Powell emailed the following engineering story to me a few weeks ago. I enjoyed
it, and I think you'll like it, too.
"The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches, which is an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used
Because English expatriates built the U.S. railroads, and that's the way
they built them in England.
Why did the English build them that way? Because the first rail lines were
built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, & that's
the gauge they used.
Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways
used the same jigs & tools that they used for building wagons, which
used that wheel spacing.
So why did the wagons have that particular odd spacing? Well, if they tried
to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old,
long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe
(and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have
been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? The ruts in the roads, which everyone had to match
for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war
chariots. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were
all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
The U.S. standard railroad gauge of 4 feet-8.5 inches derives from the original
specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Specifications & bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are
handed a specification & wonder what horse's behind came up with
it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were
made just wide enough to accommodate the back end of two war horses. Thus
we have the answer to the original question.
Now, the twist to the story, when we see a space shuttle sitting on its launching
pad, there are two booster rockets attached to the side of the main fuel
tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol
at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB's might have
preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train
from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had
to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The tunnel is slightly wider than
the railroad track, & the railroad track is about as wide as two horses'
behinds.
So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced
transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width
of a horse's behind. Don't you just love engineering?"
Bodock Beau
Teachers & Educators
Having been a teacher, I like to think I was an educator. However, I may
have never lived up to the example set as follows:
According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington recently
was faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning
to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after
they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving
dozens of lip prints.
Every night the maintenance man would remove them, and the next day the girls
would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to
be done.
She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance
man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem
for the custodian who had to clean
the mirrors every night.
To demonstrate just how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked
the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.
He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned
the mirror with it. Since then, there have been no lip prints on the
mirror.
There are teachers, and then there are educators...
Contributed by Jeffrey Brown
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