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| DAN FOGELBERG |
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| ARDEADORIS EGRETTA |
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What is the hottest part of the pepper?
??? PASS YOUR MOUSE OVER THE QUESTION MARKS FOR THE ANSWER! |
 ONE HUNDRED FAMOUS VIEWS OF EDO (TOKYO) NUMBER THIRTY-ONE |
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| Azuma Shrine and the Entwined Camphor |
| It is dusk on this spring day, and a flock of birds crosses the dimming northeast sky as two boats pass each other below on the North Jukkengawa Canal.
We pass along the canal road from the left, its surface bathed yellow in the late afternoon sun, and turn left through the stone torii, passing among the shring pennants between darkened rice paddies on the left and a lotus pond on the right. Crossing the small bridge, we enter the precincts of Azuma Shrine, where we join a group of others who stand staring up at the giant split trunk of the sacred tree known as the "Entwined Camphor." Beyond to the left stand the shrine buildings. The Entwined Camphor survived until World War II when it was destroyed in the fire-bombing that swept this area of Tokyo. Recently a new pair has been planted in the hope that they will again grow together as one. |
| The Dixie Cup was developed by Lawrence Luellen and Hugh Moore. Its original name was the 'Health Kup,' changed to 'Dixie Cup' in 1919. The name came from a line of dolls made by the Dixie Doll Company. |
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| RECONNAISSANCE BALLOON |
| Both the Union and Confederate armies used balloons for reconnaissance during the American Civil War, marking the first time that balloons were used in the United States for reconnaissance. The professional aeronaut John Wise was the first to receive orders to build a balloon for the Union army. However, the balloon never was used because it escaped its tethers and was shot down to prevent it from falling into Confederate hands. |
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| Some authorities claim that, although balloon observations contributed to battle victories, the Union Army's commanding generals did not use the balloon observations advantageously.
Vague reports on Robert E. Lee's movements issued from the hydrogen balloon Intrepid during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign apparently served only to panic General McClellan. The general withdrew his vastly superior forces and positioned them seven miles (11 kilometers) from Richmond, Virginia, rather than attacking the sparsely defended Confederate capital and ending the war three years and tens of thousands of lives sooner. After McClellan was relieved of his command, Ulysses S. Grant took over and reorganized the Army of the Potomac. Preferring to rely more on attrition than on intelligence, he disbanded the Balloon Corps. |
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| US Civil War observation balloon, 19th century artwork. The balloon, near Gaines Mill, Virginia, USA, is being inflated by gas being piped through tubes from the containers at left. This balloon was designed by Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe.
The balloons used hydrogen gas, and were used in several battles, including the battle of Fair Oaks, Virginia, on 31 May 1861. Lowe had been designing and building balloons since the 1850s, and established the Union Army Balloon Corps to perform aerial reconnaissance during the US Civil War (1861-1865). Despite some successes, problems led to the Balloon Corps being disbanded in 1863 |
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| SYLVESTER STALLONE (Caricature) |
 | Truffles are underground mushrooms which grow in symbiosis with certain trees, especially oaks. During a limited harvesting season, they are found in several regions of southern Europe: France, Italy and Spain. There are more than a hundred different kinds of truffles, but only a few have a gastronomic interest. Some are not even edible. |
| Truffles were known in Ancient Greek and Roman times. The production of the black winter truffle (Tuber melanosporum) was at this time much higher than today--more than a 1000 tons a year. Today the production has gone down to 40 - 90 tons a year depending on the weather conditions. |  |
| In France, most of the truffle production comes now from Provence. The biggest truffle market takes place in Richerenches, a little village located in northern Vaucluse, where more than one ton per week can be sold (depending on the production). In the United States, truffles can cost you up to $500.00 a pound. |
| The French truffles grow in symbiosis with oak trees and hazelnut trees. They grow from 10-30cm (3.9 to 12 inches) underground near the roots.
Truffles can also grow near trees other than oak and hazelnut, but these two species give the best quality truffles. The advantage of hazelnut trees is that they will give truffles after 5-7 years, but they will produce truffles for only 15 to 20 years. Oak trees will produce truffles for 30 to 40 years but you will have to wait 10 to 15 years between planting the young tree and the apparition of the first truffles. The best weather conditions for a good harvest of black winter truffles are an alternation of sun and rain beginning in March/April. In August heavy rains help to nourish the truffles that are starting to grow at this period. |
| Pigs were once used by people to hunt truffles, but this job has been turned over to dogs.
Pigs, specifically sows, are naturally attracted to truffles because they emit a steroid similar to a pheromone produced by the boars' pre-mating behavior. The pigs could be aggressive when truffles were found and tended to eat most of them. |  |
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COTTONTAIL |
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| Lewis, clearly, is the most fascinating member of the expedition, the leader, but also probably the most complex--A man fraught with serious emotional problems but also a man of great character, great integrity, truly marvelous insightful leadership.
But he was a man continually on the edge of losing good sane control. And we know in later life, in fact, that's what happened to him with his apparent suicide. Lewis was never entirely easy with with his own men and definitely not with the Indians that he was meeting. He got along with them, he behaved in a courtly manner and a proper military manner, but there was not that ease that that you see in Clark. We we know that there were various kinds of assignations between the men and and Indian women. You never have that sense in reading the journals that Lewis was a participant in this. Lewis was Thomas Jefferson's right hand man in the White House. He lived in the White House, with Jefferson, just the two of them. He lived in the East Wing, and Jefferson lived in the presidential quarters. They had dinner together every night. Lewis knew Jefferson's mind. He was Jefferson's hand-picked man for many tasks, and for this pet project of Jefferson, there was only one man he wanted--Meriwether Lewis. Lewis was brash, sometimes impulsive. One of the cabinet members warned Jefferson, "Well, watch out. Lewis might try to do some things too brashly, too rashly, and endanger the whole expedition." But he was to be Thomas Jefferson's eyes and ears in the West, and Jefferson trusted him. Lewis had what Jefferson described as "occasional depressions of the mind." |
It's pretty easy to read into Meriwether Lewis a manic depressive. He could be full of vigor and effusiveness, and other times almost completely close down.
At the end of the expedition, Lewis went to Washington to report to Jefferson. Jefferson then appointed him Governor of Louisiana, with the capital in St. Louis. This was a terrible mistake. Lewis was not a politician. He got into fights in St. Louis about land bounties and about the iron mines and many other things. He took to drinking very heavily. He also had malaria and was doping himself up, taking a mixture of opium and morphine on a regular basis. He sank into a depression. He had over-extended himself in speculating in western lands. He had signed way too many government (chits?), which he had become accustomed to doing, just signing his name and then the government will pay you off later. And now the War Department (Jefferson was gone, Madison was president) began to fail to honor these chits that he had signed. So his creditors started calling in his debts, and he was ruined financially. He was a physical wreck because of the drugs and because of the alcohol. He became suicidal. He left St. Louis in July of 1809 to make a trip to Washington to explain to the government that all these chits were legitimate. During the course of that journey he tried to kill himself, was restrained by the crew. Finally got down to today's Memphis, Tennessee, and set off overland, over the Natchez Trace, to go to Washington with his journals, to make his explanations to the government. And on that trip, at a place called Grinder's Inn, just across the Mississippi-Tennessee border on the Natchez Trace, he killed himself. |
| Photographer, conservationist; born in San Francisco. A commercial photographer for 30 years, he made visionary photos of western landscapes that were inspired by a boyhood trip to Yosemite. He won three Guggenheim grants to photograph the national parks (1944--58). Founding the f/64 group with Edward Weston in 1932, he developed zone exposure to get maximum tonal range from black-and-white film. He served on the Sierra Club Board (1934--71). |  |
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| MOUNTAINS |
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| THE FALL OF THE COWBOY Frederic Remington |
| Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 – December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U.S. Cavalry. |  |
| Remington was born in Canton, New York in 1861 to Seth Pierre Remington and Clara Bascomb Sackrider, whose paternal family owned hardware stores and emigrated from Alsace-Lorraine in the early 18th century.
Remington's father was a colonel in the Civil War whose family arrived in the United States from England in 1637. He was a newspaper editor and postmaster, and the family was active in local politics and staunchly Republican. One of Remington's great grandfathers, Samuel Bascom, was a saddle maker by trade, and the Remingtons were fine horsemen. Frederic Remington was related by family bloodlines to Indian portrait artist George Catlin and cowboy sculptor Earl W. Bascom. |
| "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the cornfield."
--- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) 34th U.S. President |
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Americans spend about what % of their after tax income on groceries?
How about in Japan, Germany and India? ??? PASS YOUR MOUSE OVER THE QUESTION MARKS FOR THE ANSWER! |
| DISCLAIMER: Material used in Bitts and Bytes is gathered from various sources--mainly the World Wide Web.
Authorship cannot always be credited nor the source defined. Authenticity of material is assumed to be correct, but is not guaranteed. |  |
