SEDONA

 People thought we were crazy to take a road trip when everything was closed down  but it was important to see our granddaughter get married in Phoenix.  We originally purchased airplane tickets, but anticipating health issues, we decided to drive instead.

We left Chicago on November 11, 2020, Armistice Day--at least they used to call it that.  We spent the first night in a Hampton Inn near St. Louis, the second night in Stroud, Oklahoma, and then Best Westerns in Tucumcari, NM in Winslow, AZ.    They may have closed all the restaurants in Blue states but not where we went.  We were able to dine in restaurants everywhere, despite reduced capacities.  In Oklahome, we had some concerns because nobody wore masks, but we didn't catch anything.  On the road, we stopped at the ubiquitous Loves Truck Stops because we both love Loves.  

In Tucumcari, I expected more.  It is famously on Route 66.  It is in the song, and I expected the locals to promote that more than they did.   All the activity in town is by the exit to the Interstate, and, for the most part, everything on 66 is run down or abandoned.   The best thing to see is the many murals painted on old buildings in the center of town.  But the food was good at a Mexican restaurant well hidden on 66.

Winslow, of course was made famous in the Eagles' song Take it Easy.   " I've been standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona such a fine sight to see it's a girl my lord in a flatbed Ford staring down to have a look at me..."   They built a statue of the songwriter Don Henley and permanently parked an old flatbed Ford truck nearby.   We've visited Winslow several times before, and nothing has  been added.

The only othr thing to see there is a circa 1930 resort called LaPosada where many well known Hollywood types spent the night back in the Stone Age.   We toured it on a past trip annd wanted to stay there, but we couldn't find it.  I was driving West on 66 through town when I should have been driving East on the adjacent street to see it.  The GPS was no help.  I didn't realize they were one-way streets.

SEDONA

The highlight of the trip, other than the wedding where we had dinner at Sandra Day O'Connor's house, was Sedona, Arizona.  Sedona is an artsy town populated by aging hippies, living in nice condominiums.  Restaurants and stores are very expensive.  The rock formations surrounding the town are beautiful, and they are said to contain vortexes.  More on that later.

We booked a couple nights at a Hilton resort which was over the top.  We have about 300,000 Hilton points which we dipped into to pay for our room, a 2-room suite.  

We signed up for the nightly UFO tour.  From what they say, with all the vortexes in town, the illegal aliens from space (undocumented space aliens?) are attracted to the area.  According to our guide, Sedona is unique in that respect.  The illegal space aliens apparently don't want to go anywhere else, and it's a quick flight from Area 51. 

The tour is owned by a woman named Anita Owens whom we met.  She sells UFO type merchandise and pamphlets out of her car trunk.  She also writes a blog in which she contends that her first memory as an infant was to see aliens standing beside her crib.  Actually, in Arizona, that's not that unusual, and the border wall won't stop them.  

The tour began after dark.  The guide led our small group to a remote parking lot just outside of town where light pollution is minimal.  The skies were clear, and it was cold.  The guide issued us laser pointers and Third Generation military night vision goggles which he said cost $10,000 apiece.   Not sure if that is just what the Pentagon pays while the rest of us only pay $500; that was not explained. 

Our guide explained that our objective was to look at the sky and watch for moving objects. If the moving objects were flashing lights they were commercial aircraft, IFO's if you will.   The objects that weren't flashing were UFO's at the edge of space.  It was pitch dark at the site but the night vision equipment made it clear as day.  Looking at the sky we could clearly see the fixed starts and the moving lights which were obviously not meteors.  There were many of them, moving this way and that, some slowly and some quickly, sometimes in tandem.  By definition, they were UFO's because we don't know what they are.  The guide said that some may be our pilots, piloting UFO's, and some may be the other guys.  Our government has not been forthcoming with that type of information.  

A bright star like object was a rare conjunction with Jupiter Saturn and Pluto in very close proximity. You can't see Pluto, of course, except with a powerful telescope, but Jupiter and Saturn are very bright.  Pluto, which used to be a planet, was first discovered in 1930 at the nearby Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, 30 miles from Sedona.  We visited on a previous trip--not Pluto, but the observatory.  

We were able to observe the Pleaides, a group of 7 stars from where the space aliens allegedly came, some of them anyway.  Deporting them back there would be a problem, given the state of our technology.

The following morning in Sedona, we signed up for the vortex tour, run by the same company.  There are 15 vortex sites in the Sedona area.  We had the guide all to ourselves, and he took us to a couple of these vortexes.  

Our guide explained that a vortex is a giant magnet of energy that is either positively (yin) or negatively charged (yang). The yin has feminine attributes while the yang has masculine attributes.  If you live in Sedona, you decide which on you want on a given day.   If you want nurturing you choose the yin.  If you want empowering and energizing you choose the yang.   This knowledge was imparted to us by Native American shamans over a period of thousands of years.  They would come to pry and seek guidance for their people.  They would hold ceremonies and perform rituals, but they didn't live at the vortex or stay for long periods.  It was considered sacred ground. 

There may be something to all of this.  At the vortex Dianne experienced nausea and headaches and had to leave the area.  Then she was OK.

SIEGFRIED MARCUS AND THE INVENTION OF THE AUTOMOBILE

 Most people have no idea who invented the gasoline powered automobile.  Popular thinking is that Gottfried Daimler and Karl Benz in Germany were the first persons to create the automobile, but that was the result of a propaganda blitz by the Nazis.  Daimler and Benz were the first to build a car commercially, but they didn't invent it.

Americans think that the Duryea brothers invented it.  Henry Ford perfected the assembly line, after observing the meat packing industry, but he didn't invent it.  While his name was lost in history for many years, Siegfried Marcus (1831-1898), born in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Germany before there was a Germany, and living in Vienna, is now being credited with the invention. 

Marcus's car, which he built around 1870, can be seen today in the Vienna Technical Museum. In about 1875, he drove the vehicle from Vienna to Klosterneuberg, a distance of 7.5 miles.  He had built an earlier gasoline powered vehicle in 1864, according to Brittanica.  The car wasn't very comfortable or safe--it had no brakes, steering or seats, but it did have an internal combustion engine, a carburetor and 4 wheels.

The internal combustion engine is the key.  Essentially, it uses the explosive combustion of fuel to push a piston within a cylinder which turns a crankshaft that turns the wheels.  The fuel would be gasoline, diesel or kerosene.  

Marcus was a prolific inventor who held 131 patents in 16 countries.  These included an 1872 device for mixing fuel with air, an 1883 improved gas engine, and an 1884 electrical igniting device for gas engines.  To Marcus, the motor car was a hobby and he never obtained a patent.  Karl Benz got the first patent for a gas fueled car in 1886.

Marcus's first automobile was a simple handcart with an internal combustion motor attached which ran on liquid combustibles (petrol/gas).  To start the vehicle, he needed a strong man to lift the drive wheels off the ground and spin them.  Marcus recognized that was not a practical solution, so he later dismantled the original vehicle.

His 1883 design for an ignition with a "rotating brush carburettor" was a major step forward.  That engine was innovative and successful, and in fact was used by the German Navy in its torpedo boats.

By the time of his death, Marcus was hailed worldwide as the inventor of the automobile.  However, 40 years later, in the late 1930's, the Hitler regime came to power and made a concerted effort to remove Marcus's name from the history books.  They removed his memorial statue from the Vienna Technical University and directed German encyclopedias to remove his name and replace it with Daimler and Benz as the inventors.   Not surprisingly, Marcus's religion was the issue.  Although he was of Jewish descent, he was originally buried at the Protestant Cemetery in Vienna.  After the war, his remains were later moved to an "Honorary Tomb" in Vienna's Central Cemetery.  

When the Germans took over Austria in 1938, one of the first things they did was go to the Vienna Technical Museum to get Marcus's car.  The museum curator anticipated that, and in a heroic gesture, he spirited the car into a far corner of the museum and constructed a brick wall, thus hiding the car from the Nazis.  The Nazis did obtain and destroy every document, patent and blueprint relating to Marcus's inventions, largely erasing him from history.  Because of that, the above dates cited are not certain.  In the 1960's the car was rediscovered when the museum was remodeled.  

Other early inventors created significant inventions to further the development of the modern automobile.  For example, in 1876, Nicholas Otto invented an effective gas motor engine.  It was a four stroke engine that was the prototype for all later automobiles.  He built his engine into a motorcycle.

Two Springfield, Massachusetts bicycle manufactures, Charles and Frank Duryea built their first motor vehicle in 1893.  They achieved fame by winning the first automobile race, held on a snowy Thanksgiving Day in Chicago in 1893.  First prize was $2000.  

The story is not complete without the efforts of Henry Ford.  A Rochester, NY patent lawyer named George B. Selden obtained a patent on a "road engine" which allowed him to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties from all American car manufacturers.  He based the patent on an 1873 engine built by George Brayton which was displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  Selden filed for the patent in 1879 to include not only the engine but its use in a 4 wheeled car which he never built.  His witness on the patent application was a guy named George Eastman who later achieved fame in the camera business.  

Selden was able to shake down car makers for years until Henry Ford decided he wasn't going to take it anymore.  With four other car makers, Ford challenged the Selden patent.  The case dragged on for 8 years, generating 14,000 pages of testimony.  Among them was Ford's statement, "It is perfectly safe to say that George Selden has never advanced the automobile industry in a single particular...and it would perhaps be further advanced than it is now had he never been born."   The trial court found in favor of Selden, but Ford appealed and the appeals court overturned the verdict.   Ford's actions opened the automobile market for the building of affordable cars.  

As you can see, the car, as we know it, has a complicated history dating back to the original efforts and creativity of Siegfried Marcus.

 

ANOTHER QUARANTINE PROJECT: SUPERNOVA OF 1054 AND THE EUROPEAN REACTION--OR LACK THEREOF

For those of you who study medieval history, you might find this interesting.   On the Fourth of July, in the year 1054, Chinese astronomers observed a supernova which became progressively brighter over the next two years, so much so, that it could even be seen in the daytime.  It wasn't as bright as a full moon, but it was 4 times brighter than Venus.  You couldn't miss it. 

The official name, as used by astronomers is SN1054.  Although the stellar explosion was observed in 1054, the actual event occurred about 6500 years earlier in about 5500 B.C.  The star is 6500 light years distant from us.

The remnants from the supernova are still visible today and are commonly studied by both amateur and professional astronomers.   The debris from the explosion is known today as the Crab Nebula, located in the constellation Taurus.  The core of the exploding star formed a pulsar which is known s the Crab Pulsar.  More on pulsars at another time.  Through a telescope the thing resembles a crab.  (see below).

The phenomenon was well documented by Chinese, Japanese and Arab astronomers of the era.  Even the Puebloan Indians of New Mexico recorded it on pictographs on rocks.  Curiously, however, if you rely on written evidence, nobody in Europe noticed it.  There are some doubtful European references recorded 400 years later, but no contemporary documentation.  It would have been impossible to not notice it unless everyone lived underground. 

The supernova event occurred hundreds of years prior to Copernicus, who suffered for his radical theories that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than the other way around.  In Europe, astronomy was closely aligned with astrology, and for over 1000 years, nobody was willing to stick his neck out to report an unusual occurrence in the heavens which would upset establishment doctrine.

The prevalent attitude in Europe was  move along, there's nothing to see here!  Considering how bright it was, visible in the daytime for 23 days, it would be hard to miss. 

Earlier, an even brighter supernova, 7100 light years distant appeared in 1006 which was at least 3 times brighter than even the 1054 supernova.  It was the brightest recorded star ever to appear in the night sky.  That one was recorded in Europe, in only a single source, the annals of the monastery of St. Gail in Switzerland.   A famous Egyptian astronomer measured the  brightness of that one as one quarter that of a full moon.

According to Sir Robert Wilson's book, Astronomy through the Ages, probably the main reason for the lack of interest in Europe was the lack of encouragement, or even active discouragement by the Church "which believed that truth and spiritual guidance could come only from Holy Scripture and that natural knowledge and understanding was best revealed by ancient writings."  Establishment thinking at that time was that the Earth was flat.  By contrast, in Islamic and Chinese cultures astronomical/astrological observations were encouraged and supported by the government. 

Eastern cultures recorded many such astronomical events going back thousands of years.  Chinese astronomers recorded at least 20 such events over a span of 2000 years.  You can't predict when a "guest star" will appear, but it is certainly a memorable experience. 

The bottom line here is that if a European astronomer were to write or say something not in compliance with Church doctrine it might get him killed.  Maybe that is why that period is commonly referred to as the "Dark Ages".

SWEET HOME ALABAMA 2.0--YOU'RE NOT A REAL BEARS FAN UNLESS YOU KNOW ABOUT HARLON HILL

Driving past cotton fields in the Northwest corner of Alabama you come to the bend of the Tennessee River is an area called The Shoals.  It includes the cities of Florence, Muscle Shoals and Tuscumbia as well as several smaller towns.  Today the area is best known as the home of the Blues, as in music.  In Florence you can visit the birthplace of W.C. Handy, the Father of the Blues.  Don't confuse him with W.C. Fields although many people do.  Also synonymous with the area as well as the whole state is Football.  The most popular sport in Alabama is football and the second most popular is Spring football. 

Back in the 1940's and early 1950's, a young man named Harlon Hill grew up in nearby Killen, Alabama, a town of about 1000.  If you are younger than about 70, you probably don't know who he was.   But, for about three glorious years, playing for the Chicago Bears, he was the best receiver in the National Football League.  He was so good that they named a trophy after him.

The Harlon Hill Award is given to the best football player in NCAA Division II (small college).  It is the small college equivalent of the Heisman Trophy.   Several recipients of the trophy have gone on to productive careers in pro football although none were big stars.  Some of the recent winners played for schools like Slippery Rock, Ferris State, Bloomsburg State, and Colorado Mines.  The best known was three time winner Johnny Bailey, a running back from Texas A&M Kingsville, who played 6 seasons with the Bears in the 1990's. 

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Young Harlon Hill was an unheralded prospect from an obscure small college, Florence State Teachers College (now called University of North Alabama), where he played 4 seasons.  The team's offense was oriented toward the run, as many teams were at that time, and Hill did a lot of blocking.  As famed Ohio State Coach Woody Hayes once said, "When you pass the ball, three things can happen and two of them are bad."  In his four years there, Hill caught a total of 54 passes, but 19 of them went for touchdowns. 

After his senior year, Hill played in the annual Blue-Gray Game in Montgomery where a coach from Jacksonville State, whose team had played against Hill to their detriment, mentioned Hill's name to his friend, Bears coach George Halas.  Halas requested some game films and was impressed enough that the Bears drafted him in the 15th round.   If Hill felt slighted he could keep in mind that a couple years later another Alabama boy, Bart Starr, a reserve quarterback on a winless Crimson Tide team wasn't drafted until the 17th round by the Green Bay Packers where he launched a legendary Hall of Fame career.

Hill was the NFL Rookie of the Year in 1954, and he won the Most Valuable Player Award the following year.  His specialty was the long "bomb", and he averaged around 25 yards per catch.   He made the All Pro team in 1954-56, but got hurt in the 1956 championship game against the New York Giants,, and his career was never the same.  He played 6 more years in the NFL, but a series of injuries slowed him down.  He wasn't bad, averaging about 17 yards per catch, but he was no longer dazzling. 

He played in an era when running the ball was more important than passing.  The best quarterbacks of the day completed only about 50% of their passes.  Nevertheless,  Hill still holds the Bears record for career 100 yard games receiving, and held the single game record with 214 receiving yards until it was eclipsed by Alshon Jeffrey 60 years later.  He also held the Bears record of 4 receiving touchdowns in a game which was later tied by Mike Ditka.   In all time Bears history he is second only to Johnny Morris in receiving yards.  He still holds the Bears rookie record for receiving yards and touchdowns.   He led the NFL in touchdowns his rookie year.

Hill's career average of over 20 yards per catch ranks third in NFL history.   He could get down the field quicker than anyone--he had 4 touchdown grabs of more than 75 yards.   He gained over 1100 yards twice, at a time when they played only 12 games per season--now they play 16, and a lot of guys gain over 1100 yards.  Even more remarkable was that he fumbled only twice in his career. 

You would expect that Hill's gridiron exploits would have earned hun a spot in the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio but no-o-o.   The probable reason is that his productive career was too brief.

After his retirement from football, Hill was a success in real life.  He went back to school and earned his master's degree in education.  He returned to his hometown to become an assistant coach and teacher, and ultimately the principal of his old high school in Killen.  He died in 2013 at age 80, leaving 4 daughters and a son.   His wife Virginia predeceased him. 

SWEET HOME ALABAMA--ALABAMA MUSIC HALL OF FAME

This year, on our annual winter trip through the South, we took a 2 hour detour off the Interstate to the tri-city area of Tuscumbia, Muscle Shoals and Florence in Northern Alabama.  My wife, Dianne, is from Georgia, so we speak Southern  When you enter the state, the road signs read "Sweet Home Alabama", as in the Lynyrd Skynyrd song.  That is the state motto as designated by the legislature.

Our destination was the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.  We wandered around the building, touring the museum and learned about many famous musicians that I never knew were from Alabama.   The location was chosen because Muscle Shoals, Alabama was a recording mecca for many rhythm and blues musicians.  The founders of the city were spelling challenged--the city was named for the tasty mussels caught in the shallow water at the bend of the Tennessee River.

The Music Hall of Fame is a modern 12,000 square foot building with a walk of fame with stars for each of the inductees.  The Hall boasts 82 inductees who are required to be natives of Alabama although many of them achieved success elsewhere.   In 1985, they introduced the first inductees to the Hall of Fame, and they honor up to 6 musicians every other year. 

Prominently displayed is a colorful 1950's style jukebox that plays popular music by Alabama artists.
On the walls and pillars are amazing and informative lists of musicians, and recordings, and even backup musicians, all with Alabama ties.   You can hear several songs by Lionel Richie and Bobby Goldsboro and even some I didn't expect, like a Grateful Dead song Truckin'.   The Dead were from Palo Alto, Caliornia, so I'm not sure of the Alabama connection other than they played concerts in the state.  Jimmy Buffett (no relation to Warren but they are friends) is from Alabama although he was born in Mississippi--the jukebox plays Margaritaville.   Captain and Tennille are from Alabama, or at least Tennille is.  You can also hear songs by groups like Spiral Staircase, Dr. Hook, Styx and Mr. Mister. 

The Hall honors other artists who recorded at the studio in Muscle Shoals but are not members of the Hall of Fame because they are not from Alabama and have no other ties there.  They brought the whole studio to the museum, or at least a replica!    The list is a Who's Who of popular music along with the songs recorded there.  The list includes Leon Russell,  Paul Simon (Kodachrome), Bob Seger (Fire Lake), The Osmonds, Paul Anka (Havin' My Baby), The Gatlin Bros., Julian Lennon, Mac Davis, Glenn Frye, Rolling Stones (Brown Sugar), Willie Nelson (but not Ricky Nelson), Rod Stewart, Mary MacGregor (Torn Between Two Lovers) , Oak Ridge Boys and R.B. Greaves (Take a Letter Maria). 

A list of songwriters (with their hometowns) with hits in the Top 40 includes Toni Tennille (Montgomery), Hank Williams, Junior (Cullman) and Senior (Mt. Olive), Tammy Wynette (Red Bay), Sandy Posey (Jasper) and Wilson Pickett (Pratteville), not to mention many others I wasn't familiar with.   On another list are Number One songs by Alabama artists.

Incidentally, the Lynyrd Skynyrd band is not in the Alabama Hall of Fame,, although the band is a member of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.  The band members are not from Alabama.  They pioneered the Southern rock genre but the group originated in Jacksonville, Florida.  Tragically, the band was decimated in a 1977 plane crash in Mississippi when the plane ran out of gas.  Those killed included lead singer and founder Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist and vocalist Steve Gaines and vocalist Cassie Gaines (Steve's sister), as well as their road manager and pilot.  Twenty passengers, including some band members, were seriously injured but survived.   The surviving members made an oath never to use the name Lynyrd Skynyrd again--they didn't want to capitalize on the tragedy.

A large room in the Hall holds the framed portraits of the inductees.  I'm not familiar with some, but here are the better known names with the year of induction:

1985 Nat King Cole (needs no introduction)
1987 Sonny James (Young Love), Sam Phillips (more on him later), Blues legend W.C. Handy (St. Louis Blues among others).
1989 Jazz great Erskine Hawkins
1991 Dinah Washington (What a Difference a Day Makes), who was married to football great Dick "Night Train: Lane, (see KENSUSKINREPORT, Sept. 24, 2007)
1993 Tammy Wynette (Stand by Your Man), Percy Sledge (When a Man Loves a Woman), R & B band Alabama, and the yodeler and father of country music Jimmie Rodgers (not the rock 'n' roll Jimmie Rodgers who was born the same year the first Jimmie Rodgers died)
1995 Martha Reeves, but not the Vandellas (Dancin' in the Streets), Commodores (Lionel Richie's band)
1997 Lionel Richie who needs no introduction
1999Temptations (My Girl), Wilson Pickett (Midnight Hour), Bobby Goldsboro (Honey). 
2001 Legendary baritone Jim Nabors
2003 Country star Emmylou Harris
2020 Big Mama Thornton who recorded Hound Dog in 1953 and held down Number 1 on the Billboard R & B charts for several weeks.  A couple years later, the song was covered by a guy named Elvis Presley who also made it a Number 1 hit.   Elvis' version annoyed the songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.  Leiber said "I have no idea what that rabbit business is all about.  The song is not about a dog it's about a man, a freeloading gigolo."   The song was supposed to be an anthem of Black female power.

Back to Sweet Home Alabama, the lyrics are controversial harking back to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.  From interviews with the band members, it was not clear which side they were on. 

Big wheels keep on turning
Carry me home to see my kin
Singing songs about the southland
I miss Alabamy once again
And I think it's a sin, yes

Well I heard Mister Young sing about her
Well I heard ole Neil put her down
Well I hope Neil Young will remember
A southern man don't need him around anymore

Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet home Alabama
Lord I'm coming home to you

In Birmingham they love the governor
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you
Tell the truth

Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers
And they've been known to pick a song or two
Lord they get me off so much
They pick me up when I'm feeling blue
Now how about you?

According to Ronnie Van Zant, the group didn't appreciate Neil Young's disparaging the state in his song Southern Man so they wrote a rebuttal.  The "Swampers" refers to the Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section that backed up many artists that have recorded in Alabama.   Several have been inducted into the Hall of Fame but they are not household names. 

Finally a large exhibit in the museum is devoted to Sun Records, once owned by Sam Phillips who discovered Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins, the Million Dollar Quartet.  Although Sun Records was based in Memphis Tennessee (and is now a museum), Phillips came from Florence, Alabama. 

Phillips formed the record label in 1952 but he had to win a legal battle to use the name Sun Records because the name was already in use.   Sun Records of New York had a big hit in 1950, Papirossen (cigarettes), a very sad song, written and sung by the great Herman Yablokoff--in Yiddish.   I'm not making this up--his biography is in Wikipedia.  He was a big star in Yiddish theater.   My folks had a collection of 78rpm's which included that record.    

In any event, when the New York company went defunct,  Phillips' company copied the design of the record label but made the decision to record songs in English. 

NEXT:  Sweet Home Alabama 2.0:  You're not a Real Bears Fan Unless You Know About Harlon Hill.

MORE QUARANTINE STORIES--MYSTERIES OF THE GREAT SPHINX

Several years ago, Dianne and I took a trip to Egypt, and I wrote several articles about our experiences there.  We stayed at the Oberoi Mena Hotel, a historic hotel just down the street from the Great Pyramid.  The Sphinx is a mile or so farther down the road.

The Great Pyramid was the tallest building in the world until the Eiffel Tower in Paris was built in the late 1800's.  We stood on the first tee at the hotel golf course, with the Great Pyramid looming over the trees and the Sphinx nearby.  Its a strange feeling to tee off knowing that the Sphinx may be watching.

Visiting the Sphinx is somewhat underwhelming;  compared to the pyramids behind it, it looks miniscule.  But it is one of the largest statues in the world.   It is 240 feet long and 66 feet high from the base to the top of the head.  It is 62 feet wide at the rear.   It faces due East toward the sunrise.

It is carved into the bedrock, a single piece of limestone, but different layers of rock have resulted in uneven erosion.  The head was carved from a much harder rock layer. 

Over a period of several thousand years, the Sphinx gradually came to be buried in sand from the Sahara.  The only part showing was the mysterious face.   There is only one Great Sphinx, but one can find numerous depictions usually guarding royal tombs and temples.  In every case, it is the body of a lion and the head of a human.  The word sphinx comes from Greek antiquity where it refers to a mythological beast with the body of a lion, wings and a woman's head.   We don't know what the Egyptians called it. 

Until Napoleon came to Egypt around 1800 there was no such thing as archaeology.  Up to that time, people showed no respect for relics of ancient history.  The Mamelukes used the Sphinx for target practice.  Religious fanatics chopped away at the face in an attempt to destroy it.  It used to have a beard. 

Today they show a little more respect, but not much.  For example, you never see a photo of the Sphinx from the rear.  (Until now--see photo below).  If you did, you would see, literally across the street, a few hundred feet away, a KFC restaurant, a Pizza Hut, a cheap hotel called the Sphinx House and a Hard Rock Café.  The street is essentially the city limits between the City of Giza and the desert.   Zoning laws are non-existent in Egypt, but the government relies heavily on the tourist industry and prohibited development next to the Sphinx.   Unlike the Alamo, for example, in Texas, or the Old North Church in Boston.   Street vendors, including little kids, sell trinkets at the statue, and they confront you at every turn. 

In the evenings, they bring in folding chairs and hold concerts and a light show at the Sphinx.  We enjoyed that very much.

Like its inscrutable face, the Sphinx holds many mysteries, and Egyptologists/archaeologists have been arguing the significance of it for centuries.  Nobody is certain how old it is, who built it, or even what it is, and those ongoing debates may never be resolved.  The same issues are debated with regard to the Great Pyramid.  Most of the pyramids were built as tombs or to honor kings, but strangely nobody is buried in the Great Pyramid and no hieroglyphics are present to indicate its purpose.  The same for the Sphinx.

The Sphinx as any casual observer would recognize, appears to have the body of a lion and the head of a man.  From the 1500's to the middle of the 19th Century, several observers even described the Sphinx as a woman, noting that it has the face, neck and breast of a woman.  Many experts assert that the head had been that of a lion or perhaps the jackal god Anubis who appears on many Egyptian monuments.  They believe the face of a man (or woman), the Pharaoh, was carved much later.

There are a number of so-called "fringe" theories and many books written attempting to decipher the mystery of the Sphinx.  For example, popular authors Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval theorize that the relative positions of the three Giza pyramids correspond to the three stars forming Orion's belt--they are not in a straight line.

Their theory asserts that the geographic relationship of the Sphinx, the three pyramids and the Nile corresponds with Leo, Orion and the Milky Way--as they were positioned 10,500 years ago during the Age of Leo the Lion (10,970-8,810 B.C.E.).  At that time, the sun rose in the constellation Leo on the vernal equinox.  Mainstream Egyptologists dismiss that as a crackpot theory, pseudo-archaeology (fake news, as you will), but nobody really knows the answers to the basics--who, when and why regarding the statue. 

Excavations have shown water damage at the underground base of the statue which may indicate that it was built at a time when the climate was significantly wetter than it is today.  It wasn't exactly the Sahara Forest at that time, but it has been a desert for at least 10,000 years.   According to geologists, the erosion on the statue could not have been caused by wind and sand because it was buried in sand for thousands of years. 

Carbon dating does not work for stone objects.  Unlike all other Egyptian monuments we visited, the Sphinx has no hieroglyphic inscriptions on it.  The Sphinx may be inscrutable, but the Egyptians generally are very scrutable.  A tour down the Nile will show that the ancient Egyptians were prolific writers completely covering monuments, top to bottom.   But the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid have no writing at all on them.  Archaeologists cannot explain that.

The mainstream experts today believe that the Pharaoh Khafre had it constructed in the 25th Century B.C.E., making it the oldest sculptured monument in Egypt.   The problem is that there are no contemporary inscriptions connecting it with Khafre.  All the circumstantial evidence was written over 1000 years later.  The evidence cited has to do with the Second Pyramid (next door to the Great Pyramid) which was said to be constructed by and is associated with Khafre.  His connection with the Sphinx is all speculation because, as we've noted, there are no inscriptions.

Other experts believe the Sphinx was built to honor Khufu (Cheops) who was Khafre's father,  The carved face does not resemble that on a statue of Khafre but they believe it looks like Khufu.  But then it is missing the nose which was pried off by the Sufi Muslims in the 1300's according to Arab historians.  The reason:  to protest idol worship by the peasants who were delivering offerings to the Sphinx, hoping to increase their harvest.

The questions about the Sphinx probably will never be answered definitively without totally excavating it, which is not likely to happen.   Keep in mind that only a fraction of historic Egyptian ruins have been uncovered, so Egyptologists will have job security for centuries to come.

THE STRANGE STORY OF MOE BERG, BALLPLAYER AND SPY

Morris "Moe" Berg (1902-1972) was a Major League ballplayer who had probably the most interesting backstory of any professional athlete.  He was a fine defensive catcher who spent 15 years in the bigs with Brooklyn, Washington, Cleveland, the Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox.  For quite a few years, he even held the record for catchers for most consecutive games without making an error.

Berg earned a B.A. degree, cum laude, in modern languages from Princeton, and a law degree from Columbia.  He even studied at the Sorbonne in Paris.  He spoke at least 12 languages, and as his teammate, pitcher Ted Lyons once said, "He couldn't hit in any of them!"  His lifetime batting average was only .243 with 6 home runs.  His language repertoire included English, Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Yiddish, and even Ancient Sanskrit.

Each day, he read 10 newspapers from cover to cover.  In those days most ballplayers, if they read anything at all, read comic books.  Berg was in a league by himself.  Other than baseball, he had little in common with his teammates.  He was a lifelong bachelor and an introvert.  None of his teammates knew him well.  Recent biographers suggest that he may have been gay, but his teammates dispute that.  He was often seen in the company of attractive women.

In college, Berg starred in baseball, playing shortstop and third base.   He was scouted by the New York teams because in their markets, they could sell more tickets with a Jewish ballplayer.  He signed his first contract with the Brooklyn Robins (later the Dodgers). 

At that time, it was common for players in the off season to travel the world, barnstorming and teaching baseball to the locals in foreign countries.  Before the 1970's ballplayers didn't make that much money so they held regular jobs in the winter to make ends meet.  After the 1934 season, Berg traveled to Japan with an all-star team which included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and a few other Hall of Famers to conduct baseball clinics and show off their skills.  Although significantly less talented than the other players, Berg was chosen to fill out the team because he could speak Japanese.   Upon arrival, he gave a speech in Japanese and was invited to address the Legislature. 

At that time, Japan was a rising power in the world, potentially hostile to the U.S., and we didn't know much about that country.  Berg had contracted with a newsreel company to look around and take a lot of pictures.  In Tokyo, he visited St. Luke's International Hospital which was the tallest building in the city, ostensibly to visit the daughter of the American ambassador who had just given birth.

Berg entered the building wearing a men's kimono, carrying a bouquet of flowers.  He went up to the roof of the building, dumped the flowers, pulled a 16mm Bell & Howell movie camera out of his kimono and filmed panoramic pictures of the city.  The Japanese government had expressly forbidden the Americans from taking photographs.   He never did see the ambassador's daughter.

The pictures made their way to Washington where they were helpful several years later in identifying targets for bombing raids during World War II.  Google Maps were still a long time in the future. 

During World War II, after Berg's baseball career was over, he was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) to do intelligence work.  He never talked about his spying with anyone, even years later.  In fact, he never talked much about anything.

Historians have been able to glean, from other sources, several of his wartime exploits. For example, in 1944 he traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, posing as a student, for a conference at which the Head of the German nuclear program, the brilliant Werner Heisenberg, would be lecturing.   Berg's orders were to talk to Heisenberg, and try to determine Germany's progress in building an atomic bomb.  If he deemed Germany was close, he was ordered to assassinate Heisenberg.   After a dinner party, Berg took a stroll with Heisenberg and discerned that the Germans were not close to producing the bomb.  The Nazi scientist was despondent that Germany was going to lose the war.   Berg left him alone and delivered critical information to the Allied intelligence community. 

On another occasion, Berg was dropped into German occupied Italy to locate Antonio Ferri, a prominent aerodynamics engineer who was privy to German nuclear secrets.  Ferri had gone into hiding, but Berg was able to find him and ferry him out of Italy to the Allied side.  Berg of course spoke Italian, and was able to translate critical documents for our side.

He parachuted into occupied Yugoslavia to evaluate the various resistance groups battling the Nazis to determine which ones should receive aid.  He determined the strongest group was the one led by Josef Broz (Tito) who ultimately ruled the country for many years.

In later years Berg was badgered by publishers to write his memoirs.  They sent over a co-writer to interview him.  Berg quit the project,  and the writer left disappointed.  Berg didn't take it well when he figured out the man thought he was interviewing Moe (Howard) of the Three Stooges.

During his baseball career an interviewer questioned whether he was wasting his talents on baseball.  Berg's reply was that he'd rather be a ballplayer than a Supreme Court justice. 

President Truman invited Berg to the White House to present him the Medal of Freedom.  He turned it down.  After Berg's death, his sister Ethel requested and accepted the award.  She donated it to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

After he retired from government service, Berg lived the last 20 years of his life, unemployed, with his family.  First he lived for many years with his brother, Samuel, a physician, until his brother evicted him.  He then lived with his sister until his death.  He died in 1972 after a fall in the home.  At the hospital, his last words were "How'd the Mets do today?" (They won.)     The never-told story of his secret life in government service died with him.

MORE QUARANTINE STORIES--CHICAGO PIZZA AND HOT DOGS

A year or two ago, I wrote an article about my quest for the best fried chicken in the country.  We had, of course paid a visit to the original Col. Sanders restaurant in Corbin, KY, which is mostly a museum but does sell chicken.  We've had wonderful fried chicken in Forrest City, Arkansas and Paducah, Kentucky, as well as the Dixie Trucker's Home in McLean, Illinois.

As a native of the South Side of Chicago, I've come to realize that gastronomically speaking, Chicago is right up there with anywhere in the world, especially for comfort food.  Certainly other cities are proud of their iconic dishes.  For example, Philly has cheese steaks, New Orleans has po'boys and other Cajun specialties, Boston has lobster, the Outer Banks of North Carolina has buckets of shrimp, and my favorite, Connecticut serves grinder sandwiches.   

But Chicago was the pioneer city for so many delicious dishes--deep dish pizza, Vienna hot dogs, Italian beef and gyro sandwiches on pita bread.  Twinkies, Cracker Jacks, Wrigley's gum and, believe it or not, fudge brownies were also invented in Chicago. 

CHICAGO DEEP DISH PIZZA

Pizza has been around in one form or another for centuries and introduced into the U.S. by Italian immigrants in the early 20th Century.  The Food Channel had a show recently where they surveyed firefighters in New York and Chicago to vote on the " best" pizza.  New York won maybe  because they have more people than Chicago, and Chicagoans never got an opportunity to stuff the ballot box.  I wouldn't put much credence in that survey--New Yorkers put ketchup on their hot dogs.  No self-respecting Chicagoan would do that.

New York pizza has a thin flatbread crust, and it's not in the same league as Chicago pizza.   The Chicago deep dish pizza was developed in 1943 when Ike Sewell and his partner Ric Riccardo opened a restaurant called The Pizzeria on the Near North Side.  Riccardo an Italian immigrant owned a nearby restaurant while Sewell worked for Fleischmann's Distillery Co.  They originally planned to open a Mexican restaurant.  When they opened Due's Pizzeria in 1955, a block away, they changed the name of the original restaurant to Uno's.   The two restaurants are still there and are still successful.  Sewell eventually did open a Mexican restaurant Su Casa, next door to Due's.   My first credit card was from Su Casa when I was in college. 

Pizza historians point out that neither Sewell nor Riccardo knew anything about making pizza, and that the pizza was actually invented by Sewell's pizza chef Rudy Malnati and/or his cook Alice May Redmond. 

The restaurants were so successful that they ultimately franchised the Uno's Pizzeria to a Boston company with plans to bring Chicago pizza across the country.  They did so, and today Uno's Restaurants is a publicly held company operating about 150 locations.  They even have locations in Saudi Arabia, South Korea and India.  The only problem with the franchise pizza is that the recipe, although deep dish, is not the same as the original.  If you're from Chicago, you'll know the difference.  The Uno's near our house closed last year.

Rudy's son Lou Malnati went off on his own in 1971, serving similar deep dish pizza,  Lou died in 1978, but his 2 sons run the company.  They now have over 50 restaurants mostly in the Chicago area as well as a few in Phoenix, Arizona, a city with many former Chicagoans.  The cook Alice May Redmond went with her sister to Gino's East which has similar pizza and multiple locations.

The big difference between Chicago pizza and New York pizza is the thick crust which can be 2 inches thick  It is cooked in a round pan  The flaky crust is made from unbleached wheat flour with lots of butter, giving it a flaky biscuit like taste.   If you're on a diet you probably don't want to read this.  The unique taste comes from 3 types of fat--vegetable oil, olive oil and butter.  They build the pizza in layers.  First they spread the mozzarella cheese, add the Italian sweet or hot sausage patties or vegetables and then the crushed plum tomatoes.  The cheese must be on the bottom; otherwise it would burn in the hot oven.

Even during a pandemic, they will get that pizza to you.  All I had to do was call ahead give a credit card number and they meet you at the curb.

VIENNA HOT DOGS

Two Austrian immigrants, Emil Reichel and Samuel Ladany created their all beef sausage recipe for the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.  They served it from a horse drawn wagon.  It was a big hit and the Vienna Sausage Manufacturing Co. was born. 

If you go to Vienna, Austria and ask for a hot dog, (or a frankfurter or wiener), they won't know what you're talking about.  The sausages, or wieners,  in Austria are more like knockwurst and nothing like the ones here.  They don't come on a bun.  In the real Vienna, the sausages are made with pork, not beef.  Incidentally, in Berlin Germany, the big thing is currywurst, and to American taste buds it really is the wurst. But it's popular in Germany; they sell it everywhere.     As Otto von Bismarck once said, "Laws are like sausages it is better not to see them being made!"

If you order a hot dog in Chicago they give it to you with everything on it--mustard, chopped onions, neon green relish, celery salt, dill pickle, sport peppers and maybe sauerkraut--all on a poppy seed bun.  Personally, I always skip the relish.  No ketchup however.  If someone sees you putting ketchup on a hot dog you may get a cold, threatening glare from bystanders.   Maybe not as bad as my wife smearing mayonnaise on a corned beef sandwich (on white bread) in a Kosher deli but bad nevertheless,

The 1893 World's Fair, the Columbian Exposition, as it was called was the celebration of the 401st anniversary of Columbus "discovering" America.  The fair was best known for introducing the Ferris Wheel and the zipper but the most enduring legacy were the foods introduced to the world for the first time.  For breakfast the fair introduced Cream of Wheat and Shredded Wheat to the world, courtesy of flour millers from Minnesota and Denver.   For lunch and snacks, in addition to all-beef hot dogs, we're talking brownies, which weren't called that until years later,  and Cracker Jacks.  Brownies were small cakes baked by socialite Bertha Palmer (see:  Palmer House Hotel) which were intended to fit inside a box lunch.  They were chocolate but didn't originally have fudge.

I could go on about Italian beef and gyros and maybe I will in a later installment.  Other surprising Chicago inventions are Shrimp de Jonghe and Chicken Vesuvio, both named after now defunct restaurants. 

MORE THINGS I LEARNED DURING QUARANTINE--ALIEN LIFE IN AND AROUND THE RINGS OF SATURN

I've taken the enforced quarantine as an opportunity to be productive and learn new things.  The library is closed, but the supermarket is still open.  We visited Mariano's today, and walking around was like playing a game of Pac Man.  If someone was in an aisle, I would quickly turn down a different aisle.  Waiting at the deli counter was like a pas de deux, an elaborate dance to not get too close to anyone.

About 5 years ago, on a long overseas flight, I watched a video on Cosmos that piqued my interest about astronomy and the possibilities of life in the satellites of Saturn.   In college, I had taken an astronomy course, but that was the Dark Ages compared to what we have learned since the Apollo missions.  Our knowledge of Saturn has increased exponentially especially after the success of the Cassini space probe.

RINGS AND MOONS OF SATURN

The Cassini spacecraft (officially Cassini-Huygens) was launched in 1997 by NASA in conjunction with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency--hence the name Cassini--Giovanni, not Oleg.  After making a grand tour of the Solar System, passing close to Venus, Earth, Asteroid 2685 Masursky and Jupiter, the spacecraft began orbiting Saturn in 2004.  It circled Saturn for 13 years before crashing (deliberately) into the planet in 2017 when its useful life was complete.    They ditched the craft to avoid inadvertently contaminating any of Saturn's moons (especially Titan and Enceladus)  with terrestrial microbes which might have somehow survived the trip.  Despite the demise of the spacecraft, the mountains of data it collected are still being analyzed by scientists who will continue to do so for years to come.

We've learned from the probe and recent observations that Saturn has 82 moons, not to mention more than 150 known moonlets.  Astronomers at the Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii discovered 20 small moons in 2019 of which 17 were retrograde; that is, spinning in the opposite direction from Saturn  When I studied astronomy as a kid, Saturn had only 9 moons.  Incidentally, Jupiter has 79 moons--it had 12 when I grew up. 

Saturn's largest moon, Titan is larger than Mercury or Pluto, but most of the moons are less than 10 km (6 miles) in diameter.  The moonlets, embedded in the Rings are even smaller than that.  If you can envision surf washing over sand on the beach and getting things caught in it, that describes the moonlets..   Some of the moonlets are as small as 400 meters in diameter.  Many of the moons don't even have names yet, and they are soliciting names from the public.  The ones that do have names are named not only for giants of Greek and Roman mythology, but also from Norse, Gallic and Inuit sagas.

Saturn's rings are composed almost entirely of small chunks of water ice, ranging in size from micrometers to several meters.  They are relatively young, geologically speaking.  Scientists estimate their age from 10 million to 100 million years.  They are also slowly disintegrating into the planet by force of gravity.  Time is short; they will be gone in a few hundred million years.

The Rings, which are by and large on the same plane, are classified into at least 154 major subdivisions.  Each one has a name.  We have Rings A through F, though not in alphabetical order.  For example D Ring is the one closest to Saturn (approx. 45,000 miles), followed by C Ring, B Ring, Cassini Division, and then A Ring.  Then comes the Roche Division and then F Ring and various others named after figures from Greek mythology.  The two outermost Rings are E Ring and lastly, Phoebe Ring.   Go figure.  The thickness of the Rings can range from as little as 10 meters up to 1 kilometer. 

The Rings are further subdivided into structures within the Rings themselves.  The 8 structures and gaps within the C Ring alone, have names like Maxwell Gap, Maxwell Ringlet, Bond Gap, Columbo Gap and Titan Ringlet.  They range from 15 km. to 370 km in width.  The Cassini Division has 9 structures and various gaps named after astronomers like Huygens, Herschel and Kuiper.  The Kuiper Gap is only 3 km across. 

The widths of the Rings range from 500 km (300 miles) to 25,000 km (15,500 miles) except for the giant E Ring which is 300,000 km (186,000 mi) across.

POSSIBILITIES OF LIFE

What excites scientists most is the possibility of life on the moons Titan and Enceladus.  Enceladus in particular is intriguing because geysers of water vapor and other materials are constantly erupting in its South polar region.  The spacecraft actually flew through the geysers, probably 50 miles above the surface, and detected organic compounds consisting of carbon and nitrogen as well as amino acids, the building blocks of life.  The indication is that Enceladus has a large subterranean ocean of liquid salt water more than 6 miles thick.  Scientists believe that the ocean covers the entire subsurface of that moon.

Although scientists don't expect intelligent life to appear, they are lobbying for more space missions to determine what types of life, if any, exist there.  They could then compare it to life on Earth in an attempt to determine whether it arose independently or if Earth life and Enceladus life came from a common source in the Universe.  Either way, the results could answer questions we've been asking for generations.  Scientists today still can't answer the question of how life originated on Earth.

For life to exist, there must be an energy source.  On Earth, that energy source generally is the Sun.  But not always.  For example, in recent years, scientists discovered life teeming in extreme environments, the superheated volcanic vents on the ocean floor, far from any energy from the Sun.  They had discovered archaea, an entirely new phylum, totally alien to what we could expect.   Many are one celled creatures distinct from and unrelated to bacteria. 

Scientists speculate that there is no reason why similar life couldn't thrive on (or under) Enceladus.  They don't rule out the fact that alien life could have a different bio-chemistry than Earth life.  We won't know until we can figure out a way to go there or send a probe to find out.  It probably won't happen in our lifetime. 

The spacecraft dispatched the Huygens lander to the surface of Titan in 2005.  The photos aren't much different than those on Mars with many rocks strewn across the surface.  Titan has a thick atmosphere, weather and tidal currents, like we have on Earth.  What's most interesting is the fact that Titan has lakes on the surface, the only lakes in the Solar System other than on Earth.  One Titanian lake, Kraken Mare, is larger than Lake Superior.  You don't want to drink out of it because it is not filled with water but rather liquid hydrocarbons methane and ethane.  Your car might run on it however.

Those lakes sit on top of a subterranean ocean filed with water.  NASA is entertaining the idea of sending a submarine to Titan (I'm not making this up--two different designs have been presented) to search for exotic alien life.

THINGS I LEARNED DURING QUARANTINE--BIG BANG

Sitting in the house with little to do and the library closed, I have to keep my mind busy.  I watched a couple educational movies on Cosmos that literally expanded my horizons.

I spent an hour and a half watching a movie explaining what occurred during the first second after the Big Bang, billions of years ago.  Of course nobody was there with a stopwatch. 

According to the movie, scientists measure time in "Planck times" (tp)  which are trillionths of a second.  The term honors German physicist Max Planck who first proposed the concept in 1899.  He incorporated the speed of light and Newton's gravitational constant along with Planck's constant in a series of complicated equations.

Actually a unit of Planck time is much shorter than a trillionth of a second  It is defined as the time to travel one Planck length at the speed of light--a time interval of 5.391 X 10 to the minus 44th of a second.  In other words, how far does light travel in one second.   That's quick.  Lickety split!

One Planck time is the shortest theoretically measurable time interval.  The key word here is theoretical  because we don't have the technology yet to measure it. This concept is useful in quantum physics and I don't purport to be an expert on that. 

To slow things down, there are actually words to describe short periods of time (in ascending order). For example: 1 yoctosecond (1 septillionth of a second), 1 zeptosecond (1 sextillionth), 1 attosecond (1 quintillionth), 1 femtosecond (1 quadrillionth) and 1 picosecond(1 trillionth).  There will be a quiz on this,

To put this in context, an attosecond (1000 zeptoseconds) is to a second as a second is to 31.7 billion years.  It takes 0.35 attoseconds for light to travel the diameter of a hydrogen atom. They didn't really measure that, they computed it mathematically.  The famous Higgs boson particle, discovered at the Large Hadron Collider in 2013, hangs around for less than a yoctosecond before it breaks down. 

The cost to obtain this information is astronomical in itself--billions of Euros.  The Europeans built the LHC, the largest machine in the world.  Located several hundred feet underground in France and Switzerland, it has 17 miles of concrete tunnels in which trillions of particles are fired at each other at nearly the speed of light.   They are expected to collide with each other, and scientists observe these collisions to better understand what happened in the Big Bang.   The best analogy is a big football game where arms and legs are flying around on every play. 

For most of us, there isn't a big demand for trillions of anything except when discussing the Federal deficit.  To paraphrase Sen. Everett Dirksen in the 1960's, "Congress spends a trillion here and a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money!"

The narrator explained that particles from the Big Bang were moving faster than the speed of light.  Einstein wasn't around in those days to tell them that you can't do that.  Einstein's theories regarding the bending of light were recently proven.  This occurred a Planck time or two after the Big Bang, which could be caused only by gravitational waves produced by inflation.  The Big Bang, by definition is simply inflation on a cosmic scale.  This discovery of inflation gratifies Washington economists and also those scientists who espouse the Big Bang Theory. 

In any event, nobody was able to explain what caused the Big Bang in the first place, or how all that matter in the universe was compressed into a single atom.  If anyone can explain that, a Nobel Prize awaits--as well as a noble one.

Did I mention that it's been a long quarantine?? In my next installment, I'll explain about all the stuff that's buried in the Rings of Saturn.

MORE ROAD TRIP ADVENTURES--TASTING CHILI, 2 PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES, 2 CAPITOLS, AND OTHERS,

SAMPLING CINCINNATI CHILI

After touring the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, Dianne and I stopped for dinner nearby at Skyline Chili, a Cincinnati icon.  I had never visited a Skyline Chili restaurant, but I heard its the most exciting thing to happen in Cincinnati since they elected Jerry Springer mayor. 

Most people don't know this, but Cincinnati is famous for its chili, especially Skyline Chili.  For years people have been bending my ear about how great it is, and this was my first opportunity to taste it.  The chili was created by a Greek immigrant named Nicholas Lambrinides in 1949 using family recipes.  He opened his first restaurant and named it for his view of the Cincinnati skyline.  Since then, it has expanded to over 150 locations in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.

The marketing department at Skyline Chili has done a good job. The chili is the "official chili" of sports teams like the Cincinnati Reds, the Columbus Blue Jackets and even Kings Island amusement park.  It sponsors the Crosstown Shootout, the annual basketball game between Cincinnati and Xavier Universities, both Division 1 rivals.  According to Wikipedia, Skyline, along with Cincinnati chili in general is considered the signature dish for the whole State of Ohio.  So take that, Texas!

It is not to be confused with Texas chili.  Cincinnati chili lacks meat, and beans cost extra.  Spiced with curry powder, and sprinkled with grated cheese, Cincinnati chili is really a sauce spread over hot dogs or spaghetti.  Most Texans will probably stick to their own chili with meat and hot spices. 

I ordered the 5-ways which is the spaghetti with chili, cheese, beans and onions.  On the 4-ways, you get a choice of beans or onions, and on the 3-way, you just get the chili and cheese.  I enjoyed it, but I'll stick to the Chicago style chili which is more similar to the Texas chili.

RIO GRANDE UNIVERSITY--BEVO FRANCIS

A three hour drive East of Cincinnati, we visited the leafy campus of Rio Grande University, at an unlikely location, not in Texas, but in Southeastern Ohio.  Many moons ago, in the early 1950's, this small school, then known as Rio Grande College was a basketball hotbed.  The school at that time had less than 100 students and more than half were girls.  The gym didn't even have a locker room, so the players had to scamper across to the dorm to take showers.

For two seasons, though, Rio Grande was a giant in the basketball world.  The team stunned sport fans by blowing through 39 straight small schools in 1953 and then more than holding their own against large basketball powers the following year, going 21-7.  That wouldn't normally be a big deal, but they had a star player named Bevo Francis who became a household name as the big fish in the small pond.   Mr. Francis AVERAGED over 50 points per game, setting the all time college basketball scoring record which still stands.  He scored 116 points in one game and 113 in another.

Years ago, I wrote an article about Mr. Francis, and now I was able to research his story firsthand.  See KENSUSKINREPORT, June 11, 2007.  

Near the gym is a street on campus named after Mr. Francis.   I went inside the gym and took a picture of Mr. Francis' jersey, Number 32 hanging from the rafters.  It was new student week and I asked a young female student guide if there were any other Bevo Francis memorabilia in the building.  She didn't know the significance, and wasn't even sure who he was.  For all she knew, I could have been talking about Pope Francis.  Nevertheless, she took me to the trophy room where behind the glass were yellowed newspaper accounts of Mr. Francis' exploits.

A large plaque hanging on the wall has a list of Francis' highest scoring games--116 against Ashland Junior College, 113 against Hillsdale, 84 against Alliance College, 82 against Bluffton College, and so on.   That was before they had 3-point baskets, and Francis could shoot from outside as well as inside.

That was the high point of Mr. Francis' basketball career.  He was drafted by the NBA, but in those days he could make more money playing for the Washington Generals, the all-white patsy team who played the Harlem Globetrotters every night.  After a few years, Francis gained weight and lost his magic on the court.  He had to get a day job and spent the rest of his working life at the steel mills.

NITRO, WEST VIRGINIA

Later the same day, we pulled up to a truck stop in Nitro, WV.  Parked next to us was a truck with a sign, "we stamp concrete any color you want!"  I talked to the guy for awhile and asked him if he could do my favorite color--plaid.  Well, almost any color.

Meanwhile, my wife, Dianne, met a woman in the rest room who explained that she was in Nitro to visit the World War I Museum   Her grandfather worked in Nitro during the war.  She convinced us to visit also.  We were just sightseeing, so we had plenty of time to look around.   I had heard of Nitro because of its unusual name and because former baseball star Lew Burdette hailed from there.  More on him in a moment.  I couldn't have located Nitro on a map until we showed up there.

Nitro is a living memorial to World War I which wasn't even called that until World War II began. The town derived its name from nitrocellulose, the main ingredient in smokeless gunpowder.  According to the Mayor, the name was selected by the Ordnance Department of the government. 

A couple years ago, we had visited the World War II Museum in New Orleans, so it was time to fill in our bucket list regarding wars.  We've done Vicksburg and Gettysburg from the Civil War and even Saratoga and the George Rogers Clark campaign in the Revolutionary War.   This museum was worth the visit. 

Nitro was conceived as a company town to manufacture smokeless gunpowder during World War I.  When the U.S. entered the war, the country could not produce enough gunpowder to supply the combat troops.  Congress acted quickly to authorize construction of defense plants.

The War Department chose the location because they deemed it safe from coastal attacks, and it offered readily available rail and water transportation.  They broke ground shortly before Christmas in 1917 and created a boomtown within 11 months.

Today, Nitro has 7100 people.  The namesake chemical plant, officially, "Explosives Plant C", was producing 100,000 pounds of high explosives daily but it quickly became obsolete when the war ended.  The government had built housing for 26,000 people, and it wasn't even complete when the war ended. 

After Armistice Day, the town had to reinvent itself, so it brought in other chemical plants.  As could be expected, the nearby Kanawha River became highly polluted, and the chemical site ultimately was placed on the National Priorities List Superfund.  You may recall the deadly Agent Orange from the Vietnam days.  Well, it was manufactured in Nitro by Monsanto, creating widespread dioxin contamination.  The company had to pay millions for cleanup of homes and for medical monitoring of inhabitants of the community.  In the old days, you could smell the town before you arrived there, but in recent years, manufacturing has shifted away from the area, and air pollution is no longer the problem it once was. 

The highlight of Nitro is the World War I Museum, located in an old school building, displaying uniforms, guns and other items donated by families of veterans.  One can review the blueprints of the explosives plant.  They even have a replica of a World War I trench.  In recent years, the museum incorporated World War II materials as well as other historical items relating to the town.  Tucked away on a back table is a signed portrait of actor Clark Gable who worked in the plant in 1918.

Our guide, the 95 year old veteran of D-Day, Clyde Mynes explained that the purpose of smokeless gunpowder was that the enemy couldn't see you.  I called him "sir"--he was a badass dude during World War II.  He stormed the beach on D-Day and continued on into Germany where he witnessed some of the battles and atrocities that we all know about.

The museum even displayed Lew Burdette's baseball uniform from the Milwaukee Braves.  In case you don't remember him, Burdette, a right-handed pitcher and native of Nitro, almost singlehandedly throttled the New York Yankees in the 1957 World Series, winning 3 games, the last two by shutouts.  About 10 years later, the team moved to Atlanta, and the City of Milwaukee has not won a championship since.

CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA

We visited two state capitol buildings on our trip.  The magnificent capitol building in Charleston, the largest city in West Virginia was completed in 1932.  Today it is being renovated, and we couldn't see too much.  The dome, which resembles the Capitol in Washington,  is 292 feet high and 75 feet in diameter.  Inside the dome is a 4000 pound chandelier, but I couldn't see that either because of the renovation. 

The verdant grounds are beautiful.  The two prominent statues outside the building brought together an odd couple.  The famous Lincoln Walks at Midnight sculpture by Fred Martin Torrey stands in front of the main entrance, and Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson stands maybe a hundred yards away, among the large trees.  West Virginia is not Virginia, so maybe they won't tear it down anytime soon. 

Jackson was born in what is now West Virginia, and the state claims him as a native son.  Before the Civil War, most Americans considered themselves citizens of their home state rather than the USA.  Jackson, a Virginian, opposed seceding from the Union, but when Virginia seceded in 1861, he remained loyal to his state and fought for the South. 

Jackson, a West Point grad, acquired his nickname during the First Battle of Bull Run when his troops held the line against superior Union forces. Another Southern general exclaimed that Jackson's forces stood like a stone wall.   He was killed by "friendly" fire on a scouting mission.  After the Battle of Chancellorsville in early 1863, he went on a reconnaissance mission with his aides.  A North Carolina regiment mistakenly took them for enemy cavalry and shot the General.

West Virginia broke off from Virginia in 1861 after Virginia seceded from the Union.  Virginia was part of the Confederacy, but the country people in the mountainous Northwestern part of the state were Union sympathizers.  Most were yeoman farmers who owned no slaves and who resented the elite planters of regular Virginia.  West Virginia proved to be a key border state during the Civil War.  By 1863, Lincoln's re-election chances were somewhat iffy with the war dragging on.  The Administration encouraged those folks to apply for statehood, and that, along with Nevada in 1864,  gave a boost to Lincoln's re-election.

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

We visited another state capitol building--Montgomery, Alabama.  On a sunny Sunday morning we toured the capitol grounds.   Across the street is President Jefferson Davis' house, actually the First White House of the Confederacy when Montgomery was the original capital of the Confederacy in 1861.

The Davis family only lived in the house for a few months; the Confederacy moved the capital to Richmond, VA the same year.  The large white Italianate mansion was built in 1832 by an ancestor of Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of famed novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald.   They moved the house to its present location in 1921.

We hung around Montgomery for a few hours and then headed for Biloxi, Mississippi, the seafood capital and challenging Las Vegas as the gambling capital of the world.

SHRIMPING IN BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI

In the spirit of Forrest Gump, we hitched a ride on a shrimp boat in Biloxi, Mississippi and learned all about the shrimp industry.  Biloxi was once called the seafood capital of the world.  Hurricanes and other disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill periodically decimate the seafood industry. Fortunately shrimps and oysters are not endangered--they breed in prodigious numbers. Shrimps and oysters produce millions of offspring in any breeding season-- for example a female oyster can produce 100 million eggs in one season.    It can take them a year or more to reach marketable size. 

Most of the harvest on our boat was brown shrimp which are caught at night in the summer months. White shrimp and pink shrimp are also caught.  To me, they all taste the same, but they do have different characteristics.  White shrimp are caught in the daylight during the fall and winter months.  Pink shrimp are also caught at night in October through April.   

The boat drags a net and hauls in the fish.  If they are the wrong size, or the wrong fish, he throws them back in the water.   For photo ops, we held up the shrimps by their long stringy tails.

JEFFERSON DAVIS--BEAUVOIR

On our trip we learned more about Jeff Davis than we ever cared to.  His real home was a grand mansion called Beauvoir, facing the Gulf Coast on U.S. 90 in Biloxi.   The house was built by a man named James Brown, probably not related to the King of Soul.   Its location, close to the water, makes it a target of hurricanes, and it was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina.     The main house has since been restored, but several buildings on the grounds were destroyed, and replicas are in the planning stage.  Today the grounds house the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library, a Confederate cemetery, a gift shop and others. 

We watched a video of Davis's life.  A graduate of West Point, Davis was appointed Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce.  He was also a U.S. Senator from Mississippi.  Among other things Davis owned and operated a cotton plantation along with 113 slaves. 

Davis married well.  His first wife, Sarah was the daughter of President Zachery Taylor.  She died of malaria a few months into the marriage.  Davis contracted malaria also, but survived.  The disease plagued him periodically the rest of his life.  His second wife, Varina Howell was the daughter of a Governor of New Jersey and a cousin of Vice President Aaron Burr.

Historians have looked unfavorably upon Jefferson Davis.  The academics considered him a poor leader detrimental to the Confederate cause. According to Wikipedia, "his preoccupation with detail, reluctance to delegate responsibility, lack of popular appeal, feuds with powerful state governors and generals, favoritism toward old friends inability to get along with people who disagreed with him, neglect of civil matters in favor of military ones and resistance to public opinion all worked against him. "  Have I missed anything?

Although Davis was not disgraced; as a war leader, I think we can all agree that he was much less effective than Abraham Lincoln.  In Southern consciousness, General Robert E. Lee is much more revered than Davis. 

Don't confuse Jefferson Davis (Jefferson F. Davis, that is) with Jefferson C. Davis, a Union general who endured much razzing  because of his name, but maybe they promoted him to confuse the Southerners.   There is no evidence they received each other's mail, but both fought honorably in the Mexican War.  The Union's Jeff Davis was promoted to Brigadier General after a significant victory in Arkansas and later served as a corps commander during Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864.    The Northern Jeff Davis achieved some notoriety when he shot and killed his superior officer, General William Nelson,  who allegedly insulted him in front of witnesses.  Davis beat the rap because of the shortage of experienced commanders in the Union Army.

OFFSHORE OIL RIG, MORGAN CITY, LOUISIANA

In Louisiana, we drove about 70 miles west of New Orleans to the oil patch in Morgan City.  The attraction there is the International Petroleum Museum which has a real working offshore oil rig.  Well sort of offshore.  You can get there by car.  The oil rig is called Mr. Charlie, named after a banker and oil man named Charles H. Murphy who financed the $2.5 million to construct it, back in 1952.  Murphy's company, Murphy Oil, based in El Dorado, Arkansas made a deal with Shell Oil to drill offshore wells.

At that time, offshore drilling was a new industry.  Oil companies obviously wanted access to the oil field, but their methods were vastly inefficient.  Shell wanted to drill near the mouth of the Mississippi River, but conventional methods were not cost effective.

A young Naval engineer named A.J. "Doc" LaBorde, working for an oil company named Kerr McGee came up with a solution by transporting the entire drilling operation on a barge that could be floated to any location.  They would then sink the barge to the bottom to create a stable platform and start drilling.  When they were done, they would raise the barge and move it to the next location.  The thinking at that time was "what could possibly go wrong?" 

The establishment thought LaBorde was nuts, but Charlie Murphy hung in there, and incredibly, the idea worked!  The oilfield turned out to be a monster, and Murphy drilled hundreds of wells for Shell and other major oil companies.

The rig is located in the inlet, the delta of the Atchafalaya River, next to the shore.  This is a 1950's vintage rig which is showing signs of rust and wear.  The guided tours are at 10 AM and 2 PM.  Unfortunately for us,. we arrived at about Noon, and there is not much else to do in Morgan City.  The city doesn't make the place easy to find.   Even using the GPS in our car, we drove around the block several times before we figured out where it was.  We couldn't do the tour, but we could walk around and take pictures.  The museum, which is interesting, tells the history of offshore and deep water drilling.

We stopped for a late lunch at a small diner on the road which served the best crawfish stew we've ever had.    Then, on to the Laura Plantation. 

LAURA PLANTATION

An hour west of New Orleans, in Vacherie, Louisiana are several restored plantations by the Mississippi River left intact after the Civil War.  The Laura Plantation, which used to be called the DuParc Plantation is named after a Creole woman who was born there during the Civil War and lived into the Kennedy Administration at age 101. 

Creoles are defined as native born people, especially of French or Spanish descent, mixed with Negro and/or Native American blood.   Creoles have a culture all their own, with a strong French influence.  Much is attributed to a somewhat hostile state government during the Jim Crow days, which mandated that English be spoken, essentially making the Creoles "outsiders"  The state decreed that French was a foreign language, at least in the segregated public school system.  It became an "us" versus "them" mentality for the Creoles.    The culture centers on food, music, folklore, family traditions, architecture, the Catholic faith and genealogy. 

Laura's life story is riveting, and the plantation has become a popular tourist attraction.  The stories are told through the eyes of the gentry and also through the slaves who lived and worked there.

The namesake "Laura" was Laura Lacool (1861-1963) who spent most of her life on the plantation.  In 1936 she wrote her memoirs, called Memories of the Old Plantation Home from where the stories are derived.  That manuscript was lost to the ages but rediscovered in 1993 and is now the basis of the whole tourist experience.   Historians now have first hand glimpses of plantation life in Creole Louisiana. 

JAMES K. POLK, COLUMBIA, TENNESSEE

We took a detour south of Nashville to visit another presidential library, that of our esteemed 11th president, James Knox Polk.  Polk, the eldest of 10 children, came from North Carolina with the Polk Brothers, and sisters.  It was a sizzling day--104F, and we were happy to visit an air conditioned house. 

Polk was elected in 1844 and served one term.  In those days it was common not to seek re-election.  In Polk's case, he said that he fulfilled all his campaign promises and also started a war with Mexico--does that sound familiar?  Polk was the Manifest Destiny president,  During his administration, the U.S. acquired more land than in any other.  Almost the entire Southwest was added to the United States,  all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  Polk died in 1849, and his wife Sarah survived him for 42 years until she died in 1891.

Polk, a protégé of Andrew Jackson, served 7 congressional terms, the last two as Speaker of the House.  Polk was nominated as a little known dark horse candidate running against the well known House Speaker Henry Clay of the Whig Party who ultimately ran for president and lost 3 times.  Clay made fun of Polk (Who is James K. Polk?), because of his low profile--he was not well known outside of politics.  Clay, as before,  managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Polk's platform favored expansion of the U.S., starting with the annexation of Texas.  This proved to be popular with the voters and was the deciding factor.  You may be familiar with Polk's vice president, George Dallas.  You've heard of the Dallas Cowboys--they were named after him, at least the Dallas part. 

Historians consider Polk the most effective president of the pre-Civil War era--Arthur Schlesinger ranked Polk 8th best president, although most other historians ranked him around 12th.  Among other things, Polk reduced tariffs and negotiated a settlement with England regarding the Pacific Northwest--Oregon and Washington territories.  On the other hand like most pre-Civil War presidents, in fact 12 of the first 14 presidents, Polk owned slaves and even purchased some during his administration.   You won't see many statues of him outside Tennessee except for one in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Polk was the only president to graduate from the University of North Carolina,  at least until Michael Jordan goes into politics.