Will I ever own it?

I learned a new word yesterday:  demonym. It appeared in one of the word games I play every morning, and I admit, I had to look it up.

I figured it had something to do with words or names, from the suffix -onym, as in homonym. Once I read the definition, the prefix demo- made sense too – something to do with people or populations, as in demographic.

A demonym, then, is the name given to the people of a place. French is the demonym for people in France, and, as if often the case, is also the name of their language.

The people of Greece are Greek and speak Greek. People in Germany are German and speak German. People in the United States are American and speak English.

Well, it works most of the time.

In grade school they told us, “Use a new word ten times, and it’s yours.”  I am wondering what my chances are of slipping “demonym” into even one conversation, but you never know.

Fishing, with emesis

The summer before my fourth birthday, my parents and grandparents and brother and I embarked on a fishing vacation that involved a cabin on Lake Kabetogama, about 10 miles from International Falls and about as far north as you can go in Minnesota and still be in the United States of America.

Dad's big Oldsmobile was loaded with suitcases, fishing gear, cabin needs, and everything else a family of six would need for such an excursion, and off we went at some ungodly hour of the morning for a one-day trip of 630 miles on two-lane roads. The men were in the front – my dad driving, my brother on the hump, and Grandpa by the passenger window; in the back it was Mother, me in the middle, and Grandma.

I was car sick.

Everyone quickly tired of stopping every couple miles for me to climb out of the car to vomit, so my father got a minnow bucket out of the trunk for me to puke into. Every 50 or 75 miles he'd stop near a stream or some other source of water so the bucket could be rinsed out.

After 250 miles of this, we interrupted the trip with a stop in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. There was a clinic open where some young doctor very cleverly diagnosed motion sickness and gave us a supply of pills which were small and yellow and very, very bitter and which put me soundly to sleep.

The rest of the story is family legend because of the complete and utter despondency my neat-freak mother experienced trying to keep house in a place where there were bugs and critters and fish and sand and live bait and all manner of other unsavory things. She never went on another trip to a lake, never rented another cabin, never again went fishing, and never had any more children who were car sick because she made me take those damn pills before every car ride of 50 or more miles until, at about age 13, I was finally able to convince her I had outgrown it.

Good Advice

I woman I used to know, a professional photographer, told me about a time she had to deliver some photos to a client whose office was in downtown Chicago. She drove into the Loop and found the building, but she couldn’t find a parking place anywhere near it.

She did not want to resort to one of those public garages that charged $27 for the first half hour, so she drove around the block six or eight times hoping somebody would leave and a spot would open up on the street. None did.

Finally, she pulled into the alley behind the building and ascertained that there was a back entrance. She was sitting there trying to decide if she and her car would be safe when she saw a dirty and disheveled man shuffling toward her.  He was obviously a street person, a genuine bum complete with a bottle in a brown paper bag.

At some level, she recognized the absurdity of seeking reassurance from such as he; nevertheless, as he approached, she rolled down her window and called out, “Hey – do you think I could leave my car here for five minutes while I run into that building?”

The guy came up to her side of the car and leaned down to look directly at her through the open window. After studying her face for a moment, he said, “Lady – take a chance.”

That was over 40 years ago, yet at any time in my life that a bold decision is needed, I always recall the sage advice of the wino in the alley and say to myself, "Lady, take a chance."

Mine Ears Have Heard the Glory

One of my mother’s favorite songs was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” words by Julia Ward Howe, sung to the tune of a camp-meeting song called “John Brown’s Body.” It arose and became quite popular during the American Civil War.

I mentioned in a previous post (“Quite an undertaking,” October 26, 2011) that my mother had pre-arranged her funeral, which actually consisted of a single night of what they now call “visitation” or (worse) “viewing,” but which we used to call a wake.  On the instruction sheet for the arrangements, she had marked that organ music was acceptable but added a note in the margin that said, "Do not play 'In the Garden,' or I will get up and walk out.”

She included, among the few hymns and songs she wanted to be played, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” but when the time came, I asked the organist to omit it.  I was afraid that thereafter I would always associate that song with my mother's death.

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” came up as a correct response on “Jeopardy!” recently, and it immediately reminded me that my mother wanted that song played at her funeral service.

I might as well have let the organist play it.

Book Covers

I've mentioned before the British company I worked for back in the 70's that made very large and very expensive things like electron microscopes and mass spectrometers. It was headquartered in Manchester, England, and the main American location was in New York. I worked in the Chicago sales office.

One of my favorite people in New York was a guy named John Tinnon who was in charge of shipping and receiving. He was intelligent and witty and fun to talk to, and completely reliable. If he said the equipment would be shipped on Tuesday, it shipped on Tuesday. He never let me down, and I thought the world of him.

An important customer needed a replacement part urgently, and I called John to see what could be done. He said he had the part in stock and promised he would get it to our office the next day. Now, this was before FedEx and over-night shipping had been  invented, so I asked him how he proposed to do that. He said, "If I have to, I'll hire a courier and put him on an airplane with it."

Sure enough, about 10:30 the next morning, a dude came into our office carrying a box with the company logo on it. I was a little alarmed because of his appearance -- long, stringy hair and a very long, stringy beard, tie-died tee-shirt and love beads around his neck. I was thinking, "Oh, John -- couldn't you find somebody besides this long-haired hippy freak?"

The guy set the package down on my desk and said, "Hi. I'm John Tinnon."

In for a penny ...

The Coinage Act of 1792 established our monetary system and also called for the building, equipping, and staffing of a mint to be located in our nation's capital, which at the time was Philadelphia. When it was the only mint, there was no point in putting mint marks on the coins produced there. Later when branch mints were opened, they used a letter (or two) to indicate where the coins were minted, except for those coins from Philadelphia. They continued to have no mint mark.

After a couple hundred years, that policy was changed.  Starting in 1980, all U.S. coins had a mint mark, even P for Philadelphia, with one exception: the penny. Philadelphia-minted one-cent coins still have no mint mark.

Here are two coins from last year. The one on the right is from Denver, indicated by the small D under the date. You know the one on the left is from Philadelphia by the absence of a mint mark.

Here are two pennies from this year:

Notice anything? Like a small P under the date on the first one?

Instead of issuing a special coin or series of coins in gold or other precious metal to commemorate its 225th anniversary, the folks at the Mint decided to do one very small but very special thing: they put the P mint mark on the pennies from Philadelphia.

The fun part is -- they didn't tell anybody they were going to do it. They just issued the coins and then sat back to see how long it would take people to notice.

The U.S. Mint has a playful side.  Who knew?

Why do we do the things we do?

Well, you probably know the story about the woman who always cut a slab off one end of a pot roast before putting it in the roaster. When asked why, she said that’s how her mother always did it. Intrigued, she called her mother and asked her why she always cut some of the meat off the roast. “That’s the way my mother always did it,” she replied.

They called Grandma and asked, “Why do you always cut a chunk off a roast before baking it?” to which Granny replied, “Because I never had a pan big enough.”

One thing my mother always did was break spaghetti in half before putting it into the boiling water, but I know why she did that – she didn’t have a pot big enough. She always used a Mirro four-quart aluminum pot for pasta, and she always broke the long strands in half so they would fit better.

I’m still using that same pot, which is at least as old as I am (i.e., 70), and I have been breaking the long pasta in half my whole cooking life.

Until now. Mueller’s has started packaging “Pot-Sized” spaghetti, linguini, and angel hair (my personal favorite) already broken into what you might call half sizes.

There must be more people out there than I ever realized who are using four-quart pots for boiling s'getti.