Sing it Willy, Sing it..."On the Road Again...

Out of contact frequently over the next few weeks as I head out across the Heartland of America with my beautiful wife on our annual road trip. Finding time to read a few journals on the way, and explore the blue roads across the farms and villages where America is still at work and play.. If you want to go from Detroit to Chicago, get off US 94 and swing down on US 12... wandering across the soft underbelly of Michigan near one lake after another, but carefully avoiding any possible slip over into Ohio (ugh)
Along the way you pass through Coldwater, Michigan, Birthplace of a murderer (or was he?) second only to Jack The Ripper in British History... Here is the story as to Wikipedia,

"On November 23, 1910, Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, born in Coldwater, Michigan, in 1862, was hanged in London for the murder and dismemberment of his wife. It was one of the most notorious English murder stories in history, second only to Jack the Ripper. Today, forensic biologist Dr. David Moran has completed a study and proven that the remains of the body found were not actually those of Dr. Crippen's wife, and proved that Dr. Crippen was wrongfully executed."
Interesting fact from the same site, the population of Coldwater is .03% Pacific Islander... with a population at about 12,697 people (2000 census) that means about 4 people in town are Pacific Islanders... probably running the only surf shop on the Sauk River....

I didn't go all the way to Chicago, but turned south into Indiana "Back home again... in Indiana... sing children... and stumbled across the home town (Wawaka, Indiana) of former Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick.. the guy who said Maris should have an astereisk on his home run record (boo).

I did find time to read a couple of old journals, and even found a new multiplication method to add to the list they are archiving over at 360.. more later...

More...Things I Learned on the Road

More Things I learned on the Road.... The picture above is for those who have always secretly wondered what I would look like with long flowing locks... Newsflash!! Spanish Moss is NOT Spanish...AND (wait for it.....) it is NOT moss... talk about bad names... The French gave it the "Spanish" name as an insult???? Guess you had to be there. Probably an old Monty Python skit about that, "Your Moss is Spanish and your Mother smells of Elderberries!!!". Ok, and the moss part, NOPE... its an epiphitic (gets its food from the air) bromeliad (cousin of the pineapple). Now you know

I also was reminded that people are really strange. In the middle of the road in Enterprise Alabama, there is a statue to the Boil Weevil . Now if you are really a city child and know nothing of the agricultural history of the south, the weevil wiped out many cotton farmers in the south around the beginning of the 20th century. The idea of a monument to the weevil in Alabama would be like a giant grasshopper in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I also continued my road heroics on Jekyll Island (which used to be called Jeykl Island, but someone thought the extra L would be better ). I saved a Loggerhead Turtle and set him free. Ok, I didn't do it all by myself. The Georgia Sea Turtle association was releasing a ten year old (about 150 pounds) that had been kept in the Georgia Acquarium since its egg-ship. I did happen to be in the crowd watching as Dylan, that was his name, went free. He seemed to need a little encouragement as he turned back to shore several times. Eventually prompted by the workers in the waters urging he swam out to sea. Perhaps he was also encouraged by the shouting on shore as the crowd yelled "DIll - Enn.. Dill Enn... repeatedly, especially if he was as confused as I was at first. I thought I had fallen in with gourmets of the turtle soup variety yelling "Kill him, kill him..' eventually I got it straight, and hope Dylan also knew we were NOT trying to have him for supper.

More stuff I learned, don't explain palindromes while driving through Elba, Alabama. As I came into town the name of the town reminded me of one of the first palindromes I ever leaned (OK, second, the first was Madam I am Adam.. read it backwards if you don't know what a palindrome is); Able was I ere I saw Elba. In math, we call numbers like 121 or 1331 or 14641 (surely you recognize the powers of 11) palindromic numbers. We even refer to a polynomial like 1x²+2x+1 as palindromic (look at the coefficients). As I was making sure my wife understood, I saw flashing lights in the rear view mirror... apparently the speed through town was only 25 mph and I was, as the kind officer explained holding thumb and finger an inch apart, "A little over." It was Sunday Morning, and in the spirit of Christian charity, he let me off with a warning.... Thank goodness I was not in Georgia.. I might still be rotting in Macon County Correctional Institute for Out of state drivers.