Freaky Fridays

Well, I've been tagged by both Living the Wife of Riley and by her husband, My Side of the Story to list 6 quirks or weird things about me and to tell you the truth I was hard(ly) pressed.

You might question what is in the water in Chicago after reading their freaky quirks - in fact it might even help you understand why the Chicago River actually flows the wrong way...

After much protracted thinking, and yes, I hear the choruses of "Ut-oh", I got my list. You see, there is really nothing odd about me - In fact, I'm so boring that:

1) I enjoy photographing orange traffic cones. The highlight of my photographic "body of work" (I use that term very loosely) is having captured them having sex and spotting an orange cone punching out an orange striped barrel.

2) My absolutely most favorite song in the world is "God Bless My Underwear" song to the tune of "God Bless America".

God bless my underwear, my only pair.
Stand beside them, and guide them,
Through the rips, through the holes, through the tears.
From the washer, to the dryer, to the clothesline in the air.
God bless my underwear, my only pair.

I enjoy pretending I only have one pair of underwear and when I do my laundry, I remove the pair I have on and throw them in the washer. I then go through "pretend" agony as my only pair of underwear is being washed. I'm pretty sure its "pretend" agony anyway.

3) The item at the very top of my bucket list, the lengthy list of things I want to do before I die, is to take the ultimate photograph of a squirrel living in the wild. I've dedicated my life to doing this - and have had little-to-no luck yet.

4) I like to go to the local hardware store to watch the nails rust and to go downtown to watch the parking meters violate themselves. These trips are often the highlights of my week.

5) I really dislike watching the professional sports of Basketball, Baseball and Football on TV. I'd much rather watch a Public Television special on how foot fungus is treated in third world countries.

6) SpongeBob SquarePants is my (not-so) secret role model. I can think of nothing more fun than catching jelly fish in a butterfly net unless its catching three-eyed fish down in the river by the local nuke plant.

So.. I live a life of quiet desperation - buried deep in a rut of dullness.

Now, I'm supposed to tag a bunch of others, but I won't... I know all of you, except for those of you living really near to Chicago (say within 12,501 miles), are perfectly normal, sane, level-headed people. But if you wanna do this - go for it! After all, your list couldn't possibly be more boring than this one.

Telford, Pennsylvania

Connections... tenuous... but they are there...

The town formerly called Hendrick’s Blacksmith, located just a few miles northwest of where I work, was originally inhabited by the Lenape Indians, and settled in 1719 by Mennonites (the "almost Amish") from the Rhenish Palatinate (Southwestern Germany).

The town changed its name to Telford in 1857, after the North Pennsylvania Railroad Company, later the Reading Railroad, named its new station there "Telford" in honour of Sir Thomas Telford.

Sir Thomas Telford (August 9, 1757 - September 2, 1834) was born in Glendinning, Scotland. He was a stonemason, architect and famous British civil engineer and a noted road, bridge and canal builder. He worked at Her Majesty's Naval Base Portsmouth, England as a young man and went from there to bigger and better things.



He designed and/or built the Shropshire Union Canal in England...



...the Caledonian Canal in Scotland...



...the Gota Canal in Sweden, and numerous other engineering structures between 1792 and 1810.



Source

The 1,007 foot long Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in Wales, carrying the Llangollen Canal over the River Dee at an elevation of 126 feet was his masterpiece.

Sir Telford was buried in Westminster Abbey, London.

I'm glad the town changed it's name to Telford; can you imagine telling people you live in the not so bucollic town of "Hendrick’s Blacksmith"?

Something Different...

When I got back to work this week, the boss had an assignment ready for me to do and it was a little different from the usual - we have a client that specializes in translating materials used in New Drug Applications (NDAs) that are submitted to the appropriate regulatory authority (such as the FDA for the USA) in other countries.

The task given me was to determine what language the materials have to be written in as well as the name and address to send them - along with any official website the regulatory authority might have - for nearly 130 different countries. I learned a bit about our world attempting to do this - and thought I'd share.

India's official language, "used by the Union", is Hindi in the Devanagari script (alphabet) but Hindi is the primary language of only 20% of the population most of which live in the in the area known as the 'Hindi-belt' or the 'cow-belt' of northern India.

English enjoys a special status and remains the additional official language of India. It is the authoritative legislative and judicial language. In fact, one could say that English is the official language of India for all practical purposes.

However, there are the various regional languages. Each state has its own language which is generally its official language. The Constitution of India lists 22 such regional languages!

Source

It could and can be "worse". The country of Angola, with a population of 17 million people and located in the southern part of Africa was a colony of Portugal at one time - and it's primary official language is Portuguese... but... they have twelve national languages, six of which are taught in school!

Source

However, Angola might be considered rather "progressive".

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, once known in turn, as the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Congo-Léopoldville, Congo-Kinshasa, and Zaire (gasping for air here), with a population of 58 million (confused) people and located in central Africa is "a whole 'nother story". It lists Koongo, Lingala, Luba-Kasai, Congo Swahili, and French as it's official languages...and its citizens speak any one (or more) of 214 different languages!

Source

The tiny Republic of Singapore, population around 4.5 million, lists Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and English as it's official languages. However the situation gets complicated when you check into what the people speak - If I understand things right and I'm no expert, they speak 7 or 8 different varieties of Chinese and even Mandarin Chinese has a number of distinctive dialects and no written form! One might speak Mandarin but would write traditional or perhaps simplified Chinese.

55 countries have English as the official language.
29 countries: French
24 countries: Arabic
20 countries: Spanish
10 countries: Portuguese
7 countries: German
5 countries: Russian
5 countries: Dutch

Mandarin Chinese is the primary language of approximately one billion people and is not even closely followed by Hindi, Spanish, English, and Arabic.

English is however spoken by 1.5 billion people either as a primary, second or even third language which makes it the largest spoken language in the world but even so, that leaves at least 5 billion people unable to read this entry (for better or worse).

Truly saddening is the fact that nearly 1 billion people cannot read at all (and 34% of them live in India and 10% of them live in the People's Republic of China).

Because You Asked For It!

Does anyone else remember the TV show named "You Asked For It!"? I can still hear the smarmy announcer saying, "Well, Maryjane O'Brien, there you have it, the complete story on such-and-such, because YOU asked for it!".

Anyway, as I worked my way through the huge backlog of blog reading I had, I was particularly touched by one that Punkn wrote titled "Chamois Treasures" in which she wrote about her husband's mother leaving both her home and her loved possessions behind to enter a nursing facility. Punkn and her hubby had a heart-rending task of dealing with those possessions which I must say they handled with exceptional grace.

Somehow, over the years, I've been designated as the family historian and heirloom keeper for my family. All the old pictures, the prized furniture and old letters and odds and ends have been entrusted to me - to see that they get passed along to the future generations of family along with their stories (even though they won't be my offspring since there aren't and won't be any). As I commented on Punkn's entry -

A memory came to me unbidden of my Grandmother's old wooden hutch - it was handmade by her Uncle for a wedding present. It's pine and made from rough cut boards and the legs are uneven and it wobbles... the doors on the front do not stay latched as they weren't fitted properly. It sat behind my grandmother favorite chair in her dining room for decades... and now it sits in my dining room, unchanged except it no longer has her so familiar and somehow comforting clutter of papers and odds and ends on it. Rough and ill fitting as it is... it is a treasure I'll never part with.

Today, when the light was about as nice as it was going to get, I took a picture of it to share with you all - particularly with Punkn, because she asked for it.

The picture is a little blurry as I got kind of choked up taking it - but if you look on the top shelf; there is a backbone vertebra from a Dolphin I found on the beach one day, a Tigger Christmas ornament, a wooden sailing ship my Uncle Jim owned, a Captain's head shaving cream mixing mug my grandfather once used.

The middle shelf has a Chinese love lantern I was given when I was in Taiwan by a young girl (I wonder what became of her?), my grandfather's gold watch that he wore for about 35 years (I got the crystal face repaired as it was cracked), a piece of Henry Mercer's handmade tile (you may recall the entry I made on the Mercer Museum), and an Irish thatched roof (china) music box that plays "My Irish Eyes Are Shining" that a high school friend of mine that I still speak to every month, gave to me 32 years ago.

On the bottom shelf is a solid bell bronze frog I cast as a teenager while working at my Grandfather's (and later my Father's) non-ferrous foundry. Hidden away are other treasures - silver spoons, a tea set, my other grandmother's china place settings - none of which are ever used and which I ought to get the tarnish cleaned off someday.

This hutch, being made for my Grandmother's wedding present (c.1922), is nearly ninety years old. I don't know where it will end up after I'm gone - but its never going to leave me.