Friday Fact: Hand over the goat in trousers, and no one gets hurt.

I am home on fall break, and it is blissful and lovely.  And I’m enjoying the break from flatlands heat as well.  It has been misty and rainy here, and I love it, even though it makes me sleepy and lazy.  I’ll post some fog photos soon.   Next week will be awful, because I have a 15 page paper, an impossibly difficult sculpture, and a painting due, and I also have to register for classes and take a nasty little Spanish exam.  But I’m enjoying the time I have to relax. 

The Friday Fact this weeks is brought to you by the back of my bedroom door, which is completely covered in interesting newspaper clippings, comic strips, trinkets, and random, hilarious doodles.  This is from something I clipped out of the N&O Mini Page way yonder back in middle school.  You’ve got to wonder what prompted state legislatures to create some of these laws and how much of our tax money is devoted to the creation of said laws. 

Some unbelievable, and very real, laws:

• It’s against the law to mispronounce “Arkansas” when you’re in that state.
• If you complain about a pothole in Baton Rouge, LA, you can be forced to fix it yourself.
• It’s illegal to educate your dog in Hartford, CT.
• You can be arrested for carrying bees in your hat in Lawrence, KS.
• In order to legally go barefoot in Austin, TX, you need a $5 permit.
• It’s illegal for goats to wear trousers in Massachusetts. 

Friday Fact: Blue Holes (not to be confused with black holes)

This is something interesting I ran across on the internet.  A blue hole is a deep, circular depression in the ocean formed during the Ice Age, the result of rainwater seeping through cracks in limestone bedrock and eventually eroding it away.  These holes were formerly above-water caves, but were submerged by rising ocean levels over the period of several thousand years.

They’re are named blue holes for their appearance…a blue hole, because it is deeper than the surrounding ocean, is a darker blue than the ocean around it.  It appears as a sapphire spot in a cerulean sea. 

Dean’s Blue Hole is the deepest known blue hole.  Located in the Bahamas, it is 0ver 660 feet deep, almost twice as deep as other known blue holes.  It is about 100 feet in diameter at the water’s surface, but as depth increases, so does width.  Toward the bottom, it widens into a cavern more than 300 feet in diameter.  Here’s a picture:

Cool, huh?

The First Friday Fact: Suicidal Dogs

I’m excited to present my first Friday Fact!  This fabulous idea was proposed by June in the comment section of a post by Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl.  You can read more about it in my previous post. 

 If you’d like to join in the fun, please do!  Drop a comment if you post your own Friday Fact.

Here is mine:

Suicidal Dogs

During World War II, some countries used tear gas.  Others used grenades.  Others used machine guns.

The Soviets used suicidal dogs.

During the Blitzkrieg campaign, German tanks were too fast and powerful for Russian military.  So these dogs, called “anti-tank” dogs, were trained to seek food under the tanks after being starved.  They wore a pouched overcoat filled with explosives.  When they ducked under the enemy’s tanks, something called a Tilt Fuse, which detonated when bent, would set off the explosives and destroy the enemy’s tank. 

It sounds like a crazy idea, but it worked, disabling over 300 German tanks.  The Germans were instructed to shoot all dogs on sight for this reason. 

But even a good idea can go bad.  The dogs were trained under Soviet tanks, which were quieter than their German diesel counterparts.  As a result, the dogs were often unable to distinguish allied from enemy tanks, and therefore blew up a fair number of both.  And they would often, quite literally, turn tail and run away from battle. 

The project was eventually abandoned.  For good reasons. 

Lovely tenants, threading rills, and Fact Freaks.

I have a terrible ear for writing poetry with a rigid meter (i.e. iambic pentameter,  trochaic hexameter, etc.), so I was pleased to discover a poet who can and does write good verse with strict meter:  Richard Weismiller.  I really like a poem of his called “Sea Horse,” so I looked up some of his other work.  His collection The Deer Come Down is made up mostly of poems about nature.  I don’t like all of it, but there are some wonderful moments.  Like this line:  “This is my world; though it turn brown / And throw its loveliest tenants down / with unseen wind…”  I’m typing out all of “Wintergreen” (even though it’s pretty long and I should be working) because I just love the way it sounds.  Read it aloud to yourself.  (Ignore the bullets.  It was the only way to outsmart WordPress and maintain the line breaks.  Pretty ingenious, huh?)

Wintergreen

• Pithed with a pungent
• silver flame,
• cloaked with fire,
• you had the name

• once of carpeting,
• whole and sweet
• the grass at the cattle’s
• straying feet

• along the tumbling
• pasture fence,
• and where the alders
• crouched in dense

• matting of moss
• on sculptured clay
• you touched your cheeks
• to the single, gray

• strand of water
• that spread and curled
• between the hills
• at the edge of the world.

• I have come back
• to the blotched skies
• and the crows calling
• in hoarse surmise

• out of the rocky
• planted fields;
• having received
• more barren yields

• I have returned
• to the sour land,
• to the hidden rock
• and the idle sand.

• But I knew beauty
• on a time,
• here where the throaty
• bell-notes chime

• out of the swamp
• where the frog lies
• blinking his shallow
• yellow eyes;

• and I have learned
• the the partridge drums,
• feathered ruffed,
• and the deer comes

• wary and light
• beneath the trees
• only in quiets
• dim as these.

• The heaped cloud
• shoulders and lurches
• across the sky,
• and the white birches

• bend to the wind
• in downward flight,
• their palms turned out
• on the silver light.

• I have come back
• to the close hills
• laced with their secret
• threading rills,

• and the high pastures,
• wild and sweet,
• pocked with the prints
• of cattle’s feet

• draw me, string
• of a sure bow,
• from the calm valley
• spread below.

• In the clenched brambles
• beside the path
• a chipmunk chatters
• its vagrant wrath,

• and a cropped apple,
• writhing, stands
• its heart pierced
• with its own hands.

• These will show me
• on any morrow
• facile hate
• and a haggard sorrow;

• but here are alders:
• down the slope
• their branches tangle
• like weathered rope

• sprung out of water;
• from their height
• a woodcock whistles
• its stinging flight,

• and I remember
• the pungent note
• formed in a younger
• flame-swept throat.

• Here are alders:
• the roots toss
• and writhe in the damp
• and starry moss;

• delicate murder
• in my heart
• and my lips prepared
• for their Judas part,

• I thrust aside
• the fingering hedge,
• kneeling down
• at the water’s edge

• where wintergreen berries
• one by one
• turn crimson cheeks
• to a gust of sun. 

It’s funny that, even though the sentences within the poem are really long, Weismiller manages not to tire us out.  He instead uses the line breaks as punctuation to slow us down and to create a rhythm that becomes hypnotic.  I hope you enjoyed it.

On a different note:  Please join me and other bloggers (like June,the creator of Friday Fact) for the first Fact Friday.  We are a group that embraces and encourages “unrestrained exuberance“ for the beauty and wonder of the world around us.  Because there are an infinite number of things to be curious about, and an infinite number of things to become passionate about.  To have your own Friday Fact, all you have to do is post one fascinating thing that you have learned recently.  As a Fact Freak, your only other prerequisite is an insatiable, undying thrist for knowledge that can be found in the minutia of everyday life.  If you do decide to do it, drop me a note in my comments.  I’m pretty durn excited myself.