She Begged to Differ

     The lady who came to my yard sale and inspected an old jewelry box didn't "beg to differ."  When I told her about the box's history, she didn't even utter an abrasive, "I'm sure you're wrong."  She looked me in the eye and said, "I'm not buying that."  Had I been called a liar?
     The item I offered for sale was given to me by a family friend in the 1970's.  She used it for all of her adult life, but when I admired it, she insisted that I take it.  I enjoyed it for many years, but I'm ready to part with it now.  I explained how I acquired the box and stated that it had to be at least eighty years old.  My yard sale customer opened the lid and informed me that the box was lined with a sheet of plastic.  "They didn't have plastic back then," she stated with authority.
     "Well, plastic has been around for quite a while.  One of the first plastics was something called Bakelite," I responded.  I was trying to educate, but in a nice way.
     She went on to tell me that the condition of the box was too good, so it must be a reproduction.  My mother told me not to argue with people in situations like this, so I shut up.  After a few comments to her companion, the disbeliever left.
     This incident piqued my curiosity about plastics.  My parents were the ones who told me about Bakelite.  Bakelite, developed in 1907, was used for radio and camera casings, jewelry, and children's toys.  I remember the dishes my mother used when we were kids in the 1950's, indestructible stuff called Boontonware.  These dishes were made from melamine resin or melmac, a plastic that went into commercial use in the 1940's.  Food has been wrapped in clear, crinkly cellophane since the 1930's.
   
     Here are some other plastic milestones:

1839 - Polystyrene was discovered by Eduard Simon.  Yogurt cups, CD cases, and disposable razor handles are made from polystyrene.

1862 - Parkesine was patented by Alexander Parkes, but he had financial difficulties making Parkesine a success.  One of the first uses for early plastics was making artificial ivory for billiard balls.  There was so much demand for ivory that people began to worry about hunting elephants to extinction.

1869 - Xylonite was a plastic developed by Aleander Parkes and Daniel Spill.

1863-1872 - Various inventors worked with Parkesine and Xylonite to develope a product that was called Celluloid.  Think the first motion picture film.

1872 - Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) - The handles of Swiss Army knives are made from PVC.

1933 - Polyvinylidene Chloride - Ralph Wiley, a Dow Chemical worker, accidentally discovered the chemical that became known as Saran Wrap®.

1938 - Dr. Roy Plunkett discovered Teflon®.

1954 - Styrofoam - Ray McIntire figured out how to foam polystyrene.  Think cups, coolers, and packing peanuts.

     I'd like to thank the lady who didn't believe me.  Learning should be lifelong, and she inspired me to educate myself.  For this, I am grateful.  Well, at least my jewelry box is authentic.

     
   



  
  
   

Bully Sticks - So Much Waste (Or Not)

     Mardi loves bully sticks.  The begging starts as soon as we settle down to watch our night time television shows.  Chewing is a great way to keep her amused and to keep her teeth clean, but there is a lot of waste with bully sticks.
     Most retailers advise that dogs be supervised when chewing.  When the stick gets down to the last couple of inches, it should be taken away and disgarded.  This prevents choking (worst case scenario) or vomiting (messy, but not so serious) if the dog gobbles the last of the chew. Thrifty Beverly hates to toss out these stubs.  I buy fifty jumbo sticks at a time for my rapacious chewer.  It works out to about $4.00 per twelve inch stick.  That means I waste thirty three cents every time I throw the end piece away.  Yeah, yeah thirty three cents doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up to $16.50 on that 50 count bag.
     The internet lead me to one solution -  attaching vise-grip pliers to the end of the stick.  The owner holds the pliers and the dog chews until he bites metal.  This didn't work with our pup. Maybe she was afraid of the pliers or maybe vise-grips smell bad.  Whatever the reason, she wouldn't go near the chew.  I started tossing the almost gone bully sticks into an old plastic bowl while I chewed on a solution.  I came up with a fix that worked for Mardi, and would probably work well for other small jawed canines.
     I drilled a hole into the end of the bully stick, then I hung the nub on some satin cord.  I suppose any string, cord, or wire will do.  I have miles of satin cord from my kumihimo supplies, so I decided to use one of the ugly colors for this project.  I also thought that satin cord would be more comfortable to hold while Mardi chewed and tugged.  So far, this is working nicely.  Only a minimal amount of the stick goes into the trash can.  Sometimes Mardi chews through the cord and I have to retrieve the last little bit of bully stick from her mouth - not a big deal for a dog mom.

I drilled a hole.  I probably could have made the hole closer to the end.

I used satin cord left over from a kumihimo project, but you could use just about anything.

Thread the cord through the hole and tie a knot.

Mardi says, "Gimme, gimme."

 
 
       

Luray Caverns, Luray, Virginia

     Luray Caverns is probably the most beautiful cave in the world.

Mike among the stalactites.  How do you remember the definitions of stalactites and stalagmites?  Easy - stalactites hang tight to the cave ceiling, and stalagmites might grow tall enough to reach the ceiling some day. 

This is the fish market formation.

And these are the world's ugliest set of dentures.

This type of formation is called a drapery.  The back lighting shows how thin the rock is.

Early cave explorers got a little spooked and swore there was a haint in the cave when they came upon this white column.  That's why they named it Pluto's Ghost. 

The Great Staltactite Pipe Organ
The fact that stalactites produce musical tones was known in when the cave was discovered in 1878.  In 1956
Leland W. Sprinkle found 37 stalactites with particular tones and shaved them to perfect the sound.  This is the custom console that creates the music. 

The organ keys are wired to rubber mallets which strike the stalactites.  You can buy recordings of stalactite music.  In 2011 a band named Pepe Deluxé composed and recorded "In the Cave" using the Great Stalactite Pipe Organ.  They also produced a weird video.

This is the wishing well.  They clean out the coins from time to time and donate the money to charity.  The last collection in 2010 netted $144,194 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Shenandoah Agency on Aging.  The total amount of spare change dropped into the wishing well from the first clean-out in 1954 to the last in 2010 was $897,933.32 - just another example of how enough drops in the bucket eventually add up to something big.

Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, Tennessee

     I could go into the history of the Opry, but this video does a better job.  Please note that it is only 5 minutes, 38 seconds long - not over 11 minutes.

     Mike and I didn't take the back stage tour.  We thoroughly enjoyed the concert, and here are the pictures to prove it:

Posing in front of a big, old guitar.

The seats are like church pews.  Well, for some pilgrims to Opryland the show is a religious experience.

Bill Anderson
Bill Anderson's singing career began in 1958.  He is also a song writer, an author, a game show host, and an actor.  He appeared for three years on ABC's One Life to Live.

Love and Theft
Stephen Barker Liles and Eric Gunderson
They did "Angel Eyes."  

Gretchen Peters
She's a singer and song writer probably best known for writing "Independence Day," recorded by Martina McBride.

Dailey & Vincent
Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent perform bluegrass.

Jana Kramer
She's mainly an actress, but also a country singer.
She performed "I Got the Boy."

Larry Gatlin
The whole audience was singing "All the Gold In California."

Pam Tillis

Brad Paisley
Brad Paisley was the headliner for the night.  He performed without backup musicians - just Brad and the guitar.

Tomi Fujiyama
Tomi Fujiyama is from Japan.  She switched from Japanese music to American country music when she began getting jobs at U. S. army and navy bases.  She has had a long country music career in Japan and performed at the Opry once in 1964.  She made her second appearance, the fulfillment of a dream for her, on the night we visited - more than 50 years later.  How lucky I felt to witness that.  There's a movie about her life titled "Made in Japan."
Check out her rendition of "Tennessee Waltz." 

Belle Meade Plantation, Nashville, Tennessee

    John Harding founded Belle Meade Plantation in 1807.  Mr. Harding and his descendants boarded, raced, bred, and auctioned thoroughbred horses at the farm until 1903.  Read more about it:

http://bellemeadeplantation.com/harding-jackson/

http://bellemeadeplantation.com/african-americans/

http://bellemeadeplantation.com/later-residents/

Grand, isn't it?

Another view.  No photography allowed inside.

Waiting for the tour to begin.

These circular dents are bullet holes from Civil War fighting.

John Harding started out in this cabin.  He lived here from 1807 until he moved into the mansion around 1820.  

These days, besides being a historic site, Belle Meade operates as a wedding and event venue.  There is a winery on the premises, and all wine sales benefit the preservation of the plantation.  I liked the railing at the entrance of the tasting room.

   

Mammoth Cave National Park

     Mammoth Cave is the longest cave in the world.  It has over 400 miles of passageways. Mammoth Cave National Park was established in 1941.  The park was designated a World Heritage Site in 1981 and an International Biosphere Reserve in 1990.
     If you are looking for fantastic formations, Mammoth is not the place.  The cave is covered by a layer of sandstone that acts like a roof.  There are almost no leaks, so there are no stalactites and no stalagmites in most of the cave.  Water managed to penetrate one small area called Frozen Niagara.  Viewing Frozen Niagara is a separate tour.  We chose the Historic Tour, the same one that people have been taking since tours began at the cave.  It's a two hour walk of moderate difficulty.  At one point the pathway gets very narrow and the ceiling is low.  They call that Fat Man's Misery.  After Fat Man's Misery, the way out is 155 steps up with no landings for resting.  To give a perspective - Cape May Lighthouse has 199 steps and Barnegat Light has 217 steps.
     There are various stories about how the cave was discovered.  All of these tales involve a bear and a member of the Houchin family.  Some say John or Francis or Charles Houchin chased a wounded bear into the cave.  Other stories say the bear chased one of the Houchins.
     What the cave lacked in rock formations, it made up for in saltpeter.  When the United States fought the War of 1812, we relied on the saltpeter mined from Mammoth Cave to make gun powder.  After the War of 1812, the cave operated as a private tourist attraction under various owners until it became a national park.
     Mammoth has lots of bats though we didn't see any.  Unfortunately, some of the bats in the cave have been infected with White-Nose Syndrome.  This is a fungus that is harmless to humans but deadly to bats.  The fungus grows on the bats' skin and is spread from animal to animal as they cuddle up during winter hibernation.  The disease prematurely wakes bats from hibernation, and they end up dying from exhaustion, starvation, and exposure because winter is not over.  We had to walk on mats which contained a disinfectant when we left the cave.  We were also advised to wash our clothing before entering other caves.

This area was an easy walk.

Just a gray, rocky place.

This model shows the known passages in the cave - about 400 miles worth.  New passages are still being discovered.  

  
                       

Jim Beam Distillery, Clermont, Kentucky

      There are plenty of bourbon distilleries to tour in Kentucky.  We chose the Jim Beam distillery located in Clermont, Kentucky.  They do the tour nicely, first taking visitors through a mini-distillery where one sees the process of making a small batch of spirits up close.  That's followed by a walk through part of the large main factory.  There's a tasting at the end of the tour.
     To sum up bourbon:  It's an American whiskey made mainly of corn.  In order for a whiskey to qualify as bourbon, it has to be made from at least 51% corn.  The other grains are rye and malted barley.  These grains are combined with water and fermented with yeast.  Kentucky's water is naturally filtered through limestone, is high in calcium, and contains no iron.  That's what makes the best bourbon.  The distillation process has three stages.  The first distillation produces a liquid called beer, the second produces low wine, and the third produces high wine.  High wine goes into new, charred oak barrels and ages for varying lengths of time.  The charring gives bourbon it's color, and the oak adds flavor.

Tasting what goes into the barrel.

Tasting what comes out of the barrel.

You can order a personalized bottle of bourbon at the end of the mini-distillery tour.

Each one of these enormous vats holds 46,000 gallons of fermenting liquid.

This is our guide Patrick Guelda.  The fluid gushing out of the pipe on the left is low wine.

The high wine ages in new, charred oak barrels for varying lengths of time.  At Jim Beam that's at least four years.  During that time the bourbon penetrates the wood and some of the liquid evaporates.  Most of the lost volume, up to 1/3 of the contents, is water, and that is called the angel's cut.  As the water evaporates, the alcohol content of the barrels increases.  The percentage of alcohol in the finished product is adjusted by adding water at bottling.   The bourbon that penetrates the barrel is called the devil's cut.  In the old days, employees took the barrels home, put water in them, and soaked the booze out - just a perk of the job.  Now the company does the same thing marketing the reconstituted 90 proof spirit as Jim Beam Devil's Cut.   

This might be a cautionary view.  Drink responsibly or end up in a cemetery like the one in front of this barrel house.  Barrel houses are painted black to absorb heat in the winter.  In the summer, only the top floors get hot.  Before bottling, batches are mixed from low, middle , and high floors.  All together there are 800,000 barrels aging in Jim Beam barrel houses.   

This is the bottling area in the main plant.  Bottles are washed out with bourbon, not water.

This is the sample storage area.  They keep the samples of every batch produced for about two years.  If there are any complaints about a batch, the sample is retrieved for analysis.  At the end of two years it is assumed that the batch has been sold and consumed without any issues.  Samples cannot be sold.  At that point, our guide explained, employees help out by taking bottles home.

                   

Patrick is conducting our tasting.  The law limits how much you can consume at a tasting - 2 ounces.  We received a plastic card containing a chip.  We inserted our card into a dispenser to receive a sample.  We had four 1/2 ounce samples.  We had the option of tasting an experimental whiskey and rating it.  Here's what we had and what we thought of it:
Baker's - A small batch, ultra-premium bourbon - I liked it, but no more than regular White Label.
Devil's Cut - I thought it was okay, but a bit lacking, like using a tea bag twice.
Kentucky Fire - This is cinnamon flavored.  It reminded me of Red Hots candy.
Bourbon Experiment 435 - Not for me.  It had an unpleasant aftertaste.

      

Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Museum

     There's a reason that horse racing is called the sport of kings.  You need a king's ransom to participate.  We might have journeyed to Louisville at Derby time, but actually attending the race was too rich for our blood.  We settled for a short visit on opening night and a tour of the track and a visit to the Kentucky Derby Museum the next day.

Attendance on opening night was 24,431.  A week later on Derby day, there were 170, 513 people in attendance.

The twin spires.

Mike and I in front of the museum.  That's Barbaro behind us.  The museum is part of the track complex.

They present a movie.  The white stripe in the center of this picture is the screen.  The action moves around the room, so you have to keep rotating on the little stools.

Mike, bursting out of the starting gate.

Mike and I posing with the likenesses of California Chrome and Victor Espinoza.

Anyone can be a jockey at the museum.

Of course I made weight!!

Yeah, these are nice   ...

... but hats are better.

A horse cemetery outside the museum.
Just the head, heart, and hooves of thoroughbred horses are buried.  The rest of the body is cremated.  Only three horse have been buried whole - Secretariat, Man O' War, and Seattle Slew.

Some horses still on the hoof.
The big guy is Au Moon, a 9 year old gelding.  The little guy is Winston, a 22 year old miniature horse.  Winston is kept as a companion to the bigger horses because horses are happier when they have buddies around.