Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to all my readers! It is, of course, my favorite holiday and I have been in costume consistently as an adult every year since 1987 (see slideshow below). You can compare my Eddie Munster with the character above, because today I am offering a "Where are they now?" edition of Quigley's Cabinet, featuring the Munsters and the Addams Family.
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The Munsters (top photo)

• Herman: Fred Gwynne (1926-1993) is buried in an unmarked grave at the Sandymount United Methodist Church in Finksburg, Maryland.
• Lily: Yvonne De Carlo (1922-2007) was cremated, so her ashes may be with family.
• Grandpa: Al Lewis (1923-2006) was cremated and his ashes are buried in his favorite cigar box at Riverside Church in New York City.
• Eddie: Butch Patrick, 56, recently wrote his autobiography, co-hosts a TV series showcasing classic horror films, and owns the Grateful Dead tour bus.
• Marilyn: Beverley Owen, 72, is retired, but still acts on-stage in upstate New York. Pat Priest, 73, is retired and living in Idaho, where she has been treated for lymphoma.

The Addams Family (bottom photo)

• Gomez: John Astin, 79, teaches acting at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
• Morticia: Carolyn Jones (1930-1983) is entombed next to her mother at Melrose Abbey Memorial Park in Anaheim, California.
• Uncle Fester: Jackie Coogan (1914-1984) is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
  
• Lurch: Ted Cassidy (1932-1979) was cremated and his ashes are buried in the backyard of his former home in Woodland Hills, California.
• Grandmama: Blossom Rock (1895-1978) is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.
• Pugsley: Ken Weatherwax, 54, works as a movie studio grip.
• Wednesday: Lisa Loring, 51, does public relations for a hotel chain and makes appearances at fan conventions.
  

The composer of The Munsters theme song, Jack Marshall, died in 1973, and the composer of The Addams Family theme song, Vic Mizzy, just died last Saturday at the age of 93.

Tree mummies

How could I resist a headline like this: Tree "Mummies" Found! On Wednesday, National Geographic revealed that Norwegian researchers have discovered 40 dead Scotch pines that date back to Viking times. This wouldn't be so surprising if they had petrified, but they simply didn't rot and the scientists don't know why. The trees lived for several hundred years, died natural deaths, and laid on the forest floor near a fjord on the rainy west coast of Norway.
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In yesterday's science news, plant biologists at the University of Vermont found that trees actually facilitate wildfires to prevent other trees from displacing them. "We used a mathematical model to show that positive feedback loops between fire frequency and savannah trees, alone or together with grasses, can stabilize ecological communities in a savannah state, blocking conversion of savannahs to forest." The longleaf pine and the Florida slash pine both engineer their own future by dropping needles that become fodder for fires that limit the spread of more trees.
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Speaking of engineering, scientists at the University of Washington have found that trees will power a small circuit. They plugged electrodes into a tree that generated the 10 nanowatts the device consumed. "Normal electronics are not going to run on the types of voltages and currents that we get out of a tree...[But] as new generations of technology come on-line, I think it's warranted to look back at what's doable or what's not doable in terms of a power source," says one of the researchers, although he admits that they haven't exactly established where these voltages come from.
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Glad to know that trees still hold some secrets...

Scrimshaw

I had a major setback today. I'd been trying to get rid of a computer virus for 2 days, and called in a tech. The only solution it seems was to re-image my computer, so I may have lost some data and I am using different software programs because we couldn't restore everything exactly as it was. Grrrrr...
Meanwhile, I am onto the topic of scrimshaw, the carving of whalebone or ivory that was a pastime of 19th c. sailors, who would have been called scrimshanders. PETA doesn't have an entry on scrimshaw, but the rules for ownership are listed on Wikipedia. There are plenty of dealers offering scrimshaw on-line, and I learned a lot of new words during my search: bodkins (awls), swifts (reels for winding yarn), and busks (the rigid pieces that fronted corsets). The utilitarian object above tops a cane and is believed to be authentic. It turns out that there are many forgeries out there - referred to as fakeshaw, since the real thing commands a pretty price.

Shackleton

I have a fondness in my heart for arctic and antarctic explorers, whose bravery is (in my opinion) beyond measure. Not least of these is Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922), whose heroism and regard for his crew is legendary. When he led an expedition to cross the antarctic in 1914, his ship Endurance got crushed in the pack ice, leaving 28 men at first stranded on board for 8 months, then camping on a drifting ice floe for the next 6 months, then finally rowing in the lifeboats on a 5-day journey to the nearest shore. It was the first time they had stood on solid ground for 497 days, and under Shackleton's lead, not a single man was lost. If you find this story compelling, you can read about it in his own words. You may also be interested to know that conservators of the Antarctic Heritage Trust, charged with preserving the hut that Shackleton used during his unsuccessful 1917 bid to reach the South Pole, have just discovered two wooden cases of Scotch whiskey that the hero in question left there 100 years ago.

Docking cow tails

Until I read that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just signed a bill banning docking the tails of any of the 1.5 million dairy cows in the state, I wasn't even aware that this was done. The practice - painful, because it is usually done without anesthetic - is to snip off the tail with a sharp pair of shears or to band the tail, cutting off the blood flow, which causes it to die and drop off. It developed in New Zealand in the early 20th c. and has now spread to other countries (although it is banned as animal mutilation in the U.K.). Tail docking is said to benefit milking personnel by reducing the incidence of an infection caused by coming into contact with a urine-soaked tail, and to be beneficial for the cattle by enhancing udder cleanliness, reducing the incidence of mastitis, and improving milk quality and hygiene, all by eliminating the spread of pathogens via a soiled tail. But all the evidence is anecdotal. In scientific studies, no significant differences were shown between docked and intact cows. On the other hand, the procedure has been proven to cause continued physical distress, increased infection rates, physiological stress, and possible displacement behavior (overeating) and the equivalent in humans of phantom limb pain. What's more, the poor cows can't shoo the flies away.

Horned Moses

It is St. Jerome (1st image - painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1480) who is responsible for the depiction of Moses with horns (2nd image - sculpture by Michelangelo, 1515). When he translated the Bible, St. Jerome used the basic meaning of the Hebrew word qaran, "to grow horns," rather than the derived meaning "to emit rays." The passage was intended to mean that Moses' face was radiant and "dispersed beams like many horns and cones around his head" - in other words, he had a halo. The mistake was clarified by English author Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) in Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a vast reference work he wrote and revised several times to refute the common errors and superstitions of his age. A little morbid trivia about Sir Thomas: (1) He also wrote a book called Hydrotaphia, or Urn Burial in which he described the discovery of a Bronze Age urn burial in Norfolk, England; surveyed ancient and contemporary funerary and burial customs; and wrote an extensive and highly-regarded meditation on mortality, and (2) His skull (3rd image) became the subject of dispute when it was accidentally disinterred in 1840, stolen, sold, put on display, and finally - in 1922 - returned to the church for reburial.

Gingko

If you have stepped on ground covered with the debris pictured in the photograph at the top, you know what this post is going to be about... I was surprised that my Mom, a lifelong gardener, was not aware of the "neighborhood nuisance" that is the gingko tree. The fact is that if the male trees are allowed to fertilize the female trees, they produce fleshy seeds that stink. Some describe the smell as rotten eggs or vomit, but I'm with those who say the "dingleberries" smell just like dog poop!

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Because the female trees take 20-25 years to mature, the trees began producing seeds long after they had been planted in many urban areas in the 1970s. Some cities (Iowa City, IA, and Easton, PA) have removed the female trees. Many (including Bloomington, IN, and Lexington, KY) now have ordinances that ban planting female gingkos. Strangely enough, 1 in 100 male trees will actually change genders, reintroducing the problem! Other cities (Boston, Lansing, Santa Monica, and Washington, D.C.) bravely continue to plant gingko trees, so much beloved for their beauty and prized for their hardiness that their most notable characteristic is overlooked when necessary. But not by Richard Mahany of New York, who is tired of cleaning up the mess: "The tree is a menace....When I clean it up, I ruin my shoes and smell like vomit afterwards."

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The smelly seeds have a nut inside that is eaten in some traditional Asian dishes. It is sometimes said to be an aphrodisiac, but is poisonous in large amounts. It is also believed to enhance memory and attention, but does not delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease, according to scientific studies. It does show promise in preliminary studies of reducing fatigue in MS patients...

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Gingko trees grow naturally in China, but have been cultivated in North America for 200 years. They are deep-rooted, long-lived, tolerate small spaces, and are resistant to insects, disease, and damage from wind, snow, pollution, and road salt. Several gingko trees were among the few living things to survive the atomic bomb blast in Hiroshima in 1945.
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I learned from my research for this post that the gingko biloba is a living fossil. The tree has no living relatives and is the only extant species in its group - the rest having died out at least 2.5 million years ago.

One man band

Last night, the idea of the one-man band popped into my head, so I have spent part of my morning poking around for some examples. I found one on the streets of Croatia, one at Quincy Market in Boston, one in Morecambe, Lancashire, U.K., one in Greece, and Professor Gizmo on TV. When I was doing the research, I also found a clip of Dick Van Dyke's character performing in the 1964 film "Mary Poppins." The traditional one-man band straps wind instruments around the neck, carries a drum on his back connected to a footpad, attaches cymbals to the knees, ties tambourines and maracas to the limbs, and plays a banjo, ukelele, or guitar. Musicians who play guitar and harmonica simultaneously are so common, they are no longer considered one-man bands, and technology has broadened the definition to include a single musician playing multiple instruments one at a time that are recorded on multiple tracks and then combined into a single song. The earliest known examples of one-man bands date from the 13th c. "The one-man band exists, in all its uniqueness and independence, as a most elusive yet persistent musical tradition." Even more elusive is the one-woman band, but I found one: Esmerelda Strange (watch video).

Trenchers

I saw this article in the weird news yesterday about an Italian man who has "invented" an edible plate made of bread. "Designed" would be a better word, since the inventor of edible plates is lost to history. They were, in fact, used in the Middle Ages and are called trenchers (definition here, see last entry). These thick round or rectangular slices of stale bread were used at the table to hold meat and salt. Sometimes they were shared between two diners, as is shown in the above illustration of the legendary Round Table of King Arthur, set in the 6th c. In an elaborate meal, trenchers were replaced with each course, with servants removing "all broke cromys, bonys, and trenchours before the secunde cours and servise be served." Later made of earthenware, wood, or metal, trenchers were made of coarse bread well into the 16th c. The man who has reinvented them today hopes they will be used in schools and eaten afterward by the students or fed to animals. The gravy-soaked trenchers were also "recycled" in medieval times: if they were not eaten by the diners, they were fed to dogs or given to the poor.

Birds in fable and fact

The Crow and the Pitcher
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In a spell of dry weather, a very thirsty crow found a pitcher with a little water in it. But he could not reach the water with his beak, no matter how hard he tried. The pitcher was too hard to break and too heavy to tip over. Just as he was about to give up in frustration, he had an idea. He collected as many stones as he could and dropped them into the pitcher one by one. With each stone, the water rose a little higher until it reached the brim and quench his thirst. Moral of the story: Necessity is the mother of invention.
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This fable by ancient Greek storyteller Aesop may be familiar to you from childhood. It has recently been in the news because biologists at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. put it to the test. They conducted an experiment and found that rooks (relatives of the crow) will indeed add stones to a tube of water to get at a worm floating on top! Already proven to use tools, the rooks appeared to estimate how many stones they would need and quickly learned that larger stones work better.
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Who Killed Cock Robin?
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All the birds of the air
Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing
When they heard the bell toll
For poor Cock Robin.
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This is the last stanza in a centuries-old nursery rhyme that you may also remember. Well, a researcher at the University of Colorado has observed the behavior of 4 magpies alongside the corpse of a 5th and describes, "One approached the corpse, gently pecked at it...and stepped back. Another magpie did the same thing. Next, one of the magpies flew off, brought back some grass and laid it by the corpse. Another magpie did the same. Then all four stood vigil for a few seconds and one by one flew off....We can't know what they were actually thinking or feeling, but reading their action there's no reason not to believe these birds were saying a magpie farewell to their friend." The headline: Magpies 'Feel Grief and Hold Funerals.'

Winks and blinks

As we all know, we blink to keep our eyes moist and clean. But here are some facts, trivia, and weird news that may surprise you.
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We blink an average of 10 times a minute as adults (only 1-2 times a minute as infants) for 300-400 milliseconds at a time, controlled by a "blinking center" in the brain and multiple muscles that control the eyelid. Blinking is affected by many medical conditions, for instance Parkinson's disease slows the rate down and schizoprenia speeds it up. Excessive blinking may indicate Tourette syndrome, stroke, or nervous disorders. Blinking slows way down when we are focused on an object - for instance, a book - for an extended period of time. To combat the fatigue and possible vision problems associated with staring at the computer screen, a Japanese company has developed "wink glasses," which ensure that the wearer blinks every 5 seconds. When watching a 150-minute movie, our eyes will be closed for a total of 15 minutes - and researchers have determined that not only do we time our blinks subconsciously so as not to miss any of the action, everyone else is doing the same thing and so we blink in unison. Unfortunately, we do not practice synchronized blinking while having our photograph taken, but Canon is working on a camera feature called "Blink Shot" that won't take the picture until everyone's eyes are open.
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Winking is usually flirtatious or indicative of a shared secret. When we blink one eye, it is intended as a signal, but when tortoises, hamsters, and some other animals appear to wink, it is because they blink their eyes independently of each other. Nigerians wink to signal children to leave the room, many Chinese find it impossible to wink, and people in many Asian countries find it offensive. Cyborgs edge closer to being human by winking in the 1927 film Metropolis (pictured) and the 2004 film I, Robot. But most remarkable is a book written with winks: French journalist, author, and editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (1952-1997) was left unable to move anything but his left eyelid after a stroke in 1997, so he dictated his memoir by blinking that eye repeatedly to indicate the letters of the alphabet. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was published in 1997; Bauby died 2 days later.

Burqa

This is not an opinion piece, just the facts about burqas, which I - and maybe you - know little about. The word burqa (also spelled burqua, bourqa, burkha, and burka) is generally used to mean the entire outer garment worn by women in traditions that follow the Islamic dress code known as hijab, which requires that they conceal the body (although the Qur'an only mandates dressing modestly). The Arabic word burqa, however, refers only to the face cover with openings for the eyes (a veil called the niqab or purdah), with the dress called an abaya. The abaya is traditionally black and is worn over the clothes to cover all but the face, feet, and hands except when a woman is at home. Some women also wear long black gloves. The chadri (photo above) is the head-to-toe garment that women in Afghanistan and Pakistan were forced to wear by the Taliban, and is distinguished by the net or grille eye-covering. Women are compelled to cover themselves in public in Saudi Arabia, Iran (where the covering is known as a chador and may be substituted by a head scarf), Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, but some Muslim women choose to maintain this tradition - which began in part as protection against sandstorms - in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, and Pakistan (where there is strong social pressure to do so). Headscarfs are banned in some countries of Europe, and hijab is outlawed in public buildings in Tunisia and Turkey.

Coraline boxes

In a highly inspired promotion, the creators of the stop-motion film Coraline sent unique handmade collaged boxes to 50 of their favorite blogs. The 1st image is a still from the movie showing Coraline with a box that figures in the plot. The 2nd image is the box that was sent to the subscription website Creativity. The 3rd image is the box sent to Boing Boing, which says, "Tell you what, if you want to see how to intelligently market creative work online, go and follow Neil Gaiman around for a month or two." Neil Gaiman is the acclaimed and bestselling British author of the children's book Coraline on which the film - directed by Henry Selick, who directed Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas - is based. The Coraline website is also quite ingenious. You can check out a number of the boxes here, and watch one being opened at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. My Mom and I share a love of assemblage and collaged boxes (which I used to make in collage) and one of our mutual favorite artists is the self-taught American Joseph Cornell (1903-1972). The plot of Coraline also involves buttons, which the mother in her alternate universe wants to sew on her in place of eyes so that she can stay. I was reminded of a story told to me by my paternal grandmother about a neighbor who went crazy - they knew she had rounded the bend when they found she had sewn a button to the end of each of her fingers.

Maldives

The Republic of Maldives has a little problem. They expect their island nation, which consists of 1,192 islets in the Indian Ocean, to disappear underwater if global climate change is not checked. Their president has brought the issue to international attention many times over the last 20 years, most recently at the United Nations climate change summit in September, and has just had a meeting with his Cabinet under 16 feet of water to draw attention to their problem. The Maldives is the lowest country on the planet, with an average ground level of 4' 11" above sea level and a high point of only 7' 7". They have tried to set the example by becoming the first country to go carbon neutral, but have begun to despair. "We in the Maldives desperately want to believe that one day our words will have an effect, and so we continue to shout them, even though, deep down we know that you are not really listening," said President Mohammad Nasheed. They are currently setting aside revenue from tourism to purchase land in another country - possibly Sri Lanka or Australia - where they can relocate when the time comes.

Lizard lore

I was just going to blog about the basilisk, which was featured in the weird news, but look what I found!
Armadillo lizard Armadillo lizards - also known as armadillo girdled lizards or armadillo spiny-tailed lizards - are native to the deserts of southern Africa. They average 6 1/2" to 8 1/2" in length. They are unusual among lizards because they give birth to live young, rather than laying eggs, and because they show parental care by sometimes feeding their young. They also stand out because of their unique defense posture. When frightened, they grab their tails in their mouths and curl up into balls, exposing their offputting scales, rather than their soft underbellies, to predators. This may have given rise to the ancient Greek symbol of the ouroboros.
Frill-necked lizard Frill-necked lizards - also known as frilled lizards or frilled dragons - are found in southern New Guinea and parts of western and northern Australia. They grow up to a meter in length. They have only a single predator (a python) and protect themselves by opening their mouths and flaring out the large ruff of skin around their necks, which is supported by spines of cartilage. Thwy usually walk on all fours when on the ground, but can flee bipedally. When the temperature of their eggs are extreme, only females hatch. The frill-necked lizard has been featured in cartoons and emblems, and was depicted on the Australian 2-cent coin, which was withdrawn from circulation in 1992 and melted down to make the bronze medals for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney.

Basilisk lizard Basilisks are a genus of lizard that is endemic to the Central and South American rainforest and are usually under 1' in length. Basilisks include 4 species - common, red-headed, plumed, and striped or brown - that have the remarkable ability to "walk on water," thus they are collectively known as the Jesus Christ lizard. They do this by running on their hind legs at almost 5' per second, which allows them to stay above the surface for nearly 15' before they sink and swim. Be sure to watch this slow-motion footage from a new BBC documentary to see how it's done.) In the bestiaries and legends of Europe, the basilisk was the king of serpents and could kill with its gaze.

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I am pleased to report that none of these lizards are endangered, although the frill-necked lizard may soon be devastated by invasive and toxic cane toads.

Tourette syndrome

If you've heard of Tourette syndrome, you may associate it with coprolalia, but the compulsion to use obscene or scatalogical language is present in only a small minority of cases. This neurological disorder is, however, characterized by repetitive, involuntary movements and vocalizations called "tics" that range from simple (blinking, sniffing, grunting, grimacing, shrugging the shoulders) to complex (grimace combined with head twist and shoulder shrug, jumping or twisting, touching objects) to severe (punching oneself in the face, coprolalia and echolalia). The average onset of the syndrome is between the ages of 7 and 10 (watch these children describe it) and usually subsides by adulthood, with tics at their worst during times of excitement or anxiety. The disorder is named after French neurologist George Gilles de la Tourette (pictured), who first diagnosed it in 1885. Famous people with Tourette syndrome include Dan Ackroyd, Howie Mandel, and David Beckham. This post was prompted by a story in the weird news 2 days ago about a British dad, but his symptoms pale in comparison to this Australian daughter.

Follow-ups

I've let these pile up again, so here's the 1st segment of 2 or more...

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Piper negrum 9/24/09 Man arrested for sneezing fetish.

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Pig butchering 9/1/09 Another painting has been restored to reveal a surprise.

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World's heaviest insects 8/28/09 A "hotdog-sized" caterpillar found in Florida pool.

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Messel pit 8/24/09 Dinosaur fossils found in China have the earliest known feathers. And feather fossils found in Messel have vivid iridescent colors.

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Mona Lisa(s) 8/12/09 Mona Lisa comes to life in Beijing. A list f Mona Lisa parodies was published a week after my post.

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Victor Noir 8/10/09 The vault above Marilyn Monroe, mentioned in a follow-up to this post, has been sold to the highest bidder.

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Castaways, real and imagined 8/6/09 Treehouses have become a trend in France.

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Strange stories about teeth 7/13/09 A pacu fish, like the one in this post, has been living in the same pet store for 41 years.

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Oscar Mayer dies 7/9/09 Ohio State University graduate hired to drive the weinermobile.

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Two of a kind 6/12/09 Photo of a 1-year-old echidna.

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Pied Piper of Hamelin 5/5/09 The rats have finally been eradicated from Alaska's Rat Island.

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Prosimians 4/25/09 Lemurs killed as bush meat.

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Vlad the Impaler 4/11/09 A sequel to Dracula by Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew has been published.

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Robo-animals 4/9/09 A box turtle gets substitutes for its missing legs. A duckling that had fractured its leg was given a sandal, but has since died.

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Kunstkammer 3/21/09 More dentistry: the dentures of George Washington.

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Camelopard 3/6/09 Art project to collect 1 million handmade images of giraffes.

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Snake handlers 2/21/09 Snakebite victims in India die because they do not seek treatment in time, believing that charmers can counteract the toxin.

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Killer chimpanzees 2/17/09 The defense tactic in the lawsuit about the chimp attack in Connecticut.

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Corpse flower 1/30/09 Scientists measure the cost and benefit of the diet of carnivorous plants and analyze the chemical contents of the pitcher plant's fluid.

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Birds and dogs 12/15/09 Maori legend about a man-eating bird has been proven true.

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Albinos 11/18/09 Trainer gets in the water with albino alligator. A photo of the strange-looking axolotl - this one an albino - that is nearing extinction.

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Animal extinction 11/9/09 Biologists discover 163 new species in China, all at risk of extinction, and paleontologists wonder if we will ever run out of new dinosaur species to discover.

The Mary Rose

Here is a timeline of the Tudor warship Mary Rose, which displaced 500 tons, was 38.5M long, and had a crew of 415:

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1509-1510: Built in Portsmouth England

1536: Number of cannons on board upgraded from 76 to 91

1545: Sunk during engagement with invading French fleet

1546: Depicted (illustration above) in survey of Royal Navy ships presented to King Henry VIII (1491-1547)

1836: Wreck discovered by fisherman and timbers and other items recovered

1967-1971: Wreck rediscovered with sonar and visualized

1979-1982: Remaining timbers raised and placed on display (photo above)

1994: Conservation efforts begun to preserve the remains of the ship

2003: New diving expedition to collect additional artifacts

2008: Determined that the Mary Rose sank after turning sharply to fire cannons from the other side of the ship and taking on water through the open gun ports

2009: Exhibition closed for preparation of new museum

2012: Museum to display the remains of the ship and its treasures will open in Portsmouth

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Ironically, considering the lengthy timeline of the ship, "Nowhere else in the world is a single moment in Tudor life captured as it was with the Mary Rose," says the head of the trust set up to preserve and display her remains and contents. Click on the quote for photos of some of the 19,000 recovered artifacts, which include leather shoes, a wooden tankard and bowl, a fiddle, a manicure set and nit combs (some still containing the nits), and a syphilis syringe.

Golf course oddities

Last week, 77-year-old James Wiencek of Ohio reached into a pond at the Ocean Creek Golf Course in Beaufort, South Carolina, to retrieve his golf ball. Suddenly, he was dragged underwater by a 10' alligator who bit off his arm before he could be pulled out by his friends. Wildlife workers killed the animal and retrieved the severed limb while the man was rushed to the hospital, where surgeons hoped to reattach the arm. No word yet whether they were successful.
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Here's a round-up of other strange golf-related happenings:

• Loch Ness, Scotland 10/13/09 Hundreds of golf balls found in its depths by researchers hunting for the legendary monster.
• Kingston, West Sussex, England 10/11/09 A pro at the Coombe Wood Golf Club is visited daily by the pigeon he rescued on the course.
• Drymen, Stirlingshire, Scotland 10/8/09 A man accidentally killed his mother-in-law with his tee shot on the 3rd hole at Stathendrick Golf Club.
• Deerfield Beach, Florida 9/23/09 A man died while diving for golf balls in the lake at the Deer Creek Country Club.
• Riverside, California 9/17/09 A man was cited for littering after tossing 3,000 golf balls into Joshua Tree National Park to honor deceased golfers.
• Loudon County, Tennessee 8/6/09 A prehistoric arm was found on the site of the Tennessee National Golf Course project.
• Brisbane, Australia 7/20/09 The world's longest golf course, stretching 842 miles from Ceduna to Kalgoorlie, was due to open in August.
• Pittsfield, Michigan 6/16/09 A man and his grandmother made a successful emergency landing of his plane on the fairway of the 5th hole at the Stonebridge Golf Course.
• East Fishkill, New York 4/20/09 A "weird wind event" trapped 2 men under their overturned golf cart at the Beekman Country Club.
• Almere, Holland 3/2/08 Plans were announced to build the world's largest indoor golf arena at an undecided location in the Netherlands.
• Loch Lomond, Scotland 5/12/08 Golfers ran for cover when an out-of-control speedboat flew at them and careened into a sand bunker.
• Mundelein, Illinois 3/20/07 Workers at the Countryside Golf Club outside Chicago found a human skull near the 14th tee of the Prairie Course.

Being so fond of fossils, my favorite weird news golf story is this: In August, groundskeeper Patrick Walker found a 10-pound tooth on the golf course at the Morrison Lake Country Club in Saranac, Michigan. Paleontologists confirmed that it belonged to an 11,ooo-year-old mammoth.

Glasswing butterflies

I've got to get cracking on an article about conjoined twins that I am writing for an on-line encyclopedia, so today I offer images of the glasswing butterfly. This species is native to Mexico and Central America and, like other butterflies, makes long migrations. They eat toxic plants like nightshade as caterpillars, storing the poison in their bodies to deter birds. Here is a video of a glasswing emerging from its chrysalis. In adult males, the toxin is converted to pheromones to attract females. They also beguile them by lekking. I have not observed this behavior among the butterfly species here in Florida, but see them all the time in my Mom's garden.

Diving horses

This story in the weird news brought to mind the diving horses of Atlantic City, New Jersey. I was surprised to find that the attraction did not end until 1978 (watch this video between the 2- and 3-minute mark) and that PETA was not more outspoken about the animal abuse, until learning that the organization was not founded until 1980. The diving horse attraction was begun in the 1920s by American showman William "Doc" Carver (1840-1947), inspired by his horse's jump from a collapsing bridge. Carver employed his daughter-in-law Sonora Webster Carver (1904-2003) to mount the galloping horses just before they reached the end of the 40- or 60-foot pier and plunge into the water with them. On one such dive in 1931, Sonora's retinas became detached when she hit the water with her eyes open. Despite the resulting blindness, she continued to dive the horses until 1942. Her story is told in the 1991 film "Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken," but after seeing it, she told her sister, "The only thing true in it was that I rode diving horses, I went blind and I continued to ride for another 11 years." Nevertheless, it has inspired 2 impassioned YouTube videos, one with clips from the film and the other in documentary style. My Mom remembers seeing the riderless diving horses at a similar act at Lake Compounce in her hometown of Bristol, Connecticut.

Postmortem photograph

The photograph above has been in my collection since March 1995 and I have felt some guilt after realizing that I let it become dissociated from the commencement invitation and tickets that accompanied it. But I am pleased to show that I found them during the relocation of my "museum" to Florida! The photo shows students at the Southern Homeopathic Medical College in Baltimore - some of whom have their graduation year painted on their smocks - posed with the African-American cadaver they are dissecting. Their instructor, with book in hand, stands on the right. A pencilled note on the back of the photo notes that it was "made by flash light" on Nov. 10, 1897. The book Dissection, which I mentioned in an April post and reviewed for Fortean Times, includes a 1902 photograph from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Baltimore and 1882 and c. 1924 images from Baltimore's University of Maryland School of Medicine. Of these photos, the authors write, "These dissection photographs recount the rite of passage to a new identity - they present a professional coming-of-age narrative. Privileged access to the body marked a social, moral, and emotional boundary crossing....As visual memoirs of a transformative experience, the photographs are autobiographical narrative devices by which the students placed themselves into a larger, shared story of becoming a doctor." I am thrilled to have reunited the photo and ephemera I have. I do wish I knew which student was George...

Reflexology

Occasionally in my yoga class, we take a moment to massage our feet, hands, or faces (particularly the ears). This is the practice of reflexology, a natural healing art that applies pressure to reflexes on the hands and feet that correspond to other parts of the body in order to promote their function. On a general level, reflexology reduces stress, but is also used to reduce pain, improve blood flow, reduce blood pressure, and complement traditional medical care. Archaeological evidence suggests that the idea of reflexology emerged centuries ago, but it began to be used in the West in the 19th c. This was the same time phrenology reached its popularity, but while phrenology was debunked as a pseudoscience, reflexology has been accepted as an alternative medicine. In the U.S., there is an association and a certification board. I like the practice of reflexology as much as I like the charts, having been long fascinated by the idea of the homunculus.