Good Living 123

I love Spring! And in the mountains of North Carolina we enjoy 3 gorgeous months of Spring.

Of course, Mom Martin’s double camellia is in bloom, as are the daffodils.

Our weeping cherry tree is starting to blossom…

… as are the plum trees.

And we are now watching the iris spring to life. Ahhhhh… just breathe!

Joining the nation in 1859, Oregon became the 33^rd state in the U.S. Since the discovery of a small, prehistoric stone knife in 2012, some archaeologists believe people have lived in the region for at least 15,000 years. Home to 10 Native American tribes, Europeans began arriving in the 1500s, when both Spain and Great Britain claimed it for themselves.

In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson sent American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to map out a huge swath of land bought the year before in the Louisiana Purchase… and the land beyond, which included the region that is now Oregon.

American settlers started arriving by wagon trains in the 1840s. All European claims were soon quashed by the large number of Americans settling there.

Bordered by Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, and the Pacific Ocean, the 9^th largest state in the U.S. is slightly larger than the United Kingdom. The origins of the name Oregon remain disputed. Some claim it comes from the French word “ouragan” meaning “hurricane,” a term used by French explorers to describe an especially windy part of the region… but others say it’s derived from the Chinook word “oolighan,” a type of fish eaten by the Native Americans.

A coin toss in 1854 determined the name of Portland. Had the coin landed on the other side, the city was to be called Boston. With no sales tax, Oregon’s population nears 4.3 million, but the Beaver State is particularly known for its grandeur.

At 1943 feet, the famed Crater Lake is the nation’s deepest lake. Oregon is home to more than 6,000 lakes, plus 112,000 miles of rivers and streams, 16 known hot springs, 230 state parks, and 13 national forests. Nearly half of the area, nearly 30 million acres, is forested,

At 7,913 feet deep, Hells Canyon is the deepest river gorge in North America and averages 5,500 feet deep.

The state’s highest point is Mount Hood at 11,245’.

Oregon has 14 National Historic Districts, 4 National Historic Trails (including the “Go West, Young Man” Oregan Trail), and more than 7,000 bridges.

Oregon’s Klamath Basin has the largest concentration of wintering bald eagles, and the Western Meadowlark is its official state bird.

The “Tater Tot” was invented here by brothers Nephi and Golden Grigg, founders of Ore-Ida.

Oregon is also home to the corn dog.

This Pacific Northwest state grows 99% of the entire U.S. commercial crop of hazelnuts. The state is also home to over 750 vineyards, growing 72 varietals of wine grapes.

With 675 million pigs in the world, on every continent except Antarctica, pigs earned their own special day. National Pig Day is not just to celebrate bacon, ribs, ham, and all the other goodies pigs deliver to help sustain humans. This is a day to learn about an animal most of us simply take for granted. There are hundreds of breeds, most of which have descended from the Eurasian wild boar.

We’ve heard all the stereotypes… a messy room is a pigsty, or someone sweats like a pig. In truth, pigs are very clean animals. They wallow in the mud to stay cool, as they are not even able to sweat. They would much prefer a lovely swimming pool, and they are good swimmers.

Many people know that pigs are clever and very intelligent. They make great pets and can be trained and taught tricks. Pigs are born with the intelligence of a 3-year-old human toddler and rank as the 5^th smartest animal, smarter and more trainable than any breed of dog. They have excellent memories and can even play video games better than some humans. (Who tried this to know?)

After a pregnancy of 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days, a female (or sow) can produce 10 piglets in a single litter, each weighing about 2.5 pounds at birth. That weight will double in the first week, but they are born able to walk and run. Pigs can run as fast as 11 miles per hour!

A mother pig sings to her babies while nursing. Pigs constantly communicate with each other via more than 20 distinct grunts and squeals. However, pigs have poor eyesight, but their sense of smell is 2,000 times more sensitive than ours.

Few animals are more social than pigs, and they are known to form close bonds with other pigs and humans too, which has helped make them easy to domesticate. They also enjoy belly rubs. Like humans, pigs spend 1/3 of their day sleeping. And they dream. They also like sleeping nose-to-nose with one another.

As adorable as they are, I am unlikely to stop eating pork products. That said, I am a believer in open-range, healthy living conditions for all the creatures that are raised to feed us. We all need to say, “No” to factory-farmed pork, along with beef, chicken, etc.

I will close with some information that I had previously been unaware existed. For decades, pig heart valves have been successfully being used to replace heart valves in humans. So, celebrate the process called xenotransplantation.

Here’s oinking at you!

True… a person turning 100 years old today only got to officially celebrate 25 birthdays.  This is also National Frog Legs Day. But, of course! A couple of silly one-liners seem in order. Sooooo…. What do athletes wear on Leap Day? Jumpsuits, of course.  And what do you call a talking kangaroo? Unbe-Leap-able.

In seriousness, early Egyptians had a leap year in their calendar. Early Roman calendars had an entire leap month from time to time to keep in line with astronomy. Julius Caesar pushed for the Roman calendar to have 12 nearly even months and a leap day every 4 years.

Regardless, we all get one extra day this year. So, what shall we do with it? For me, this is a day welcoming a couple of dear friends coming for their first visit with us in the North Carolina mountains.

I’ll close with a cultural tidbit: One ancient Irish tradition allowed women to propose marriage on Leap Day. Allowed. Words like “allowed” feel so incredibly archaic in such a context. Yup. Such “allowances” and rules were definitely created by boys. (Men do not feel threatened by women.)

Wisconsin became the 30^th state of the union in 1848. Being shortly before the Civil War, people met in Ripon, Wisconsin to discuss stopping the spread of slavery, resulting in the creation of the Republican Party. The state then became an important part of the Underground Railroad, helping escaped slaves reach freedom in Canada.

Wisconsin’s prairie soil is very fertile, boosting corn, the state’s #1 crop. The Sun Prairie’s sweet corn festival is one of the largest of its kind in the nation.

The Badger State is so famous for its cheese that it has a cheese museum. In truth, the Swiss Cheese Capitol of the World is in Wisconsin, rather than in Switzerland. The term “cheesehead” started as a term used by German soldiers to insult the Dutch during World War II, long before Green Bay Packers’ fans adopted it. Famous for its dairy products, Wisconsin banned the sale and use of margarine from 1895 to 1967. It remains illegal for a restaurant to serve margarine as a butter substitute unless a customer requests it.

The name Wisconsin hails from a Native American word “meskonsing,” meaning “this stream meanders through something red,” likely referring to the state’s reddish sandstone. Eleven Native American tribes still live in Wisconsin today.

With a current population nearing 6 million people, the state is noted for its forests and fertile farmland.

Neighboring Minnesota is called the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but Wisconsin has more than 15,000, all created during the last Ice Age some 12,000 years ago when glaciers scraped across the land.

Glaciers carved a sandstone gorge called the Dells of the Wisconsin River, along with flattop hills called buttes and mesas.

Wisconsin is also home to a major archaeological find: 14,500-year-old mammoth bones with human-made tool marks.

Here are a few more fun facts.

Nearly 21 million gallons of ice cream are consumed by Wisconsinites each year.

Green Bay, the oldest city in Wisconsin, is known as the “Toilet Paper Capital” of the world.

Sheboygan, which freshwater surfers know as the “Malibu of the Midwest” is also known as the “Bratwurst Capital” of the world.

The Fox River is one of the few rivers in the nation that flows north.

More than 800,000 deer roam Wisconsin woods.

With 250 miles of lake front shoreline, Door County has more shoreline than any other U.S. county.

A long list of famous folks hail from Wisconsin, including magician Harry Houdini, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, actor Orson Wells, and performer Liberace.

Wisconsin contains 60,570 acres of State parks and 471,329 acres of State forests.

Its highest elevation is Timms Hill at 1,951.5 feet.

The town of Warrens has 400 residents but draws 100,000 visitors each September for the world’s largest cranberry festival. Wisconsin produces 60% of the nation’s cranberries.