An American Road Trip?

I have been on several fabulous vacations with my Dad in recent years. There was the cruise to Alaska, the long road trip - spent mostly in the car, frankly - to Nova Scotia and back, and our most recent jaunt to sunny Florida where, I think, we finally got it just right.

But now I will suggest another road trip for you, sparked by the news that this past Monday the Obama Administration declared five more sites in the good ol' U.S.A. national monuments. Go visit 'em all!

The list now sits at a total of 108. You can find them all and a bit of background from your friendly neighborhood Wikipedia here.

What a trip that would be, eh?

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SILLY ACTUAL ROAD SIGNS

"If you hit this sign, you will hit this bridge."

"Welcome to Reed City. If you lived here, you'd be home now."

"Extreme Fire Hazard. Don't Even Fart in the Forest Today."

At a gas station: "Regular - Arm; Mid•Grade - Leg; Premium - First Born"

On the road outside of Las Vegas: "Guns - Wedding Gowns - Cold Beer"

"Drive slow, see our village. Drive fast, see our judge."

--Roadandtravel.com

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"When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it."  (Yogi Berra)

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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/markmusings. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761. Be careful when you hit the road. It's hard and often hits back.

Mawwiage

Any fan of the movie, "The Princess Bride" should instantly recognize the title of today's post.

But yes, let's talk about marriage for a moment. There's a new legislative bill being considered in Scotland that would allow a third type of organization to conduct marriages, in addition to religious and civil ceremonies. The third type is being defined only as organizations that must pass certain tests to be defined as a "belief group."

The link takes you to a story where the Free Church of Scotland comes out against it, suggesting that groups as far afield as the Order of Jedi Knights would be allowed to conduct marriages, if the "Marriage and Civil Partnership Bill" passes.

Your thoughts?

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While we're on the subject, here's a relatively thoughtful article from Our Sunday Visitor's blog, a Catholic weekly newspaper, on why same-sex marriage is not necessarily a good thing. Though it's published in a religious forum, the article goes out of its way to set religion aside and makes its point in a kind, civil way. Something quite refreshing, if you ask me.

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When it comes to the whole question of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, I must confess that my thoughts are a very jumbled bag. It's a thorny issue with which I wrestle using the Bible in one hand and my experience and understanding of the way God and nature works in the other. One day perhaps I shall have the courage to make the attempt to put these musings down here on the blog, but I hesitate because a) I have not found any answers that satisfy me, and b) I'm pretty sure my beliefs would offend just about everyone, no matter which side of the question you stand.

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I do have some legitimate thoughts on two people committing their lives to one another, however. And I wrote them back in 2006. You can find those here.

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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/markmusings. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761. For richer, poorer? For better, worse? In sickness and in health? I choose richer, better, and health. Well, it's multiple choice, isn't it?

NASA, Phasers, Guns, and Mr. Rogers

I just keep stumbling across these interesting tidbits in my Internet travels, which have actually increased since I retired (to my work ethic's chagrin).

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was recently called on the carpet by Congress to explain why they haven't done more to locate and advise the public on Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), such as the meteor that exploded over Russia recently.

The answer? Congress keeps cutting their funding.

Duh! And d'oh!

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From the science desk comes the invention and miniaturization of the ... are you ready? ... phaser! Seriously, you know that the word laser is an acronym, right? It stands for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation." Well, scientists in Japan have now done basically the same thing that lasers do, only with sound waves instead of light waves. Those particles are called phonons, so the appropriate name for the process is "phasing."

It was actually first invented about three years ago, but at that time the phonons needed a medium - such as light - to move through. The Japanese research lab has successfully removed the light ride-along piece. Unlike a laser, which can move through the vacuum of space, the phaser needs air to get the job done, so it will only have an earthly application at this time.

They've been able to put it on a microchip, though, so it may well end up replacing quartz as the regulator in all of our timepieces. At least for those of us who still wear a watch instead of peeking at our cell phone for the time.

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Speaking of guns, the website Thumbs and Ammo posits that real men don't need to use a gun, just the power of positive thinking.

So they have dedicated themselves to taking images from popular movies, removing the gun(s), and replacing the trigger fingers with a "thumbs up" sign.

Some of them - such as the one pictured here - are quite funny.

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Finally, today would have been Fred Rogers 85^th birthday. Here's an interesting mashup honoring his life as the children's TV host, "Mr. Rogers."



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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/baldmark. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761. Why yes, it *is* a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

Miscellaneous Monday

Well, ABC's Dancing with the Stars is back and my wife is ecstatic. Did I tell you she once studied ballroom dancing? 'Tis true. In fact, our local Arthur Murray's studio asked her to become an instructor, but she demurred.

It's something I've promised her we'll take up in retirement, and I intend to keep my word. When she retires and her schedule frees up, watch for us!

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A company that helps develop smartphone applications - called "apps" in the vernacular - has published an infographic on mobile phone use. Internet access is indeed getting more and more portable and ubiquitous. Soon it will be everywhere.

The company - New Relic (love that name!) - says there are now more Android phone activations every day than there are babies being born. And by 2020, half of all your financial transactions will be done over your phone.

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So, hey, my daughter has a blog. It's a work in progress and she's new to all this stuff, but I feel proud of her in a "chip-off-the-block" kind of way. You won't find anything really deep there yet, but she's got an easy way of writing that makes it a fun read.

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And oh, yes, before I forget ... tomorrow is my wife's birthday. That's her, below. Yup, I'm one lucky guy.

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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/baldmark. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761. No, I won't be telling you how old she is.....

Why Green?

Saint Patrick's Day is this Sunday. So here's a wee video from the History Channel with some facts you probably didn't know.

I learned something. Hope you do, too.




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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/baldmark. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761. May ye be in heav'n a half an hour before the devil knows ye're dead!

Attitude Check

According to research too numerous, varied, and over my pay grade to mention, we all have two types of attitudes: the ones we are consciously aware of, and the ones in our subconscious that drive our feelings and choices without our actively realizing it.

An "international collaborative network of researchers" have come together to form Project Implicit, which is a standardized series of quick Internet tests designed to determine how you *really* feel about things, whether you're aware of it or not. That word, implicit, means "implied though not plainly expressed."

You can choose to be part of the study - click the "Participate" button at the link above - or you can choose to just take some demonstration tests here. It's backed by the folks at Harvard, Yale, and other prestigious institutions, it's on a secure server, and no personal information is collected, aside from your IP address.

There are all manner of subjects to choose from: what your conscious and subconscious attitudes are about race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, self-esteem, alcohol, and more.

The group says if you get a result that's widely different than what you expected, take the test again. There is a gentle learning curve, from what I can tell you of my own experience. And, the group is quick to point out, don't take the results too seriously ... unless you want to.

What you do with the results is, in the end, entirely up to you.

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A Congressman was once asked about his attitude and thoughts toward whiskey.

"If you mean," he replied, "the demon drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, destroys family life, and inflames the unrighteous, then I'm dead set against it.

"If, however," he continued, "you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer, the shield against winter's chill, the taxable potion that puts needed funds into public coffers to comfort crippled children, then I'm all for it!

"This is my position, and I will not compromise."

--jokebuddha.com

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"Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude."  (Zig Ziglar)

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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/baldmark. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761

Don't Panic!

Google is making note today of what would have been the 61^st birthday of English humourist and author Douglas Adams, who is most famously known for his Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books.

It started out as a trilogy: Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy was followed by The Restaurant At the End of the Universe and the story mostly finished up in Life, the Universe, and Everything. Only they sold so well, he added a *fourth* book to the trilogy, titled So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. (The title references the last thing said by dolphins before they left the planet. In the Hitchhiker Earth, mankind is only the third most intelligent species, being outsmarted by both dolphins and white mice.)

In the book, a race of beings built a super-computer that would give them the answer to "life, the universe, and everything." It said it would need seven-and-a-half million years. At the appointed time, it gave the answer (which I shall refrain from spoiling for you, though most everyone I know has already heard, such is the popularity of Adams' work). So then these beings built a *second* super-computer, a living experiment of a computer, to come up with the question to life, the universe, and everything, since they could make no sense out of the answer.

That second super-computer, posits Adams, was our Earth. When the scientists who created the Earth wanted to pop in and check up on their experiment, they appeared here as white mice.

The series is quite fun; Adams has a whimsical style of writing with a keen eye for sarcasm and the human condition, and as long as you don't take a word of it for gospel, I think you'd enjoy it. Today I'm going to feature several quotes from the book for your daily chuckle. (At least I hope you'll chuckle.)

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"He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which."

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

"It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear."

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws."

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

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The story follows the trail of sad-sack human Arthur Dent and his pal, Ford Prefect, who is from Betelguese, though Arthur does not find this out until later. Arthur is our way into the author's world, and he is often as amazingly perplexed as we would be.

In the novels, there actually is something called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and it is a travel guidebook, of sorts, with the words DON'T PANIC emblazoned on the cover. Which, I hope, explains the title of today's post.

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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/baldmark. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761. Don't forget your towel.

Branded!

All right, I admit it ... I ran straight up against a stone cold wall today. So I got nuthin'.

Except this.

You can now access my blog by using a much more memorable name!

http://www.markmusings.com

Don't use "marksmusings" with the "s" after my name. That will take you someplace else.

Make a note of it. Update your favorites/bookmarks.

And thanks for reading, everyone! See you on Monday.

I Charity You

At one time, the word charity meant love. For example, in 1 Corinthians 13 - the famous "love" chapter of the Bible, often quoted at weddings - the final line in the King James version reads:

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity."

In the original Latin version of the Bible, the word translated as charity was used to describe God's love. Hence the King James' usage. The French, however, broadened the definition of charity to include mercy, compassion, alms, and benevolence for the poor. According to my word etymology resources, this meaning crept into English around the end of the seventeenth century. 

So for a little over 300 years charity has mostly meant giving aid to those less fortunate.

Anyone who has had their dinner interrupted by a telemarketing fundraiser phone call can surely attest to the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations out there - and all of them have called us at one time or another (or so it feels). How do you know which ones to trust?

That's where today's link comes in: check 'em out at Charity Navigator. The website has diligently logged, catalogued, and rated all **1.6 million** charities registered with the Internal Revenue Service. You can read about their methodology, their rating system, and search their immense database to find your favorite organization and see if they qualify for the site's four-star rating, which is the highest.

I particularly liked the "Tips for Savvy Donors" which, in fact, recommended you never give to a charity over the phone!

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A Red Cross volunteer and a lawyer died and went up to the heavenly gates. Saint Peter tells the volunteer to wait a little while, and lets the lawyer in first. As the gates close on the volunteer, she sees the lawyer greeted with much fanfare! Music erupts, cheers are heard, a choir of angels descend from above and sing a joyous hallelujah. Finally, the Lord Himself appears and gives a personal greeting and warm embrace to the lawyer.

Things eventually begin to die down, and the lawyer wanders off to enjoy his eternity in heaven. As the last angel floats away, Saint Peter grants entrance to the volunteer. But there is no music, no choir, no grand heavenly greeting.

Confused, the volunteer looks to Peter for an explanation. "Oh," says Saint Peter, "we get volunteers in here all the time. That was our first lawyer."

--DoSomething.org

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"Volunteering is the time without the crime. Community Service, on the other hand...."  (Anonymous)

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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/baldmark. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761.

Monday Miscellany

A couple of bits and pieces, odds and ends today.

With a tip o'the Musings cap to Kim Komando, you can find a list of free wifi locations in your state by clicking those bold colored words. Of course, we all know most of our favorite restaurants, coffee shops and bookstores offer it, but if you're in a strange city or you want to find a new place to hang your @, check it out.

The list is hardly complete and doesn't have many small towns on it, but there's a form you can fill out on the site to update them.

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In a recent post here on the blog, I asked what you do for Lent. Well, Christianity Today has reported out the annual analysis of people who use Twitter to compile a Top 100 List of what everyone else gave up for Lent.

Most went for the joke and said they were going to give up "being Pope." But there are some creative ideas listed, as well.

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Finally, a word on computer security today: namely, passwords. If yours is on this list, change it immediately! (The article is the third or fourth one down on the page as I write this.) The Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, is a collaborative effort between the FBI and the White Collar Crime Division (yes, USA Network fans, there really *is* a White Collar crime division).

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Enjoy all of today's links, and I hope you enjoy the click-throughs!

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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/baldmark. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761.

Outlive Yourself

Apparently it's obsolete now (at least all I can find are digital breadcrumbs), but at one time the website "My Last E-Mail" would - upon your estate executor submitting a certified death certificate - send out "e-mails from the grave" that you had prepared before your death to be delivered posthumously.

Now, another company has picked up on the theme, using Twitter to continue sending out little 140-character messages long after you've passed on, with the help of a loved one and their artificial intelligence software. Their catchphrase? When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting.

And you thought I was kidding.

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A life-long supporter of the Republican Party lay on his deathbed, and as the end approached, he whispered to his friend that he wished to switch parties and become a Democrat.

"But why?" his friend asked. "You've been a Republican through and through your entire life!"

With his dying breath, the man raised his head and explained, "Yes, well, I'd rather it was one of them that died than one of us, you see."

--jokes4all

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"They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days."  -- Garrison Keillor

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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/baldmark. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761.

There and Back Again

...with apologies to Mr. Tolkien and, of course, Bilbo Baggins.

As you may have read here recently, I have been away for a fortnight. Yesterday I returned. And all throughout I have been thinking. About the familiar.

The familiar is what bores us. The familiar is waking up and doing much the same thing we have done for God knows how long. The familiar is what drives us away, seeking fresh adventures and something to put a little extra zing in our step, a little bit of a rush in our blood. The familiar is often despised.

And yet, when our sojourn is over and we return to the place we call home, the familiar is warm and comfortable to put on, like a favorite shirt or a comfortable pair of shoes. It's a balm, and a peace, and the feeling of safety.

It's a rest from the road, a surcease from the strange, and a warm embrace from and for arms too long empty.

As the saying goes, it is two different sides of the same coin. The familiar is both foe and friend. It's the crazy uncle you avoid at reunions and a favorite aunt you just can't visit enough; the one who makes you wish you never had to leave.

The familiar is what I left behind two weeks ago and the familiar is what I joyously returned to yesterday.

It was, simply, a fabulous vacation.

It is, simply, a delight to be home.

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Mark's Musings is published on a periodical basis - right now on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays - but that may change without notice. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/baldmark. This blog is considered to be a digital periodical publication and is filed as such with the U.S. Library of Congress; ISSN 2154-9761.

Travels with Dad: The Road Home

In the past two weeks, I have driven the length of Indiana, the small end of Kentucky, the width of Tennessee, the length of Alabama, and darn near the length and width of Florida.

Dad and I started out visiting family and friends, worked our way down through the Everglades, rode the inter-coastal highway all the way to Key West, visited the southernmost tip of the continental United States, took video of roosters crowing just down the street from Ernest Hemingway's house, counted cats, bought way too many souvenirs, were within an arm's reach of a zebra and a good spitball from a grown tiger, fed a real live giraffe, hung out with friends, played in a euchre tournament (and lost), watched dolphins, ate too many over-priced and crappy hot dogs, looked at items we grew up with that are now in a museum and it made us feel ancient, watched a bi-plane fly, actually touched a piece of history, had the best strawberry shortcake of our life, and finished up by watching two major league teams play in a lovely minor league stadium.

I think it was, hands down, one of the best vacations I've ever had. And to think, all I had to do to get it was retire.

Now, we head home. And it's a race. As I write this, we are in northern Florida on a Sunday night. On Tuesday afternoon, back in our home state of Michigan, a snowstorm bringing 4-7 inches of snow is predicted to blow through. Our goal is to beat that storm home.

We have an awful lot of driving to do on Monday, the day this blog entry is published. So forgive me if I'm brief, but I need to hit the sack so I'll be a safe driver as you read this.

Thanks for tagging along on my retirement vacation this past week!

Travels with Dad: The Way It Was

Today is going to be mostly a photo essay, with a few tidbits that I picked up along the way during our visit to Heritage Village - which sounds like a retirement community - but it's a 21-acre compound in Largo, Florida run by Pinellas County Parks and features a gaggle of turn-of-the-twentieth-century buildings from the 1900s and a few older, some newer.

It seems to me to be a near-perfect opportunity for us to see just how far we've come as a society and to let those whippersnapper kids we've got know just how easy they've got it, so they'd better shape up.

The photo up top is Dad pointing to a railway depot run by the Railway Express Agency, which also happened to be the first company for which he worked. He drove a truck delivering freight that came off the trains in the early 1950s.


Back in the day, pretty much every store was like a Wal-Mart, carrying just about anything and everything your household might need. And in case anyone is interested, that's a 1921 Dodge Brothers automobile parked out front.

The store would usually house the town's switchboard, as well. If you wanted to place a call, kids, you would pick up your phone (see photo) which would automatically ring the operator who would then connect you to an outside line and dial for you. (Note on the phone pic there's no dial.) Back then, *all* your calls were 3-way calls and there was no extra charge. The town switchboard operator also doubled as the town gossip and their information was pretty reliable, considering they could eavesdrop on every call, if they wanted.

Next comes your kitchen. You get one cupboard, seen in the left foreground. Your refrigerator - called an icebox, because it was cooled by one honkin' big chunk of ice - is in the left background. Your stove, in the right background, was usually a wood stove. The little dustpan you see leaning against the door was for cleaning out the ashes. Your countertop space is in the right foreground. No luxury granite counters here.

When it was time for laundry, you lugged everything into the laundry room - outside - and dropped it, one at a time mind you, into a tub filled with water that was usually heated on top of a small fire. You dropped in your corrugated washboard (Google it, kids), then scraped a bar of soap help in a wire trap against it until it was clean. Then you rinsed and wrung it out by hand and hung it on a line strung between two trees.

In those days, men's shirts didn't come with collars. Collars were stiff cardboard and linen creations, sold separately (about a dime apiece). A man would wear the same shirt for three days in a row, but he'd put on a fresh collar every day.

Next you see an old-fashioned, seven-foot long tub in its original condition, circa 1907. You would only bathe about once a week because it was thought that "getting wet all over" would leave you vulnerable to all manner of illnesses; chills, ague, consumption, etc. And in this tub, you could wash three children at a time.




Church was usually just once a week, unless a revival preacher was in town, and it was on Sunday morning. There was no coffee or lattes in the lobby, no plush cushions on the pews or theater seating, no worship band, no audio/video presentations ... just a big wooden box with great acoustics that make a few people singing sound like a gigantic choir.

And God said it was good.

Women didn't get to go out and work with the men in those days, and when the chores were done, they couldn't be allowed to just sit and take their ease because, you know, "idle hands are the devil's playground" and all. So women all took up a hobby that occupied their hands ... knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, calligraphy, and some type of musical instrument (generally piano if a family was wealthy enough to own one). With no television and no radio (no iPod, iPad, Gameboy or Internet, either), music was the primary diversion back in the day, and everyone knew how to sing.

They were certainly simpler days, and probably better days, in so many ways. But there were definitely drawbacks. It took a long while for bathrooms to move indoors because, "who wants that stuff *inside* the house?" Segregation and prejudice relegated whole races to second class and worse living standards. (Still does, in some places.) And unless you were lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, every day was a scratch for survival, living hand-to-mouth.

But still, it was a more innocent time. People didn't need to lock their doors. Gangs meant groups of friends hanging out together, not seeing how much trouble they could stir up. Profanity was never heard in public and rarely heard at home. 

As science and technology relentlessly drag us into the future, let's remember those days with fondness, and then, perhaps, also be thankful they are behind us. Because today can be pretty awesome, as well.

Travels with Dad: Edison Museum

The gentleman to your left, his likeness forever cast in stainless steel, is Thomas Alva Edison. The man was an inventor and came up with patents for 65 years straight; 1,093 in all. The tree you see in the background is a banyan tree, a gift from Harvey Firestone, planted there in 1925 and flourishing 88 years later.

Edison is most well-known for inventing the light bulb but he created oh, so much more. There is a fairly well-researched Wikipedia entry here, for those who want to read more. Some of Edison's inventions my father and I witnessed today were the coffeemaker, curling iron, toaster, phonographs (the grandfather of the music CD, kids), mimeograph (the ancestor of the copy machine most well known by the brand name Xerox), cement, baby furniture, rubber from plants, batteries, and a high-quality iron ore.

And those are just the ones I can remember.

Since both Dad and I grew up in Michigan, we felt an affinity for Edison, as he grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He fell into the telegraphy business, but his entrepreneurial spirit had blossomed before that. His first patent was for an electric voting machine, to help the legislators in Congress cast votes more quickly and easily. This was, of course, the *last* thing they wanted to do and so it was a commercial failure. One historian on film at the museum suggested that was Edison's best legacy: that failure is often a prerequisite for success; picking yourself up and trying again.

The first big hit of Edison's was the phonograph. The thought that sounds could be captured on metal (he used tin foil at first) and then replayed was from so far out in leftfield at the time that Edison was dubbed, "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (his lab was in Menlo Park, New Jersey). The phonograph to the right was built in 1904 and we heard a demonstration where it still sounded pretty dang good. The tinfoil - which tore far too easily - was eventually replaced by a hard waxy substance called "blue amberol," from which the cylinder here is made. The motor ran off a spring that you hand-cranked with the device seen on the right. There was no volume control, so to soften the sound coming out of the horn, people would stuff a bit of cotton - or a wadded up sock - down the horn to quiet it (this was also demonstrated for us). And that, gentle reader, is where the expression, "stuff a sock in it" originated.

 Eventually Edison switched to the 12-inch plastic round disc we know as the "Long-Playing Album" (or LP), because his main competitor - Victrola - had started using them. The advantage to the disc was that you could flip it over and record a second song on the back. The technology was improved until you could get up to 40 minutes of music on each side, instead of 3-4 minutes.

Ultimately, that's what Edison really became good at doing - improving his own inventions. As he grew older, the demands of his fame, and his family (which his second wife sensibly insisted he attend upon) took away much of his time from inventing and the world's technology was changing around him so fast that he couldn't keep up and lacked the energy to try. So even though he built a laboratory that was 10 times larger than his original, he never really struck out onto new ground.

Interestingly, Edison was nearly deaf. He had to rely on the ears of others to fine-tune his recording devices. Once, he had a phonograph placed into this wood frame, where he would actually bite the corner (see the photo) and feel the vibrations of the music to make sure they were being reproduced.

By the way, if these pictures aren't crystal clear, chalk it up to the fact I'm using my cell phone. It's a pretty good camera (Samsung Galaxy S-II), but not as good as, say, a *real* digital camera, like the one my father uses.

Speaking of cameras - oh, wasn't that smooth? - Edison began experimenting with motion pictures in 1888. So yeah, he sort of invented Hollywood, too.

To accommodate his new invention, he built the world's first soundstage and movie studio - in West Orange, New Jersey. It was built on a circular railroad track and both sides of the roof opened so the interior could be flooded with natural sunlight.

 Edison's work ethic was incredible. He thought himself no higher than his workers - here you see him punching the clock, like everyone else - and on this particular day, if you could see the plaque below the photo ... it was his 74th birthday.

Wow.

His last project in life started in 1929. Edison, Harvey Firestone, and Henry Ford  realized that the country imported nearly all of its rubber, a critical component to all of their businesses (Edison used rubber in the manufacture of battery cases). And realizing that the rubber supply could be cut off and was out of their control, they began searching for ways to make rubber right here in the United States. The three of them created the Edison Botanical Research Laboratory, each contributing $25,000 in start-up costs. Edison went to work testing different plants for a potential rubber source. He tested more than 17,000 varieties, finally settling on the goldenrod weed as the best potential source. At the time, it grew to about six feet, and approximately 4% of the leaf would yield rubber.

Through cross-breeding and hybrid pollination, Edison created a variety of goldenrod that grew to 12 feet, and 10% of the leaf would yield rubber. In 1930, Congress rewarded him by naming this new hybrid variety after him, calling it the Solidago edisoniana, but before it could move to the mass-production process, DuPont discovered a way to make artificial rubber, calling it neoprene. The laboratory remained in operation until 1937, six years after his death.