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December 17 2013 Published by PTK Corp.
of the River Region
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ICY INFO by Kathy Wolfe There’s more to know about ice than just the fact that it’s frozen water. Here are the cold hard facts about cold hard ice! • About 10% of the Earth’s land mass and 7% of its oceans are covered by ice. Close to 98% of Antarctica, located at the Earth’s South Pole, is covered by ice averaging at least a mile (1.6 km) in thickness. Its ice sheet holds about 90% of the planet’s fresh water. • An ice sheet forms when snow that falls in winter does not melt entirely over the summer months. After thousands of years of this process, the layers pile up and compress into thick, dense sheets of ice. In order to be classified as an ice sheet, it must extend more than 20,000 sq. miles (50,000 sq. km). Antarctica’s ice sheet covers almost 5.4 million sq. miles (14 million sq. km), which is about the size of the U.S. and Mexico combined. At one spot the ice is 2.96 miles (4.76 km) thick. Greenland, the world’s largest island, has an ice sheet extending 656,000 sq. miles (1.7 million sq. km), about three times the size of Texas. • The size of an iceberg varies between 3.3 ft. and 246 ft. (1 to 75 m) above the sea, weighing between 100,000 and 200,000 tons. About one-ninth of an iceberg’s volume is above water. It’s very challenging to determine the shape of that portion that lies underwater. • Icebergs are composed of freshwater ice that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf, causing them to float freely in the open water. During the warmer weather of spring and summer, the formation of icebergs increases as they separate from the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets and from other outlying glaciers. About 15,000 icebergs separate from Greenland every year, but most melt long before entering the Atlantic Ocean. Less than 400 will flow south of Newfoundland into the North Atlantic. • Iceberg Alley is the area about 250 miles (402 km) southeast of Newfoundland, Canada. This is where the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in April of 1912. Prior to that disaster, which caused 1,500 deaths, there was no system to track icebergs and protect ships from Turn the page for more Ice!.
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Tidbits® of the River Region ICY INFO (continued): collision. Immediately, the U.S. Navy began patrolling the waters, and the following year a permanent international system was created. • About 93% of the world’s icebergs are found in the Antarctic, and they are much larger than their northern counterparts. The largest iceberg on record was sighted in the Pacific Ocean in 1956 and measured 60 x 208 miles (97 x 335 km), with over 12,000 sq. miles (31,000 sq. km) of area, larger than the country of Belgium. In the Northern Atlantic, a 551-ft-tall (168-m) iceberg was reported in 1958, the equivalent of a 55-story building. • If all the ice in the world were to melt at the same time, the volume of all the oceans would increase by 1.7%, with a rise in sea level of 1180 feet (55 m). This would be the equivalent of the Empire State Building standing in water up to the 20th floor. • Water freezes from the outside in, expanding as it freezes. Tiny air bubbles are trapped in the water as it freezes, and the air is pushed to the center of an ice cube, which is shy cubes have cloudy, opaque centers. Ice cubes made from tap water have more air content, making them cloudier. If you want your ice cubes to be perfectly clear, start off with hot water, which has less air than cold water from the faucet. Or use bottled water, boiling it briefly before freezing. • When can you trust walking on ice? Ice with a thickness of two inches (5.1 cm) will support the weight of a man. Ice that is four inches (10.2 cm) thick will support that man on horseback. • Hail forms inside strong thunderstorm clouds when those clouds with updrafts pick up water droplets and carry them above the freezing level. Hailstones measure between .2 inch (5 mm) and 6 inches (15 cm) in diameter. In North America, “Hail Alley” is where hail is most common, that area where Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming meet. Cheyenne, Wyoming is the continent’s most hail-prone city, with about 9 to 10 hailstorms during the time from May to September. Vivian, South Dakota recorded the U.S.’s largest hailstone in July, 2010, with a diameter of 8 inches (20 cm) and a weight of 1.93 lbs. (0.88 kg). The world’s largest fell in 1986 in Bangladesh and weighed 2.25 lbs. (1 kg), and was about the size of a cantaloupe. That deadly storm killed 92 people. • What’s the difference between ice and dry ice? Regular ice is frozen water, while dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide. Dry ice is much colder, with temps below -108 degrees F (-78 C). Carbon dioxide does not go through a liquid state as it cools from gas to a solid state, and it also doesn’t melt. Rather, it changes directly from a solid into a vapor. • The word “ice” doesn’t always refer to water that has frozen into a solid form. It can also refer to an air of unfriendliness or animosity, when the atmosphere turns to ice. It can be a snack of shaved ice flavored with sweetened juice. The term can also mean flashy diamond jewelry or a smokable form of an illegal methamphetamine. As a verb, to a hired assassin, it’s slang for killing their victim and to a baker, it’s what they do to a cake. To a hockey player, it’s their skating surface as well as the act of shooting the puck out of defensive territory and far into the opposing team’s territory. If you’re too busy at work to take any time off, you put your vacation on ice when you postpone it. If you’re in an awkward social situation and no one is speaking, you might break the ice by offering the first remarks. But be careful about offensive remarks – they might put you on thin ice, meaning you’re in a difficult situation. • A glacier forms when multiple snowfalls occur over many years, even centuries in mountainous or polar regions. Glaciers form only on land, and flow very slowly across the land, powered by gravity, altering the shape of the Earth, creating valleys, morasses, crevasses, and changing landforms. Not surprisingly, the world’s largest glacier, Lambert Glacier is located in Antarctica.
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by Samantha Weaver * It was beloved American pianist and comedian Jimmy Durante who made the following sage observation: “Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down.” * Famed markswoman and exhibition shooter Annie Oakley was born the daughter of Quakers, who gave her the name Phoebe Ann Moses. * It was in July 1911 when daredevil Bobby Leach became the second person (and the first man) to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. His daring came at a cost, though; he spent six months in a hospital, recovering from injuries due to his feat. He later went on publicity tours, recounting his experience and posing with the barrel that took him over the falls. He was on one such tour in New Zealand in 1926 when he slipped on an orange peel, injuring his leg slightly. The leg became infected, necessitating an amputation -- which still didn’t save him. He died two months later, the daredevil felled by a citrus rind. * Those who study such things say that fully 10 percent of the country’s total income is due to organized crime. * You might be surprised to learn that only two out of every 10 ears of corn grown in the United States actually ends up being eaten by people. The other eight are destined to feed animals and to be made into ethanol gasoline. * If you’re like more than half of all Americans, you’d be willing to live in a haunted house -- provided you didn’t have to pay rent. * There are those who say that actor Johnny Depp is afraid of clowns. *** Thought for the Day: “This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.” -- Will Rogers (c) 2013 King Features Synd., Inc.
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* On Jan. 2, 1811, Timothy Pickering, a Federalist from Massachusetts, becomes the first U.S. senator to be censured when the Senate approves a motion against him. Pickering was accused of violating congressional law by publicly revealing secret documents. * On Dec. 30, 1862, the U.S.S. Monitor sinks in a storm off Cape Hatteras, N.C. Just nine months earlier, the ship had been part of a revolution in naval warfare when the ironclad dueled to a standstill with the C.S.S. Virginia (Merrimack) -- the first time two ironclads faced each other in a naval engagement. * On Jan. 5, 1920, the New York Yankees major-league baseball club announces its purchase of the heavy-hitting outfielder George Herman “Babe” Ruth from the Boston Red Sox for the sum of $125,000. The deal paid off as Ruth went on to smash his own home run record in 1920, hitting 54 homers. * On Jan. 1, 1946, on the island of Corregidor, in Manila Bay, 20 Japanese soldiers approach a lone soldier -- literally waving a white flag. The soldiers had been living in an underground tunnel and only discovered that the war was over by reading it in the newspaper. * On Jan. 3, 1967, Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, dies of cancer in a Dallas hospital. The Texas Court of Appeals recently had overturned his death sentence for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald and was scheduled to grant him a new trial. * On Jan. 4, 1974, President Richard Nixon refuses to hand over tape recordings and documents that had been subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee. Nixon would resign from office in disgrace eight months later.
Savonte Parker Black/Male 6’0” 184 lbs Hair: Black Eyes: Brown Outstanding Warrants: Fraudulent Use of Credit/Debit Cards (3 counts) Theft of Property 2nd (2 counts)
* On Dec. 31, 1984, Bernhard Goetz, the white man dubbed the “subway vigilante” after he shot four young black men on a New York City subway train, turns himself in at a police station in Concord, N.H. Goetz claimed that the men, all of whom had criminal records, were trying to rob him and that he had acted in self-defense. (c) 2013 King Features Synd., Inc.
Ricky Lee Brown White/Male 5’11” 180 lbs Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown
Outstanding Warrants: Failure to appear on Driving while suspended
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FIVE-FOOTSOMETHING Good things come in small packages! Check out these folks who are 5’3” (1.6 m) and under. • The career of singer/songwriter Paul Simon began when he met fellow 11-year-old Art Garfunkel while performing in their school’s production of Alice in Wonderland to celebrate the school’s sixth grade graduation. The pair began performing together when they were 13. The 5’2” (1.57 m) Simon has earned 12 Grammy Awards for his work and was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the “100 People Who Shaped the World.” Familiar compositions include “Cecilia, “I Am a Rock,” “Sound of Silence,” “Mrs. Robinson,” and “Bridge over Troubled Water.” “Bridge” has sold more than million copies and is ranked #47 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” When Simon writes songs, he says, “The music always precedes the words.” • One of history’s greatest philanthropists stood just 5 feet (1.52 m) tall. Andrew Carnegie came to the United States at age 13, and went to work in a Pennsylvania factory earning $1.20 a week. At 18, he began a career in the railroad business, and began making investments with his earnings. His wise choices yielded substantial returns which enabled him to go into the steel business. The Carnegie Steel Corporation was the largest of its kind in the world. At age 61, Carnegie sold his business to J.P. Morgan, earning him more than $200 million (about $6.3 billion in today’s dollars). From that point on, he devoted his life to helping others, including the construction of 2,800 libraries and the establishment of Carnegie-Mellon University. By the time he died at 83, had had donated some $350 million. • Although Minneapolis-born Prince Rogers Nelson was professionally known as Prince and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, his childhood nickname was Skipper. This 5’2” singer/songwriter has produced ten platinum albums and 30 Top 40 singles throughout his career, including 1984’s “Purple Rain,” which sold more than 13 million copies in the U.S., spending 24 consecutive weeks in Billboard’s No. 1 spot. From 1993 to 2000, Prince’s name was an unpronounceable symbol, referred to as the Love Symbol. • Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian independence movement, political and spiritual leader, advocated a practice of non-violent resistance to injustice. This London-trained lawyer lived a simple life and believed, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Although Gandhi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times, he never received it. A 187-minute film chronicled his life in 1982, winning eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Actor Ben Kingsley who portrayed this hero stood 5’8” (1.73 m), although Gandhi was just 5’3” (1.6 m). In 1948, as Gandhi walked to a prayer meeting, he was shot in the chest at point-blank range, the sixth and final attempt on his life. Two million mourners made up the 5-mile-long (8-km) funeral procession. • Danny Devito was a hair stylist in his sister’s salon before enrolling in New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts. As a young aspiring actor, the 5’0” (1.52 m) Devito shared an apartment with another up-and-coming actor, Michael Douglas, with whom he would go on to produce numerous projects. For his 1992 role as the Penguin in Batman Returns, Devito was strictly forbidden to discuss the top-secret makeup design with anyone, including his family.
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Tidbits® of the River Region
1. Three Dodgers pitchers since 1916 have struck out at least five batters in each of their first five major-league starts. Name two of them. 2. Who has the most managerial wins in Kansas City Royals history? 3. When was the last time before 2012 that Northwestern’s football team won a bowl game? 4. How many championships did the Los Angeles Lakers win under the ownership of Dr. Jerry Buss? 5. When was the last time before 2013 (Chicago and Boston) that two of the Original Six NHL franchises met in the Stanley Cup finals? 6. Who was the first NASCAR driver to be featured on a box of Wheaties cereal? 7. When was the last time before 2013 that no American male tennis player was in the top 10 of the ATP rankings?
1. The main Christmas story is paraphrased from what two New Testament books? Mark/ John, Acts/Romans, Matthew/Luke, Jude/ Revelation ? 2. Approximately how old was Jesus when the wise men (Magi) arrived with their gifts? 1 day, 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years 3. Where did the angel Gabriel appear to Mary saying, “Blessed art thou among women”? Nazareth, Tyre, Ninevah, Gazi 4. In what city of Judaea was Jesus born? Damascus, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Gezer 5. Who plotted to kill the baby Jesus? Archelaus, Herod, Pontius Pilot, Caesar Augustus 6. How many times does the word “Christmas” appear in the Bible (KJV)? Zero, 1, 2, 7
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Swedish Meatballs for the Holidays My great-aunt Ina had no children of her own, so we always included her at holiday gatherings, where we played endless rounds of Boggle and Scrabble, and did lots of eating. She’d win the games and then happily drift into the kitchen to make her Swedish meatballs, a recipe passed on to her from her immigrant parents more than a century ago. Now that she is no longer with us, we find ourselves reminiscing about her when we pull out her recipe for our Christmas Eve smorgasbord. As we do, I root around in the fridge for eggs, beef and pork, then Mom gathers spices from the cupboard. Without a word being spoken, we both have similar thoughts, remembering Aunt Ina, and others who gathered around the warm kitchen in Christmases past. Heirloom recipes and special traditions make the holiday season bright for families everywhere. “And they help us slow down,” says 42-year-old Blake Christiansen, an energetic fourth-grade teacher and father of four active kids under 11. “Traditions aren’t fast-moving. They call us to put our super-busy lifestyles aside and come together to do something that matters. When we prepare Grandma Signa’s Julgrod (a Norwegian rice pudding), it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Wow! I’m passing along something from my heritage while connecting with the most important people in my life. It’s real, and that’s what counts.” Find a pause in family life to celebrate your unique traditions this month. And if you are in need of a new one, I am sharing great-aunt Ina’s Swedish meatball recipe with you. We serve ours with lingonberry sauce on the side, but you might prefer topping them with your favorite gravy or even a spicy barbecue sauce! Let’s get rolling ... AUNT INA’S SWEDISH MEATBALLS 1 pound lean ground beef 1 pound ground pork 1 egg, slightly beaten 1/2 cup milk 1 cup breadcrumbs or cracker crumbs 1 large onion, grated 1 clove garlic finely chopped 1 tablespoon parsley finely chopped 1 teaspoon ground allspice 1 1/2 teaspoons salt Pinch of pepper Here’s the fun: 1. In a large bowl, let your child mix ingredients thoroughly for several minutes. Shape into firm 1-inch balls. Aunt Ina dipped her fingers in a bowl of cold water to make it easy. 2. Arrange on two rimmed cookie sheets. Bake at 350 F for about 30 minutes until lightly browned, rotating sheets halfway through. Makes 48 meatballs. Alternate method: Place in an ovenproof frying pan with melted butter. An adult should fry them on medium heat, turning occasionally for 10 minutes until lightly browned. Bake in a 350 F oven for 10 minutes. *** Donna Erickson’s award-winning series “Donna’s Day” is airing on public television nationwide. To find more of her creative family recipes and activities, visit www.donnasday. com and link to the NEW Donna’s Day Facebook fan page. Her latest book is “Donna Erickson’s Fabulous Funstuff for Families.” (c) 2013 Donna Erickson Distributed by King Features Synd.
BIBLE TRIVIA ANSWERS:
1) Matthew/Luke; 2) 2 years; 3) Nazareth; 4) Bethlehem; 5) Herod; 6) Zero
1. Hyun-jin Ryu, Hideo Nomo and Kaz Ishii. 2. Whitey Herzog won 410 games between 1975 and 1979. 3. It was the Rose Bowl after the 1948 season. 4. Ten titles. 5. It was 1979 (Montreal and the New York Rangers). 6. Dale Earnhardt. 7. It had never happened before in the rankings, which began in 1973.
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Tidbits® of the River Region By Samantha Mazzotta
Broken Windowpane Is Easy to Replace
Q: During a recent party, there was a bit of an incident in the kitchen, and one of the panes in the window above the sink was shattered. I removed the bits of glass and covered the empty space with cardboard, held in place with duct tape. How easy is it to replace just the pane of glass? -Candace G., Ithaca, N.Y. A: Replacing a single glass pane is a pretty straightforward job, one that can be accomplished quickly once you have the supplies and tools at hand. You’ll need, of course, a replacement pane of glass. Because the original pane was shattered, the exact dimensions need to be figured out. Do this by measuring the width and height of the frame. Then, subtract 1/16 inch from each side -- this will allow a bit of space for the new glass to expand and contract in changing temperatures. When cleaning up the broken glass, did you save the small metal tabs or spring clips that were spaced around the frame? If so, keep them around to reuse; otherwise, you’ll need to buy replacements. The metal tabs are called glazier’s points and are used in wooden frames; the spring clips are used in metal frames. These help hold the windowpane snugly in place. Head for the hardware store with measurements in hand. Most stores will sell precut windowpanes in standard sizes that match or nearly match your measurements; otherwise, they can cut the glass to your specified size. Make sure you have the following on hand for the repair: Window putty (also known as glazier’s putty), a putty knife, glazier’s points or spring clips (for metal frames), a wire brush, steel wool, fine-grit sandpaper and a soft cloth. Remove the cardboard and tape patch and clean up the frame to prepare it for the new pane. Take out any remaining points or clips and carefully scrape away the old window putty. This may be the most time-consuming part, as the putty may have hardened and adhered to the frame. Be patient and work carefully. Once the old putty is removed, wipe the frame clean. Then add a new line of putty by forming a ball in the palm of your hand, then rolling it out into a long, thin line about the width of a pencil. Press this line of putty around the edge of the frame on the side on which the new pane will be attached. Insert the new pane of glass, pressing it against the new putty. Hold it in place with one hand, and with the other hand, insert glazier’s points or clips. Points should be placed every 8 inches around the frame and pressed into the wood using the putty knife or a similar tool. Clips can be placed in existing holes in the metal frame. Use a little more putty to secure the pane on the side closest to you, by dabbing it into areas where the glass touches the frame. Scrape away excess with the putty knife. Clean excess or spilled putty from the window and the frame using the putty knife and a wet cloth. Let the putty dry and cure for about four days before painting. HOME TIP: Wear heavy work gloves to protect your hands when removing or cleaning up pieces of broken glass, especially when prying shards loose. Send your questions or home tips to ask@thisisahammer. com. My e-book, “101 Best Home Tips,” is available to download on Kindle! Pick it up it today for just 99 cents. (c) 2013 King Features Synd., Inc.