Moreover, shouldn’t the length in question be measured from the fret to the bridge at the fixed end of the string (instead of measuring from fret to fret)?
An old unsolved murder in Australia-the old locked room question
And today I learned about Aromachology. Apparently the scent of jasmine “in a testing room enhanced the problem-solving cognitive skills of participants and also led to them demonstrating more interest and motivation for the task at hand.”
Apropos of which, I am reminded of listening to NPR in the '70s upon which one Noah Adams decided we needed to add the word “osmyrrah” to the language, to describe a mingling of fragrances. Sadly, it never really caught on.
This guy…
And this guy…
Are the same actor!
As I continue to watch farming videos on youtube, I learn more facts that are new to me but I know are well-known to anyone living in the country.
Haying takes at least five separate steps with tractors using different devices. The farmer I watch drives old tractors and tows the different devices, rather than employing a (expensive) dedicated all-in-one machine for each step:
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Mowing the hay with a device called a “haybine”. This just chops down the green grass and alfalfa and leaves it lying in the field.
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“Tetting” the cut grass with a tetting machine. You do this a day or two after cutting the green grass. This device tosses the cut grass around, exposing the damp buried undersides of the piles so that they dry out and don’t become moldy.
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Raking the hay with a machine that rakes and collects the scattered hay into neat rows, called “windrows”. The purpose of this is for step 4:
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Baling the hay with a baling machine. The tractor or baler is driven right over and along the windrows so that the hay can be scooped up in one long continuous line. The farmer can use a baler that makes the familiar square bales, or one that makes those big round rolls.
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Moving the bales or rolls into a barn or shelter so they don’t get rained on and get moldy.
Phew! And you have to perform the steps rather quickly, as the hay dries out fast and you want to collect it up when it’s still a little green. Otherwise, it’s brittle and breaks up into chaff rather than bundling up neatly.
Then, on the hottest, most humid day of the summer, you take the bales of hay to our house, where we carry the bales and stack them just right.
Gotta’ make hay while the sun shines.
I’ve only heard of tedding hay from crossword puzzles.
I actually bucked bales back in the day on relatives’ farms. They lived in a very dry climate so some steps were saved. There was just one pass to mow alfalfa and form into rows. Then a second pass with the baler. Then a 3rd pass to pick up bales onto a sled and take them to the place where they were stacked.
Technology affected things. The pickup got autmated with a thing that grabbed the bales and stacked them onto a large trailer. Then the trailer was dumped out giving a small (but fragile) haystack.
Another relative went with chopped hay. So the rows were gathered and shot into trucks and taken to the haybarn where they were shot up into the barn. (This haybarn was huge. All made by one man. Amazing. Sadly, it got destroyed one winter due to exceptional amount of snow.)
I have one relative still in the business. Over time the bales got denser and denser until picking them up by one person required some oomph. Now the bales are bigger than cars, mega-dense and require a special thing to lift them and transport them out of the field. The bales then end up getting sent to Japan.
This is how I grew up ‘making hay’. (Yes, we called it that.) First we mowed the alfalfa with a sickle mower. Then we raked it into windrows. Then we baled, with the hayrack attached behind the baler where one or two guys would stack the bales onto the rack. Then the rack was towed to the barn, where two or three more guys would use a bale elevator/conveyor to move the bales from the rack up into the barn where the bales were stacked. It was generally a 4 to 7 man operation, so my dad owned a baler with two other farmers, and the work was shared between the 3 farms.
And oh by the way, the smell of fresh-cut alfalfa is perhaps the best smell in the world.
Martin Van Buren’s wife’s maiden name was Hannah Hoes. Imagine if the poor woman was First Lady today. (Technically, she didn’t live long enough to become First Lady then, dying long before he won office.)
Three other wives died too soon as well, those of Jefferson, Jackson, and Arthur. Teddy Roosevelt was a widower and Reagan a divorcé.
There have long been rumors that Kennedy had a secret marriage when he was young, but nothing provable.
Biden’s first wife died and he remarried.
Trump is on his third marriage after two divorces.
How could this not be provable? I thought marriages were a matter of public record.
If a marriage certificate can be found. Perhaps missing as are plenty of old records, intentionally destroyed, or a marriage outside the US where no record exists for even more reasons. Or just made up which makes it very difficult to prove.
I found this. Just some speculation that’s a huge reach.
“Tedding”, eh? Now I’ve learned another farming fact! It sounded like tetting to me.
That article indicates that Clarke Clifford was Kennedy’s “fixer”, though it doesn’t use the word. All really rich people have a fixer. Some are more discrete than others.
Yeah, the discrete ones are better. The continuous ones are the worst.
Vice President William Rufus DeVane King (for whom King County WA was originally named) died 4 years before his very close friend and roommate James Buchanan was inaugurated President. In fact, the office of VP remained vacant those 4 years. There were scurrilous rumors about Buchanan and King.