My wife’s maiden name is very rare. But when we were dating, I learned my great grandmother had the same rare name. We joked about being cousins.
My mother’s maiden name was even more rare. The only non-relative I’ve ever come across with it was from Turkey.
Or time travelers.
I had a music teacher at my High School who had that done. I guess that was crucial for his ability to play instruments. Which were piano and guitar.
There are only about 600 people in the US with my surname. Still, I know of two of those that what my first name. I even randomly ran into one of them at a grocery store not long after forwarding an email I got intended for him.
There are very very few people in Argentina with my surname, practically all are related to me through my Great-Grandfather who was the first “Baggins” here (About 20 years later almost all his relatives in Poland were killed in a pogrom, in or about the end of World War II).
But there was one “Baggins” I saw in the phone guide (when such things still existed) that I can’t place, I wonder if he’s a relative or an non-related hobbit from the old country.
Where’s John Madden when you need him?
I’ve known several people who raised chickens (including my own family when I was little). One of my grandmothers did it for money. Eggs first, meat second. When the bird was older it was served for supper. No soup or such involved. May not have been as big and tender as a modern broiler but still considered very good eating.
Random fact: Catherine O’Hara has situs inversus. That is, her internal organs are reversed right-left. Unless something is noticeably wrong as a baby, it’s nothing to worry about in most cases. Unless you need a heart or lung transplant when the “plumbing” might not line up.
Our hens begin as day old chicks in our home. They are treated like pets, hand fed mealworms and taught tricks. We eat their eggs, but continue to feed and care for them into their old age. They even get a burial at the end.
Because of this, our eggs are pretty expensive.
I do think a medical bracelet would be appropriate in case emergency care was ever needed.
Sigh. That reminds me of the time our city did a big overhaul of the municipal code, removing anything that no longer applied. It was in 2008. Up to then, the Director of Public Works was required to oversee and license the collection of ‘swill’.
The big no-no regarding swill was leakage onto city streets.
A girl in my high school biology class had this. Naturally, she was the focus of anatomy talk. All totally scientific and above-board, I should add. If people sniggered it wasn’t around me.
Red broiler hens are just about perfect - 4-5 eggs per week per hen, don’t bulk up and die of heart attacks like Cornish crosses, and at 2+ years old are still good for most methods of chicken preparation (alas, still only 2 wings. Paging John Madden!)
I assume they have a mirror hung around their neck just in case they need an emergency appendectomy or intercardiac injection.
I believe it’s the driest country in the world, so I’m not too surprised.
However, I have heard of a place in the mountains that gets snow in the winter, and I wish I could remember the name. For some reason I’m fascinated by locales that belie what we usually expect in their regions. For instance, Nevada is the driest state in the U.S., yet it has mountain ranges topped by dense pine forests. And I’m talking the middle of the state, not just Tahoe.
That’s probably the reason for the “permanent” qualifier. In Montana, all of the roads are flanked by ditches deep enough to swallow cars two deep without them even being visible from the road. 51 weeks of the year, those ditches are empty. But for a week every spring, they’re full to the brim with snow-melt runoff.
I imagine those Arabian mountains have similar meltoff.
Roadside ditches are the rule here in Oregon as well, though they aren’t as big as the ones you describe. It’s been a source of frustration for me because I like to do astrophotography, which I started doing when I still lived in California. Down in California the roads have generously wide shoulders, and in hilly or mountainous regions there are plenty of spaceous turnouts where you can pull over and turn around, or even just park and sit there. In areas away from city lights these locations are excellent for astrophotography. But here in Oregon the inner edge of the roadside ditch is like six inches beyond the concrete or asphalt. You can’t stop, you can’t park, and if you need to turn around you have to just keep on going until you find a lonely intersection or something where you can do it.
I’m always interested in the lives of singers and musicians, even if I don’t care for their style or genre.
So I was amused to learn a little about the life of Perry Como, who was one of 13 kids in the family. Though his father was just a mill hand and money was tight, he insisted that all the kids have music lessons.
In the process young Perry learned to play many instruments…but he never studied voice!
The first picture of Earth from deep space came from the Russian Molniya 1-3 communications satellite on May 30, 1966
More on early photos
“The first photograph ever made showing laterally the curvature of the Earth,” read the original caption in the May 1931 issue of The National Geographic Magazine.
On Dec. 11, 1966, the ATS-1 advanced technology satellite beamed back the first photograph of Earth from geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above Ecuador. The Department of Defense Gravity Experiment (DODGE) satellite returned the first color image of the full Earth in August 1967.
Take this, flat earthers! (yeah, I know it’s hopeless with these people…)
Italy seems to have a lot of rare surnames. Maybe it’s due to pre-modern naming conventions? My ex-wife, my ex long term girlfriend and my wife all have unique enough names that anyone I’ve met, seen or heard about with their names turns out to be a relative. My mother’s maiden name is close but there is one prominent person with the same name but he’s probably related somewhere down the line. My Italian side of the family is full of names that I’ve never seen anywhere else.