Falling Star

Ann Hodges wasn’t looking for worldwide attention on this date in 1954.  Sometimes interesting stories just crash into your life.

It was a clear afternoon in Sylacauga, Alabama.  Ann was reportedly napping on her couch, covered by quilts, when a softball-size meteorite traveling at 200 miles per hour broke through the ceiling, bounced off a radio, and hit her in the thigh.  Didn’t kill her, just left a large bruise.

Ann was an instant international star (pardon the pun).

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t exactly have a “she lived happily ever after” ending.  With Cold War paranoia running high, the Sylacauga police chief confiscated the black rock and turned it over to the Air Force. Ann reportedly said. "I feel like the meteorite is mine," according to an article published by the Alabama Museum of Natural History.  “I think God intended it for me. After all, it hit me!"

But, there was one more hitch.  Ann and her husband were renters, and their landlady, a recently widowed woman named Birdie Guy, wanted the meteorite for herself. Claimed the rock should be hers since it had fallen on her property.  The law may have been on Birdie’s side, but public opinion wanted Ann to have it.  Guy settled out of court, giving up her claim to the meteorite in exchange for $500. Ann’s husband, good old Eugene Hodges, was convinced the couple could make big money off the rock.  He was wrong.  A couple of years later, the Hodges donated the meteorite to the natural history museum where it's still on display.

Ann later suffered a nervous breakdown, and in 1964 she and Eugene separated. She died in 1972 at 52.  Eugene suspects the meteorite and frenzy that followed had taken its toll on Ann. Museum director Randy McCready state, "The Hodges were just simple country people, and I really think that all the attention was her downfall."

I don’t know if there is a Carpe Diem Life lesson here.  If there is one, maybe it’s that if you’re ever hit by a meteorite, keep it quite.  You see, that wasn’t the only piece of space to fall in the area that day.  A one Julius K. McKinney, an African-American sharecropper, lived nearby. He’s reported to have been driving his mule wagon down a dirt road when suddenly the animals stopped. “Shaken, jittery, and nervous,” writes Emmett Burnett in Alabama Living, “The mules refused to pass a small black stone in the road. After the rock was authenticated, he sold it for an undisclosed sum but enough to buy a new house, new car, and property.” 

I just thought is was an interesting piece of trivia from this date.  Because what makes this story so unique is that Mrs. Hodges is the only confirmed person in the history of the world to have been hit by a meteorite.  Pretty amazing.   

UPDATE:  Earlier this year, for the first time in recorded history, a meteorite is reported to have killed a person.  The incident happened on a college campus in Tamil Nadu, a state in Southern India.  But NASA has yet to confirm whether the mysterious object is indeed a meteorite.

David Kuhn
CarpeDiem-Life

Cyberdiculous!

The past couple days you couldn’t tune in, or log on, or open a paper without being cyberbombarded with Cyber Monday Sale ads. 

Did you know that Cyber Monday is a real marketing term?  The term was coined by a real person.  Ellen Davis of the National Retail Federation in 2005 coined the work describe the Monday after Thanksgiving when people could continue to shop online after returning to work.  Now it has become a worldwide phenomenon.

Thanks, Ellen!

cy·ber 
adjective
of, relating to, or characteristic of the culture of computers, information technology, and virtual reality.
"the cyber age"

Seems that “cyber” is being used so often to describe so many things, it’s creating a, well, cyberoverload.  In fact, Wiktionary lists 382 English words beginning with the prefix cyber-.
And Cyber Monday was not even one of them (two words, I guess).

I say cyberenough already! 

Of course, this is all good news is you’re a Scrabble Player:

11 Letter words that start with cyber
    •    Cybernating
    •    Cybernation
    •    Cybernetics
    •    Cyberspaces
10 Letter words that start with cyber
    •    Cybercafes
    •    Cybercasts
    •    Cybernated
    •    Cybernates
    •    Cybernauts
    •    Cybernetic
    •    Cyberporns
    •    Cyberpunks
    •    Cybersexes
    •    Cyberspace
9 Letter words that start with cyber
    •    Cybercafe
    •    Cybercast
    •    Cybernate
    •    Cybernaut
    •    Cyberporn
    •    Cyberpunk

Carpe Diem Life (FYI, Cyberlife is already a registered trademark)
David Kuhn
CarpeDiem-Life.com

The Key to Finding Synchronicity.

As I’ve written before, I’m captivated by stories of bazaar synchronicity (the simultaneous occurrence of causally unrelated events and the belief that the simultaneity has meaning beyond mere coincidence).  It’s really beyond my understanding.

This weekend I found the key—literally!

My son-in-law and I took my grandchildren ages 5 and 18 months to the park to play on Friday after Thanksgiving.  Our original plan was to take them to Wesselmans’ Park to hike and then play on the playground, only to discover that it was closed.   For some reason, my next thought went to a playground way on the other side of town:  Sunset Park along the Ohio River.

It’s a pretty large playground.  Only a couple of other kids there.  As we are playing, I found, at the bottom of a slide, a key ring with a car key and a house key.  It also contained a library card from what turned out to be a town 417 miles away in Michigan.   Because the park is also at the start of our Greenway hiking and biking path, there are several parking lots around.  A walk through each lot pressing the panic button on the key and searching for Michigan plate was fruitless.  We figured that we’d just turn them into the police station at some point after we were done playing.

About a half hour later, as we were preparing to leave, I see a guy walk up looking around on the ground. “Searching for car keys?”  I no sooner got it out than I recognized him as my nephew.  My nephew and his wife from Michigan, in town, visiting family.  Michigan. Car keys from Michigan?  No way. 

They had played on the playground earlier with their two girls and then met up with other family members at the museum just up the road.  It’s at the playground that the keys were lost.  Where I found them.  And, where they came back looking for them just as we were ready to leave.

I don’t know if Albert Einstein played on many playgrounds, but I know that he certainly discovered a few “keys” in his life:

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”

My nephew’s wife lost the keys going down a children’s slide.  Later, I found the keys going down the same children’s slide.  The Carpe Diem Life Lesson: Realizing that we’re all connected is the key to understanding the Universe!

Oh, and don't be afraid to stay connected to our childhood and have fun, but always keep your car keys secure and have a spare. 

Carpe Diem Life,
David Kuhn
CarpeDiem-Life.com

The Thanksgiving Marathon & Friends

There’s a barren, saucer-shaped patch of earth in our back yard.  Been there about 10 years now.  Caused by a foreign object that landed there one Thanksgiving morning.  A tall silver cylinder with four legs and a flamethrower underneath.  The combination of intense heat and boiling oil that spilled over the ground for hours and hours rendered the ground forever scorched. 

Most of you know it as a turkey fryer.

It all started with needing to cook a turkey for our Thanksgiving feast.  My good friend Bill (a.k.a. Vuk) had, for years, been exalting the virtues of deep friend turkey.  So, I asked him if he minded cooking one of us.

“I would, but I’m going to be out of town.  You’re more than welcome to use mine, though.”

When I went to pick it up he carefully explained all the ins and outs of deep frying a turkey.  Seemed simple enough.  Easy.  That’s when he dropped the not-so-easy part.  “Oh, and by the way,” he said as if an afterthought, “I usually deep fry all the turkeys for my family.  You wouldn't mind to . . .”

Dateline:  Our Backyard.  Dawn.  Thanksgiving Morning.
The Great Turkey Frying Marathon.

Bill doesn’t have a huge family, but they must have huge appetites.  That, and the fact that the “Vuks” don’t do anything small.  There were more turkeys in coolers to be fried than Swanson has turkey TV Dinners.

Throughout out the day, a parade of Vukovichs started showed up at our door wanting their turkeys.  Sister, nieces, brother, father . . . even a guy whom I’d never met.  And Bill promised him I’d have a cigar and beer ready for him—which I did.  The final turkey was passed out sometime after sunset.  By 6 o’clock, the only one left to fry was ours.  We were running later than we had planned, but the epic tale of what “Uncle Bill” had put me through kept everyone in a comic mood.  And when we finally did eat, all agreed that Vuk’s fried turkeys are, in fact, most delicious. 

So, that's the short story of the first and only time I deep fried turkeys.

And that patch of scorched earth?  That remains . . . a beautiful reminder of one of the most memorable Thanksgivings ever.  A fun day filled with friends and family.

Happy Thanksgiving. 
Carpe Diem Life,
David Kuhn

CarpeDiem-Life.com

Thanksgivng Head Cheese

Today (the Wednesday before Thanksgiving) is traditionally a day of carry-in lunches at many companies.  Everyone pitches in to provide a snack-all-day-smorgasbord of chips, dips, casseroles, desserts. . .  Sort of a chance to warm up and stretch the bellies before the big game that is Thanksgiving. 

My traditional contribution—at least for the past few years—has been head cheese. 

What exactly is headcheese?  I honestly couldn’t tell you.  Words simply can’t describe it.  Wikipedia defines it as: 

Head cheese is not a dairy cheese, but a terrine or meat jelly made with flesh from the head of a calf or pig, or less commonly a sheep or cow, [along with god only knows what else] and often set in aspic.

Meat jelly made with flesh from the head of a calf or pig.  Yum!  Not your typical Thanksgiving treat, right? 

There are a couple of reasons

I choose to give head cheese at such events (after all, it is the season of giving).  The first reason is that I actually find it disgustingly delicious.  And the second reason is seeing how it's met with such revulsion.  Definitely a conversation starter.  You get everything from "What is heck is it?" to "My grandparents used to eat that crap!"  Some have tried it in the past and will never try it again, some will be brave enough to give it a taste, most won't go near it. 

But, at the end of the Pre-Thanksgiving day banquet, people are either thankful for having tried and enjoyed it or they’re very thankful that they didn’t eat it. 

Either way, my head cheese gift is a mindful way for people to be thankful.

Today’s Haiku

Today we give thanks

Time to carve up the head cheese

                                    Happy Thanksgiving!

Carpe Diem Life
David Kuhn

CarpeDiem-Life.com

A Life Lesson From a Tree

Last Friday I knew that I would be entombed in a dark, windowless room, dimly lit only by a bank of television monitors (working A/V at the Small College Hall of Fame Basketball Games). So before I clocked in, I choose to make enough time to take advantage of the absolutely beautiful fall day and take a short hike at Audubon State Park.  That’s where I ran across this tree.

With 1/2 its roots exposed, how has it managed to grow so tall and strong?  The question reminded me of something I read a while back:  The Bio-Dome Experiment. 

It was an exercise in attempting to create the "perfect" living environment for human, plant, and animal life.

A huge glass dome was constructed and an artificial "controlled" environment was created with purified air, water, filtered light, etc, offering the perfect growing conditions for trees, fruits and vegetables ...and humans.  One problem was that when the trees that had been planted there grew to be a certain height, they would simply topple over.

It baffled scientists for the longest time, until one day they realized the one natural element they had forgotten to recreate in the Bio-dome: Wind!  Trees need the wind to blow against them, which in turn causes their root systems to grow deeper into the soil, which in turn supports the trees as they grow taller!

Nature’s wisdom at work.  Be flexible, give thanks for the wind of adversity, grow deep and strong. 

“Trouble is the thing that strong men grow by.  Met in the right way, it is a sure-fire means [of] putting iron in the victim’s will and making him a tougher man to down forever after.” 
                                                                                         —  H. Bertram Lewis

Next time I’m feeling overwhelmed by the strong winds of strife, I’ll know where to go for encouragement:  My old friend at Audubon State Park. 

Carpe Diem Life, 
David Kuhn

CarpeDiem-Life.com

Seventeen Syllable Lesson

I started a practice of writing one haiku a day.  A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count.  Though usually inspired by nature, they can be anything that captures a moment.  

I present this one inspired by a tree I saw at Audubon Park.  Stay tuned tomorrow on the lesson that this tree teaches me.  In the meantime,  Long story short (or seventeen syllables):

 Exposed roots, yet strong

But how is this possible?

By facing the wind

Carpe Diem Life,

David Kuhn
CarpeDiem-Life.com