Amber, One of Nature's Curiosities

The natural world is filled with wonderful and curious creatures and creations. Few, however, have the humble beginnings of a protective resin that can trap, or poison, and kill, predators, but that ends up as an adornment throughout the world.

Fossil resin, known popularly as amber, is just such a phenomenon.

Pretty and golden, amber has been shown, by archeological evidence, to have been one of the first adornments used by prehistoric humans. Today, it is even considered a gemstone.

But what is amber? In short, it is the exudate of pines and other trees in the same family, or resin, which is released in the presence of predatory insects and bugs, as well as bacterium and fungi that might pose a threat to the tree. According to http://www.fossilmuseum.net/ amber is: "mainly carbon and hydrogen atoms that readily form hexagonal rings. Molecular bonding between the rings increases over time (called polymerization), and the sticky resin becomes hard....For all practical purposes, the hardened resin, or amber, is a plastic." The article makes the point that "young" amber is referred to as copal. While "old" copal is amber. However, apparently even scientists cannot agree on what the demarkation line is.

The value of amber comes as a result of the little creatures trapped inside. Primarily insects, there have been tiny little vertebrates occasionally found as well, such as small lizards. There are also discoveries of amber containing the remains of bacteria and fungi, to which resin can act as a poison in defense.



Amber is biodegradable, though long-lived (unlike diamonds which are, as the advertising says, "forever"). The Fossil Museum says "weak covalent bonds and weaker hydrogen bonds are easily broken." Apparently all electromagnetic radiation causes the bonds to break down, but particularly ultraviolet radiation is damaging (so wear those baubles only on shady days, ladies!).

Amber is found throughout the world, but primary areas of production are in the Baltic region (in particular at the largest amber mine in the world, in Kaliningrad, Russia), the Domenican Republic and areas surrounding Mexico and Colombia.












So the next time you fasten on that gorgeous piece of amber, reflect that you are, in fact, wearing a tree's defense mechanism, the tiny little sarcophogus of some prehistoric bug.





Ain't nature cool?

The Power To Maim and Kill - Polio

Polio, a virus easily transmitted by contact and via the air, was a devastating disease. It could paralyze, rendering its victims unable to walk or breathe, or it could kill.

Poliomyelitis met its match in 1962 when Dr. Jonas Salk's vaccine was licensed. Though polio is almost unheard of in this day and age, before Salk's breakthrough it left children and adults alike weak and crippled and in many cases people spent the remainder of their lives in iron lungs, the only mechanism by which they could breath after the virus crippled their nervous system and they lost the ability to breathe on their own.

With worldwide eradication efforts implemented by the World Health Organization in 1988, the disease is essentially gone from the Earth.

Two of the more famous victims of the disease were our 32nd President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led the country out of the depression and guided it through World War II, until his death in his third term on April 12, 1945, and athelete Wilma Rudolph, the 20th of 22 children who overcame polio in childhood to become a gold-medal winning Olympic runner (earning her nicknames of The Tennessee Tornado and La Gazella Nera (the Black Gazelle).

Dead Man's Hand

"Who wants to play those eights and aces
Who wants a raise
Who needs a stake"
(Bob Seger, Fire Lake)

"Pushing up the ante, I know you've got to see me,
Read 'em and weep, the Dead Man's Hand again,
I see it in your eyes, take one look and die,"
(Motorhead; Ace of Spades)

These are just two songs that use the reference to the legendary Dead Man's Hand. Numerous others have written entire songs based on the episode.



Deadwood, South Dakota, August 2, 1876. The date helped put the "wild" in the legend of the wild, wild west, and it wrote the epitaph for gambler and lawman, Wild Bill Hickock. On that date Wild Bill joined a poker game at Nutall & Mann's Saloon, with, among others, Charlie Rich. Contrary to his usual precaution of sitting with his back to the wall, Hickock accepted a seat that left him with his back to the door. He also didn't notice Jack McCall, from whom he'd won money the day before, drinking heavily at the bar. While Hickock played his hand, aces and eights showing, Jack McCall walked up behind him and shot him in the back of the head with a .45 pistol, allegedly shouting, "Take that!" Some say McCall calimed it was a revenge killing for the death of his brother.

Hickock died instantly and was buried on boot hill. is friend, Charlie Utter, placed a wood plaque that read:

Wild Bill

J. B. Hickok

Killed by the assassin Jack McCall

Deadwood, Black Hills

August 2, 1876

Pard we will meet again in the

Happy Hunting Grounds to part no more

Good bye

Colorado Charlie, C. H. Utter






The 5th card in the poker hand is not authoritatively known and is much debated. The Vegas nightclub, the Stardust, displays a 5 of diamonds as the card. Deadwood, South Dakota has a 9 of diamonds in its displays about the incident and Ripley's Believe it or Not has a queen of clubs. Possible cards are the Jack of Diamonds, Five of Diamonds, Nine of Diamonds, the Queen of Clubs, QAueen of Hearts, Queen of Spades, King of Spaces and the Deuce of Spades.

Poker experts however say that if you're playing the game, the fifth card won't matter. Holding aces and eights gives you a "Dead Man's Hand". Just don't make Hickock's mistake. Keep your weapon unholstered and your back to the wall.

Eggheads & Me

So a few years back I read a book called THE MAKING OF THE ATOM BOMB by Richard Rhodes. It was a massively dense book, but simply marvelous: a history of the physics that led to the Manhattan Project during World War II and the creation of the first atomic bomb.

There were many scientific discoveries, theories and experiments that made it possible, but the bomb project was sheparded on the scientific side at Los Alamos, New Mexico, by J. Robert Oppenheimer.



He was a fascinating man (coincidentally, a very young Richard Feynman worked under him as well) and ended his life ignominiously after a dispute with Edward Teller over the ethics of proceeding with the creation of an even larger nuclear device, the hydrogen bomb. Teller prevailed, Oppenheimer had his National security clearance revoked, and he died of cancer.

And the hydrogen bomb was made.

Richard Rhodes' book, DARK SUN, chronicles that dubious scientific achievement.

A detail that I learned while reading ATOM BOMB that is chilling in is revelation that scientists, and our government, may not always choose the prudent path:

A number of the scientists, as they pondered this very first atomic chain reaction explosion, posited the theory that the chain reaction would run out of control and set the entire Earth's atmosphere aflame and the world would end.

But they went ahead anyway.




And that is why, as a child of the baby boomer generation, I was subject to the "duck and cover" drills - hence the name of my memoir blog. Because we were told that crouching in a fetal position under our desks would save us from a nuclear explosion.




Knowledge.

It can be very, very good.

Or it can be very, very bad.

Use it wisely.

Get Smart.

Are you the sort of person who feels a sense of yearning every autumn? You feel as though something wonderful and new and exciting is just around the corner? Even though your school days are far behind you, do you watch wistfully as eager students rush through the fall leaves to their new adventure? Do you never pass a book without wondering what's inside it? Are you compelled to peek, just a glimpse, to find what nuggets of wisdom, what pearls of knowledge lie within?

I am one of those people. Like Richard Feynman, noted physicist and the author of the book, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, I just love knowing stuff. There is nothing I am not curious about, no bit of esoteric information that does not picque my interest. Whether I find that knowledge in books, newspapers, from the television or other people, if a day goes by in which I have not yet learned something new, I consider it a loss.

I am a librarian's daughter. My father was a man obsessed by learning. He failed at many things as a father, but the one thing that he did give me was a love of books, of knowledge and a desire to never stop seeking. Whenever I spot one of the books he left behind when he moved on to his new life, I get that little shiver of excitement, recalling the first time I read that book. Or looked through the American Heritage to find all manner of fascinating images of people, places, and times. I am a child of the '70's, but the flashbacks I have are not of the Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds variety, but rather I flashback to a rainy fall day when I was snuggled in my second-hand chair, beside a small red table - that I still own - drinking a cup of tea and devouring a book. It might have been The Wizard of Oz. Or my favorite biography of Harriet Tubman. Or The Diary of Ann Frank. Or a photographic book of far away places. Other times I can close my eyes and smell the cool mountain air of my family's Pennsylvania cabin, where I was admonished daily to put down the book and go out and play. Do you have fond memories of your stolen, bookish hours? And do you smile when you recall a moment in which something became absolutely clear to you - for the first time?

Many people continue their educations to further their careers, in order to make more money, to be competitive and to earn more money. But there are also people who, regardless of their age, continue to take classes. Adult education, sometimes, or workshops at bookstores. More often than not, they continue to self-educate themselves. Like 21st Century Rennaissance men and women, they dabble, or they gorge themselves, driven to cram their brain cells with as-yet-unlearned things. Yes, they study. They don't shirk from a subject that is complex but consider it a challenge to be met. Because knowledge is not something we gain casually. It is something that we must strive for. Search, investigation, or any means by which we can glean an understanding, or gain facts. It requires a diligent and dedicated focus to never cease. There will never be a day when I can say "I know everything." There will always be something else that titillates me cerebrally, or excites me, mentally.

Are you my kind of person? Do you bemoan the fact that there are not enough hours in the day in which to learn? Not a house big enough to hold all the books you covet? No bank account large enough to purchase every title you crave? Too few people whose eyes light up with curiosity when you say, "Did you know......?"

Well, then, welcome to my blog. I am The Librarian's Daughter. And I am inviting you along on my never-ending journey where I leave no stone unturned in my quest to find stuff out. It is my goal that no day will go by without providing some delicious morsel of information that will make you say, "Ah!", and let you lay down upon your pillow at night with that self-satisfied smile because something new - some factoid - now resides inside your cranium, one that was not there when you arose.

Dr. Feynman is no longer with us, but I know that he is delighting in our pilgrimage, from the mystery that is the great beyond where I expect he continues to seek.