I hope it’s a Happy Monday for everyone.
As to what is happening in the world, especially here in the U.S., I have no words printable in a blog post written in a family-friendly space, so I refrain, which is a good thing for my blood pressure. I need to escape and doing that with some humor is such a great stress reliever. Joking and laughing together was a lifesaver when my kids were young and the challenges of raising so many were constant. Levity and fun eased a lot of tensions.
So today, to ease our collective tensions, here’s some humor from Slim Randles. The essay is an interesting look at his early years as a columnist and a trip to Chicken, a small town in Alaska. Enjoy…
Chickens have forever had a place in our hearts and on our tables. Why is that? Well … why not?
And so I’d like you to come with me back to the summer of 1970, ‘way up north of Fairbanks, Alaska, to what was once the thriving gold mining village of Chicken, Alaska. I was on my way, hitchhiking with a canoe, to paddle down a stretch of the Yukon River and to see the cabin where Jack London spent the winter once upon a time.
Just as an aside here, hitchhiking with a canoe, or with a sled and 10 dogs, would make a lengthy how-to book all by themselves. It doesn’t sound easy, does it? It isn’t.
So what I would do on these “adventures” of mine, (my boss, Larry Fanning, referred to them as Slim’s tin-cup trips because of all the scrounging I did) is go neat places and interview great people, and write stuff. My column in the Anchorage Daily News … brace yourself … was called “Slim’s Column.”
Truth in advertising.
So I arrived in Chicken, Alaska, only to find I’d nearly doubled the local population. In the far-distant past, Chicken was an actual town. When the gold gave out, so did Chicken.
So what was left was “the business” consisting of a gas pump, a coffee pot, some postage stamps and a couple of nice folks. But there was something else, too.
There was not only an outhouse there, but it was electrically lighted. So where should I write my column? In an electrically lighted outhouse in Chicken, Alaska.
Naturally.
The raising of poultry this far north is uncommon, too many local varmints, including any resident sled dogs, eat them. So how did this gold camp get its name? Ahh … the reason for that column on the wooden “desk” beneath that 20-watt bulb.
Chicken, Alaska, got its name because none of the miners there knew how to spell ptarmigan.
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I’m Slim Randles, author of the book Packing the Backyard Horse, enabling you and your own Ol’ Snort to have some camping fun in the back country. Packing the Backyard Horse, available on Amazon.com.
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For even more fun today, here’s a list of bookish facts that was posted on Facebook by Bookish Chronicles – a page devoted to reviews, book news, and fun facts. I stole, er, borrowed the list as I found it fun and interesting. Enjoy!
1. Roosevelt read an average of one book per day.
2. Harvard University Library has four books bound in human skin.
3. Iceland tops the world in per capita book reading.
4. People who read books are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
5. In Brazilian prisons, reading a book can reduce a prisoner’s sentence by four days.
6. The most stolen book is the Bible.
7. Victor Hugo’s *Les Misérables* contains a sentence with 823 words.
8. Virginia Woolf wrote all her books while standing.
9. Leo Tolstoy’s wife hand-copied the manuscript of *War and Peace* seven times.
10. There are over 20,000 books written about chess.
11. Noah Webster took 36 years to write his first dictionary.
12. The Mahabharata is the only book or epic in the world with over 1,200 characters.
13. Words like “hurry” and “addiction” were invented by Shakespeare.
14. If all the books in the New York Public Library were lined up, they would stretch 8 miles.
15. The longest novel ever written is *In Search of Lost Time* by Marcel Proust, with over 1.2 million words.
16. The first book ever printed was the Gutenberg Bible in 1455.
17. J.K. Rowling is the first billionaire author, thanks to the success of the Harry Potter series.
18. Charles Dickens was paid by the word, which is why many of his books are so lengthy.
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I hope you enjoyed the offerings in the blog today and you have a stress-free rest of your week. Be safe. Be happy.