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Announcing...........July Writers' Contest Winner!!
Congratulations to Betty King for her wonderfully humorous
story "X-Rated". Even though several of the messages
were undelivered because to the title (bounced by e-mail
filters), she won "Hands Down". Way to go, Betty.
And now - on to September. The categories for
September are "Autumn Amber" (anything about fall trips,
fall colors, harvest, etc) and "School Days" (anything about
school)
Good Luck - and have fun.
Bob |
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Most of the things that we are taught while growing up were
correct, but there were always a few things that were not.
We remember those things much better than we should. I
remember sitting in Miss Curran's 7th Grade English Class
back at New Richland-Hartland High. Miss Curran was trying
to take our minds of mush and fill them with knowledge
before they had a chance to become even mushier. She would
teach us things like; "It is 'i' before 'e' except after
'c,' or in 'neighbor' or 'weigh.'" I thought this was a
wonderful bit of wisdom as I made my way down the hallowed
halls to Mr. Bergner's General Science Class. Science?
I thought about asking Mr. Bergner why the old "'i' before
'e' except after 'c' rule" didn't apply to science. Then I
thought better and tied that bull to a fence. Mr. Bergner
was a wonderful teacher, just like Miss Curran, but I felt
there were some things a young fellow just shouldn't be
asking Mr. Bergner. After all, Mr. Bergner was an ex-Marine
and I imagined there was a reason that all of the other
teachers called him 'Rocky.'
Miss Curran and Mr. Bergner taught me a lot. So did my
father. One piece of apparent wisdom that was passed on to
me by my father each summer was when we would hear a loud
irritating buzzing that sounded like the whine of the old
telephone wires that vibrated in hot weather. This always
happened during the dog days of summer when the temperatures
were high. This hot, sultry time of the year is called the
dog days because of Sirius, the Dog Star, which is prominent
in the western sky.
"That's the first locust I've heard sing," Dad would say.
"That means it is just 6 weeks until the first frost."
Dad would mark the date on the calendar. If this bit of
folklore came close to predicting the date of the first
frost, he would remind us of the fact when Jack Frost came
for a visit. If it didn't come close, he would let the
matter drop without another word.
To some, the call of the cicada says, "Pha-roah." Despite
this, they are not a part of one of the plagues mentioned in
the Bible. This large insect is not a locust. It is not a
cricket or a grasshopper. It is a cicada. The cicada is a
voice of summer. More often heard than seen, the prolonged
buzzing sound is made only by the male and he does so
without any vocal cords. Unlike the locusts, crickets or
grasshoppers which produce sounds by rubbing a leg against a
wing or a wing against a wing, the cicada makes its buzz by
vibrating membranes stretched over a pair of sound chambers
located at the base of its abdomen.
There is another superstition about the wings of a cicada.
If the pattern on their wings indicates a "W," this
supposedly prophesies war. If the wings show a "P," it means
peace.
Intoxicated by the heat, cicadas sing loud and often. It is
impossible to ignore their high decibel whines emanating
from a tree. "If cicadas sing in early morn, it is good for
growing corn; if cicadas sing all day, it is time to gather
hay; if cicadas sing at noon, it will be hot enough to
swoon."
These large insects (up to 2 inches long), also know by some
as "harvest flies," are a delicacy in some countries. I can
only imagine the delights that a big plate of cicadas and
rice or cicadas and noodles would provide the discriminating
palate. The cicada larvae live in the soil, surviving on the
juices of tree roots. The nymph emerges from the soil and
climbs a tree. I have often found the casings of the nymphs
on the ground under trees where they were dropped or like
husks clinging to a tree after the adult has exited from its
exoskeleton.
So science has taught me that it is not always 'i' before
'e' except after 'c' and I have learned that it is not
locusts forecasting our weather. I have become aware of the
fact that cicadas are no more a harbinger of frost than the
robin is a harbinger of spring. But when I hear the cicadas
call, I know that we are closer to fall than to spring.
?ŠAl Batt 2003
Hartland, MN 56042
SnoEowl @ aol.com
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