If I Had a Nickel…

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I enjoy the number crunching on fivethirtyeight.com, which is sometimes serious and sometimes just-for-fun. They recently tried to estimate how much money you’d have if you received a nickel every time someone in America said “if I had a nickel…” (The answer is $1.72 million, give or take, per year.) This made me wonder where the phrase came from.

UsingEnglish.com says “When someone uses this expression, they mean that the specific thing happens a lot. It is an abbreviation of the statement ‘If I had a nickel for every time that happened, I would be rich.'” I’ve seen variations that use a dime or a dollar.

Not many sites seem to tackle tracking down the origin of this phrase.

English Language & Usage says “the earliest I can find is Mark Twain in 1809.” Since he wasn’t born until 1835, this is suspect. My quick google search did not track down this alleged quote at any date. A search on Phrase Finder and Word Detective turned up nothing.

Do any of you have a source?

New Year’s Eve Possum Drop

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We often post serious commentaries, but this isn’t one of those (unless you are a member of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals—PETA). I was alerted to this non-serious issue by a Rich Tosches editorial in  the Denver Post. He writes that he engaged in so much New Year “…over-the-top partying and so much wild and crazy hooting and hollering that many of the other residents of my assisted living center complained.” He then adds that what was missing was the lowering of an unattractive animal from a pole at midnight…in an Appalachian village in North Carolina.” The organizer of the possum drop stopped fighting PETA lawsuits that claimed the shy animal was left out in the cold and could also be “startled” by the fireworks and band. The organizer decided to put a dead possum or possum stew in the plexiglass box, but Tosches doesn’t report on the selected alternative. He does manage, as he often does, to close his editorial with comments that I found irritating.

I hope Tosches won’t be insulted that I found much of the editorial to be so silly that I checked to see whether there were other articles on the subject. Sure enough, David Zucchino has a confirmation. He adds that PETA claimed that even though the possums are released after the drop that “…they may die later of capture ‘myopathy,’ a cascading series of catastrophic physical reactions to stress or trauma.” Healthcommunities.com explains, “Skeletal muscle weakness is the hallmark of most myopathies.” I’ve failed at trying to imagine how a possum could become so frightened that it would develop muscle weakness and die.

This makes me want to look for something important for future commentaries.

Farmer Island Magic

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FIM_3D_Cover_341pxFrequent visitors to this web site know that the books reviewed tend to be non-fiction. I’m making an exception this week because I’ve published Farmer Island Magic, the sequel to my 2012 book, Angry Pigs Organized Against Gerbils: The Farmer Island War. Both of those books were crafted based on character and plot suggestions offered by my four grandchildren who are credited as the “Creative Staff and Illustrators.”

Farmer Island Magic begins where Angry Pigs… left off and the truce that ended The Farmer Island War has held without incident. The farm animals, including the intelligent pigs, and their allies, are living peacefully with the gerbils that had been the enemies in the war. There are as yet no humans on the farm, so the animals must work together to plant, tend, and harvest the food for their survival. All appears well, but pigeon scouts and rat spies remain ever vigilant for dangers to the farm. The serenity of life on the farm is broken when a pigeon scout brings troubling news that humans are approaching. He reports that four humans are traveling toward the farm in a covered wagon and that one of them — a young woman — is probably the daughter of the original settlers that first cleared the farm from what was then wilderness. She is traveling with a husband and two children.

The arriving family is surprised to find a prosperous farm with well-tended crops yet no evidence of humans. They also notice many other mysteries, such as the farm pigs appearing intensely alert and watchful when the young farm wife is nearby. Nevertheless, the human family begins to settle into the farm and enjoy the frontier. The animals notice the human adults seem a bit careless with the children, perhaps not realizing there are real dangers on the frontier.

However, everything changes when the children are pursued by a viscous wolf pack and the farm pigs intervene to rescue the children. The humans begin to understand there is something remarkable about the farms pigs that seem to be able to understand what the young farm wife is saying. The family continues to uncover many mystical things about Farmer Island. The farm wife is led to a magic book and a letter from her mother that explains she has inherited powers from an ancient ancestor.

There are more mysteries and excitement ahead. The farm family is threatened by a band of marauders, but they are saved first by the bravery of the pig herd that defends them and then warriors from the Native American village who have been alerted by animals that the family is in danger.

This will be one of the shortest reviews posted on this web site, but I tell you that there are many other adventures and magical events to be enjoyed in Farmer Island Magic. I hope you are intrigued enough to buy the Farmer Island Magic Kindle ebook for $2.99 or the paperback for $9.95 (or even less). We also hope those of you who decide to enjoy the book or ebook will consider posting a favorable review at the Farmer Island Magic webpage at Amazon.com.

Movie Buff

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Tim Bowen explains, “The noun buff has come to mean someone who is both very interested in and knows a lot about a particular subject, usually an intellectual subject. Examples include a wine buff, a film buff, a theatre buff and a computer buff. The noun is related to the verb to buff meaning to make something shine by rubbing it with a cloth. In the past buffing was often done with a cloth made of soft leather, originally from buffalo skins (which is often believed to be the origin of buff)…”

Confusion About Common Core

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I happen to be the one who is confused by the debate over Common Core. I’ve read in an article by Michael J. Petrilli and Michael Brickman that “…educators have spent almost five years implementing Common Core in their classrooms.” The stated goal of the program is to prepare students for college and careers. It has milestones that “…students need to pass to reach those goals.” The program lays out standards for what students should know at the end of each school year. Teachers are accountable to see that their students learn what they are expected to learn.

None of that sounds bad to me, so what’s the problem? An article by Allie Bidwell says that support is waning for the academic benchmarks. Conservative critics are against the program as federal intrusion into what states should be controlling. Teachers are becoming more and more outspoken about opposition to the accountability measures that are part of the program. “Randy Weingarten, present of the American Federation of Teachers said in a statement the standards ‘must be guides, not straightjackets and they must be decoupled from testing.’” Continue reading →

The Man Behind the Rosenbergs

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the-man-behindThis is a fascinating book written by retired KGB agent Alexander Feklisov with Sergei Kostin. The book begins with an interesting description of Feklisov’s life in the Soviet Union as a youngster and his eventual acceptance into the INO, or Soviet Foreign Intelligence. He is sent to the United States early in World War II and spends four years sending and receiving messages without being involved in espionage. He is a capable and loyal employee and he eventually enters the world of the “illegals” with the assignment of recruiting spies from the many Americans who sympathized with the Communism and the Soviet cause. I found it interesting that Feklisov ardently defended his contacts as being “anti-fascist activists” and not Communist spies.

Feklisov’s advancement in Soviet intelligence was enhanced by the remarkable fact there were few older agents when he began his training. Feklisov was surprised there “…was only one older officer in our section…” He “…later learned that the Stalinist purges had not spared the intelligence services. The leadership of the INO had been decimated as much as the Red Army by the end of the 1930s.” It is difficult to understand Feklisov’s dedicated loyalty to the Stalinist system after such a revelation.

Feklisov was almost prohibited from receiving a foreign assignment because he wasn’t married. He was told, “How can you recruit any agents if you can’t even recruit a wife?” His immediate supervisor praised his abilities and recommended him for an overseas assignment. He even complimented him with the comment, “If you want my opinion, it’s rather good that he didn’t get married on command. It goes to prove he’s a serious sort of fellow.” That and the fact the NKVD was short of people in the United States led to his assignment in New York as a communication specialist.

He became Alexander Fomin with the code name “Kalistrat” and was assigned to establish a clandestine radio link. The announcement of the Nazi attack on the USSR revealed some attitudes that disturbed Feklisov, or Fomin. Senator Harry Truman announced that Russia should be helped if the Germans were winning or the Germans should be helped if the Russians were winning. “The first prize for bluntness would go to the New York Daily News, which published a cartoon depicting the USSR and Germany as two snakes fighting each other. The caption read, ‘Let’s let them eat each other!’” Feklisov felt Roosevelt was fairer in his assessment. “His attitude toward the USSR in general, now that it was bearing the brunt of the war effort was favorable.” (My reading of history says that FDR’s attitude went far beyond “favorable.) Continue reading →