Frances Slocum For Westen Wednesday...

What compels someone to stay with people that originally treated you as a slave? Some just didn't want to leave after a while.

Although the lifestyle might have began with rough treatment, soon many of the captives came to look to the Native Americans as their adopted family. That was the case with Francis.

Frances Slocum

Photo credit: Martha Bennett Phelps

In 1835, a trader named George Ewing met an elderly woman of the Miami tribe named Maconaquah. She was in her sixties and a respected woman among the tribe, a widowed grandmother whose husband had been their chief. And so you can imagine his surprise when this old woman told him she had born to white parents.

As a child, he soon found out, Maconaquah’s name had been Frances Slocum, the daughter of a Quaker family who had been stolen away from home by Seneca warriors when she was five years old. A Miami family had bought her for a few pelts, and they’d raised her as their own.

57 years had passed since her capture. She’d grown up among the Miami, gotten married, seen her husband rise to chiefdom, given him four children, and raised them until they had children of their own.

Frances’s brothers hadn’t stopped looking for her since the day she was captured. When word got out that she was still alive, her brother Isaac met with the sister he’d lost decades ago and begged her to come home.

Frances, though, had forgotten how to speak English. Communicating through an interpreter, she told him, “I do not wish to live any better, or anywhere else, and I think the Great Spirit has permitted me to live so long because I have always lived with the Indians.”

True to her word, she stayed with her captors until the day she died—and she was buried next to the man who had been her husband.

Bottom line here is that she just flat out did not want to go anywhere. She had lived with and made her home with the Indians for so long, it was the only life she knew. Can't say I blame her.

Coffee out on the patio again this morning.

No Post Today...!

Sorry, but I'm taking today off. No post...

Why Do We Yawn...?

Today for Monday Mysteries, we have another medical question. It's about yawning...

This is one of those things that we probably don't think about too much. Not only humans do it, but so does most of the animal kingdom. And another strange thing, it seems to be contagious!

Why Do We Yawn?

Everybody yawns. It’s not even just humans who do it—most animals yawn, too. But not matter how universal yawning might be, we have absolutely no idea why we do it.

People have been trying to figure out why we yawn since the fourth century BC. Hippocrates suggested that it might be to get rid of “bad air” and take in “good air.” Today, most people think it decreases carbon dioxide and increases oxygen levels in the blood, which means the same thing but makes you sound a lot smarter.

The problem with this explanation, though, is that it doesn’t really explain why we yawn when we’re tired. The logical explanation is that it has to do with the brain, but yawning doesn’t really seem to change the oxygen levels in the brain.

So why are we doing it? Why don’t we yawn when we really need that extra oxygen? Why don’t we yawn when we exercise?It doesn’t really make any sense, and we don’t really have a clear answer yet. As it turns out, that’s the case for a lot of things. We have our theories, but the truth is that there are a lot of aspects of the universe we just don’t understand

I don't exactly know why we yawn...but I do know that a yawn is just a silent scream for coffee!

Coffee out on the warm patio again this morning!

Slightly Cool Sunday 'Toons...

Even though it really in't cold, it is a little cooler. So, being as how it is Sunday again, let's do some cartoons to pass the time.







And maybe just one more...



OK...that's enough for this morning. Go back to the funny papers now.

Coffee out on the patio again this morning!

Am I Going In Circles...?

Sometimes the seemingly easiest things are not easy at all.

For instance, why can't we walk in a straight line when blindfolded? We do OK when we can see, but cover our eyes and ...BAM! We go in circles. Worst part is, no one knows why.

Why Can’t We Walk In A Straight Line With Our Eyes Closed?

Try this: Go out to a park, put on a blindfold, and try to walk in a straight line. When you take your blindfold off, you’ll discover something strange, other than that your wallet’s now missing. No matter how careful you were, most people will end up spinning around in circles if they don’t have a clear target to walk toward, and nobody knows why.

Scientists have done multiple experiments on this effect, watching how people walk visually and even mapping out how they move with GPS. They’ve learned a few things: We know that the darker the sky is, the more people spin in circles, but we still don’t know why it happens.

There are certainly theories. Some scientists have speculated that it’s because of brain dominance, and others think it’s due to differences in the lengths of our legs—but the only thing experiments have been able to prove for sure is that every theory we’ve ever come up with is definitely wrong.

I pretty much can't walk a straight line at the best of times, even with my eyes wide open. I tend to lean a lot and bump into things. Maybe I'm just clumsy or something...who knows?

Coffee out on the patio this morning. It's chilly, but nothing we can't handle.

Surprising Good News About Coffee...!

Want to do more to help Mother Nature do her thing...like attracting bees? Furnish more coffee!

Actually, I'm referring to the coffee plant and not the finished product. I found an interesting article over on Listverse that talks about how bees are attracted to the caffeine in the coffee plant flower. I mean, who knew?

Coffee Contains Caffeine To Attract Bees

Every other coffee list on the Internet will tell you that coffee was discovered by goat herders, whose goats got a little jolly after munching on coffee berries. But why does coffee contain caffeine to begin with? Well, it’s toxic to slugs and other pests, but it turns out it also has an effect on pollinators such as bees. In fact, scientists think they get—wait for it—a buzz from the caffeine in the flowers of plants.

Scientists found that consuming caffeine helped bees to improve their long-term memories. The caffeine acts on the brain chemistry of bees in a way that makes the flowers more memorable, so the bees are more likely to return to plants of the same type. Though bees and humans are very different, some experts suggest the capacity to be affected by caffeine could be as old as the common ancestors we share, as it impacts our neurological activity on a very fundamental level.

See? Coffee drinkers and bees have more in common that you thought! How cool is that?

Coffee inside again this morning. Still a bit cool out on the patio.

A June Bug Epidemic...?

Most everyone in the South (and probably other parts as well) know what June bugs are.

Here around my house they can be seen in the Spring, climbing on the screens and generally making a pest of themselves...no pun intended. I would say that I can't remember them ever causing an epidemic, though. Here's a case where some folks thought otherwise.

The June Bug Epidemic

Photo credit: Patrick Coin

Here’s an odd one. The June bug epidemic refers to an incident in summer 1962 when a worker in a textile mill in the USA claimed to have been bitten by some sort of dangerous insect. Convinced that the latest batch of fabric that the mill had received from England was infested with creepy critters, the woman refused to go back to work. She complained of headaches, dizziness, and a painful rash. Before long, more than 50 of her colleagues were also insisting that they had been bitten by the elusive “June bug.”

Understandably, the mill was closed down for inspection, and officials from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta were dispatched to deal with the outbreak. But to their surprise, they could find zero evidence that such a creature even existed. The health inspectors found only two biting insects in the entire plant, neither of which could have caused the symptoms described by the workers.

Despite this dumbfounding discovery, they decided to have the mill sprayed for insects anyway. After all, there was nothing else they could do. But the most incredible part of the story is this: After the mill had been sprayed and reopened, not a single person complained of June bug bites again. Was there really something hiding in the fabric?

Something sounds a little fishy about this story, if you ask me. I've been around June bugs all my life, playing with them, picking them up and such. Never had one bite me that I know of.

Coffee in the kitchen. Kinda cool on the patio and it's misting rain.