{"id":10144,"date":"2012-01-29T15:53:22","date_gmt":"2012-01-29T20:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=10144"},"modified":"2022-04-29T06:30:36","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T11:30:36","slug":"things-i-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/things-i-wonder\/","title":{"rendered":"Things I Wonder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I maintain a long list of potential topics on a spreadsheet and currently it stretches several hundred rows. Some of my story ideas remain on the sheet for months or years. That’s because they must have been interesting enough to record but not substantial enough to create a standalone article. Let me winnow down the list a little by posing some ridiculous hypothetical questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why do they love me in Yellowknife?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Yellowknife.<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I get an unusually large number of 12MC visitors per capita from Yellowknife, the capital city of the Northwest Territories of Canada (map<\/a>). Maybe 20,000 people live in Yellowknife. Yet hardly a few days go by between visits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s always different people. There doesn’t seem to be any connection between the topics they select either. All I can figure is maybe people enduring dark, cold winters deal with their confinement by hitting the Intertubes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also wondered about the unusual number of hits from East Sparta, Ohio, a village of less than a thousand inhabitants. I often record several visits per day. So I combed through the data a little bit further and discovered that the source was always yahoo.com or yahoo.net. I guess Yahoo has a server farm nearby? Maybe something similar happens in Yellowknife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Did the founders of Jay, Oklahoma realize its postal abbreviation (Jay, OK) sounded a lot like A-OK<\/a>?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Jay<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There’s no connection. A-OK didn’t come into prominence until the early 1960’s. Jay, OK (map<\/a>) had been around for a solid half-century by that point. So it’s just an interesting coincidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, that leads to a follow-up question: If it’s not A-OK, then who or what is Jay? The local Chamber of Commerce attempted to answer that perplexing question<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There are at least two stories about how the town got it’s name. One story says it was named by its surveyor Dick Wofford, for his only son, Jay, who later was a business man in Jay until his death early 1960. Another story says the town was named for ‘Jay’ Washbourne. ‘Jay’ got his name from the large ‘J’ which refused to come off the flour sack from which his mother made his shirt. There is no known documentation as to how Jay, Oklahoma actually got its name.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I hope someone uncovers definitive evidence of the second theory. The mental image of a kid in a homemade flour sack shirt oddly amuses me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay also has an interesting twist to its formation. The founders build Jay completely from scratch with the express purpose of serving as the county seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delaware County wanted a more central location for its county seat sometime around 1908. They calculated the exact center of the county hoping to plat a town there. However a full-blooded Cherokee Indian owned the land and that presented too many legal hurdles. The owner couldn’t sell the land easily because it belonged to the Cherokee nation. So instead they selected an adjacent tract owned by a person of partial Cherokee descent. Even today, upwards of 40% of Jay’s residents can trace Cherokee ancestry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jay is the self-proclaimed “Huckleberry Capital of the World.” Another contender, Trout Creek, Montana, had to settle for a lesser standard<\/a> (“proclaimed ‘Huckleberry Capitol of Montana’ by the state’s legislature in 1981”). Thus, Jay, OK is indeed A-OK in the world of Huckleberries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Where is Europe’s largest vegetated shingle spit?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Orford<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Face it, you’ve wanted to know the answer to this forever, right? In simple terms a vegetated shingle spit is composed of small pebbles created through long-shore drift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The largest European vegetated shingle spit sits along the coast of Suffolk, England at the mouth of the River Orr. It’s called Orford Ness (map<\/a>). The National Trust describes it<\/a> as<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“… [an] Internationally important nature reserve, with a fascinating 20th-century military history.” “… Orford Ness may contain as much as 15% of the world’s reserve of coastal vegetated shingle, and the best preserved shingle ridges in Europe. So fragile is this habitat that even walking on it causes irreparable damage.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Consider the rarity of vegetated shingle spits: Orford Ness is only about 2,200 acres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What’s the deal with the Austrian Navy?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n