A friend recently told me that the horror villains we fear are subconscious stand-ins for things we’re afraid of in real life. Vampires stand for a fear of change; zombies for a fear of crowds or strangers.
Fear of clowns is a sign you’re a normal, well-adjusted, perfectly rational person.
Inquiring minds want to know! I started with vampires—and I never got past vampires!
When I went online to learn what it means if we fear vampires, what popped up was an article by Ralph Blumenthal, “A Fear of Vampires Can Mask a Fear of Something Much Worse.” He was writing in 2002 about villagers in Malawi believing that the government was colluding with vampires to collect human blood in exchange for food.
At the time, Malawi was in the grip of starvation, a severe AIDS epidemic, and political upheaval. He cited Nina Auerbach, author of Our Vampires, Ourselves, to the effect that stories of the undead embody power ”and our fears of power.”
In nearly every culture in the world, there is a legend of some variation of vampire-like creatures—the dead who reanimate and come back to feed on the living. And there is general agreement that the roots of vampire legends are in the misunderstanding of how bodies decompose and of how certain diseases spread.
In an October 26, 2016 article in National Geographic titled “The Bloody Truth About Vampires,” Becky Little wrote, “As a corpse’s skin shrinks, its teeth and fingernails can appear to have grown longer. And as internal organs break down, a dark ‘purge fluid’ can leak out of the nose and mouth. People unfamiliar with this process would interpret this fluid to be blood and suspect that the corpse had been drinking it from the living.”
Paul Barber, author of Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality, made several telling points in the introduction to his book. One is that there is little similarity between the vampires of folklore and the vampires of fiction.
The Modern Vampire
Modern images of vampires are pretty stereotyped: fangs that bite the necks of victims; drinking human blood; can’t see themselves in mirrors; can be warded off with garlic, killed with a stake (or silver nail) through the heart; are aristocrats who live in castles and may be sexy. This image was popularized by Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Count Dracula in the 1931 film adaptation of the Broadway show of the same name. Unlike Bram Stoker’s description of the monster in the 1897 novel Dracula as a repulsive old man with huge eyebrows and bat-like ears, Lugosi showed audiences a mysteriously elegant gentleman in evening dress.
The 1922 film Nosferatu (on left), though an unlicensed adaptation, portrayed the vampire as described in Stoker’s novel.
Polish strzyga
In European folklore, vampires typically wore shrouds, and were often described as bloated, with a ruddy or dark countenance. Specific descriptions varied among regions: sometimes male, sometimes female, might have long fingernails, a stubby beard, the mouth and left eye open, a permanently hateful stare, red eyes, no eyes, etc. Fangs were not always a prominent feature, and blood was generally sucked from bites on the chest near the heart rather than the throat.
But perhaps the most important theme of Barber’s book is that, lacking a scientific background in physiology, pathology, or immunization, the common response of ancient societies was to blame death and disease on the dead. To that end, the interpretations they came up with—while wrong from today’s perspective—nevertheless were usually coherent, covered all the data, and provided the rationale for some common practices that seemed to be otherwise inexplicable.
He’s the color of a rotting corpse, but cloth fangs are pretty harmless.
Should you ever be pursued by a vampire, fling a handful of rice, millet, or other small grain in its path. The vampire will be compelled to stop to count every grain, giving you time to escape. I found no information on how vampires came to be associated with arithmomania, but it endures: remember The Count von Count on Sesame Street?
At this point, I realize that getting into methods of identifying vampires, protecting against vampires, ways to destroy vampires, and cross-cultural variations on vampirism is way beyond the scope of this blog. Instead, I refer you to books such as this:
The yara-ma-yha-who in Australia drains a victim of almost all blood before swallowing and regurgitating the body, which then becomes a copy of its killer.
Seeing a vampire in your dream symbolizes an aspect of your personality that is parasitic or selfishly feeds off others.
Alternatively, a vampire may reflect feelings about people you believe want to pull you down to their level or convert you to thinking negatively in a way similar to theirs.
To dream of being a vampire represents a selfish need to feed off others.
To dream of being bitten by a vampire represents feelings about other people using you or feeding off you and being unable to stop it.
Vampires may be a sign of dependence, problems with addiction, social pressure, or ambivalence.
A dream vampire might be telling you that you need to start being more independent and relying less on others’ resources or accomplishments.
To dream of killing vampires represents overcoming dependence on others.
Repeated dreams of vampires hovering over your shoulder and correcting your spelling or suggesting topics for research and expansion is almost certainly a sign that you are writing a blog entry about vampires.
Bottom line for writers:consider whether a vampire is a fit metaphor for your character.
The soucouyant appears in the Caribbean by day as a harmless old woman, but she sheds her skin at night to hunt as a ball of fire.
And if you are a true traditionalist, you will be carving turnips rather than pumpkins for your jack o’lanterns!
Legendary Jack of the Lantern
Jack o’lanterns originated in the fens (marshes) of rural Ireland. In the early 1600’s, the legend began of Stingy Jack (aka, Jack the Smith, Drunk Jack, Flakey Jack, and other names, used interchangeably).
The most popular version of the tale involves Jack first tricking the Devil into changing into a coin, then trapping him in his transfigured state. Some longer versions of the story have Jack tricking the Devil three or four different times. Eventually, Jack offered the Devil out of the deal in exchange for not taking his soul for ten years.
Jack died before ten years had passed. The angels didn’t allow him into heaven because he was such a dishonest trickster. The Devil kept his promise not to take Jack’s soul, so he couldn’t go to hell, either. Instead, the Devil tossed Jack a lump of burning coal from hell so he could have a bit of light. Jack carved out a turnip and stuck the coal inside, creating a lantern. Hence, “Jack of the Lantern,” has roamed the Earth with it ever since.
Jack O’Lanterns at Samhain
Traditional Cornish Jack O’Lantern
Many people in Ireland and Great Britain also continued the Gaelic celebration of Samhain, including a ritual of going from house to house in search of food and drink. (Thus the origins of Trick or Treating). Many carved turnips, potatoes, and other root vegetables, adding coals or candles to create makeshift lanterns to light their way. Occasionally, people carved these with faces.
Those who made the lanterns with faces said they represent spirits or supernatural beings. Sometimes, they used jack o’lanterns to ward off evil spirits they might encounter while walking at night. Alternately, Halloween celebrants used them to frighten people.
Traditionally, the veil between the living and the dead was thinnest at Samhain, leaving people in danger of supernatural threat. Celebrants sometimes set jack o’lanterns on windowsills to keep harmful spirits out of the house.
Carving Jack O’Lanterns
A jack-o-lantern (or jack o’lantern) is any carved lantern, most commonly made from a pumpkin today. But instructions for carving less common jack o’lanterns are widely available online. Alternatives, other than turnips, include:
Melons
Red beets
Rutabagas
Eggplant
Potatoes
Sweet potatoes
Butternut squash
Acorn squash
Zucchini
Bell pepper
Grapefruit
Grapes
Apples (which can be dried, making shrunken heads)
On the last Thursday of October, children in South Somerset, England celebrate Punkie Night. They carve mangelwurzel roots into the shape of a lantern. In the words of one who has tried this, “It’s like trying to hollow out a block of wood with a spoon.” Children then dress in costumes and knock on neighbors’ doors to ask for a candle for their “punkie” — and threaten tricks if neighbors don’t comply!
According to legend, this tradition began in the 19th century when a group of [probably inebriated] men returning from a nearby village got lost in the foggy night. Their wives went out searching for their missing menfolk, carrying carved mangelwurzel lanterns to light the way. However, the men thought the approaching lights were the souls of unbaptized children and ran away, forever lost in the fog.
Jack O’Lanterns in America
European immigrants to America found a handy New World crop to celebrate Halloween, much larger and easier to carve than the root vegetables of home: winter squash, the most famous of which is a pumpkin.
If you prefer using pumpkins for your jack o’lanterns, consider a white one. New Moon Hybrid is perfectly uniform, 35-45 pounds, alpine white. Alternatively, grown for appearance and carve-ability rather than flavor, the Albino White Casper produces 12-15 pound pumpkins.
Bottom Line: Virtually any fruit or vegetable can be a jack o’lantern, especially if you allow painting as well as carving (although carving is necessary for a lighted lantern).
Evidence for bat-like flying mammals appears as far back as the Eocene Epoch, some 50 million years ago.
Bat Cultures
Bats have had a long time to become steeped in cultural superstitions and myths. For example:
Australian folklore: A bat represents a human incarnation, and killing one can shorten your life or result in a heavy fine.
Camatotz in Guatemala City
Maya religion: The Mayan bat god, Camazotz, appears as an anthropomorphized leaf-nosed bat in sculpture and stories. His name translates to “death bat” or “snatch bat”.
Buddhism: Some Buddhists believe a small bat perched on the right shoulder signifies good luck, longevity, and happiness.
Spiritual practices: Many practices associate the bat with themes of rebirth, intuition, and darkness. They are believed to guide people through difficult or frightening transitions.
Chinese culture: The Chinese word for bat (福 Fu) sounds like the Mandarin word for prosperity and luck. Because of this, many feng shui practitioners include bat symbols in their decor. Red envelopes of money presented to children at New Year traditionally include five bats in their design.
Polynesian religion: While fleeing from her husband, the goddess Leutogi’s brother sent his pet bat to rescue her. When she became the goddess of fertility and night, she showed her appreciation by adopting the bat as one of her totem animals.
Modern Western Culture
“Ariel on a Bat’s Back” (1804) by Henry Singleton
In Western cultures, such as ours, people often associate bats with bad luck, death, witchcraft, vampires, and darkness. Some Westerners believe that a bat flying into the house is a sign of death or that the occupants will soon leave. As someone who lived with bats in the attic—literally—for years, I can personally testify that neither of those things happened.
Some believe that hearing a bat call while flying in the early evening is a sign of bad luck. Despite many close encounters with bats, I’ve been extremely fortunate!
So, darkness, yes. Death and bad luck, no. As for witchcraft and vampires, keep reading.
The real skinny on bats is that they are an important species that impact our daily lives in ways we might not even realize. Bats play important roles in their ecosystems as natural pest controls, pollinators, and seed dispersers.
Bat Pest Control
Most bats (about 70%) consume insects, like mosquitos, helping to control insect populations that can carry human diseases, or beetles, which damage agricultural crops. Economists have estimated that the pest control provided by healthy bat populations is worth over $50 billion!
Hibernating Indiana bat
Most North American bats are insectivorous. Insect-eating bats capture their prey by foraging on the wing, catching flying insects from a perch, or collecting insects from plants. Some species of bat seize insects with their mouths. Others use their wings or tail membrane to trap prey. Bats disable large insects with a quick bite, then envelop the insect in a basket formed by its wings and tail, and carry the insect to a perch for eating. Bats have sharp teeth to chew their food into tiny, digestible pieces.
Each night, bats eat thousands of insects! Big brown bats fly at dusk, often using the same feeding ground each night. They fly in a nearly straight course 30 feet in the air, often emitting an audible chatter. One little brown bat can catch 600 mosquitoes or more an hour. The endangered Indiana bat, which weighs about three pennies, consumes up to half its bulk every evening. This insect-heavy diet helps both foresters and farmers.
Carnivorous bat species—which are more rare and eat small animals like fish, birds, mice and frogs—also act as a natural control on their prey’s populations.
Plant Helper
Golden-crowned fruit bat
Fruit bats and nectar bats are key players in helping local plants by dispersing seeds as they fly, which assists pollination. For example, the lesser long-nosed bat is the primary nighttime pollinator for the saguaro cactus in the Sonoran Desert, which spans from southern California and Arizona into northwest Mexico. Like a hummingbird, the lesser long-nosed bat can hover at flowers, using its 3-inch-long tongue — equal to its body length — to feed on nectar in desert environments.
Desert ecosystems rely on nectar-feeding bats to pollinate giant cacti, including the organ pipe as well as the saguaro of Arizona.
Without bats, say goodbye to bananas, avocados, and mangoes. Over 300 species of fruit depend on bats for pollination. Bats help spread seeds for nuts, figs, and cacao — the main ingredient in chocolate.
Bats Inspiring Medical Marvels
Illustration of bats’ echolocation
About 80 medicines come from plants that rely on bats for their survival. Research on bats has also led to advances in vaccines.
Donald Griffin, an American zoologist, coined the term echolocation in 1944. Griffin worked with Robert Galambos, a neuroscientist, to demonstrate the phenomenon and determine precisely how bats used echolocation. While bats are not blind, studying how bats use echolocation has helped scientists develop navigational aids for the blind.
Scientists have also been studying the secrets behind bats’ relative longevity. Biologists hope that understanding how the telomeres on strands of bat DNA protect cell growth may lead to breakthroughs in preventing or reversing aging and cancer growth in humans.
Vampire bats have a protein in their saliva that researchers have modeled to help stroke patients. Their anticoagulant property keeps the blood of prey flowing without clotting so the bat can eat its meal. This enzyme — named Draculin — has been found to break up blood clots in the brain that cause strokes in humans. The opposite of frightening, vampire bats are a fascinating and important species that are contributing to science.
Vampire Bats
Vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus) feeding on a pig
But what about bats feasting on human blood? Mostly just myth. First of all, only three bat species are blood-suckers—meaning 0.0025% of bats eat blood to survive—and they only suck the blood of other mammals and a few birds. These three vampire bat species live in Central and South America; none are native to the U.S.
The vampire bat feeds mainly on the blood of cattle, horses, and wild mammals such as deer and peccaries. The harm from such bites isn’t from blood loss, which is relatively small, but rather from the exposure of the livestock to secondary infections, parasites, and the transmission of viral-borne diseases.
Diphylla ecaudata, a bat native to northern Brazil, may have recently adapted to feeding on human blood. These bats, which primarily feed on several species of birds, have felt the effects of climate change making their preferred food source more difficult to find. When researchers tested the DNA of blood in these bats’ stomachs, they found cattle and human blood mixed with the expected birds. However, evidence points to D. ecaudata still relying primarily on their preferred birds for food.
Because the true vampire bat of Central and South America feeds on blood, a popular misconception has been to link it to the human vampire legend. The Eastern European tale of a vampire dates back to the Middle Ages. There are no vampire bats native to Europe or Asia. They weren’t even known to exist before the 1500’s, when explorers visited the New World and observed their unusual eating habits. Scientists named the bat for the legend rather than the legend originating with the bat!
Fascinating Animals
Besides being useful, bats are just plain interesting. This isn’t surprising, given that there are over 1,400 species of bats worldwide. Only rodents have a greater number of species. Bats are native to nearly every climate except extreme deserts and polar regions.
To reduce their energy needs, hibernating little brown bats can stop breathing for almost an hour.
The Honduran white bat, a snow-white bat with yellow nose and ears, cuts large leaves to make “tents” to protect its small colonies from drenching jungle rains.
The ancestors of the endangered Hawaiian hoary bat (‘Ope’ape’a) traveled over 3,600 kilometers from the Pacific Coast almost 10,000 years ago to become Hawaii’s state land mammal.
If you’ve seen one bat, you’ve seen one bat! Bats come in many colors, sizes, and shapes.
Spotted bat
The spotted bat, which lives in Texas, is black with a white patch on each shoulder and the rump.
Other bats have patterns so bright biologists call them butterfly bats.
Some bats, such as the Eastern red bat, have long angora-like fur varying in color from red to black and white.
The bumblebee bat of Thailand weighs less than a penny.
Some of the large bats known as flying foxes, such as those living in Indonesia, have wingspans up to 6 feet.
The eastern pipistrelle, which lives in most of the eastern United States, is also called the pygmy bat because of its small size. Its fur is yellowish brown, darker on the back. The back hairs are tricolor: gray at the base, then a band of yellow brown, and dark brown at the tip.
Flying foxes live only in tropical and subtropical areas including Australia and eat primarily fruit and nectar. Other species of bats are carnivorous, preying on fish, frogs, mice, and birds. As discussed above, the fabled vampire bat feeds on blood. All bats living in the United States and Canada eat insects, except 3 species of nectar-feeding bats living along the Texas-Arizona border.
Bats are Mammals!
Because they fly, many people think of bats as birds. Instead, bats share the characteristics of all mammals (hair, regulated body temperature, the ability to bear their young alive and nurse them). They make up a fifth of all mammal species on earth.
Big-eared Townsend bat
Bats are the only mammals to truly fly. Other “flying” mammals, such as the flying squirrel, only glide through the air for short distances. True flight requires a flight stroke, or flap of the wings, to thrust the animal through the air. Because of their unique wing structure, bats have great maneuverability — some say, even better than birds!
Bats may be small, but they’re fast little buggers. How fast a bat flies depends on the species, but some can reach speeds over 100 miles per hour according to new research.
Bat Life
Procreation
A baby bat is a pup, and a group of bats is a colony. In many species, the males and females roost separately except when mating. In migratory species, mating occurs in the fall and winter. The female stores the sperm until spring when ovulation and fertilization occur.
Eastern red bat with three babies
Most bat mothers give birth to a single pup. However, the evening bat typically has two pups per litter. The eastern red bat averages two or three pups per litters. The seminole bat and the yellow bat can have three or four pups per litter.
In May or June, the females congregate in large colonies and give birth. Mother bats form nursery colonies in spring in caves, dead trees and rock crevices. Bats benefit from maintaining a close-knit roosting group because the group increases reproductive success, and it is important for rearing pups.
The female hangs head up as the young is born, feet first. She catches and holds the new born in a pouch formed by a special membrane. The baby bat, already large and well developed, crawls to the mother’s nipples to feed until they are 6 weeks old. Like other mammals, mother bats feed their pups breastmilk, not insects.
Bats have one of the slowest reproductive rates for animals their size. Most bats in northeastern North America have only one or two pups a year, and many females do not breed until their second year. Their relatively long life-span somewhat offsets this low reproductive rate.
Bat Growth
Baby bat
Newborn bat pups are blind and furless. In the evening when the mother forages for food, she may, for the first few days, carry the young with her. Later the baby remains behind, clinging to the wall or roof of the cave or shelter. The mother may return several times during the night to feed her young.
Young bats born in June or July reach their full size in 4 weeks and are usually able to hunt by mid-July. Females are mature at 8 months, and males mature in their second summer.
Aged Bats
Little brown bats
The longest-living bat is 41 years old. It’s said that the smaller the animal, the shorter its lifespan, but bats break that rule of longevity. This may be because bats have a high number of genes involved in DNA repair and control of cell division. Although most bats live less than 20 years in the wild, scientists have documented six species that live more than 30 years.
The little brown bat, common in North America and in West Virginia, is the world’s longest- lived mammal for its size, with a life-span over 32 years, although it is generally rare for a bat to live this long.
In 2006, a tiny Brandt’s bat from Siberia set the world record at 41 years.
Cleanly Bats
People might think bats dirty because they excrete guano, a prized fertilizer. Far from being dirty, bats spend a lot of time grooming themselves, like cats. Some, for example the Colonial bat, even groom each other. Besides having sleek fur, cleaning also helps control parasites.
Hibernation and Migration
Even though bears and bats are the two most well-known hibernators, not all bats spend their winters in caves. Some bat species like the spotted bat survive by migrating in search of food to warmer areas. Bats that migrate usually travel less than 200 miles, often following the same routes as migratory birds.
Hibernating bats
Many bats do hibernate through the cold weather when insects are scarce. Bats prepare for hibernation by putting on fat to last through the cold weather. When a bat hibernates, its body temperature drops almost to air temperature, and respiration and heartbeat become very slow. Throughout the winter, bats eat nothing, surviving by slowly burning accumulated fat.
Hibernating big brown bats
It is fairly easy to rouse bats from hibernation, and they may fly around for 15 minutes. However, disturbances that cause bats to awaken and use fat stores can be fatal. Hibernating bats should be left alone.
Unlike other hibernating bats, red bats may wake and feed, if temperatures rise above 55 degrees.
After females leave the hibernation sites, they gather in colonies varying in size from 10 to 100 or more, roosting in attics, barns, and other dark retreats. The males are solitary, roosting in hollow trees, under loose bark, and in other crevices. Bats may also move from nursery caves, suited for rapid growth of their young, to cooler caves with stable winter temperatures. Bats that hibernate use the same sites year after year.
Bat Habitats
Roosting fruit bats
Habitats vary during bats’ life cycles. As discussed above, many bats dwell in caves or use caves for hibernation. Others, the Virginia big-eared bat, for example, live in caves year-round, but its winter home is typically different from its summer roost. These endangered bats live in only a few locations throughout Virginia and West Virginia.
A group of small-footed Myotis made their home in an underground tunnel at an inactive nuclear reactor in the state of Washington. But more typically, bats live in abandoned mines, caves, on the underside of bridges, in trees, in crevices in old buildings and barns, in woodpecker holes in trees, occasionally in homes and attics, in bat houses constructed especially for them, or other protected places during the day.
Bats outside Bracken Cave
Colonial bats cluster in caves and mine tunnels. Over 15 million Mexican free-tailed bats inhabit Texas’s Bracken Cave, making it the largest known bat colony (and largest concentration of mammals) on Earth.
Forest dwelling bats roost in trees or on the forest floor and many raise their young in the exfoliating bark of large trees. Some bats, like endangered gray bats, feed on insects over water and roost near streams and rivers.
Bats can also take up residence in human structures like old buildings, culverts, bridges, and attics.
Bat Eyesight
Blind as a bat? Not so much… Bats’ eyes are adapted for nocturnal life, and they can see well. However, sight is just one sense a bat relies on. Some bats, like most fruit bats, also use their noses to sniff out nearby treats.
Bat Voices
Echolocation is using sound reflecting off objects to locate them. Many people have heard of bats’ ability to use echolocation to navigate and hunt.
Virginia big-eared bat
Echolocation works by bats’ emitting a series of high-pitched squeals through their mouths or noses (usually inaudible to humans). These sounds bounce back to the bats, enabling them to navigate in total darkness, not flying into obstacles but locating prey. Some bats use tongue clicks instead of vocal cords. Usually, they receive the echoes in their large, funnel-shaped ears. Bats’ ears are specialized for frequencies in the ultrasonic range.
In addition to the ultrasonic sounds used in echolocation, bats also emit other sounds—to communicate or indicate emotion? Purrs, clicks, and buzzing often precede mating of some species. Recognition of mothers and babies involves both audible and ultrasonic sound.
Certain North American insect-eating bats vibrate when at rest and content. This vibration does not occur when they are asleep. The bat’s ear is extremely mobile and sensitive to sound.
Do bats get tangled in women’s hair and need to be removed with scissors? No way! Their echolocation is so sensitive that bats can detect objects as thin as monofilament fishing line. Fishing bats have an echolocation system so sophisticated they can detect a minnow’s fin as fine as a human hair.
How Bats Live
Eastern red bat
When they are at rest, bats hang with their heads down. During the day, red bats hang by one foot, wrapped in their big furry tails.
Swimming isn’t typical of bats. Although there is little scientific data, observations by naturalists in the field seem to support that some bats swim in stressful situations, although swimming isn’t part of their ordinary behavior.
Flying foxes, often island inhabitants, may have to fly long distances to obtain food. A forced landing or a foray over water to collect fruit which has dropped and floated there may involve an unexpected swim. Photographs of the flying fox, Pteropus giganteus, show the animal actually swimming, using its wings and feet to reach land rather than floating or paddling.
Bat Diets
Most bats eat insects, such as mosquitoes, moths, beetles, crickets, leafhoppers, and chinch bugs. Bats use echolocation to find and track insects in flight, and they can eat up to 600 insects in an hour.
Harpy fruit bat
Pipistrellus pipistrellus eating a mealworm
Many tropical bats eat fruit exclusively, and fruit-eating bats can disperse up to 95% of seeds in recently cleared rainforests. Epaulette fruitbats can eat up to three times their body weight in figs each night.
Some bats feed on nectar and pollinate plants like peaches, cloves, bananas, and agaves.
A few bats are carnivorous and hunt small vertebrates, such as fish, frogs, mice, and birds.
Vampire bats feed on the blood of mammals and birds.
Bats and Rabies
All mammals, including bats, can get rabies. However, it is estimated that less than 1% of bats have rabies. The best way to avoid getting rabies from bats is never to pick up a bat, especially if you see it fluttering on the ground during the day.
Actually, a higher incidence of rabies is found in skunks and foxes than in bats. In the United States the rate of occurrence is so small, barely a fraction of a percent, that there is very little danger to humans.
Bats Need Help
Roosting fruit bats
There are over 1,200 bat species worldwide. However, bats are basically tropical animals and only about 45 species are native to the U.S. and Canada. Twelve of them are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
American bats species are considered endangered due to disturbance of roosting bats in caves, loss of habitat including forested areas due to large scale logging and development, and inappropriate use of pesticides.
Owls, hawks, and snakes eat bats, but that’s nothing compared to the millions of bats dying from white-nose syndrome. The disease — named for a white fungus on the muzzle and wings of bats — affects hibernating bats and has been detected in 37 states and seven Canadian provinces.
Little brown bat with white nose syndrome
This deadly syndrome has decimated certain species. At least 10 bat species in the U.S. and Canada are threatened, plus the endangered Virginia big-eared bats. It has killed over 90% of northern long-eared, little brown and tri-colored bat populations in fewer than 10 years. This fatal disease, has killed more than 5.7 million bats since it was discovered in 2006.
The implications are enormous. Loss of bats destabilizes ecosystems and can cause people to increase their use of chemicals to control insects.
You can help by avoiding places where bats are hibernating. If you do go underground, decontaminate your clothing, footwear and gear to help with not spreading this disease to other areas.
Servants of Evil?
Oh, yes. I nearly forgot witchcraft. Bats are associated with witchcraft in many cultures because of their nocturnal nature and their visibility during the transition from day to night.
It is believed that witches worshipped horned figures with wings—possibly bats?
In Dante’s Inferno, the poet used bats as an allegory for the devil and his domain.
Gustave Dore’s illustrations of Dante’s Inferno
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel describes Dracula as a vampire who can transform into a bat.
In some cultures, people believe a bat must be a witch’s familiar or an evil omen. For example, in the Ibibio people of Nigeria, a bat flying into a house is said to be a sign that the person is bewitched and will soon die.
Some believe that the witches’ hour is when bats fly upwards and then come down again quickly.
It is said that witches used bat blood in their flying concoctions.
Both bats and witches are often featured together in Halloween decorations.
Although in the West, bats are popularly associated with darkness, malevolence, witchcraft, vampires, and death, bats are actually an important part of the ecosystem, as as described above.
If this blog has truly inspired you, Bat Week — held the last week in October — celebrates the role of bats in nature and all that these amazing creatures do for us, so party down.
Bottom Line: There’s more than Halloween to love about bats. They’re the heroes of the night!
Dragons appear in the mythologies, legends, and folklore of cultures around the world since time immemorial! Pliny the Elder, who wrote the world’s first encyclopedia, noted dragons.
Defining Dragons
Dragons in all their variations fascinate children and adults alike. Physically, the dragon can have the horns of a deer, the head of a camel, the eyes of a demon/devil, the neck/body of a snake, the abdomen of a cockle, the scales of a carp, the claws of an eagle, the paws of a tiger, and the ears of an ox.
Generally, dragons are large lizard- or serpent-like creatures, considered evil in some cultures and beneficial in others.
Among reputed dragon qualities is that they have no fixed gender differentiation in some mythologies. According to Maester Aemon (Game of Thrones), dragons are “but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame” presumably meaning that they are able to change from one sex to the other and back for whatever reason.
Australian Aboriginal Namaroto spirits and the Rainbow Serpent Burlung (Borlung)
Baby dragons are called hatchlings. A dragonet is a small breed of dragon. A Dracotaur is half-human, half-dragon.
In many traditions, dragons hoard wealth, gold, or simply shiny objects. In other traditions, dragons aren’t materialistic by nature, though they are attracted to beauty, wealth, prestige, and power. Dragons know how to live the good life, and their generosity towards others, especially their admirers, knows no bounds.
Dragon Slaying
In medieval European literature, the ichneumon or echinemon was the enemy of the dragon. When it sees a dragon, the ichneumon covers itself with mud, and closing its nostrils with its tail, attacks and kills the dragon.
Statue of St. George slaying a dragon in Tbilisi, Georgia
The more popular/common view is that the only creatures known to be able to defeat dragons are humans, particularly those with religious protection or calling. Lancing a dragon is probably the best-known method, as popularized by St. George (though he is sometimes confused with other dragon slaying saints such as St Theodore).
Even divinely-ordained humans didn’t have an easy time of it. The best way to kill them, according to Western belief, was to throw a lance into its mouth or underbelly, because that was the only part without heavy scale protection.
Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, has a dragon on its coat of arms because, according to lore, when the Greek hero Jason was returning from his quest to capture the golden fleece, he slew a dragon there.
Modern Dragon Slayers
Their size and perceived ferocity makes dragons an ideal foe for video-games and role-playing games. Games like Skyrim, Minecraft, Dragon’s Dogma, Monster Hunter, and Dragon Age all pit players against dragons. In deference to the typical size difference, these are often “boss” fights, meaning the final or most difficult encounter a player will face in a particular stage.
Fighting a dragon in Skyrim
Dungeons and Dragons, one of the most popular tabletop role-playing games, includes many types of dragons with varying sizes and attack styles. They range from a relatively weak metallic Brass dragon to Tiamat, based on a goddess in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. She is the queen and mother of evil dragons and a member of the default pantheon of Dungeons & Dragons gods. Her symbol is a five-headed dragon.
There is also a popular reversal of this trope, particularly in media for children. The Dealing with Dragons books and How to Train Your Dragon movies feature human protagonists initially expected to slay a dragon instead looking past society’s terror and their own initial fear. Ultimately, the helpful dragons work with humans to defeat other enemies.
Dragon Varieties
Just about every culture around the world includes dragon-like creatures in its mythology. Anthropologists have many ways of classifying and categorizing dragons, some of which are below:
Wyvern – two legs and two wings
Amphiptere – two wings and no legs
Dragon – four legs and two wings
Drake – four legs and no wings
Drac – two legs, wings, cow’s face, breathes fire and poison
Naga – half human/ half dragon beings that can shift to either shape
Mesoamerican
Peruvian amaru painted on Qiru
Ancient Incans in Peru called dragons amaru. According to legend, they had two heads, one a llama and one a puma. They had supernatural powers and symbolized great change, bringing rains, or winds, or revolution.
Rainbow dragons (Draco arcus) are elegant, beautiful dragons that are close relatives of the light dragons. Quetzalcoatl prizes them as one of his most colorful and wonderful creations.
Qʼuqʼumatz, a Mayan god of wind and rain, carried the sun across the sky every day and served as a mediator among other gods. Qʼuqʼumatz could take the form of a jaguar or eagle but most often appeared as a two-headed serpentine sky monster with feathers, scales, and a human face emerging from a bird’s beak.
Greco-Roman
In ancient Greek myth, a dracaina was a female dragon or serpent. She sometimes had human features or even a human torso. In some depictions, Medusa was a dracaina.
Iaculus, from medieval manuscript
In Roman and medieval literature, dragons couldn’t fly. Instead they dropped out of trees onto people’s heads. According to Pliny the Elder, “The jaculus darts from the branches of trees; and it is not only to our feet that the serpent is formidable, for these fly through the air even, just as though they were hurled from an engine.”
East Asia
In East Asian mythologies, the dragon is a positive creature, retaining its prestige. The dragon came to Japan with many other elements of Chinese culture, and there it became capable of changing its size at will, even to the point of becoming invisible.
Imperial Chinese dragons, Beijing
Both Chinese and Japanese dragons, though regarded as powers of the air, are usually wingless. They are among the deified forces of nature in Daoism. Dragons also figure in the ancient mythologies of other Asian cultures, including those of Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Buddha demonstrating strength through tranquility by riding a dragon, Vietnam
According to Chinese lore, dragons are auspicious, symbols of wealth, power, and leadership. Official belief held that emperors were the children of dragons.
The dragon lung represents yang, the principle of heaven, activity, and maleness in the yin/yang of Chinese cosmology. From ancient times it was the emblem of the imperial family, and until the founding of the Republic (1911) the Chinese flag had a dragon.
Loa, benevolent spirits in Voudu and Vudu beliefs, often take the form of dragons. Damballa and Ayida-Weddo are the most ancient and powerful loa in West Africa and the Caribbean, primordial creators responsible for fertility, water, fire, and wealth.
Several mythologies in Sub-Saharan Africa feature stories of a woman who marries a serpent or dragon, Monyohe. The bridegroom was often a water deity or able to influence rain. In the Sotho and Zhosa variations of this story, the dragon took all the water away when the marriage broke up, leaving the region in a drought.
Evil Dragons
In European lore, dragons were portrayed as evil monsters. They terrorized human settlements, raided cattle, demanded impossible tributes, and kidnapped innocents.
St. Margaret of Antioch, escaping from the belly of a dragon, Walters Manuscript
Much of this stems from the dragon’s association with the serpent that enticed Eve in the Garden of Eden, according to Christian myth. Many Christian scholars portrayed Satan and other demons as large serpents or dragons.
“On the whole, however, the evil reputation of dragons was the stronger, and in Europe it outlived the other. Christianity confused the ancient benevolent and malevolent serpent deities in a common condemnation. In Christian art the dragon came to be symbolic of sin and paganism and, as such, was depicted prostrate beneath the heels of saints and martyrs.” (Encyclopedia Britannica)
In Christian folklore, St. Margaret of Antioch was imprisoned for her Christian beliefs and was swallowed by Satan in the guise of a dragon. (However, his stomach rejected her, and she emerged unharmed.)
Set slaying Apep in the boat of Re, from the Coffin Text, Egypt
The opposite of the sun god Re in Egyptian mythology was Apep or Apophis, the dragon of darkness and chaos. He caused thunderstorms and earthquakes and, according to New Kingdom priests, battled Re every night in an attempt to prevent the follow day’s sun rise.
Many stories in West African folklore blame ecological disasters on huge serpents or reptiles. According to legend, the Ninki Nanka dragon of Gambia causes droughts, floods, plagues, and fires if not approached carefully. Bida, once the dragon protecting the Soninka people of Mali, began oppressing the people, leading to the kingdom’s downfall.
German immigrants in Maryland reported fearing the predations of the Schneller Geist (“quick ghost”) in the early 18th century. A century later, sensationalist newspaper articles mixed with anti-abolitionist rhetoric to create the Snallygaster, a half-bird, half-reptile monster with tentacles that hunted and ate escaping slaves.
The Dragon of the Zodiac
Pretty much everyone associates dragons with Chinese New Year. In the Chinese zodiac, this is the Year of the Dragon. People born in 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000, 2012, and 2024 should be having a very good year!
Lunar New Year celebrations in Oklahoma (2024)
The Chinese lunisolar calendar determines the specific animal and element associated with a particular year. The Year of the Dragon in 2024 is associated with the element wood. The combination of the animal sign (Dragon) and the element (Wood) designates the year as the Year of the Wood Dragon. The Dragon represents strength and success.
Many couples try to plan for their children to be born in the Year of the Dragon. “Dragon is powerful, endlessly energetic and full of vitality, goal-oriented yet idealistic and romantic, and a visionary leader. They know exactly who they are and possess the keenest sense of self among the 12 zodiacs of Chinese astrology.”
Lucky colors for 2024 are golden, yellow, green, gold, and silver. They are most compatible with Rats, Monkeys, and Roosters.
Bruce Lee, John Lennon, and Charles Darwin were all born in the Year of the Dragon.
Dragons in the Zoo
Fact: winged, fire-breathing dragons are a complete fantasy, a creature of myth and legend only.
The term dragon has no zoological meaning, but biologists have applied it in the Latin generic name Draco to a number of species of small lizards found in the Indo-Malayan region. Many people also apply “dragon” to the giant monitor, Varanus komodoensis, discovered on Komodo Island and a few neighboring islands of the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia, the Komodo Dragon.
Beyond the Komodo dragon, many animals and insects with the word ‘dragon’ in their name. For example
Blue Dragon Sea Slug
Bearded Dragon
Dragonfly
Blue Dragon Sea Slug
Chinese Water Dragon
Draco Lizard
Leafy seadragon
Common seadragon
Chinese water dragon
Black dragonfish
Dragonet
Jacky dragon
Dragon moray eel
Although dragons are unique and special creatures rooted in a remote and obscure past, the tuatara (Sphendon punctatus) may well be their visibly closest relative in the real world. Due to their reptilian nature, they are likely close relatives to crocodiles, dinosaurs, and birds, and probably had their origins in the Permian, when the major lineage between the mammals and the reptiles split.
Dracorex pachycephalosaurus, Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Dracorex is a pachycephalosaur from the end of the Cretaceous Period, which paleontologists identified after the discovery of a spectacular skull. The skull lacks the dome characteristic of this group and instead has spikes and frills reminiscent of a mythical dragon.
Bottom Line: Although dragons do not and never have lived, they have had a strong and pervasive influence across time and cultures.
Sometimes we lose sight of just how much has changed, and how rapidly. This blog might put some of those changes in perspective.
Note: This blog deals with changes in our lives here in the United States. Technological and social trends vary greatly around the world, and drastic changes in lifestyle vary as well.
Homes and Farms
Central heating was first coal, then oil. Coal deliveries often came directly into a cellar bin near the furnace, convenient for chilly people to shovel straight into the furnace hopper. It was messy and time-consuming!
Air conditioning started in public places. Although it was not unusual to find air conditioning in movie theaters, supermarkets, hospitals, or office buildings in 1955, fewer than 2% of U.S. residences had air conditioning of any kind then. Air conditioning units that fit on a window ledge hit the market in 1932, but their high cost meant few people purchased them. As late as 1955, less than half a percent of family residences had a central air conditioning system.
Architects incorporated elements into homes to allow residents to regulate temperature. Porches offered some break from the indoor heat. High ceilings, large windows, and opposing entrances for cross-breezes helped to cool the insides of homes.
Indoor plumbing came in stages. In the early 1900s, running water became more accessible to the average home. By the 1930s both running water and indoor plumbing were widely available. Still, most could not afford indoor plumbing early on, instead relying on outhouses and wells, and pumps.
Outhouses were still common after World War II, especially in rural areas. Chamber pots, very handy for the sick and for nighttime needs, required daily dumping and washing.
Changes in the understanding of public health and the ability to manufacture interchangeable pipes on a large scale both helped to drive the large-scale adoption of indoor plumbing. Only in the mid-20th century was there consensus among public health officials that indoor plumbing was essential. At this point, authorities developed plumbing codes for residential homes.
Food
Fresh food was seasonal and local, even in markets (which were small, nothing like today’s supermarket chains). A produce clerk who worked in an early supermarket in New York explained what he saw in the 1950s and early 1960s.
All winter, we’d sell potatoes and onions. Maybe some cabbages. In early March, we’d start to see spinach and maybe some broccoli coming up from Florida. After that, I could track spring by looking at the boxes: from Georgia, then South Carolina, then North Carolina, on and on. And then a few strawberries from Maryland or Delaware, but the trucks weren’t refrigerated so they didn’t make it very far before going bad. We’d sell peaches and watermelons and cantaloupes all summer, trucked down from Connecticut or Vermont. Then everything would be apples and squash for a while. And then back to just potatoes and onions.
Bill Corcoran, A&P Produce Clerk in Brooklyn, NY from 1951-1965
People preserved food by canning and drying, usually at home.
Milk, delivered to the house in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers, was unpasteurized, allowing cream to rise to the top. Daily milk delivery people could leave the milk by the door in an insulated box. This was still common in the 1970s.
Farm families milked their own cows (by hand). Churning the milk in wood or glass churns produced butter and buttermilk.
Farm families typically had smoke houses. When meat—red, white, or fish, but typically pork (bacon, ham)—was cured and cold smoked, it was also preserved.
There have been cases where smoked meats were still safe for consumption despite staying in storage for years, but food safety experts do not recommend eating meat stored for more than six months.
Hunting for the table was common. Deer, of course, but also pheasant, quail, rabbit, and squirrel. Fishing for the table was common as well, early on using a bamboo pole.
A drip jar/can on the stove collected bacon grease or other meat fat for seasoning.
Household Conveniences (i.e., Appliances)
Ice boxes predated refrigerators, and an ice man delivered big blocks of ice to the house. The insulated cabinet could keep food cold for about 5-7 days. Some ice boxes remained in use even after World War II, although 85% of American households owned a refrigerator by 1944.
Early refrigerators’ cooling units also served as the freezing compartment, big enough for only one or two ice cube trays. People who needed to freeze food rented a meat locker. No one “wasted” the rented space on freezing vegetables.
There were no dishwashers or garbage disposals in private houses, though Josephine Cochrane had invented a hand-powered dishwashing machine in 1886 to keep fancy china safe during cleaning. Some large restaurants had machines to disinfect dishes in keeping with changes to public understanding of contamination after the influenza pandemic of 1918.
The process of using a wringer washing machine was laborious, to say the least. A person doing laundry had to fill the machine by hand, lift the clothes out of the tub, and feed the wet clothes through rollers to press the water out—being careful not to get a hand or arm caught in the rollers. The water fell back into the washer. Water wasn’t changed after every load, so the weekly laundry started with the least dirty clothes.
Even earlier, people washed clothes by hand and squeezed them through a laundry press.
In either case, people hung clothes on a line to dry outdoors, or in the basement when weather dictated. Clothes dryers began coming into their own around 1960. As changes in ecological consciousness have encouraged smaller carbon footprints, line drying clothes is growing in popularity again.
Everything was ironed (or worn wrinkled). Permanent press wasn’t invented till the 1950s, not widely available till the 1960s.
Treadle sewing machines were common, even though electrically powered sewing machines were in wide use as early as 1905. The tailor pumped the treadle machine by foot, and the quality and evenness of the stitches depended on the steadiness of both hand and foot.
Machines
Plowing small gardens required one-human-hand-pushed plows. For big gardens and farms, plows were powered by a mule or two, sometimes horses. The turning point – when the amount of tractor power overtook the amount of animal power on American farms – was 1945.
Lawnmowers were human-powered reel mowers, with whirling blades that make a “scissory” sound. Gas-powered lawn mowers—still pushed by a person—didn’t become popular till after World War II in the U.S.
Automobiles were all stick-shift, with crank-down windows. Early Ford cars had a rumble seat, an open seat for two in the back.
Although available earlier, seatbelts didn’t gain popularity till the mid-50s, and then they were optional. Legal changes required that all car seats had seatbelts by 1968, and all passengers had to wear them after 1984.
Interestingly, high-end cars could get air conditioning as early as 1933, and Chevy was offering radios in the 1920s—i.e., earlier than houses had air conditioning, and before transistor radios swept the country!
Gas stations were not self-serve. Gas did not cost more than $1 per gallon till 1980.
Families were lucky to have one car.
Changes in Typing Machines
Typewriters were manual. The darkness of the print depended on the pressure on the keys, and hitting two keys at a time resulted in a jam that the typist had to untangle by hand.
At the end of a line of type, the typist had to return the carriage manually, resulting in the sound of a bell. One could choose single, double, or triple spacing.
One explanation for the keyboard being less than optimal for convenience is so that the typist wouldn’t work too quickly and jam the keys repeatedly. The QWERTY keyboard layout, developed for typewriters in the 1870s, remains the de facto standard for English-language computer keyboard.
Using a manual typewriter requires a lot of paraphernalia, such as inked ribbon and a typewriter eraser for mistakes. If one needed copies, the lack of copy machines meant that one needed to use carbon paper, which made correcting all copies a major pain.
Apparently, manual typewriters are still available, but used primarily by poets.
Manufacturers of electric typewriters, introduced by 1973, switched to interchangeable ribbon cartridges, including fabric, film, erasing, and two-color versions. At about the same time, the advent of photocopying made carbon copies, correction fluid, and erasers less and less necessary.
Still a far cry from personal computers and in-home printers!
Entertainment
Quiet pleasures were the norm for children: reading, playing cards or board games (e.g., Monopoly), “dressing up,” putting on puppet shows, jacks or pick-up-sticks.
Outdoor games burned off energy: tag, hide and seek, statues, mother-may-I, Simon Says, races, jump-rope, pick-up games of basketball, baseball, or football. Pediatricians speculate that changes from outdoor to indoor diversions in early childhood may be responsible for the increase in children with near-sightedness.
Playing outdoors—biking, hopscotch, catching fireflies, whatever—was typically without adult supervision or worry.
Television sets were produced and released commercially in America in 1938 but didn’t become popular until after World War II. The sets had three “channels” and changing channels required physically turning a knob. No mute. No recording. And all programming was black and white.
Movies were mostly black-and-white, too, until 1967! That was the first year in which film studios produced more color films than black-and-white (just two more, but this was the tipping point).
Music on demand records played on a victrola. Listening to a record required cranking (winding up) the victrola and placing the needle arm on the record by hand. Early vinyl records came in 33 1/3 singles or 78 albums.
Radio was a big source of entertainment prior to tv, providing comedy, music, thrillers, dramas, something for everyone. Radios were actually furniture at first. Portable radios, hand-held, carry anywhere, transistor radios really got going in the mid-1950s.
Communication
News came from newspapers and news broadcasts on radio, later television. It was not available 24/7.
Mail meant letters, physical paper pages delivered via USPS. In 1955, it cost 3 cents per ounce, 6 cents per ounce for Air Mail. Early in the century, in some cities, mailmen (always men) delivered the post twice a day! In small towns, with no home delivery, people had mail boxes at the post office, with combination locks.
Phone Call Changes
Telephones appeared in upscale households starting in the late 19th century. But by the 1950s about one-third of American households still didn’t have a phone.
At that time, people did not own their telephone; they rented it from the telephone company. Telephones had rotary dials and were either freestanding or wall mounted, but all were landlines. Most households had only one, in a central location.
There was no answering machine/voice mail option.
Private lines were a luxury. Party lines (from 2 to more than a dozen (!) households) had a specific number of short and long rings to signal which phone was being called. Anyone on the line could pick up—meaning any other party on the line could listen in.
With no portable phones, those needing to call had to find a pay phone, mostly located in phone booths, and have a pocketful of change. Phone companies charged for calls by the minute. On average, pay phone calls cost $0.05 into the 1950s and $0.10 until the mid-1980s. The pay phone peaked in 1995 when millions were scattered all over the country.
Long distance calls cost more than local calls, the cost going up after 3 minutes. One could call collect, i.e., request that the person being called accept the charges. Sometimes families who wanted to know that someone had arrived safely would work the system by having the traveler call collect but the recipient would refuse the collect call, message received.
Shopping
“Wish Books” were the nation’s Amazon from the late 1800s through the first half of the 20th century. Sears, Roebuck, & Company and Montgomery Ward sent thick catalogues packed full of everything from clothing to toys to household appliances. By 1894, the Sears catalogue was 322 pages.
As one man told me, “In the fall we’d sit down with the Wish Book and I could mark what I’d like to have for Christmas—up to $5.”
Both companies offered a mind-boggling array of products, including medical and veterinary supplies, musical instruments, firearms, bicycles, sewing machines, baby buggies, and houses!
Modern Home No. 15, available for only $725!
Sears house kits came in 447 different designs. At the economy end, $659 covered all the lumber, lath, flooring, roof, pipes, cedar shingles, paint, and other materials needed to build a five-room bungalow, featuring two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a front porch. At the other end of the spectrum, the grand “Magnolia” cost $5,140 to $5,972.
Sears advertised all kits with the promise that “We will furnish all the material to build this [house design].” All the parts arrived (usually by train) precut and ready to assemble. From 1908 to 1940, Sears sold between 70,000 and 75,000 homes.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Ward’s catalogue had more than 3 million subscribers to its mailing list.
In 1913 the USPS added Parcel Post Service. The maximum package weight the Post Office would deliver was 11 pounds, but grew to 70 pounds by 1931. Within the first six months of Parcel Post, Sears handled five times as many orders as it did the year before, and within five years doubled its revenue.
Catalogues aside, most shopping was local, in locally owned stores.
Within the Family
Male-female relationships generally followed a set pattern. Women lived at home until they married (when not on a college campus). Most couples had children after marriage.
Announcement of the Florence Crittenton Home in Seattle, 1899
Women pregnant out-of-wedlock faced social disgrace. Under the guise of visiting relatives, such women often went to homes for unwed mothers. Such establishments provided medical care, and some offered a semblance of schooling. Staff (and society) convinced the new mothers to relinquish their newborns for adoption, and then the young women returned to their prior lives.
There were few divorces, few single parents, and few grandparents rearing children. Changes in the legal landscape around families came about very recently. California was the first state to legalize no-fault divorce, in 1969, making it much easier for people to escape abusive relationships. Spousal rape was legal in the US until the 1970s, and laws designating a husband “head and master” of a family, with unilateral control of property owned jointly with his wife, remained in place until 1981.
Gay couples were all pretty much in the closet, certainly not married or parenting children. Staying in the closet was often the only way to stay out of prison until the 1970s.
Nostalgia of a Baby Boomer
Parents taught their children to respect authority without question. Police and teachers are there to protect you. They are always right, do as they say.
Respect for elders was expected from children. This was generally any adult. It included Mr., Mrs., or Miss when addressing them.
“Children were to be seen and not heard.” Enough said, except to emphasize sass or back-talk earned a scolding if not other punishment.
Fathers were the head of the household, provided for the family, and made most of the major decisions.
The evening meal was family time. It was usually at the same time every day, and children remained at the table till the meal was over. Parents forbade toys, books, and other distractions.
Personal Appearance and Finances
Church was a dress-up occasion, especially for women and girls, who wore dresses, hats, and gloves. New outfits for Easter were common.
Business men generally wore suits and ties.
Employed women—e.g., secretaries, teachers, bank tellers, any public facing job—often had to wear skirts, suits, or dresses, and stockings. As recently as 1965, college women were required to “dress” for dinner. Being able to wear jeans to class was a big deal.
Fiscal responsibility was important to many following the Great Depression; good paying jobs and saving for the future were major concerns. “A penny saved is a penny earned.” “Watch the nickels and the dollars will take care of themselves.” People aspired to pay-as-you-go.
Those in need turned to friends, family, or banks for loans. Credit cards started a craze that began to take shape in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Note: Until 1972, women could not get loans or credit cards without a male co-signer.
Bottom Line: Things change, and the rate of change is accelerating. Changes between 1925 and 1950 were substantial, but each subsequent twenty-five year has seen more change than the one before.
A person dies. The body is still there. Someone, somewhere, somehow must deal with the human remains.
Burial
Interment is a fine old tradition, as testified to by all the graveyards and cemeteries. Essentially, a burial is putting a body somewhere where it is likely to remain, usually undisturbed, into the foreseeable future.
In the ground
In a building: mausoleum, crypt, wall
At sea
FYI: Although, historically, graveyards were attached to churches and did not allow cremated remains, there is no functional difference today between graveyards and cemeteries.
In Ground Burial
The Mushroom Burial Suit, invented by Jae Rhim Lee, is threaded with mushroom spores to help the body decompose after burial.
In-ground burial usually means a cemetery and involves a funeral home/director who makes sure all requirements are met. It’s the sort of thing most of us are familiar with.
Except in California, Indiana, and Washington State, it is legal to bury a corpse on private property, although rules and regulation apply.
Obtain a permit for burial/transportation
Follow local regulations regarding zoning laws embalming, refrigeration, and burial depth
Get written approval. The local board of health and governing body may need to be notified in writing
The property must be under the control of deceased’s family
So called “green burials” are growing in popularity. Natural burial grounds, cemeteries, and preserves all bury without embalming, liners, or vaults, and use biodegradable containers, whether caskets, shrouds or nothing at all. A variety of entities own and operate these cemeteries: municipal governments, religious groups, individuals, nonprofits, for-profits, and others. Many use GPS units or non-native stone markers to mark grave sites rather than carved headstones.
In buildings, sometimes special requirements apply.
Most mausoleums require that a licensed funeral director has embalmed the body. Caskets must meet specific size requirements, and sometimes must have a self-sealing air valve.
Mausoleums are usually located in a cemetery or other place dedicated to the dead. They shouldn’t be noisy areas and should be well-maintained.
If you’re building a family mausoleum on private property, you must abide by local zoning rules.
Crypts are typically smaller than mausoleums and are often located in religious buildings or cemeteries. Owners often reserve crypt spaces for notable people.
Where space is scarce, people often turn to ossuaries for skeletal burial. After temporary burial in the ground (typically for a pre-determined period, such as ten years), a caretaker exhumes a corpse and transfers skeletal remains to a final—much smaller—resting place. Sometimes the bones go into an ornamental container; sometimes people display them in elaborate (if macabre) artwork.
Burial at Sea
People are still buried at sea, not just out of necessity but by choice—a choice growing in popularity.
The US Navy offers free burial at sea for eligible families of service members and veterans. The Navy performs such burials for an average of 1,500 cremated remains and 15 casketed remains per year.
Anyone can choose a burial at sea. The US Environmental Protection Agency has parameters for such burials and require a permit. The burial must take place at least three nautical miles from land. The ocean waters must be at least 600 or 1800 feet deep, depending on location. And the presiding entity must take measures to ensure that the remains sink rapidly and permanently.
Burning
The word cremation stems from the Latin word ‘crematio‘, meaning ‘to burn or destroy by heat’.
The form of body burning most common in the United Sates today is the modern cremation process, defined as the burning of a corpse using a column of flames at a temperature of around 1000 degrees Celsius in a furnace powered by natural gas or oil.
After the cremation procedure is complete, what remains are typically gray fragments including ashes from the cremation container and bone particles. Pulverizing these remains is typically the last step in the process.
Besides putting the cremains in an urn or box for burial or a place on the mantle, they can be
There are legal rules in many places that require a waiting period before cremation. This wait is also important for things like completing all the necessary paperwork.
Of all world religions, Islam opposes cremation the most strongly. Islamic teaching considers cremation to be an unclean practice.
Conversely, funeral pyres are an essential part of a Hindu funeral, which is why people still used traditional pyres in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.
Water “Burning”
So called “water cremation”—aquamation—doesn’t actually involve burning. An alkaline hydrolysis machine contains a single air-tight and water-tight chamber. The chamber holds approximately one hundred gallons of liquid. A technician places the deceased into the chamber, then seals it. The contents may be subjected to heat (199 to 302 degrees Fahrenheit), pressure, and/or agitation (varying with equipment) to ensure proper cremation.
At the completion of the process, bone fragments and a sterile liquid remain. The bone fragments, now called cremated remains or hydrolyzed remains, appear pure white in color. Because the process uses water, the last step of the process is thoroughly drying the remains before pulverization.
Aquamation results in approximately 32% more cremated remains than flame-based cremation and may require a larger urn. On the other hand, it has less environmental impact (less air pollution and less energy needed).
On average, aquamation is slightly more expensive than traditional cremation because of the expense of the machines used. Typically, water cremation costs between $2,000-3,000, while flame cremation costs around $1,100-2,000. A traditional burial can cost between $7,000-12,000.
Exposure
The Lakota Sioux, Mandan, Cheyenne, Ute, and Navajo tribes often practiced tree burial, constructing platforms like a scaffold or tree to bring the deceased closer to the sky. Animals consume the body, bringing the life cycle full circle–similar to a Zoroastrian or Tibetan Sky burial.
Vultures at a Tibetan Sky Burial
In the Tibetan Sky burial, a celestial burial master chops the human remains into pieces and mixes them with barley flour. Then, a body carrier takes the mixture high into the mountains and leaves them for vultures. Everyone involved smiles and sings throughout the process to help guide the dead from darkness to the next stage. Tibetans see sky burial as a last gift to the universe — a way to show the insignificance and the impermanence of our earthly lives.
A Zoroastrian Tower of Silence holds human remains high above the ground, removing any chance of contamination. After carrion birds have stripped the bones clean of flesh, nusessalars (ritual pallbearers) transfer any remaining bones to an ossuary, mix them with lime, and allow them to disintegrate and return to the soil.
Preservation
Mummification, ancient as it is, is seldom practiced today. Natural mumification may occur, such as of people lost in the desert, but very few people choose mummification.
However, some villagers in Papua New Guinea still mummify their ancestors today. They believe that spirits will roam the earth after death unless their descendants maintain the body of the deceased. After death, family members place the bodies in a hut and smoke them until the skin and internal organs have desiccated. Then they cover the remains in red clay, which helps maintain their structural integrity, and placed the mummy in a jungle shrine. Villagers bring the bodies down from the shrine for celebrations, and loved ones visit the mummies to consult with their ancestors.
Sunflowers preserved in liquid silicone oil, by Marc Quinn
Cryogenics is, essentially, the opposite of mummification. The motivation is to preserve one’s body (or body part, typically the brain) in the hope that in the future, science will be able to correct or heal whatever the person died of, and the frozen person can live again. Today, liquid nitrogen tanks hold approximately 500 people globally for preservation, the vast majority in the United States. Around 4,000 people are on waiting lists of cryonics facilities around the world.
If you record your consent in the donation register, you can specify which organs or tissue you would like to donate. Several factors determine whether organs or tissue are actually useable for transplant, like their quality and whether or not a donor died in a hospital.
The donor must die in a hospital to be able donate organs. Organs need a supply of oxygen-rich blood to remain suitable for transplantation. After death, doctors hook up the donor’s body to artificial respiration to keep the heart beating, so that oxygen-rich blood continues to circulate.
By contrast, tissue donation is often possible if the donor dies in a non-hospital setting.
Not all organs and tissue types are suitable for transplant. Organs eligible for transplant are the heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas, and intestines. The skin, bone tissue (including tendons and cartilage), eye tissue, heart valves and blood vessels are transplantable forms of tissue.
Even if you are a registered donor, transplant teams may reject your organs or tissue after your death for medical reasons, for instance if you:
Had blood poisoning (sepsis)
Had an active viral infection
Acquired a tattoo or piercing in the 6 months before your death
There is no general age limit on donation. Although the heart of an 80-year-old person would be too old for transplantation, their skin or corneas might still be suitable.
Medical Education
“Muscles of the back: partial dissection of a seated woman, showing the bones and muscles of the back and shoulder” Color mezzotint by J.F. Gautier d’Agoty, 1745/1746
Medical students use whole bodies for education. None of the tissue goes for transplant into a living person (which distinguishes whole body donation from organ donation). Physicians, EMS personnel, even dental healthcare professionals practice their skills through studying donated bodies.
Some specialized educational purposes require “fresh” bodies or parts. For example, plastic surgeons cannot use embalmed heads in the course of their education.
But typically, when a donated body reaches the end of its usefulness, it goes for cremation. Upon request, the family might then receive the cremated remains.
Science
Some medical conditions or circumstances of death can make a body unacceptable for scientific study. Depending on the nature of the research, these include:
Obesity/emaciation
Amputations
Unhealed open wounds
Contagious diseases
For example, real human bodies were/are necessary to calibrate crash test dummies accurately for impact tolerance. Similarly, the military studies effects of bullets and bombs.
Whole body donation is not possible after an autopsy has been performed.
At the Body Farm, students intentionally leave corpses out in the elements to study what happens as the body decomposes. The placement might expose the body to air, submerge it in water, bury it in a shallow or deep grave, allow access to scavenging animals, or any other circumstance. The goal is always the same: to simulate crime scenes so that students can document decay and learn to identify future victims (or the time and circumstances of their death).
Just as you can become an organ donor when you die, you can also choose to donate your body to the Body Farm. Medical examiners who cannot identify a corpse or locate next of kin are also primary providers of bodies to the facility. Since the inception of the Knoxville, TN lab, body farms have sprung up in Illinois, Texas , Colorado, Illinois, Florida, and North Carolina—and even exist outside the U.S. Facilities have opened in Australia, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom!
Bottom Line: Something will be done with your mortal remains. If you care, make provisions before you die, and tell your next of kin of your wishes!
You want to send your brother-in-law’s ashes to his son in Taiwan. Not a problem.
Sending a durian fruit to someone who loves it? That would be a big NO.
It turns out that modern U.S. Postal Services go way beyond letters, postcards, bills, junk mail, and the occasional birthday bracelet.
A Brief History of the Post Office
On July 26, 1775, at the beginning of the American Revolution, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia founded the United States Post Office. They appointed Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general (he had plenty of experience as the postmaster of Philadelphia since 1737). The passage of the Postal Service Act in 1792 officially created the Post Office Department.
The appointment of local postmasters was a major venue for delivering patronage jobs to the party that controlled the White House. For this reason, newspaper editors often got the job.
It wasn’t until 1970 that the U.S. Postal Service became an independent agency. The signing of the Postal Reorganization Act by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970, replaced the cabinet-level Post Office Department with a new federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service, effective as of July 1, 1971.
The Cost of Mail
Much as we bemoan every increase in the cost of stamps, the U.S.P.S. has the most affordable domestic letter price of 31 countries studied. In June 2023, foreign currencies, converted to U.S. dollars, revealed that a U.S. stamp was approximately one-third of the average price of domestic stamps. The next most affordable postal systems, Australia and Japan, are nearly 25% less affordable than U.S.P.S.
Why is a first class letter so inexpensive? Federal law allows the price of first class stamps to increase only at the rate of inflation. The use of first class stamps has declined during the current era of email, Instagram, text messages, and social media. And, as of April 12, 2007, savvy buyers can load up on Forever Stamps at the old rate before new rates go into effect.
Package rates do not follow the same constraints as letters. Shipping rates are determined by a package’s weight, dimensions, rate tier, and the distance between the ship-from and ship-to location (referred to as a zone). Although the package rates of U.S.P.S. are competitive, they aren’t particularly low.
For most packages, the shipper has alternatives: UPS, FedEx, etc. However, be aware: the United States Postal Service offers the only legal method of shipping cremated remains domestically or internationally.
I did not explore what other shippers will handle, but the Post Office can probably accommodate almost all of one’s shipping needs. In fact, commercial shipping companies often have “last-mile” agreements with the Post Office, under which the shipping company will take a package to the Post Office closest to the final destination, and U.S.P.S. letter carriers then take the package that last bit to final delivery.
Mailable Live Animals
Many live animals are mailable under proper conditions.
Bees
Honeybees and queen honeybees must be free of disease, as required under federal and state regulations. The following additional conditions apply:
Honeybees
Honeybees are acceptable to mail only via surface transportation.
Mailpieces must be plainly marked on the address side with “Live Bees” and “Surface Only” or “Surface Mail Only.”
Queen Honeybees
Queen honeybees may be shipped via air or surface transportation.
Each mailpiece shipped via air transportation is limited to one queen and eight or less attendant honeybees.
Baby Birds
The following live, day–old fowl are acceptable for mailing when properly packaged:
However, day–old poultry vaccinated with Newcastle disease (live virus) is not legal to mail.
Adult Birds
With proper packaging, you can ship disease-free adult birds domestically IF you are in compliance with all applicable governmental laws and regulations, including the Lacey Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Animal Welfare Act, regulations of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and any state, municipal, or local ordinances.
Mailings must also be compliant with the requirements provided in USPS Publication 14, Prohibitions and Restrictions on Mailing Animals, Plants, and Related Matter. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also requires that you mark each package according to the rules in 50 CFR 14.
Besides having proper packaging, adult birds must be able to sustain shipment without food or water because liquids, moisture, and loose foodstuffs can cause damage to the shipping container, other mail, and Postal Service equipment during transport.
Scorpions
Restrictions in 18 U.S.C 1716 limit the mailing of scorpions. Under this limitation, scorpions are mailable only when sent for the purposes of medical research or the manufacture of antivenin. Please do not try to mail scorpions under any other circumstances!
Cold-Blooded Animals
“Snail mail” will actually mail snails!
If you properly package your small (no more than 20 inches!) cold–blooded animals, you can mail them through the U.S. Postal service. However, snakes, turtles, and turtle eggs are exceptions – wildlife rules prohibit shipping those through the mail.
Mailing dead animals or animal parts is a bit tricker. You can only mail dead bodies, or parts, of wild animals, wild birds, or eggs if they meet specific conditions:
They are lawfully killed or taken.
The law of the United States or of the state, territory, district, or foreign country or subdivision in which killed or taken or offered for shipment does not prohibit their shipment.
You’ve packaged them in such a way that they will not pose a health or contamination risk.
Prohibited or Restricted Mail
The Post Office outright prohibits mailing many things that are potentially hazardous.
Alcoholic beverages
Handguns (although unloaded rifles and shotguns are allowed)
Cigarettes (since 2010, unless you’re in Alaska or Hawaii and shipping within the state)
Drugs in any form*
Switchblades (unless the person you’re sending them to works for law enforcement)
Animal-fighting materials, accessories, and paraphernalia
*But what about prescription drugs? Under Federal law, it is illegal for most people to mail prescription drugs or pills. Only eligible entities approved by the DEA are allowed to send prescription medications through the mail.
You can only mail liquids and powders if they are are nonhazardous (i.e., not regulated as hazardous materials) and you have properly labeled them and packed everything in sealed containers. To send more than 4 oz, you need to triple-pack the container with insulating materials in leakproof, sealed containers. Surprisingly (to me), you can mail small amounts of poison, including cyanide, arsenic, and tear gas.
Any matter that emits an obnoxious odor (think durian) is nonmailable.
Note: the lists above are illustrative, not comprehensive.
Other People’s Mail
Section 1708, Title 18, of the United States Code addresses the question of opening someone else’s mail. According to this code, opening, destroying, or hiding mail addressed to another person is a federal crime. The only exception would be where another party has a Power of Attorney or similar legal power (for example, if you are declared incompetent, etc.). Under the law, even opening mail addressed to your spouse or ex-spouse is a Federal crime.
Similarly, even intentionally taking a letter addressed to someone else, from someplace other than your mailbox, is a federal crime that could potentially land you in prison for up to five years.
But don’t panic! Provided there is no malicious intent, the legal system typically does not treat the accidental opening of another person’s mail as a criminal act. However, intentionally misusing mail belonging to someone else may fall under obstruction of correspondence, mail tampering, or mail fraud.
If you have a problem with someone taking or opening your mail, it is a postal crime. You should file a complaint with the Postal Service, and they will handle the matter.
If you get mail with your address but a different name, mark it “Return to Sender” and send it back with your outgoing mail.
How do you stop junk mail from being delivered to your house? To opt out permanently: Go to optoutprescreen.com or call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT (1-888-567-8688) to start the process. But to complete your request, you’ll need to sign and return the Permanent Opt-Out Election form you’ll get after you’ve started the process.
Bottom Line: USPS regulations are extensive and complicated. You can browse regulations at usps.com, or you can get relevant information quickly and easily with an online search. For example, search online for “Can I mail XXX by USPS?” and you will get the correct info quickly and easily.
There’s nothing like a road trip to make me notice license plates even more than usual. I recently spent twelve days in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and, not surprisingly, their iconic plates were everywhere.
A local confirmed what I had heard before, that lower numbered plates are more prestigious, and that license plate numbers can be bequeathed, bought, or sold. In order to retain ownership of a license plate, before completing the sale or finalizing the trade of a vehicle, the owner must bring the title to the DMV. The fee to retain a plate is $35. There is a $20 fee to take the plate out of retention.
As I looked into Delaware plates, I learned a lot about other states as well.
History of License Plates
Maybe charioteers marked the license number on the horse!
License plates, also known as vehicle registration plates and license tags, must be displayed on every car and truck on the road in the United States these days. But identifying vehicles is far from a recent development.
The earliest references to vehicle registration and possibly license plates date back to ancient Rome at the time of Julius Caesar (102 – 44 B.C.). There are references to the licensing of chariots, but whether a number was marked on the chariot itself or onto an attachment to the vehicle is not known.
What may have happened during the intervening centuries is a mystery. However, there must have been developments in Victorian England in the 1880s. In The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson try unsuccessfully to catch a public Hansom cab. Holmes, however, got close enough to the cab to spot its license number, which became a major clue in cracking the case.
Early American Vehicles
1894 New York horseless carriage registration
Delaware first required its residents to register their motor vehicles in 1905. Registrants provided their own license plates until 1909, when the state began to issue plates.
However, as of April 25, 1901, New York became the first state to require license plates on cars. The first New York plates were homemade, displaying the owner’s initials without any numbers. These first license plates were typically handcrafted of leather or metal (iron) and were meant to denote ownership via the initials.
Massachusetts was the first state to actually issue plates, beginning in 1903. The first such plate, featuring just the number “1,” was issued to Frederick Tudor, who was working with the highway commission. One of his relatives still holds an active registration on the 1 plate.
These early Massachusetts license plates were made of iron and covered in porcelain enamel. The background was cobalt blue and the number was white. Along the top of the plate, also in white, were the words: “MASS. AUTOMOBILE REGISTER.” The size of the plate was not constant, growing wider as the plate number reached into the tens, hundreds, and thousands.
Massachusetts was the first to issue license plates, but by 1918, all 48 of the contiguous United States were issuing license plate. Although territories at the time, Alaska and Hawaii began issuing plates in 1921 and 1922, respectively.
Variations Among States
Washington DC plates carry an additional message
Although the first license plates were meant to be semi-permanent, by the 1920s, states had begun mandating renewal for personal vehicle registration. Individual states tried various methods for creating the plates. The front typically contained registration numbers in large, centered digits while smaller lettering on one side dictated the abbreviated state name and a two- or four-digit year the registration was valid during. States often varied plate color from one year to the next to make it easier for police to identify expired registrations.
1951 Tennessee plate shaped like the state
Since 1957, most types of North American plates have been a standard size, six by twelve inches. Prior to that, different sizes and shapes were common. Most were rectangular, but some plates used oval, square, round, and triangular shapes as well. For a number of years, Kansas and Tennessee cut their plates to match the shape of the state itself.
Delaware was the last state to adapt to the 1957 changeover to standard-size 6″x 12″ license plates, and remains the only state with [historic] non-standard size plates in current use.
The majority of Delaware’s black porcelain plates in use today are reproduction copies of the original series one style. In 1986 Delaware’s Division of Motor Vehicles legalized the manufacture of accurate replicas due to popular demand. There is only one company actively supplying the demand for these plates, the Delaware Historic Plate Company. Delaware is the only state that allows the private manufacture of legal license plates, and the only state to have retained the famous (among license plate aficionados) porcelain plates in the modern era.
License Plates Today
The modern Delaware style of reflective gold on blue was first introduced in 1958. Delaware DMV added “THE FIRST STATE” slogan four years later.
The style of Delaware’s license plate has not changed much in about 50 years. The black onyx and heritage gold colored Centennial License Plate [2005] was a celebration of 100 years of state-issued license plates.
In the U.S., each state’s Department of Motor Vehicles issues vehicle registration plates. The only plates issued by the federal government are for their federal vehicle fleet or for cars owned by foreign diplomats.
License plate issued by Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota
Note: some Indigenous groups in America also issue their own registrations to members, but many states now offer a special registration.
New Mexico is the only state that specifies “USA” on its license plates, in order to avoid confusion with the country of Mexico, which it borders.
Initially, license plates were issued in pairs. During WWII, due to material shortages, most states dropped the requirement for a front plate. As of 2023, the “Rugged Nineteen” states still require only one plate:
Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Michigan
Mississippi
New Mexico
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Tennessee
West Virginia
Modern Standards
Even today, there’s no nation-wide standard for how many letters/numbers are on a license plate. Some states have six-character plates, some have seven-character plates and yet others have eight-character plates.
As of 2023, the four oldest plate designs in use – each with slight to moderate cosmetic changes since inception – are those of Delaware (in production since 1959), Colorado (since 1960, continuously since 1978), the District of Columbia (since 1975, and Minnesota (since 1978).
It’s been many years since all of a state’s license plates looked alike. Today, the 50 states and the District of Columbia offer 8331 different vehicle license plate designs.
Jon Keegan, an investigative data reporter, has published a complete list of all license plate designs in the US. He found that Maryland has the most plate designs of any state: 989, nearly twice as many as runner-up Texas (476). Hawaii has the fewest, with just 14. You can discover more intriguing tidbits from Keegan’s survey and search the database for yourself here.
License plates in Delaware feature up to seven characters. Prefixes indicate the type of vehicle or organization they represent. The state originally used the letter C only for trucks and vans. However, they introduced “CL” when they started to run out of numbers.
The number of possible license plate numbers depends on the format of the license plate. If the plate consists of 6 digits and letters, then there are 2,176,782,336 possible license plate numbers. If the plate consists of 7 digits and letters, then there are 78,364,164,096 possible license plate numbers.
Vanity License Plates
Virginia offers 333 basic plate designs. Drivers can personalize most of these designs for an additional fee. Vanity plates such as HRD TME, GR8 BOD, etc., are common. In fact, one out of every ten personalized license plates in the United States is registered to a Virginia driver. Perhaps this high take-up of vanity plates is due to the fact that a personalized plate in Virginia costs just $10 more than a randomly-assigned number.
Look, too, for vanity in New Hampshire, Illinois, Nevada and Montana, but car and truck owners in Virginia are the vainest of them all.
In Delaware, the DMV will no longer accept or process new vanity plate requests. The DMV has already stopped processing all pending vanity license plate requests as of Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Existing vanity license plates that have been issued prior to the Court’s decision currently remain eligible for renewal.
Government Plates
Politicians and elected officials have long had access to colorful, special, low-numbered plates. In Virginia, if you see a regular license plate that is 1, that is the Governor’s official car. The Lt. Gov. is 1A, the Attorney General A1, the Governor’s unofficial car is A, and prior Governors are 2, 3, 4, etc.
In Delaware, 1 is for the Governor, 2 for the Lt. Governor, and 3 for the State Attorney General.
In fact, in most states the No. 1 plate is assigned to the Governor’s limousine, while No. 2 is provided to the Lieutenant Governor.
North Dakota has a unique approach to providing low numbers to their elected officials. The North Dakota Governor gets plates No. 1 and 5, while the state’s senior U.S. Senator receives plate No. 2. The junior U.S. Senator from North Dakota gets plate No. 3, and the lone at-large Congressman can drive a car with plate No. 4. The Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota receives plate No. 6. However, officials who don’t want to attract attention—for whatever reason—will choose not to display such identifiable license plates. Such special plates are very sought after by collectors.
Collecting License Plates
Serious U.S. license plate collectors consider the 1921 Alaska plate to be the holy grail of license plates and perhaps the rarest of all U.S. license plates. As recently as 2008, just four were known to exist, with their worth being somewhere around $60,000 each at the time.
But for dollar value? In 2008, someone bought the No. 6 Delaware license plate at auction for $675,000. In 2018, Butch Emmert auctioned off the No. 20 tag for $410,000.
For Delawarians, there may be no status symbol greater than the coveted low-digit license plate. Not just anyone can buy these rare Delaware plates, though. You have to be a Delaware resident with a Delaware driver’s license.
Although the biggest draw is low numbers, Delaware complicates the situation by starting some tags with letters: C for commercial, PC for passenger car, T for trailer, MC for motorcycle, RT for recreational trailer, and RV for recreational vehicle.
Bottom Line: Even something as mundane as a license plate has history. What might you learn about your own?
How could I not love tomatoes? I grew up in Ohio, where the official state drink is tomato juice! In 1870, Reynoldsburg resident Alexander Livingston began growing tomatoes commercially, and in 1965, the Ohio General Assembly made tomato juice the state’s official beverage. Now there is an annual Tomato Festival honoring Livingston and the role of tomatoes in Ohio’s economy.
I’ve always loved tomatoes. As a child I sometimes took a saltshaker to the garden and gorged on warm tomatoes seconds after plucking them from the vine.
I’m just one of the millions—billions?—who have loved tomatoes over the centuries.
Tomatoes in South America
We are so accustomed to modern, home-grown, hothouse, farmers’ market and store-bought tomatoes that it’s hard to imagine them growing wild. Indeed, today’s tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) have undergone centuries of cultivation and hybridization. Chances are, we wouldn’t even recognize their ancestors as tomatoes. Today, there are more than 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.
Results of researchers’ genetic studies indicate that the modern cultivated tomato is most closely related to a weed-like tomato group still found in Mexico. At that time, tomatoes were a wild, blueberry-sized fruit.
Once upon a time, tomatoes grew wild in the Andes of western South America. These were a semi-domesticated intermediate type of tomato. Ana Caicedo and Hamid Razifard, leading a team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, recently published the results of their research into how tomatoes evolved. Their findings show that “about 7,000 years ago, the weedy tomatoes may have been re-domesticated into the cultivated tomato.”
The indigenous people cultivated them. When the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century, they found the inhabitants growing a food crop called “tomatl” in the native language.
The Tomato Goes to Spain
Deborah J. Benoit serves as the Extension Master Gardener at the University of Vermont. She writes, “Tomato seeds were brought from Mexico to Spain by those early explorers. From there the plant spread to Italy by the mid-1500s where it began to be incorporated into regional cuisine. Over the following decades, tomato plants were cultivated throughout Europe, but primarily as an ornamental plant.”
“Still Life of Artichokes and Tomatoes in a Landscape” by Luis Egidio Meléndez (1716-1780)
Tomatoes have had many nicknames, including wolf peach and gold apple. In France, new tomato fans called them love apples and thought they might be an aphrodisiac. (Actually, amorous humans have thought dozens of foods work as aphrodisiacs over the years. You can look it up!)
Because many Europeans mistakenly considered the tomato to be poisonous, they also referred to it as the “poison apple.” True, tomatoes are related to deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna). Also true, the leaves, stems and roots of tomato plants contain solanine, a neurotoxin, and so humans should not eat them.
Because of its similarity to nightshade, some people even thought that tomatoes were a part of potions that allowed witches to fly and turned unsuspecting men into werewolves!
But the strongest “proof” of tomatoes being poisonous was the fact that upper class Europeans did die after consuming tomatoes. However, the fault was not with the tomato but with the pewter dinnerware the rich used. The high level of acidity in tomatoes leached lead from the pewter, and those wealthy enough to afford pewter dinnerware died from lead poisoning after eating tomato-based dishes.
American Tomatoes
Much like the turkey, the tomato travelled to Europe and back to the New World in the 1700s before American colonists thought it fit to grace their tables. Thomas Jefferson reportedly grew tomatoes at Monticello and enjoyed eating them. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that tomatoes became popular throughout the United States (pizza may have had a hand in tomatoes’ social acceptance). Today, tomatoes are the most popular home-grown vegetable crop in the country.
In spite of the general acceptance and use of tomatoes as a vegetable, botanically they are a fruit (actually a berry). But, as a result of the case of Nix v. Hedden, which the Supreme Court decided in 1893, legally tomatoes are a vegetable according to the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883.
And surprise! Early ketchups didn’t involve tomatoes at all. Ketchup originated in China. The first version was based on pickled fish and looked more like a soy sauce – dark and thin. People called it “keh-jup” or “koe-cheup,”
The condiment made its way west via European merchants, taking with it Westernized pronunciations. Early recipes for ketchup (or catsup) used a wide variety of ingredients, e.g., mushrooms, walnuts, and shellfish.
In 1812, the first recipe for tomato-based ketchup debuted. Historians credit James Mease, a Philadelphia scientist, with developing the recipe. He wrote that the choicest ketchup came from “love apples,” as Philadelphians then called tomatoes.
Bottom line: Tomatoes have come a long way, baby. But what’s not to love?
History was one of my favorite subjects in school, mostly because I’m a very nosy person. I always wanted to know details of other people’s lives. What did samurai have for breakfast? How do Inuit living above the Arctic Circle stay warm? Where did Irish Druids camp? These questions, not battles and trade agreements, are the types of historical mystery that I want to know!
Fortunately, many historians share my nosiness (though they’d probably word it more professionally) and have written fascinating works of historical fiction to explore these tiny details. One of the best methods to explore the daily lives of a variety of people in the past is through mystery series. Over the course of solving a crime, an investigator typically must interact with a variety of people. And I get to read about all these interactions and be as nosy as I like!
These mystery series are some of my favorites for the amount of detail the authors have included and the way they’ve represented the tensions and different viewpoints of the time periods in their books.
While performing her legal duties in 7th Century Ireland, Sister Fidelma comes across an awful lot of crimes. In the course of her investigations, she travels widely through Ireland, England, and Rome, interacting with people in every profession and social class along the way. She also has a front-row seat for the seismic changes happening at the time in the Catholic Church, which I found easier to follow in fiction than in my history textbooks.
One of the reasons I enjoy historical mystery series is that the person investigating typically has a reason to look into people and places the reader might not otherwise know about. In the case of Perveen Mistry, social convention dictates that she is the only one who can talk to the people involved in the cases she solves. Along the way, the reader can learn about daily life, religious strictures, and legal tensions in 1920s India.
In addition to recreating the atmosphere of New York City in 1896, Caleb Carr walks the reader through the early days of forensic psychology. This historical mystery series focuses on the evolution of psychology as a science and the use of forensic science as a tool for the police. The beginnings of the modern police force, cameos by real figures from history, and juxtaposition of New York’s gilded mansions and slums evoke the atmosphere of the time.
Murder mysteries set in Victorian London are nothing new, but I particularly like the way these books explore middle-class attitudes toward police and respectability. In solving his cases, Inspector Pitt frequently comes up against butlers and ladies of the house who simply refuse to cooperate. After all, detectives ask so many rude questions and behave quite above their station! It’s a good thing Inspector Pitt can rely on his wife Charlotte to help him navigate the minefield of social sensibilities.
The first book in this historical mystery series takes place in 1866, among a gathering of the bands of the Kiowa nation. While Tay-Bodal goes about the business of solving a murder, the author includes descriptions of people around him preparing food, discussing treaty negotiations, repairing clothing and equipment, and going about their daily routines. These books have so much detail about the time period, but they also make it much easier to follow historical events occurring and their impacts on the people involved.
In feudal Japan, Sano Ichiro must dance cautiously around court politics, rigid social hierarchies, and a million unwritten rules of behavior to find justice. His investigations are set against a backdrop of major events in Japanese history, including the 1703 earthquake in Edo and the tale of the 47 Ronin.
Even in the middle of a global war, someone still needs to bring murderers to justice. When the Army higher-ups find out about newly-enlisted Billy Boyle’s background as a detective in Boston, they put him to work tracking down people who commit murder in times of war. He visits just about every European conflict in World War II, giving the reader a look into the world of French partisans, the Irish Republican Army, and the Sicilian Mafia in the 1940s.
China has an astonishing variety of climates, cultures, languages, and history. Li Du, an Imperial librarian in the early 18th Century, experiences many of them while investigating mysteries. Sometimes, he works on behalf of the Emperor, and sometimes he works despite Imperial wishes. His questions take him into a Tibetan guesthouse, the underbelly of civil service exams, and behind the scenes of negotiations with Jesuit missionaries.
Set in the 1830s in New Orleans, this historical mystery series highlights all the ways that city have changed and how it’s stayed the same. Benjamin January, a Creole physician, deals with the complexities of a pre-Emancipation city, moving through many layers of society while tracking down miscreants and murderers. The reader meets voudon practitioners, fancy hotel patrons, and riverboat smugglers among details of music and food that bring New Orleans to life.
This series starts out on a very small scale, set entirely within a small Bavarian village in 1659, just after the Thirty Years’ War. As the sequels progress, the author takes the reader through all of Bavaria, weaving discussions of folklore and politics with the history of the region.
Three Imperial Roman Detectives
Marcus Didius Falco(by Lindsey Davis) works as a private investigator of sorts, looking into crimes without the official backing of the state. One of the most interesting things I found in this series is the discussions of the various forms of Roman law enforcement and jurisdiction. There is also a spin-off series of mysteries starring Marcus Didius Falco’s daughter, allowing the reader to see some of the other side of the gender divide in Roman society.
Gaius Petreus Ruso (by Ruth Downie)is a Roman army doctor (a medicus) posted to the far northern reaches of the Empire, in Britannia. While he solves crimes, the reader sees a wide swath of Imperial Roman society, with plenty of details about the local tribes in what is Chester, England today and their uneasy truce with the Romans.
Libertus (by Rosemary Rowe) has earned his freedom from slavery by the time the first novel in this series opens. However, this backstory allows the author to explore the intricacies of Roman practices of slavery and social hierarchies through Libertus’s detective work.
This isn’t actually a historical mystery series, but the setting and details are so fascinating that I’m including it here. Edie Kiglatuk is an Inuit guide, schoolteacher, and sometimes hunter on a tiny island far north of the Arctic Circle. She investigates crimes in her community while dealing with settlement politics, historical trauma, and some of the most inhospitable terrain humans manage to survive. In later books in the series, she visits other communities in the far north of Russia and Greenland, and the reader gets a glimpse of the cultural similarities of communities separated by so much distance.
