Life on Toast #30

I am trying to remember to post these daily. Regardless, I have no egrets.

Life on Toast #28 & #29

More below...

Life on Toast #26 & #27

There's more. Keep clicking.

Life on Toast #24 & #25

no 25 is after the cut. 

Life on Toast #23

Life on Toast #21 & #22

#22 (below) is one of my favorites so far.

Life on Toast #20

There really is a giant green olive on a street corner in Corning, CA.

Life on Toast #18 AND #19

Don't forget to look at #19 below the cut

Life on Toast #17

Life on Toast #16

Life on Toast #14-15

Don't forget to look at the one below the cut....

Life on Toast #13

Lucky number 13. :)

Life on Toast #12

Life on Toast #11

Life on Toast #10

Follow on Instagram @t_is_for_toast

Life on Toast #9

Life on Toast #7 & #8

#8 is below the cut 

Life on Toast #6

Life on Toast #5

Life on Toast #4

Life on Toast #3

Life on Toast #2

Life on Toast #1

Trying out a new sequential layout here and on Instagram (@t_is_for_toast). 

Toasterariums

As some of you know, I like to garden. I have a few containers (like the one above) that fall into the category of unusual. When my office decided to get together a team to create terrariums for the IIDA (International Interior Design Association), Northern CA chapter auction this year, I agreed to help out.

This year’s IIDA Northern California Chapter Philanthropic theme is 

Oligodynamic action

In 1878 a young black man named Osbourn Dorsey (who was, as near as anyone can tell, 16 at the time) applied for and was granted the first known patent worldwide for..... the doorknob. Not much is known about Osbourn, except for his patent application. Which is a shame. I want to know more about him. I mean, look at that face.

Is this the Osbourn Dorsey who invented the doorknob? I hope so.

Doorknobs have traditionally been constructed of brass or bronze. Both of these metals have a high copper component (brass=tin+copper; bronze=zinc+copper). The oligodynamic properties of copper were once dismissed as folklore. More and more research papers point out the antiseptic properties of copper. Unfortunately, many people had to fall sick before this was figured out. 

In 1976, a plague of sorts plowed through the American Legion hotel in Philadelphia. A virulent flu bacterium got into a proliferated in the airconditioning vents, spreading to hundreds and killing 34 people. Now known as Legionnaire's Disease, the outbreak caused building practices to be reformed via laws that aim to establish cleaner air and water. Copper filters and pipes are now the norms in most hospitals and other public buildings.

As bacteria ooze across these surfaces, they absorb copper molecules which disrupt their working metabolism, causing death in about an hour. Doorknobs made of brass or bronze are, therefore, self-sterilizing. This oligodynamic action is the ability of small amounts of heavy metals to exert a lethal effect on bacterial cells. This is good since one germ covered doorknob can infect half of your office in a single hour. Further studies have even shown that older, tarnished doorknobs are even more effective at eliminating Staphylococcus bacteria and even the Influenza virus. Use of brass or bronze doorknobs and push plates in public places are a simple way of reducing the spread of infection.

References

Kean, Sam (2011) The Disappearing Spoon. New York: Little Brown & Company

Michels, H., W. Moran, and J. Michel, (2008) "ANTIMICROBIAL PROPERTIES OF COPPER ALLOY SURFACES,  WITH A FOCUS ON HOSPITAL-ACQUIRED INFECTIONS" International Journal of  Metalcasting 

Noyce, O. et al. (2006) "Potential Use of Copper Surfaces to Reduce Survival of Epidemic Metacillan-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the Healthcare Environment" Journal of Hospital Infection.

Kajigaya, Naoko et al. (2015) "Assessment of contamination using an ATP bioluminescence assay on doorknobs in a university-affiliated hospital in Japan" BMC Research Notes.

Shimoda, Tomoko et al. (2015) "ATP bioluminescence values are significantly different depending upon material surface properties of the sampling location in hospitals" BMC Research Notes.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/one-germy-doorknob-can-infect-half-your-office-within-hours/
http://www.handsomehandles.co.uk/blog/6/the-invention-and-history-of-door-knobs

https://www.tbks.co.uk/blog/ask-the-expert/the-history-of-door-knobs/

https://www.reference.com/history/o-dorsey-c2356d21b129dfc1

Dorsey's patent application

Hippopotamuslessness

sketch of a hippo I did at the zoo in Portland around 5/2012

you can call it cynicism or you can call it realism, but it's the attitude that's given us a hundred years of hippopotamuslessness.
                                                            -Jon Mooallen-

In the 1890s, the United States ran into trouble, meat-wise. There was unfettered European immigration driving the population up. There was poor land management, leading to massive cattle die-offs during the blizzard of 1897. Upton Sinclair published his book, The Jungle, in 1904 about slaughterhouses. Newspapers across the nation debated the Meat Question.

Bridges of Eggs from Peru to SF

Puente de Piedra, Lima, Peru. photo from creative commons.

In 1608, the architect Juan del Corral designed and built a bridge over the Rio Rimac, connecting Lima to the district of San Lazaro. The bridge is still standing today. This is cool just based on time itself. Cool that a bridge can be built of stone and still be standing, still be being traveled upon over 400 years later. What is even cooler is that the mortar for the bridge was mixed not with water, but with an estimated 10,000 egg whites. Not chicken eggs, sea bird eggs. People went out on cliffs and to islands, harvested ten thousand sea bird eggs with the intent of mixing mortar for a bridge. Though officially the Bridge of Stones (Puente de Piedra) it is sometimes referred to as the Bridge of Eggs.

In the 1840s & 50s, a man named Doc Robinson decided that the Farallones Islands, located 27 miles off of the coast of San Francisco, were the perfect spot to harvest bird eggs. San Francisco grew in leaps and bounds during the Gold Rush years - years in which eggs were scarce. Folks got to the golden coast either by taking a boat all of the way around South America, or overland. In both cases, any chickens would be eaten long before San Francisco showed on the horizon. Shortages lead to high prices. One chicken egg sold for $1 each - the equivalent of thirty dollars in 2019 money.

Doc Robinson and his hired men would take a small (less than 20 ft) boat across the choppy, shark-infested waters, to the Farallones. There are no beaches on all but one of the jagged rocks, just smaller rocks to haul the boat up on to. Then they would scale the cliffs to pull eggs from the nests of Common Murres, Urea aalge.

my quick sketch of Common Murres, both in and out of the water.

Goofy-looking, penguin-shaped birds, the Common Murre always seems to need to run across the surface of the water before their small wings achieve enough lift to pull them from the ocean waves. Their eggs are blue with yolks twice the size of chicken eggs - and also fiery red in color. The bird numbered in the hundreds of thousands before Robinson's enterprise led to the near-mythic San Francisco Egg Wars. Italian eggers headed out to the "Islands of the Dead" to cash in on the Egg Rush. Robinson's hired men held them off of the beach with guns. Men died, fortunes were made, and the legends became the stuff of comic books (literally - check out this out: https://sfnhs.com/2011/08/31/eggs-and-more/)

a pile of stolen eggs waiting to be loaded on the boat. Despite the fact that the rough seas caused the eggers to lose as much as half of their plunder during every trip back to the mainland, they kept at it.  Photo by Arthur Bolten.

It was not uncommon for eggers to fall to their death from the cliffs. Common Murre populations plummeted to less than 30K. The western faction of the Audubon Society was founded to help these sea footballs, pushing through a government mandate in 1881 prohibiting further egging on the islands. It still happened for years after. The Nature Conservancy estimates that murre populations only really began to recover in the last decades of the 20th century.

I keep trying to picture going to the equivalent of a diner in Gold Rush San Francisco and being served a plate of pink scrambled eggs. If Clark Gable & Jeanette MacDonald's 1936 film San Francisco (set during 1906) had been filmed in color, would anyone have gotten the egg color detail correct? A pink Hangtown Omelet* anyone? (*eggs, bacon & oysters).

References:
Bridge of Eggs https://hruk.biz/bridge-of-eggs-in-peru/
http://www.augnet.org/en/history/places/4205-ecuador-quito/
Gold Rush Satirist https://www.sfchronicle.com/chronicle_vault/article/Gold-Rush-satirist-impresario-and-Farallones-13509804.php 
High Egg Prices http://time.com/4149595/farallon-egg-wars/
Girabaldi and the Farallon Egg War http://faralloneggwar.blogspot.com/
San Francisco's Egg Basket http://faralloneggwar.blogspot.com/

I'm having pi for breakfast.

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679.....

In 1988, Larry Shaw decided to celebrate Albert Einstein's birthday with Pi Day. It started at the Exploratorium in San Francisco with a circular parade and the eating of fruit pie. If that is all it takes, then every day could be pie day at my house. Photos below of some pies I have made over the years. Grab a slice and enjoy!

Words, thoughts, and reading at pace.

Those of you who've joined me before should probably turn to those who have not and assure them I am just as crazy about reading as they think. If I could spend all day in the hammock chair in the garden reading and sipping my coffee, I would.
We are not quite a quarter of the way through the year and my read book list is maybe 1/3 of its usual length. (I post a full list every year so you can look at them if you want to.) Part of this speed is related to the fact that I'm taking some classes. My personal rule from my undergrad years of not reading for pleasure when I should be studying has resurfaced. Only this time I permit some fun fiction once the homework for the day is done.
When one of the book bloggers that I follow posted her 1000-page reading challenge for the month of March, I wondered how my reduced rate would affect something like this.