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Put Your Elbow Grease to Work

We’re not talking about spring cleaning. For now forget about the floors, dust and windows. Look to the items you have neglected, maybe forever. There are places in your home could be harboring all sorts of nasty gunk and grime. They might not appear dirty, but don’t forget to clean them to keep them working properly and to keep you and your family safe.

If your broom and mop are coated in dirt, you’re ultimately only spreading it around your house when you’re trying to clean. Soak your mop in a mixture of water and bleach to kill anything that’s seeped into it. To clean your broom head, soak it in water and dish soap then wipe it down and let it dry.

Bath mats on the bathroom floor get just as dirty as your towels do. Dirt, dead skin and more end up there and accumulate, and even if your feet look clean, you can track contaminants to other parts of your house. Wash bath mats regularly and spritz them with white vinegar to clean bacteria between washes.

Gunk and buildup on your iron might make it seem like it’s time to buy a new one. But you can make it as good as new by cleaning it with a vinegar and baking soda paste.

Aside from getting tossed in carts and on conveyor belts, reusable grocery bags can get covered in gunk from your groceries, including dirt from vegetables, juice from leaky raw meat and more. Canvas bags can be washed in the washing machine, while recycled plastic bags can be washed by hand in warm soapy water and air dried.

Most people know that smartphones and tablets are magnets for germs because they touch all kinds of surfaces. There are plenty of electronic wipe products on the market because of this. But most people don’t consider items like their driver’s licence and credits cards when wiping down their personal possessions. These cards are handled by other people and set on all sorts of different surfaces. Use a towel or antibacterial wipe to clean it off and then rub an eraser along the magnetic strip to remove any grime that would make it harder to read.

Washing your sheets and pillowcases is part of your cleaning routine, but what about washing your pillows themselves? Dust mites, a major trigger of allergies and asthma, and their droppings accumulate by the millions in your pillow, as can multiple kinds of fungus, so it’s recommended to wash it in hot water. Check the tag on your pillow to find washing instructions.

Your keys can collect all sorts of germs, grease and dirt. On top of sanitizing them, make sure they’re free of rust by scrubbing them with salt and lemon juice or soaking them in water and vinegar. Toothpaste can also help make keys shiny and clean.

Small appliances are often not cleaned as regularly as they should be. While you might clean the coffee pot, what about the coffee maker itself? Bean debris and hard water deposits build up inside the machine. Run a cycle with half vinegar and half water to flush it out, and then a couple more cycles of just water to clear out the vinegar. You can do the same thing with Keurig machines.

You touch your car’s steering wheel and dashboard buttons after touching all sorts of surfaces, including gas pumps and your dirty exterior door handles, so it shouldn’t be surprising how dirty they can be. Wipe down plastic parts with disinfectant wipe and use leather cleaner for any leather surfaces.

It’s obvious when glass shower doors are grimy. But shower curtains can look deceptively clean. Although they’re constantly exposed to soap and warm water, that doesn’t mean they’re clean. In fact, they’re a breeding ground for all sorts of mold and mildew if not cleaned regularly (ideally at least once a month). You can run plastic shower curtains through the washing machine on the rinse cycle with a little white vinegar or run it through the wash cycle with detergent.

Even the sturdiest trash bag is prone to leave little bits of food and garbage lingering in your trash can that can fester and leave unpleasant smells even after you take out the trash. Small indoor trash cans can sometimes fit in your dishwasher for a thorough clean. For large indoor or outdoor garbage bins, take them outside, add some dish soap, scrub them out and spray them down with a hose.

The exhaust fans in your bathroom and kitchen get just as filthy as ceiling fan blades, but the dust and grease accumulates behind a grille or cover. Blast out dirt from the bathroom exhaust fan with a can of compressed air and wipe the exterior with a microfiber cloth. Remove and clean the mesh filters and fans in your kitchen exhaust.

Even after the rinse cycle, your dishwasher can remain dirty. Hard water deposits, soap scum and other buildup can cling onto the racks, and food can clog the drains. Scrub these places thoroughly, then run a cycle on hot with white vinegar to clean and disinfect. Remember to clean the filter.

Dust accumulates on houseplants just the same as other surfaces in your home. Brush down sleek leaves with a duster or microfiber cloth, or spritz them with water and wipe down. For textured or fuzzy leaves, you can use a toothbrush to get into the grooves.

Kitchen, bathtub and shower drains get a lot of TLC to make sure they don’t get clogged with hair, soap scum and food. But the drains in your bathroom sinks shouldn’t be neglected. Pop-up bathroom sink plugs are easy to forget to clean because you can’t see the gunk surrounding them. But before your bathroom sink gets so clogged it’s unable to drain, disconnect the stopper piece from underneath the sink to give it a good cleaning, and remove all the debris stuck in the pipe above it.

Most people know to wipe down their patio furniture before storing it away for the winter and again getting it out in time for backyard barbecues in the spring. But many people neglect their outdoor umbrellas, especially the inside. Dirt, moisture and bugs get trapped inside and can stain the fabric, allow mildew to grow and possibly even rust the metal mechanisms in the umbrella. Brush or vacuum out debris before washing the umbrella with warm water and laundry detergent. Add bleach to tackle mildew or tree sap stains.

Running over your lampshades with a duster once in a blue moon might not be enough to grab grime that has sunk into the surface. Try rolling it with a sticky lint roller, or vacuum it with an upholstery brush attachment. If your fabric lampshade is stained, soak the lampshade in warm soapy water with laundry or dishwashing detergent, then scrub it clean, rinse and dry.

So many crumbs fall into the bottom of a toaster. When these accumulate, they can start to burn, creating an unappetizing smell, or even catch fire. On top of simply dumping out the crumbs, wash out your toaster using soapy water and a washcloth, thin scrubber or toothbrush to make this small appliance as good as new.

Many people empty out their dust cup and replace or clean the filters on their vacuum regularly, but some additional steps are necessary to keep this appliance running smoothly. Wash your dust cup with warm soapy water and check your brushes, belts, and hoses to remove any built-up dirt or hair caught in them. It’s important to keep your vacuum clean, because it’s just one of the many areas of your home where dangerous bacteria might be growing.

Happy cleaning, everyone!

Inventions with Impact

In just a few millennia, mankind has moved from dark caves to spectacular cities and gained the ability, thanks to the internet, to pull up a good chunk of our species’ accumulated knowledge from the telephones in our pockets.

How we got from worshiping the moon to walking on it is the direct result of history-making inventions old and new. Here’s a look at some of the inventions that have had major impacts on humankind.

The wheel – The most amazing thing about the wheel isn’t so much its invention, but that people relied on dragging things around for so long. A 5,500-year-old Sumerian pictograph of a wheeled sledge represents the earliest evidence of humankind finally working smarter, not harder.

Steel – The key process of tempering steel was known to ancient Egyptians by about 900 BC, giving rise to the world’s first steel industry. Swords and knives were the initial bestsellers.

The compass – Twelfth-century Chinese and European mariners discovered that pieces of lodestone, a magnetic ore, tended to align with the North Star. Iron or steel needles touched by lodestones for long enough took on the same quality, and so, the compass was born.

The printing press – The printing press was the product of other inventions. Paper and movable type first appeared in China, but Germany’s Johannes Gutenberg generally is credited with inventing a machine that transferred ink-based text and images to paper some time around 1439. This drastically reduced the cost of printing books and other documents, and spurred the spread of information like no invention before.

The rocket – Rocket propulsion originated centuries before the first manned space flight. In 12th-century Asia, rockets propelled by a mixture of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal were used for military purposes.

Guns –. Around the year 1000, after having invented gunpowder, the Chinese came up with a bamboo tube that used gunpowder to fire a spear. This is widely regarded as the first gun. Rifles, pistols, revolvers and more advanced forms of handheld weaponry came later.

The telescope – In 1609, Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei used a small, primitive telescope to observe mountains and craters on the moon. He also noted a band of light stretching across the heavens, which would later be identified as our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

The microscope – Moving from observing very large things to very tiny ones, the compound microscope was invented around 1590 by three Dutch spectacle makers: Hans Jansen, his son Zacharias Jansen and Hans Lippershey.

Refrigeration – Artificial refrigeration was first demonstrated by William Cullen at the University of Glasgow in 1748. But it was Ferdinand Carré who introduced ammonia as a vapor-compression coolant in 1859. The French inventor’s refrigeration became widely used, and vapor-compression refrigeration remains the most popular method of cooling.

The steam engine – Until the 17th century, the steam power had not been harnessed for any practical purpose. That changed in 1698, when Thomas Savery patented a steam-powered pump for sucking water out of mines. Much refinement later, this technology would power everything from locomotives to ships.

The automobile – Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is widely credited as the inventor of the first true automobile. In 1769 the Frenchman’s enormous steam-powered vehicle, a tricycle, carried four people for 20 minutes at 3.6 km per hour.

The airplane – The Wright Flyer of 1903 was the first powered airplane to make a sustained flight under a pilot’s control. Designed and constructed by Wilbur and Orville Wright, it flew across the base of the Kill Devil Hills four times. The aircraft now is displayed in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

The battery – By providing the first source of continuous current, Italian Alessandro Volta’s invention of the electric battery in 1800 opened the door to many of the world-changing inventions on this list.

The telephone – After much competition and controversy, Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell was awarded a US patent for both the telephone instrument and the concept of a telephone system on March 7, 1876. His patent often is described as one of the most valuable of all time.

Vaccines – British physician Edward Jenner introduced the first vaccine in 1796, when he used the cowpox virus to inoculate human patients against smallpox. Since then, vaccination has wiped out smallpox, decimated polio and continues to help prevent other deadly diseases such as typhoid fever, cholera and tuberculosis.

Internal combustion engine – In 1859, Étienne Lenoir unveiled the first successful gasoline-powered engine in Paris. Closely modeled on a horizontal steam engine, it was expertly refined by German inventor Nikolaus Otto in 1878, and went on to become the power plant of choice for most of the world’s motorized vehicles.

The camera – Photography was born when the camera obscura was adapted to produce a permanent image. This was achieved by two Frenchmen, Joseph Nicéphore Niepce and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, in the 1820s and 1830s.

The computer – The Analytical Engine, which was designed and partly built by English inventor Charles Babbage in the 19th century, is generally considered to have been the first computer. Its four components – the mill, the store, the reader and the printer – were precursors to the CPU, memory and storage and input and output devices of modern computers.

Television – Technical developments in Britain, Europe, the Soviet Union and the United States made TV broadcasting feasible by 1931. It was then that a team headed by Britain’s Isaac Shoenberg invented a complete and practical TV broadcast system based on the Emitron camera tube and a receiver based on a cathode-ray tube.

Motion pictures – Legendary American inventor Thomas Edison is frequently credited with inventing the motion picture in 1889, despite the fact that his motion-picture operations were run by an assistant, W.K.L. Dickson, and that several British and French inventors could also claim precedent. What can’t be debated is that the 1892 version of Edison’s Kinetograph camera used a 35-mm format that is still in use today.

Concrete – When English inventor Joseph Aspdin burned and ground together a mixture of limestone and clay in 1824, the Portland cement he created would go on to become the dominant cementing agent used in the production of concrete, which is now used to build the vast majority of modern structures.

Plastic – The first plastic, Parkesine, was developed by British inventor Alexander Parkes when he combined chloroform and castor oil. Parkes won a bronze medal for his invention at the International Exhibition of 1862 in London.

Dynamite – Alfred Nobel of Sweden invented dynamite in 1867 when, by chance, he combined nitroglycerin and a powdery compound known as kieselguhr. This produced a substance that was much safer to use and easier to handle than nitroglycerin alone.

The incandescent light bulb – Despite several competing claims, American Thomas Edison has always received most of the credit for inventing the light bulb. A bulb isn’t much good without power, and Edison also had developed a practical lighting system to illuminate “his” invention.

Radio – Guglielmo Marconi was the first inventor to develop a method for transmitting wireless telegraph signals over significant distances. Eventually, in 1901, the Italian physicist bridged the Atlantic when he transmitted the letter “s” in Morse code from Poldhu, Cornwall, to St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Antibiotics – A decade after Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming noted that Penicillium notatum mold killed bacteria growing on a culture plate, British biochemist Ernst Chain and others isolated penicillin in 1938 and showed that it could fight many serious bacterial infections.

Nuclear fission – On Dec. 2, 1942, Italy’s Enrico Fermi and his team ushered in the Atomic Age by operating the world’s first self-sustaining nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago. Known as a “pile,” the device was made up of an array of uranium and graphite blocks.

Artificial satellites – The Soviet Union launched the first Earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik 1, on Oct. 4, 1957. Circling the Earth every 96 minutes, Sputnik’s radio signal was the first to be transmitted around the world.

The Internet – In 1974, American computer scientist Vinton Cerf first described the transmission control protocol (TCP) that enables different types of machines on distant networks to route and assemble data packets. This laid the foundation for the global network that is now used by more than 3 billion people.

Mobile phones – Widely regarded as the inventor of the cellular phone, Martin Cooper is the American engineer who led the Motorola team that built the first mobile cellphone, and made the first cellphone calls, in 1972 and 1973. The result, the enormous DynaTAC phone, weighed around eight times as much as today’s smart phones.

Travels with Fido

Can’t bear the thought of boarding your four-legged family member as you head off for a road trip? With a little extra planning, Fido can road trip with you. Here’s some tips about traveling with your dog.

Before you hit the open road, first pay a visit to your veterinarian to make sure your furry friend is up to date on vaccinations and healthy enough for travel. Once he’s cleared, it’s a good idea to go on a few short practice trips before you embark on the real thing. This will give you a chance to see if your dog suffers from motion sickness or exhibits any nervous or anxious behaviors about traveling.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, take him on a few car rides to fun places like the dog park or a favorite pet supply store so he starts associating the car with something positive, says animal expert Dr. Tricia Earley. If he shows signs of nausea (drooling, excessive lip-licking, shaking, vomiting), you can offer treats containing ground ginger or a few drops of ginger extract 30 minutes before travel to help settle his stomach, adds Dr. Earley. If that doesn’t seem to do the trick, talk to your vet about a prescription anti-nausea medication.

Practice can’t prepare you for everything, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve packed accordingly. While your list will depend on your dog’s individual needs, here’s a good place to start:
Leash and collar with up-to-date ID tags
Food and water (Tip: Now is not the time to try a new food!)
Waste bags (Tip: Before the trip teach your dog to relieve himself on multiple surfaces-not just grass!)
Dog bed and blankets
Medical records and vaccination certificates
A few new toys and a couple of old favorites to keep boredom at bay
A recent photo of your dog
Flea and tick control
Treats
Collapsible bowls (Tip: Let him get used to them a week or two before you travel.)
A pet seat-belt or car seat and hammock to keep him safe and your seats protected

Rest stops are essential for a peaceful trip. Experts suggest you take a 15- to 30-minute break every four hours so your pup can do his business and stretch his legs. Dogs love routine, so the closer you can keep to your regular walking and feeding schedule, the better.

Snowflakes Marching, Polar Bears Pushing

I’m hoping that you can visualize some of the cringe-worthy comments you hear on TV these days, particularly from the meteorologists, in an amusing way.

Take, for example, the phrase “a massive winter storm is marching in”. Can you picture a bunch of snowflakes, or perhaps penguins, marching like an army toward your town?

Or try “an arctic blast is sweeping in”. Can you see a blast in the background as a huge broom sweeps everything in its path?

Perhaps you can ponder the meaning when the weather forecaster says the temperature is minus zero. How does minus zero differ from zero? Is that even possible?

How about “a massive cold front is pushing southward”. Can you picture a wall of snow being propelled forward by a group of polar bears standing on their hind feet?

And have you noticed the “nanny state” instructions from the meteorologists that have become so common of late? “You will need a warm jacket, mittens and a hat when you go out today.” “Don’t leave the house without your umbrella, heavy rain is expected”.

Then, of course, there’s the constant use of “weatherwise,” “temperaturewise” and a host of other instances of “wise” being tacked onto the ends of otherwise normal words. Why not “weatherdumb” or “Meteorologistdumb”? Or, you know, we could just, you know, sprinkle “you know” throughout our conversations. Meaningless, of course, but no more so than adding “wise.”

I leave you with a storm “rolling in”. Visualize a snowball picking up speed and size as it rolls down the hillside, or tumbleweeds rolling across the prairie.

How Months Are Named

Though the names of the months are among the first words we learn, we don’t really give much thought to those names. After all, it merely dictates when we have to do something or be somewhere.

But, the stories behind the names is interesting. The names involve rich histories of kings and emperors, with no shortage of Greek and Roman gods.

January – The month of January is named after Janus, the Roman god of gates and doorways. Janus is represented with two heads that are back to back, which signifies that he is looking back at the past for perspective, as well as forward to the future for hope. His duality perfectly coincides the end of one year and the start of the next. January is marked with renewal and fresh beginnings, which is why it’s the month of resolutions, to make positive changes for the year ahead. Oddly it’s commonly referred to as “Divorce Month,” since more people kick off divorce proceedings in January than any other month.

February – The name February is derived from the Roman period of Februa, which was a festival of purification. Also called the festival of Lupercalia, it was named after the Roman God Februus, who represented purification. In fact, William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar begins during Lupercalia. Mark Antony is instructed by Caesar to strike his wife Calpurnia, in the hope that she’ll be able to conceive. This festival took place on the 15th day of the month and involved some usual cleansing rituals to improve health and fertility. February is the only month to have 28 days – except during the Leap Year, when it has 29. According to an Irish tradition, a woman can ask a man to marry her on this day and have better luck of him saying yes.

March – The third month, March, was formerly the first month of the year in the Roman Calendar. It’s named after Mars, the Roman god of war, and also identified with the Greek god Ares. This month was considered the time to resume war, once the winter thawed out. As the Romans viewed war and fighting as a means to gaining lasting peace, this idea can provide an alternative perspective to the quote, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” Vasectomies spike by 30 percent during March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. As vasectomy patients need to ice the area for a full day, doing so while sitting on the couch and watching the games all day makes perfect sense.

April – April is the month of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. (In the Roman pantheon, she’s known as Venus.) The word April comes from the Latin word apeire, which means to open, likely in connection with flower buds opening to bloom in the spring. April is also marked by April Fools’ Day, which takes place on the first day of the month, and is celebrated by playing pranks on others. It is believed that the tradition began in the 1500s after the shift from the Julian calendar (where new year starts around the March equinox) to the Gregorian calendar (where the new year starts on January 1). Those who didn’t know about the calendar switch, and stuck to the old Julian system, were roundly mocked—and April Fool’s stuck through the years.

May – The name of the fifth month, May, is derived from the French word Mai. It is named after Maia, the goddess of spring and growth. Maia is also the daughter of Faunus, one of the oldest Roman deities and the wife of Vulcan. Also, in Greek mythology, Maia is known as the mother of Hermes. The Greeks and Romans saw Maia as a nurturer filled with warmth and plenty – kind of like May. In Japan, there is a condition known as May Sickness referred to as Gogatsu-byou. As the Japanese school year begins in April, and many changes take place at that time of the year, Gogatsu-byou is a type of depression that affects new students and employees after a few weeks of adjusting to a suddenly busier life.

June – Month six, June, is named after Juno, the Roman goddess of love and marriage, and also the de facto deity-counselor of the Roman state. (Hera is her Greek equivalent.) In Roman mythology, Juno watched over pregnant woman and children and insured safe births, which is why getting married in June is considered good luck. When looking at its goddess name origin, June is not only an ideal time for weddings, but it’s also a good month for renewing vows and conceiving children.

July – July initially was known as Quintilis, or “the fifth month,” which it was on the Julian calendar. July was named in honor of Julius Caesar after his death in 44 B.C., as he was born during this month. In fact, July is the first month of the calendar which is named after a real person. For those who live in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s the month known for its hot summer days, also known as “dog days.” July is the month to head to the beach, pool or playground, and take part in many other outdoor activities. In the United States, people revel in Independence Day celebrations on July 4, while in Canada, July 1 marks the similar Canada Day holiday. In the Southern Hemisphere, July is a month for reflection and meditation as it falls in the middle of the cold, dark winter.

August – The month of August was originally called Sextilis, from the Latin word sextus, meaning six. Its name was changed in honor of the Roman emperor Augustus, Julius Caesar’s great-nephew. Augustus was an emperor who brought peace to a very conflicted area, and inspired growth, reform and a stronger infrastructure within its cities. August is an excellent month for reorganization, improvements and development within ourselves and our own communities. It became the eighth month in 700 B.C. when January and February were moved to the beginning of the year on the Gregorian system.

September – Just like Quinitlis and Sextilis, September comes from the Latin term septem, meaning seven. September was originally the seventh month in the ancient Roman calendar – which was 10 months long – until 153 B.C. when it became the ninth month of the year. For the Romans, September was known for the celebration called Ludi Romani, which lasted several weeks and featured chariot races, gladiatorial contests and lots of feasts. In the spiritual sense, September can be thought of as the month that we celebrate our own personal victories and accomplishments.

October – October is derived from the word octo, which means eight, as it was the eighth month of the Roman calendar, and later became the tenth month with the Gregorian calendar. October is marked by many festivals taking place around the world, including Oktoberfest in Germany and the Aloha Festival in Hawaii, which is also known as the Mardi Gras of the Pacific. It’s also National Cookie Month, National Pizza Month, National Popcorn Month, National Dessert Month, National Pretzel Month, National Seafood Month, National Sausage Month and National Pasta Month.

November – November is derived from the Latin word novem, which means nine. Just like the others, its name stuck, even after January and February were added to the calendar, making November the eleventh month. In the United States, November is associated with the much-anticipated Thanksgiving holiday, which involves lots of eating, a four-day weekend, and Black Friday, the start of the Christmas holiday season and the busiest shopping day of the year.

December – December comes from the Latin word decem, meaning ten. It was the tenth month of the Julian calendar, and now the twelfth month of the Gregorian one. The Latin name is derived from Decima, the middle Goddess of the Three Fates, and the one who personifies the present. In the Northern Hemisphere, December is not only the start of winter but is also known for having the shortest day of the year with the least amount of daylight hours on December 21.

Montana Winters Not for Wimps

Yep, you’re right. The weather outside is frightful. But quit your bellyaching and consider how much worse it could be!

(This article from This Is Montana, published by the University of Montana, Missoula, spells it out.)

It seems that this year much of Montana is experiencing a tough winter, but it’s actually not. We are just getting back to winter after last year’s weird spell. Temperature readings haven’t gone wild – yet. No reporting stations have recorded 50 below or colder, and the coldest known low during January’s first week was 46 below Fahrenheit. Twenty to 30 below was more prevalent in the past.

Stories abound about conditions changing quickly and in a pronounced way. Montana holds the national record for cold with a 70-degrees-below-zero reading near Helena. And if you research the recorded low for most Montana towns on any given day from early November through March, you will see they range from minus 10 to minus 50 or colder. Archives of every Montana newspaper hold facts that give credibility to our reputation as a place where winter isn’t wimpy!

Frigid times can come slowly while at other times the transition is abrupt. Take a look back to 1989: January witnessed a disastrous weeklong warm spell that tricked some trees into believing spring had arrived. Unsuspecting vegetation prepared to show new growth until suddenly winter reclaimed its place in a matter of hours with a vengeance. Much plant life was killed. An Arctic air mass invaded the Northern Rockies bringing record cold temperatures and extreme wind chills. Ahead of the front, on Jan. 30, downslope winds gusted to 100 mph at Shelby, 102 mph at Browning and 124 mph at Choteau. Twelve empty railroad cars were blown over in Shelby. Elsewhere, roofs were ripped off houses, mobile homes torn apart and trees and power lines downed. Then on Jan. 31, temperatures plummeted. In Helena, it remained colder than minus 20 for a week, including a low of minus 33. Wind chills dropped to minus 75. At Wisdom the mercury sunk to minus 52. As the cold hit Great Falls, the temperature went from 54 degrees above zero to minus 23 (a 67-degree change) and did not rise to above minus 20 until Feb. 4. This included temperatures of minus 35 and minus 33.

Another abrupt renewal of winter occurred on Dec. 24, 1924. The temperature at Fairfield near Great Falls dropped from a balmy 63 at noon to a bone chilling minus 21 by midnight. This 84-degree difference still stands as the greatest 12-hour temperature change ever recorded in the United States. At another time, Browning witnessed a change of 100 degrees in 18 hours – a Chinook wind had warmed the January temperature to a spring-like 44 degrees. A traveling arctic invasion took the reading to 56 below zero. This is the U.S. and also world record for the greatest temperature drop in 24 hours.

Other stories of long, tough, frigid seasons abound, such as the winter of 1936. January was colder than usual. In February, the mean temperature from 111 reporting stations was 22.4 degrees colder than normal. Temperatures fell on Jan. 13 to minus 53 at Summit (west of the Continental Divide) and on the Jan. 15 to minus 57 at Cascade (southwest of Great Falls) and minus 59 at Frazer and Glasgow. While March saw an overall average temperature, the month ended with readings well below zero. On March 30, Red Lodge was at minus 20, Chessman Reservoir was at minus 28 and Summit’s low was minus 29. Winter’s grip held through early April with temperatures bottoming out at minus 28 at Chessman Reservoir on April 1. During that winter, many areas of Montana east of the mountains recorded below zero readings for 57 days straight. Ten below was considered to be a warm day, and the wind chill often exceeded minus 100.

In 1965, a Terry woman reported to the Miles City Star that it had been minus 20 at her place on Nov. 20 and minus 20 on March 20 “and darned few days did the temperature rise above 20 below in-between” – a total period of four months or 123 days. Pat Gudmundson, writing in a Miles City Star publication, related that the 1977-78 cold season started with heavy November snows and below-normal temperatures that continued through each month. A February blizzard isolated many southeastern towns when 15- to 20-foot drifts blocked roads and buried houses up to their rooftops. Snowplow crews struggled to open roads only to be hit by another storm.

To most folks who experienced it, the winter of 1919-20 was considered severe because it lasted from early October until May. But 1886-87 is thought to be the worst because of its impact on the cattle industry. This was the winter Charlie Russell so poignantly titled his sketch “Waiting for a Chinook or The Last of the 5,000 Brand,” which started his rise to fame. After an extremely dry summer and fall, grass was scarce. Arctic storms hit in November and December followed by short thaws. By January, a hard icy crust covered what little vegetation there was, making it impossible for animals to get at it. Deep snow and a fierce minus-30 to minus-40 cold returned and continued unabated until early March. It was the end of an era, 50 to 95 percent of the great cattle herds were lost, and the days of unmanaged, free-roaming grazing were over.

Words for THE Day

Valentine’s Day, the holiday for lovers young and old, is filled with flowers, candy and sometimes elaborate greeting cards. It’ also a day marked by considerable usage of specific images, words and phrases:

Adore
Ardor
Be Mine
Beau
Bouquet
Bow and Arrow
Boyfriend
Candy
Cherish
Cherub
Crush
Cupid
Darling
Dating
Enamored
Fall for
Flame
Flirt
Gifts
Girlfriend
Heart
Heartthrob
Hugs
Kiss
Like
Longing
Love
Lover
Lovesick
Romance
Romantic
Rose
Secret Admirer
Smitten
Suitor
Valentine
Woo
Yearning

Express your love in your own way on Feb. 14 and have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Thoughts of Love

As Valentine’s Day nears, it seems a good time to look over some of the thoughts about love penned over the centuries.

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Bronte

“Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove,
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.” – John Donne

“Tis better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.” – St. Thomas Aquinas

“Who so loves believes the impossible. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he and I was I.” – Michel de Montaigne

“Love on through all ills, and love on till they die” – Thomas Moore

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle

“I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints,
I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life!
And if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.” – Euripides

“Who, being loved, is poor?” – Oscar Wilde

“Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee.” – Song of Solomon 4:7

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4

“Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all transgressions.” – Proverbs 10:12

“Above all, love one another deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” – 1 Peter 4:8

Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone.

A Panoply of Fading Jobs

Lamplighter, elevator operator, coal miner, buggy whip maker. These and other jobs have vanished or been sharply curtailed over the years. Things change – be it from technology advancing, an influx of cheap labor due to globalization, shifting immigration patterns or even just a change in consumer tastes.

While many industries and jobs seemed doomed to the dust bins of history, many of us remain stuck in denial when we should be looking forward to automation and robots taking the reins from humans.

Businesses come and go. A very small number tend to survive through the generations, and it’s unlikely even some of the biggest names in business today will make it to the next century. Things change, and economies evolve. There’s not much you can do about it. And when that happens, the jobs change, too.

Employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics related to job growth and decline helps to pinpoint a handful of jobs that are rapidly shrinking – and which might be almost completely gone within the next decade. Information from a report compiled by Lottoland aided in the process.

While these jobs probably always will exist in some fashion, their roles are quickly diminishing. They might not be fields you want to try to break into. Here’s take a quick look at some jobs on the endangered-species list.

Drivers. The world will always have drivers of some sort, and we’ll probably still be driving in 10 years. But the writing is on the wall, and a lot of resources are dedicated to handing over the wheel to automation. Self-driving cars are only a few years away, and when the switch happens, it’s not just our personal vehicles that will be autonomous. It’s Uber vehicles, long-haul 18-wheelers, public buses and more.

Farmers. Not all farmers will disappear within 10 years, but as we’ve seen over the past couple of generations, their role will diminish. At one time, most Americans were farmers. Now, there are only 2 million across the country. And it’s a shrinking field. Technology is making it easier for fewer people to produce more yield, and it’s likely that indoor farms and even lab-grown meats will start increasing in popularity. The new batch of farmers might resemble scientists and biologists more than anything.

Postal workers. The number of postal workers is dwindling for many reasons. Private companies, such as UPS and FedEx, are taking on some of the burden. But technology is the main culprit. As the mail system’s facilities become more automated and technologically capable, fewer people are going to be needed to run them. Postal workers have been pegged as America’s fastest-disappearing job.

Broadcasters. In an age when Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite have been replaced by Wolf Blitzer and Brian Williams, many people have already labeled broadcast journalism as dead. This is another industry that won’t disappear completely. But it is shrinking, meaning the few positions that are out there will become even more competitive. And generally, broadcast reporting is a hard job that pays relatively little and requires long hours.

Jewelers. The shrinking of the American jewelry industry is mostly due to globalization. There will always be local jewelers, but most jewelry manufacturing has moved overseas to contain costs. According to the statistics bureau, there aren’t even that many jewelers left in the U.S. – around 40,000 as of 2014. And that number is set to drop by 11% by 2024.

Fishermen. Professional fishermen face threats to their jobs on all fronts. The technology is clearly getting better, meaning fewer people are required to run an operation. But imports of seafood and farm-raised fish are becoming more popular and cheaper. There’s also the issue of overfishing to take into consideration and the fact that climate change is having a big effect on marine life and stocks of available fish.

Printers and publishers. Publishing and printing, at least in the old-fashioned sense, is an endangered industry. Technology has brought it to the digital realm, and we’ve seen the aftermath in declining newspaper readership and the rise of e-books. We’ll always publish books and periodicals, but the folks who have been trained in the old ways of producing them are likely to find themselves out of a job in the near future.

Cashiers. It’s clear to anyone who has been in a grocery store or big box chain recently that the days of the cashier are numbered. Cashiers are being replaced with self-checkout kiosks. Amazon is taking this a step further by experimenting with stores that don’t have checkout lines at all. It might take longer than a decade for the majority of cashiers to disappear, but they’re on the list.

Delivery. We’ve already looked at jobs such as drivers and postal workers. Both of those jobs aim at one primary function: delivering things. But we think that adding “delivery” as its own category is justified. Millions of people deliver things professionally – be it pizzas, newspapers or even people. And once again, the clock is ticking on these jobs, potentially leaving tens of millions out of work.

Travel agents. If you’re a fan of travel sites, such as Kayak, Priceline, or Hotwire, you’re slowly killing a long-established industry: travel agencies. Depending on your age, it’s entirely possible you never used a travel agent. At one time, these people were indispensable. These days, you can easily find a flight, hotel and car all from your phone – which is the main reason travel agents jobs are headed for extinction.

Dispatchers. We touched on drivers and delivery, but what about the people who tell those people where to go? They, too, are in trouble. We traditionally call these people dispatchers, and their jobs are in serious jeopardy. The main reason why is due to automation like many other imperiled jobs. Computers can route resources where they’re needed as well as (if not better than) any human.

Telemarketers. There was a time when you didn’t want to answer your phone because you thought it might be a telemarketer. They still exist, but fewer of them are flesh-and-blood humans. You might be familiar with robocalls. These days, these robot callers are replacing telemarketers. They are able to make more calls in less time, all while eliminating the need for employers to pay people to do it.

Social media professionals. Social media has wormed its way into every facet of our lives. Think of it this way: If it happened and you didn’t post it on Instagram, did it happen at all? With the advent of social media has come social media experts and managers. These jobs might exist in the future in some form. But social media isn’t going anywhere, and it might be akin to being a “television expert” or something similar in coming years. As the LottoLand report says, the skills associated with these jobs will become more commonplace than specialized.

Manufacturing workers. Manufacturing is declining at a rapid pace. It’s been happening for a while. This is one of the biggest issues facing the American economy. We simply don’t have or need armies of manufacturing workers like we used to. Factories have been automated, and many other manufacturing jobs have been relocated to countries where labor is cheaper. These jobs aren’t coming back, and they will, in all likelihood, continue to disappear.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Today’s newest, fastest and best technology will soon look like a relic to future shoppers. With each new update, release and revision, the last version immediately feels primitive. Some products last just a few years, others endure for centuries, but one thing is certain – obsolescence is often inevitable. A look at our telephones and associated devices gives a good picture of what is happening.

Landlines. 1876-2017
Alexander Graham Bell revolutionized human communication when he made the first phone call to his assistant, Thomas Watson. The landline was born and it dominated for more than a century. The mobile era, however, signaled the end for the old-fashioned landline. In 2017, lawmakers in Illinois finally voted to allow AT&T to stop serving the state’s 1.2 million remaining landline customers.

Rotary Telephones. 1919-1975
Although Bell developed a primitive version in 1950, it took until 1975 for push button phones to make an impact. Tone-enabled features like call waiting and three-way calling signaled the beginning of the end for the slow, clumsy rotary dialing system, which had ruled since 1919.

Phone Booths. 1878-2011
Before phones were pocket-sized supercomputers, people had to stop if they wanted to make calls on the go. The places they stopped to make those calls were called phone booths. Once a familiar sight phone booths – like the landlines and phone books contained within – were dealt a mortal blow by the arrival of cell phones. Just 100,000 pay phones remain compared to 2 million in 1999.

Phone Books. 1878-2012
In 2007, Bill Gates predicted that “Yellow Page usage among people, say, below 50, will drop to zero – near zero – over the next five years.” More than a decade later, the 20th century relic refuses to die, with bound white and yellow paper directories of business and residential phone numbers still showing up on doorsteps across the country. But while they are still being produced, how often are they actually used in the era of smartphones and Google?

Answering Machines. 1971 – mid-2000s
In 1971, the world met the telephone answering machine with the debut of the PhoneMate Model 400. Now that you didn’t actually have to be home to know who called and what they wanted, the devices changed telephone communication forever. Then along came voicemail, which instantly made countertop machines with little tapes inside feel primitive. Then came cell phones. Then came smartphones. There are still some answering machines left in service, but they are the last of their kind.

1-900 Numbers. 1971-2012
The first known use of the 1-900 number was for the “Ask President Carter” talk radio broadcast, but the exchange became pop culture fodder when Eddie Murphy urged viewers to call one such number in defense of a lobster on “Saturday Night Live.” Soon 1-900 became the curse of parents everywhere when commercials featuring child-focused phone lines as well as adult chat lines became almost unavoidable. Thanks to strict blocking laws approved by the Supreme Court and an FTC ban on 1-900 commercials targeting children, the area code all but disappeared by 2002. Verizon dropped the very last one in 2012.

Dial-Up Modems (56K). 1996-2013
Do you want to use the phone or the computer? At the dawn of the internet age in the 1990s, this was the decision you would have faced if you wanted to get online. Then, 56k dial-up modems were associated with crushingly slow speeds, long startup times and frequent crashes. Then, as early as 2004, Newsweek reported on the “Death of Dial-Up,” which was on the decline thanks to the arrival of broadband. By 2013, just 3 percent of the country was still shackled to dial-up – a drop of 15 percent over the year prior.

Pagers. 1949-1998
The first pager was originally developed for a hospital in 1949. One-way pager use hit its peak in 1998, and then began a rapid downward spiral. The arrival of the two-way cell phone quickly rendered the technology – long a mainstay of drug dealers and doctors – a relic as the digital age drew near.

Fax Machines. 1843 – late 2000s
It’s hard to believe that fax machines have clung to the bottom rung of the office tech ladder for as long as they have. Although facsimile machines aren’t quite dead, they are certainly a dying breed, at least compared to the technology’s peak of popularity in 1997 when 3.6 million of the loud, bulky machines were sold. Faxing was perfected to near-modern standards in the early 1900s, but the technology was so expensive that it was out of reach for most businesses until the 1980s. Today, services like FaxZero, launched in 2006, allow anyone with an email address and an internet connection to send faxes for free, which doesn’t bode well for the future of the fax machine. U.S. sales of fax machines fell by more than half from $181 million in 2005 to $70 million in 2010.