Changing the subject, why are there 5,280 feet in a mile? To learn the answer to that question and a few others as well, read this:
Why Are There 5,280 Feet in a Mile?
Lastly, what do I.M. Pei, Freddy Mercury, the Code of Hammurabi, Gitche Gumee, and the Articles of Confederation have in common?
Don't know? That's an easy one! They are the answers to the Final Jeopardy question in five recent episodes of the television game show Jeopardy!
Gitche Gumee, perhaps the most obscure of the five, is an Ojibwe (Native American tribe) phrase meaning "Big-Sea-Water", which is what the Ojibwes called what we call Lake Superior. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used the phrase in his 1855 poem, "The Song Of Hiawatha":
By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis....
Post-lastly, which do you think is harder, to write poetry using trochaic tetrameter or to remember to phrase all of your answers in the form of a question?
Those are the Great Lakes of North America from space. Lake Superior is the largest one at the upper left. The little squiggly line at the lower left is the Mississippi River.
To write poetry in whatever you said. I struggle to spell Lymerik.
ReplyDeleteAdrian, you made me start my day with a chuckle. Trochaic tetrameter is what that tom-tom-like rhythmic beat is called that Longfellow used in his Hiawatha poem: dee-dee-DUM-da, dee-dee-DUM-da. And limerick is much easier to spell than Auchtermuchy!
DeleteIn your map I see the nose and forehead of Iowa. And, to me, Lake Superior looks like a monster's head. I like that song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" for the info it gives about the Great Lakes. Have a great day!
ReplyDeleteJeannelle, my dad joined the U.S.Navy from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1942 and all of his training occurred at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois. During my childhood and teen years in Texas I heard the phrase “Great Lakes” many, many times. Never once have I ever thought Lake Superior looked like a monster’s head, though.
DeleteHmm. I was still trying to imagine why there are 5280 feet in a mile. I'm gonna go with....Remembering to answer everything with a question? I love to write poetry in my own made-up fashion - since I was a kid, decades ago! I mean, what were decades ago?
ReplyDeletePam, Question: What is something rhymeswithplague might say to one of his readers that is meantt to be funny but might be construed as rude? Answer: Your heart is definitely in the right place but sometimes I wonder about your head.
ReplyDeleteMost of my poetry is in the limerick style. For my mind it's easier. I guess my answer to your question is, "No."
ReplyDeleteEmma, I don’t understand your answer as the question was “Which is harder?”
ReplyDeleteI know. By the way there are 5280 feet in a mile because 5279 is not quite enough.
DeleteOf course! Your answer about 5280 feet in a mile makes perfect sense. I don't know why I didn't see it before.
DeleteIronically the only one I was likely to know the answer to was Gitche Gumee. I know who Freddy Mercury was but precious little else about him.
ReplyDeleteI have some difficulty with the origin of a furlong and its relationship to an acre. I started to explain why when I realised that there are some things in life that just do not merit the time and effort. A furlong is what it is and, as no-one uses furlongs any more anyway, what is the point.
ReplyDeleteGraham, it is not true that no one uses furlongs any more. Americans and Canadians use it when discussing horse racing. Also, I just learned that the country of Myanmar (formerly Burma) posts road distances in both miles and furlongs. Saying “no-one uses” something is akin to Donald Trump saying “Everybody knows”.
Here’s the clincher: In the final chapter of Flannery O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood, Haze Motes’s landlady, Mrs. Flood, is horrified to discover that he has been wearing strands of barbed wire wound tightly around his chest because, as he later tells her, “I ain’t clean”. She says, “It isn’ natural....it isn’t normal. People have quit doing those things”. Haze Motes replies, “As long as I’m doing it, people ain’t quit doing it “.
Yes, it is used in the UK for horse racing too. But I'll wager that very few people have a clue how long a furlong is and care even less.
Delete