Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (30 page)

ROSEMARY

One legend says that as the Virgin Mary fled King Herod’s soldiers (given orders to kill all first-born babies), a thick bush miraculously parted to allow her to hide behind it. She remained there for several hours. She draped her blue cloak over the bush’s white flowers, and in the morning the flowers had turned blue. The bush became known as “the rose of Mary.” Medieval monasteries, known for herb and plant cultivation, grew the sacred herb for medicinal purposes, to spice food, and to be used as incense at weddings.

VANILLA

Most spices originated in Asia, where they grow wild and have been used for centuries. But vanilla, the beanlike fruit of an orchid, is native to North America. The Aztecs used it to flavor chocolate drinks that Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés brought back to Europe in the 1500s. Aristocrats and royalty throughout Europe loved the exotic beverage, but it wasn’t until 1602 that vanilla was used without chocolate, when a chemist working for Queen Elizabeth I of England discovered that vanilla made a good flavoring agent by itself.

About a fifth of France’s population lives in or around Paris.

BASIL

A native of Asia and Africa, basil was sacred in ancient India, and believed to be the disguised form of Lakshmi, wife of the Hindu god Vishnu. Anyone who broke basil twigs was said to have their prayers go unanswered. Leaves, however, were allowed to be plucked and placed on the dead to assure admittance to heaven. Ancient Greeks brought the herb back from Persia and also treated it with reverence. They called it
basilikon
, which means “royal.” Only kings were permitted to cut basil, and only with a golden sickle. Long used as a cooking ingredient in Asia and the Mediterranean, the sweet herb became popular in western Europe in the 16th century after British explorers brought it back from India.

SESAME SEED

Cultivation of sesame seeds—believed to be one the first crops grown specifically for their taste—dates back at least to 3000 B.C. in India. Egyptians imported it, and the plant flourished in the Middle East, where it inspired the phrase “open sesame,” a magical incantation that opens an entrance in the book
1,001 Nights
. Reason: Hundreds of sesame seeds are encased in every pod. When the plant is ripe, the slightest touch causes the pod to explode open. Sesame seeds came to Europe in the first century through the spice trade. The trade route gradually extended into Africa, where, via the 17th-century slave trade, the seeds made their way to the western hemisphere.

FENNEL

Fennel was one of the first herbs to be cultivated in the Western world. It was sacred to ancient Greeks; according to mythology, Prometheus used the stalk of a fennel plant to steal fire from the gods. And in 490 B.C. Athens defeated Persian invaders on a battlefield covered in fennel. The plant was considered such good luck that the adjacent village was named
Marathon
, meaning “place of fennel.” In ancient Rome, fennel was used for medicinal purposes (Romans thought chewing on it prevented obesity). In medieval times, the herb was hung from the rafters of homes to keep out ghosts and witches, a practice that may have sprung from fennel’s effectiveness as an insect repellent.

The U.S. death toll from the 1918 flu epidemic was so high that it created a coffin shortage.

BENNIES FROM HEAVEN

In this age of corporate scandal, it’s nice to know that some companies go out of their way to let their employees know they’re appreciated. Here are some fantastic—and unusual—job perks
.

• At a New York consulting firm called Inlumen, employees get a cash award of $50 a month to spend on “someone they love.”

• Boot manufacturer Timberland offers a $3,000 subsidy to any employee who buys a gas/electric hybrid car.

• Workers at New Belgium Brewing in Colorado get a free bike on their one-year anniversary with the company (they make Fat Tire beer). And after five years, they get a free trip…to Belgium.

• BMW Financial Services pays all healthcare costs for workers and their families. And if the employee doesn’t have a family, the company will help out there, too, with $30,000 toward fertility treatments.

• Acuity Insurance has a well-stocked fish pond on the company campus. Workers get to keep what they catch. Another perk: Acuity pays for Weight Watchers—but only if the employee meets his or her goal weight.

• Outdoor supply company Patagonia will pay for employees to go on a two-month “environmental crusade.”

• The OhioHealth hospital system provides free concierge service to its 15,200 workers. Everybody, from doctors to janitors, has someone to run any errand, such as feeding pets, meeting repair workers at their home, or waiting in line for concert tickets.

• At the University of Notre Dame, children of staff and faculty get four years of free tuition. And if they don’t want to go to Notre Dame, the college will pay 30% of the cost to attend another college.

• In addition to regular sick days and vacation time, the Calvert Group, an investment firm in Maryland, provides workers with an extra 12 paid days off per year to do volunteer work.

Sing Sing was the first prison to use fingerprinting for identification purposes, in 1903.

DIVA OF THE DESERT

This unique performer craves the spotlight…but doesn’t much care about the size of the audience
.

I
F YOU BUILD IT…

In the scorched wasteland of Death Valley, California, lies one of the most unusual theaters in America: the Amargosa Opera House. The quirk is that no opera is ever performed there—only ballet. And there is only one performer: a prima ballerina named Marta Becket, who at 79 years of age still performs her solo show in the desert, as she has for the last 38 years.

In 1967 Becket, a dancer and artist from New York, was on a camping trip in the desert with her husband. When they had a flat tire on their trailer, a local park ranger told them they could get it fixed in Death Valley Junction. The town had been built in the 1920s by the Pacific Coast Borax Company to house its mine workers. While her husband stayed at the gas station with the trailer, Marta poked around the small compound of adobe buildings. Aside from the old company offices, there was a 23-room hotel with a lavishly painted lobby, still open for business, and something that really caught her eye: a rundown community center known as Corkhill Hall.

Peeking through a hole in Corkhill’s door, she saw a small stage with tattered cotton curtains. Trash was strewn between the wooden benches that faced the stage. Marta said later, “Peering through the tiny hole, I had the distinct feeling that I was looking at the other half of myself. The building seemed to be saying, ‘take me…do something with me…I offer you life.’”

…THEY WILL COME

Marta tracked down the town manager and talked him into renting her the hall for $45 a month. Six months later, on February 10, 1968, she gave her first daily performance. There were 12 people in the audience, all of them locals curious to see what the peculiar lady from New York was up to. Occasionally, curious tourists would wander in. Sometimes no one was there at all. Marta always performed no matter what. One night she had just begun her performance to an empty house when four people came in. They sat quietly, applauded politely at the curtain call, and left. Becket thought nothing of it until a few months later, when an article about her appeared in
National Geographic
magazine. After that, audiences grew. Locals kept coming back; at first they came to gawk and laugh, but left strangely moved by the sight of this intense woman following her muse wherever it led her. Word spread, and soon tour buses were making the newly named Amargosa Opera House a stop on their itineraries. Celebrities would pop over from nearby Las Vegas (comedian Red Skelton was so charmed that he visited four times).

Hot spot: More than 90% of Egypt is desert.

PAINT THE WALLS

Part of the ongoing attraction of the Amargosa is the whimsical, brilliantly colored murals Becket has painted on its walls. Starting in July 1968, driven partly by her loneliness at playing to such small audiences, Marta spent four years covering the walls with a permanent audience. A king and queen hold court in the royal box. Bullfighters sit next to 17th-century Spanish nobility. Monks and nuns stare disapprovingly at the garish prostitutes leering from the opposite wall. The central dome has 16 women playing musical instruments beneath a flight of doves, and there are jugglers, dancing cherubs, dowdy matrons, and little children—whatever took Marta’s fancy. The result is an arts institution unlike any other. The town of Death Valley Junction (now owned by the Amargosa Opera House) was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

CURTAIN CALL

Becket’s husband wasn’t as dedicated to the venture—he left in 1983. But Becket soldiered on, assisted by Tom Willett, who started out as her stage manager and became her emcee and partner. Willett died in 2005, but Becket has no intention of retiring. Although age has forced her to cut back the number of performances she gives each week (she only performs on weekends now) she still begins promptly at 8:15 p.m.

“I am grateful,” she says, “to have found the place where I can fulfill my dreams and share them with the passing scene…for as long as I can.”

First animated cartoon character:
Gertie the Trained Dinosaur
(1910).

IT’S RADIOACTIVE!

Look around your house. Feeling all safe and comfy? Now check out this list of common household RADIOACTIVE items. It’s enough to make your hair glow green
.

I
tem:
Smoke detectors
Radioactive Element:
Americium-241
Explanation:
Americium
is used to ionize the air between two electrically charged plates inside a smoke detector, causing a current to flow between them. When smoke enters the detector, it blocks the americium particles, lowering the electrical current between the two plates and setting off the alarm. Though the radiation is safely contained inside the smoke detector, radiation levels near the americium element can be quite high.

Item:
Glow-in-the-dark clock hands

Radioactive Element:
Tritium

Explanation:
At one time,
radium
was painted on watch and clock dials to make them glow in the dark. Many of the workers who painted the radium onto the clock parts contracted radiation poisoning because they would set the tips of their brushes by licking them. (Today we know that’s not a good idea.) Radium was later replaced by
tritium
, which emits radiation, but not enough to penetrate the glass or plastic cover of a clock or watch. Some compasses, glow-in-the-dark key chains, and exit signs also contain tritium.

Item:
Pottery

Radioactive Element:
Uranium oxide

Explanation:
Some types of old pottery were glazed using
uranium oxide
to give them that desirable glossy finish. The most common was the Homer Laughlin China Company’s brightly colored Fiesta ware made between 1936 and 1943. Vintage Fiesta ware is considered collectible and can still be found in many homes and antique stores. Fiesta ware collectors are commonly advised not to eat from the orange dishes, especially acidic foods such as tomato soup, which tend to leach the uranium out of the glaze. (Fiesta was reissued in the 1980s
without
the uranium oxide.)

Ka-boom! There have been 2,036 known nuclear-bomb explosions since World War II.

Item:
Salt substitute

Radioactive Element:
Potassium-40

Explanation:
Most salt substitutes contain potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride. But many also contain
potassium-40
, a radioactive isotope that makes up a small amount of the potassium found naturally in foodstuffs. Unfortunately for anyone hoping to use salt substitute to get rid of unwanted houseguests, the amount of potassium-40 found in the condiment is not enough to do harm.

Item:
Lantern mantels

Radioactive Element:
Thorium

Explanation:
To make lantern mantels more luminescent, the radioactive element
thorium
is commonly added. Although Coleman, the largest lantern-mantel manufacturer, recently traded in thorium for the more stable yttrium oxide, many generic mantels still contain thorium. Just a few good whiffs of the mantel dust might be enough to make you a much less happy camper: It can cause cancer and liver disease.

Item:
Jewelry

Radioactive Element:
Radium

Explanation:
Some jewelry manufacturers use X-rays and
radium
to irradiate certain gemstones, a process that enhances their color. Sometimes the gemstones can remain radioactive for years after the treatment. Also, cloisonné jewelry is enameled using uranium oxide.

OTHER RADIOACTIVE ITEMS

Vaseline glass, thoriated welding rods, spark plugs from the 1940s, some old vacuum tubes, yellow Leica camera lenses, jewelry polish, anti-static brushes, neon lights, dental crowns, LCD wristwatches, old eyeglasses, microwaves, TVs, and topaz gemstones.

*        *        *

“The atomic age is here to stay…but are we?”

—
Bennett Cerf

When Kuwait’s first McDonald’s opened in 1994, the drive-through line was 7 miles long.