Marcia Smith 0:00
What famous person wrote under the pen name? Silence, do good?

Bob Smith 0:07
Oh! What US president was the first to receive an electronic message sent by someone in the air. Answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and Marsha Smith.

Welcome to the off ramp, a chance to slow down, steer clear of crazy and take a side road to sanity with fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. All right, Marcia, what US president, was the first to receive an electronic message sent by someone in the air,

Marcia Smith 0:56
In the? Well

Bob Smith 0:57
Someone who was in the air, someone who’s not on the ground,

Marcia Smith 1:01
Oh.

Bob Smith 1:01
Sent an electronic message.

Marcia Smith 1:03
What President?

Bob Smith 1:04
That’s the question, Marcia. Should we repeat it again?

Marcia Smith 1:09
No, no, no. Dwight Eisenhower.

Bob Smith 1:12
Dwight Eisenhower, okay, so he was sent something on what ARAPNET network, which eventually became the Internet. Are you thinking of something like that?

Marcia Smith 1:20
I don’t know what I’m thinking. Just spare me. Tell me who it is.

Bob Smith 1:23
Well, it wasn’t Dwight,

Marcia Smith 1:24
Okay,

Bob Smith 1:24
It was Abraham Lincoln.

Marcia Smith 1:26
Oh, good lord.

Bob Smith 1:27
And the message was sent to him via telegraph from a balloon 500 feet,

Marcia Smith 1:31
Really!?

Bob Smith 1:32
In the air.

Marcia Smith 1:32
Well, that’s interesting.

Bob Smith 1:33
Above the White House.

Marcia Smith 1:34
I’ll be darned.

Bob Smith 1:35
The telegraph, which was only 14 years old when the civil war broke out, was something Abraham Lincoln put into action for the Union cause. They set up mobile telegraph wagons and teams of technicians that tapped into telegraph wires near battlefield so he could be connected to Union generals. But a message from the air? Yes, that happened at a demonstration on Saturday, June 16, 1861 when a showman, Professor Thaddeus Lowe, you remember in the Wizard of Oz, the balloonist was the professor?

Marcia Smith 2:04
Yeah.

Bob Smith 2:05
Well, that’s how these people called themselves back in the day.

Really.

So this guy, a showman, was a professional aerialist, or balloonist, called himself Professor Thaddeus Lowe. He convinced Lincoln you should be able to use the telegraph up in the air. He launched his balloon the enterprise from the lawn of the Columbian armory, across the street from the White House, and ascended above that armory with representatives of the American Telegraph Company, a telegraph operator, a telegraph key and a 500 foot wire hanging down.

Marcia Smith 2:33
500 foot wire – oh God.

Bob Smith 2:34
Cconnecting him to the White House.

Marcia Smith 2:36
Okay.

Bob Smith 2:36
And from 500 feet in the air, low, telegraphed Lincoln that from that altitude, he could observe an area of nearly 50 miles in any direction. And for the rest of the day, the enterprise remained tethered on the South Lawn of the White House. I even have a quote from a Boston newspaper.

Marcia Smith 2:51
Okay.

Bob Smith 2:51
“A balloon is now floating nearly over the president’s house. The plan of sending telegraphic messages is found to work admirably.” Lincoln was hooked, and the War Department began a program to build a balloon corps, ultimately putting Lowe in charge of it.

Marcia Smith 3:06
Really?

Bob Smith 3:06
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 3:07
Well, his entrepreneurial ship paid off,

Bob Smith 3:09
And we’ll talk a little more about that later.

Marcia Smith 3:11
Okay, all right, that’s interesting. Okay, Bob, what famous person wrote under the pen name of a widow named Silence Do Good?

Bob Smith 3:20
Silence Do Good. That sounds like something Benjamin Franklin would use.

Marcia Smith 3:24
Oh for God’s sake!

Bob Smith 3:25
Is that who it was?

Marcia Smith 3:26
Yes.

Bob Smith 3:28
Well, he had all these funny names. You know, Mark Twain had names like that in his stories.

Marcia Smith 3:32
Yeah, I thought you were gonna say, well.

Bob Smith 3:34
Well, I’m so sorry to disappoint you, Marcia.

Marcia Smith 3:37
Are you?

Bob Smith 3:37
Let’s go back. Let’s pretend like I don’t know. Was it Mark Twain? Marcia, does that make you feel better?

Marcia Smith 3:42
Okay, how old was he when he wrote under that name

Bob Smith 3:45
Under Silence? Do Good?

Marcia Smith 3:48
Yeah.

Bob Smith 3:49
I think he was only a teenager at the time. Was pretty young man, wasn’t he?

Marcia Smith 3:57
16.

Bob Smith 4:00
Okay.

Marcia Smith 3:55
All right. And he wrote essays for his brother’s paper, the New England current, who wouldn’t have let him published if he knew who it was. So he used to slip the essays under the door.

Bob Smith 4:02
Oh, he said, here’s an essay somebody wrote?

Marcia Smith 4:04
Yeah.

Bob Smith 4:04
Oh that’s funny.

Marcia Smith 4:05
Yeah, they didn’t know where it came from and constance – or – what’s her name?

Bob Smith 4:09
Silence Do Good.

Marcia Smith 4:10
Silence was an instant hit with the weekly paper readers, and she even received marriage proposals. She wrote commentary touching on such subjects as religion and politics.

Bob Smith 4:22
Oh no kidding.

Marcia Smith 4:23
14 of these essays were published in 1722. Franklin eventually revealed his true identity, and his brother was not too happy.

Bob Smith 4:35
Oh no kidding.

Marcia Smith 4:35
Warned him of getting a big head and getting too vain in light of him being so popular in the paper.

Bob Smith 4:41
Oh, so he’s a 16 year old who’s a very successful correspondent in his paper.

Marcia Smith 4:47
Yeah.

Bob Smith 4:47
Oh my goodness.

Marcia Smith 4:48
So they had a little fallout, and it played a part in Franklin’s departure for Philadelphia, and he stayed there in that city for the rest of his life.

Bob Smith 4:58
Except for his trips to Europe and to various states.

Marcia Smith 5:01
Yeah, but that was his home base, and, yeah, he had a very interesting life.

Bob Smith 5:06
That’s funny. So it’s Silence Do Good? Is it Silence Do gooder or Silence?

Marcia Smith 5:11
No, the widow the Silence. Do good.

Bob Smith 5:14
Silence. Do good. Iove that. Such a funny, funny moniker.

Marcia Smith 5:20
We were just at a family conversation last night, all raving about Ben Franklin, what an amazing man he was.

Bob Smith 5:27
Marcia for what medical procedure do millions of people now go to Turkey each year. This is a new thing.

Marcia Smith 5:35
What? Say again? How many go there for vacations each year?

Bob Smith 5:39
For what medical procedure.

Marcia Smith 5:41
Oh.

Bob Smith 5:41
do millions of people go to Turkey each year?

Marcia Smith 5:44
Facelifts?

Bob Smith 5:45
No.

Marcia Smith 5:46
Is it cosmetic?

Bob Smith 5:47
It IS cosmetic?

Marcia Smith 5:49
Oh, is it LASIK?,

Bob Smith 5:51
No.

Marcia Smith 5:52
is it … what kind of cosmetic? I don’t know. It’s not a facelift?

Bob Smith 5:57
It’s hair transplants.

Marcia Smith 5:59
Oh, all right.

Bob Smith 5:59
According to britannica.com Turkey is widely known as the hair transplant capital of the world, and the procedure there costs a fraction of what it does in the US. So even when you factor in airfare and hotels …

Marcia Smith 6:12
It’s still cheaper?

Bob Smith 6:12
It’s usually cheaper for Americans to make the trip there.

Marcia Smith 6:15
They do it with hair plugs or what?

Bob Smith 6:17
I don’t know, but from 2022 to 2024 just those two years, more than a million medical tourists visited Turkey each year.

Marcia Smith 6:25
Holy, wow, that’s interesting.

Bob Smith 6:27
Hair transplants.

Marcia Smith 6:29
I wouldn’t have guessed that. Aren’t they known for rugs? Ha-ha-ha.

Bob Smith 6:33
Very funny. Marcia.

Marcia Smith 6:34
Thank you. Thank you, Bob. How many days a month does the average American feel fully healthy.

Bob Smith 6:42
How many days a month?

Marcia Smith 6:43
Yeah,.

Bob Smith 6:44
The average American is this good or bad?

Marcia Smith 6:47
Fully healthy.

Bob Smith 6:48
Fully healthy!

Marcia Smith 6:49
Oh, I feel great today.

Bob Smith 6:50
Le’s say more than maybe, let’s say 20 days a month.

Marcia Smith 6:54
Very good. 19 days.

Bob Smith 6:57
Oh, no kidding,

Marcia Smith 6:57
Yeah.

Bob Smith 6:58
Okay.

Marcia Smith 6:58
A recent survey that’s been published by doctors best. They’ve surveyed 2000 Americans, and respondents said that for nearly two weeks a month, they deal with fatigue, headaches or digestive issues, all of which you and I have on a monthly basis, right? I’m so tired my tummy hurts.

Bob Smith 7:18
Some of that’s when you’re getting older, and also it’s a result of weight and everything too.

Marcia Smith 7:23
Well. I think also part of it is long COVID. Maybe

Bob Smith 7:26
Okay. Could be, could be you’re right.

Marcia Smith 7:28
After effects of that. Who knows?

Bob Smith 7:30
So, people only feel good 20 days of the month,

Marcia Smith 7:33
19 days.

Bob Smith 7:34
Sorry, 19 days of the month.

Marcia Smith 7:36
Yes.

Bob Smith 7:37
Okay. Marcia, looking back through history, what kinds of people — two kinds of people are believed to have spread cats throughout the world.

Marcia Smith 7:45
What kind of people?

Bob Smith 7:46
And you can do this by occupation. What kinds of people spread cats throughout the world? Two kinds of people, two kinds This is what scientists now think, based on DNA research,

Marcia Smith 7:56
Really?

Bob Smith 7:56
Yeah.

Marcia Smith 7:57
Well, I haven’t got a clue. I mean, it’s not cat lovers and crazy old women. What was it?

Bob Smith 8:02
Well, let’s say it this way. Who do you blame for cats? Who can you blame for cats? Scientists say you can blame farmers and Vikings,

actually farmers and seafarers.

Marcia Smith 8:13
Seafarers?

Bob Smith 8:14
Yeah, in 2016 researchers reported they sequenced the DNA from the remains of 209 felines found at various archeological sites dating from 15,000 to 2700 years ago. And what they found was cats expanded across the world in two waves. The first they credit to farmers who traveled with cats from the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean, looking for fertile lands. And what do you think?

Marcia Smith 8:40
Because they’re trying to avoid mice?

Bob Smith 8:42
That’s right, the finding supports long held beliefs farmers spread cats for rodent control.

Marcia Smith 8:47
Yeah, and it works.

Bob Smith 8:48
The next wave, thousands of years later, started in ancient Egypt, where cats were worshiped and moved to Africa and Eurasia thanks to seafarers, and they believe, Vikings and other seafarers also took cats on their ships for the same reason as farmers.

Marcia Smith 9:03
Well, they did their job to control the rats and mice. Okay, Bob, why did Apollo 11 astronauts sign hundreds of autographs before they left on their moon mission?

Bob Smith 9:15
Why did they sign hundreds of autographs before they went to the moon or they went to the moon? Was it because they did it for money? They thought their their signatures would be worth something.

Marcia Smith 9:24
Yes, and keep carrying that to the logical conclusion.

Bob Smith 9:27
What’s the logical conclusion? They’re selling the autographs?

Marcia Smith 9:30
Yeah, but it was for the families if they didn’t come back.

Bob Smith 9:33
Oh, no kidding. Oh my god.

Marcia Smith 9:36
So they could live. They signed all sorts of different things that would have their autograph.

Bob Smith 9:41
So much worth?

Marcia Smith 9:42
Yeah, it was a dangerous endeavor, and it was a fact not lost on astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz, Aldrin and Michael Collins. Aware of the risks ahead, the crew of the historic moon mission signed autographs as a way to provide for their families in case of disaster at the time, Standard life insurance policies were extremely expensive for interstellar missions, as you can

Bob Smith 10:05
Oh, I can imagine.

Marcia Smith 10:05
Oh, yeah, I’m going to the moon. What do you got for a policy?

Bob Smith 10:08
Okay, that’ll cost you $17 million

Marcia Smith 10:12
And they wouldn’t. They could not have adequately supported the astronauts family. So lacking any traditional protection, the astronauts realized that there was a market out there for signatures from them as American heroes. They entered quarantine roughly a month ahead of time to stay healthy before they left. During that time, their free time, they signed hundreds of autographs known as covers okay envelopes postmarked with important dates, such as the date of the moon landing itself and the covers were delivered to the astronauts families, who held on to them in the event that tragedy struck. Thankfully, the Apollo 11 made it home, but the cruise of Apollo 12 through 16 continued this tradition.

Bob Smith 10:55
Oh they did it, too.

Marcia Smith 10:56
Yeah.

Bob Smith 10:56
Geez, that’s amazing.

Marcia Smith 10:58
In the 1990s covers from the Apollo 11 mission began appearing in memorabilia auctions and commanded prices, selling for 10s of 1000s of dollars.

Bob Smith 11:08
Wow. Well, it’s good that those things were kept, you know, in abeyance, so just in case something happened, families would have some.

Marcia Smith 11:15
Yeah.

Bob Smith 11:15
It’s like we had the story recently about the two astronauts that didn’t get any hazard pay, but they were in space for nine months more, and they got like, four or $5 extra.

Marcia Smith 11:23
Per day for, you know, shampoo. Golly, okay,

Bob Smith 11:27
Sometimes we don’t treat people who do these things very well.

Marcia Smith 11:30
Well, remember the days presidents didn’t have pensions?

Bob Smith 11:32
True?

Marcia Smith 11:33
It’s just never

Bob Smith 11:33
That’s true. It wasn’t too long after that. You’re right. Okay. Marcia, back to the balloons that they used for reconnaissance and the Telegraph in the Civil War. By September 1861 this professor Thaddeus Lowe, he was an official member of General George B McClellan staff, and he used a balloon to direct artillery fire on Confederate positions in falls river Virginia. So immediately there was military value, and he was signaling us back and forth with both flags and with the telegraph messages back and forth these long cables. Some of the cables were 5000 feet long, so almost a mile.

Marcia Smith 12:08
Wow

Bob Smith 12:09
And he and his team of professional balloonists communicated with Union generals in the battles of Bull Run, Yorktown Fair Oaks and Vicksburg in the Battle of the Pines near Richmond. The balloons told McClellan that Samuel P Heinzelmans Corps was slowly being surrounded by Confederate Army forces. McClellan took action. He repaired a bridge and sent reinforcements to the general’s aid. Confederates had balloons too, but they had a problem. They couldn’t order silk for the balloons because they couldn’t get through the union blockade. Lowe received a captured letter from Major General James Longstreet, reporting that Confederate forces were sent out to gather up all the silk dresses.

Marcia Smith 12:47
Oh my gosh!

Bob Smith 12:48
To be bound, fashioned into a balloon

Marcia Smith 12:50
All those Scarlet O’haras out there.

Bob Smith 12:52
Exactly.

Marcia Smith 12:53
Give us your big dresses.

Bob Smith 12:54
“It was done, and soon we had a great patchwork ship for use in the Seven Days campaign.” So the Union troops captured the ship that had this thing on it, “and with it,” wrote Longstreet, “the last silk dress in the Confederacy. This was the meanest trick of the war!”

Marcia Smith 12:54
Oh, the humanity!

Bob Smith 13:10
Oh my god! All the effort they had to put into it!

Marcia Smith 13:13
Well, here’s a quick, quick question, what’s the difference Bob between genial and congenial?

Bob Smith 13:20
Genial and congenial? Yeah, genial means you’re affable, you’re a nice person, you’re easy to getalong with.

Marcia Smith 13:26
That’s correct.

Bob Smith 13:27
CONgenial means the opposite, I would think, con meaning the opposite.

Marcia Smith 13:32
No, he was very congenial.

Bob Smith 13:33
Okay.

Marcia Smith 13:33
People say that about you all the time.

Bob Smith 13:34
Okay I was thinking, I was thinking about the Confederates. People who didn’t believe in federalism.

Marcia Smith 13:41
No, no.

Bob Smith 13:41
Okay, well, no, okay, what?

Marcia Smith 13:43
So you don’t know?

Bob Smith 13:44
I said I didn’t know.

Marcia Smith 13:46
Don’t know the data. Okay? Congenial refers to a thing such as pleasant and friendly surroundings. It was a congenial setting. So genial is a person. Congenial is a thing.

Bob Smith 13:59
What if you’re a genial person in a congenial setting?

Marcia Smith 14:02
You can say that!

Bob Smith 14:03
Then you’re in a happy place.

Marcia Smith 14:04
Yes, you are.

Bob Smith 14:06
I think it’s time for a break. Okay, you’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith, we’ll be back in just a moment.

Okay, we’re back. You’re listening to The Off Ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith, we do this each week for the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. After that, we put it on podcast platforms.

Marcia Smith 14:24
All over the world.

Bob Smith 14:26
Where it is heard. Oh, my goodness, heard all over the world. Yes.

Marcia Smith 14:31
Okay, moving on, Bob. What is the difference between an enemy and a nemesis?

Bob Smith 14:37
An enemy and a nemesis?

Marcia Smith 14:38
Yes,

Bob Smith 14:39
I thought they were kind of the same. Okay, a nemesis is a person who challenges you, is a threat. But what’s the difference?

Marcia Smith 14:48
The big difference is enemies can come and go, but a nemesis is more permanent in your life and can pursue you relentlessly, often in search of vengeance.

Bob Smith 14:58
Like me and you, that’s what you’re talking about.

Marcia Smith 15:00
According to dictionary.com and they wouldn’t lie, so yeah.

Bob Smith 15:04
Wow, I never thought of that. So Nemesis is like a permanent enemy, yeah, who will persecute you to the ends of the earth.

Marcia Smith 15:07
Yeah, out to undo you.

Bob Smith 15:11
Okay.

Marcia Smith 15:12
All right, just so you know.

Bob Smith 15:13
Okay Marcia, a dog question, all right, do dogs only see in black and white?

Marcia Smith 15:21
Well, so I say, I say they see in more than black and white, yes,

Bob Smith 15:27
Okay, yeah, you’re right. People think that dogs only see in black and white, but a dog’s ability tosee color is close to that of a human with red green color blindness. So you might be a little impaired, but not that much.

Marcia Smith 15:38
Okay

Bob Smith 15:39
Dogs actually have an easier time seeing yellow or blue toys in the grass rather than red ones.

Marcia Smith 15:44
Oh, I’ll be you would think red was the brightest color of yellow.

Bob Smith 15:47
Red’s the one that, you know upsets the bulls.

Marcia Smith 15:49
Yeah, that’s right. Okay that’s why we think that, probably. And now Bob, it is time for AKA,

Bob Smith 15:57
Also known as.

Marcia Smith 15:58
That is correct.

Bob Smith 15:59
All right.

Marcia Smith 15:59
Marcia’s favorite card game.

Bob Smith 16:01
What’s the watch word today?

Marcia Smith 16:02
The category we will discuss is Oscar winning movies.

Bob Smith 16:06
Okay!

Marcia Smith 16:07
Since 2000, so you don’t have to go back too far. Oh, that’s good. Okay, yeah. All right. You ready? If I say the Windy City, what’s the movie?

Bob Smith 16:15
Chicago?

Marcia Smith 16:16
That’s it. How about the condition of H2O

Bob Smith 16:20
The condition of H2O, the, see, that’s something about water, the color of water, the temperature of water, the color of water?

Marcia Smith 16:27
You saw this, the condition, the shape of water.

Bob Smith 16:31
Oh, is that why that was called, I didn’t remember that. Okay,

Marcia Smith 16:33
Yes, okay, lunar luminance,

Bob Smith 16:36
Lunar luminance, full moon, half moon, White Moon, Paper Moon. Wasn’t that an Oscar winner?

Marcia Smith 16:44
Luminance,

Bob Smith 16:45
Okay, I don’t know, Marsh

Marcia Smith 16:46
Moonlight.

Bob Smith 16:48
Oh, Moonlight. Oh the movie Moonlight, yes. I guess Paper Moon was a long time ago.

Marcia Smith 16:51
That was before, Okay, how’s this? A pretty brain,

Bob Smith 16:55
A pretty brain. A, god what is that? A Beautiful Mind.

Marcia Smith 16:59
Very good. Yes. Stock market collapse. Stock market collapse,

Bob Smith 17:05
Okay, what was that one? I remember that one. Stock market collapse. Wall Street!

Marcia Smith 17:11
No.

Bob Smith 17:11
Okay. That was okay. That wasn’t it. I don’t know what?

Marcia Smith 17:14
Crash.

Bob Smith 17:16
Oh, the detective drama,

Marcia Smith 17:17
Yeah.

Bob Smith 17:17
Okay. That was, what about 2004 or something? I remember that now,

Marcia Smith 17:20
Okay,

Bob Smith 17:21
I didn’t see it though.

Marcia Smith 17:22
Alright, this might be a stretch, but formerly known as Prince.

Bob Smith 17:26
Formerly known as Prince

Marcia Smith 17:28
You saw this movie, too.

Bob Smith 17:30
The King’s Speech.

Marcia Smith 17:32
No.

Bob Smith 17:32
Okay, what is it?

Marcia Smith 17:33
The Artist, remember that movie? The Artist.

Bob Smith 17:37
That was the one that was a silent movie,

Marcia Smith 17:39
Yeah,

Bob Smith 17:39
Yeah. The clue was?

Marcia Smith 17:40
That clue is: Formally Known as Prince,

Bob Smith 17:43
Okay? And that’s what prince went by for a while, right? The artist formally known as — I see.

Marcia Smith 17:49
Okay, that was hard to

Bob Smith 17:50
That sure was hard to get.

Marcia Smith 17:51
Not fun, okay, sorry, but

Bob Smith 17:53
That’s just the way you do it. Marsh, you’re my nemesis, I guess. Right?

Marcia Smith 17:59
yeah, oh yeah, for a lot of years.

Bob Smith 18:00
My Trivia Nemesis.

Marcia Smith 18:02
Ookay, okay. And lastly, chicken guy.

Bob Smith 18:06
Chicken guy,

Marcia Smith 18:07
Uh huh.

Bob Smith 18:07
Chicken Man,

Marcia Smith 18:09
You saw this movie.

Bob Smith 18:10
Chicken guy? Oh, I know what this was, The Bird Man!

Marcia Smith 18:14
That’s it.

Bob Smith 18:14
That was, who was that?

Marcia Smith 18:16
That was, um, Bust — not. Buster Keaton. Keaton.

Bob Smith 18:18
Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton, yes, yes. Buster Keaton’s been gone a long time.

Marcia Smith 18:23
I’m sorry. Okay, go ahead your turn.

Bob Smith 18:26
Speaking of a long time ago. Why did the President of the Confederacy help strengthen the Union? Jefferson Davis, we’re talking about.

Marcia Smith 18:34
Okay.

Bob Smith 18:34
Jefferson Davis.

Marcia Smith 18:35
Well, because

Bob Smith 18:36
Why did the President of the Confederacy help strengthen the union? I saw this on britannica.com and I had to ask you this, why would Jefferson Davis help the union?

Marcia Smith 18:44
Did he help them?

Bob Smith 18:45
Yes.

Marcia Smith 18:46
He did?

Bob Smith 18:46
Yes.

Marcia Smith 18:47
Was his wife a Yankee?

Bob Smith 18:49
No.

Marcia Smith 18:50
Oh, I don’t know.

Bob Smith 18:51
This was before the war. That’s the problem. You see, he was the Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce in the 1850s so he was a, you know, United States citizen and a military veteran and everything he fought for increasing the army size and replacing an old style of musket that had been used since the Revolutionary War. So he actually modernized the US Army a decade before he faced it as President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy. So he battled against the army he helped improve.

Marcia Smith 19:20
All right.

Bob Smith 19:20
So that’s the reason the President of the Confederacy helped strengthen the union. It’s because he was its Secretary of War – the Secretary of War for the United States – a decade before the Civil War.

Marcia Smith 19:31
All right!

Bob Smith 19:31
Trick question!

Marcia Smith 19:32
Okay, okay, Bob, why was George M. Cohen forced to rewrite the song, It’s A Grand Old Flag?

Bob Smith 19:40
Because he originally wrote It’s A Grand Old Rag.

Marcia Smith 19:43
That’s right! How did you know that?

Bob Smith 19:45
It’s just this famous thing I knew, yeah, sorry.

Marcia Smith 19:48
it’s a Grand Old Flag. It’s a high flying flag. Yeah, and it just wouldn’t do to be calling the US flag a rag.

Bob Smith 19:57
Not too patriotic!

Marcia Smith 19:59
No. He was made to change the song, and it probably would have never been sung if he didn’t change that word from rag to flag.

Bob Smith 20:05
Exactly. It’s just one of those things, like scrambled eggs. What was that the original title of what song? What famous pop song? Scrambled eggs? I don’t know. Paul McCartney woke up one morning with this song in his head, this tune. He was trying to explain it to people, and he it has this number of syllables, so he started calling it Scrambled Eggs — Yesterday.

Marcia Smith 20:24
Scrambled eggs, yes, the amount of syllables. That’s right. Okay,

Bob Smith 20:28
Ml right. Marcia, what causes that unpleasant wet dog smell?

Marcia Smith 20:33
Oh, that is stinky.

Bob Smith 20:34
This is the American Kennel Club telling us

Marcia Smith 20:36
why, because of oils in the dog’s coat.

Bob Smith 20:40
That’s pretty close. You’re pretty close. Very good Ning Ning Ning, not due to the dog itself, but to the yeast and bacteria that live in dog fur. These microorganisms regularly release volatile compounds as they live out their lives on our canine pets, but we don’t usually smell them. But when mixed with water, some of those chemicals become pungent, and the combination of their scents — yech! As the water evaporates from the fur, the compounds become airborne, and a wet dog basically takes a little stink cloud with it wherever it goes.

Marcia Smith 21:13
Stink cloud! Not unlike some people we know.

Bob Smith 21:16
So how do you take care of this? They say, drying the dog quickly. Yeah, that can lessen the smell and keep the responsible microorganisms from undergoing the quick population explosion that a damp environment encourages. But those little stinkers – just a normal part of a dog’s microbiome.

Marcia Smith 21:32
There’s nothing you can use to dissipate that.

Bob Smith 21:35
Well, maybe there are things, but I, you know, consult your doctor, or your veterinarian.

Marcia Smith 21:38
Yeah,

Bob Smith 21:38
You don’t want to hurt your dog, you know.

Marcia Smith 21:41
And $10,000 later, they’ll give you the result and the answer. Okay, Bob, here’s a question that everybody should know the answer to, especially you.

Bob Smith 21:51
Okay, everybody should know this. Everybody, everybody, all right.

Marcia Smith 21:54
How did the framers of the Constitution, your personal, close friends, limit the power of government and secure the liberty of citizens.

Bob Smith 22:05
Limit the power of government?

Marcia Smith 22:07
Yeah?

Bob Smith 22:07
Well, government by the people, for the people, that’s part of it, right?

Marcia Smith 22:11
Yeah.

Bob Smith 22:11
Government had to be –

Marcia Smith 22:13
But the founders, they created something.

Bob Smith 22:16
Is it The Bill of Rights?

Marcia Smith 22:17
No, no

Bob Smith 22:19
Is it the balance of power?

Marcia Smith 22:19
Yes, a balance of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

Bob Smith 22:25
Right.

Marcia Smith 22:25
These three divisions create checks and balances among the three functions, and that’s something everybody should know and appreciate.

Bob Smith 22:32
What was the Connecticut Compromise? Now, this is something called the Great Compromise now. Now consider it was one of those smaller states.

Marcia Smith 22:40
Now you just poppin’ this off the top of your head?

Bob Smith 22:42
I just read this.

Marcia Smith 22:43
Oh, did you?

Bob Smith 22:44
I knew about this, but I didn’t know the details of it. But –

Marcia Smith 22:46
Yeah, okay, tell me.

Bob Smith 22:47
The Virginia Plan said we’ll have a Congress, which will be the House and the Senate, and both of them will be proportionate to the number of people in each state. Okay? So that essentially meant all the big states, wield all the power.

Marcia Smith 22:47
Yeah.

Bob Smith 22:48
The little states were like, No, we don’t like that. We would like each state to have one vote. So the Connecticut Compromise was the Senate being two votes per state.

Marcia Smith 23:08
Every state, no matter how big or small, which was a great idea.

Bob Smith 23:11
That really IS a balance of power.

Marcia Smith 23:13
Yeah.

Bob Smith 23:13
Because you can win as a big state in one house, you know, but in the other you can’t.

Marcia Smith 23:18
Yeah.

Bob Smith 23:18
You have to make allegiances with everybody.

Marcia Smith 23:20
It’s very smart. I think, I think they should keep it. Certainly up for debate all the time is, should we have popular vote or electoral vote?

Bob Smith 23:20
Oh, yes, the Electoral College, exactly. And both parties have been on either side of that argument. If you leave it the way it is now, the big states win. They’re always but if you get rid of that, it’s even worse.

Marcia Smith 23:40
Yeah

Bob Smith 23:40
Bbecause Rhode Island’s gonna get hardly anybody come to that state.

Marcia Smith 23:43
Yeah.

Bob Smith 23:43
There’s no points there. And also the prairie states in the Midwest, some of the Midwestern prairie states.

Marcia Smith 23:48
Yesh, they’d be ignored.

Bob Smith 23:49
Yeah, totally ignored. So it’s good to have those points that people have to go, they have to build these coalitions for these, but it is, yes, very controversial. Okay, Marcia, this is about a literary person which you probably never heard of – I never did. But this victim predicted the disaster that would take his life 26 years before it happened.

Marcia Smith 24:08
Really?

Bob Smith 24:08
What was the disaster and how did this come about?

Marcia Smith 24:12
Was it the Titanic?

Bob Smith 24:13
It was the Titanic.

Marcia Smith 24:14
Oh, how did I pull that out of my head?

Bob Smith 24:17
Yeah, or other places. Well, in 1886 a famous crusading journalist and publisher from England, William Thomas Stead, printed a story called, How the mail steamer went down in the mid Atlantic, by a survivor. That’s exactly what happened to the Titanic. It was a mail steamer.

Marcia Smith 24:34
I thought it was a fancy cruise for rich people.

Bob Smith 24:37
It was HMS Titanic.

Marcia Smith 24:39
Right.

Bob Smith 24:39
Her Majesty’s Ships always carried the mail.

Marcia Smith 24:42
Oh, okay, in addition to being a fancy cruise.

Bob Smith 24:44
But it carried millions of pieces of mail – we had that on one of the shows – that went down along with all those people.

Marcia Smith 24:47
Okay.

Bob Smith 24:48
Anyway, his was the account of an unnamed steamer that collided with another ship, and due to a shortage of lifeboats, there was a large loss of life. And guess what? That’s exactly what happened to the ship he boarded 26 years later, in 1912. He was on the Titanic and perished when it sank due to too few lifeboats.

Marcia Smith 25:09
Prophetic.

Bob Smith 25:10
He was actually quite a crusader for many causes, including world peace. He was taking the Titanic to America to participate in a peace conference at Carnegie Hall. He’d been invited to it by President, William Howard Taft.

Marcia Smith 25:22
okay, all right. Last question before my quotes, why do we call someone too smart for his own – or her own – good, a smart alec?

Bob Smith 25:31
So Alec? Smart Alec,

Marcia Smith 25:34
Yeah

Bob Smith 25:34
Is Alec like a name like Joe, like, He’s a smart Joe or something, like that.

Marcia Smith 25:38
It is a name, you’re right.

Bob Smith 25:39
Okay.

Marcia Smith 25:39
It’s not a euphemism for something else.

Bob Smith 25:41
Was it like a general term, like Every Tom Dick and Harry kind of thing? No, no. Okay, tell me

Marcia Smith 25:47
it was a specific person. The expression dates back to 1840s when a New York scam artist named Alec Hogue, H-O-A-G, paid off police to look the other way while he and his wife who posed as a prostitute to attract men, before breaking in on them – the husband would – and revealing that he was the husband and demanded money from the scared to death man.

Bob Smith 26:10
Oh, this was the smart alec. He went in like that?

Marcia Smith 26:13
Yeah, but that’s not the part. He decided somewhere along the line to stop paying the police, and then they arrested him, and he soon became Smart Alec, too clever for his own good.

Bob Smith 26:26
Oh, no kidding. So he was known as Smart Alec.

Marcia Smith 26:29
Yeah.

Bob Smith 26:29
And then that was so well known at the time.

Marcia Smith 26:31
Yeah.

Bob Smith 26:31
People started using it, and then we all forgot the reason.

Marcia Smith 26:34
Oh yeah, and it’s the police gave him that name.

Bob Smith 26:37
Smart Alec.

Marcia Smith 26:37
Yeah, sure. Stop paying off the police. You’re under arrest, buddy.

Bob Smith 26:42
Not so smart, Alec!

Marcia Smith 26:43
That didn’t occur to you Alec?

Bob Smith 26:45
Wow, that is an interesting origin story for a term.

Marcia Smith 26:49
Yeah.

Bob Smith 26:49
I like that. So Smart Alec, he would come in and say, I am the husband.! What are you doing to my wife?

Marcia Smith 26:55
Yeah.

Bob Smith 26:55
Oh, that’s so funny.

Marcia Smith 26:56
And he’d get the money, but he also paid the police off. Until he didn’t.

Bob Smith 27:01
Well, that’s not too smart, Alec.

Marcia Smith 27:04
Okay.

Bob Smith 27:04
Okay, what do you got for the quotes today?

Marcia Smith 27:06
This first quote is by Jermaine Greer, remember her?

Bob Smith 27:10
Oh yes.

Marcia Smith 27:10
You are only young once, but you can be immature forever.

Bob Smith 27:14
Well, that’s for sure. Yeah, like smart Alec!

Marcia Smith 27:16
Yeah.

Bob Smith 27:18
Okay.

Marcia Smith 27:18
And Woody Allen. Basically, my wife was immature. I’d be home in the bath and she’d come in and sink all my boats.

Bob Smith 27:29
Okay, oh, dear! I guess it’s all perspective. Well, we hope your perspective is this was a good show. We enjoyed doing it, and we hope you join us again next time, when we return with more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. I’m Bob Smith.

Marcia Smith 27:44
I’m Marcia Smith.

Bob Smith 27:44
You’ve been listening to The Off Ramp.

The Off Ramp is produced in association with the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Visit us on the web at the off ramp. Dot show.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai