Let's hope Joe Miner stays the way he is

Joe Miner, image taken from S&T website

After hearing news about sports team names and athletic mascots that offend people enough to be eliminated and erased from memory, we’re concerned about the future of the mascot of our local university, Missouri University of Science and Technology.

We’re proud to have that engineering campus here, a university that started out as the Missouri School of Mines.

The teams are known as the Miners or the Lady Miners, and the school’s mascot is a character named Joe Miner.

Of course, Joe Miner attends games to support the team, and he occasionally is seen at community events. We enjoy watching kids react to the big fellow.

But look closely at Joe Miner and you’ll see several things wrong with him.

For one thing, he’s a man. We recall reading about the controversy surrounding a “cowboy” mascot at another university because such a character excludes the female students. It troubles us that someone might find Joe offensive because he is a manly man. Just look at that smoothly-shaved face and that strong jaw and chin..

For another thing, he carries a pistol. This is an homage to the days of mining in the west, we suppose, but now, a pistol-packing man on a campus is a frightful sight.

Joe also is wearing a cowboy hat, a relic that brings up the term cowboy again. He is not wearing a woolen stocking cap or a beret, both of which seem to be preferred by today’s young men.

On a related note, he is wearing boots, footwear for rough rubes. Today’s college boys wear sneakers or sandals, signs of their gentleness.

Joe is also carrying a giant slide rule and a pick. What in the world for? Shouldn’t he simply be carrying a cell phone -- and looking at it, both thumbs working the keys -- instead, to be reflective of today’s culture?

And, of course, he lacks melanin.

The description of Joe on the school’s website is also troubling to some, we fear. It describes Joe Miner as “rugged and individualistic” and a character who evokes “the spirit of the old west and the determination to succeed.”

Make no mistake, we here at The Ozarks Almanac like a character that looks like a man, dresses like a man and carries a firearm. We believe in the value of rugged individualism and in determination to succeed. We also are fond of the spirit of the Old West and The Cowboy Way.

But we wonder when Joe is going to be targeted by people who are offended and replaced with someone or something more "inclusive." We wonder when the S&T Miners will be replaced by the S&T Social Justice Warriors—and what that mascot might look like on the sidelines of a football game.

Let's all hope that never happens. 

Part of my lawn and garden crew

There's an unused fence post in my back yard, relic of a former gate and fence that was there before we bought the place.

I left it in place, figuring I would use it someday.

And, sure enough, I do use it. I use it to hang my sprayer nozzle, which I bought on clearance at Lowe's for a little of nothing.

Moreover, I am not the only one who uses the post. A little fellow sits there and waits for bugs to fly by, I suppose.

I left him alone--aside from photographing him--and went and found a different nozzle to use for watering the plants.

If he's killing bugs, I figure he's an important part of my garden work.

Along with the possum that kills snakes--I hope--and the cats that kill mice--though not well.

You just can't beat farm-fresh eggs for breakfast

 

These farm-fresh eggs, unwashed for longer preservation,
obviously, came from multiple hens.

When you live in town,  as we do, it's good to know someone  in the country who keeps chickens and sells their eggs.

Fortunately, I do.

A young woman I work with, Amy, has a husband and two children and she keeps them busy with a flock of hens, no roosters. Every week or so, she brings me a couple dozen eggs with shells that are brown, blue, or some hue I can't quite figure out.

What's important, though is the color of the yolks. These eggs have deep, rich yellowish orange or orangish yellow yolks, so you know they have to be good.

I like to cook breakfasts on the weekends for my wife and our three babies (two standard poodles and a little terrier mix feller from the animal shelter), so we eat them fried or scrambled or as French toast. Sometimes I make pancakes and put an egg or two in the mix. No one ever turns a nose up at weekend breakfasts around here.

Sometimes, when I'm in the mood, I make fried egg sandwiches for supper. If they could talk, the babies would say, "Mighty fine, mighty fine."

Amy said she told her mother-in-law that I fed bites of egg to the three fur-babies, and her reaction was an aghast, "Farm-fresh eggs for dogs! What a waste!" When Amy told me that story, I said, "Dogs? What dogs?" She laughed and said that's what she told her mother-in-law.

Farm-fresh eggs are great for boiling, too--and to use in recipes.

So, if you live in town, find someone with a flock of birds.

Persimmon seeds tell us what to expect this winter

Persimmons hold the winter weather forecast inside.

A couple of days ago, we predicted that this was going to be a cold, snowy winter, not a mild season.

Why are we so sure of this?

Why, persimmon seeds of course.

We Ozarkers love to talk about the weather, gripe about the weather, predict the weather ourselves and gripe about the weatherman when he is occasionally wrong. And we rely on our folklore to tell us what to expect.

One way to predict the weather is to cut open persimmon seeds. The Ozarks Boy has done that before here at The Ozarks Almanac. Now, the local newspaper has a columnist called The Insider who also took a turn at it.

The Insider’s conclusion is about the same as The Ozarks Boy’s, i.e., it is going to be a cold, wet winter. And when we say cold and wet, we mean snow and, unfortunately, ice. There were some cold wet days in November and December, but in this part of the country, the cold really hits us hard in January and, especially, February.

Now, for you city slickers and people from other states who don’t have our rich hillbilly folklore, it goes like this: You pick a bunch of persimmons, take the seeds out of the pulpy fruit, cut them open and see what you find. You’re going to find a little depiction of a knife, a fork or a spoon. Or, perhaps you’ll just find a blank.

A knife means biting, cutting cold. A fork means moderate weather is coming through. A spoon means snow.

The Ozarks Boy and The Insider have found that the seeds this year contained knives and spoons. Nope, there was nary a fork. So, it appears that we need to make ready for cold, wet (snowy, icy) winter here in south central Missouri. If you’re interested in what The Insider’s column had to say, here is the link to click on: Out and About With The Insider.

For those of you more interested in science and data, rather than folklore, from S.A. Fraley, the weather observer at the Rolla (Missouri S&T) NOAA Co-Op Weather Station, here is the local weather data for the 24-hour period ending at 7:30 a.m. this morning, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2021:

The seed halves in the middle appear to be spoons (snow)
while those on the right appear to be knives (bitter, cut-
ting cold. We don't know what the blank ones mean, and
we prefer not to think about the possibilities.

 Maximum temperature: 31 degrees F

Minimum temperature: 27 degrees F

Temperature at 7:30 a.m.: 29 degrees F

Precipitation: 0.05 inch

Precipitation for the month: 0.81 inch

Precipitation for the year: 0.81 inch

Snowfall/frozen precipitation: 0.5 inch

Snowfall/frozen precipitation for the month: 1.3 inch

Snowfall/Frozen precipitation for the year: 1.3 inch

Snowfall/frozen precipitation for the 2020-2021 season: 1.4 inch

Relative humidity: 99 percent. 

Snow and ice usher in the New Year

A little ice goes a long way. This
is pretty, but much more and limbs
break and power lines fall.

Here in Rolla, Missouri, we woke up today, the first day of the new year to ice on the trees and windshields, topped with a little frosting of snow that was still coming down—slightly—when The Ozarks Boy left for work at 5:30 a.m. Friday, January 1, 2021.

We expected to wake up to this, for it had started on New Year’s Eve.

Moreover, we expect to wake up to more snow on the ground and ice cracking on the moving tree limbs. We’re going to have to scrape the windshield many days, and we old-timers are going to have to drive even more slowly than we do during good weather. We'll tell you about that in the next day or two.

Bu right now, from S.A. Fraley, the weather observer at the Rolla (Missouri S&T) NOAA Co-Op Weather Station, here is the local weather data for the 24-hour period ending at 7:30
a.m. this morning, Friday, January 1, 2021:

Maximum temperature: 32 degrees F

Minimum temperature: 22 degrees F

The Ozarks Boy lets the motor and
defroster run to clear the wind=
shield. No scraping for him.

Temperature at 7:30 a.m.: 21 degrees F

Precipitation: 0.68 inch

Precipitation for the month: 0.68 inch

Precipitation for the year: 0.68 inch

Snowfall/frozen precipitation: 0.2 inch

Snowfall/frozen precipitation for the month: 0.2 inch

Snowfall/Frozen precipitation for the year: 0.2 inch

Snowfall/frozen precipitation for the 2020-2021 season: 0.3 inch

Relative humidity: 99 percent.

Happy New Year to all of you who read The Ozarks Almanac, wherever in the world you are.