The Baboon Congress

Whaddaya Know?

64 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Steve Grooms.

During most of my life, I have been trying to acquire the knowledge that would permit me to function as effectively as I want to. I learned years ago how to cook perfectly done hard-boiled eggs, for example. But that knowledge wasn’t original. I learned from others.

My search for knowledge took a strange turn when the internet became so central to how we live. Now it is usually not important to know much at all, if only you know how to tease answers from the internet with cleverly written Google search strings. It is still nice to know things, for you might not even know enough to do a search if you are totally clueless. And yet if you know just a little, you can get the rest from a computer.

It is obvious that we now live in a brave new world where knowing things isn’t all that important if you just know how to acquire knowledge. Are you a rotten speler? Well, all you really need to know is how to spell words well enough that your spell-checker can figure out what you meant to say. As I remember grade school, a lot of precious time was spent memorizing multiplication tables. Now I use my computer’s calculator to handle the most basic math, such as how old am I? Or how about the arcane calculations needed to divide up a luncheon check, with tips? It used to be that only a few people had that skill, and they might get invited to lunch a lot, but most folks can divide a check and figure the tips with apps on their telephones.

In spite of all of that, I think I’m aware of a few—very few—things I know that I learned all on my own and which might not known by anyone else. Unique knowledge. What a strange concept!

Years ago I worked out a technique for keeping celery in my fridge in great eating condition. Celery used to die a revolting death in the fridge before I got around to eating it. No more. (And I’m in such a generous mood, I’ll share this.) You buy a head of celery. It will come in a plastic bag that is shot through with little holes. Chop off some of the messy top material of the head, but then very carefully carve off a small slice at the base of the head (like you would cut the base of a Christmas tree before putting it up in a bucket of water). Tear off two or three paper towels and soak them in water. Wrap the celery head in the wet towels, then pop the whole mess back in that bag full of holes and store it low in the fridge. Within a day your celery will be in better shape than when you bought it, and you might be able to keep it this crisp and tasty for a week or so.

I made several original discoveries when I spent so much time reflecting on pheasants. Depending on how you count, I have written about pheasants in four books. Much of what I said had been written by someone else somewhere else . . . much, but not all of it.

One of the issues I pondered is the difficulty of getting a good closeup photo of a wild rooster. You might think with telephoto lenses this would be easy, but it is quite the opposite. Pheasants are shy. They live in dense cover that obscures them. It is all but impossible to get their portrait.

And yet some photographers do it, and I finally figured out how. In spring the vegetation isn’t as thick in pheasant country as it is in fall. Roosters gather harems of hens, and part of that process is that they strike showy poses to impress their hens. A springtime rooster might sit in the open trying to look magnificent, even with a human photographer nearby snapping photos of this.

And yet there is a problem. A springtime rooster putting himself on display will be so horny that the naked facial tissue around his eyes be engorged and exaggerated. That is, his face looks nothing at all like it will look in fall when people hunt him. I finally realized that every gorgeous closeup portrait of a rooster I had seen was a photo obviously taken in spring. I made the mistake of noting this and then sassing all those photos of springtime roosters.

roostercover_2

I got my just deserts. When I revised my first pheasant book, the publisher was proud to find a great photo of a rooster that could go on the cover. You already know what it looked like. It was a spring rooster with engorged wattles that was on full sexual display. I begged the publisher to not use a photo I had mocked in my last pheasant book, but they were determined to stick with the photo they had picked.

Do you know something that nobody else knows?

64 thoughts on “Whaddaya Know?”

  1. My ego would have me thinking that I’ve had a few original ideas. Like rubbing a large safety pin across my oily scalp in order to help it slide through two layers of a cloth diaper (no Pampers back then) or tying my toddlers shoe laces together while their little legs straddled the old fashioned stroller crotch metal piece so that they couldn’t crawl out. Did any of you do these things?

    A more recent example of creativity is how to recover as quickly as possible from an early morning acid reflux attack. I’m pretty sure that no one else has figured out how to resolve the intense burning and awful taste in quite the way I’ve stumbled upon: pop two TUMS, take a swig of Calafate (prescription throat-coating liquid), and chew a piece of Nicorette Fruit Chill-flavored gum. It took me three years to discover immediate relief, but just last week I did!

    One other unique solution to a problem comes to mind. Too many years of sun tanning has produced an increasing number of white spots on my otherwise tan legs. These “spots” no longer have pigment and have bothered me for years. Last year, determined to find a way to conceal them, I discovered that a lip liner pencil worked. The lip liner is the same color as my tanned skin. After showering, I just sit on the couch methodically filling in the white spots with the pencil – kind of like dot to dot coloring.

    Another original idea (as far as I know, that is) is cleaning off cob webs and tree cotton from the exterior of my screens. In this old place, the screens are permanently installed in casings at the top of the windows. They have to be pulled down in the warm season and can’t be separated from the window frames. I discovered that a wire pet brush pulled in several strokes over the screen’s surface cleans them perfectly.

    I can’t wait to read about countless original solutions for everyday living on the Trail later today!!

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    1. cb
      for acid reflux try a pinch of arm and hammer baking soda with a half a shot of water. chemistry class in your body= instant no acid

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  2. the stuff i know is all common knowledge. nothing new. but how i am able to recall it is original. i often get the fixes confused and end up with a version of a resolution that resembles what i had in mind but is just a variation or two off the intended deal. two days ago i opted to make some beans. pinto beans in a pot with water get it boiling… 3 or 4 hours later on the low boil i had going they weren’t ready so i turned them onto the burner i have barely keep it alive while buying me time to deal with it in the morning. the morning found the beans ready to rest and then later in the day i opened a big ol can of tomato sauce. when i opened the tomato sauce i though tit was tomato jusce. there ws nothing but liquid there so… add a monster can of tomato puree (i just threw out a tupperware of tomato paste earlier int he wek because i didnt get to it in time. i had so much sauce i now didnt have enough beans to deal with it all. so i split the beans into two groups each a spaghetti pot of their own one for chili one for boston baked beans, and the biggest for a spaghetti sauce foundation kind of thing.8turned to 1030 and it was time to put a wrap on it but in the process 2 daughters and a wife found the chili and left me with a cereal bowl of chili for the fridge and a sauce a little to italianized to modify into chili. i will come up with something but maybe thats what i know how to do is fake the response to how you fix the mess you got yourself into. it requires fool hardy confidence and an intent to do better. reminds me a lot of my golf game. i play rarely, i paly poorly, things rarely go wher i had intended them to go and i have to figure out how to get to where i am headed after i end up behind the bush or in the woods in my quest to reach the pin. sometimes golf cooking and life are all kind of the same. different results but similar methodologies. damn… youd think a break would come up every now and again but no, it is just a varaition on a theme.
    as for photography i have always been glad that when i am photographed in pursuit of sexual conquest that i am not recognizable for later identification especially down the sights of a gun barrel.

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    1. When I was about 11, my mother left me in charge of watching the pressure cooker, telling me that when the little steam release valve began rocking, I needed to immediately turn the flame way down. She was cooking her famous navy bean soup with ham. She left to visit a neighbor and I nervously watched the valve until it started rocking. I then turned the flame UP instead of down. Within moments, the whole pot of soup blew its lid, spraying me and the whole kitchen with scalding hot liquid. After this trauma, I never again would be in the same room as a pressure cooker.

      Since her soup was my very favorite meal ever, I found a way around the pressure cooker risk. I boil water with the dried navy beans in it. When it boils, I toss in some baking soda and stir it around for just a minute or two, then drain all the liquid off and cook the beans (with ham, carrots, and celery) for about two hours. When the liquid boils down, I just add more water and repeat. The baking soda apparently breaks down the beans, softens them, and makes them instantly ready for cooking with the rest of the ingredients – no need for a pressure cooker at all!

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        1. My pressure cooker sits waiting for me to make artichokes (which I don’t do often enough). My parents cooked all our veggies (fresh or frozen) in the P.C. but artichokes are the only things that make it into mine.

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  3. Good morning. I guess there are times when special knowledge can back fire on us, Steve. Your story reminds me of the errors I have made repairing my house that most people wouldn’t notice. It bothers me a little bit whenever I remember those errors even though no one else is aware of them. I guess the picture of the pheasant on your book bothers you even though you might be one of very few people or the only one who knows it could be better.

    The first thing that I can think of in answer to the question today is something I did this spring to get the soil ready in my garden for planting. Most of this spring the soil in my garden was too wet to work using my usual methods. I was able to plant in this wet ground when I discovered I could use a very large fork shaped tool that I bought a few years ago to loosen excessively moist ground without turning it into a muddy mess. I just pushed the large fork into the ground and pulled back on it enough to break up the ground a little. After doing that, the soil surface was broken up just enough to prepare a seed bed with some light hoeing and raking. It wasn’t the best kind of seed bed, but it did allow me to plant in ground too wet to plant any other way that I know.

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I can not think of much that would be unique or new. Most of what I know is what others have taught me. I will be grinding away on this question all day.

    Beautiful day out there folks!

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  6. Thanks for the celery tip, Steve! And I enjoyed this: “basic math, such as how old am I”…

    I know there is something… I have, over the years, figured how to make curtains out of almost anything, but I imagine lots of people do that. I will wander around the house and see if I come up with something.

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  7. OT: reply to Lisa from late post yesterday: “Oh it’s right in the middle, oh it’s ret in the meedle, oh it’s root in the moodle of my head head head.” (or something like that)

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  8. For some reason, I seem to be a person at work in whom co-workers and even adminstrators confide and who swear me to secrecy. I know, for example, that there will be a moving of some personnel to different offices on different floors in September. It is all hush-hush because the personnel in question will be terrribly unhappy about moving to different offices (these are long-term employees who have been in the same offices for decades and who may quit as a result of having to move).

    I know lots of arcane details about baking, making pie crusts and strudel, growing flowers and vegetables, butchering hogs and making sausage, Rorschach interpretation, Canadian history, tailoring suits, etc. I have to be careful about sharing my knowledge as I tend to share too much when asked and people get glassy-eyed and apparently overwhelmed with the information.

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  9. Morning all. I have a situation similar to Renee’s; co-workers often show up at my cube saying “since you know everything”. I don’t actually like this since #1) there are plenty of things I don’t know and #2) it’s a lot of pressure knowing that people think I know everything. I think of myself as a person who knows how to find out about things more than a “know everything”.

    This morning I am loving that I can find things out. Discovered online yesterday that my intermittant power steering problem is an actual known defect and in following up this morning, found out that I can get it fixed for no cost! Woo hoo.

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    1. I also hear about some things I should keep to myself. I guess all of us have been told things that we shoiuldn’t tell to anyone. Mostly the inside stuff I know is from someone who shouldn’t have told me. They need to talk about what they know and think that they trust me. I can be trusted almost all of the time to keep my mouth shut. I will pass on information when I think I can trust the person getting the information. I guess I shouldn’t do that.

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    2. We live in an odd new sort of world, vs. People often curse computers, but when they can help us fix our cars at no cost we should be grateful.

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  10. I know (or at least have known) how to keep 40 kindergarteners occupied while waiting in line. (Songs with lots of hand motions work best.)
    I can look into almost any refrigerator and figure out how to make lots more space.
    I know how to make lefse (the non potato version).
    I know how to calm my mother down.
    I know how to make a bottle of wine last longer after it’s been opened (put it into the little bottles, where not so much oxygen is getting to the wine).
    Still thinking…

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    1. BiR, I need your fridge consolidation skills! I have two unrelated actors involved in the Fringe Festival coming to my house this weekend (for the run of the Fringe 8/1-8/11) and can’t figure out how 3 different people, not eating together, are going to share my miserably small fridge.

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      1. One trick if you have the time is to transfer things in half full containers into a smaller one, so you’re not basically storing AIR. Zip locks are good for this…

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      2. by them cheerios and kraft macaroni and cheese. or tell them their payment for the couch is to feed you meals out every meal during their stay. that should keep the refrigerator open except for styrofoam containers for leftovers kept in the coleman cooler on the back porch

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    5. SO nice to hear your “voice”. I adored The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I listened to it on CD; this version had a couple of women and a couple of men doing the different characters. Towards the end, I ended up sitting in the car in the garage for almost 30 minutes because I didn’t want to stop listening!

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    8. I love that book so much.

      (I was just thinking the other day how I missed hearing your “voice” here on the blog – good to hear you.)

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    10. I picked out this book title from a list of names for one reason (well, I also like quirky whimsical titles): I had an uncle Arlo, my mother’s older brother, a true genius but warped and difficult, who enlisted in the RCAF in 1940, as many young American men did. He was shot down over Germany in early 1942. He lived almost three years as a POW, living mostly on potato peelings. He only rarely ever spoke about anything but the potato peelings. Who knows how much of the difficult character he had came from those years. But he was a problem before that. But my mother says he was different after, as so many men were, if not all. He did bring home an English wife. He spent the rest of his life disguising his 3/4 German heritage, which was easy to do with the name Wetter, which he told people was English, but it is German for “weather.” So the book was not only grand but personal for me.

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    11. i love this group. i would be willing to bet the general population at alrge would register at about a .003 level of being able to acknowledge familiarity with the guernsey literary nd potato peel pie society ane yet here ont eh trial it has immeadaite hits form what 40-505 of the population. i will have to look up the book but i am among the more illiterate porrtion of the population here. you gott love this group. thanks for sticking your head back in clyde. always a treat..how about them twins?

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  12. Does anyone else know what a delightful afternoon snack can be had if you stir chunks of mango (& the juice left on the cutting board), and almonds into ricotta cheese?

    Clyde! Hello! So good to see your post. I lOVE The GL & PPP Society!

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  13. There are select, esoteric, bits of knowledge on how we are getting product information for my company’s search tool from the source data…even before you get to what I consider “esoteric” it can get into the realm of minutia. Beyond that, it gets into things, like others, where I am one of a select few who know this oddball information: how to make dutchman goop out of wheat paste (for theatrical sets), how much cinnamon to add to zucchini cake (beyond what is called for in the recipe) to get it “just right,” how to finesse a toddler into thinking they have control of their choices when they really don’t…

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  14. Greetings! I am not an original thinker, so am unsure of what I can add to the discussion. I know some arcane things, but generally learned them from elsewhere. Here’s a breathing exercise to do when you’re nervous or upset: Alternate nostril breathing. With right finger, gently push right nostril closed. Breathe in (by default in left nostril). Switch over — release right nostril, the use left hand to close left nostril and breath out. Now breathe in (stay put). When you breathe out, switch over. Breathe in, then switch over. Best done slowly when you don’t have a cold or sinus problems. It’s a wonderful, calming and balancing exercise.

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  15. I know how to commit many crimes and get away with most of them.
    I know how to set up food and dishes for a buffet so the “traffic” flows all in one direction, no circling back.
    I know how good thimbleberries taste and I’ve made thimbleberry jam.
    I know how amazing wild strawberries taste.
    I know the feel of a November storm on Lake Superior.
    I know that the Baboons are some of the nicest people I know.

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  17. The last few days, WordPress has disallowed posts from my iPad. And eaten them.
    I doubt that I have any unique knowledge. Any practical knowledge I have is not uncommon and any obscure knowledge I may have is not practical. For example, I can identify by sight perhaps 100 prominent American stage actors and actresses from the nineteenth century. I can tell you a little about perhaps another 100. I can make some surprising (a la six degrees of separation) connections between seemingly unconnected nineteenth personages ( the nineteenth century was a relatively small world). I can offer some convincing arguments for some unusual word etymologies, like where cantaloupes ( which means, essentially, “song of the wolf”) got its name and what porcelain has to do with pigs. I just wish I knew somebody that found that sort of thing interesting…

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    2. bill half the fun of getting into the stuff that interests you is that it interests you. i think your knowledge about obscure stuff is amazing but im easy. i even like clydes posts.

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  19. I know how to tell hardboiled eggs from the raw ones in the fridge. You boil the eggs with onion skins in the water. They turn brown. Then you know.

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