Did I Miss That Day In School?

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Until a recent trip to Vermont I thought Vermont was one of the original thirteen states. Wrong. Vermont had wanted to be its own country. It changed its mind in time to become the fourteenth state in the union. I also learned that Vermont is the most rural of the fifty states. One-third of its roads are unpaved and one hundred twenty covered bridges dot its countryside. In Vermont roofs are covered with tin so the winter sun will warm them and cause accumulated snow to slide off. If I didn't think snow was a four-letter word, I'd live in Vermont. Living in a state that's outlawed billboards would be a sign of good taste.

Until recently I thought that London's Big Ben was a clock. Wrong. Big Ben is the nickname for the clock's main bell. Until the late 1850's Big Ben was England's largest bell. In early times clocks didn't have faces or hands. Bells told the time. In Latin "clocca" means bell. I studied Latin in school, but none of that rang a bell.

I studied economics too, but I must have been absent when the "Hemline Theory" was discussed. According to this theory, there's a direct correlation between the length of women's skirts and the condition of the economy. In the 20's and 60's hemlines were high and so was the stock market. In the 30's and 40's hemlines were low and so was the stock market. In 1987 when miniskirts were the rage, the market was at a matching high - until October. That's when fashion designer Bill Blas said that miniskirts looked ridiculous. Hemlines dropped and so did the stock market. Obviously, the shorter the skirt, the better chance we have to see if we have a leg to stand on.

I knew palm oil was a saturated fat - a member of the artery-clogging fat family. I knew palm oil was bad for our health, but I didn't know it's bad for the environment. According to a senior forest campaigner for Greenpeace, the palm oil made in Indonesia's tropical forests is responsible for the worst deforestation in history and has made Indonesia the third worst emitter of greenhouse gas. On top of that, the disappearing forests are causing orangutans and Sumatran white tigers to be in danger of extinction. What I learned was that the crisis at the gas pump isn't the only oil crisis.