Happy belated Easter for those of you who celebrate the holiday! Happy last Sunday of March for those that don’t! As we continue on with exploring the senses, it seems especially appropriate to write about the sense of taste – with all of the chocolate that has found a temporary home at my house.

The following paragraphs describe a taste and smell experiment that you can conduct with your students. All you need is a roll of lifesavers or other fruit flavored candy. The other paragraphs describe the relationship between the sense of taste and sense of smell, which at times may get too technical for your students. As always, use whatever makes sense.

Your Sense of Taste

Relationship between taste and smell:

Think of all the wonderful sensations taste can impart to us - the delicious Honey Baked Ham, au gratin potatoes, Brussels sprouts of an Easter celebration. Coffee, chocolate, lush strawberries - the list goes on and on! Receptors on our tongues bind to chemicals in our food and relay the information about the chemicals to our brain. Surprisingly, all those wonderful tastes are transmitted to our brains through only four types of receptors on our tongues – those for sweet, sour, salt and bitter. How can this be so?

Life Savers or other flavored candies:

Work with the student or have the student work in pairs. One person closes their eyes and holds their nose, while another feeds them a lifesaver, without telling them the flavor. The student should try to guess what flavor the lifesaver is, without letting go of their nose. Observations should proceed for a minute or so as the candy dissolves in their mouth. Is there any change in the taste of the candy from the beginning to the end of the experiment? Describe the tastes.

There are only four different types of true tastes -sour, sweet, salt and bitter. Each of these types of receptors bind to a specific structure of a "taste" molecule. Sweet receptors recognize hydroxyl groups (OH) in sugars, sour receptors respond to acids (H+), the metal ions in salts (such as the Na+ in table salt. Alkaloids trigger the bitter receptors alkaloids are nitrogen containing bases with complex ring structures which have significant physiological activity. Some examples of alkaloids are nicotine, quinine, morphine and strychnine. Many poisons are alkaloids, and the presence of receptors for the bitter taste at the back of the tongue may help to trigger the vomiting response.

Approximately 80-90% of what we perceive as "taste" actually is due to the sense of smell. Just think about how dull food tastes when you have a head cold or a stuffed up nose. At first students may not be able to tell the specific flavor of the candy, just perhaps a sensation of sweetness or sourness. If students are patient, some may notice that as the candy dissolves they can identify the specific taste. This is because some scent molecules volatilize and travel up to the olfactory organ through a "back door" - that is up a passage at the back of the throat and to the nose. Since we can only taste four different true "tastes", it is actually smell that allows us to experience the complex, mouth watering flavors we associate with our favorite foods.

by Karen Kalumuck

The tutor tips this month continue on a sensory theme, with the sense of hearing the next topic. The mechanics of how we hear is briefly described in the paragraphs below and is followed by a fun exercise. Although the description of how we hear is technical with a few new terms, it is fairly straightforward and might be useful while viewing a diagram of the ear.

Find a good diagram at:

The Ear

"Keeping one's ear to the ground" means to keep up on current trends. The phrase dates back to early 20^th century politicians and comes from frontier lore of both pioneers and Indians, who listened for the sound of approaching hoof beats.

Fun exercise:

Pretend that you are a conductor. Here's how to follow the conducting pattern for one of the more common time signatures (4/4). Difficulty Level: Average Time required: 5 minutes

Here's How:

You can conduct with just your hand or with a baton. Orchestral conductors usually use batons. Imagine a 'square' in front of your body. For the purposes of this exercise, put the top of the 'square' in front of your eyes, and the bottom somewhere above your waist. Start with your right hand (holding baton if desired) in front of your face, in the 'center' of the top line of the 'square'. 'Drop' your hand straight to the bottom of the 'square' and stop. This is the 'downbeat'. For the next beat, move your hand to the left, to another imaginary 'corner' and stop. For the next beat, move your hand to the right to another imaginary 'corner' and stop. For the next beat, move your hand to the original position in front of your face. Try this basic pattern a few times. Allow your hand to 'bounce' a bit on the bottom of the 'square' and turn up slightly at the 'corners'. Take out the 'stops' and move your hand continuously, all the time counting (1, 2, 3, 4) and making sure your hand 'arrives' at each 'corner' at the proper time. Try singing 'Mary had a little lamb' slowly, and conducting. Figure out how many beats every note should get (hint: the first 'lamb' gets two beats).

Tips:

Vary the pattern according to the results you want. Try making the pattern a different size, conducting 'smoothly' (legato), faster or slower. Be creative. Once you have the pattern down, add your other hand. Try 'mirroring', or use it to indicate volume. The next time you are at a concert (or see one on T.V.), watch the conductor to see how they vary their conducting.

May Day is celebrated around the world. It is a festival of happiness, joy and the coming of summer.

Come all ye lads and lassies

Join in the festive scene

Come dance around the maypole

That will stand upon the green.

Background:

Beltane (Bright Fire) or May Day is the first day of summer, and once marked when cattle were taken to pasture to graze after being blessed with protective bonfire smoke. In later agricultural societies, when people leapt over bonfires, the height of their leaps was supposed to forecast the height of crops. While a German farmer's calendar of 1493 shows all other months of the year illustrated by hard-working farm folk, May alone represents leisure time—luxuriating lovers. A man attentively plays a lute for a bathing woman. Beltane especially celebrated love, attraction, courtship and mating--that yearly groundswell of desire we know as "spring fever." Long before our current high school prom king and queen, villages elected a young, attractive couple to represent the King and Queen of the May, also known as John Thomas and Lady Jane. Folk danced around the May pole, the skyward symbol of life; they gathered flowers and spent nights together under the stars in the forest. Beltane is the time of milk and honey, the primary pagan time of pleasure, of blossoming and blooming, of desire and satisfaction, so the cow and the bee are both significant symbols for this celebration. The cow's miraculous ability to create great amounts of milk and the bee's creation of honey, the sweetest food on earth, were absolutely magical. Large oatcakes, called bannocks, were eaten as part of the festivities. Traditionally a portion of the cake was burned or marked with ashes. The unfortunate soul who received the marked piece was sacrificed to the gods. More recently, the recipient simply jumped over a small fire 3 times instead. May Day traditionally features flowers, fruits and other sweets, and dancing, especially around a May pole with streamers.

Background for the Teacher:

Italy: The people of ancient Rome honored Flora, the goddess of flowers and springtime, with a festival called Florialia. The goddess was represented by a small statue wreathed in garlands. A procession of singers and dancers carried the statue past a sacred blossom-decked tree. Later, festivals of this kind spread to other lands conquered by the Romans. Today May Day is known as the happiest day of the year in Italy. All varieties of flowers are placed in and around places of worship. Boys often serenade their sweethearts on this day.

Switzerland: In Switzerland, a May pine tree is often placed under a girl's window.

Germany: German boys often secretly plant May trees in front of the windows of their sweethearts.

Czechoslovakia: At night, boys at night place maypoles before their sweethearts' windows.

England: The festivals begun in Italy reached their height in England during the Middle Ages. On the first day of May, English villagers awakened at daybreak to roam the countryside gathering blossoming flowers and branches. A towering maypole was set up on the village green. This pole, usually made of the trunk of a tall birch tree, was decorated with bright field flowers. The villagers then danced and sang around the maypole, accompanied by a piper. Usually the Morris dance was performed by dancers wearing bells on their colorful costumes. Often the fairest maiden of the village was chosen queen of the May. Sometimes a May king was also chosen. These two led the village dancers and ruled over the festivities. In Elizabethan times, the king and queen were called Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

Maypoles were usually set up for the day in small towns, but in London and the larger towns they were erected permanently. They were considered heathen eyesores by the Puritans. May Day festivals became so gay and wild that the Puritans were able to force the government to forbid them. They soon sprang up again, however, and still continue in many English villages.

Today in London children go from house to house bringing flowers in return for pennies. After the pennies are collected, they are thrown into a wishing well. Special wishes are made with hopes they will be granted. The pennies are later collected and given to different charitable organizations.

France: The French considered the month of May sacred to the Virgin Mary, so they enshrined young girls as May queens in their churches and May queens led processions in honor or the Virgin Mary. Cows also play important roles in French May Day festivals. Bunches of flowers are tied and draped around their tails as they are led in parades. Everyone tries to touch the cows because it is believed to be good luck.

On May Day morning, everyone drinks milk still warm from the milking to assure good luck during the year.

Greece: Greek children set out early in the morning to search for the first swallow of spring. When the bird is located, the children go from door to door singing songs of spring. For their efforts, neighbors offer special treats to eat, such as fruits, nuts, and cakes.

United States: The Puritans frowned on May Day, so the day has never been celebrated with as much enthusiasm in the United States as in Great Britain. But May Dayis celebrated by dancing and singing around a maypole tied with colorful streamers or ribbons. The dancers twist the streamers around the pole to make a pretty pattern to be enjoyed by all. On college campuses a May queen is often chosen and the old dances are performed around a maypole. Children often gather spring flowers, place them in handmade paper May baskets and hang them on the doorknobs of relatives and friends--they ring the doorbells and run away, leaving their flowers as a surprise. At May Day parties, children select May queens, dance around the maypole, and sing May Day songs. These festivals often occur in parks or schools.

May Day Trivia: The Traditional May Day celebrations were pre-Christian agricultural festivals. Eventually the significance was lost and the practices survived merely as popular festivities. A widespread superstition held that washing the face in the May Day morning dew would beautify the skin. In Hawaii, May Day is Lei Day. Everyone gives the gift of a lei to another, putting it around the receiver's neck and accompanying it with the traditional kiss. Lei Day began in 1928. Some Hawaiian celebrations are complete with pageants, a Lei Queen and her court. In 1889, a congress of world Socialist parties held in Paris voted to support the U.S. labor movement's demand for an 8-hour day. It chose May 1, 1890, as a day of demonstrations in favor of the 8-hour day. Afterward, May 1 became a holiday called Labor Day in many nations. It resembles the September holiday in the U.S. The holiday is especially important in socialist and Communist countries--when political demonstrations are held.

Last revised 4-9-02.

One of my earliest memories is of my Grandmother avidly listening to the Minnesota Twins play on her brown leather covered a.m. radio. Although technology has come a long way, what hasn't changed is the superstitions that baseball players have. Read through this list and then watch a portion of a baseball game with your student. You will be amazed at how many instances of superstitious behavior you will identify from the list.

• A "hoodoo" ball is one the pitcher has spit on so it will slip off the bat.
• A ball player on coming off the field will always lay his glove in the same place for luck in hitting.
• A baseball player on going to the batter's box will spit on the ground and rub his foot in it for luck in batting.
• A good baseball player will step on first base for luck in reaching the base the next time he bats.
• A pitcher will think it is unlucky, if the second baseman throws the ball to him.
• A third baseman will touch his base on going out and coming in from the field so that he will be lucky in batting.
• A third baseman who makes the third "put out" will touch his base for luck, especially if he is the next batter up.
• Always wear a red necktie to win in a baseball game.
• Always whirl your bat around your head three times for good luck when you go to bat.
• An itching hand while playing baseball means that you will catch the next foul ball.
• An outfielder will touch second base after the game so that he will reach that base on the day following.
• An outfielder muffing his first fly indicates that his team will win the game.
• Baseball teams always lay their gloves down in a row and the player who does not put his glove in its proper place will have bad luck.
• By common consent and with one impulse everyone stands up to stretch while two sides are changing places at the end of the seventh inning.
• By spitting on the ball a pitcher can make the batter miss it.
• Changing bats after you have taken one is unlucky.
• If baseball player starts out upon the field, forgets something and returns for it, it will be unlucky in the game.
• If a baseball player is called back from the field and he returns, he will have bad luck.
• If a baseball team on its way to the ball park meets a load of beer kegs, it means good luck. If a batter fouls the first ball pitched to him, it is a sign that he will strike out.
• If a batter on returning from home plate throws his bat down and it crosses another bat, it will bring him bad luck.
• If a pitcher rubs slippery elm bark on his hands, he will cause the batter to miss the ball.
• If a pitcher walk around another pitcher to start the inning off, it gives them the other pitcher) the jinx and causes them to lose the game.
• It is a sign that he will win, if the pitcher finds a toad in the outfield before the game starts.
• It is unlucky for a pitcher to drop a ball when about to pitch it.
• It is unlucky to let anyone from the visiting team sit on the home team's bench.
• It is unlucky to drop a bat between home plate and the catcher.
• Keep a buckeye in your pocket while paying baseball and you will have good luck.
• Never cross your bat with another batter when on your way to the home plate or it will bring you bad luck.
• Some baseball players keep their caps turned backward for luck.
• Some baseball players will step on home plate before leaving the park in order to have good luck the next day.
• Some baseball players will turn around three times in the batter's box for good luck.
• Spit on the end of your bat for good luck.
• Stick a piece of chewing gum on the lower end of your bat and you will make a good hit.
• Striking out the first man who comes to bat signifies that the pitcher will win his game.
• The batter who passes between home plate and the pitcher's box when going to bat will be hit by a pitched ball.
• The last half of the seventh inning is known as the "lucky seventh" for the home team.
• To be put out at third base is unlucky.
• To strike out the first batter indicates that the pitcher will lose his game.
• When an outfielder goes to the outfield, he will kick the same base each time he passes it for luck.
• When you want to make a hit, put dirt on the bat.

By Cheri Sicard

While many people might assume that Mother's Day is a holiday invented by the fine folks at Hallmark, it's not so. The earliest Mother's Day celebrations can be traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece, honoring Rhea, the Mother of the Gods. The Romans called their version of the event the Hilaria, and celebrated on the Ides of March by making offerings in the temple of Cybele, the mother of the Gods. Early Christians celebrated the festival on the fourth Sunday of Lent in honor of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Christ.

The Mother Behind Mother's Day

The story behind Ana Jarvis's mother, one Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis, is just as interesting than the story of Mother's Day itself. The elder Mrs. Jarvis organized a series of "Mother's Work Camps" in West Virginia to improve health and sanitary conditions before the civil war. During the war she declared neutrality for her organizations and regularly aided soldiers in need on both sides of the struggle.

In more recent times, relatively speaking – England in the 1600s--the celebration was expanded to include all mothers with "Mothering Sunday" being celebrated on the 4th Sunday of Lent (the 40 day period leading up to Easter). Besides attending church services in honor of the Virgin Mary, children returned home from the cities with gifts, flowers, and special Mothering Day cakes that were important parts of the celebration.

Mother's Day festivities in the United States date back to 1872 when Julia Ward Howe (her other claim to fame was writing the lyrics for the "Battle Hymn of the Republic") suggested the day be dedicated to peace. Ms. Howe would hold organized Mother's Day meetings in Boston, Massachusetts ever year.

In 1907, Ana Jarvis, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania schoolteacher, furthered the cause by beginning a campaign to establish a national Mother's Day. Ms. Jarvis persuaded her mother's church in Grafton, West Virginia to celebrate Mother's Day on the second anniversary of her mother's death, which happened to be on the 2nd Sunday of May that year. By the following year, Mother's Day was also being celebrated in Philadelphia.

Not content to rest on her laurels, Ms. Jarvis and her supporters began to write to ministers, businessman, and politicians in their quest to establish a national Mother's Day and in 1912, the Mother's Day International Association was incorporated for the purpose of promoting the day and its observance. By 1911, Mother's Day was celebrated in almost every state in the nation. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson made it official by proclaiming Mother's Day a national holiday that was to be held each year on the 2nd Sunday of May.

It is somewhat ironic that after all her efforts, Ana Jarvis ended up growing bitter over what she perceived as the corruption of the holiday she created. She abhorred the commercialization of the holiday and grew so enraged by it that she filed a lawsuit to stop a 1923 Mother's Day festival and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a war mothers' convention where women sold white carnations -- Jarvis' symbol for mothers -- to raise money. Ana Jarvis' story is not a happy one. Things went from bad to worse and she eventually lost everything and everyone that was close to her and died alone in a sanatorium in 1948. Shortly before her death, Jarvis told a reporter she was sorry she had ever started Mother's Day.

Ana may be gone, but Mother's Day lives on, regardless of whether it meets her approval. Many countries throughout the world celebrate Mother's Day at various times throughout the year, but some such as Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, and Belgium also celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May.

Copied from:

http://www.fabulousfoods.com/holidays/momsday/momdayhistory.html

Honor the anniversary on the Mount St. Helens eruption this Saturday, May 18th.

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At 8:32 a.m. PDT, Mount St. Helens, a volcanic peak in southwestern Washington, suffered a massive eruption, killing 57 people and devastating some 210 square miles of wilderness. Called Louwala-Clough, or "the Smoking Mountain," by Native Americans, Mount St. Helens is located in the Cascade Range and stood 9,680 feet before its eruption. The volcano has erupted periodically during the last 4,500 years, and the last active period was between 1831 and 1857.

On March 20, 1980, noticeable volcanic activity began again with a series of earth tremors centered on the ground just beneath the north flank of the mountain. These earthquakes escalated, and on March 27 a minor eruption occurred, and Mount St. Helens began emitting steam and ash through its crater and vents.

Small eruptions continued daily, and in April people familiar with the mountain, noticed changes to the structure of its north face. A scientific study confirmed that a bulge more than a mile in diameter was moving upward and outward over the high north slope by as much as six feet per day. The bulge was caused by an intrusion of magma below the surface, and authorities began evacuating hundreds of people from the sparsely settled area near the mountain. A few people refused to leave.

On the morning of May 18, Mount St. Helens was shaken by an earthquake of about 5.0 Richter magnitude, and the entire north side of the summit began to slide down the mountain. The giant landslide of rock and ice, one of the largest recorded in history, was followed and overtaken by an enormous explosion of steam and volcanic gases, which surged northward along the ground at high speed. The lateral blast stripped trees from most hill slopes within six miles of the volcano and leveled nearly all vegetation for as far as 12 miles away. Approximately 10 million trees were felled by the blast.

The landslide debris, liquefied by the violent explosion, surged down the mountain at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. The avalanche flooded Spirit Lake and roared down the valley of the Toutle River for a distance of 13 miles, burying the river to an average depth of 150 feet. Mudflows, pyroclastic flows, and floods added to the destruction, destroying roads, bridges, parks, and thousands more acres of forest. Simultaneous with the avalanche, a vertical eruption of gas and ash formed a mushrooming column over the volcano more than 12 miles high. Ash from the eruption fell on Northwest cities and towns like snow and drifted around the globe within two weeks.

Fifty-seven people, thousands of animals, and millions of fish were killed by the eruption of Mount St. Helens.

By late in the afternoon of May 18, the eruption subsided, and by early the next day it had essentially ceased. Mount St. Helens' volcanic cone was completely blasted away and replaced by a horseshoe-shaped crater-the mountain lost 1,700 feet from the eruption. The volcano produced five smaller explosive eruptions during the summer and fall of 1980 and remains active today. In 1982, Congress made Mount St. Helens a protected research area.

Memorial Day is much more than a three-day weekend that marks the beginning of summer. To many people, especially the nation's thousands of combat veterans, this day, which has a history stretching back all the way to the Civil War, is an important reminder of those who died in the service of their country.

Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day because it was a time set aside to honor the nation's Civil War dead by decorating their graves. It was first widely observed on May 30,1868, to commemorate the sacrifices of Civil War soldiers, by proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of former sailors and soldiers.

On May 5, 1868, Logan declared in General Order No. 11 that:

The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit. During the first celebration of Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery.

This 1868 celebration was inspired by local observances of the day in several towns throughout America that had taken place in the three years since the Civil War. In fact, several Northern and Southern cities claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day, including Columbus, Mississippi; Macon, Georgia; Richmond, Virginia; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; and Carbondale, Illinois.

In 1966, the federal government, under the direction of President Lyndon Johnson, declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day. They chose Waterloo—which had first celebrated the day on May 5, 1866—because the town had made Memorial Day an annual, community-wide event during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags.

By the late 1800s, many communities across the country had begun to celebrate Memorial Day and, after World War I, observances also began to honor those who had died in all of America's wars. In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May. (Veterans Day, a day set aside to honor all veterans, living and dead, is celebrated each year on November 11.)

Today, Memorial Day is celebrated at Arlington National Cemetery with a ceremony in which a small American flag is placed on each grave. Also, it is customary for the president or vice-president to give a speech honoring the contributions of the dead and lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. About 5,000 people attend the ceremony annually.

Several Southern states continue to set aside a special day for honoring the Confederate dead, which is usually called Confederate Memorial Day:

Mississippi: Last Monday in April

Alabama: Fourth Monday in April

Georgia: April 26

North Carolina: May 10

South Carolina: May 10

Louisiana: June 3

Tennessee: (Confederate Decoration Day): June 3

Texas: (Confederate Heroes Day): January 19

Virginia: Last Monday in May

The first practical can opener was developed 50 years after the birth of the metal can. Canned food was invented for the British Navy in 1813. Made of solid iron, the cans usually weighed more than the food they held!

The inventor, Peter Durand, was guilty of an incredible oversight. Though he figured out how to seal food into cans, he gave little thought to how to get it out again. Instructions read: "Cut round the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer." Only when thinner steel cans came into use in the 1860s could the can opener be invented.

The first (patented in 1858) devised by Ezra Warner of Waterbury, Connecticut, looked like a bent bayonet. Its large curved blade was driven into a can’s rim, and then forcibly worked around its edge. Stranger yet, this first type of can opener never left the grocery store. A clerk had to open each can before it was taken away!

William Lyman of the United States invented the modern can opener, with a cutting wheel that rolls around the rim, in 1870. The only change from the original patent was the introduction of a serrated rotation wheel by the Star Can Company of San Francisco in 1925. The basic principle continues to be used on the modern can openers, and it was the basis of the first electric can opener, introduced in December 1931.

The Food Label

Grocery store aisles are avenues to greater nutritional knowledge.

Under regulations from the Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the food label offers more complete, useful and accurate nutrition information than ever before.

With today's food labels, consumers get:

-nutrition information about almost every food in the grocery store
-distinctive, easy-to-read formats that enable consumers to more quickly find the information they need to make healthful food choices
-information on the amount per serving of saturated fat, cholesterol, dietary fiber, and other nutrients of major health concern
-nutrient reference values, expressed as % Daily Values, that help consumers see how a food fits into an overall daily diet
-uniform definitions for terms that describe a food's nutrient content--such as "light," "low-fat," and "high-fiber"--to ensure that such terms mean the same for any product on which they appear
-claims about the relationship between a nutrient or food and a disease or health-related condition, such as calcium and osteoporosis, and fat and cancer. These are helpful for people who are concerned about eating foods that may help keep them healthier longer.
-standardized serving sizes that make nutritional comparisons of similar products easier
-declaration of total percentage of juice in juice drinks. This enables consumers to know exactly how much juice is in a product.