• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
• The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
• Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
• David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
• Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
• Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
• February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
• Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.
• The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
• No word in the English language rhymes with month.
• The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
• There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
• Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
• Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
• Cat's urine glows under a black light.
• Back in the mid to late 80's, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered a hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
• The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
• Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
• It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.
• In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
• Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
• The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously
• If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
• The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
• Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
• No NFL team which plays it's home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl
• The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".
• In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured
• Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
• One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers --they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
• The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older
• The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan"

(I wonder how long it would take to sufficiently verify the validity of these statements. Years?)

Green Eggs & Ham Jam
Everyone at one time or another should try to put on a concert. Though it's actually a tremendously difficult task and they never tend to run quite smoothly, it was an interesting experience and quite entertaining. Anyway, it was a one-day, 13-band outdoor music festival that occupied the Saturday afternoon, evening, and late night of about 1000 people on the 12th of September, 1992. A Douglas County farmer, Darryl Petefish, was kind enough to rent a piece of his property to us--and it happened to be the same property due west of Clinton Lake that had hosted the previous year's American Rights Festival (late September) and Omega festival (around May 1).

The following bands performed: Slackjaw, DNA, the Lonesome Hounddogs, the Salty Iguanas, Dracomagnet, Chubby Smith and His Orchestra, Eros, Which Doctors, IdXplosion, and Joe Worker. Special thanks to Shawn Jackson for security, Jeff Purcell for keeping the stage under control, the Loud American for getting the nine kegs we gave away, and Mike Sarowski for planning and cleaning the field the next morning (I was in bad shape and somewhere there exists pictures to prove it). I must say I cringe at the amount of intoxicants that were consumed that night under a full moon and canopy of stars.

Few experiences in my life have affected me quite like the trips I took to Central America. Each trip was to the IXIL Triangle in Guatemala, an area more or less centered around the villages of Nebaj, San Juan Cotzal, and Chajul (see the upper left corner of the map to the right). The IXIL Triangle (pronounced "ih-SHEEL") is located in Quiche, an area in the country's north-central mountains. The land is quite rugged, yet is very beautiful--at least during the rainy season, which more-or-less coincides with winter in the United States.

I first had the opportunity to visit the summer between eighth and ninth grade, and then returned January of my senior year of high school. Each time, I had the pleasure of a fourteen hour busride up and over several mountain ranges, and each time I rode on top of the bus (there were too many chickens inside the bus for comfort). The highway from Guatemala city to Quiche is the scariest road I've ever traveled. It's paved only about a third of the way, and in the more mountainous areas has several steep drop-offs, completely protected by a series of absolutely no guardrails at all. We stayed in rudimetary huts, devoid of facilities and electricity.

The people I met there were Mayans by decent, and quite amiable and content, given what I perceived as their stead in life. The women dressed quite colorfully, much moreso than the men, and it was not uncommon to see children of very young ages engaged in activities--protecting the family, plowing the earth, carrying several loads of wood--one would expect to be reserved for adults.

The first time I was there, I went with my dad and two brothers, and built houses for widows and orphans whose husbands and fathers were victims of rampant guerilla activity. We stayed in San Jaun Cotzal for the majority of the time, but took a long hike (in the vacuum of the altitudes, I might add) to Nebaj, where we witnessed religious services and met Paul Townshend, a missionary who had been working with the IXIL peoples for several years. I saw many wonderful things, many horrible things; to that point, it was the most amazing experience I'd had.

The second time, I assisted in building a water line that ran down the mountain from an amoeba-free spring to a pila, or trough, in the village of Chel. Chel is located to the north of the Ixil Triangle, near the region of Ixcan (pronounced EESH-khan).