Ask a Librarian: Answers You Won't Get From Google: Odds and Ends

Some questions fell through the digital cracks and I am just now getting around to answering them. Sorry, folks - too much screen time for this librarian!

Let's begin with James, who asked, "What is the weirdest place you've ever been? If you could would you go back?"

For the longest time I thought that Columbus, Ohio was the strangest place I had ever been. No mountains, no Great Plains, and so much humidity that some summers I never felt completely dry.

People there crazy about a football team, Ohio State, whose mascot is a buckeye, which is the name of a poisonous nut from the buckeye tree. On football Saturdays, many of the crazies in attendance wore necklaces made of buckeye candy, a lethal combination of milk chocolate and peanut butter that left people well on their way to a sugar crash.

Now that I think of it, the whole Midwest is just weird. Consider the Big 10 Conference, which has 14 schools. Really. Universities that apparently can't count. And the mascots? Don't get me started. The Wisconsin Badgers and Michigan Wolverines are properly fierce mascots, but the Cornhuskers (Nebraska), Boilermakers (Purdue), Golden Gophers (Minnesota - really?!), and the Hoosiers (Indiana). Even people who grow up in Indiana don't know, for sure, what a Hoosier is. No one does.

But as weird as the Midwest is, since my time in Ohio I have discovered an even weirder place.

BIt turns out that middle school is the weirdest place I've ever been. Any middle school in any town, I imagine. Just think about what students must endure in their passage through middle school? And look what it does to middle school teachers. Two words that capture how weird middle school is? Mr. Chimo.

Would I go back, James? Back to middle school? Not as a student. Not for anything would I be that age again. But as a teacher, especially as a librarian? Yes, again and again and again. Middle school, it turns out, is my native habitat, and I've come to terms with that. 

Ronan wants to know, "How do you get rid of bedbugs?"

Bed bugs and humans have been sharing space for over 3,300 years, which is more than long enough to come up with cute little sayings like, "Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite." Some scholars believe that old saying was an early effort to banish the biting pests from our beds. Unfortunately, bed bugs don't listen any better than some of the kids I try to chase out of the library on nice days.

Bed bugs bite because all they consume is blood. They are a happy to suck blood from a deer or a marmot, but they are as fond of central heating and warm blankets as humans are. To get rid of the bugs, you'll need to call a professional exterminator.

If, that is, the old saying doesn't work for you. And about the first part of the saying: "sleep tight" refers to a time when mattresses were held in the bed frame with ropes that could be loosened or tightened as desired. Just thought you would like to know.

Arden wondered, "Why do you grow old?"

There are several reasons why we grow old: So that we can tell young people all about what it was like in the good old days when ourselves were young; to allow for the creation of fun phrases like "young whipper snapper" and "Get off my lawn!" And think about the role that old people play in the economies of Florida, Arizona, and other warm winter places; where would old people take their giant RVs if not for such destinations?

Perhaps more important, old people have had their turn and, let's face it, the world's in a mess. Pandemics, climate catastrophe, economic inequality, and the strange and slightly scary persistence of the Lawrence Welk Show. My grandparents loved the show, which made its last episode in 1982 yet, inexplicably, is still on public television. If you want to be assaulted by sickly sweet music, try Googling "Lawerence Welk Show." Go ahead -  I dare you.

Yes, young people, the boomers and probably the Gen Xers, too, have made a mess of things. Now it's your turn to be in charge and screw up the world for your own kids.

Kaeleigh wrote, "You missed my question: Does Bob have a truckload of cinnamon toasters in his closet?"

Kaeleigh, I have to say that your question is just a little confusing. Did you mean, cinnamon toast? If so, then yes, Bob has a truckload of cinnamon toast in his closet and, frankly, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Bob's issues.

If, on the other hand, you are asking about cinnamon toasters, then the answer is, no; even Bob doesn't have a machine for toasting cinnamon.

Ben queried, "If most liquids are a solid at room temperature, then which ones are a liquid at room temp?"

Ben wins the prize for confusing a librarian. Once something is solid, at any temperature, it by definition can't be a liquid. Anything that is liquid at room temperature is, of course, a liquid - like ice cream left out too long goes from solid at liquid at room temperature.

Unless that room is an ice cave, in which case our ice cream remains a solid at room temperature.

On the other hand, Ben may have been referring to elements, in which case there is a simpler answer: bromine and mercury are the only elements that are liquid at room temperature. Ceasium, rubidium, Francium, and Gallium become liquid at or just above room temperature.

Dani asked, "Are there fiddlehead ferns in this part of Montana?"

They do indeed, Dani, although some people call them "violinhead ferns" when they want to sound all fancy. Bracken fern is another name for the plant, varieties of which grow just about anywhere except in the driest deserts and coldest tundra. As you may know, the name refers to the curled tips of the fern before it fully unfolds.

It's a controversial plant, as I learned from a 2011 article in The Atlantic: "Bracken is so controversial you will see [foragers] writing statements ranging from "eat it as much as you want, it's fine," to "never, ever, ever eat bracken, raw or cooked." Foragers, of course, are folks who learn how to look for and safely eat wild plants, something that all humans used to do before cities, supermarkets, and pizza delivery put an end to widespread human foraging.

But I digress. Fiddleheads contain a substance called "ptalquiloside," which, in addition to being hard to pronounce, causes cancer in humans. If, that is, you eat a lot of it and eat it raw. Cooking, according to the article I looked at, if done properly, removes the ptalquiloside.

As with anything like this, be careful. Up until the last 200 years or so, the humans who lived around here knew what was safe to eat and how to prepare it safely. Most of us don't have that knowledge, and by "us" I mean specifically "me."

That's all for today, young people. Stay together, learn the flowers, go light.