Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #69: Allergy Attack, Cereal-Flavored Ice Cream, Crab Party, etc.

1. This week was the week of the revenge of allergies. I typically get hit with allergies twice a year, early to mid-May and late August. This round was likely exacerbated by visiting Hart Farm to buy my mom’s butterfly bush and being in the swirling winds of pollen. Early in the week was the worst. I had very little energy and felt like I was moving through molasses. This is not good when your job is training people. I was practically begging for rain to knock the pollen down.

2. Monday Runday was ruined by my allergies. Sure, I still went but it was all walking while my friend Mike ran around the track. I know it’s more about the camaraderie of friends but I will admit I was disappointed that I couldn’t even run one step. By the end of my 2.5 miles of walking I was gagging on pollen and my throat was coated like I had just done that stupid cinnamon eating contest.

3. I feel so bad for Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum. He went down in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals against the New York Knicks with a ruptured Achilles tendon. He’s already had surgery but will likely be sidelined for close to a year. Granted he’s only 27 and will likely make a full recovery but Achilles injuries suck. In 2012, when I was marathon training I strained my left Achilles, which took 5 months to heal. A strain took 5 months. Plus I had numbness going up into my calf. It was no fun. I was really hoping for a Celtics repeat as NBA champs but as long as Tatum recovers, they will have a good shot at another title when he’s back.

4. There are 2 types of people in this world, those who yell at the self-checkout robot voice in a supermarket, and normal people. These are the same types of people who shuck their corn at the stand in the supermarket in front of the sign that asks them not to. Obviously, you can figure out this is the same person. All I could do was shake my head and feel bad for the people who have to call him family. The guy looked like someone who is a boatload of laughs to be around.

5. So now Kellogg’s have cereal-flavored ice creams? My pants are crying knowing that at some point I will have to try all of them. If you’re curious, there are Corn Pops, Rice Krispies Treats, Frosted Flakes, Honey Smacks, Froot Loops, Fruity Pebbles, Apple Jacks, and Eggo Waffles. If you care about how healthy they are each pint appears to be 600-650 calories so use that info as you wish.

6. When out on a photo excursion to Chatham, I ended up at Cockle Cove, which has a creek that eventually meets the ocean. I stumbled upon a tiny crab colony. The little crabs that are about the size of a quarter and live near the rivers and creeks on the Cape. I ended up shooting way too much video of these crabs, much of it being me trying to get them to stand still. Amazingly, these tiny crabs didn’t like a giant pointing a phone at them. Well, this video tells the story better.

7. A few weeks ago I got my first tick on me, which I only found because it eventually crawled onto my neck. For the second tick interaction this year, naturally, I got 2 ticks on me. I am terrified of this increasing number, especially since summer won’t start for a month. In September, I’ll be mentioning getting 100 on me and that they stole my car afterward.

8. The Outdoor Boys YouTube channel is a fascinating story. It has been around for years but in the last 18 months or so has exploded. Currently, they are right at 15 million subscribers. This week, Luke, the father/main creator of the videos, made a short goodbye video. He has made over 1,100 videos. He said it’s so time-consuming and now with it blowing up he’s got way too many people wanting to meet him, contact him, or just be around him. I’m sure most subscribers will be sad and not understand but as a content creator, I totally got it. I have over 600 videos on my YouTube channel and couldn’t imagine what I’d do if suddenly I had 100x more followers. Sure, it sounds like a good problem but the more eyes that end up on you the more of a chance you take of some weirdo crossing a line. I won’t stop my content creator journey but it does make me think sometimes.

9. I had my first 1,000-calorie burn run in almost a year. 7 total miles in perfect weather. I chose a route where I could end up at Mattacheese Middle School. This is my old school, now closed, that I graduated 8^th grade from in 1992. Next door is M.E. Small School. Feeling good, I happened to go by the playground and there was a giant plastic crate filled with balls and frisbees, etc. On my way back off the school grounds, I was feeling great and decided to stop and shoot some hoops on the basketball court. I also noticed some of the balls were close to the parking area. I figured I’d kick them back toward the plastic crate. One was a kickball, which went flying and made a good sound. The other I think was a soccer ball but it felt like it was a bowling ball. My big and second toes on my right foot immediately hurt. Once I got home I had the pleasure of seeing the black and blue toenails. Mmm, tasty, those will be feeling good for the next week or so.

The facade of my old middle school.

10. Back in March, when I shot my first movie role in Provincetown, I got a lot of content for my YouTube channel. One piece of content was an interview with the cast and crew of the documentary The Old Men Of the Mountain. My friend Frank Durant of the Lady of the Dunes documentary produced it. The documentary was recently finished and is up to watch. I did and loved it. So I figured why not finish off this week by sharing that documentary?

 

In My Footsteps: The Time Period I Wish I Could Visit

    2020 has been a year unlike any I have experienced in my lifetime to say the least. Months in at least a state of semi-isolation has given me a lot of time to stroll down memory lane, thinking of my favorite years of life. That's a topic for another day though. These times have also got me thinking about what period of time in the past I would have liked to have lived in. Everyone has that time that if they had a time machine they'd go back to and see what life was like. Some people might like to go back to Medieval times, or be a passenger on the Mayflower coming to the New World. Others might want something more recent like the Golden Age of the 1950's. It is all a matter of personal preference and I am going to share with you my own.

    For me I would love the chance to go back and visit the 1890's in the United States. I am fascinated by this time period. It is a sweet spot between the past and present I believe. During this decade ending the 19th century many inventions and products that we find so common today were first brought to the general public. I am a big fan of wide open spaces, have never been a big city guy. So for reference the population of the United States as of 2019 was 328.2 million people across 50 states. In contrast the 1890 Census saw the country's population to be 62.98 million across 42 states. The population was 19% of what it is today. Granted New York City still had an impressive 1.5 million people but big cities were fewer and further between.

    Getting around might have been a little harder as the first gasoline powered automobile in the United States made its debut in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1893. Charles and J. Frank Duryea designed it and first sold it in 1896. By 1899 30 manufacturers had made a whopping 2,500 automobiles. This is a far cry from the 273.6 million registered vehicles in the U.S. in 2018. The best bet would be train, a horse-drawn omnibus(essentially a city stagecoach), or an electric trolley. Or one could use a bicycle. Bikes sold like crazy during the 1890's after the invention of the 'safety' bicycle in 1886. Shockingly this 'safety' just meant having both wheels be the same size. Two years later rubber tires were added and the so-called 'bike boom' of the 1890's was underway.

Charles and J. Frank Duryea in their first gasoline powered vehicle. (Public Domain)

    Transportation is taken care of, but what about the common home? For starters yes there was electricity. However despite Thomas Edison bringing electric lights to parts of Manhattan as early as 1882 it did not catch on quickly. In fact more than half of the homes in America were still using candles and gas lighting until 1925. Rural America was still being introduced to electric power as late as the 1940's and early 1950's.

    Inside the home was similar to today assuming you had electric power. Toasters and refrigerators existed as did irons, fans, and hair dryers. Obviously in the 1890's these were considered luxury items and not necessities like the 21st century. There was no television or radio back then, but there was the new Sherlock Holmes books, first released in 1891 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For sports lovers there was baseball to follow.

    In 1893 the pitcher's mound was moved back to 60'6" its current distance, making the game very similar to present-day. For big-time players that people flocked to see there was none bigger than Cy Young. The pitcher won 511 games and has a pitching award named after him. Other big names were Willie Keeler, Cap Anson, and John McGraw. It would have been possible to go see a game played by the Boston Reds in 1890 or 1891 at the Congress Street Grounds near Thompson Place.

1891 Boston Reds baseball team (Boston Public Library)

    So what other inventions came along during this decade that would have been fun to be around for? As far as food and drinks go there was a lot. The cereal Corn Flakes was invented by Will Kellogg in 1894 and he began the still-thriving Kellogg's company in 1906. Having only been invented a few years earlier, in 1886 by John Stith Pemberton, Coca Cola would see its popularity explode by the end of the 1890's. The boom was so sudden that after building its first headquarters in 1898 the company would need to expand it 5 times in the next 12 years. Rounding out the decade we saw the Hershey chocolate bar come along in 1894 and Jell-O in 1896. Granted the decade also contained the horrific meat-packing quality issues that became exposed by Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle in 1906 but that's a separate story.

    In 1896 the dry cell battery was invented and one can only imagine a world without AA and AAA batteries which go in just about anything electronic these days. Speaking of electronics the discovery of radioconduction by French scientist Edouard Branly in 1890 led to the eventual advent of wireless communication that came just after the turn of the 20th century by Guglielmo Marconi.

    The main thing that I'd have wanted to experience was the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. This was a place to see all of these new innovations in one place. Since the mid-1800's there have been more than 100 of these types of exhibitions worldwide. At this particular event which lasted 6 months the more than 27 million attendees got to witness the debut of Juicy Fruit gum, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Cream of Wheat cereal. They also were amazed by a dishwasher machine, the first commemorative coins and postcards.

The original Ferris Wheel at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (Public Domain)

    However despite 'Buffalo Bill' Cody setting up shop just outside of the walls to siphon off some guests with his Wild West show the World's Fair held all of the cards with its giant 264-foot tall revolving steel wheel. Invented by steel magnate George Ferris Jr., the 'Ferris Wheel' stole the show with 1.4 million people paying 50 cents each to ride it. This meant on its own it made $700,000 ($20.2 million in 2020) at the World's Fair. It would have been amazing to be there to experience the plethora of new inventions, seeing them with the wonder that people of the time did.

    I would have loved to have been alive during the 1890's. For me I find that era to be the perfect link between past and present. Wide open spaces with the first flickers of current technology. However of course it's all subjective, some people might think this would be a dumb time to be alive. So how about it? If you could live or visit another time when would it be and why?

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View my previous blog posts: 

In Their Footsteps: New England History - Mercy Brown and the New England Vampire Panic

In Their Footsteps: Cape Cod History - Mildred's Chowder House

Be sure to check out my website: Christopher Setterlund.com