Category: History (Page 3 of 15)

History.

“Fine as Kine” not “Finest Kind”

November 23, 2021 / Phil / 4 Comments

“How are you today?”
“Fine as kine!”

“Fine as kine” is a common expression in the State of Maine. Those who are not from there often hear it as “finest kind”, “fine as kind”, “fine is kind”, or something similar, which doesn’t make any sense.

The word kine is an Old English word that means cattle. The expression “fine as kine” has a nice ring to it and it implies “in good health” or “strong as an ox”.

The word kine appears rarely in English literature. However, one of those cases is the King James Bible. Avid readers of the King James Bible would be very familiar with the word kine because it appears in 20 different verses of the Old Testament:

Genesis 32:15 Thirty milch camels with their colts, forty kine, and ten bulls, twenty she asses, and ten foals.

Genesis 41:2 And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well favoured kine and fatfleshed; and they fed in a meadow.

Genesis 41:3 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river.

Genesis 41:4 And the ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven well favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.

Genesis 41:18 And, behold, there came up out of the river seven kine, fatfleshed and well favoured; and they fed in a meadow:

Genesis 41:19 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them, poor and very ill favoured and leanfleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness:

Genesis 41:20 And the lean and the ill favoured kine did eat up the first seven fat kine:

Genesis 41:26 The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one.

Genesis 41:27 And the seven thin and ill favoured kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine.

Deuteronomy 7:13 And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee.

Deuteronomy 28:4 Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

Deuteronomy 28:18 Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

Deuteronomy 28:51 And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee.

Deuteronomy 32:14 Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.

1 Samuel 6:7 Now therefore make a new cart, and take two milch kine, on which there hath come no yoke, and tie the kine to the cart, and bring their calves home from them:

1 Samuel 6:10 And the men did so; and took two milch kine, and tied them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home:

1 Samuel 6:12 And the kine took the straight way to the way of Bethshemesh, and went along the highway, lowing as they went, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left; and the lords of the Philistines went after them unto the border of Bethshemesh.

1 Samuel 6:14 And the cart came into the field of Joshua, a Bethshemite, and stood there, where there was a great stone: and they clave the wood of the cart, and offered the kine a burnt offering unto the LORD.

2 Samuel 17:29 And honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheese of kine, for David, and for the people that were with him, to eat: for they said, The people is hungry, and weary, and thirsty, in the wilderness.

Amos 4:1 Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink.

Now you know.

Saran Wrap Isn’t What It Used To Be

October 8, 2021 / Phil / 6 Comments

In the 1960s, I used to help my mother in the kitchen and learned how to cook. I used Saran Wrap to cover plates and bowls, and I noticed that this material was sort of magical. It stuck to what I wanted it to stick to and wasn’t much inclined to stick to itself. What is this sorcery? You could pull it back to access something in a bowl, then seal it back up again. I was fascinated because it seemed like it was intelligent. I had studied some chemistry but not yet enough to guess the cause for this marvelous behavior.

So what was this wonderful material I was working with? In 1933 a chemist at Dow Chemical was trying to develop a new dry cleaning solvent. He noticed that certain beakers and glassware were hard to clean. They had a residue that was hard to scrub off. Investigation revealed a new substance, a new polymer that was named polyvinylidene chloride or PVDC.

It was found that, among other things, PVDC made a tough and durable clear coating. During World War 2, virtually every U.S. aircraft was coated with PVDC to help protect it from the elements. At the end of the war, hundreds of companies in the U.S. got busy looking for commercial applications for the countless marvelous things they had developed for the war effort. Somebody at Dow realized that PVDC would make an excellent food wrap. And excellent it was, as you will see later. Production methods for forming PVDC into a very-thin film were developed. The CEO of Dow decided to name it after his wife and daughter, Sarah and Ann: Saran.

The product was introduced in 1949 and was an almost overnight success. This is the stuff I was using in the 1960s. Towards the end of the 1960s, Dow’s patents expired and other companies began producing PVDC food wrap, like Glad Wrap. They were all just copies of Saran Wrap.

From the 1990s forward, I didn’t use much plastic food wrap until I began to work in a restaurant in 2012. There, I used plastic food wrap all the time and immediately noticed that it behaved differently from what I remembered. Sure, it worked, but it frequently refused to stick to some things and it was eager to stick to itself. This is not what I remembered. After opening and closing a covered bowl, the plastic wrap would become wrinkly and refused to stick to anything. I covered a mixing bowl full of diced onions with this plastic wrap and placed it in the cooler. Soon, the cooler smelled strongly of onions. What? That’s not supposed to happen. What is this stuff? Maybe some kind of cheap imitation of Saran Wrap?

Time passed, I finally did some digging on the Internet, and immediately found the answer. Through the 1990s, chlorinated polymers like PVDC became an increasing environmental concern. In 2004, all the makers of PVDC plastic wrap switched to ordinary low-density polyethylene (LDPE). Polyethylene is cheap and easy to make into a thin film. But there are problems. Big problems.

First of all, polyethylene is a low-friction, non-stick kind of polymer. This is why milk bottles are made from it. Polyethylene film doesn’t stick to anything, nor itself. Today’s polyethylene plastic food wrap is coated with a moisture-activated adhesive to make it “cling”. At best it clings to certain things but not others, and it eagerly sticks to itself, making it hard to work with.

Secondly, the adhesive quickly wears out so opening and reclosing a bowl covered with modern plastic wrap is something you might be able to do once but not repeatedly, like you can with PVDC film.

Thirdly, polyethylene film is around 3,000 to 4,000 times more permeable than PVDC film. Oxygen is the main culprit that causes food spoilage. For every molecule of oxygen that a given area of PVDC film lets through, polyethylene film lets through 3,000. The consequences of this are obvious. It also explains the experience I had with onions stinking up the cooler. That wouldn’t have happened with PVDC film. In fact, certain meats are still packed with PVDC film because polyethylene film can’t do the job.

The bottom line for me is I was pleased to discover that my memories from the 1960s were pretty accurate. However, I was not pleased to discover that the plastic film I use today is inferior in terms of performance and user friendliness, and there’s no way to fix it.

Today’s plastic wrap looks like classic Saran Wrap, but it ain’t. It’s not even close.

Mayhem At Walmart

March 18, 2020 / Phil / 2 Comments

I took a few photos of the mayhem left by the hoarders. Paper goods, milk and dairy, disinfectants like Lysol, wipes, and hand sanitizers were all stripped bare. Below are some photos.