Exhibit On Real Johnny Appleseed To Hit the Road 71
An anonymous reader writes with this story about a traveling Johnny Appleseed exhibit set to hit the road sometime next year. If you picture Johnny Appleseed as a loner wearing a tin pot for a hat and flinging apple seeds across the countryside, experts say you're wrong. They're hoping that a traveling exhibit funded by an anonymous donation to a western Ohio center and museum will help clear misconceptions about the folk hero and the real man behind the legend. "We want people around the country to know the real person, not just the myths and folklore," said Cheryl Ogden, director of the Johnny Appleseed Educational Center and Museum at Urbana University in Urbana. "We want them to know John Chapman's values of hard work, compassion and generosity." Chapman, known as Johnny Appleseed to generations of Americans, was a pioneer nurseryman in the late 18th and early 19th centuries credited with introducing apple trees to portions of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. While it's probably true that he lived outdoors and wore ragged clothes, at least sometimes, researchers doubt he wore a pot on his head or just gave his seedlings and nurseries away.
There are modern day fruit tree efforts too (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a tweet I do on twitter daily: Go #green & help the #poor @foodforthepoor Plant fruit trees in #Haiti [foodforthepoor.org]http://www.foodforthepoor.org/... [foodforthepoor.org]
Re:There are modern day fruit tree efforts too (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're off by a billion people or so. Cooking over wood fires or using rudimentary wood-fueled cooking stoves is very common.
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I don't think most people cook with wood ovens even in poor countries. If you mean to provide heat, Haiti isn't exactly a cold place.
wow... you need to get out of the house... Haven't been to Haiti myself, but I've been to plenty of primarily African heritage 3rd world countries. Most people use wood to cook. Old pallets, dead trees, whatever they can find. If you have a bit more money you can afford to buy home-made charcoal. There are vendors that make and sell it. You put the wood in a 55 gallon steel drum that's sealed and light a fire under it. This cooks all the wood inside and turns it to charcoal, the exhausted from the barrel d
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and more importantly opportunity than 95% of the people in the 3rd world
Yeah, this is what is sad to me, the hopelessness people have.
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and more importantly opportunity than 95% of the people in the 3rd world
Yeah, this is what is sad to me, the hopelessness people have.
That's somewhat true. But despite what those terrible commercials show on TV I didn't see throngs of hopelessly miserable Children. They were as happy, if not happier than any US child. playing made up games in the streets, chasing our car and singing. They asked to touch my hair, which I think people over here would get crabby about but being an uncultured idiot myself I understood the lack of tact and didn't have a problem with it. Granted, I never went anywhere while there was a drought or anything. I t
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But despite what those terrible commercials show on TV I didn't see throngs of hopelessly miserable Children.
True, the hopelessness is in the adults. And it's usually not a matter of being in an impossible situation, it's a matter of lacking the knowledge of how to improve their situation (I'm more familiar with latin america, so Africa could be completely different, I don't know).
Anyway, why are you going to Africa? I've wanted to go, but I don't really have a reason, and I'm not going to go just to stare at people.
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just because people are poor, doesn't mean they are hopeless.
You should visit (really visit, not do the touristy thing) a third-world country and feel the hopelessness. Not all countries are like that,but a lot of them are.
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One Problem with your plan... Poor people need firewood to.
Well, some fruit trees give high quality firewood. So they seem likely to be able to provide on that front as well.
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Check out the Breadfruit Institute [ntbg.org] for a good group on that topic. Breadfruit is highly productive and can be grown in some of the poorest most food insecure regions on the globe.
It's not about the fruit. (Score:2)
Chapman's apple-planting was never about the fruit (nor did TFA go into it). What it was really about was CIDER -- hard cider in areas that didn't yet raise enough barley for beer, or lacked the quality of soil for grain crops, frex in rocky areas like the Appalachians. Beer (which then meant thick stuff with a lot of nutritional value) and cider are how you preserve grain and fruit when you don't have secure dry storage or refrigeration (not that fruit keeps very well at its best). That the end product con
I'll wait (Score:1)
I'll wait for the surreal Johnny Appleseed exhibit.
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"And this picture we see the tin pot wearing Johnny Appleseed and distributing Spam to all the starving earthworms in the New York subway system."
Damn it (Score:4, Funny)
Next you will be telling me that Paul Bunyan didn't have a giant blue ox named babe or Pecos Bill didn't tame a tornado.
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John Henry was not a steel driving man. He used a Wood.
bringing booze to a thirsty frontier (Score:4, Informative)
Back in his day, hard cider was the dominant form of alcoholic beverage in the frontier. Easy to make, easy to grow. Beer requires growing grain, then processing, and fermenting, and storing. Grapes don't grow in the area.
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this absolutely.
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And then, there was Hopalong Cassidy.
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Johnny Appleseed brought reliable apple trees and apple jack to western Ohio. It was the apple jack that made him successful. There are also stories that he had a ten-year-old bride. Mr Chapman was not quite the person that folk mythology portrays him as.
Re:bringing booze to a thirsty frontier (Score:4, Funny)
That's right. He was an early eco-terrorist, spreading invasive species throughout the country.
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John Chapman was substantially earlier.. think late 1700s, early 1800s, back when "frontier" was just over the mountains from the east coast. No trains, not even wagon trains, out west. The idea of farming large areas of grain really didn't come about until post-railroad, or late 1800s.
There was some whiskey production in colonial times, but rum was also popular (viz: triangle trade), but I suspect that transportation costs to the frontier was excessive. And besides, your thirsty farmer/hunter/pioneer pro
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Wheat and rice are just like corn. Crap for making 'beer' with. Source for pure ethanol with little flavor (rice) or bad sour flavor (wheat). If 'beer' tastes better with the yeast still in it or mixed with fruit juice, it's bad 'beer'.
To get the quotes off 'beer' you can only use malted barley.
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This is what I understood about the Johnny Appleseed story.
Apple seeds don't necessarily grow sweet apples. Some are sour. Modern eating apples are grafts from trees that product sweet fruit, while seedlings are a crap shoot.
Old and young alike consumed hard cider (children were given a watered down version) because of waterborne illness. You couldn't trust the water, but you could trust that your hard cider would be safe.
The Johnny Appleseed Reality Tour (Score:2)
Includes a pizza bagel and a bite size Snickers for dessert!
News for Nerds you say? (Score:2)
Oh yeah tons of nerdy tech stuff in this article.
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In case you've missed it, we've had plenty of articles on drugs (alcohol is a drug), distillation (chemistry) and taxation (cue the innumerable posts on taxation, etc.). This fits right in.
Stifle yourself.
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Better than the repetitive Android/Apple shit that gets posted over and over again.
I'll wait for the simulation (Score:2)
The Botany of Desire has a great chapter on J.A. (Score:2)
Alcohol production! Genetic Diversity! Microclimate!
http://michaelpollan.com/books... [michaelpollan.com]
Johnny Weedyseed (Score:2)
How about a modern day guy who roams the countryside with marijuana clones. I have often dreamt about scattering seeds in all the ditches of the land.
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He was anti GMO (Score:3)
Re:He was anti GMO (Score:5, Informative)
That's close, but not entirely true. Some apple trees are triploid, like Gravenstein and Jonagold, but most are diploid, so not really polyploid. Apple seeds will grow just fine, but the reason they are grafted is because they are very heterozygous, and as such, any seedlings will not have the same genetic characteristics as the original parent apples, and in all likelihood will be inferior. When people breed apple trees, they can go through thousands of seedlings only to find one tree with superior fruit. By grafting, you keep the superior genetics of an exceptional fruit, like Honeycrisp. Most fruit crops are reproduced asexually in some way for this reason, with the exception of cantaloupe, watermelon, and papaya, which have much shorter lifespans, and as such are much easier to work with. Trees are also grafted because, by using mature plant material, the tree will come to bearing faster, and you can select rootstock that offers dwarfing and disease resistance traits, which are useful.
You are right that he was against grafting though, proclaiming that it was wicked, damaging, and against the will of God. Unfortunately, judging by the modern opposition to GMOs, humanity did not learn anything from his silliness. Today, we have opposition to the Arctic apples, which hopefully will be released soon, which have the relatively simple trait of non-browning. Anti-GMO people claim they are worried that GMO apples will cross pollinate other apples [www.cbc.ca], despite the simple fact that apples are asexually propagated. That's right, these folks don't know the first, most basic things about apple biology, but damn it they're going to pound in their stupid point anyway no matter how wrong they are. Ridiculous.
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My parents have an apple tree growing in the front that has apples that don't brown at all. They taste pretty good as well, and don't seem to have much of a problem with insects. I have no idea if the tree was grown from ra andom seed from an apple or what its lineage is, I don't think it's been grafted. Does that mean it's potentially worth something?
BTW, regarding the article - that's Urbana, Ohio. There's more than one Urbana (e.g. Urbana, Illinois, with the University of Illinois, not Urbana Univers
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"News for nerds, Stuff that matters - > is now -> Any shit we can post to get a few more random add impressions.
I mean people are engaging with the story too, the quality of comments you're creating by the stories your posting and the audience youre drawing 're getting close Youtube comments or Yahoo"
From your friendly DICE overlords:
Most certainly you are on Slashdot! It's new, it's improved, and if you didn't notice, it is no longer news fo
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I would argue that American history is a perfectly good topic for a Slashdot article. Look, I read Slashdot because it attracts a decent number of highly educated or knowledgable commenters, and I think that's still likely to be the case when the topic is a historical one.
I'm not disagreeing with you on the whole pre-DICE/post-DICE quality issue, since I don't really have an opinion on that. I just think this article was fine and you chose the wrong example to pick on.
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To me, this particular article just seems out of place.
Which is of course only a Pslytely Psycho opinion...;)
And I just couldn't resist a DICE troll....just for the fun of it.
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Maybe we all should add a sockpuppet account and flood the submissions with Kardashian and the like just to see how much of it makes it through and just go ahead and kill the site quickly rather than watch it decline slowly into a popular general nonsense site.
I will miss Slashdot, but yeah, come join us hippies! Pipedot in particular could use more submitters and it has a very nice interface. Bryan is kinda doing it
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I detest 'IT' types who are so frenetic about 'slashdot changing.' It's always been more interesting than the dull software shit that some seem to think should be the main /. focus.
But then, I'm a nerd. That's right. I still have a sizable hoard of #30 wire-wrap wire, though I haven't owned a solder-pot in years. I read articles about, but haven't taken a plunge toward, home-made steam and gasoline engines. I have computers with Microsoft software on them from before MS-DOS existed. I have a Fluke Dif
Fun apple tree fact (Score:2)
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Also, apple vinegar. And apple butter is pretty good to spread on your bread like a jam. And it all works pretty well with apples that are definitely not 'direct eaters' like the modern hybrids.
Michael Pollan's "Botany of Desire" (Score:2)
John Appleseed ? (Score:2)
Any connection to that John Appleseed guy that appears in all the Apple keynotes ?