Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2013; 6:30-8 pm
After a period of almost 2
months, I was finally back for ‘What’s
The Word’ project. It also meant
that I had missed out on the March/April issue of ‘As We See It’. I saw Jim and Jack by the TV, and knowing that Jim is an avid sports fan, I asked if he
was excited about the Baseball season.
He started on his pet peeve that is the 'Cubs' and said that it was unfair that Chicago was a 'Cubs' town when the 'White Sox' had a much better record and performance over the past
decade. He blamed the media for their
fascination with the 'Cubs' and before
he could continue with that, other volunteers started to arrive. I saw Noel, who is a regular at ‘Paint The Town Red’ and besides Gwyn,
some of the other volunteers were Sallie, Tash and Erin. Amongst the residents, usual members of our
editorial board – Jim, Jack and Mary were in attendance, though Larry was
missing, having gone to bed after taking some pain killers for his back.
 |
| The first 'Batman' issue |
While Gwyn set things up, I took
a look at the last month’s issue that I had missed, and it looked like the team
had done a fine job. Since today’s task
was preparation and research for the May/June issue, Gwyn split us into
groups. There was only one laptop, but
Sallie said that she had an iPAD and Erin and I each had a smart phone, which
meant that we could use those for research.
One of the things that Jack likes to do, and which I had helped him with
the last time, is using the book ‘Chase’s
Calendar Of Events’, to identify some of the more unique occasions through
the history. Noel had taken over that
role and at the previous session, she and Jack had realized that the characters
of both, ‘Batman’ and ‘Superman’ had been introduced in the
month of May and June. Using that as a
basis, Gwyn had assigned Sallie and Jim the task of finding out about this
launch and more specifically, what that first issue of Batman and Superman
would be worth today. After a brief
Google search, they reported back that while ‘Batman’ had sold for $1 Million, ‘Superman’, had been purchased at $2.6 Million. Having grown up collecting such comic books,
I wish I had kept all of mine! It was natural for ‘Superman’ to have fetched more than ‘Batman’ and I was not surprised to hear that. Gwyn also wanted some pictures of the first
cover and at one stage Sallie found one with ‘Batman & Robin’. I said
that I may not know much about the history of the origins, but I know for the
sure that Robin should not be present in the first issue of ‘Batman’.
 |
| And the first 'Superman' |
Some of the other things that
were being researched were local events in Chicago over May and June. Taash and Mary were on it, while Erin was reading about the ‘Kentucky Derby’. My task was to find out unique things that
would go alongside 3 important days in May and June – ‘Mother’s Day’, ‘Father’s Day’
and ‘Memorial Day’. Having done this for over six years, they were
running out of cool facts to mention each time and hence Gwyn wanted me to do a
bit of research using my phone. I entered
‘Mother’s Day unique facts’ as a
search parameter, and was soon led to a page about a woman named Mrs. Vassilyev
of Russia. She has set the record as the
most prolific mother by giving birth to 69 children, which included 16 pairs of
twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets. All of this happened sometime between 1725
and 1765 – they most noteworthy things being that despite the lack of medical
facilities in that era, 67 out of 69 children survived infancy. When I read this out, everyone was stunned
and we unanimously agreed that this should make it to the list of things to
include. I wrote down on a notepad and while Mrs. Vassilyev is definitely in contention for ‘Mother
of the Millennium’, the only thing I
can say about her husband is, “Well done Sir!”
Nothing that I found for ‘Father’s Day’ could top that, and most
of the trivia was already known to Gwyn.
Some of the fun facts were about how neckties were the most popular gift
and the total number of ‘stay at home dads’.
The best thing I found was a quote by Mark Twain which says “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so
ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be
21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Next was a search on ‘Memorial Day’ and Jack asked me if I knew about the origins of the
day. I said it must have been after
World War II, but I soon realized that I was mistaken, the first recording of
something similar dating back to the Civil War.
I did find something interesting, that the actual observance of ‘Memorial Day’ happens at 3 pm. Well, now all of us knew.
It was time to wrap up for the
day and we still had one more session to finish the issue. I told Jack and Noel to find something
special in the book to include for my birthday in June. I also reminded Noel to pick up the cards she
had left behind at Pat Crowley House. Before
leaving I chatted with some of the other volunteers and told Sallie about the
other projects that Chicago Cares has, now acting as a spokesperson for the organization. I always enjoy
coming to this project and having been my first ever activity with Chicago
Cares, it is special to me. Not only do
I meet great people, but this is the one place to come learn about fascinating trivia, like
Mrs. Vassilyev. What a lady!
*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their privacy
No comments:
Post a Comment