YOU NEED (OR MIGHT WANT) TO KNOW Editor’s note

ANDREW FELDER aafelder@crestpublicationsgroup.com

Managing Editor & Publisher

Information Please

When I Was quIte young, my father had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember well the polished, old case fastened to the wall. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I was too little to reach the telephone but used to listen with fascination when my mother talked to it. Then I discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person. Her name was "Information Please," and there was nothing she didn’t know. Information please could supply anyone's number and the correct time.

My personal experience with the genie-in-a-bottle came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there seemed no point in crying because there was no one home to give me any sympathy. I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly, I ran for the footstool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver in the parlor and held it to my ear. “Information, please," I said into the mouthpiece just above my head. A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear. "Information."

“I hurt my finger," I wailed into the phone. The tears came readily enough now that I had an audience.

"Isn't your mother home?" came the question.

"Nobody's home but me," I blubbered.

"Are you bleeding?" the voice asked.

"No," I replied. "I hit my finger with a hammer, and it hurts."

"Can you open the icebox?" she asked. I said I could. "Then chip off a little bit of ice and hold it to your finger," said the voice.

After that, I called "Information Please" for everything. I asked her for help with my geography homework, and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math. She told me my pet chipmunk, that I had caught in the park just the day before, would eat fruit and nuts. Then, there was the time Petey, our pet canary, died. I called Information Please and told her the sad story. She listened, and then said things grown-ups say to soothe a child. But I was inconsolable. I asked her, "Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to everyone, only to end up as a heap of feathers on the bottom of a cage?"

She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, "Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in."

Somehow, I felt better.

Another day I was on the telephone. "Information, Please," I said. "Information," said the now familiar voice. "How do I spell fix?" I asked.

All this took place in a small town in the Pacific northwest. When I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Boston. I missed my friend very much. Information Please belonged in that old wooden box back home and I somehow never thought of trying the tall, shiny new phone that sat on the table in the hall. As I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me. Often, in moments of doubt and perplexity, I would recall the serene sense of security I had then. I appreciated now how patient, understanding, and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy. A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down in Seattle. I had about a half-hour or so between planes. I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now. Then, without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, "Information Please."

Miraculously, I heard the small, clear voice I knew so well. "Information."

I hadn't planned this, but I heard myself saying, "Could you please tell me how to spell fix?"

There was a long pause. Then came the soft-spoken answer, "I guess your finger must have healed by now."

I laughed, "So it's really you," I said. "I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time?"

"I wonder," she said, "if you know how much your calls meant to me. I never had any children and I used to look forward to your calls."

I told her how often I had thought of her over the years, and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister.

"Please do," she said. "Just ask for Sally."

Three months later I was back in Seattle. A different voice answered, "Information." I asked for Sally.

"Are you a friend?" she said.

"Yes, a very old friend," I answered.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this." she said. "Sally had been working part time the last few years because she was sick. She passed away five weeks ago."

Before I could hang up, she said, "Wait a minute, did you say your name was Paul?"

"Yes."

"Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you." The note said, 'Tell him there are other worlds to sing in. He'll know what I mean.'

I thanked her and hung up. I knew what Sally meant.

I DREAMED I HAD AN INTERVIEW WITH GOD...

"Come in," God said. "So, you would like to interview Me?"

"If you have the time," I said.

God smiled and said, "My time is eternity and is enough to do everything.

What questions do you have in mind to ask Me?"

"What surprises You most about mankind?"

God answered: "That they get bored of being children. They are in a rush to grow up, and then long to be children again. That they lose their health to make money, and then lose their money trying to restore their health. That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present… such that they live neither for the present nor the future. That they live as if they will never die and die as if they had never lived."

God's hands took mine and we were silent for a while. Then I asked: "What are some of life's lessons You want

Your children to learn?"

He replied with a smile: “To learn that they cannot make anyone love them. What they can do is to let themselves be loved. To learn that what is most valuable is not what they have in their lives, but who they have in their lives. To learn that it is not good to compare themselves to others. All will be judged individually on their own merits, not as a group or on a comparison basis. To learn that a rich person is not the one who has the most but is one who needs the least. To learn that it only takes a few seconds to open profound wounds in people we love, and that it takes many years to heal them. To learn to forgive by practicing forgiveness. To learn that there are persons that love them dearly, but simply don’t know how to express or show their feelings. To learn that money can buy everything but happiness. To learn that two people can look at the same thing and see it totally differently. To learn that it is not always enough that they be forgiven by others, but that they have to forgive themselves.”

I sat there for a while enjoying and enraptured by the moment. I thanked Him for His time and for all that He has done for me and my family, and He replied, "Anytime. I'm here 24 hours a day. All you have to do is ask for Me, and I will answer." n

A: Beer Nuts are $1, and Deer Nuts are always under a buck.

Q: What's the difference between Beer Nuts and Deer Nuts?

I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t look up ‘Jim Crow’ myself. I think it was in July (when the coverage about state election laws was all over the news) that not a day went by without someone on TV using the expression. Thanks for shedding light on it for me – and, I’m sure, for many others.

Roland Tansman, Jacksonville, FL

My son loves your book –Vertical Lines. He has been reading it and just told me it's now his favorite book of all time.

Gary Revel, Sr. , Killeen, TX

I’ve been reading “The Best Diversions” and have really enjoyed the collection. It’s hard for me to stay focused. I hungrily move my eyes from place to place, sometimes missing spots. However, I always put them back in their sockets, without eating them, when I’m through. LOL! I cannot believe the quality of material that was used. Fantastic!

Bruce Lyngaas, Gleason, TN

I am enjoying checking out the full magazine! Very cool.

Alysia Heun, Phoenix, AZ

The cover and artchitecture section artist has a wild imagination (as well as talent). Great stuff!

Jane Mendlinger, Wichita Falls, TX

Ed: Watch for more photographic surrealism in 2022!

'PARIS ON BASTILLE DAY'

by Kal Gajoum

"I wanted to encompass the exaltation in Paris on Bastille Day (Quatorze juillet) in this painting. This fateful day shaped France as we know it today. There are also important symbols of France represented in the “Arc de Triomphe” (a/k/a “Étoile” because a major boulevard intersects with this particular roundabout and seems to branch out like a star), including the French flag, and the people marching down the street. This painting represents a nation’s resilience, its fight for freedom and the pride of its people. It is widely celebrated throughout the world."

Whether

With

You decide which products you want or need.

You install it where you want it.

You control your system.

You choose what songs to play.

Whether your home or away, you can keep an eye on your favorite people, pets, and possessions. When

HOW DO MOSQUITOS SURVIVE IN THE RAIN?

Cold temperatures Can sloW insects down, and water droplets add weight to them (and can make their wings stick together) Also, high winds can easily push insects off course, and they may have to expend more energy to stay on track.

Insects are exothermic (cold blooded); therefore, their body temperatures and activities are heavily influenced by their environment. But what do they do in the rain? That depends on the insect. A single raindrop can weigh 50 times as much as a mosquito, for example. So how can they fly through a downpour and come out alive? A new study reports that the answer lies in the mosquito’s low mass and its strong exoskeleton.

About 25%of the time, raindrops fall between a mosquito’s wings. In these cases, the mosquito is absorbed into the falling water drop, but it pulls away just before the drop hits the ground. The insect’s long wings and legs make it “like a kite with long tails, and it can pull away,” said Dr. Hu, a mechanical engineer and biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. They don’t resist the impact of a water drop and instead “go with the flow. It’s kind of like boxing with a balloon,” he explained. “There’s no way to pop the balloon because it doesn’t resist you at all.”

Wednesday

The German name for the day, Mittwoch (literally: "mid-week"), replaced the former name Wodenstag ("Wodan 's day") in the 10th century. The Dutch name for the day (“woensdag”), has the same etymology as English Wednesday. It comes from Middle Dutch (“wodenesdag”, which means ("Odin's day"). (Wodan = Odin and Odin is generally depicted as the king of Norse gods.)

Sun Showers

We usually associate rain with clouds. Sometimes, though, rain can fall out of a seemingly cloudless sky. It is commonly referred to as a sun shower or serein. A sun shower is a meteorological phenomenon in which rain falls while the sun is shining. It is usually the result of accompanying winds associated with a rainstorm sometimes miles away, blowing the airborne raindrops into an area where there are no clouds. Another possible cause is rapidly dissipating clouds. The time it takes for raindrops to leave a cloud and start falling to the ground, to the time it reaches the surface, plays an essential role in the formation of a sun shower. If a cloud has very little moisture left to form water droplets (or rising atmospheric temperatures in the cloud make reaching the dew point impossible), it starts to dissipate quickly after the last raindrops fell from it. Since the rain takes a couple of minutes to reach the ground, the chances are that the cloud will have broken up completely by the time you experience the rainfall on the ground.

Interrobang

Also known as the interabang and often represented by ?!, !?, ?!? or !?!), this is an unconventional punctuation mark used in various written languages and intended to combine the functions of the question mark, and the exclamation point. The glyph is a superimposition of these two marks. (The interrobang was first proposed in 1962 by Martin K. Speckter.)

Q: Why do men find it difficult to make eye contact? A: Breasts don't have eyes.

Controller Vs Comptroller

A comptroller and controller hold key positions regarding an organization’s financial operations. A comptroller is a high-level executive who oversees accounting tasks and financial reporting for governmental or non-profit organizations. The main difference is that controllers perform those duties at for-profit businesses.

A: A pimp.

KNOTS AND FATHOMS

Q: What do you call an Alabama farmer with a sheep under each arm?

Ever notice that measurements are different on land and sea? Mariners (as boaters often call themselves) have their own unique nautical language and that includes their own nautical measurement systems. While the rest of the world thinks in miles (or kilometers) per hour, boaters think in terms of knots. A knot is one nautical mile per hour, and it’s equal to 1.151 statute (regular) miles per hour. They use nautical miles (instead of statute miles) because of basic navigation; the distance of one nautical mile corresponds to one minute of latitude on a chart. Long ago, sailors needed a way to measure the speed of their boat, so they tied knots in a length of rope, one knot at every 47’3”, then tossed the end of the rope over the side of the boat and counted how many knots passed by in a 30 second period. (Conversion trick: Multiply MPH by 1.151 to get knots, and divide knots by 1.151 to get MPH.)

Today, a fathom equals six feet—quite an inconvenient number to use in your head when trying to go back and forth between feet and fathoms— but it was once used as a general term to mean the distance between a man’s out-stretched arms. (Thus, it could be five feet; it might be five and a half feet, or it might be six – or anywhere in between.) At some point a few hundred years ago, someone realized that six feet was almost exactly one-thousandth of a nautical mile (6,080 feet), so it made sense to standardize the term at that length.

Idioms

Your expectations are wrong and unreasonable; you’d better think again. It is almost always preceded by "If you think (something).". The phrase is commonly mistakenly spoken as "you've got another thing coming.". If you think you can walk in here and just demand a raise, you've got another 'think' coming.

THE FILIBUSTER

...is a parliamentary tactic used in the United States Senate by a minority of the senators (sometimes even a single senator) to delay or prevent parliamentary action by talking so long that the majority either grants concessions or withdraws the bill. The practice goes all the way back to the Senate of ancient Rome. The word filibuster is related to the Dutch word "vrijbuiter" meaning "pirate." It may have acquired its current meaning because pirates took hostages for ransom; filibusters hold senators hostage.

Some regard the filibuster as a tactic that preserves the rights of the minority and assures careful consideration of issues. Others criticize it as intrinsically undemocratic in that it allows the minority party to ‘dictate’ to the majority.

The filibuster is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, nor is it part of our system of checks and balances. There is no Senate rule which specifically mention filibusters; it evolved accidentally in the U.S. senate.

When the House of Representatives and the Senate were established in 1789, they had similar rules for cutting off debate on a bill or any other matter. In 1806, senators changed their rules, but likely didn’t realize that they had made it possible for one or more senators to carry on an endless debate.

During the 20th century, Southern senators often used filibusters to block civil rights legislation. From 1922 to 1949, they blocked five separate antilynching laws. In 1957, Strom Thurmond (the Senator from South Carolina) spoke in the Senate for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent a vote on a civil rights bill. That stands as the record for a one-man filibuster. To conduct a one-man filibuster, a senator has to remain on the Senate floor continuously and talk nonstop. Bodily functions present a distinct problem. Thurmond took a steam bath before his record-setting filibuster to dehydrate himself, reducing his need to use the bathroom.

In 1975, senators changed the cloture rule to require only a three-fifths vote (60 rather than 67 senators) to cut off debate. New procedures also allowed senators who could muster at least 41 votes to delay a particular piece of legislation while the Senate proceeded with other business. They didn't need to conduct an actual filibuster, only threaten one. Intended to make the Senate more efficient, this change increased the frequency of filibusters The cloture rule, also known as Rule 22, is the only formal procedure that senators can use to break a filibuster. But senators have always been reluctant to give up the power that the filibuster affords them. Plus, reformers face a major obstacle: A rule change usually requires a two-thirds vote to pass — and that can of course itself be filibustered.

In 2010, senators discussed filibuster reform. These proposals failed, for the most part, though both sides agreed not to exercise the "nuclear option," changing filibuster rules by a simple majority vote. First used in 2013 In 2013, the nuclear option was first invoked by Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid to lower the 60-vote requirement to 51 for approving executive branch appointees and federal judges. Now, debate is again raging. In order to pass what they see as vital legislation, some are again calling for use of the nuclear option again. But President Biden (a senator from Delaware for nearly four decades before becoming vice president), is opposed to eliminating the longstanding rule—at least for now.

Isis K

ISIS-K is a branch of ISIS that was established in January 2015 by disgruntled members of Taliban's Pakistani affiliate. They have been a sworn enemy of the Taliban. Their goal is to establish a caliphate, or an Islamic empire governed by Sharia law, in the historic Khorasan region (hence the ‘K’ in the name), which encompasses large parts of Central and South Asia. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (a U.S. foreign policy think tank) says the group has been responsible for 200 terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Reports suggest that the group has approximately 2,200 core fighters.

Diaspora

From the Greek word meaning 'to scatter,' a diaspora is a community of people who do not live in their country of origin but maintain their heritage in a new land. Many can relate to this issue, having ancestral roots from one country but residing in a different place. In the United States, many ethnic communities exist, often classified according to sub-cultures (e.g., African-American, Mexican-American, Irish-American, etc.) Inclusion of emigrants, or people who have left their homelands to settle permanently in a different one, is a major characteristic of a diaspora.

Antibody

An antibody (a/k/a an immunoglobulin) is a large, Y-shaped protein used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The antibody recognizes and binds to a unique molecule of the pathogen, called an antigen, in an interaction similar to a lock and key. Each tip of the "Y" of an antibody contains a paratope (analogous to a lock) that is specific for one particular epitope (analogous to a key) on an antigen, allowing these two structures to bind together with precision. Using this binding mechanism, an antibody can tag a microbe or an infected cell for attack by other parts of the immune system, or can neutralize it directly (for example, by blocking a part of a virus that is essential for its invasion). n at the BuIldIng oWners and Managers Association (BOMA) International’s annual conference in Boston on October 10th, seventeen commercial properties were honored with The Outstanding Building of the Year® (TOBY®) Awards.

Ed. Have something you’d like to see or learn about in this column? Email editor@crestnetwork.com and our crackerpot team of jack smokers will look it up for you!

The TOBY Awards are the commercial real estate industry’s highest recognition honoring excellence in commercial building management and operations in specific categories of building type or size. To win a BOMA International TOBY Award, a property first must win both local and regional competitions. Judging is based on criteria that includes community impact, tenant and employee relations programs, energy management, accessibility, emergency evacuation procedures, building personnel training programs and overall excellence. A team of industry experts also conducted comprehensive building inspections.

The following properties were honored with 2021 BOMA International TOBY Awards:

Boma International Honors Excellence In Commercial Real Estate

/01/ Corporate Facility: Seattle Municipal Tower in Seattle, Washington, owned by the City of Seattle and managed by CBRE.

/02/ Earth Building:

353 North Clark in Chicago, owned by Heitman and managed by CBRE.

/03/ Historical Building:

Queen’s Quay Terminal in Toronto, owned by Northam CCPF II Tenco (QQT) Ltd. and 10954594 Canada Inc., and managed by Northam Realty Advisors Ltd.

/04/ Industrial Building:

1001 North Greenfield Parkway in Garner, North Carolina, owned and managed Duke Realty.

/05/ Medical Office Building:

1128 Hornby in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, owned and managed by Wesgroup Properties.

/06/ Mixed-Use Building: The Curtis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, owned and managed by Keystone Property Group.

/07/ Public Assembly Building: The

/08/ Renovated Building: 401 Park in Boston, Massachusetts, owned and

/09/ Enclosed Retail: 10 Dundas East in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, owned by 10 Dundas Street, Ltd. and

/10/

/11/ Suburban Office Park Low-Rise: 1-8 Prologis Boulevard in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, owned by Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) Realty Inc. and managed by Triovest Realty Advisors Inc.

/12/ Suburban Office Park Mid-Rise: SouthCreek Corporate Centre in Markham, Ontario, Canada, owned by Northam CCPF Tenco (Commerce Valley Drive) Ltd. and managed by Northam Realty Advisors Ltd.

/13/ Under 100,000 Square Feet: 3300 Paramount Parkway in Morrisville, North Carolina, owned by Perimeter Park Offices, LP, and managed by Trinity Partners.

/14/ 100,000-249,999 Square Feet: 511 EJC in Irving, Texas, owned by Codina Partners and managed by Crescent Property Services.

/15/ 250,000-499,999 Square Feet: 745 Thurlow in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, owned by 2748355 Canada Inc. and 45 Thurlow Street Holdings Inc., and managed by QuadReal Property Group, LP.

/16/500,000-1,000,000 Square Feet: 333 Bush in San Francisco, California, owned by 333 Bush LLC and managed by Tishman Speyer.

/17/ Over 1,000,000 Square Feet: 150 North Riverside in Chicago, Illinois, owned by 150 North Riverside Titleholder, LLC, and managed by CBRE. n

On June 4, 1923, jockey Frank Hayes took off through the gates at Belmont Park in Elmont, NY. He and his horse, Sweet Kiss, made it to the finish line first; however, during the race, Hayes suffered a heart attack and died. Nonetheless, he was declared the winner - the only jockey to win a race while deceased. In fact, it’s the only time in sports history when a competition was won by a dead man.