FOG
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
The foggiest place in the world is the Grand Banks off the island of Newfoundland, Canada, with over 200 foggy days each year! Fog is frequent here, as this is the meeting place where the Grand Banks meets the cold Labrador Current from the north and the much warmer Gulf Stream from the south. The cold Labrador Current runs over the Grand Banks, and when warm air passes over this water, a dense fog forms.
The fog, shallow waters, and drifting icebergs make navigation difficult in this region. About 150 km south of the Grand Banks lies the shipwreck of the Titanic, the largest steamship in the world, which sank four days into its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, in 1912. Besides Argentia and Labrador in Newfoundland, Point Reyes, California, has about 200 foggy days a year.
Make Your own Fog in a Bottle!
It's easy to simulate the formation of radiation (ground) fog. All you need are two bottles with a narrow enough neck that you can stick an ice cube into the mouth. Fill one bottle about half way with very hot water (it doesn't need to be boiling.) Fill the other bottle with about 1 inch of cold water. After several minutes, pour out all the hot water but one inch. Now place an ice cube in the mouth of each bottle. Observe what happens in both bottles.
Do you have the "foggiest" idea who Carl Sanburg is? Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) was born in Galesburg, Illionis, and was best known for his poetry. He won two Pulitzer prizes for poetry and one for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. From childhood, Sandburg loved and admired the legacy of President Lincoln.
He spent most of his life in the Midwest and was a reporter for several years for the Chicago Daily News. Sandburg was virtually unknown in the literary world until a group of his poems appeared in the nationally circulated Poetry magazine in 1914.
Sandburg wrote three children's books, Rootabaga Stories, in 1922, followed by Rootabaga Pigeons (1923), and Potato Face (1930). These were "American fairy tales" to match American childhood. The stores were created for his daughters and were filled with skyscrapers, trains, corn fairies, and the "Five Marvelous Pretzels."
In 1945, the Sandburgs moved with their herd of prize-winning goats to a 245-acre farm in Flat Rock, North Carolina, and he began writing his memoirs. In 1953, he published Always the Young Strangers, the autobiography of the first 20 years of his life. He published his last book of poetry, Honey and Salt, in 1963. The next year he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. To the end of his life, accolades continued to pour in, and he took special pride in the more than half a dozen public schools named in his honor.
In the lobby of Carl Sandburg Middle School, there is a finished split tree trunk with the quote engraved lengthwise horizontally:
"MAN IS BORN WITH RAINBOWS IN HIS HEART AND YOU'LL
NEVER READ HIM UNLESS YOU CONSIDER RAINBOWS"
NEVER READ HIM UNLESS YOU CONSIDER RAINBOWS"
I'm sure you know what I'm thinking now - let's watch Foghorn Leghorn in Pullet Surprise (1997).
