Norma Jean's Column for Southern Prince George's County

CLINTON COLUMN FOR DECEMBER 5, 2002

Only twenty shopping days left before Christmas. I would hope that most of you have bought everything you are going to buy except for your food, and that any of you who really wanted to be out in that mob on the Friday after Thanksgiving enjoyed yourself. Of course, I also hope that all of you had as great a Thanksgiving holiday as I did, with my family. We always have too many dishes to choose from, and this year was no exception. I am glad I had an extra day before heading back to Weight Watchers.

More information on the Maryland Choral Society's concerts for this holiday season is the December 7 concert is at 8 pm at St. Anthony's Catholic Church on Chesapeake Avenue in North Beach and the December 8 concert is at 5 pm at St. Mark the Evangelist Church on Adelphi Road in Hyattsville. The concerts will consist of Gloria by John Rutter, a Christmas Cantata by Daniel Pinkham, and the Magnificat by Charles Pachelbel, as well as other Christmas music. Tickets are $15 in advance, and $18 at the door. Seniors are $12.00. For more information, call 0ete Perry at 301-934-2916 or log on to www.angelfire.com/MD/MDChoralSociety.

If you would like to spend some time with Jim Lehrer, he has written a book titled "No Certain Rest", which reveals an intensely intriguing story of murder during the Civil War on the Antietam Battlefield, and talks about his career as coanchor and executive editor of PBS Newshour on December 9 at 7:30 pm at the Corcoran on 17th Street. For information about the other programs Corcoran will be having during December, call them at 202-639-1774.

From the Civista health Center in La Plata, I have learned that of the treatment options available for men with organ-confined prostate cancer, brachytherapym which is the implantation of tiny radioactive seeds into the prostate gland and which appears to be the least disruptive for the patient, both physiologically and practically. Increasingly. This is playing a major role in the treatment of clinically localized prostate cancer. The procedure is now being performed at Civista, according to Dr. Boris G. Nagdich, and has produced very satisfying results. It is a relatively simple procedure and can be performed in about an hour. In most of the cases, the patient goes home the same day, and recovery is rapid. The best candidates have a prostate gland less than 50 cc, a Gleason score of 7 or less, and a PSA score of less than 10 and the disease is confined to the gland at palpation. If the patient has a higher score, he could still be a candidate, but it would be used in conjunction with other treatment.

At the start of the Civil War, civilian pay varied greatly depending on geographical location, skills, etc. The 19th-century version of Bill Gates, Andrew Carnegie, actually started at a bobbin boy in a Pennsylvania cotton mill and was paid $1.20 per week for a work week of 72 hours. At the Washington Arsenal, a boy of 12 to 16 years of age was paid by the piece and it usually took a full day to put together 650 cartridges. As the need grew for more ammunition, the pay rose from 60 cents a day to 75 cents. The U.S. Patent Office also required piecework and a typical employee earned 80 cents for the skilled and labor-intensive job of sewing a book by hand.

Between July and November of 1863, the Gettysburg National Cemetery was being established and thousands of bodies were exhumed at an average rate of $1.69 for each. As the war drew to a close, federal forces made it easy for Northern entrepreneurs to come in and take over some of the large plantations, but they soon learned they had no idea of how to work them. After the war, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard returned to his native New Orleans, financially ruined. He served as president of a railroad and then became superintendent of the state lottery. In that position, he was paid $30,000 annually, which was 20 percent more than what Abraham Lincoln earned as the wartime President.

Many people ask me where I get the information I put in my column. The last item was taken from the Surratt Society newsletter. If you happened to see the "haven't lived" article this past week, it was about our Surratt House, and I hope that all of you who read my column have found time to visit this wonderful museum. 

Many of you have been to battlefields where you see the stack of cannon balls and you may wonder how they stay that way. To prevent the bottom cannon balls from sliding or rolling from under the others, the solution ws a metal plate called a Monkey with 16 round indentations. Since the balls would rust if this item was made of iron, the answer was to use brass. Brass, however, contracts much more and faster than iron when chilled. When the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink and the cannon balls would come right off. And so, it was literally "cold enough to freeze a brass monkey."

Norma Jean Fazenbaker's column can be found in the Clinton Gazette, Prince George's Post, Prince George's Sentinel, and the Enquirer Gazette. You can contact Norma Jean by email - click this link.

2002 Archives: May 30, June 6, June 13, June 20, June 27, July 4, July 11, July 18, July 25, Aug. 1, Aug. 8, Aug. 15, Aug. 22, Aug. 28, Sept. 5, Sept. 12, Sept. 18, Sept. 26, Oct. 3, Oct. 10, Oct. 17, Oct. 24, Oct. 31, Nov. 7, Nov. 14, Nov. 21, Nov. 28

This web page is sponsored by Dowling Web Consulting & Training.

Back to the Brandywine, Maryland web site

Back to the Accokeek, Maryland web site