2 minutes in the mind of JB and how she learns trivia and other useless information, that interests her:
I saw an old photo (from a site an innmate told me about 6 mo's). Echos from the past.
It showed the Clinch River, from days gone by.
I remembered my Master Naturalist Training where we discussed lotic and lentic ecosystems...which led me to learn that mussels are a great indicator of the health of a stream. Learning that the health of the Clinch River is now coming back, as they do much testing and introducing mussels back into the river which was all but annihilated by the Clinch River Reactor. It has more endangered mussels than any other river in America.
And from that I recalled that this was a great pearl river in it's hey day. that there was a "gold rush" of sorts to get to these very valuable pearls. Selling a single pearl for $50 or $100 way back when.
And from that, I considered the statement about "Mother of Pearl" and how the discarded mussel shells were sent off to a "pearl button factory" which as a child I found ultra beautiful. Nowadays we have plastic and other materials for buttons that have taken the place of the "Mother of Pearl button"
And then I am led to the history of the Mother of Pearl button, as I wondered where they were made...and lo and behold, the capital of the mother of pearl buttons is none other than an innmates town, who has been on this forum and the old forum before it since I first joined: Muscatine IOWA!
and the rest, as they say, is history. Now you know as well. Thanks for traipsing along my journey, each link explains what I found out.
I saw an old photo (from a site an innmate told me about 6 mo's). Echos from the past.
It showed the Clinch River, from days gone by.
I remembered my Master Naturalist Training where we discussed lotic and lentic ecosystems...which led me to learn that mussels are a great indicator of the health of a stream. Learning that the health of the Clinch River is now coming back, as they do much testing and introducing mussels back into the river which was all but annihilated by the Clinch River Reactor. It has more endangered mussels than any other river in America.
And from that I recalled that this was a great pearl river in it's hey day. that there was a "gold rush" of sorts to get to these very valuable pearls. Selling a single pearl for $50 or $100 way back when.
And from that, I considered the statement about "Mother of Pearl" and how the discarded mussel shells were sent off to a "pearl button factory" which as a child I found ultra beautiful. Nowadays we have plastic and other materials for buttons that have taken the place of the "Mother of Pearl button"
And then I am led to the history of the Mother of Pearl button, as I wondered where they were made...and lo and behold, the capital of the mother of pearl buttons is none other than an innmates town, who has been on this forum and the old forum before it since I first joined: Muscatine IOWA!
and the rest, as they say, is history. Now you know as well. Thanks for traipsing along my journey, each link explains what I found out.