WORDS AND MORE WORDS

BARTONYou might have thought this was just the last name of certain people, which it is, but it also used to have a meaning as a regular word.  Back a long time ago in England, barton meant the lands that belonged to a manor, plus the manor itself.  This was the land that the lord of the manor owned, not including the land that the tenants owned.  A barton could also mean a farmyard or a courtyard.The word came from the old words bere,...

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TWO GIRLS IN ECUADOR

Mom has been very busy the last couple of days trying to get caught up on writing letters to her sponsored kids.  She still has three letters left to write, but I told her maybe she should stop doing that and help me write a blog entry instead.  So she said I could tell you about the two girls in Ecuador that she just finished writing letters to.  Frankly, I'd rather blog about some exotic dog breed, but sometimes I don't get to do...

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NOT YOUR ORDINARY NATIVITY SCENE

At Christmastime, lots of people put little manger scenes in their houses, and these show the birth of Jesus in a stable.  You pretty much have to have at least Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in one of these scenes, but you can also have shepherds, wise men, and angels.  Also you can put in some nice animals such as sheep, cattle, camels, and a donkey. There are lots and lots of ways to make nativity scenes, and some of the traditional ways to...

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THE END OF THE WORLD!

The Long Count calendaron the east side of Stela CThe world might end today.  Or not.  But if it does end, that means I wasted a bunch of time writing this blog entry when I could have been taking a nap!Anyway, the reason people think the world is going to end is because a cycle in the Mayan Long Count calendar ends today.  The Mayans were some native people who lived in the Yucatan Peninsula and in Guatemala a long time ago.  Their...

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UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATERS

If you have not got yourself a Christmas sweater yet this year, you had better hurry, because there are only a few days left until Christmas.  Lots of people seem to like wearing pretty Christmas sweaters, but other people think it's funnier to wear ugly ones.  Sometimes these people even have contests to see who can wear the ugliest sweater of all. My Chief Research Assistant (Mom) found me a  bunch of pictures of ugly Christmas sweaters...

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MORE MISINFORMATION

MISINFORMATION #1:  Quicksand will suck you under.In movies and cartoons, if the characters walk into quicksand, they get sucked down, kind of like being sucked down a drain.  But this is not really how quicksand works.  What makes sand into quicksand is that there is a whole bunch of water in it, like from a spring underneath it.  So then the sand won't support the weight of the person or cow or truck or whatever went in there,...

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