Category Archives: Froggy Foibles

Froggy Foibles

Three Canadian gifts for the cannabis lovers in your life

The GrowthOp
December 10, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada

Hippy Papers

Doob Tube

Forest Set

 

 

 

 

Rolling papers by Canadian Lumber – Halifax-based Canadian Lumber sells a trio of rolling papers well-suited for any walk in the woods. The papers are all natural, unbleached and unrefined. The Hippy papers are made from a natural blend of flaxseed and hemp.

Doob tubes by Goodwood – Manufactured in Ontario’s Niagara Region, Goodwood’s take on doob tubes come in several  varieties, including walnut, maple and padauk. A tube holds two regular-sized joints. For every 2OOB sold, Goodwood plants two trees. 

The Forest Set by Green Cannabis – Toronto-based Green Cannabis creates plastic-free, locally sourced products. Its handmade Forest Set contains a ceramic birch stick pipe and a rolling tray made from clay sustainably sourced in Ontario and Alberta. 

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Spruce top thieves: How demand for a north woods cash crop is sparking an illicit trade

By Dan Kraker
The Duluth News Tribune
December 7, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, United States

The COVID-19 pandemic has prevented many suppliers of spruce tops from Canada from selling across the border. So spruce thieves in northern Minnesota have stepped in to take advantage of that gap. …Zavodnik, a conservation officer with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, has been investigating reports of theft all season. …The footlong evergreen tops of small, immature spruce trees… are all the rage in home holiday decor. When potted up, the spruce tops look like miniature Christmas trees. …The people illegally cutting the spruce tops are going to great lengths to avoid detection. They work late at night, and use fluorescent tape to mark their trails into the spruce swamps. So far this season, conservation officers in Minnesota have seized well over 15,000 spruce tops. Still, it’s a tiny fraction of the overall, legal market.

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Fire logs that smell like KFC available in Canada for first time

By Valerie Leung
Castanet
November 18, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada

The smell of chestnuts won’t be the only scent being roasted over an open fire this year as Kentucky Fried Chicken has brought its fried-chicken scented fire logs to Canada. The fast-food chain is selling its limited-time 11 herbs and spices fire log at all Canadian Tire stores across Canada. The logs are being sold in Canadian stores and online for the first time since being launched in the United States in 2018. “It’s the comfort of a warm fire and the delicious aroma of our world-famous fried chicken that makes the KFC 11 herbs and spices fire log a truly heart-warming and hunger-inducing experience for all,” said Samantha Redman, chief marketing officer at KFC Canada. …“We are thrilled with the overwhelming consumer demand for the KFC Firelog and are proud that we are now able to make it available to Canadian fans,” said Ross McRoy, CEO of Enviro-Log, Inc.

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Smokey Bear leaves U.S. for Canada – a fictional account

By Judy Blais
The International Falls Journal
October 22, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, United States

International Falls awoke to a shocking sight this summer… an empty pedestal in Smokey Bear Park. After 66 years on the job, Smokey and his cubs had disappeared overnight, leaving nothing behind but a large shovel and a few scattered garments. Reportedly, a big bear and two cubs were seen swimming across Rainy River to Canada. This bizarre story awakened my dormant reporter’s instincts, so I snuck across the Minnesota/Ontario border to track it down. I found the bear and his cubs in a wooded area several miles north of Fort Frances. He seemed to be in good spirits so I jumped right in with a question. “Why did you leave the U.S. after so many years? Smokey settled back on his haunches, scratched his belly in contemplation and finally said, “For several reasons…

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These Canadian species are found nowhere else on Earth

By Emily Chung
CBC News
June 4, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada

What species are more Canadian than moose or beavers? We now have an answer. A new report has catalogued 308 species, sub-species and varieties of plants and animals found in Canada — and nowhere else on the planet. They include mammals such as the eastern wolf, Vancouver Island marmot, wood bison and Peary caribou; birds such as the Pacific Steller’s jay; and fish such as the Banff longnose dace, Atlantic whitefish and Vancouver lamprey. But 80 per cent of them are plants and insects — ones you probably haven’t heard of, like the Maritime ringlet butterfly and the Yukon goldenweed. …B.C., Quebec, Alberta and Yukon had the highest numbers of endemic plants and animals.

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Behold the star-tipped reindeer — Canadians’ top pick for a national lichen

CBC News
May 26, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada

Canadians have voted on a national lichen, and they picked a spiky white caribou snack that looks like “little mounds of cauliflower.” The star-tipped reindeer won the Canadian Museum of Nature’s nationwide online contest with 27 per cent of 18,075 votes cast. “Canada has spoken,” Troy McMullin, the museum’s lichenologist, told As It Happens host Carol Off. “It’s a great choice, largely because it’s easy to identify and it’s a spectacular species that grows mostly in the boreal and Arctic regions that dominate our country.” The museum launched a contest in February for Canadians to choose a national lichen in an effort to boost the profile of the more than 2,500 species that carpet the country. …Still, the star-tipped reindeer isn’t yet Canada’s official national lichen. Only Parliament can declare it so. 

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A special announcement from Ducks Unlimited Canada

Ducks Unlimited Canada
April 1, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada

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Alberni logger discovers a mystery in a rock face

By Susie Quinn
Parksville Qualicum Beach News
August 4, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada West

“Shawn”

When veteran logger Fred Thompson agreed to drive a truck for a job in Drury Inlet on the central coast of British Columbia, finding a megalith was the last thing he figured he would be doing. Thompson, 77, is a semi-retired logger from Port Alberni. …he was working on a site in Jennis Bay—part of Drury Inlet, in Queen Charlotte Strait—near the Broughton Archipelago. …“My crew pointed to a rock formation and said ‘we call that guy Shawn, a nickname for the owner of the company,’” Thompson said. They dismissed the face in the rock as a natural anomaly of the cliff. …Thompson said the features revealed in the rock face look similar to the stone moai (sculptures) on Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. …the shape of the stone is not characteristic of the artwork typical of the Indigenous people from the area.

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Sasquatch sighted in East Sooke

By Rick Stiebel
Victoria News
July 23, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada West

Numerous sightings of a Sasquatch in East Sooke have been officially confirmed. A giant carving of the often mentioned but rarely seen creature towers above the parking lot at the East Sooke General Store, thanks to the efforts of Paul Lewis. Lewis, a Langford resident, has gained quite a reputation for his work, which is essentially crafted from driftwood and fallen timber he’s collected. …The four sasquatches Lewis has done so far are on private property, so after requests, he decided to try and find a location where the public could get acquainted with one of his gentle brown giants.

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Chainsaw art in Fort Qu’Appelle inspiring hope during pandemic

By Heidi Atter
CBC News
July 17, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada West

The loud buzz of a chainsaw and sound of a blowtorch echo on the streets of Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan. Instead of avoiding a work area, people walk and drive by, stopping to stare at the wood carvings being created at the Hansen-Ross House. The new attractions are bringing in a physically-distanced crowd. The artist hopes he’s giving them a bit of hope. Lingelbach has been using a chainsaw since he was 19 years old. He started carving trees into shapes like chains, gnomes and more about 28 years ago while working for SaskPower as an arborist. 

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‘All hell broke loose’: 60 years ago, a 5-alarm fire destroyed four blocks in False Creek

By Jon Azpiri
Global News
July 3, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada West

[Tree Frog Note: we include this historical piece in the Foibles section only because it is a unique story] On the afternoon of July 3, 1960, Capt. John Telosky of the J.H. Carlisle fireboat noticed smoke billowing out of the B.C. Forest Products sawmill near Oak Street and West 6th Avenue. He called the fire in, as did the watchman who was on duty at the mill, and the boat moved towards the south side of False Creek. The fire, which was sparked in a planer mill, was stoked by strong winds in an industrial area filled with lumber. “Then all hell broke loose and away it went,” local historian Alex Matches recalls. The B.C. Forest Products fire quickly grew into the first five-alarm fire in the city’s history, destroying an estimated four-block area east of Oak Street and changing the landscape of False Creek. …The fire consumed more than 300,000 metres of lumber. …The president of B.C. Forest Products estimated the damage at $3 million, or about $26 million in today’s dollars. …The mill was never rebuilt.

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The Enchanted Forest will open for the season in a few weeks

By Megan Trudeau
Kamloops BC Now
June 10, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada West

The Enchanted Forest located west of Revelstoke is set to reopen for the season on June 26. The tourist attraction will be opening with COVID-19 protocols in place, as all reopening businesses are. …The attraction boasts a 50 foot treehouse, the largest one in the province. It also features 350 handcrafted fairy tale figurines and structures all hidden within gorgeous, old growth forest. The grounds include a two-kilometre boardwalk through the forest where visitors can learn more about the trees, plants, herbs and the giant 800-year-old cedar grove found there.

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British Columbia bear takes a nap in eagle tree

The Red Deer Advocate
June 4, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada West

A small black bear spent the night in a treetop – and had a long sleep in Sunday morning. Terry Ruth Eissfeldt and her husband Terrence were in their Hyde Creek home, an east-Vancouver Island spot overlooking the Broughton Archipelago, Saturday evening when Terrence noticed a kerfuffle in a nearby tree. The young bruin was eating something at the top of what the Eissfeldts call the eagle tree – which is frequented by eagles, but there isn’t an active nest there this year, Terry said.

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Living near more trees can feel as good as a $10,000 raise

By Brendan Shykora
Pentiction Western News
May 21, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada West

Living close to nature has long been considered a boon for mental health, but it takes a special kind of researcher to ask what dollar value can be put on the feeling of being surrounded by foliage. In 2015, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to quantify the benefits of green spaces, and after analyzing data sets from the City of Toronto, they found that having 10 or more trees on a city block does the same for a person’s sense of health and well-being as getting a $10,200 raise, or being seven years younger. A tree-filled street may not make you feel like a million bucks, but $10,000 is nothing to sneeze at!

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Mysterious ‘face’ found in B.C. cliff near logging operation

By Gord Kurbis
CTV News
March 28, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada West

PORT ALBERNI — A Port Alberni man is wondering if a recent logging operation on B.C.’s Central Coast has uncovered a giant face carved into a rock sheer.  Fred Thompson was driving a logging truck near Jennis Bay for a Powell River based company. He says the company has cleared a cut block and uncovered what appears to be a giant face.  Thompson says it reminds him of the faces seen on Easter Island.  “I think it’s too perfect to be natural. The nose is perfectly vertical to the earth and the eyebrows are 90 degrees to that,” Thompson told CTV News.  “You could probably put a square on it and you’d probably find it was damn close to square.”  Thompson says he was parked beside it in his truck for nine loads of logs and kept looking at the face wondering how it got there. 

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What is a piece of hockey history worth? Hastings man looks to sell 19th-century stick

By Bruce Deachman
The Ottawa Citizen
December 9, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada East

Wayne Caruk is looking to sell a piece of lumber, a four-foot long vintage piece of Canada’s national pastime that most certainly predates the NHL, perhaps by a quarter century or more. If possible, Caruk would like the stick to remain in Canada, ideally in a museum. …The stick was handmade by the Mi’kmaqs in Nova Scotia, probably between 1870 and 1900,” says Caruk. The stick, he adds, was fashioned from hornbeam, or ironwood, a particularly durable hardwood. Bill Fitsell, at the time a historian with the International Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston… compared it to other sticks of similar vintage in the 19th century. I deem it ‘unique’ in that it features a rare, knife-blade tip introduced in the 1890 to 1905 period. 

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Edmonton wood carver says Rambo sculpture is ‘a little bit of me’ — minus the muscles and dry rot

CBC News
August 22, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada East

Ryan Villiers is a chainsaw-wielding Edmonton wood carver whose latest creation depicts the Sylvester Stallone character John Rambo. The Western red cedar statue, standing almost seven feet tall, towers outside the town hall in Hope, B.C., where 1982’s First Blood movie was filmed almost 40 years ago. Villiers, a full-time chainsaw carver for the last two years, completed the finely detailed statue — right down to the wrinkled pants and bullet belt… He is … downright delighted over an Instagram shout-out he got from Sly Stallone himself. …Villiers’s toolkit includes about a half-dozen different sized chainshaws, Dremel tools and lots of sandpaper. None of these were able to save Rambo’s first head. …”I had to do his head twice,” Villiers said. “I ran into some kind of a dry rot in the wood, I couldn’t dial in his eyelids and they kept flaking off.  “Off with his head, I put a new one on. And, oh, I was happy that one worked out.”

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Flashback Foible – St. John’s machinist builds car out of wood

CBC News
August 8, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: Canada, Canada East

No one had a car quite like Don Piercey’s — in part because he assembled it himself, in part because its body was crafted out of wood. In August 1993, Midday spoke to Piercey about his creation, which he gladly showed off to a CBC camera in St. John’s. The two-seater roadster had a sleek mahogany exterior and a maple leaf-shaped hood ornament. It was powered by a Volkswagen engine and anchored to an existing metal chassis.

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Why Bigfoot and the ‘Abominable Snowman’ Loom Large in the Human Imagination

By Colin Dickey
Smithsonian Magazine
July 20, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States

…The story of Bigfoot—and the many other names he travels under—is, after all, the story of such confusions between human and animal. It is the story of the creature uncannily close to us, encroaching from the wilderness into our homes. Reports of such creatures like Bigfoot aren’t new; they’ve been around for centuries. Bigfoot and its siblings—Sasquatch, the Yeti—have long been recognized by folklorists as variations on an archetype known as the Wild Man. The Wild Man legend is old, and spans many cultures; usually the story involves some large, hairy figure, like a man but different… Such folklore can reflect our uneasy relationship to the natural world around us: While we see ourselves as civilized, differentiated from the wild beasts of the forests, the wild man mythology presents a shadowy remnant of our former, uncivilized self. …despite the absolute lack of evidence of their existence, stories remain, with the Wild Man forever just outside the door, threatening to come inside.

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Tree frogs create auditory illusion to find mate without being eaten

Down to Earth.org
May 10, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States

New research by Purdue University has found that treefrogs create an ‘auditory illusion’ to protect themselves while trying to find a mate. The frogs become easy targets for predators and parasites when they send mating calls. But they have found out this unique way to protect themselves. Male treefrogs essentially overlap their mating calls with those of their neighbours. When this happens, an auditory illusion takes place and predators are more attracted to the leading call, leaving other frogs to find mates without risking their lives, according to the research. This is called the ‘Precedence Effect’… When we hear two short sounds in quick succession, we assume the sound is coming from the source of the first one.

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‘Easter Trees’ Bring Joy to Many Homes Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

By Tarrah Gibbons
Radio.com
April 9, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States

If you’re the kind of person who hates taking down their Christmas tree, you may want to take part in a new fad flooding the ‘gram. People all across Instagram are posting pictures of their Easter trees. The hashtag #eastertree has more than 500 posts. Sam Riccioli, an interior designer from Pennsylvania, thinks these trees will bring joy to people throughout spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The Christmas tree brings so much happiness to me, my husband and children that I decided to keep it up all year round and decorate it for every holiday,” she said.

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The World’s largest smiley is in the forest

Forestry.com
November 26, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US West

Is it really the largest smiley in the World? We don´t know, but in the coastal part of Oregon, USA, Hampton Lumber has planted this smiley that measures 80 meters in diameter. It´s planted on a hillside which makes it visible from Highway 18 in Willamina. …As the smiley is supposed to be yellow, larch was used as the base and for the eyes and mouth, douglas fir was planted. As the larch turns yellow in the autumn, that is the best time to see the giant smiley. According to Hampton Lumber, it took a week to plant the smiley in 2011. They used a rope to measure the circle and the eyes and mouth were triangulated from that point. Click here for more.

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Bigfoot spotted along roadside in Northern California

By Kevin Reome
Boing Boing
November 16, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US West

A wooden statue of Bigfoot was recovered by police after being seen along a road north of Santa Cruz, California last Thursday. Thieves grabbed the 4-foot tall wood carving from the Bigfoot Discovery Museum near Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park and relocated it. Maybe it wasn’t human thieves at all. Bigfoot, you know, the real one, might have moved it to prank the locals him/herself.

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Oregon ranks high in sasquatch sightings

By Mark Freeman
Mail Tribune
August 3, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US West

…Oregon has the highest rate of reported Sasquatch sitings per capita, according to data collected by the Bigfoot Field Research Organization that for decades has hoped to prove it’s real. The BFRO’s official Oregon sitings reports is 254, the group states. With 4.2 million residents, that means six reports per 100,000 residents… “Oregon is definitely one of the best states to see a sasquatch in the world,” said Matt Moneymaker, executive director of the Bigfoot Field Research Organization and start of a handful of Bigfoot-chasing cable television shows. …Most cryptozoologists will tell you that if Bigfoot is real, it likely is a surviving version of gigantopithecus. That was the world’s largest primate when it inhabited the forests of China and India from as far back as 9 million years ago. …a licensed Bigfoot trap was set up on federal lands in 1974 in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. It caught a few beavers but no sasquatches on six years of operation, records show.

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Legion of lumberjacks: Celebrate National Paul Bunyan Day around the state

By Bria Barton
The Bemidji Pioneer
June 27, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US West

BEMIDJI — It’s pretty obvious that Minnesotans can’t get enough of Paul Bunyan. Our love and pride for the over-sized, burly lumberjack is apparent in towering statues found along roadsides and in the businesses, trails and byways that bear his iconic name. Across America and Canada, the folk hero’s renown is as large as he was. … the most popular detail of his tall tale recalls the legend that Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes were created by his footprints — as well as those belonging to his trusty sidekick Babe the Blue Ox — which filled with water as they explored the state. Nowadays, the height of logging days may well be over, but the legend of the colossal lumberjack lives on each year, particularly on June 28, which is National Paul Bunyan Day.

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Move over Smokey says a moose with no name (yet)

The Juneau Empire
June 24, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US West

There’s a new face for a statewide fire-prevention campaign, but that face —a cartoon moose — doesn’t yet have a name. The Division of Forestry is holding a contest to name the new “Take Time to Learn Before You Burn” moose, DNR announced Tuesday. The Legislature in 2018 passed a bill that updated the penalties for burning offense committed on state, municipal and privately owned land. The statutes took effect last June, and DOF developed the campaign to target the division’s goal to reduce human-caused fires by 10% annually, according to a news release from DNR. …A winner will be announced Oct. 1.

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Why Eastern red cedar is known as the ‘graveyard tree’

By Charles Seabrook
AJC News
October 2, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US East

I was in southeast Georgia the other day and decided to pay a visit to a national champion — a grand Eastern red cedar tree. The magnificent old tree made its debut on the National Register of Champion Trees in 2018. At 57 feet tall, it is the largest known specimen of its kind in the nation. …But it got me thinking how common Eastern red cedars are in old cemeteries all over Georgia and the entire South. The species, in fact, is found so often in Southern cemeteries that it’s sometimes called the “graveyard tree.” A reason perhaps is that red cedars often were planted in burial grounds because their long lives and needled evergreen foliage symbolized eternal life.

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Could a Tree Help Find a Decaying Corpse Nearby?

By Matt Simon
WIRED
September 3, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US East

SINCE 1980, THE University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center has plumbed the depths of the most macabre of sciences: the decomposition of human bodies. Here scientists examine how donated cadavers decay, like how the microbiomes inside us go haywire after death. …That gave a group of researchers an idea: What if that blast of nutrients actually changes the color and reflectance of a tree’s leaves? And, if so, what if law enforcement authorities could use a drone to scan a forest, looking for these changes to find deceased missing people? Today in the journal Trends in Plant Science, they’re formally floating the idea—which, to be clear, is still theoretical. …“What we’re proposing is to use plants as indicators of human decomposition,” says plant biologist Neal Stewart.

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Only You… can design my bumper sticker

The Suwannee Democrat
June 24, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US East

LAKE CITY — Anybody can design a new Smokey Bear bumper sticker. The Florida Forest Service is hosting a bumper sticker design contest through Sept. 30 featuring Smokey Bear, urging artists to use their skills to send a message to their community about preventing devastating wildfires. The winning bumper sticker, along with the top 90 submissions, will be used as a collage in a Florida Forest Service calendar. The calendar will also include information about wildfire prevention week, special individual wildfire days, and Smokey Bear’s birthday.

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Ever Wonder Series: Why do the Celtics have a parquet floor?

NBC Sports
May 27, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US East

The Boston Celtics play their home games sandwiched by history with the 17 championship banners that hang above and the fabled parquet floor beneath. Ever wonder how the Celtics ended up with such a unique court design? The parquet look was the product of a lumber shortage as the Celtics prepared to debut in the Basketball Association of America in 1946. In the aftermath of World World II, many common items were in short supply, including professionally cut wood. Most manufactured wood had been earmarked for residential housing as servicemen returned home. To attract players and fans they needed a good quality floor. The only way they could do that was getting scraps of wood at lumber yards throughout Boston and put together a floor. The court was constructed for $11,000 using surplus scraps of northern Tennessee red oak. The pieces were laid out in alternating pattern, creating the parquet effect. The Celtics utilized that same floor for 53 years…

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The end of the innocence

By Dante Bellini Jr.
The Providence Journal
May 12, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US East

“Social distancing” has become the standard. Here in Rhode Island, gatherings of more than five are a violation as prescribed by medical and political leaders. And, like “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” a “Twilight Zone” episode from 60 years ago, your neighbors may even turn on you — in this case if you refuse to wear a mask. While there remains a great deal we don’t know about the immediate or long-term future, what we should probably prepare ourselves for is this — that we will think in terms of “Before Times and After Times.” It seems highly unlikely, however, that we’ll just emerge from our comfortable cocoons of toilet paper, disinfectants, sweats, Netflix and PJs to return to a busy life of meetings, travel, handshakes, kisses and hugs.

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Man builds “lumber jacked” gym after he is forced to stay home

By Robert Dalheim
Woodworking Network
April 7, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: United States, US East
CINCINNATI – After Zachary Skidmore was forced to stay at home and away from his usual gym, he took matters into his own hands. He built a gym in his backyard. And he built it from lumber.  The “lumber jacked gym” features a treadmill, leg press, shoulder press, dumbbells, and more. Skidmore built the gym using a chainsaw over a two-week period. He estimates it took around 60 hours.  “So my gym closed. So, I grabbed a chain saw and went to work,” Skidmore wrote on Facebook. “I managed to satisfy my hunger to work out.”

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7 MOST beautiful wooden houses & palaces in Russia

By Nikolay Shevchenko
Russia Beyond
January 14, 2021
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: International

Kizhi Pogost – This wooden complex was built in the 17th century. Constructors used no nails (apart from the domes and roof shingles) and delivered thousands of logs from the mainland — two difficult tasks at the time. …Kolomenskoye – At the time of construction in the early 17th century, Kolomenskoye consisted of a wooden palace, a church made of white bricks and a few other buildings. …Sutyagin House – often called a ‘wooden skyscraper’, it is reportedly the world’s tallest wooden residential house. 

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Have you considered eating your Christmas tree?

US 99 – Chicago’s Hottest Country Radio
January 6, 2021
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: International

There’s a new cookbook out from a, quote, “artisan baker and cook” in the U.K. named Julia Georgallis called “How to Eat Your Christmas Tree”. And it features dozens of recipes you can make using your tree. For example, Christmas-Cured Fish uses almost a pound of needles for decoration and flavoring.  With Christmas Tree Pickles, you throw a handful of needles into a jar with your pickles for a month. There’s even ICE CREAM flavored with blue spruce needles and ginger. Julia says she created the book so people would get better use out of their trees . . . rather than chopping down 30 million trees every year and then throwing them away.

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Black Forest Christmas Dazzle brownie and ice-cream layer cake

By Katrina Meynink
Good Food
December 10, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: International

Sometimes our news filters pull up interesting forestry stories – who doesn’t want this amazing black forest cake? Yum! This has look-at-me written alllll over it. Standing at six layers tall, it does require some freezing and planning but it’s all about assembly rather than any true ‘doing’ on your part. Even the brownie mixture is coming from a box*, making this a very low-key way to make a showstopping Christmas dessert.

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Dutch ‘living coffin’ aims to provide source for life after death

Thomson Reuters in CBC News
September 23, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: International

A Dutch startup has created a biodegradable “living coffin” made of a fungus instead of wood that it says can convert a decomposing human body into key nutrients for plants. Loop company says its casket is made of mycelium…and filled with a bed of moss to stimulate decomposition. …The coffin is grown like a plant within the space of a week at the company’s lab at the Delft University of Technology by mixing mycelium with wood chips in the mould of a coffin. After the mycelium has grown through the wood chips, the coffin is dried and has enough strength to carry a weight of up to 200 kilograms. …Once buried, interaction with ground water will dissolve the coffin within 30 to 45 days. Decomposition of the body is estimated to take only two to three years, instead of the 10 to 20 years it takes with traditional coffins. Get yours today for $2,340 Cdn!

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Diageo to launch Johnnie Walker whisky in paper bottles in 2021

Reuters in the Chronicle Herald
July 13, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: International

Johnnie Walker scotch whisky will be available in plastic-free bottles from early 2021, Diageo Plc said on Monday, as the world’s biggest spirits maker ramps up efforts to tackle plastic waste. The new bottle, developed in partnership with venture management company Pilot Lite, will be made from wood pulp that meets food grade standards and is fully recyclable, the Guinness and Tanqueray Gin maker said. Diageo and Pilot Lite have launched a sustainable packaging company called Pulpex Ltd to develop the paper bottle and collaborate on research and development. Pulpex will also create branded paper-bottles in non-competing categories for companies including Lipton team maker Unilever Plc and soda maker PepsiCo, which are also expected to launch next year.

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Listen to Woodlands Around the World With This Forest Soundmap

By Melissa Breyer
Treehugger
July 9, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: International

A global, mass-participation audio project brings the sounds of the forest to all. …These are just a few of the many soundscapes – like short audio postcards – which can be found at Sounds of the Forest, the world’s first-ever forest soundmap. A collaboration between Wild Rumpus and the Timber Festival. the project maps the sounds of woodlands and forests contributed by people from all around the globe. Photos and descriptions help add to the stories behind the audio glimpses. Already the map has hundreds of recordings from more than 30 countries. …Being able to escape into the sounds of nature is a simple but effective endeavor; as evidenced by the launch of BBC Earth’s five 10-hour “visual soundscape” videos.

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Icelandic Forest Service Recommends Hugging Trees Since You Can’t Hug People

By Trevor Nace
Forbes Magazine
April 14, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles
Region: International

Geoff Henley

Feeling the Coronavirus blues? Forest rangers in Iceland are working to clear roads and paths leading up to trees for people to hug as an alternative to hugging friends and family. On the eastern side of Iceland park rangers for the Hallormsstaður National Forest have come up with an interesting way to cope with social isolation, to hug trees. Representatives from the National Forest have encouraged Icelanders to take a walk outside and find a nice tree to hug to start their day off right. …Coronavirus can live on wood up to 4 days, which means you shouldn’t go hugging trees that someone else has hugged recently. While the premise of going out to hug trees sounds pretty silly, research shows that living near a forest makes people happier and increased connectivity with other living things (plants and animals) reduces stress and increases happiness. 

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Symbol of 2020 angst or sophisticated style choice? What to make of black Christmas trees.

By Elizabeth Mayhew
The Washington Post
December 8, 2020
Category: Froggy Foibles

There is a decorating trend that has slowly been creeping, Grinch-like, into the holiday season. People across the country have been ditching their very green evergreens for artificial black trees. It makes sense for right now: With a still-raging pandemic, millions out of work and food pantries inundated, a black tree seems like the perfect symbol for our plagued 2020. But for black-tree lovers, it’s not a symbol at all. It’s a stylistic choice, one that devotees say is classic, glamorous and extremely versatile.  …Tami Kelly, a trend expert for Treetopia, an online resource for artificial colored trees, says black trees are selling extremely well this year. (All sales, including black-tree sales, are up more than 50 percent this year on Treetopia’s site.) 

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