Tom Hoch tells us last Friday was an assembly at Slavens, 18 kids received their shirts and frames along with their families. 

In more Super Citizen news, Paul Stratton reports from the assembly at Lowry Elementary:  On Friday, Lowry Elementary held the second Super Citizen presentations of the school year.  Greg Young and Paul Stratton participated in the Zoom assemblies as 12 students were honored.  The teachers and students were each in their own classrooms, and school staff, specials teachers and parents participated as well.  At least three of the new Super Citizens are new to Lowry this year and also learning the English language for the first time, including one from Myanmar.  Thanks to the club for continuing to support Lowry!

The Brain Bowl is coming! 

 

The Optimist Brain Bowl is a team quiz competition for middle school students from schools in Colorado and Wyoming. Optimist Brain Bowl teams compete by grade level. In addition to regional tournament awards for the top four teams in each level, the top six teams in each grade level are invited to participate in the Optimist Brain Bowl Championship Tournament. 

 

Training sessions are coming up, so if you have not helped before and want to be a reader please sign up to be trained.  www.monacosouth.org and there is a link that will give you more information. Need volunteers for this event.

 

Monaco South received a Recognition banner patch for the  2020-21 Optimist Year for their $30 per member contribution to the O.I. Foundation.

 

Dan Rodriguez-Past President and Chris Dunphy-Vice President received an Award for recruiting their First Member to the Club.

 

Our own Kent Gloor is our speaker this morning. Kent’s presentation is a follow up to his presentation how the invention of fertilizers impacted World War I and led to advances in bomb making capabilities for Germany. From food and fertilizer to the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

 Throughout the 19th century, farmers used guano (i.e., the accumulated excrement of seabirds and bats) as highly effective fertilizer due to its exceptionally high content of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium—nutrients that are essential for plant growth. But by the beginning of the 20th century, guano deposits started to run out, and the price of the fertilizer began to increase. If a solution to the depletion of guano hadn’t come soon, famine would have followed.

Enter, Fritz Haber. Born in 1868 in Breslau, Germany (now part of Poland), Haber began studying chemistry at the age of 18 at the University of Heidelberg. By 1894, Haber worked at the University of Karlsruhe, researching methods to synthesize nitrogen. Nitrogen is very common in the atmosphere, but the chemical element is difficult to extract from the air and turn into a liquid or solid form (a process known as “fixing” nitrogen).  After thousands of experiments over almost 15 years, Haber succeeded in producing ammonia on July 3rd, 1909.  At the start of the 20th century, large containers that could handle the pressures and temperatures required for industrial scale production of ammonia did not yet exist.  That is where Carl Bosch enters the story. 

Bosch met Haber in 1908 and after finding out about the latter’s breakthrough the following year, Bosch took on the challenge of developing suitable containers that could manage Haber’s process on the industrial level.  Within four years Bosch was producing ammonia in 8-meter-tall containers. The Haber-Bosch process was born. By 1913, Bosch had opened a factory that kick-started the fertilizer industry that we know today.  After their revolutionary contribution to human progress, the two scientists worked to help Germany during World War I. Bosch focused on bomb making, while Haber became instrumental in developing chlorine gas. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Haber fled Germany to teach at Cambridge University, and he died shortly after in 1935. Meanwhile, in 1937, Bosch was appointed President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute – Germany’s highest scientific position. Being a staunch critic of Nazi policies, Bosch was soon removed from that position and died in 1940.

By 1918 the development of the plant was key to fighting the war.  German chemical plants were prime targets for the English and French.  Peace talks at Versailles were being held to try to end the war.  Strong anti German public opinion was growing and Germany’s enemies were trying hard to learn the processes it had developed to manufacture explosives.  Bosch had visited the United States and was amazed by assembly line process the auto makers were using.  They learned much from Ford process and how the cars were powered by gasoline.  The German scientists learned to make synthetic gasoline from coal and many efficiencies were developed to help make the process run better.  Carl Bosch was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1921.  

 

Do you feel old after reading this?Mergatroyd ? Do you remember that word?Would you believe the spell-checker did not recognize the word, Mergatroyd
Heavens to Mergatroyd!

 

The other day a not so elderly (I say 75) lady said something to her son about driving a Jalopy; and he looked at her quizzically and said, "What the heck is a Jalopy?" He had never heard of the word jalopy! She knew she was old ...But not that old.

Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory when you read this and chuckle.

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology.

 

These phrases included: Don't touch that dial; Carbon copy; You sound like a broken record and Hung out to dry.

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie . We'd put on our best bib and tucker, to straighten up and fly right.

Heavens to Betsy!
Gee whillikers!
Jumping Jehoshaphat!
Holy Moley!

We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley; and even a regular guy couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and pedal pushers.

Oh, my aching back! Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.

We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, "Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!" Or, "This is a fine kettle of fish!" We discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent, as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind. We blink, and they're gone. Where have all those great phrases gone?

Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it. Hey! It's your nickel. Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper.

Well, Fiddlesticks! Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers. Don't take any wooden nickels. Wake up and smell the roses.

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills.

This can be disturbing stuff! (Carter's Little Liver Pills are gone too!)

Leaves us to wonder where Superman will find a phone booth.

See ya later, alligator! Okie Dokie.

You'll notice they left out "Monkey Business"!!!