Comparison of Two Canned Fruits

Nutritional information for canned peaches and pineapple

Here are the nutrition facts from two cans of fruit. Both are Great Value brand from Wal-Mart.

Yellow cling sliced peaches
in heavy syrup:
Serving size -- 1/2 cup
Calories -- 100
Total fat -- 0%
Cholesterol -- 0%
Sodium -- 0%
Potassium -- 4%
Total Carbs -- 7%
Dietary fiber -- 0%
Vitamin A -- 2%
Vitamin C -- 2%
Calcium -- 0%
Iron -- 0%
Folic acid -- 0%

Pineapple chunks
in unsweetened pineapple juice:
Serving size -- 1/2 cup
Calories -- 70
Total fat -- 0%
Cholesterol -- 0%
Sodium -- 0%
Potassium -- 4%
Total Carbs -- 6%
Dietary fiber -- 4%
Vitamin A -- 0%
Vitamin C -- 20%
Calcium -- 0%
Iron -- 2%
Folic acid -- 0%

I suppose Great Value canned peaches are better for you than, let's say, chocolate bonbons. However, they're not exactly nutrient-laden They are minimally more nutritious than a glass of Kool-Aid. Let's hope that, maybe, peaches contain some trace minerals that aren't listed on the label.

Some other brands of canned peaches, including Del Monte, contain 8 to 10% of the RDA for Vitamin C.

In comparison, canned pineapple delivers a good dose of Vitamin C and a small amount of fiber. I've noticed that the Vitamin C content is about the same (around 20% of the RDA) across most of the brands of canned pineapple.

Somehow, pineapple manages to retain more Vitamin C despite the canning process. Maybe it's because of the acidity of pineapple. I suspect that being canned in juice (instead of syrup) boosts the Vitamin C, as well.

Todd County Courthouse in Elkton, KY

A handsome 1830s building

The historic Todd County Courthouse sets on the town square in Elkton, Kentucky. It was built in 1835-1836 to replace a smaller courthouse, built in 1821.

This structure served as the seat of county government for the next 140 years, until a new, one-story courthouse was built in 1975-1976.

Near the end of the Civil War (1865), the Todd County Courthouse was occupied by Union forces. They left the building in a damaged state, and a major renovation was carried out in 1871. The cupola was added at that time.

Ironically, the occupation of the courthouse probably saved it from being burned. Confederate General Hylan B. Lyon torched 7 courthouses in Western Kentucky to prevent them from falling into Union hands, including the courthouses of Christian, Trigg, and Caldwell counties, just west of Todd County.

The Wikipedia entry for the old Todd County Courthouse says that the cupola was originally painted orange, olive green, and beige. Wow.

The old courthouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Many other fine old buildings surround the courthouse square. They were added to the National Register in 1989 as the "Elkton Commercial Historic District."

Photos of the interior of the old courthouse appear at the Old Courthouse Preservation Project webpage. The October, 2006, minutes of the Elkton City Council state that a museum is planned for the second floor of the building, and a Welcome Center is planned for the first floor.

I admire Elkton and Todd County for choosing to preserve their old buildings rather than demolish them. Downtown Elkton has its own unique atmosphere, and the old Todd County Courthouse is its jewel.

Most of the historic information in this post comes from two great books about Kentucky:

• John W. Carpenter's Kentucky Courthouses by John W. Carpenter & William B. Scott, Jr. (Copyright 1988 by John W. Carpenter and William B. Scott, Jr. and published by John W. Carpenter, London KY.)
• The Kentucky Encyclopedia, edited by John E. Kleeber. (Copyright 1992 by the University Press of Kentucky, Lexington.)

Double Spaces Are Out

Typewriter rule bites the dust

I was searching for a punctuation rule about commas, when I came across an interesting paragraph.

Spacing at End of Sentence

Use a single space at the end of a sentence and after a colon. Double spaces date back to the days of typewriters, when all characters were allotted the same amount of space. Computerized typesetting adjusts the spacing for a good fit. Extra spaces create gaps and look unprofessional.

Source: Punctuation Primer

I had never read this rule in print before. I did read a discussion about single-spacing after a paragraph, on Sarabeth's blog a while back. It seemed to me that the younger commenters were single-spacing, and the older ones were still double-spacing. It was evidence of the difference between keyboarding (taught nowadays) and typing (taught before the Computer Age).

Miss Tibbitts, the stern typewriting teacher of my high school days, is surely feeling some un-rest, whether she is still in this world or has gone on to the next. A single space at sentence-end was always an error in her classroom of big, manual, office typewriters.

In Blogger Draft, I notice that a double space is converted into a single space plus a space-holder symbol that creates the second space. It assumes that, if you double-space, you really want two spaces. (I think previous Bloggers automatically converted double spaces to single spaces.) To be honest, the double space does look like an unprofessional gap, just as the Punctuation Primer says (quoted above).

I can't express how hard it is to abandon the double space habit. I type without much conscious thought about the process. Typed words flow from my fingers like spoken words from my mouth. My right thumb is extremely well-trained after 40 years of typing. It goes "thump thump" automatically after every period.

Even in this post about the rule of single-spacing, I double-spaced after most of the periods. I had to remove the Blogger-inserted extra space-holders manually. If I do that often enough, maybe that will teach me.

Measuring the Rain

Talking about rainfall

When my children were both in school, but still young, I worked for several years at a little country store in our neighborhood. It was a very short commute (less than 5 minutes), and the kids could get on or off the bus at the store as necessary, so it worked well.

One day, a customer asked me how much rain had fallen at my house. I said that we'd received about 30 hundredths (meaning .30 inch). He looked at me oddly for a long moment. Then he said, "Where are you from?"

He asked that question because, in Kentucky, people talk about tenths of rain. When I spoke of hundredths of rain, I was using the language of Nebraska. In the Nebraska Sandhills where I grew up, rain is precious enough most years that every hundredth of an inch is measured and appreciated. In Kentucky, where we get twice as much annual rainfall, we carelessly round off the measurement to the nearest tenth of an inch.

A slow, quiet rain is falling now. Its scent is drifting through the open window. I won't have to water my garden for another few days, and the crops in the neighborhood will welcome the moisture.

We live near a divide. On one side, the creeks run into the Pond River, and on the other side, they run into the Little River. This little area is often dryer than the rest of the county, because the rains either go north or south of us. We've been fortunate this year, though. We received several little showers in June that other parts of the county didn't get.

At work tonight, a lady who lives in the western part of the county told me that they had received three tenths of rain last night. She was thankful because their corn needed the moisture. I hope her corn got some more rain tonight.

Plain Vanilla Blog

Illusion is reality

UPDATE: Well, never mind, at least for now. I had so much email about changing to the plain white format that I've decided to go back to the old template with a smaller photo at top.

I've been worried that my blog loads much too slowly. I've removed some feeds, etc., but I don't want to remove anything else. (I like all that stuff that appears in the sidebar and at page bottom, and I often use parts of it myself.) I also enjoy posting photographs, even though they increase the loading time of the page.

To give the illusion that the blog loads faster, I've moved the posts to the left of the page and made the page a single color. The posts will load right after the header. Visitors should be able to read the post(s) fairly soon after they arrive, although the sidebar and page bottom may not finish loading if they read fast and leave.

Isaac looked at this page and said, "Oh, Mom, that's so plain," and I could only answer, "Yes, it is."

I'll leave it like this until I feel like changing it again. I'm going to install a fresh template next time I make a major revision. I've tinkered with the current template so many times that it's time for a new start.

On a related subject, Blogger (ordinary Blogger) is running all the sentences into one giant paragraph when I publish a post. I've tried and tried to fix it. (Delete the cookies, empty the cache, restart the computer. Go to Blogger and save the settings page again with the option clicked for converting two line breaks into a new paragraph. Repair the paragraphs in the post and publish it again. Check to see if the post is still a single paragraph. If so, repeat process.)

Blogger Draft was doing it also, but I fixed it using the above-described technique. Ordinary Blogger still refuses to cooperate. Thus, I guess I'm now a permanent Blogger Draft user.