What are some hiking trails in Pennsylvania?

One of our outdoorsy patrons had heard that there were some good trails in the mountainous area of southwestern Pennsylvania, but they couldn’t remember exactly where. We checked The Firefly Atlas of North America, The Rough Guide to the USA, and the internet to find the answer.

The Alleghenies and the Appalachians are the two main mountain ranges running through southern Pennsylvania. Our patron may have been thinking of the Laurel Highlands a scenic portion of the Alleghenies known for its whitewater rafting, biking and hiking trails, and fishing. It encompasses several state parks, including Laurel Ridge, Laurel Hill, Laurel Summit, Laurel Mountains, and Ohiopyle. The Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail, a 70-mile-long segment of the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail, is popular. It’s marked with yellow blazes every hundred feet and has shelter areas every six to twelve miles.

If our patron is looking for something else, Robert Isenberg put together a list of twenty nearby biking and hiking trails for Pittsburgh Magazine. The relatively quiet Panhandle Trail is twenty-nine miles long, stretching from Carnegie, Pennsylvania, to the West Virginia border. The Great Allegheny Passage runs 150 miles from Pittsburgh to Maryland. It’s covered with asphalt and crushed limestone and built mainly on old rail beds, making it a good level trail for bicycling.

For more information, John Young’s book Hiking Pennsylvania is available through CLEVNET. If our patron would like to look at trails closer to home, we have a book here on the Midwest Rail-Trails, which covers Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. We also have Diane Stresing’s Cleveland edition of 60 Hikes within 60 Miles.

Was there someone from Braceville on the Lusitania?

“I was reading Dead Wake, Erik Larson’s book about the Lusitania, and it mentioned that someone on the boat was from Braceville. Can you tell me anything about her?”

A quick internet search told us that Jessie Taft Smith was the Braceville resident in question. She was born into one of Braceville’s original pioneer families in February 1876. In October 1901, she married John Smith (also from a prominent family) at the Methodist Church, and the two moved to Chicago shortly after. John developed an airplane engine that the British Admiralty was interested in, so in 1915, he went to England and Jessie moved back to Braceville. A few months after he’d left, he contacted Jessie, asking her to bring him blueprint plans for one of his engines. We were able to find her passport application (including a photograph) on Ancestry.com. On the application, she gives “to accompany husband (who is there with passport)” as her reason for visiting Great Britain. John paid for her passage on the Lusitania.

The Lusitania began its journey from New York to Great Britain on May 1. On May 7, it was torpedoed by a U-20 submarine in the Irish Channel. Jessie made it into one of the lifeboats and was rescued by a British ship and reunited with her husband. She survived the sinking, but the stress of it took a toll on her, and she suffered a mental breakdown from which she never recovered. Jessie Taft Smith died in 1928 at the age of fifty-two. She is buried in Braceville Cemetery.

We found our online information at RMSLusitania.info, FirstWorldWar.com, and Encyclopedia Titanica. The History of Braceville Township Trumbull County Ohio by Grace R. Sells has a brief section on Jessie Taft Smith. We also have Erik Larson’s Dead Wake, the book that inspired the question. 

When did people start using "XOXO" to mean "hugs and kisses"?

After receiving a text with “XOXO” as the signoff, one of our patrons was curious about when and where the custom has originated. According to the 1965 book How Did It Begin? by R. Brasch, the X became synonymous with the kiss in the Middle Ages, when people would sign documents with an X and then kiss them to show their sincerity. However, Brasch offered no source for this information and didn’t mention the O, so we sought another source.

Around Valentine’s Day last year, Nadine Epstein wrote an article for the Washington Post on the history of X’s and O’s. She also traced the X back to its use as a signature, as well as its being used as a symbol for Christ (as in X-Mas). The Oxford English Dictionary attributes first use of “XXXXX” in a sign-off to a letter written in 1763, but the X’s there may have stood for “blessings” rather than “kisses.” In 1894, Winston Churchill wrote a letter to his mother that ended with “(Many kisses.) xxx” and a poem from 1893 mentions young women using “little crosses for kisses” in their love letters, so the custom can be traced back at least that far.

While the O is more of a mystery (although some people say it came to represent a hug because it visually resembles one), “XOXO” seems to have been around at least since the 1960s. Epstein even recalls her mother teaching her to end her letters that way.

For more information on letter-writing, Shaun Usher’s Letters of Note collects a variety of correspondence, and Laura Brown’s How to Write Anything gives advice on how to write letters, emails, and announcements. Both are available here at the Newton Falls Public Library.

Could you give me more information about this Louis Vuitton hat box?

A patron brought in a vintage brown leather hat box with a velvety, mushroom-colored lining. “Bté. SGDG Patent” was stamped on the lock, along with “Made in France,” “Louis Vuitton,” “1 Rue Scribe, Paris,” and “149 New Bond St., London.” Louis Vuitton opened a store at the Paris address in 1871, and his son opened one at the London address in 1889. “Bté. SGDG” is the abbreviation for “Breveté Sans Garantie du Gouvernement” which means "Patented without State Guarantee" and was used up until 1968. All of this information helps date the hat box a little.

The box was also stamped with a six-digit number inside. While Louis Vuitton pieces made in the last thirty years have date codes that can identify when and where they were made, we were unable to find anything to help us decode the number on the hat box.

Our patron was interested in possibly finding patent information for their item. We checked the French patent office (INPI) database, but it didn’t go back as far as we needed. INPI has a separate database called Brevets français 19e siècle set up for their vintage patents. We searched there too, but the information was sparse and nothing seemed to be for a hat box.

A little more searching around brought up an antique dealer’s website. The dealer had posted a hat box that looked very similar to the one our patron had brought in. On the website, the box was dated circa 1910 and valued in the $5,000-$15,000 range. We checked Price It!, one of our library databases, to get an estimate of better estimate of how much the box was worth. Similar items were selling for about $5,000.

We have several books on antiques available here at the library, such as the latest editions of Warman’s Antiques and Collectibles and Antique Trader Antiques and Collectibles. For more information on Louis Vuitton, Louis Vuitton: Art, Fashion, and Architecture is available through CLEVNET.

What is the golem?

“Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman have a new book out called The Golem of Paris. What exactly is the golem?”

The golem is a humanoid creature from Jewish folklore. It’s built, often from clay, by a righteous person with great knowledge of Kabbalah. The creature is given life when its maker inscribes a sacred word (often the name of God) on the golem itself or on a piece of parchment which is then placed on the golem or in its mouth.

Legends of the golem date back to medieval times and take different forms. They typically portray the creature as a hardworking, if overly literal, servant, with superhuman strength that made it useful for physical labor. In many stories, though, the rabbi then loses control of his creation and must destroy it in order to end its rampage. The golem can be destroyed by removing or erasing the sacred word that brought it to life. In some legends, the golem is inscribed with the Hebrew word for truth, emet. Erasing the first letter changes it to the Hebrew word for death, met, and thus the golem is returned to dust.

One of the most well-known golem legends is that of the golem of Prague. In it, the Maharel (which is an acronym that refers to Rabbi Yehudah Leib ben Betsal’el, whose name is also transliterated as Judah Loew ben Bezalel and Yehuda Loew) creates a golem to protect his people from anti-Semitic attacks. There are different endings to the story. In some, the Maharel simply disables the golem when it’s no longer needed. In others, he must destroy it when it becomes too large and violent. David Wisniewski’s Caldecott-winning interpretation blends the two. In his book, Golem, the Maharel destroys the rampaging golem, but only after the emperor guarantees the safety of the Jews. 

“Golem” was originally a Hebrew word that could be translated as “shapeless mass” or “unformed substance.” In Yiddish, the word is also used disparagingly for a clumsy or unintelligent person.

We found much of our golem information in the YIVO Encyclopedia, A Treasury of Jewish Folklore, and The Facts of File Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend.

The Kellermans’ The Golem of Paris is actually a sequel to The Golem of Hollywood. Both books center around a Los Angeles detective whose family has a connection to the legendary golem of Prague. We own both books at the Newton Falls Public Library, along with David Wisniewski’s retelling, Golem, and Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni, a historical fantasy about a golem and jinni meeting in early-1900s New York City.

Will squirrels only eat half a buckeye?

“I heard that squirrels will only eat one side of a buckeye because one side is poisonous and the other isn’t. Is that true?”

We checked Grizmek’s Encyclopedia of Mammals: Volume 3, the Peterson Guide to Edible Wild Plants, Warner Shedd’s Owls Aren’t Wise and Bats Aren’t Blind, The Ohio Nature Almanac, and Osmond P. Breland’s Animal Life and Lore to see if there was any mention of this bit of folklore. While we learned a few interesting facts about squirrels (that they aren’t strict vegetarians, for example – along with nuts, seeds, and mushrooms, squirrels will sometimes also eat eggs and insects), we didn’t find any mention of squirrels only eating half a buckeye.

Looking around online, we found that Cindy Decker, a writer at the Columbus Dispatch, had already tackled the question. She went all the way back to the 1913 edition of The North American Journal of Homeopathy. In the journal, Dr. H.L. True writes of the experiment their friend Mr. C.H. Morris did on squirrels. Morris caged three squirrels and provided them with buckeyes to eat. The squirrels did not all start eating on the same side of the nut. While none of them ate their whole buckeye in one sitting, they would eventually go back and finish it when they got hungry enough.

According to a fact sheet provided by the Ohio Division of Forestry, while the buckeye can be poisonous to people, it doesn’t affect squirrels. It’s not their preferred food, but they will eat it if they can’t find anything better.

For more information about squirrels, check out Richard R. Thorington’s Squirrels: The Answer Guide, available through CLEVNET.

What is the white part inside an egg?

“When I crack an egg, sometimes there’s a stringy white piece attached to the yolk. What is that? Should I take it out?”

Merriam–Webster’s Visual Dictionary provided us with a labeled diagram of the inside of a bird egg, allowing us to identify just what part of the egg our patron was referring to and what purpose it serves. The stringy white bit is called the chalaza. It’s a ropy filament of egg white that’s there to keep the yolk in the center of the egg. It can also be an indicator of freshness – the more noticeable the chalaza, the fresher the egg.

The chalaza is perfectly fine to eat and its presence is not noticed in most dishes. However, it can interfere with the smooth texture of sauces and custards, so cooks will sometimes remove it.

CLEVNET carries a variety of egg-specific cookbooks, including Marie Simmon’s The Good Egg, Andrea Slonecker’s Eggs on Top, Terry Blonder Golson’s The Farmstead Egg Guide and Cookbook, and Kathy Casey’s D’lish Deviled Eggs. Any of these books can be ordered in to our library.