Not Impressed

Three guesses what the white dots in that graphic are. 

Update on Sunday, June 8, 2008 at 4:27PM by rebecca

Scott has proof that we really did have snow today.

Into the Wild Blue

 
The lavender of the crocuses is gone and we’re into the blue period of the seasonal wildflower show.

These flowers are wild lupines. At least that’s what we call them here in the Yukon. Texans call their particular variety of lupines bluebonnets, which makes them sound a whole lot more intriguing, doesn’t it?

Lupines are legumes, which means they’re related to peas and beans and peanuts. Each one of those little blooms grows into a peapod-like seed packet. You don’t want to eat the seeds of these legume pods, though, because they contain a bitter poison. Thankfully, lupines make up for their toxicity with their loveliness, and before long I expect to see a solid sweep of lupine blue on each side of one of my favorite woodland walking trails down by the river.

I’ve also seen another blue wildflower recently (below). This one is called Jacob’s ladder because of their ladder-like leaves. This is a plant that can do unbroken stretches of colour, too. There are places on my regular dog-walking trail around my subdivision where entire hillsides become blue with a low carpet of blooming Jacob’s ladder.

Soon there’ll be one more blue wildflower blooming in my perennial garden; I’ll show it to you when it’s here. And after these initial blue blossoms, the summer wildflower revue moves on to the pretty pinks.

Previous wildflower post: 

• Lavender Charm 

Photos by Andrew Stark.

Update on Monday, June 2, 2008 at 8:30AM by rebecca

At Kim’s suggestion, I submitted this post to Project Blue at Anna Carson Photography.

Robert W. Smyth, 1922 - 2008

Robert W. Smyth died May 7, in Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, IL.

You don’t know who Robert Smyth was, do you? He was the man who came up with the idea for the Quaker Oats Great Klondike Big Inch Land Caper advertising campaign in 1955. From the Chicago Tribune:

Just 32 years old at the time of the Yukon campaign and only a copywriter at the firm, Mr. Smyth helped adapt the idea from an article he read in Life magazine about two men selling pieces of Texas.

So for a few weeks in 1955, each box of Puffed Wheat Cereal contained a deed to a square inch of land in the Yukon. These were the years when every kid with a television watched Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, and every kid who watched wanted their own plot of land right where Sergeant Preston and his trusty dog King had their weekly adventures.

Millions of those deeds still exist. The Lands Branch in the Yukon has a file 18 inches thick containing inquiries into the status of the properties attached to these deeds.

The answer, unfortunately, is not good news. Quaker Oats never registered the deeds because it would have been much too expensive, so the pieces of paper that came in the cereal boxes were worthless right from the start. And then, in 1965, the Canadian government took back the land Quaker Oats bought for the promotion. The reason? Nonpayment of $37.20 in taxes.

But here is good news:
You can still have a worthless piece of paper like this for only $29.95!

Some of the “landowners” got just a little upset about their raw deal.  

Charles Matznick, of Detroit, wrote several letters in the mid-60s and at one point threatened legal action if he wasn’t given title to the land.

On Jan. 4, 1965 the commissioner of the Yukon and the Prime Minister of Canada received letters from Iowa resident (sic) Steven T. Spoorl and John A. Zook.

“This is to inform you that certain areas located between Dawson and Whitehorse…hereafter to be referred to as Xanadu, hereby declare themselves free and independant (sic, again) from the Yukon Territory, the Dominion of Canada and the British Commonwealth of Nations.” (Source)

It was a bit of a scam right from the start, wasn’t it? But Robert Smyth’s idea worked on one level. Twenty-one million boxes of cereal were sold in just a few weeks. It was one of the most successful sales promotions in the history of advertising in North America. And when you’re in advertising, that’s what’s most important, isn’t it?