Smoky Mountain Hearing Specialists - October 2020

Smoky Mountain Hearing Specialists - October 2020

OCTOBER 2020

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The Origins of Your Favorite Spooky Traditions Stingy Jack and the Celt Traditions of Halloween

Halloween is an exciting time for many kids. I always love seeing their costumes and the way their faces light up as their bags fill with candy. Have you ever wondered why kids go door-to- door and beg for candy every Halloween or why we carve faces into pumpkins? As it turns out, Halloween is one of the longest-standing traditional holidays for mankind! I did a little digging and discovered its unique roots. A Modern Twist on an Ancient Tradition More than 2,000 years ago, the Celts had little way of knowing that the practice of dressing up in animal pelts and leaving food out overnight would set off a tradition we all know and love: trick-or-treating. In Ireland, the Celts practiced Samhain. This marked the end of summer and the harvest and signaled the start of winter, which was particularly deadly thousands of years ago. To celebrate — and please the evil spirits — the Celts would dress in animal pelts, have bonfires, offer food sacrifices, and honor the dead. In the Middle Ages, this tradition transformed into dressing up as ghosts and other demonic creatures to perform in exchange for food. When Christianity swept through Europe, Nov. 2 was designated as All Souls’ Day to honor the dead. Poor citizens would knock on the doors of their rich counterparts, asking for food in exchange for praying for the rich citizens’ families. The tradition included children, who eventually took on this strange recognition of the dead. Scottish and Irish kids combined the above traditions and performed for a treat.

century, trick-or-treating was modernized into the tradition it is today.

Stingy Jack’s Purgatory The jack-o’-lantern is a staple of Halloween in the U.S., but its origins have little to do with artwork and more to do with an Irish legend and a turnip. Folklore dictates that a conman, Stingy Jack, invited the devil to have a drink with him, but Jack refused to pay the tab. Instead, he convinced the devil to turn himself into a coin and allow Jack to pay the tab with the coin. However, Jack kept the devil-turned-coin in his pocket next to a silver cross. This clever rouse prevented the devil from changing back to his true form. With the devil tucked in his pocket, Jack promised to free the devil from the clutches of Christ if the devil promised to not bother Jack for one year, and if Jack died, the devil could not admit him into Hell. The devil agreed and was freed. Just one year later, Jack made another deal with the devil. Jack lured the devil into a tree and once again trapped him with a cross by carving the symbol into the bark of a tree. Jack made the devil promise he wouldn’t bother Jack for 10 years if Jack were to free him from the tree. The devil complied again. Shortly after this last trick, Jack died, and true to his word, the devil didn’t take his soul. But God wasn’t too fond of admitting him into heaven because Jack was someone who tricked others. So instead, the devil enacted his revenge. Jack was sent off into the night with a lump of burning coal as his only source of light. Jack placed the coal in a turnip and has carried it across the Earth

ever since, condemned to an eternity of walking at night with only burning coal in a turnip lantern to light the way. As the legend of Stingy Jack became more popular, Irish and Scottish residents began creating their own turnip carving creations and placed them in their windows at night to scare away Jack and other wandering spirits. The tradition was carried over to the U.S. by immigrants, who transformed “Jack of the Lantern” into jack-o’-lantern carvings. Whether the story of Jack is an Irish legend or the true story of a conman receiving a taste of his own medicine, Stingy Jack and his modern jack-o’-lanterns continue to make an impact on Halloween traditions in the U.S. today. Whether you spend your Halloween passing out candy or perfecting your jack-o’-lantern skills, I hope no wandering spirits find their way to your stoop, lest you don’t have the treat to placate them.

Happy Halloween!

—Brett Parish

As immigrants traveled to the U.S., they brought these unique traditions with them, and in the 20th

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5 STEPS TO A SAFER HOTEL ROOM

KEEP STRANGERS AND VIRUSES OUT WITH THESE QUICK TIPS

Staying home is the best way to protect yourself and your family from illness, but sometimes life gets in the way. Maybe you need to travel for work, to help a relative, or just to keep your kids from bouncing off the walls. If you have a hotel stay on the books, worrying about safety is understandable. But by taking these precautions, you can protect your loved ones and increase your odds of coming home healthy. 1. Bring a sanitation kit and use it! Most hotels are going above and beyond to sanitize their rooms these days, but it never hurts to take extra care. Before you check in, pick up cleaning supplies like disinfectant spray, wipes, plastic bags, and gloves. Then, use them to wipe down your room. Focus on big surfaces as well as features like faucet handles, doorknobs, lightswitches, and microwave buttons. 2. Skip the decorative linens. Many hotels don’t wash decorative bedding like comforters and fancy pillowcases. To be extra safe, strip these off the bed and wash your hands afterward. If you’re chilly, opt for the hotel’s spare blanket (it’s probably hiding in a closet) or bring one from home. 3. Quarantine your remote control. As USA Today puts it, “It’s common knowledge that one of the germiest items in a hotel room is the remote control.” To avoid the ick, pick up the remote while wearing gloves and drop it into a Ziploc. Then, remove your gloves and seal the bag. Now you can use the remote without touching it directly! 4. Invest in a rubber door wedge. Viruses aren’t the only risk in hotel rooms — break-ins are another concern. To keep your room secure, bring a rubber door wedge. They cost less than $10 on Amazon and make kicking in a door much more difficult. 5. For maximum security, bring a door alarm. Simple travel alarms hang from the handle of a door and have two prongs that slide between the door and its frame. When the door opens and the prongs separate, that triggers the alarm. These simple devices send thieves running, and Lewis N. Clark makes a model for just $14.99.

Did you know that Oct. 4 is National Taco Day? Corn or flour tortillas, hard or soft shells, we really love our tacos here in the USA. According to NationalTacoDay.com, Americans ate more than 4.5 billion tacos last year. End to end, that’s 490,000 miles of tortilla-wrapped beans, meat, and cheese. By far, the biggest peddler of light-speed tacos in the country is Taco Bell, the fast-food scion of Americanized Mexican cuisine. In 2012, Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco went the food equivalent of viral, selling more than 500 million tacos in just 14 months. It seems like there’s a Taco Bell on every street corner, but how much do you really know about the chain? To celebrate National Taco Day, we’re serving up three Taco Bell facts that will blow your mind. 1. Home Depot helped bring Doritos Locos Tacos to life. After Frito-Lay reached out to Taco Bell to suggest a collaboration, the development team turned to a hardware store for help. To create the famous snack, they “basically went out to Home Depot to buy a paint-spray gun” and blasted a taco with Dorito dust, according to Grub Street. 2. Taco Bell killed Taco Kid. Before it bought Taco Bell in the 1970s, PepsiCo tried to compete with it. The company launched a restaurant dubbed Taco Kid under its Pizza Hut banner. According to Mental Floss, Taco Bell swiftly stomped out its kid brother. In response, PepsiCo opened its wallet and bought the chain for $130 million. 3. The U.S. government was behind the Quesalupa (sort of) . In February 2016, Taco Bell launched the Quesalupa, a taco featuring a shell stuffed with melted pepper jack cheese. It was the chain’s cheesiest offering to date, perhaps because it got a boost from Dairy Management Incorporated, the branch of the United States Department of Agriculture 3 MIND-BLOWING FACTS ABOUT TACO BELL The Secret Link Between Home Depot, the Government, and Fast-Food Tacos

Hopefully, these tips give you some peace of mind on your next trip. Happy trails!

in charge of unloading the country’s 1.4-billion pound cheese surplus . That’s right: The Quesalupa was (kind of) a tasty government conspiracy.

This is just the tip of the Taco Bell iceberg. To learn about the chain’s wacky endeavors (including putting a bullseye in the ocean for astronauts and flying 10,000 Doritos Locos Tacos to Alaska by helicopter), visit TacoBell.com/History.

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COULD A LLAMA SAVE US FROM COVID-19? Meet Winter, a 4-Legged Hero of Vaccine Research

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, people have turned to their four- legged friends for help and comfort . In Nebraska, an 11-year-old girl and her pony, Peanut, cheered up nursing home residents through their windows this spring, while in Pennsylvania, an award-winning golden retriever named Jackson starred in videos that kept thousands laughing. Pets like these have given the national mood a boost, but another four-legged critter deserves just as much recognition. Her name is Winter, and she’s the 4-year-old llama whose antibodies could help us beat the coronavirus. At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Llamas? Really? What will these scientists think up next?” But in fact, Winter wasn’t an outside-of-the-box discovery during the COVID-19 vaccine scramble. Llamas have been helping

scientists battle viruses for years. That’s because, along with her fuzzy brown coat and long eyelashes, Winter has a unique virus treatment hidden in her blood: llama antibodies. According to The New York Times, Winter has participated in past studies for both SARS and MERS — diseases also caused by coronaviruses — and her antibodies fought off both infections. Llamas have also helped out with research for HIV and influenza. It turns out llama antibodies are smaller than the ones found in humans, which makes it easier for them to wiggle into the tiny pockets in virus-carrying proteins. This superpower gives them the ability to “neutralize” viruses, including COVID-19. Studies are now showing that using these llama antibodies in humans could potentially keep coronaviruses from entering human cells as well. At least two separate llama studies have shown the effectiveness of these antibodies on coronavirus infections. This summer, a team of researchers from the U.K . discovered that llama antibodies “have the potential to be used in a similar way to convalescent serum, effectively stopping progression of the virus in patients who are ill” when those patients are given them in a transfusion. They also suggested that a cocktail of llama and human antibodies could be even more successful at temporarily blocking the virus. Studies of the latter are in the works, and scientists around the world have their fingers crossed for success. In the meantime, Winter will continue peacefully grazing in Belgium, unaware that she just might play a role in saving the world.

SPOOKY STRAWBERRY GHOSTS

TAKE A BREAK

Inspired by Candiquik.com

Ingredients

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16 oz white chocolate, chopped

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1 package mini dark chocolate chips

24 strawberries

Directions

1. In a microwave-safe bowl, heat the white chocolate at 50% power for 30 seconds. Remove it and stir, then repeat the process until melted. 2. Lay out a sheet of parchment paper. 3. One by one, dip the strawberries into the melted white chocolate and set them on the parchment. Allow the extra chocolate to pool to form a “tail” effect. 4. Before the chocolate coating fully cools, add three mini chocolate chips to each berry to form two eyes and a mouth. 5. Let chocolate set, then serve your spooky snacks!

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1501 E. Morris Blvd. Morristown, TN 37813 423-307-8846 www.SmokyMtnHearing.com

INSIDE 1

Do You Know Why We Carve Pumpkins? I Do! 3 Mind-Blowing Facts About Taco Bell 5 Steps to a Safer Hotel Room Could a Llama Save Us From COVID-19? Spooky Strawberry Ghosts ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Is Finally Here — Yes, Really!

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‘WONDER WOMAN 1984’ IS FINALLY HERE 5 Release Dates Later, Gadot Returns to the Screen

When the first “Wonder Woman” movie hit theaters in 2017, it was a box office smash, making more than $821 million. People all over the world fell in love with Gal Gadot’s portrayal of the famous comic book superhero and Chris Pine’s performance as her sidekick Steve Trevor. Globally, they waited with bated breath for the release of the sequel: “Wonder Woman 1984.” Despite the hype, that film has been a long time coming. Incredibly, it has blown through four different release dates: Dec. 13, 2019; Nov. 1, 2019 (yes, they moved it up ); June 5, 2020; and Aug. 14, 2020. First, pre- and post- production issues wreaked havoc with the film’s schedule, then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and slammed movie theater doors shut. When the fifth and (hopefully) final release date of Oct. 2, 2020, was announced, it seemed almost too good to be true. Even star Gal Gadot sounded surprised.

“Wow, it’s finally happening, & I couldn’t be more excited!” she tweeted, adding that she appreciated her fans’ patience and was excited for everyone to see the film. “... It will be worth the wait,” she said. Award-winning director Patty Jenkins joined in the Twitterfest on Aug. 15, saying, “Wish we were sharing our film yesterday, but there are more important things going on in our world we’d rather you focus on for now. Thank you to our fans for being so great, by our sides. Can’t WAIT for you to see it! Sending love and healing to the world. See you October 2nd!!” Critics and fans are crossing their fingers and their toes that the prophetic October release date comes true and they get to see Wonder Woman battle her nemesis, Cheetah, this fall. The postponements have been a roller coaster ride, but at least consumers can console themselves with “Wonder Woman 1984”

merchandise, which rolled out far in advance of the film. Some favorites are the “Wonder Woman 1984: Meet Wonder Woman” children’s book (which includes sneak-peek photos) and the Wonder Woman vs. Cheetah LEGO model complete with a secret bunker, both of which can be found (appropriately) on Amazon.

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