What the Heck is a Sea Horse?
American Press Travel News–11/20/17–“The Seahorse is the name given to 54 species of small marine fishes in the genus Hippocampus. “Hippocampus” comes from the Ancient Greek word hippos (ἵππος, híppos) meaning “horse” and kampos (κάμπος, kámpos) meaning “sea monster”. “The word “seahorse” can also be written as two separate words (sea horse), or hyphenated (sea-horse). Having a head and neck suggestive of a horse, seahorses also feature segmented bony armor, an upright posture and a curled prehensile tail. The above was from Wikipedia, below is from me: They really are a fish, but their characteristics are weird. A horse-like head, a monkey like prehensile tail, a pouch like a Kangaroo, a bony exo-skeleton like insects, independently moving eyes like a lizard, etc. They are carnivores and like their cousins the Pipe fish, are the only critters where the males exclusively care for their eggs after fertilization and they bear their young. They taste bad and although they move rather slowly and are specialists in camoflage they are not gone after as food from bigger sea animals and fishes. Frankly, I, as so many aquarium enthusiasts are intrigued by these amazing animals.
Memorial Day Everyone Needs to Remember Why We are Not Enslaved-Commentary!!
AmericanPressTravelNews–May 25th, Commentary–By Bob Epstein, Publisher—-Memorial Day is coming up on Monday. We have too many horrible Memorial Days! No I won’t list them here. All smart and decent people older than far too many college age youth, increasingly being taught by some incredibly poor and foolish teachers- even those that call themselves “Professors” (liberal all and socialist leaning, heavily leaning) know what I mean, and have the list burned into their memories. Lest anyone think that all those that have come before and confronted life and death as soldiers for “the Good” not the evil, paid dearly in blood, limb, mental disarray for life, and unfortunately death as well. So, having just been to a children’s science museum in Oak Ridge (home of the nuclear bomb development) TN, and noticing a sculpture created out of steel taken from the Twin Towers horrors, I felt everyone always needs to remember and say never again!
Barb stands at the Memorial Monument and we asked a few of the children that entered the museum what it was, and none of them bothered to read the plaque. They just wanted to play games at the museum. So I asked their teachers why did they dismiss the opportunity to teach their charges about this. Answer: “not very appropriate for their students” by most of them. I should have been stunned. But, I was not! We all live in a nation that has had a dollar become close to worthless, and an educational system amongst many systems, that have become devalued to disastrous depths.
Oak Ridge, TN. Known as “the Secret City” is a Secret No More!
AmericanPressTravelNews-May 16th,–Bob and Barb “On the Road Again” & “Stopping to Smell 
the Roses”- this time in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. High security still is de rigueur in Oak Ridge’s tech centers and buildings.
The once little burg of just farmers and land scratchers for their daily living, known as Oak Ridge was established by the US government in 1942 to serve as a home base to the Manhattan Project.
The entire city had to be built almost from scratch to handle the influx of employee/residents, which mushroomed from about 3,000 to 75,000 within 3 years. Only a few of the employees, mostly women, knew what was being built at the time, or exactly what they were getting into.
Oak Ridge back then was, in a lot of ways, like about any neat little southern city—there was plenty of leisure activities including swimming, a library, 13 grocery stores, an orchestra, and swing dancing. Besides the required badges, guard towers and giant perimeter fence, it was practically a wartime Mayberry. Everyone was quarantined, and their duties left the actual project a mystery. It wasn’t until we dropped the atomic bomb on Japan that the nice citizens of Oak Ridge realized what they had become a part of.
Two years after WWII ended, the city was relinquished to civilians. When visiting the city today, you can still see some of the old guard towers on the edges of the city, and experience one of the nation’s largest swimming pools still in operation. For $5 with valid US photo identification, you can go on a tour hosted by the American Museum of Science and Energy which includes the old graphite reactors as well as the Y-12 museum in an operational government facility with a billboard right outside that reminds employees to keep secrets a secret.
For a special treat, stop in the museum afterwards to see the brilliant photos of Ed Westcott, the official photographer during wartime.
The Secret City Festival, complete with WWII reenactors, happens every June. For more information go: www.amse.org and visit or head to Anderson County Tourism Council Welcome Center 115 Welcome Lane, Clinton, TN. 865-457-4547
