Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (61 page)

Here's a list of the contents of the record:

• Bach's
Brandenburg
Concerto no. 2 in F, first movement

• Bach's “Gavotte en rondeaux” from the Partita no. 3 in E-major

• Mozart's
The Magic Flute
, “Queen of the Night” aria, no. 14

• Stravinsky's
Rite of Spring
, “Sacrificial Dance”

• Bach's
The Well-Tempered Clavier
, Book 2, prelude and fugue in C

• Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, first movement

• Beethoven's String Quartet no. 13 in B-flat, Opus 130, Cavatina

• Holborne, Paueans, Galliards, Almains and Other Short Aeirs, “The Fairie Round” (Ireland)

• Court gamelan (Java)

• Percussion (Senegal)

• Pygmy girls' initiation song (Zaire)

• Aboriginal songs, “Morning Star” & “Devil Bird” (Australia)

• “El Cascabel” (Mexico)

• “Johnny B. Goode” (USA)

• “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong (USA)

• “Dark Was the Night,” by Blind Willie Johnson (USA)

• Panpipes and drum (Peru)

• Men's house song (New Guinea)

• “Tchakrulo” (Georgia S.S.R.)

• “Flowing Streams” (China)

• “Tsuru No Sugomori” (Japan)

• “Izlel je Delyo Hagdutin” (Bulgaria)

• Panpipes (Solomon Islands)

• Night Chant (Navajo)

• Wedding song (Peru)

• Raga: “Jaat Kahan Ho” (India)

• Bagpipes (Azerbaijan)

Speakers were given no instructions on what to say other than that it was to be a greeting to possible extraterrestrials and that it must be brief. Here's a sample:

• “Greetings to our friends in the stars. We wish that we will meet you someday.”

—
Arabic

• “Hello to everyone. We are happy here and you be happy there.”

—
Rajasthani (Northwest India)

• “Hello from the children of planet Earth.”

—
English

• “Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.”

—
Amoy (Eastern China)

Here are some (not all) of the languages in which they spoke: Sumerian, Urdu, Italian, Ila, Romanian, Hindi, Nguni, Hittite, French, Vietnamese, Sotho, Swedish, Hebrew, Burmese, Amoy, Sinhalese, Akkadian, Ukrainian, Aramaic, Spanish, Greek, Korean, Wu, Persian, Indonesian, Latin, Armenian, Serbian, Portuguese, Kechua, Polish

It will be forty thousand years before the Voyagers make a close approach to any other planetary system.

The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet
.

—Carl Sagan

What happens when we mess around with nature, trying to get it to do our bidding? Sometimes it works…but sometimes nature gets even. Here are a few instances when people intentionally introduced animals or plants into a new environment—and regretted it
.

I
mport:
English sparrows

Background:
One hundred sparrows were brought from England to Brooklyn, New York, in 1850. Reason: to control canker worms that were killing trees in city parks.

Nature's Revenge:
The sparrows did their job—for a while. Then they got a taste for native insects, then they had a lot of babies, and then they took off. By 1875 the sparrows had made it to San Francisco, stealing nesting sites from native birds and ravaging crops and livestock feed along the way. In 1903 noted ornithologist W. L. Dawson said, “Without question the most deplorable event in the history of American ornithology was the introduction of the English sparrow.” Today they number about 150 million in North America.

Note:
They're not even sparrows—they're from the weaverbird family.

Import:
Cane toads

Background:
The cane toad can grow up 9 to 10 inches long and weigh as much as 4 pounds. Its croak is said to sound like a dog's bark. This bizarre species is native to Central America but was imported to Australia in 1935. Australian farmers wanted it to eat two types of beetle that were damaging their sugarcane crops.

Nature's Revenge:
Nobody seemed to notice that the cane toad lives on the ground—so they were only able to eat beetles that fell off the sugarcane. The experiment was a failure, then a disaster. The toads feasted on other native insect species—many to the point of extinction—and spread into neighboring habitats. They are large enough to eat any insect, as well as frogs and other toads, and have even been known to eat from dog and cat food bowls. And, to make matters worse, they're poisonous. Whatever tries to eat them dies—even if they only eat the tadpoles. The situation continues to be dire: people who spot a cane toad are advised to contact toad hotlines and websites.

Import:
Rats

Background:
In the 16th and 17th centuries, hoards of people were leaving Europe on ships bound for the New World. Tyranny, poverty, horrendous filth, and epidemics drove boatload after boatload of settlers across the Atlantic seeking wide-open spaces, better resources, more freedom, and less disease.

Nature's Revenge:
The settlers found a pristine paradise—and quickly infested it with rats. Early ocean-crossing ships were famously rat infested, the vermin often numbering more than the humans onboard. The adaptable rodent made itself at home and spread all over the continent. According to a study by Cornell University, by 1999 there were approximately a billion rats in the United States—on farms alone, and rats do an estimated $19 billion in economic damage every year.

Import:
Rabbits, opossums, and stoats

Background:
New Zealand's landscape had evolved for 60 to 80 million years with only four mammals—all bats. In this unique ecosystem, exceptionally unique flora and fauna, such as flightless birds, prospered. Then, in the early 1800s, Europeans arrived bringing sheep, pigs, and goats as livestock, and rabbits and opossums as game for sportsmen.

Nature's Revenge:
Rabbits multiply…like rabbits. By 1894 more than 17 million rabbit pelts were being exported annually. While that made money for some, the rabbits' effect on the land, competing wildlife, and sheep farmers was devastating. The opossum did similar damage by eating massive amounts of native plant life in the exotic canopy.

Desperate farmers imported the stoat, a weasel-like creature that eats rabbits and opossums. That worked for a while, but birds, insects, and bats were easier for the stoats to catch. They quickly decimated bird populations, especially that of the kiwi. Thanks to the stoat, today several other species are either endangered or already extinct. New Zealand's government spends millions every year trying to stop the continuing rampage. And what of the stoat's intended targets, the rabbit and opossum? As of 2001, they were still the number one and number two pests in the country.

Here's more proof that Andy Warhol was right when he said that “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”

T
HE STAR:
Mark Stutzman, a 34-year-old illustrator living in Mountain Lane Park, Maryland

THE HEADLINE:
Struggling Artist Takes Care of Business

WHAT HAPPENED:
Stutzman was just another artist having trouble making ends meet when one of his clients encouraged him to enter a contest to design a stamp commemorating Elvis Presley. He'd never designed a stamp before, but he entered anyway, creating a portrait of the King in his younger days. “It's the first thing I think of when I think of Elvis,” he says, “when he was really young and parents didn't want their kids to listen to his music.”

Thirty artists submitted designs to the U.S. Postal Service; only Stutzman's (a young Elvis) and another artist's (an old, fat Elvis) were chosen as finalists. The American public would choose between the two designs by voting at their post office or mailing in a special ballot.

What happened? Millions of people cast their votes…and Stutzman's stamp won overwhelmingly.

THE AFTERMATH:
The U.S. Postal Service ordered 300 million of the stamps and then, when those sold out in barely a month, ordered 200 million more, making it the most popular commemorative stamp in U.S. history. Estimated profits: $20 million. How much of that went to Stutzman? Zero—he got the standard design fee of $3,000…nothing more.

THE STAR:
James Carter, 76, an ex-convict and retired shipping clerk from Mississippi

THE HEADLINE:
Ex-Con Makes It Big with a Song He Can't Remember, in a Movie He's Never Seen

WHAT HAPPENED:
In September 1959, Carter was chopping wood with a Mississippi prison road gang. He frequently led the
men in singing while they worked, and one afternoon he happened to be recorded while singing a song called “Po' Lazarus.” Carter served out his sentence and became a shipping clerk when he got out of prison. By 2002 he was retired.