05/01/03’s illustrious band:

Extremes in Weather

Brought to you by this month’s reading from the Book of Spam.

According to Hormel archives, my Spam calendar tells me, the best international markets for Hormel’s most famous (or most infamous) product tend to have one or more of three things in common. To wit:

1. They usually have extremes in weather, with part of their weather typically being hot.
   
2. The population is accustomed to pork products and likes them.
   
3. The country has had, at some point, a large U.S. military presence.
   

The last might sound odd, but many countries first saw Spam as a military ration, for sale in the PX. The military connection is one of the reasons Spam used to be so popular in Britain.

Guam, however, is the Spam capital of the world. Guamanians consume an average of 16 cans per person per year. Mmm, porky!

Editor’s note: It took me 10 minutes to figure out what to call a resident of Guam. The Internet fell short; the entries I found there referred to “residents of Guam.” It was my handy-dandy old dictionary that bailed me out, in the Geographic Entries section in the back.

Didn’t know there was one? Neither did I, but since I’m often surprised at what I can find in that good book besides pronunciations and definitions, I gave it a shot. The dictionary is a source of amazement to me. If you look at the special sections in the back, you can find:

• lists of two- and four-year colleges and universities
  
• correct ways to address professors, government officials and clergypeople
  
• the proper name and usage of the punctuation mark we call the slash (it’s a virgule!)
  
• biographical entries
  
• abbreviations
  
• a writers’ style guide
  
• the periodic table of the elements
  
• tables of measurements
  
• a chart of signs and symbols, including some used in physics, some used on weather maps and some you’d expect to find in the Farmer’s Almanac.
  

Good reading!

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