The ethylene glycol in snow globes

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Dear Matthew Alice:

I’ve always wondered, how do they make those snowball things, where you have a scene in a bubble and it snows when you tip it over? And what do they use in the water to keep it from getting slimy in there? — Michelle, Talmadge

Certainly would have taken the edge off Citizen Kane if his snowball was full of pond scum. In some of the older toys, you can remove the globe from the base and change the water if it gets weird, but nowadays there’s another solution. Literally. There’s a shot of ethylene glycol (automobile antifreeze, a form of alcohol) in the water to thicken it, prevent it from freezing, and help cut down on crud. The glycol keeps the “snow” suspended longer, enhancing the funtime factor. For Scrabble buffs and vocabulary snobs, insiders call the white stuff “flitter.” New flitter is probably plastic, but originally it was bone chips, porcelain, sand, a compound of wax and camphor, or even ground raw rice.

The toys are made pretty much the way you would expect. The globe is filled with water, sometimes using a vibration technique that expels air bubbles and ensures the globes have no air pockets, then the bases are attached and sealed to avoid leaks. In the early part of the century, they were sometimes made entirely underwater for an airtight seal. If your curiosity gets the best of you and you take a hammer to one of them, you’ll find the figure inside is smaller than you might expect. They only appear larger when viewed through the water and curved globe.

But you didn’t ask the most obvious nagging question that’s plagued us for a century. What, exactly, do you call the things? Amazingly, they’re one of the few objects without an official name. Since they were first offered as souvenirs at the 1878 Paris Exposition, they’ve been called snowballs, snowdomes, snowglobes, snowshakers, shaky toys, shakies, shakes, blizzard-weights, water domes, water globes...each name as correct as the next. Only the tidy, precise British call them by a single name, snowstorms.

Hey, Matt:

Why do they call them “Grape-Nuts”? I’ve only tasted them once — they were vile — but as far as I could tell, they contain neither grapes nor nuts. — Mike, UCSD

America’s second mass-marketed cereal (after Shredded Wheat) turned C.W. Post from merely rich to egregiously stinking rich. He’d already made a buck or two with Postum coffee substitute and his haberdashery breakthrough, “Scientific Suspenders.” Perhaps lifting an idea from the Kellogg brothers (as he had with Postum), C.W. baked a loaf made of whole wheat, malted barley, flour, and yeast, then sliced the loaf, rebaked the slices for 24 hours, and ground them in a coffee mill. The resulting rocks, “nutty” tasting and supposedly containing good-for-you “grape sugar” (dextrose), became Grape-Nuts. Health-conscious, turn-of-the-century America went wild. Grape-Nuts cereal will turn 100 next year.

Matthew Alice:

I was led to believe that Easter Sunday is always on the first Sunday in April. I placed a small ($300) wager on this with a dear friend of mine. Please help me. Could you please clear up this matter for me, the sooner the better! — Wendy Ann Rossi, San Diego

You bet three big ones on that? How did you explain your theory last year, when Easter was the third Sunday in April? Guess we’d better clear this up before next year, when Easter is the last Sunday in March. I’ll explain; you rev up the ATM card.

Historically, Easter’s date has been set relative to the first day of the Jewish celebration of Passover, which was a fixed date in the Jewish lunar calendar but a variable date in the Christian’s solar calendar. In the first century A.D., Christians decided that Easter’s date could vary, but the day should always be a Sunday, the weekly celebration of the Resurrection. So, after a few centuries of head-scratching, calendar changes, and recalculation, Western Christian churches now celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox, anytime from March 22 to April 25. Given your definition of “small wager,” Wendy, I’d like to know how one gets to be a “good friend” of yours. Potentially very profitable.

Dear Matt:

I was trying to stop breastfeeding my daughter with as little pain as possible. Five different people said, “You have to get yourself some cabbage.” They said to put the cabbage in the freezer and then stuff leaves in my bra. Supposed to dry up the milk a lot faster and ease the discomfort. Does cabbage have a special ingredient to stop milk flow? — Kelly Duff, Mission Valley

Ordinarily I’d be skeptical of any advice that required putting frozen vegetables in my underwear. But this bit of folk medicine is still recommended by some health-care workers. Actually, it doesn’t have to be cabbage. Tater Tots or a quart of Chunky Monkey would probably work as well. And it doesn’t even have to be frozen. The whole point is to put anything cold on milk-engorged breasts to reduce blood flow to the area and ease the pain and swelling (though some say use heat; others advise alternating the two). Leaving the breasts full, rather than continuing to nurse or express milk, activates so-called suppressor peptides that eventually stop milk production. But it occurs to me that between the cabbage and the baby, you’d be smelling pretty ripe for a while.

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