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Although casual dress is usually appropriate for most social events nowadays, there are still occasions when more formal attire is expected. Sam and Virginia recently traveled to Salt Lake City to see the Utah Opera’s production of "Aida," by Giuseppe Verdi. Sam wore a dark suit and tie and Virginia wore a long skirt and a black top covered with silver sparkles. At the performance, many men in the audience wore a suit and tie like Sam did, but some dressed even more formally by wearing tuxedos. The evening performances of the Utah Opera’s winter season tend to be the most formal. In the summertime, Sam and Virginia like to attend the Utah Festival Opera in Logan, Utah, where dress is less formal. Sam still wears a button-up shirt and tie, but he usually doesn’t wear a suitcoat.
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A spelling bee is an organized spelling contest where children are given a word and asked to spell it out loud. Contestants who misspell a word are eliminated from the competition. The one who spells the most words correctly wins. Recently, Jeff’s daughter Brooklyn competed against 25 fellow students in her school’s 5th-grade spelling bee. She spelled “havoc” correctly in the first round, but misspelled “relieve” in the second round (she mistakenly transposed the “i” and the “l”). Even though she realized her error immediately, contestants aren’t allowed to change the order of the letters once they have started speaking the word. The top 10 finishers from each grade level will compete next week to see who is the best speller in the school. By the way, Americans began using the term “bee” in the 1800s to refer to certain social gatherings where large groups of people convened to accomplish a common task (other examples include quilting bees, cornhusking bees, and sewing bees). The term apparently came about because bees are commonly thought of as busy and social insects.
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Covered wagons were used 150 years ago by pioneers who traveled across the Plains to settle in the West. Families would live out of their wagons for months while they made their journey. The wagons were stocked with clothes, bedding, tin cups and dishes, cooking utensils, food, water barrels, and a washtub. Occasionally, a wagon might have had a few pieces of furniture or even a spinning wheel. Heirlooms and precious items like china, fine linens, books, and photographs were carefully stored in a trunk. In most cases, covered wagons were pulled by either horses or oxen, but many families who owned no livestock had to pull a smaller handcart using their own muscle power. This old pioneer wagon (along with other wheels and axles) is on display in front of a trading post-style craft store a little over a block away from the DHC U.S. Office in Moab.
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