The Daring Book for Girls

by Andrea J. Buchanan; Alexis Seabrook; Miriam Peskowitz

  Bowling shoes

  These are shoes with special soles to help a bowler glide across the floor during her approach. Street shoes are not allowed on bowling alleys.

  Clean Sheet

  This means making all the spares in the game.

  Dutch 200

  Scoring spare-strike-spare-strike for the entire game, resulting in a score of 200.

  Foul

  The foul line separates the approach from the start of the lane. When a bowler steps on or over the foul line, she doesn’t get the score for that attempt. A foul is marked on the score sheet with an “F.”

  Frame

  Each game of bowling consists of ten frames for each bowler, who has two chances to knock down the ten pins in each frame.

  Lane

  The narrow stretch where the ball rolls toward the pins. Lanes are usually about 60 feet long and 42 inches wide. Gutters, two lower rounded areas alongside the lane about 9½ inches wide, are there to catch balls that stray to the left or right. When a ball rolls into the gutter, it’s called a “gutter ball” and gets zero points.

  Open Frame

  This is when a bowler fails to knock down all ten pins in both tries.

  Perfect Game

  A perfect game is when a bowler scores twelve strikes in a row in the same game. The resulting score is 300, the highest possible score for a bowler in any one game.

  Pin Deck

  The place where bowling pins are set at the end of the lane. The pins are set a foot apart from each other to form a 3-foot triangle. Pins, which are 15 inches tall, are usually made of wood and plastic, and weigh about 3½ pounds. The widest part of the pin is called the belly.

  Sleeper

  When you have a spare with one pin standing directly behind another, the back pin is called a “sleeper.”

  Spare

  If one or more pins are standing after a bowler’s first try, the bowler gets a second chance to knock all the pins down—a “spare” shot. If the bowler knocks the rest of the pins down on her second try, she has made a spare. A spare is marked on the score sheet by a slash (/).

  Split

  This is when two or more pins remain standing with a gap between them. A split that is left can be marked on the score sheet by drawing a circle around the pin-count for that frame.

  Strike

  This is when a bowler knocks down all ten pins on her first try. When a bowler gets a strike, her score goes up by 10, and in addition the score of her next two turns gets added to the strike score. A strike is marked on the score sheet by an X.

  Turkey

  Getting three strikes in a row. Each “turkey” (group of three strikes in a row) is worth 30 pins a frame.

  Queens of the Ancient World II

  Salome Alexandra of Judea

  SALOME’S STORY is a tale of diplomacy, of managing the constant challenges of royal leadership, and of resisting attacks from outside armies as well as from members of her own family. She is remembered as the last independent ruler of her country, Judea, during the period just before the countries of the Mediterranean were conquered by Rome.

  Salome Alexandra was born in 140 BC. Not much is known of her girlhood. Her Judean name was Shelamzion, which is translated as Salome. Her Greek name was Alexandra, after Alexander the Great, who brought his Greek armies to the region nearly 200 years earlier. Like many people of her time, Salome lived amid her family and clan and spoke their language, Aramaic. She was also versed in the Hellenistic culture and Greek language that united the many lands around the Mediterranean Sea, including the nearby empires of Egypt and Syria.

  From what historians can piece together, it seems Salome Alexandra first married in her late twenties. Her choice of husband—Aristobulus, the eldest son of the native ruler of Judea—led her both to royal life and to the beginning of her family problems. Aristobulus was intensely ambitious. When his father the king died in 104 BC, he willed the country to Aristobulus’ mother. But his eldest son would have none of it. He imprisoned his mother, starved her to death, and jailed three of his brothers.

  In this brutal way, Judea became his, and Salome became the reigning queen. Just a year later, though, Aristobulus died of a mysterious disease. As Salome performed the proper funeral rites over him, she learned that he had bequeathed the kingdom to her.

  Salome was faced with another complicated decision: should she rule by herself or share the throne? She released the three royal brothers from jail and chose the eldest of them to be king and high priest. His name was Alexander Janneus. She married him and continued her life as queen.

  Her second husband, Alexander, was a tough man to live with. He was mean-tempered and he drank too much. He was fond of raiding and pillaging nearby cities, and he was cruel to his own people. He reigned for twenty-seven years. The historian Josephus tells us that as much as the people hated Alexander, they adored Salome, and considered her wise, kind, strong and reliable, decent, fair, and a person of good judgment. It’s possible that during Alexander’s long rule, the people didn’t rise to overthrow him because they loved Salome so much.

  In 76 BC, Alexander was on his deathbed. He called Salome close and bequeathed the kingdom to her, returning the favor she had granted him twenty-seven years before.

  Alexander presented Salome with a plan: “Conceal my death until, under your command, the soldiers will have won this battle we are now fighting. March back to the capital Jerusalem and hold a Victory. I have oppressed many people, and they now hate me. Make peace with them. Tell them you will include their leaders as advisors in your government. Finally, when you return to Jerusalem, send for the leading men. Show them my dead body and give it over to them. Let them defile it, if they wish, or honor me with a proper burial. The choice will be theirs. And then, they will support you.” Quite a beginning for the new reigning queen.

  As queen, ruling from her palace in Jerusalem, Salome faced immediate challenges from her family once more, this time from her two grown sons. Salome anointed her oldest son, Hyrcanus, a quieter and more private sort of man, to be high priest. Hebrew religious law forbade women from overseeing the Temple and performing the animal sacrifices, so although she was queen, she couldn’t be high priest, as her husband had been. Her younger son, named Aristobulus after Salome’s first ruthless husband, was a much bigger problem. Like his father, he was very ambitious. He wanted Salome’s throne from the start. Soon he would rise against her.

  True to her promises and King Alexander’s plan, Salome delegated the domestic affairs and a good deal of the power over the nation’s religious life to the elders of Judea. This helped to end the civil war that had simmered under her husband’s rule, during which he had killed a great many of the elders’ group. Still, the remaining elders wanted revenge. Before Salome could stop them, they slit the throat of one of Alexander’s ringleaders, Diogenes, and set out to find more.

  The ambitious son Aristobulus used the growing violence to threaten his mother’s reign. After the revenge killings, Aristobulus led a delegation of men to Salome’s throne. They demanded she put a stop to the killings. If she could do so, they promised they would not avenge the recent murders. They would keep the country from descending into a spiral of violence. In return for keeping the peace, Aristobulus demanded his mother give him several of the family fortresses strung throughout the desert from Jerusalem to the Jordan River.

  Salome negotiated a deal. She kept the majority of the fortresses for herself, including those that housed her royal treasure, but she gave a few to Aristobulus. Seeking to push him far from her capital, she dispatched him on a small military mission to Damascus.

  As Salome dealt with the situation at home, another problem was brewing outside of Judea. The country’s northern neighbor, Syria, was very weak. The Seleucid dynasty that had once controlled the entire region was in its last days. Taking advantage of this weakness, King Tigranes of Armenia descended on Syria with a massive army of a half million soldiers, quickly taking over Syria
’s cities. Tigranes trapped the Syrian queen, Cleopatra Selene, in the city of Ptolemais, on the Mediterranean coast.

  Ptolemais was not far from Salome’s city of Jerusalem. Terrible news of the siege reached Salome quickly, as did the rumor that Tigranes planned to march on Judea next. Salome knew that despite her large army of mercenaries and native soldiers, she could not beat Tigranes.

  Rather than ready her troops for war, Queen Salome took a different stance. She sent her ambassadors to meet with King Tigranes, and sent along with them many camels loaded with extraordinary treasure. Tigranes agreed not to attack. Luck was on Salome’s side, because another army had begun to attack Armenia. Instead of marching south toward Jerusalem, Tigranes had to turn north to defend his own people back home.

  That episode, and the years of strife leading up to it, wore Salome down. She was over seventy, and her health was beginning to fail. She had outlived two husbands, she faced attacks from outsiders, and her youngest son continued to undermine her authority from within.

  Sensing her final frailty, Aristobulus planned a coup. He had been angry that Salome negotiated a peace with King Tigranes. Had it been up to him, he would have led their soldiers to battle. He knew she was near death, and he suspected that she would bequeath the throne to his older brother, who was already the high priest.

  Secretly, Aristobulus left the family palace in Jerusalem. He rode his horse through the countryside, and at each city and village he asked the people to foreswear their allegiance to Queen Salome and pledge their loyalty to him.

  Salome gathered her last ounce of strength and decided to take harsh action against her son. She imprisoned his wife and children—much as her first husband had done to his relatives. She stashed them in a fortress next to the Temple where Hyrcanus was high priest, but she knew her time was running out. She gave Hyrcanus the keys to the treasury and directed him to take command of her army.

  Salome Alexandra died soon thereafter, in 67 BC, before Aristobulus could strike against her. She was seventy-three, had reigned for nine years as her people’s only independent queen, and she died a natural death. Salome took part in no great battles. She commanded no stunning ships on the sea. She merely did her best to keep the peace at home and to keep stronger armies at bay.

  Queen Salome was so admired that for many generations, hers was one of the two most popular names that Judean people would give to their baby daughters (including one infamous Salome who appears in the New Testament). She couldn’t have known that she would be the only Judean queen, and that this era of independent states was about to end.

  In the year Salome died, across the sea in Italy an empire was growing. The Roman general Pompey was fighting the pirates who controlled the Mediterranean. He cleared them out and made it safe once again to cross the vast waters by boat. By 64 BC, Pompey forged his soldiers into battalions and started his eastward trek. He took control of Syria later that year, and of Judea the year after. Soon, all of western Asia was under Rome’s hand, and the era of Queen Salome the diplomat was a distant memory.

  Secret Garden

  IN THE SECRET GARDEN, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the orphaned Mary is sent to live with her uncle at Misselthwaite Manor. Mary takes to roaming the grounds, and one day she finds a mysterious, ivy-covered wall. A robin leads her to the key that reveals, behind the wall, an abandoned garden. Once in, Mary learns that the “small, pale green points” emerging beneath the cover of weeds are bulbs on their way to becoming “sweet-smelling” things, and that February’s dead roses return to life by Spring. Mary befriends the local boy Dickon, who knows the mysteries of the natural world and can talk to animals. Together they bring the secret garden back to life. In Mary and Dickon’s spirit, you can create a garden of your own, secret or not. Here are two ideas for working your own patch.

  A BULB GARDEN

  * * *

  The secret garden at Misselthwaite teemed with all kinds of bulbs, and your garden can, too. First, you must know that the essence of gardening is good soil, planting in sun or shade (depending on the plant’s needs), and water. Find a space in your yard, till the soil, add nourishments like compost and old leaves to the soil, then plant.

  In the Fall, plant bulbs six inches or so down, in good soil. Choose a variety of bulbs: crocus, daffodils, tulips, and gladioli. Then add several kinds of lilies; even though they are not officially bulbs, they are part of the same plant family, Liliacaeae. These will bloom in succession from early Spring through mid-Summer. Nearby, in the Spring, you might plant peas, cherry tomatoes, and other pick-as-you-go vegetables, for when you’re outside playing and need to nibble.

  A SUNFLOWER HUT

  * * *

  If you already have an outdoor fort of your own, add flowers or vegetables, like a bustle of orange tiger lilies or a line of hardy Black-eyed Susans. Tall plants such as a stand of joe-pye weeds or butterfly bushes provide excellent cover.

  You can also grow sunflowers into a hut. In Spring, plant sunflower seeds in a circle or square (or any shape you wish). Leave some unplanted space for a doorway. Dig a one-foot wide planting area according to your plan, and add mulch till the soil is rich and ready.

  Plant sunflower seeds, two to a hole, in holes one foot apart. As they grow, prune away the weaker seedling. In between the sunflower seeds, plant morning glories. They will tangle their way up the sunflower stalks and give your hut more privacy and a blur of color.

  Water daily and pull any weeds that grow nearby. When the sunflowers are tall, weave rope or twine through them. Find a way to pull the rope over and across until the sunflower tops come together to create the roof of the hut. Tug gently, though, so the sunflowers won’t pop off their sturdy stems.

  Friendship Bracelets

  FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS can be very simple or extremely intricate, but at heart they’re just colorful embroidery floss woven into lovely patterns, to be given to dear friends. Originally part of Native American life, particularly in Central America, these handwoven bracelets became popular in the United States in the 1970s—and not just for girls. President Bill Clinton sported one in the first televised interview of his post-presidential years.

  The slender Snake Around the Pole is the easiest friendship bracelet to make.

  1. Cut two strands from different colors of embroidery floss, using a bit less than one yard.

  2. Hold the two strands together. Tie a knot at one end, leaving 2 inches above the knot. Use a safety pin to attach it to your pants or the arm of a sofa (if you do that, make sure your parents won’t mind a tiny hole). Some people use tape, but it can come off and mess up the pattern. You can also use a clipboard, putting the knot just under the clamp .

  3. Separate the two strands. Take the left and cross it on top of the right, making the shape of a number 4 . Then loop the left strand under the right and bring it through the opening created by the “4” shape .

  4. This forms a knot that you will pull tight by sliding it toward the big knot at the top. Repeat this with the same string for as long as you want this color. When you’re ready to change colors, just take the right-hand strand and move it to the left.

  5. With this new left-hand strand of the second color, repeat steps 3 and 4 until you’re ready to switch colors again, or until you’re done with the bracelet.

  6. Finish with another big knot, and leave enough room to tie the bracelet around your friend’s wrist.

  SNAKE AROUND THE POLE

  For a heftier and more colorful Snake Around the Pole, use four colors, with two strands of each color. Knot the strands together, and attach to a hard surface. Follow the directions for the first Snake Around the Pole, but twist the knot around seven other strings instead of only one. Tighten each knot by pulling it toward the top. Repeat for as long as you want that color, then switch to the next. Continue until you’re done. Knot to finish.

  SNAKE AROUND THE POLE 2

  The flatter, wider Candy Stripe is a different kind of knot bracelet. With the string on
the left, you’ll tie a knot around each strand one at a time, moving to the right. All this knotting can be a bit tedious—which shows your true devotion to the friend who gets the bracelet! Once you get the hang of it, though, you can knot a friendship bracelet practically without looking.

  1. Cut three strands each of three colors, about one yard long. Tie a knot at the top, leaving two inches above the knot. Attach the strands to a hard surface, like a clipboard, or use a safety pin to attach it to your pants. Separate the strands by color .

  2. Start with the leftmost strand and make the “4” shape over top of the strand directly to its right. Bring the left strand back through the opening created by the “4” shape, and slide it to the top, pulling the knot tight . Repeat for each of the other strands, moving left to right, always using the leftmost strand to make the knot. When all eight knots are done, the strand will be at the far right, where it should stay.

  CANDY STRIPE

  3. Take the strand that is now the leftmost , and start knotting across the strands, as in step 2. As before, when it reaches the far right, let it rest, and allow the new leftmost strand to make a new row of knots . The key to success is to make sure you make all the knots very tight, and push each finished row tightly to the top.

  4. Repeat the process until you are done . Leave room at the end, tie a knot, and then fasten it with care onto a friend’s ankle or wrist.

  Slumber Party Games

  THERE IS USUALLY not much slumber involved in your typical slumber party. Instead, pajama-clad girls stay up into the wee hours talking, watching movies, playing games, telling stories, having pillow fights, and giggling. It’s a chance for girls to enjoy the bonding element of playing together as a group, and revel in subverting the normal evening routine—sleeping in the living room together instead of in bed, alone; staying up well past bedtime; being awake in the dark telling scary stories. It’s a time for mystery and daring, as illustrated by some of the most popular slumber party games played by girls over the years.