Concrete and sleet hubbub

Aggregate is the blueberries in your pancake. Cement is the pancake flour. What is the recipe for concrete?

Cement + Aggregate + Water = Concrete

What is the recipe for preschooler commotion? Loud construction equipment across the creek!

What in the hubbub is going on beyond the trees and fences? And what does hub mean anyway?

hub

The student can read the word, but tells me a "hub" is a young boy lion. Enter Online Etymology Dictionary stage left:

hub (n.) 

"solid center of a wheel," 1640s, perhaps from hubbe, originally "lump," the source of hob of a fireplace and hobnail, as in boots. A wheelwright's word, not generally known or used until c.1828; it reached wider currency in connection with bicycles. Meaning "center of interest or activity or importance" first recorded 1858 in writings of Oliver W. Holmes, and originally especially of Boston.

"Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system." [O.W. Holmes, "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table"] 

Whobub?

hubbub (n.) 

1550s, whobub "confused noise," generally believed to be of Irish origin, perhaps from Gaelic ub!, expression of aversion or contempt, or Old Irish battle cry abu, from buide "victory."

hubby (n.) 

colloquial shortening of husband, attested from 1680s, with -y (3).

hubcap (n.) 

also hub cap, 1896, from hub + cap (n.).

Hubby cat?  Boy lion?

And across the creek from the preschool playground the workers are pouring concrete into forms. They use shovels and trowels, then strike off the wet concrete. The drum of the cement mixer keeps turning while the concrete pours down the chute. A worker wields a long-handled fresno to smooth the concrete surface.

My mother used the expression "hotter than the hubs of hell". As a religion-challenged kid I thought if you were really bad you went to a car tire when you died. Heaven was even more confusing, but there would be cakes with the hole in the middle.  No rebar as far as the eye can see.

It sure is challenging to fly. We are having a winter weather event here at the hub for American Airlines, and hundreds of flights have been canceled. So grateful that my Thanksgiving flights were uneventful.

airline hub

For sale to a good hub--Acrylic on paper mounted on mat board under non-glare glass with silvery wood frame dimensions 25"x31".

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder