Front page even when I don't win

This past Thursday marked the 11th annual CLICK Spelling/Trivia Bee. Originally, it was a spelling competition among local business to support an adult literacy charity that helps the nearly 1/3 of my counties population that does not have a high school diploma. The team from my high school gets sponsorship from the Times Herald, the Newnan newspaper. I've participated in the competition five or six times, and it's definitely a worthwhile cause. My team and I have won once or twice in the original spelling bee, and last year we won the first trivia bee. This year we made 3rd place, but considering the rules kept changing about every five minutes, that's not so bad. Making the front page while the winners made 2A was just a bonus, i guess. I did learn some new tidbits:

• Holocene - the current geologic epoch
• North American hibernating bird - whippoorwill
• Hitch your wagon to a star - R.W. Emerson
• Plantagenêt - England's longest ruling dynasty (1152 - 1399)
  
• Barney Clark - first artificial heart recipient (I could only remember Dr. Jarvik but mostly from the Lipitor commercials.)
  
• DeWitt Clinton - New York governor who built the Erie Canal

I did a little fact checking and it's not actually the whippoorwill that hibernates, but the common poorwill. Another irritation, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon were not the original Odd Couple no matter what that trivia contest insisted (though I put down that answer knowing that their source would be thinking Hollywood and not Broadway). Walter Matthau and Art Carney were the original Odd Couple (now played by Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the revival).

By the end of the evening, all had a good time (me included) and $21K will go to helping people learn to read, to do math and to earn a high school diploma or GED.