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Winter 2019

Home DNA test kits... What will they reveal?

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INSIDER<br />

WINTER <strong>2019</strong><br />

Home DNA<br />

test kits:<br />

...what<br />

will they<br />

reveal?<br />

WHAT’S INSIDE | THIS ISSUE<br />

WATER BAGEL WATER<br />

G&S MONDAY VIDEOS<br />

CAMELLIAS


Brooklyn Water Bagels<br />

bring their own H 2O<br />

New York bagels. Some people insist<br />

they are distinctly better in NYC<br />

than any other place in the world.<br />

The secret, according to Steven<br />

Fassburg, is in the composition of<br />

the water that supplies the region.<br />

When you consider the role water<br />

plays in the creation of a bagel—not<br />

only added to flour to create the<br />

dough, but also thrown in boiling<br />

UPCOMING SHOWS<br />

DATE SHOW VENUE<br />

JAN<br />

9-11 MANTS<br />

JAN<br />

30-<br />

FEB 1<br />

JAN<br />

30-<br />

FEB 1<br />

FEB<br />

7-8<br />

GULF STATES ​<br />

HORTICUL-<br />

TURAL EXPO<br />

SC GREEN<br />

JAX<br />

LANDSCAPE<br />

SHOW<br />

BALTIMORE<br />

CONVENTION<br />

CENTER<br />

BALTIMORE<br />

MD<br />

MOBILE<br />

CONVENTION<br />

CENTER<br />

MOBILE AL<br />

COLUMBIA<br />

METROPOLITAN<br />

CONVENTION<br />

CENTER<br />

COLUMBIA SC<br />

JACKSONVILLE<br />

FL<br />

water when it is cooked—certainly<br />

plausible that the water would<br />

influence the flavor and texture of<br />

a bagel for better or worse.<br />

This is the premise behind Fassburg’s<br />

chain of restaurants called<br />

the Original Brooklyn Water Bagels.<br />

The restaurant may be located<br />

in Florida, California or Massachusetts,<br />

but each location has an<br />

elaborate water filtration system<br />

on prominent display. This impressive<br />

assembly transforms the local<br />

water chemistry into a blend of<br />

minerals and trace elements to<br />

replicate the magic formula allegedly<br />

responsible for making a New<br />

York bagel the world’s finest.<br />

Whether the water thesis is correct<br />

or not, there’s no denying that the<br />

waterworks on display in every<br />

store presents a bold statement<br />

that is easy to understand and<br />

differentiates this bagel restaurant<br />

from all the competition.<br />

LOOKING FOR OLD MAN<br />

WINTER TO SHOW UP<br />

I’ve lived in Lake City all my life.<br />

<strong>Winter</strong> to me is when the grass<br />

turns brown. Our nurserymen put<br />

down their clippers and await orders<br />

to spread out frost cloth in the<br />

afternoon and fold it up again the<br />

next morning.<br />

It has snowed here before, but it<br />

only happens about once every 20<br />

years.<br />

Last year was a very mild winter.<br />

We have an event around here<br />

called Iche Nippy Dip Day that<br />

takes place on the first Saturday<br />

of each year. People are invited to<br />

come down to our local springs<br />

and bathe in the Ichetucknee. The<br />

water temperature is a consistant<br />

72° all year round. It was sunny<br />

and in the 50s when they held the<br />

event last year, so it wasn’t such a<br />

feat of valor as it is some years.<br />

What will the weather hold for us<br />

this winter? Will it be freezing cold<br />

for the Iche Nippy Dippers or will<br />

it be mild again? Will we skate<br />

through the season with little to do<br />

to keep our plants in top condition,<br />

or will we have to match wits with<br />

an unrelenting freeze? Stay tuned,<br />

and we’ll all find out!<br />

Be sure to take a look at our show<br />

schedule on the opposite page.<br />

We’re going to be doing a lot of<br />

exhibiting in the next few months,<br />

and it’s always a tremendous<br />

opportunity to get together with<br />

people we speak with often but<br />

seldom see in person. I hope we<br />

can get to see you at one of these<br />

events!<br />

Thank you for the chance to serve<br />

you!<br />

Zack Kirsch<br />

General Manager<br />

386 754-0161<br />

zack@gsnursery.com<br />

2<br />

3


4<br />

Letting the “Gene-ie” Out of the Bottle<br />

We live in a world fraught with equal<br />

parts wonder and danger. From prehistoric<br />

days when man first learned<br />

to build a fire to modern times when<br />

scientists unlocked the secret of<br />

nuclear fission, our ingenuity often<br />

brings great benefits paired with the<br />

seeds of our own destruction.<br />

This is certainly the case the deeper<br />

we come to understand our own<br />

DNA. As our science has evolved,<br />

the knowledge of this genetic<br />

fingerprint has revolutionized our<br />

criminal investigation process,<br />

solved paternity disputes, united<br />

children with their birth mothers, and<br />

greatly aided the field of medicine.<br />

This same technology taken to one<br />

extreme even raises serious ethical<br />

questions about the authoritarian<br />

use of information to decide the fate<br />

of people who possess so-called<br />

“undesirable” markers in their genes.<br />

But before this piece becomes too<br />

heavy for a publication whose purpose<br />

is keep you in touch with our<br />

wonderful nursery, let’s talk about<br />

the amazing ways DNA testing has<br />

become a part of our everyday lives!<br />

Home DNA test kits have become<br />

so affordable that they became a<br />

popular Christmas gift in 2018. For<br />

as little as $75, folks are now able<br />

to spit in a tube and send it off for<br />

evaluation. Four to six weeks later,<br />

the results come in.<br />

What will your results<br />

include?<br />

• A detailed<br />

breakdown of<br />

your genetic<br />

heritage<br />

• Opportunity to<br />

connect with<br />

DNA relatives<br />

• In some cases,<br />

health screening<br />

Different vendors seem to cater to<br />

different agendas. 23andme is decidedly<br />

more concerned with what your<br />

DNA may reveal about your health<br />

risks, and AncestryDNA provides a<br />

more detailed analysis of where you<br />

come from. Since Ancestry has long<br />

existed as a website to help people<br />

find out about their family tree, they<br />

have a pre-existing database to<br />

enrich their genetic testing by linking<br />

the information of subscribers that<br />

the genetic testing may reveal are<br />

related to you.<br />

A small percentage of test takers<br />

are completely unprepared for what<br />

the results reveal. Take the story<br />

of Catherine St Clair, from a recent<br />

Bloomberg article:<br />

St Clair, 57, is her family’s<br />

resident genealogist and<br />

had sent her saliva to Ancestry<br />

for testing. So when her brother<br />

Mike showed up as a “first<br />

cousin or close relative,” she assumed<br />

it must be a glitch. Even<br />

stranger: The test showed that<br />

someone she had never heard of<br />

was a much closer genetic match<br />

than Mike.<br />

The import of the story was that Catherine<br />

discovered that she and Mike did<br />

not share the same father. Moreover,<br />

she was able to contact the stranger<br />

who shared her genetics through a<br />

cooperative arrangement on the website<br />

to find that her biological father,<br />

now deceased, had actually been her<br />

mother’s boss in 1960. This boss had<br />

two daughters from his own marriage:<br />

one of which was this genetic match<br />

that Catherine now realized was her<br />

half-sister. She would meet her other<br />

half sister through this connection.<br />

Such occurances add a special<br />

dimension to the job of customer<br />

service at these testing companies.<br />

When the results don’t make sense,<br />

the first reaction the customer has is<br />

to pick up the phone and contact the<br />

company to discuss what appears to<br />

be an error.<br />

“How most of those conversations<br />

start is people come to us to verify<br />

the accuracy,” says a company rep<br />

in the Bloomberg article. “Somebody<br />

has known something their whole life<br />

and then this company is telling them<br />

something different.”<br />

Sources: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-19/surprise-dna-results-are-turningcustomer-service-reps-into-therapists<br />

Ancestry.com<br />

23andme.com<br />

5


Featured<br />

Plant<br />

There are two principal species<br />

of camellia are sasanqua and japonica.<br />

The differences between<br />

the two are that the sasanqua:<br />

• blooms earlier<br />

• has smaller, less dense leaves<br />

• grows faster<br />

• are more sun-tolerant<br />

• are slightly less cold hardy<br />

Camellias thrive in southern<br />

climate zones and do best in<br />

partial shade. Once established,<br />

they will produce a profusion of<br />

blooms beginning in the fall and<br />

providing much-needed color<br />

as other plants in your garden<br />

retire for the winter. The blooms<br />

vary from white to dark pink,<br />

but the stamens are consistently<br />

golden yellow. The blooms<br />

are fragrant and short-lived.<br />

The first sasanqua camellia was<br />

introduced to the western world<br />

in 1820 when Captain Richard<br />

Rawes presented a specimen<br />

6<br />

386 754-0161<br />

SASANQUA CAMELLIA<br />

Camellia Sasanqua<br />

7 gal: $38.50!<br />

Prices good through the end of January<br />

<strong>2019</strong><br />

to Thomas Carey Palmer in England, having<br />

brought the plant from Japan where it<br />

was first cultivated. In Japan, the leaves<br />

are used to make tea, and the seeds are<br />

used to make tea seed oil, which is used for<br />

lighting, lubrication, cooking, and cosmetic<br />

purposes.<br />

“A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man<br />

with two watches is never sure.”<br />

— Segal’s Law<br />

NEW AND NOTEWORTHY<br />

Natalie Loomis<br />

G&S welcomes our newest staffer to<br />

our Jacksonville offices. Natalie Loomis<br />

has come to work for us in our accounts<br />

G&S Founder Curry Launches Video Series<br />

Gabriel Curry is nothing if not goal-oriented.<br />

He is the “G” of G&S nursery, a business<br />

he built from a $300 investment in<br />

the 1990s when he was a newly-married<br />

teenager.<br />

When the nursery grew from part-time<br />

occupation to full-time business, he put a<br />

manager in charge while he pursued a career<br />

as a salesman for an industrial supply<br />

company in Lake City.<br />

As he forged his reputation in the industrial<br />

supply industry, he continued to<br />

make time to supervise the growth of the<br />

nursery.<br />

He would eventually become the owner<br />

of the supply company. He assembled a<br />

team of talented people who worked with<br />

him to grow the company until it attracted<br />

the attention of one of the world’s leading<br />

industrial supply companies, and Gabriel<br />

and his partners accepted the offer to be<br />

bought out.<br />

Now that Gabriel has fulfilled his responsibilities<br />

with HUB Industrial Supply, he<br />

has been transitioning from behind-thescenes<br />

supervisor to a more prominent<br />

role at G&S. As a service to G&S clients,<br />

he has begun to release a weekly video<br />

on topics he believes to be of interest to<br />

fellow business managers. “I want to challenge<br />

business people to keep optimizing<br />

their businesses,” Gabe says. “We as<br />

receivable department as A/R Credit<br />

Manager.<br />

Natalie has lived in Florida since 1984,<br />

mostly in the south. She enjoys yoga,<br />

the beach, spending time traveling<br />

and exploring new restaurants, and<br />

loves to read books. Sometimes it’s<br />

the sweetest, most soft-spoken credit<br />

managers who best succeed in collecting<br />

invoices that have somehow fallen<br />

through the cracks...<br />

business managers have so much opportunity<br />

to make a positive impact on<br />

the lives of the people closest to us.”<br />

The videos typically run between 2 and<br />

3 minutes and deal with issues businesses<br />

of all types must address to<br />

distinguish themselves as leaders in<br />

their field of work.<br />

The videos are available<br />

on the G&S<br />

Nursery YouTube<br />

channel. If you would<br />

like to be notified<br />

when a new video becomes<br />

available, you<br />

can get on our mailing<br />

list by emailing sales@<br />

gsnursery.com.<br />

www.gsnursery.com<br />

7


1550 SW Bedenbaugh Ln.<br />

Lake City FL 32025<br />

RIDDLE OF THE MONTH<br />

In 1901, which port city of Florida laid<br />

claim to the state’s largest population? The<br />

population of this city was 20,000 at the<br />

time.<br />

A) Jacksonville<br />

B) Tampa<br />

C) Key West<br />

D) Miami<br />

ANSWER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN:<br />

HARRY & DAVID<br />

ROYAL RIVIERA<br />

PEARS<br />

LAST ISSUE RIDDLE:<br />

The car’s odometer reads 32923, which<br />

is a palindromic number (reads the same<br />

backwards as forwards). What are the<br />

minimum number of miles needed to<br />

travel to form another palindrome?<br />

ANSWER: In another 110 miles, the<br />

odometer will read 33033, which is the<br />

next possible palindrome.<br />

LAST ISSUE’S WINNERS<br />

Dolores Mews<br />

Tricia Hood<br />

Katie Brugh<br />

Send answers to newsletter@gsnursery.com before January 31, <strong>2019</strong>. All<br />

correct answers will be entered into a drawing to win a prize!

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