pig's whisper  noun   

   1. A very short time.

   2. A low or nearly inaudible whisper.   

[Of uncertain origin.  Earliest documented use: 1780.]   

An illustration from the book "The Tale of Pigling Bland", 1913 https://wordsmith.org/words/images/pigs_whisper_large.jpg   

It's not clear how a pig's whisper came to be associated with a very short time or a whisper.  A pig is not known for whispering, though a grunt can be brief enough.  A variant of today's term is a pig's whisker.  Wordsmith  May 14, 2026   

Invisible Cities is a novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino.  It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.  The book is framed as a conversation between the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, and Marco Polo.  The majority of the book consists of brief prose poems describing 55 fictitious cities that are narrated by Polo, many of which can be read as commentary on culture, language, time, memory, death, or human experience generally.  Short dialogues between Kublai and Polo are interspersed every five to ten cities discussing the same topics.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities   

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) was an Italian novelist and short story writer.  His best-known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).  Admired in Britain, Australia and the United States, Calvino was the most translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death.  Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de las Vegas, a suburb of Havana, Cuba, in 1923.  In 1925, less than two years after Calvino's birth, the family returned to Italy and settled permanently in Sanremo on the Ligurian coast.  Calvino's brother Floriano, who became a distinguished geologist, was born in 1927.  See list of Calvino’s writings, films about Calvino, and awards at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Calvino    

Tristram Coffin (or Coffyn) (c. 1609–1681) was an immigrant to Massachusetts from England.  He came to the Massachusetts colony with his family in 1642.  In 1659 he led a group of investors that bought Nantucket from Thomas Mayhew for thirty pounds and two beaver hats.  He became a prominent citizen of the settlement.   Some descendants became loyalists and migrated to Canada.  Other descendants migrated away from colonial America's eastern seaports and settled in Quaker communities in places such as North Carolina.  While some descendants were engaged in the slave trade and illegally smuggling slaves into the US or Canada after the international slave trade was banned in 1808, others were leading influential anti-slavery and abolitionists movements in multiple states across the country.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristram_Coffin_(settler)    

Chicago fine dining destination Smyth has been named the continent’s best restaurant in the 2026 edition of North America’s 50 Best Restaurants.  On a starry night in New Orleans, dining luminaries from coast to coast were honored among their peers.  Eunji Lee of New York’s singular Lysée was recognized as North America’s Best Pastry Chef, while Aldo Sohm of Le Bernardin and Aldo Sohm Wine Bar was declared North America’s Best Sommelier.  Mashama Bailey from The Grey Restaurant in Savannah, Ga., was named North America’s Best Female Chef.  Find the full list of the 50 restaurants honored in 2026 at https://blog.resy.com/2026/05/worlds-50-best-north-america/  

May 31, 2026

In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is a type of fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the pip (UK), pit (US), stone, or pyrena) of hardened endocarp with a seed (kernel) inside.  The definitive characteristic of a drupe is that the hard, woody (lignified) stone is derived from the ovary wall of the flower.  In an aggregate fruit, which is composed of small, individual drupes (such as a raspberry), each individual is termed a drupelet, and may together form an aggregate fruit.   Such fruits are often termed berries, although botanists use a different definition of berry.  Other fleshy fruits may have a stony enclosure that comes from the seed coat surrounding the seed, but such fruits are not drupes.  Flowering plants that produce drupes include coffee, jujube, mango, olive, most palms (including açaí, date, sabal and oil palms), pistachio, white sapote, cashew, and all members of the genus Prunus, including the almond, apricot, cherry, damson, peach, nectarine, and plum.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupe 

Ruth Reichl quotes:  “A thousand years ago the Chinese had an entirely codified kitchen while the French were still gnawing on bones.  Chopsticks have been around since the fourth century B.C.   Forks didn't show up in England until 1611, and even then they weren't meant for eating but just to hold the meat still while you hacked at it with your knife.”
― Ruth Reichl, Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise

“I felt that I was really living in the moment.  I did not know where my life was going, but right now the future did not trouble me.”
― Ruth Reichl, Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table

 “Luxury is best appreciated in small portions.  When it becomes routine it loses its allure.”
― Ruth Reichl, Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir 

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5662.Ruth_Reichl   

Morus, a genus of flowering plants in the family Moraceae, consists of 19 species of deciduous trees commonly known as mulberries, growing wild and under cultivation in many temperate world regions.  M. alba is native to South Asia, but is widely distributed across Europe, Southern Africa, South America, and North America.   M. alba is also the species most preferred by the silkworm.  It is regarded as an invasive species in Brazil, the United States and some states of Australia.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morus_(plant)   

The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library is a planned presidential library in Miami, Florida.  Currently, a website administered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is in place.  The website was launched on January 20, 2021, when President Donald Trump left office as the 45th president after his first term.  It serves as a placeholder until a presidential library is built.  It will be the 15th NARA-managed presidential library.  Plans to build the library and museum remain on hold after Trump began his second, non-consecutive term as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.  In September 2025, it was announced that the library would be built at Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus in Downtown Miami, Florida.   

The NARA library is established by the Presidential Records Act and is independent of possible plans for a physical building under the Presidential Libraries Act.   All current content has been previously available to the public, including websites such as Melania Trump's Be Best, photographs, and social media accounts including @POTUS and @FLOTUS.  Other private records from Trump's first term are subject to access requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from January 2026.   While most records will be open to FOIA requests by 2026, records could be withheld from public access on the basis of executive privilege for up to twelve years.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Trump_Presidential_Library   

The name pretty much says it all:  sugar + cream.  Add in the Hoosier and you have a nice nod to the thrifty Indianans, likely Amish or Shaker farm folks, who created this pie in the pioneer days.  Sugar cream pie is what's known as a "desperation" pie, the kind of dessert you could make on a farm when you didn't have fresh fruit on hand.  The Indiana Foodways Alliance calls the dish "Indiana's come-home-to dessert" and they've created a "Hoosier Pie Trail" with must-stop eateries for visitors looking to try their state pie.  Their descriptions of mom-and-pop joints like Stories Restaurant in Greensburg, Indiana or the famed Mrs. Wick's Pies in Winchester would make any pie lover want to jump in the car.  Find recipe at https://www.seriouseats.com/hoosier-sugar-cream-pie-recipe    

The Walt Disney character Goofy first appeared in the cartoon Mickey’s Revue on 25 May 1932 under the name “Dippy Dawg”.  Wiktionary   

May 28, 2026 

In the array of possible natural hair colors, dark hues are the most common more than 90 percent of people worldwide have brown or black hair.  That’s followed by blonde hair.  Red hair, occurring in just 1 to 2 percent of the population, is the least common.  Blue eyes are similarly uncommon, and they may be becoming rarer.  One study found that between 1899 and 1905, more than half of non-Hispanic white people in the United States had blue eyes.  But from 1936 to 1951, that number fell to 33.8 percent.   Today, estimates suggest about 17 percent of people worldwide have blue eyes.  Your hair color and eye color come down to what genes you inherit from your parents.  If one person has both red hair and blue eyes, there’s a good chance one or both of their parents do, too, but not always.  You must inherit two sets of genetic information for both your hair color and your eye color to have these less-common characteristics.  The likelihood of this happening is quite rare, especially if neither of your parents has red hair or blue eyes.  Sometimes, however, the genetic stars align, and individuals are born with the rare combination of red hair and blue eyes.  https://www.healthline.com/health/red-hair-blue-eyes    

Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo will not run in the Preakness Stakes, trainer Cherie DeVaux announced May, 6, 2026.  DeVaux and owners decided to skip the Preakness and set their sights on the Belmont Stakes on June 6 at Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York.  DeVaux, the first woman to train a Derby winner, is from Saratoga Springs, which is hosting the Belmont for a third and final time this year.  "We are incredibly appreciative of the excitement and support surrounding the possibility of a Triple Crown run," DeVaux said in a statement.  "Golden gave us the race of a lifetime in the Kentucky Derby, and we believe the best decision for him moving forward is to give him a little more time following such a tremendous effort.  His health, happiness and long-term future will always remain our top priority."  Golden Tempo is the third Derby winner in the past five years not to be entered in the Preakness.  For various reasons, it is the sixth time in eight years the Preakness will happen with no chance of a Triple Crown on the line.  American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018 are the only horses to sweep all three races over the past four decades.   https://www.espn.com/horse-racing/story/_/id/48695744/kentucky-derby-winner-golden-tempo-run-preakness-stakes     

Memorial Day, a federal holiday held the last Monday in May, is the nation's foremost annual day to mourn and honor its deceased service men and women.  Originally called Decoration Day, it was formalized by a "Memorial Day Order" issued by Grand Army of the Republic Commander-in-Chief John A. Logan in 1868.  https://www.cem.va.gov/history/Memorial-Day-history.asp   

Originally called Decoration Day, from the early tradition of decorating graves with flowers, wreaths and flags, Memorial Day is a day for remembrance of those who have died in service to our country.  It was first widely observed on May 30, 1868 to commemorate the sacrifices of Civil War soldiers, by proclamation of Gen. John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of former Union sailors and soldiers.  During that first national commemoration, former Union Gen. and sitting Ohio Congressman James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who were buried there.  This national event galvanized efforts to honor and remember fallen soldiers that began with local observances at burial grounds in several towns throughout the United States following the end of the Civil War, such as the May 1, 1865 gathering in Charleston, South Carolina organized by freed slaves to pay tribute and give proper burial to Union troops.  In 1873, New York was the first state to designate Memorial Day as a legal holiday.  By the late 1800s, many more cities and communities observed Memorial Day, and several states had declared it a legal holiday.  After World War I, it became an occasion for honoring those who died in all of America’s wars and was then more widely established as a national holiday throughout the United States.  In 1971, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act and established that Memorial Day was to be commemorated on the last Monday of May.  https://www.pbs.org/national-memorial-day-concert/memorial-day/history/    

May 22, 2026

curtilage (plural curtilages)  noun   (chiefly property law)  A small piece of land, such as a garth or yard with the buildings and structures on it, immediately surrounding a dwelling house and legally regarded as part of its property; originally, such areas that were enclosed by a fence or wall.  Synonym:  grounds   https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/curtilage   

Famed British naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough turned 100 years old on May 8, 2026 and a team of researchers prepared a special present: an entire new genus of wasp named in his honor.  Meet Attenboroughnculus tau, a tiny parasitic wasp discovered in Chile.  The specimen is 0.14 inches long and has a T-shaped marking on its abdomen that inspired the species name, “tau.”  The insect was collected from Chile’s Valdivia Province in 1983, and it took over four decades for someone to officially recognize it as something new.  See picture at https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/sir-david-attenborough-100th-birthday-110100910.html     

“OK” (implying ambivalence or even distaste).  What started off as an initialism—an abbreviation in which the letters are pronounced individually—has evolved into one of the most widely used words in American English, and the subject of entire books (Allan Metcalf’s The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word).  Thank you, reader.    

OK with spelling variations including okay, O.K. and many others, is an English word (originating in American English) denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, acknowledgment, or a sign of indifference.  OK is frequently used as a loanword in other languages.  It has been described as the most frequently spoken or written word on the planet.  The origin of OK is disputed; however, most modern reference works hold that it originated around Boston as part of a fad in the late 1830s of abbreviating misspellings--that it is an initialism of "oll korrect" as a misspelling of "all correct".  This origin was first described by linguist Allen Walker Read in the 1960s.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK   

"A-O-K" is a song by American singer Tai Verdes.  It was released on June 8, 2021, as the fifth single from his debut studio album TV via Arista Records.  The song was written by Adam Friedman, Brian William Brundage, Martijn Tienus Konijnenburg and Tai Verdes, and produced by Friedman.  A remix featuring guest vocals from fellow American rapper 24kGoldn was released on September 10, 2021.  Additionally, an alternative version featuring latin artist Manuel Turizo was released on November 18, 2021.  The song was also the walk-up song for Philadelphia Phillies second baseman Bryson Stott until 2026, making it particularly popular in the Delaware Valley.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-O-K_(song)     

In English grammar, an intensifier (from the Latin for "stretch" or intend," also known as a booster or an amplifier) is a word that emphasizes another word or phrase.  Intensifying adjectives modify nouns; intensifying adverbs commonly modify verbs, gradable adjectives, and other adverbs.  The opposite of an intensifier is a downtoner, which lessens the emphasis on the word or phrase it's modifying.  https://www.thoughtco.com/intensifier-grammar-term-1691176    

Oblong is a village in Crawford County, Illinois.  The population was 1,466 at the 2010 census, and then was later recorded to be 1,371 in the 2020 census.   Oblong was incorporated in 1883.   The original town site was on a naturally occurring oblongular prairie, hence the name.  The crossroads at the town site was the location of a general store owned by Henry Peck.  The prominent sign "Hen. Peck" gave rise to the village's original moniker, Henpeck.   According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Oblong has a total area of 1.09 square miles (2.82 km²), of which 1.09 square miles (2.82 km²) (or 99.36%) is land and 0.01 square miles (0.03 km²) (or 0.64%) is water.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblong,_Illinois    

May 14, 2026