A TANK AWAY FROM TOLEDO, May 3-8, 2009
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario Situated on the south shore of Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River, the first capital of Ontario, where the first library in Ontario was established, birthplace of the Law Society of Upper Canada, home of first newspaper in the province, and site of the oldest golf course in Ontario. Former names: Butlersburg, Newark, Niagara. In 1781, the British purchased land from the Mississaugas, a strip of land 6 miles wide along the western bank of the Niagara River for 300 suits of clothing. The town was almost erased when burned by the Americans during the War of 1812. Visited shops in historic buildings and two wineries.
Drove to Niagara Falls, viewing American and Canadian (horseshoe) falls
Buffalo, New York, home of America’s first public park system
“In Buffalo, we measure snow in feet, not inches.”
Buffalo was discovered by LaSalle and Hennepin in 17th century, and destroyed by fire during War of 1812. In 1797, Dutch speculators bought 1.3 million acres from the Senecas for $100,000. Early names were New Amsterdam and Buffaloe (for Buffaloe’s Creek). Erie Canal opened in 1825 and transformed a village into a city. Source: Buffalo: Lake City in Niagara Land by Richard C. Brown and Bob Watson, 1981.
Visited Frank Lloyd Wright structures: Darwin D. Martin complex, http://www.darwinmartinhouse.org/history.php
Graycliff, http://graycliff.bfn.org/history.html and
Rowing Boathouse, http://www.wrightsboathouse.org/photos.php,
Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens.
Erie, Pennsylvania
Visited Erie Maritime Museum and Erie Public Library—toured Brig Niagara, the resurrected and restored ship that defeated the British in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813. http://www.brigniagara.org/museum.htm
Learn about “Don’t Give Up the Ship” and “We Have Met the Enemy and They Are Ours” at: http://www.brigniagara.org/OliverPerry.htm

The expression “vale of tears” goes back to pious sentiments that consider life on earth to be a series of sorrows to be left behind when we go on to a better world in Heaven. It conjures up an image of a suffering traveler laboring through a valley ("vale”) of troubles and sorrow. “Veil of tears” is poetic sounding, but it’s a mistake. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/veil.html

Hamlet complains of the drunken carousing at Elsinore to his friend Horatio, who asks “Is it a custom?” Hamlet replies that it is and adds, “but to my mind,—though I am native here and to the manner born,—it is a custom more honour’d in the breach than the observance.” “To the Manor Born” was the punning title of a popular BBC comedy, which greatly increased the number of people who mistakenly supposed the original expression had something to do with being born on a manor. The correct expression is “to the manner born.” http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/manor.html

Common errors in English
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

Best-selling Irish author John Connolly, who sets his crime fiction in the United States, credits his inspiration to M.R. James. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/john-connolly-dying-is-an-art-i-do-exceptionally-well-448261.html

James, M[ontague]. R[hodes] (1862-1936)
English writer, antiquarian, and academic, widely regarded as one of the greatest practitioners of supernaturalist short fiction; his specialty was the antiquarian ghost story. http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/mrjames.html

pseudandry (su-DAN-dree)
noun: The use of a male name as a pseudonym by a woman
Many women wrote under male pen names because in the 18th and 19th centuries it was considered scandalous for a woman to write a book. The English novelist Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot. Also, in olden times, people didn't take a woman's writing seriously.
The counterpart of pseudandry is pseudogyny where a man takes a woman's name as a pseudonym. The rationale here is that people expect certain genres, such as romance, to be written by women. A.Word.A.Day

Last week, on the Concurring Opinions blog, Temple Law professor David Hoffman responded to the whirlwind of criticism of Second Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor with a post about the qualities the legal profession generally uses to evaluate “smartness.” At the end of the post, Hoffman wrote: [T]he quality of the information we use to evaluate the smartness of judges is terrible. So why the focus? I blame the Socratic Method, which teaches young lawyers that being a good lawyer is the same thing as being a good debater: quick, witty, cutting, etc. We don't want the smartest justice. We want the wisest. Or at least someone who understands that smartness correlates with wisdom about as well as law does to justice.
Responded GW's Orin Kerr, in the comments section of the same post: “I don't see the connection to the Socratic Method. The Socratic Method does not reward intelligence; it rewards glibness. But as far as I know, no one claims to want a Supreme Court Justice who is exceedingly glib.”
But then comes Scott Greenfield, who on his Simple Justice blog, puts forth with a pretty robust defense of the Socratic method. Writes Greenfield: We work with a gun to our head, demanding that we analyze and react in a split second. We risk public humiliation if our utterances are foolish or incomprehensible. We face a room of people who are wholly unconcerned about whether we feel warm and fuzzy, and are by definition judgmental and critical. So what pedagogical exercise best prepares a law student to survive in this environment? . . . The Socratic Method forces law students to face the circumstances they will face in the courtroom, and to either figure out how to deal with it or figure out what else they should do with their lives. If you can't handle the pressure, then you don't belong in the trenches.
The passage of the Copyright Act of 1976 represented the first major revision in seven decades of a basic law governing intellectual property. The drafter of that seminal piece of legislation--Barbara Ringer--died last month. And this weekend's WSJ has a fascinating remembrance of Ringer, who joined the Copyright Office as an examiner on her graduation in 1949, after graduating from Columbia Law School. According to the story: The 1976 act was the culmination of more than two decades Ms. Ringer spent negotiating with business, lobbying Congress and drafting provisions. It established an expanded length of copyright (life plus 50 years, changed from 28 years, renewable once), codified the concept of “fair use” and made other key updates in response to technologies such as broadcasting, recording and photocopying. “Barbara was the heart and soul of that project,” says former U.S. Rep. Robert Kastenmeier, chairman of the House subcommittee that dealt with copyrights. Despite attempting to bring U.S. copyright law up to date, “the 1976 act was obsolete when passed,” says Jessica Litman, a law professor at Michigan. WSJ Law Blog May 11, 2009