Congress passed health care reform legislation on March 21. Read special report from CCH: http://health.cch.com/pdf/congress-passes-health-reform.pdf

Perrysburg, Ohio is one of only two federally designated cities. (The other is Washington, D.C.) On April 12 of 1816, the United States Land Commissioner, Josiah Meigs, wrote to Amos Spafford and gave him the chance to honor Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's victory over the superior British fleet on September 10, 1813 in the Battle of Lake Erie. Meigs wanted to create a town name utilizing Perry's name. He suggested "Perrysville" or "Perrytown", but Amos coined another one, "Perrysburg(h)." Once part of Champaign County, it was now in Logan County. Wood County wasn't created until February 22, 1820 and included all of Lucas County until 1835. Maumee was the first county seat as it was part of Wood County until 1835. Perrysburg became the county seat of justice March 27, 1823 and remained so until 1870. http://www.ci.perrysburg.oh.us/HistoricPerrysburg/tabid/57/Default.aspx

The massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck the west coast of Chile in February moved the entire city of Concepcion at least 10 feet to the west, research has found. The preliminary measurements, produced from data gathered by researchers from four universities and several agencies, including geophysicists on the ground in Chile, show that Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina moved about 1 inch to the west. Chile's capital, Santiago, moved about 11 inches to the west-southwest. The cities of Valparaiso and Mendoza, Argentina, northeast of Concepcion, also moved significantly.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/chile/7403578/Chile-earthquake-moved-city-of-Concepcion-10ft-to-the-west.html

Chameleons fire their tongues at breakneck speed, says study leader Christopher Anderson and reported in a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “A chameleon’s tongue travels at accelerations exceeding 400 meters (1,312 feet) per second squared, or about 41 Gs of force,” he added. To put that into perspective, a space shuttle only develops about three Gs of force when it takes off [Discovery News].

When Katie Spotz landed in the South American port of Georgetown, Guyana, on Sunday, March 14, Spotz became the youngest person and the first American ever to row an ocean solo from mainland to mainland. The 2817-mile trip from Dakar, Senegal, in Western Africa took her 70 days, 5 hours and 22 minutes. http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/boating/4349594.html?nav=RSS20&src=syn&dom=yah_buzz&mag=pop http://rowforwater.com/

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
salmagundi Def: 1. A heterogeneous mixture. 2. A mixed salad of various ingredients.
A little more than 35 years ago I started what has become an annual spring party and invited friends to what I called a Salmagundi. Each invitee was required to bring an unusual item to put into a huge salad. I provided the very large mahogany salad bowl and the green leafy things. What we dined on depended on the creativity and imagination of the guests. Each year the gathering is a new collection of friends and always a new and surprisingly salad.
Solomon Gundy came in a little jar when I was a child in Jamaica, West Indies, in the 1950s. Yes, I do remember the anchovy taste. We put it on crackers. I have not encountered the word or the condiment itself until now, decades later.
Salmagundi is also the title of a delightful collection of some twenty sketches by Washington Irving and his friends, published in the early 19th century.
For 30 years, our Public Radio's morning show was called Salmagundi. I loved waking up to the host's melange of classical music, off-beat music, poetry, crazy comments, interviews, and news. Now that host has retired, and his replacement plays only classical with straightforward news and national feeds. It's pleasant, but I miss the spice that got every day off to an interesting start.
Salmagundi is also the name of a notable on-again-off-again literary magazine going back as far as Washington Irving's publication of 1807, then revived in 1900 at Dickinson College, and again reconstituted and continuing from 1969 at Skidmore College.
The yearbook at my college (Colgate University) was called Salmagundi, or "the Sal". What a lovely way to start the week, reminiscing about the heterogeneous mixture of students I met there!

Northern Fried Chicken is served at Blue Ribbon, a restaurant in New York City, and boasts extra-crunchy skin thanks to a matzo meal crust; the chefs there serve it with bright collard greens quick-sautéed in browned butter. SAVEUR’s executive food editor, Todd Coleman, profiled this dish in our April 2010 issue (see "Prize Chicken"). See recipe and instructions at: http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Northern-Fried-Chicken
Northern Comfort is a strong drink made with apple schnapps and bourbon. Find ingredients and directions at: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Northern-Comfort/Detail.aspx
Express northern hospitality by serving both and maybe serving northern dishes found at: http://www.recipezaar.com/recipes/northern-canadian

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost (1874-1964)
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Nothing_GoldCan.htm

Cardamom is a distinctively pungent aromatic spice that is part of many different world cuisines. It is the second most expensive spice; only saffron costs more. Cardamom (Elletaria Cardamomum) is a member of the Zingiberaceae or ginger family. It is a perennial with tall simple canes or stems that grow out of rhizomes. It is native to the shady forests of India, Ceylon and Malaysia. Today it is cultivated mainly in Guatemala and India. http://www.foodreference.com/html/artcardamom.html