A gift card is a type of prepaid card that is designed to be purchased by one
consumer and given to another consumer as a present or expression of appreciation or
recognition. When provided in the form of a plastic card, a user of a gift card is able to access and spend the value associated with the device by swiping the card at a POS terminal, much as a person would use a debit card. Among the benefits of a gift card are the ease of purchase for the gift-giver and the recipient’s ability to choose the item or items ultimately purchased using the card. According to one survey, over 95 percent of Americans have received or purchased a gift card. There are two distinct types of gift cards: closed-loop cards and open-loop cards. Closed-loop gift cards constitute the majority of the gift card market, both in terms of the number of cards issued and the dollar value of the amounts loaded onto or spent with gift cards. These cards generally are accepted or honored at a single merchant or a group of affiliated merchants (such as a chain of book stores or clothing retailers) as payment for goods or services. They have limited functionality and generally can only be used to make purchases at the merchant or group of merchants. Closed-loop gift cards are typically issued by a merchant, or by a card program sponsor or service provider working with a merchant, and not by a financial institution. These cards may be sold in a predenominated or consumer-specified amount at the merchant itself or distributed through other retail outlets, such as at grocery stores or drug stores. Generally, closed-loop gift cards cannot be reloaded with additional value after card issuance. Further, the issuer typically does not collect any information regarding the identity of the gift card purchaser or the recipient. See Federal Reserve System regulations (12 CFR 205) effective August 22, 2010 at: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/bcreg20100323a1.pdf

A third of Americans 14 and older—about 77 million people—use public library computers to look for jobs, connect with friends, do their homework and improve their lives, according to a new study paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and released March 25. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hWnSqIJiabnfP8SQTFrhU80pEDMQD9ELOC380

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners in the Japanese architectural firm Sanaa, have won the 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession’s highest honor. The pair’s buildings include the acclaimed New Museum in New York, a sculptural stack of rectilinear boxes on the Bowery, which was completed in 2007. The first Sanaa project in the United States was a glass pavilion for the Toledo Museum of Art, completed in 2006. It holds the museum’s collection of glass artworks, reflecting that city’s history as a major center of glass production. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/arts/design/29pritzker.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Well used, meter can make a singular appeal to the ear, mind, and memory. Meter can give language a rare elegance and tension, enabling the poet to unite verbal fluidity with stable form. As Robert Frost once remarked, prefacing a proposed collection of his work for younger readers, poets follow “The measured way, … so many feet to the line, seldom less than two or more than five in our language.” English-language poetry is written mostly in iambic meters. “Meter” (from the Greek metron) means “measure” and denotes the rhythmical organization of verse lines. “Iambic” refers to a specific kind of rhythm that alternates between relatively lightly stressed syllables and relatively heavily stressed ones. Because iambic rhythm suits English speech more naturally and flexibly than other rhythms, it has been the principal mode of English poetry from the time of Geoffrey Chaucer (14th c.) to the present day. See interesting article with examples of different meters at: http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/tsteele/TSpage5/meter.html

When people drop a syllable (LISS-ning rather than liss-uh-ning) or add a syllable (ATH-a-leet rather than ATH-leet), they like the rhythm or ease of speaking that way. Or, have just picked up the pronunciation from others. Poets may purposely drop a syllable and put in an apostrophe (as in list'ning) or instead of using the apostrophe, may just drop a syllable as they recite their work.

Elision means
Omission of a final or initial sound in pronunciation.
Omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable, as in scanning a verse.
The act or an instance of omitting something.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/elision

Clarification on recipe for the sweet Armenian cake pahlava: Bake in 8 or 9-inch pan, either round or square. Walnuts may be omitted if you wish.

Motion picture screen writer and author of detective fiction Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) was born in Chicago, but he grew up in England after the divorce of his parents. He attended Dulwich College, and studied then international law in France and Germany. He worked as an assistant stores officer in the Naval Supplies Branch, a temporary teacher at Dulwich College, and published poems and essays in the Academy, the Chamber's Journal, and Westminster Gazette. Before returning to the United States in 1912, Chandler published twenty-seven poems and his first story, 'The Rose-Leaf Romance.' Back in America he worked in St. Louis, then on a ranch, in a sporting goods firm, and as a bookkeeper in a creamery. During the World War I he served in the Canadian Army (1917-18), and was later transferred to the Royal Air Force (1918-19). He prepared himself for his first submission by carefully studying Erle Stanley Gardner and other representatives of pulp fiction, and spent five months writing his first story, 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot.' It appeared in December 1933 in Black Mask, the foremost among magazines publishing in the hard-boiled school. Chandler was a slow writer. Between 1933 and 1939 he produced a total of nineteen pulp stories, eleven in Black Mask, seven in Dime Detective, one in Detective Fiction Weekly. His fourth published story, 'Killer in the Rain,' was used in THE BIG SLEEP (1939), Chandler's first novel. The story introduced Philip Marlowe, a 38-year-old P.I., a man of honor and a modern day knight with a college education. Marlowe is about forty, has a college education, listens to classical music, and solves alone chess problems. PLAYBACK, Chandler's last finished novel, appeared in 1958. Originally it was written as a screenplay. During the writing process Helga Greene became Chandler's literary agent. He and Helga Greene were induced by Ian Fleming to travel to Capri, and to interview Lucky Luciano along the way in Naples. Chandler essay 'My Friend Luco' was not published. His unfinished novel POODLE SPRING was completed by Robert B. Parker, who has also written a sequel to The Big Sleep, entitled PERCHANCE TO DREAM (1990). http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rchandle.htm

Philip Marlowe's name is an amalgam of literary reference to Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, and the Marlow who occupies the moral center of several of Joseph Conrad's tales. Chandler originally intended to name his detective Mallory, alluding to Sir Thomas Malory whose chivalric romance, Le morte d'Arthur (1485), simultaneously dramatizes the heroic deeds of the Arthurian knights and portrays the less glamorous side of knighthood.
http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/6754/Marlowe-Philip.html