When Jim Hyler was inaugurated as president of the U.S. Golf Association in February, he surprised many by speaking out more forcibly than USGA presidents are wont to do on a controversial subject: water usage and the misguided perception that golf courses need to be lush, green and perfect to be good. It is the issue, he said, "that is perhaps of greatest concern to golf's future." He called for a "reset" in the way golfers look at and think about courses, with "playability" replacing aesthetics as the primary consideration. Playability, he said, "should include concepts of firm, fast, and yes, even brown, and allow the running game to flourish. We need to understand how brown can become the new green." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704370704575228253377487596.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_lifestyle

Ernie Harwell, the neighborly Georgian who delivered Margaret Mitchell’s newspaper in the 1930s and then delivered the play-by-play of more than 8,500 major league baseball games over 55 years, died May 4 at his home in Novi, Mich. He was 92. Mr. Harwell started each season by reciting lines from the Song of Solomon, and in 1955, he composed an essay, “The Game for All America,” to celebrate baseball. “Baseball is Tradition in flannel knickerbockers,” he wrote. “And Chagrin in being picked off base. It is Dignity in the blue serge of an umpire running the game by rule of thumb. It is Humor, holding its sides when an errant puppy eludes two groundskeepers and the fastest outfielder. And Pathos, dragging itself off the field after being knocked from the box.” He also composed dozens of songs, including one for Hank Aaron after he passed Babe Ruth with his 715th home run and another for Detroit’s Denny McLain when he won 31 games in 1968.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/sports/baseball/05harwell.html

Robin Roberts, the Hall of Fame right-hander who won 286 games and pitched the Philadelphia Phillies’ 1950 Whiz Kids team to the National League pennant, died May 6 at his home in Temple Terrace, Fla., near Tampa. He was 83. He won at least 20 games every season from 1950 to 1955 and led National League pitchers five times in complete games, five times in innings pitched, four times in victories and twice in strikeouts. He still has the record for most victories by a Phillies right-hander, 234 over 14 seasons, and he often pitched for mediocre teams. He was a seven-time All-Star and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1976. “You don’t have to make a big study of batters beforehand,” he told Time magazine in 1956. “When I have good stuff I throw four fastballs out of five pitches. When you take up a hitter in a clubhouse meeting, no matter what his weakness is, it’s going to end up low and away or high and tight, and the curveball must be thrown below the belt. That’s the whole story of pitching. Keep your life and your pitching real simple and you’ll get along.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/sports/baseball/07roberts.html

Lena Horne, who was the first black performer to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio and who went on to achieve international fame as a singer, died on May 9 at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She was 92 and lived in Manhattan. The only time I ever said a word to another actor who was white was Kathryn Grayson in a little segment of ‘Show Boat’ ” included in “Till the Clouds Roll By” (1946), a movie about the life of Jerome Kern, Ms. Horne said in an interview in 1990. In that sequence she played Julie, a mulatto forced to flee the showboat because she has married a white man. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/arts/music/10horne.html?src=me

Reader feedback to Niagara Falls story:
Pierre Berton's "Niagara: A History of the Falls" is an interesting assembly of stories and facts about the Falls. One of these is that only about 35% of the Great Lakes water actually flows over the Falls. The rest goes through underground hydroelectric tubes. It is commonly held that the glaciers formed the Great Lakes, but the western half of Lake Superior is a syncline that formed 900 million years ago when the Keweenawan lava flows (40,000 feet of them poured out about 1.4 billion years ago) faulted and sank in the middle forming the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan to the southeast and Isle Royale and the Canadian/Minnesota shore to the northwest. This is pretty old surface rock that John McPhee calls part of the great midcontinent craton.

Lebanon set a record for the largest plate of hummus May 8 in the continuing gastronomic war with Israel over the regional delicacy. The war has played out publicly for years with two sides outdoing each other for the title of world's best or world's largest hummus dish. On May 8, about 300 Lebanese chefs in the village of al-Fanar -- about 8 km (5 miles) east of Beirut -- lay claim to the latter title with a dish that weighed 11.5 tons. That's 23,042 pounds or 10,452 kg. The Lebanese chefs used 8 tons of boiled hummus, 2 tons of tahini, 2 tons of lemon juice and 154 lbs (70 kg) of olive oil for their dish, local media said. http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/05/09/lebanon.hummus/

Q: Does Ohio have a state song?
A: It not only has a state song, it is the only state with a state rock song.
The state rock song is, "Hang On, Sloopy," a hit for the Dayton band The McCoys in 1965.
The same year, The Ohio State University Marching Band first performed its "now-famous" arrangement of it at the Illinois-Ohio State football game. "Hang On, Sloopy" was adopted by the Legislature in 1985. The song is about Dorothy Sloop, a jazz musician from Steubenville whose stage name around New Orleans was often "Sloopy." She died in 1998 at the age of 84.
The state song is "Beautiful Ohio," written in 1918, and adopted by the Legislature in 1969.
It's hard to dance to, and that is being kind. "Classic" and "modern" versions of it can be heard at: www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1612&nm=Ohios-State-Song-Beautiful-Ohio. -- Ohio Historical Society, Peter Mattiace.
Q. Were all interstate highways built since the '50s?
A: No. At least two important segments predate the interstate system. Part of the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, N.Y., which opened in July 1936 and later, is now included in Interstate 278. And the Pennsylvania Turnpike between Irwin, southeast of Pittsburgh, and Carlisle, west of Harrisburg, is designated Interstate 76 and Interstate 70. It opened in October 1940. -- Federal Highway Administration. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2010/May/JU/ar_JU_051010.asp?d=051010,2010,May,10&c=c_13