Several of the world’s top experts in the conservation of very old wood covered with very old paint met recently in a windowless, cramped room of the St. Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. For two days, they worried over planks that had been cut from Baltic oak trees six centuries ago. The room, named the Villa Chapel, houses the multi-panelled Ghent Altarpiece, a six-hinged polyptych, measuring twelve feet high by seventeen feet wide when it is fully opened, which is sometimes called “The Adoration of the Lamb,” after its largest panel. The work is believed to have been begun by Hubert van Eyck in the early fourteen-twenties and was finished in 1432, six years after his death, by his brother Jan van Eyck, who was at least as important to Northern European painting as Giotto, a century earlier, had been to Italian painting. The work is the premier tourist attraction in Ghent. The experts had been charged with assessing the physical condition of the altarpiece, which last underwent a major restoration in 1950-51, and with recommending a site and a design for its future display.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_schjeldahl

Giotto di Bondone (1266–1337), better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian Renaissance. In his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari relates that Giotto was a shepherd boy, a merry and intelligent child who was loved by all who knew him. The great Florentine painter Cimabue discovered Giotto drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock. They were so lifelike that Cimabue approached Bondone and asked if he could take the boy as an apprentice. Cimabue was one of the two most highly renowned painters of Tuscany, the other being Duccio, who worked mainly in Siena. Vasari recounts a number of such stories about Giotto's skill. He writes that when Cimabue was absent from the workshop, his young apprentice painted such a lifelike fly on the face of the painting that Cimabue was working on, that he tried several times to brush it off. Vasari also relates that when the Pope sent a messenger to Giotto, asking him to send a drawing to demonstrate his skill, Giotto drew, in red paint, a circle so perfect that it seemed as though it was drawn using a compass and instructed the messenger to give that to the Pope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto_di_Bondone

When the Toledo Symphony makes its Carnegie Hall debut on May 7, the program is intended to dazzle with important 20th-century works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 6 in B minor, and a bold collaborative piece for actors and orchestra by composer Andre Previn and playwright Tom Stoppard: Every Good Boy Deserves Favor. ("Every Good Boy Deserves Favor" is a mnemonic device used by young music students to remember the lines of the five-bar music scale, from bottom to top: E, G, B, D, F.) The TSO is collaborating with the University of Toledo Department of Theatre and Film on the Previn-Stoppard work. Programming was a key criterion for Spring for Music founders, who had to choose from a field of 65 orchestras to fill seven performance slots. "You have a really great program. It knocked us out. It’s creative, it’s interesting, and it fits this orchestra and its music director," said Thomas Morris of Spring for Music during a visit to Toledo last fall. http://beta.toledoblade.com/Music-Theater-Dance/2011/02/20/Untitled-BQ17DQ88-10N.html

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Sean Duggan Subject : lacuna Def: An empty space, gap, missing part, an opening.
Interesting. I never realized that lacuna referred to all kinds of gaps. I had always seen it exclusively referring to a hole in the text, such as a missing chapter or a smudge on a manuscript which has eliminated some of the words. I seem to remember being introduced to the word via the Xanth books which featured a character by that name who could erase the words of a text at will, and who was also at risk of becoming a lost footnote in history owing to an entirely uneventful life.
From: Kiko Denzer Subject: miasma Def: 1. Noxious emissions: smoke, vapors, etc., especially those from decaying organic matter. 2. An oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere.
Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map tells a gripping and inspiring story about how Dr. John Snow (and a few allies) conquered cholera in London, in the 1800s, by proving that water spread the disease, not miasma.
From: Jayadev U.K Subject: plural of mongoose
Talking of plurals, it reminds me of the story of a little boy who wanted to buy a couple of the animal called a mongoose. He did not know whether to say two mongooses or two mongeese. So he asked the shopkeeper to pack one mongoose and while at it, pack another one.
From: Bob Nyden Subject: adopted plurals, not: Euro
When the European Union adopted the Euro as its currency, the plural was defined in the legislation as euro so that the various EU languages would not bend it to varied pluralization rules. Yet in the United States, either through ignorance or arrogance, we say euros. Even the New York Times uses euros, so I guess it's a lost cause.

Parcheesi, also known by the names Pachisi and Twenty-five, originated as an ancient game in India. The name Pachisi comes from the Indian word for 25, pacis. That number holds a significant place in the game. Twenty-five is the maximum number of places achievable at one time and the maximum score achievable by throwing the cowry shells. This number also plays a part in the strategy of moving to the finish box on the game board. Though wood and cardboard materials make up the Parcheesi game boards of today, games were originally created of colorful woven and embroidered cloth. Game boards today resemble the shape and design of ancient games. A symmetrical cross containing columns of small squares around the board and a place in the middle for the game to begin and end make up the design of the board. Wooden beehive-shaped game pieces for each player and six cowry shells for determining the number of spaces to move make up the game equipment. Variations of Parcheesi or Parcheesi-like games called "Cross and Circle" appear in ancient historical accounts from many cultures. Ancient Asian game remnants of the same type were found in the Americas, which helps confirm that early Asians colonized in America. Evidence found in Aztec and Mayan artifacts indicates they too played a similar game. To this day, native Americans play variations of circle and cross games. http://www.ehow.com/about_5049766_parcheesi-history.html

The traditional Indian Pachisi game inspired the designs and rules of both Parcheesi and Sorry! E.G. Selchow & Company introduced Parcheesi in 1869. Parker Brothers first published the American version of the Parcheesi-derived Sorry! in 1934. Both Parcheesi and Sorry! players push pawns around the board. Parcheesi players roll dice to determine movement, while the fate of a Sorry! player depends on a drawn card. http://www.ehow.com/facts_7650170_difference-between-parcheesi-sorry.html

In case you didn't figure out who said that cooking is a very good way to decompress, it was British actor and writer Colin Firth.