Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (1881-1975), called Plum by most of his family and friends, was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Stephen Fry, Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Terry Pratchett. The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, given annually for the finest example of comic writing in the UK, was established and named in his honour in 2000. Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1914 onward he split his time between England and the United States. In 1934, he took up residence in France, to avoid double taxation on his earnings by the tax authorities in Britain and the U.S. He was also profoundly uninterested in politics and world affairs. When World War II broke out in 1939 he remained at his seaside home in Le Touquet, France, instead of returning to England, apparently failing to recognise the seriousness of the conflict. Subsequently, the German military authorities in occupied France, interned him with several other Englishmen in the same condition, as an "enemy alien" according to the definition of such by the Geneva Convention, first in Belgium, then at Tost- now Toszek- in Upper Silesia -now in Poland. Of the latter, he is recorded as having said, "If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what Lower Silesia must be like..." While at Tost, he entertained his fellow prisoners with witty dialogues. He was released from internment because of having reached the limit of age (60 years) stated by the mentioned Convention of Geneva (Wodehouse's version) or because of a deal with the German Ministry of Propaganda. He then proceeded to broadcast through the German radio services and with the full cooperation of the German propaganda services several humoristic autobiographical commentaries as a basis for a series of radio broadcasts aimed at America (then not at war with Germany). When the text of his commentaries was published in England many years later, several short sentences of the commentaries had been suppressed, probably by Wodehouse himself, for showing him being relatively friendly to the German military men when they arrived at Le Touquet. Wodehouse believed he would be admired as showing himself to have "kept a stiff upper lip" during his internment. Some libraries banned his books. Foremost among his critics was A. A. Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh books; Wodehouse took revenge in a short story parody, Rodney Has a Relapse (1949), in which a character based on Milne writes about his son, a ridiculous character named "Timothy Bobbin". See lists of characters, plots and adaptations at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse

A Celebration of P.G. Wodehouse http://www.terry-mordue.co.uk/Wodehouse/

E-mail precautions I delete notices from companies I don't deal with, things that say "you asked for this" or something similar, and e-mails with no subject line. Even if I know the person sending the e-mail with no subject line, it could be that someone (Nigeria scammer, for instance) has taken over their mailing list. It slows you down when you're opening mail, but it's worth it.

Q: How do bells fit into a U.S. Navy ship's operations?
A: Bells have a long tradition at sea, starting with the British in the late 1400s. Signaling, keeping time, and sounding alarms are important in any ship's routine and readiness. Time at sea was once measured by the trickle of sand through a half-hour glass. One of the ship's boys was ordered to watch the glass and turn it. When he turned the glass, he struck the bell to show he had performed his duty. Thus the tradition began of striking the bell once at the end of the first half hour of a four-hour watch, twice after the first hour, etc., until eight bells marked the end of the watch. The process is repeated for the succeeding watches. Sounding the bell on the hour and half hour still has its place in the nuclear- and missile-oriented Navy, regulating daily routine just as it did on vessels under sail. U.S. Navy.
Q: How did Samuel Clemens decide to use the pen name "Mark Twain"?
A: In "Life on the Mississippi," Twain wrote: "I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands -- a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say." classiclit.about.com. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Mar/JU/ar_JU_031411.asp?d=031411,2011,Mar,14&c=c_13

"Half twain! Quarter twain! M-a-r-k twain!" For most people, the name "Mark Twain" is virtually synonymous with the life along the Mississippi River immortalized in the author's writing. Clemens first signed his writing with the name in February 1863, as a newspaper reporter in Nevada. "Mark Twain" (meaning "Mark number two") was a Mississippi River term: the second mark on the line that measured depth signified two fathoms, or twelve feet—safe depth for the steamboat. http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/MTP/mississippi.html

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Eva-Maria von Hauff Subject: sitzfleisch A sitzfleischorden is a promotion or decoration someone receives not because of personal merit but due to seniority.
From: Edith Slembek Subject: sitzfleisch A very common understanding in Germany is: you have guests and politeness wants that the guest has to decide when he wants to leave. Sometimes there are guests who stay and stay, you want to go to bed but guest sits and sits, we say 'He has sitzfleisch.'
From: BranShea Subject: sitzfleisch Germans are clever with word glue. Besides Sitzfleisch they also have the word Fleischersatz, meaning the whole magic world of tempe, tofu, breadcrumbs, mashed beans, and Analogkäse.
From: Rudy Rosenberg Sr Subject: ersatz During WWII in occupied Europe everything became ersatz. There were ersatz ladies' stockings, ersatz butter, but mostly ersatz coffee (basically malt). When my mother Frieda and I went into hiding (for 27 months), we took along a small test tube filled with about a dozen real coffee beans and settled to drinking ersatz coffee until the liberation in 1944. Mother had saved the dozen coffee beans to offer a real cup of coffee to our eventual liberators. When I talk to groups about our diet of herring, turnips, black bread, and ersatz coffee, I am always greeted with puzzled looks from the audience. It had never occurred to me that this was a word not known in the USA. Thank you for resuscitating Ersatz. Incidentally, we were liberated by the British and they drank tea!

A new paper by James M. Donovan from the University of Kentucky College of Law caught much attention recently. The paper is self-archived and it examines the citation trend of open access articles from three different law journals. The opening sentence from the abstract sounds very powerful: “Open access legal scholarship – which today appears to account for almost half of the output of law faculties – can expect to receive 50% more citations than non-open access writings of similar age from the same venue.” The introduction to research is done with the mention of Harvard, ranked number one among world universities according to Times Higher Education, as the first law school to make an institutional commitment to open access. Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, which calls for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats, is also described as a strong argument for open access gaining ground with law librarians who are also facing crisis due to increasing prices of journal subscriptions. “The AALL’s Price Index for Legal Publications… reports a 42% increase in costs for all periodicals (both law-school subsidized and commercial) from 2005-2009, with the average price jumping from $155 to $222.” http://intechweb.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/focusing-on-the-impact-of-open-access-on-legal-scholarship-50-more-citations/ Thanks, Julie.