Laurel Gotshall Blair, founder of the Blair Museum of Lithophanes, was born in Toledo in 1909. He attended Scott High School and the University of Michigan. Like his father before him, he served as president of the Toledo Board of Realtors. A lifelong lover of beauty, Laurel was visiting a fellow musical box collector in Berlin Heights, Ohio, when he saw for the first time in the windows delicate porcelain pictures illuminated by the sun shining through them lithophanes. "And with that," he frequently said, "I fell in love." The Blair Museum of Lithophanes is home to over 2300 antique lithophanes. http://www.lithophanemuseum.org/who_was_laurel_blair.htm

The Blair Museum of Lithophanes will open its season with a free reception from 2 to 4 p.m. April 30. The museum is at Toledo Botanical Garden, 5403 Elmer Drive. Featured will be a new exhibit, Hands Illuminating Porcelain: The Lithophanes of Hannah Blackwell, continuing through Oct. 30. A recent graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute, Blackwell studied the 19th-century art in Hungary. The exhibit includes nine flat-panel lithophanes, lamps, and a tutorial which shows how she makes a lithophane, beginning with carving a model in beeswax, creating a plaster mold, pressing porcelain, and finally, firing the work. Information: 419-245-1356
http://www.toledoblade.com/Art/2011/04/21/Blair-Museum-opens-for-the-season-April-30.html

When jurors were chosen for the perjury trial of baseball star Barry Bonds this month, they were barred from using social media in regards to the case. Such a ban doesn’t extend to lawyers, who mine Facebook Inc. profiles of jurors to unearth a bias that might hurt or help their side. Facebook, Twitter Inc. and other services have become a major resource for both prosecutors and defense attorneys, letting them glean more insight than they can get from jury questionnaires, said Joseph Rice, chief executive officer of Jury Research Institute in Alamo, California. “Social media has given us an incredible tool, because it’s something jurors voluntarily engage in, and they post information about their activities or affiliations or hobbies,” Rice said. That reveals “their life experience or attitude that may have an impact on how they view the facts of the case.” The practice adds fuel to the debate over social-networking privacy and whether Internet postings should be used to reject someone from a job or academic program -- or a seat in the jury box. Facebook has more than 500 million users, while Twitter members post 140 million messages daily. That yields a wealth of data that lawyers can use to screen people or hone arguments. To ensure lawyers aren’t surprised, companies are selling social-media monitoring services. DecisionQuest, a trial consulting firm, started offering it three years ago, said Christine Martin, a senior consultant with the firm in New York. “In the old days, they could use private investigators,” Martin said. “This just makes it a lot easier.” She cites an example last year of a Michigan woman who was removed from a jury because she said on Facebook that the defendant was guilty -- before arguments were finished. In the Bonds case, jurors had to agree in writing not to communicate about the case via social media, the Internet “or any other means, electronic or otherwise,” according to a filing in federal court in San Francisco.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-31/trial-lawyers-scour-jury-members-profiles-on-facebook-twitter.html

The second O+ Festival in Kingston, New York is developing relationships with supporters from the West Coast to the UK, with plans to expand, and the team is assembling an elegant publication of photographs and essays along with a compilation CD to be released in June 2011. The festival is scheduled Oct. 7 to 9. The first O+ Festival was a massive success. a wonderful turnout. outstanding music and art from 30 bands, 48 visual, performance, and film artists. at the first O+ artists’ clinic, 38,000 dollars of medical, dental and wellness services were administered by 40 health care providers to festival artists, free of charge. See much more at: http://opositivefestival.org/art-music-wellness/

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: James Downie Subject: Joke about knots
Surely you have heard the story about three pieces of string who go into a bar. The first piece of string orders the drinks and the barman says, "We don't serve strings in here." The second piece of string fails as dismally. The third piece ties himself up, fluffs out his ends and saunters up to the bar. "Three beers and make it snappy!" he shouts. The barman turns around and looks puzzled. "You're a string, aren't you?" he asks. The string says, "No, I'm a frayed knot!"
From: Paula Meier Subject: Knotty
I often use this word as a pun. I make and sell hand-tied Celtic knotwork jewelry. I often sell at Renaissance Faires and as part of my sales pitch I tell the crowds "I am a Knotty girl. I like to tie one on, in public! Which is not to say tie one up but that can be fun too." This often gets the attention I seek.
From Gary Glasser Subject: Gordian
Def: Highly intricate; extremely difficult to solve.
Might one say one cuts the Gordian knot with Occam's razor?

Edith Wharton (1862-1937) wrote over 40 books in 40 years, including authoritative works on architecture, gardens, interior design, and travel. Essentially self-educated, she was the first woman awarded: the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University, and full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Edith Wharton designed and built her "first real home," The Mount, in 1902. The Mount was Wharton's design laboratory where she implemented the principles articulated in her first major book, The Decoration of Houses (1897). Wharton believed that the design of a house should be treated architecturally and should honor the principles of proportion, harmony, simplicity, and suitability. She viewed proportion as the "good breeding of architecture" and symmetry as the "sanity of decoration." She saw house decoration as "a branch of architecture" and the decorator's role as "not to explain illusions, but to produce them." She thought gardens, too, should be architectural compositions.
http://www.edithwharton.org/index.php?catId=6&subCatId=16

Alliteration is the repetition of the same sound, usually of a consonant, at the beginning of two or more words immediately succeeding each other or at short intervals. Two examples:
(1) The repetition of f and g in fields ever fresh, groves ever green
(2) Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers, Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061204162937AA40mUK
Alliterative names: Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan, Billy Budd, January Jones.
Clark Kent

Q: Is it true that some of the newly-elected congressmen are living in their offices at the Capitol in Washington?
A: Yes, and Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Bob Latta, both R-Ohio, are among at least 30, and perhaps as many as 50, lawmakers who do so.
The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which made the estimate, has called for the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate whether the congressmen are getting an unfair tax break and violating their own rules by making personal use of public resources on Capitol Hill. Although the newest congressmen have swelled the number of office-sleepers, the practice is not new. "For years, at least a few lawmakers have slept on couches and cots in their offices to avoid long commutes or pricey Washington rents," Associated Press reported. "Some see it as a badge of honor, a commitment to frugality and hard work, and a reminder to constituents they don't consider Washington home," it reported. AP, Jordan and Latta aides
Q: Where is the new population center from the 2010 Census?
A: It is 2.7 miles northeast of Plato, Mo. ¬¬ U.S. Census Bureau
http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Apr/JU/ar_JU_041811.asp?d=041811,2011,Apr,18&c=c_13