The National September 11 Memorial opens to the public Monday, September 12 -- a decade and a day after terror attacks brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. The memorial opened a day early on Sunday only to victims' family members and those attending the commemoration service at ground zero. The finished plaza is a calm spot in the midst of a busy construction zone for 1 World Trade Center -- the new skyscraper rising above the site. The focal points of the memorial are a pair of granite reflecting pools -- "voids," as designer Michael Arad calls them -- that plunge into the earth. Located on the footprints of the old twin towers, they are open-topped cubes, nearly an acre in size. Their walls are clad in dark granite, surrounded by brass parapets engraved with nearly 3,000 names: those killed on September 11, 2001, in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, as well as in a 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. The largest man-made waterfalls in North America wash over the dark granite, flowing from beneath the etched names into the pools below. http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn

Special Peace Issue from A.Word.A.Day published September 20, 2001 http://wordsmith.org/awad/awadmail48.html

Tea is the agricultural product of the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of various cultivars and sub-varieties of the Camellia sinensis plant, processed and cured using various methods. "Tea" also refers to the aromatic beverage prepared from the cured leaves by combination with hot or boiling water, and is the common name for the Camellia sinensis plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world. Camellia sinensis is an evergreen plant that grows mainly in tropical and sub-tropical climates. Nevertheless, some varieties can also tolerate marine climates and are cultivated as far north as Pembrokeshire in the British mainland and Washington in the United States. Tea is traditionally classified based on the techniques with which it is produced and processed.
White tea: Wilted and unoxidized
Yellow tea: Unwilted and unoxidized, but allowed to yellow
Green tea: Unwilted and unoxidized
Oolong: Wilted, bruised, and partially oxidized
Black tea: Wilted, sometimes crushed, and fully oxidized
Post-fermented tea: Green tea that has been allowed to ferment/compost
See much more including pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea

There is, perhaps, no more uplifting musical experience than hearing the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah” performed in a perfect space. Many critics regard Symphony Hall in Boston — 70 feet wide, 120 feet long and 65 feet high — as just that space. Some 3,000 miles away, however, a visitor led into the pitch-blackness of Chris Kyriakakis’s audio lab at the University of Southern California to hear a recording of the performance would have no way to know how big the room was. Acousticians have been designing concert halls for more than a century, but Dr. Kyriakakis does something different. He shapes the sound of music to conform to the space in which it is played. The goal is what Dr. Kyriakakis calls the “ground truth” — to replicate the original in every respect. “We remove the room,” he said, “so the ground truth can be delivered.” Dr. Kyriakakis, an electrical engineer at U.S.C. and the founder and chief technical officer of Audyssey Laboratories, a Los Angeles-based audio firm, could not achieve his results without modern sound filters and digital microprocessors. But the basis of his technique is rooted in the science of psychoacoustics, the study of sound perception by the human auditory system. “It’s about the human ear and the human brain, and understanding how the human ear perceives sound,” Dr. Kyriakakis said. Dr. Kyriakakis and his students went to Boston Symphony Hall in 1998 to conduct a series of sound tests and to record the “Messiah.” At that time, acousticians had long known that a shoebox-shaped concert hall like Boston’s offered the best sound, but what was important for Dr. Kyriakakis was to know why the human ear and the human brain that processed the signal felt that way. Back in Los Angeles, his team began a series of simple experiments. Listeners were invited into the labs to hear the Boston tests and music and to rate the sound, using a scale of 1 to 5. Researchers shifted the sound to different combinations of speakers around the room. Statistics showed that speakers directly ahead, combined with speakers 55 degrees to either side of the listener, provided the most attractive soundstage. The “wide” speakers mimicked the reflection from the side walls of the concert hall by causing the sound to arrive at the listener’s ears milliseconds after the sound from the front. Sound from other angles did not have as great an effect. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/science/06sound.html

Vegetable of the month: beans From the royal tombs of ancient Egypt to the Old Testament cultivation, preparation, and consumption of beans are recognized. In some Eastern cultures, legumes were a basic dietary staple that can be traced back more than 20,000 years. The lima and pinto bean were cultivated for the first time in the very earliest Mexican and Peruvian civilizations more than 5,000 years ago, being popular in both the Aztec and Inca cultures. The United States is by far the world leader in dry bean production. Each year, U.S. farmers plant from 1.5 to 1.7 million acres of edible dry beans. And while Americans are the chief consumers of these beans, 40 percent are shipped to international markets in more than 100 different countries around the globe.
http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov/month/beans.html

Bucky Katt quote I tried to be open-minded once. It interfered with my sense of humor. Get Fuzzy comic strip September 10,2011

Word of the Day Grimalkin grih-MAWL-kin (noun) A domestic cat, especially an old female cat www.merriam-webster.com
Website of the Day Jesse Owens Olympic Legend www.jesseowens.com
September 12 is the birthday of Jesse Owens - one of the greatest Olympians in history - take some time to learn about this phenomenal man and athlete. Did you know that he went to Ohio State University? Did you know that he essentially embarrassed Adolf Hitler by winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games? http://www.norwichbulletin.com/topnews/x1069112601/Morning-Minutes-Sept-12#axzz1XjZ6a8Te