On South Carolina's once-isolated Sea Islands, Gullah is still spoken, African traditions are carried on, and salty marshes perfume the air. After the Civil War, the Gullahs were abandoned in the islands flung off the Carolina coast because the land was considered worthless. That abandonment and the century of isolation that followed have preserved the Gullah language, culture, and daily way of life. Families live for generations on the same farm, grow much of their own food, pick sweet grass to make baskets, and attend the one-room praise houses of their slave ancestors, where hymns are harmonized in Gullah and Geechee. Gullah comes from a west African language and means "a people blessed by God." Throughout most of the South, African culture perished with the slaves. But in the Sea Islands it has been kept powerfully alive by women like Marquetta L. Goodwine. Queen Quet, as she's known locally, travels the country, spreading her love of Gullah life by performing what she calls "histo-musical" presentations in both English and Gullah. Another woman, Natalie Daise, shares Gullah art and culture by means of Ms. Natalie's Workshop on St. Helena. Batik-patterned burlap lines the walls, and the gallery and studio floors are painted sky blue and decorated with turtles and fish. Shelves hold locally made candles, woven banana- and pineapple-fiber frames, African rain sticks, and Australian didgeridoos. In the back room, Daise shows children how to make bracelets using crystals and African ceramic beads—typical of a scene from her Gullah Gullah Island show on Nickelodeon, which ended its run last year. But cultural proponents like Daise and Goodwine may not be enough to preserve the Sea Islands, says Hurriyah Asar, owner of the No Pork Café. Since the Georgia native moved to St. Helena six years ago, 30 percent of the island has been sold off. "Developers come in with cash, so they don't even have to deal with the banks," she says. http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/nothing-could-be-finer

The South Carolina Sea Islands are a low-lying chain of sandy sea islands stretching from Florida north along the coastlines of Georgia and South Carolina. These beautiful islands are alive with wildlife of all description. Considered some of the best fishing venues in the southeastern United States, many of these isolated palm covered islands have stunning white sand beaches. The most visited, and most famous island in the chain is Hilton Head. See a map at: http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/scisles.htm

Frogmore Stew and Other Lowcountry Recipes http://www.beaufortcountylibrary.org/htdocs-sirsi/frogmore.htm

With its abundant farms and shrimp docks, St. Helena Island, just 5 miles east of Beaufort, offers visitors a glimpse into rural Lowcountry life past and present. St. Helena is home to the Penn Center, one of the first schools for the children of freed slaves the location of a small rural cottage, where Martin Luther King, Jr. drafted his famous “I have a dream speech”.
http://www.beaufortsc.org/more/like-a-local/sthelenaisland.stml

Considered the grandfather of long grain rices in the Americas, Carolina Gold (which emanated from Africa and Indonesia ) became a commercial staple grain in the coastal lands of Charles Towne in the Carolina Territory by 1685. Possessing superior flavor, aroma, texture and cooking qualities (and a beautiful golden hue in the fields), Carolina Gold rice brought fortunes to those who produced it and created an influential culture and cuisine in the city of Charleston . Though the culture and cuisine disappeared with the Civil War, Carolina Gold continued to set quality standards for long grain rice well into the 20th century. In fact, the terms “Carolina Rice” and “long grain” became interchangeable worldwide, underscoring the impact of Charleston ’s contribution to Colonial Carolina Gold Rice production. After the Depression Carolina Gold rice lost its prominence to new varieties and became virtually extinct. But in the mid 1980s Dr. Richard Schulz, an eye surgeon and plantation owner from Savannah, collected stores of Carolina Gold from a USDA seed bank and repatriated the rice to its former home along coastal wetlands around Charleston . By 1986 he produced enough rice to sell. Clemson University Coastal Research and Education Center began growing Carolina Gold rice for sustainable farming research in 2001 for the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. Today there are 60 acres planted to this near extinct heirloom rice along the South Carolina Coast. Find recipe at: http://www.carolinagoldricefoundation.org/recipes/classic_rice/classic_rice.html

If you squint your eyes in the afternoon light of the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, you can just make out what looks like an unassuming structure of metal and glass. Look closer and you'll see Richard Neutra's VDL Research House, which exemplifies the dream of American Modernism—an architecture with as much promise and optimism as any ever conceived. As the architect's own home, it was a labor of love and a laboratory for some of his most radical ideas. This is actually Neutra's second building on the site. The first was built in 1932 with a grant from an ardent supporter (VDL stands for C.H. Van der Leeuw, a Dutch industrialist so taken with Neutra's 1929 Lovell House that he immediately wrote a check just to see what the architect would build for himself). After a disastrous fire destroyed the structure in 1963, the Austrian-born architect conceived VDL II in collaboration with his son Dion. What rose from the ashes is a more interesting building than the one that was lost, from the colossal metal louvers on the entrance facade to the hanging gardens of the interior courtyard. It represents both the beginning and the high point of the humane-organic Modernism spearheaded by Neutra, embraced by Los Angeles and captured so memorably in the photographs of Julius Shulman. Economic use of materials as well as the teasing out of sensuality by water elements and manipulations of light, all within forms of surprisingly modest scale, express perfectly Neutra's position as the anti–Mies van der Rohe, the architect who would deliver us a future that was friendly and usable. It is one of the most important buildings in America. The VDL Research House, at 2300 Silver Lake Boulevard, is open to the public Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. David Netto
See pictures at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653521365695968.html

In the world of chef José Andrés, if the dozens of projects he has constantly simmering aren't marinated in conviviality, then he wants no part of it. "José has always been smart enough to know that it is not enough to just be a 'chef' in the traditional sense," says Rob Wilder, his business partner and CEO of ThinkFoodGroup, their umbrella company. "He steps back and looks at the whole business, the people, the guests, the flow." Nowhere has he been more active than at DC Central Kitchen, an astonishingly well-run organization responsible for feeding the area's large homeless population as well as eight local schools. The DC Central Kitchen isn't big enough for Andrés, so he's set up his own nonprofit, the World Central Kitchen, with the goal of replicating the DC Central Kitchen model—one that doesn't just turn donations into meals, but uses the food they cook to create revenue that helps keep the business running—on the largest scale possible. Of all the kitchens under Andrés's thumb, Minibar is the one that matters most, not just because it represents the highest expression of avant-garde cuisine, but because it connects him literally and figuratively to the best kitchens of Spain, above all, to El Bulli and Ferran Adrià. It was there, as a 19-year-old just out of the Navy, that Andrés worked under the young Catalan destined to become the most influential chef of the 21st century. "As a chef, the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to me was being a good friend of Ferran," says Andrés. With El Bulli having shuttered its doors in July, Andrés believes Minibar is the closest remaining thing to the El Bulli experience. "I could be in Minibar every day, 18 hours a day, but then I couldn't be doing seven other restaurants, World Central Kitchen, speaking engagements, all of it." Matt Goulding
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653392488212366.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Q: Why isn't Veterans Day always observed on a Monday?
A: The Uniform Holiday Bill of 1968 required that it, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day and Columbus Day be celebrated on Monday to give three-day weekends to federal employees. But there was much confusion when the first Veterans Day under the law was celebrated on Oct. 25, 1971, and many legislatures and veterans groups complained. In 1975, Congress returned it to Nov. 11, regardless of the day of the week. This year, it is Friday, 11-11-11. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Q: How many veterans are there?
A: The United States has nearly 22 million military veterans. About 15 percent have a service-related disability. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Nov/JU/ar_JU_110711.asp?d=110711,2011,Nov,07&c=c_13
Note that there are nine 5-digit palindromes (11-1-11 through 11-9-11) and one 6-digit palindrome (11-11-11) in November this year.

The General Assembly of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), taking place at the Institute of Physics in London, has approved the names of three new elements. Elements 110, 111 and 112 have been named darmstadtium (Ds), roentgenium (Rg) and copernicium (Cn). The elements are so large and unstable they can only be made in the lab and quickly break down into other elements. They are known as Super-heavy elements. Roentgenium was originally discovered in 1994 when a team at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Germany created three atoms of the element. It has been named after Nobel Prize winning German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who was the first to produce and detect X-rays in 1895. Darmstadtium was discovered by the same group in 1994 and is named after the city of Darmstadt, where the GSI Helmholtz Centre is based. Copernicium was named after Prussian astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who died in 1543 and first suggested that the Earth revolves around the sun. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8871840/Periodic-Table-swells-as-three-new-elements-named.html