Poets, novelists, essayists, and anyone who writes uses the same currency: words. That's all they need to say to say all there is to say. The trick is to choose the right denomination and arrange them in the right way. There are times when nothing quite fits, and then you can invent your own. You have the building blocks. This week we'll feature words made by using combining forms. What are combining forms? You can think of them as Lego (from Danish, leg: play + godt: well) bricks of language. As the term indicates, a combining form is a linguistic atom that occurs only in combination with some other form which could be a word, another combining form, or an affix (unlike a combining form, an affix can't attach to another affix).
duopsony (doo-OP-suh-nee, dyoo-) noun
A market condition in which there are only two buyers, thus exerting great influence on price.
From Greek duo- (two) + -opsony, from opsonia (purchase).
From Greek duo- (two) + -opsony, from opsonia (purchase).
NOTES
monopoly: one seller, many buyers
duopoly: two sellers, many buyers
oligopoly: a few sellers, many buyers
gerontology (jer-uhn-TOL-uh-jee) noun
The scientific study of aging.
From Greek geronto-, from geras (old age) + -logy (study). Earliest documented use: 1903.
autologous (ah-TOL-uh-guhs) adjective
Involving a situation in which the donor and the recipient (of blood, skin, bone, etc.) are the same person. From Greek auto- (self) + -logous (as in homologous), from logos (proportion, ratio, word). Earliest documented use: 1911.
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

The Fine Art of Where to Start by DARIN STRAUSS
Good stories can be good for a thousand and one reasons, but failed stories often fail in the same way. For the fiction students I teach, one of the most common mistakes is to start in the wrong place. Often the actual story doesn't begin until about a third of the way into their narratives. They start off instead with excessive scene-setting, metaphysical speculation, introducing nonessential dramatis personae, throat-clearing, etc. But there's no need for any of that.
One of the first lessons in writing school is (to paraphrase my great teacher Lee K. Abbott) "a story equals trouble"—that is, no trouble, no story. E.L. Doctorow made the same point, a bit cryptically, when he recommended starting a story "as late as possible." By which he meant as late as possible in the crucial action. The clearest guidance on this point may come from the Canadian writer Douglas Glover, a master of narrative structure. He compares a story's protagonist to a boulder perched insecurely on a hilltop and suggests that we imagine a bird coming along to knock the boulder off the hill. That's a perfect place to begin—the moment of impact, the start of the trouble. The motion of the boulder is the story. For an example of this, look at a classic: Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." His opening line: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect." The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs. —Mr. Strauss's books include the novel "Chang & Eng" and the memoir "Half a Life," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550304577138892700746530.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Sarah Trimmer (1741–1810) was a writer and critic of 18th-century British children's literature. Her periodical, The Guardian of Education, helped to define the emerging genre by seriously reviewing children's literature for the first time; it also provided the first history of children's literature, establishing a canon of the early landmarks of the genre that scholars still use today. Trimmer's most popular children's book, Fabulous Histories, inspired numerous children's animal stories and remained in print for over a century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Trimmer

TWO HUNDRED AND COUNTING Armies, archaeology and art are on the agenda at Ohio Historical Society sites in coming weeks. The War of 1812 bicentennial gets underway in 2012 and featured events begin, appropriately, with the 2012 Bentley Lecture Series at Fort Meigs, our reconstructed War of 1812 fort in Perrysburg near Toledo.
At Fort Meigs in Perrysburg Visitor Center
Third Thursdays except June, July, August and December
Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Detroit and the War of 1812, with Dr. Denver Brunsman of Wayne State University
Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Thus Fell Tecumseh, with Frank Kuron
See future dates in various locations at: http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/enews/0112f.shtml
Bentley Lecture Series programs are free. For more information, call 800.283.8916
or visit fortmeigs.org.

JERUSALEM In the three months since the Israeli Health Ministry awarded a prize to a pediatrics professor for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews, her experience at the awards ceremony has become a rallying cry. The professor, Channa Maayan, knew that the acting health minister, who is ultra-Orthodox, and other religious people would be in attendance. So she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But that was hardly enough. Not only did Dr. Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, as men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage. The list of controversies grows weekly: Organizers of a conference last week on women’s health and Jewish law barred women from speaking from the podium, leading at least eight speakers to cancel; ultra-Orthodox men spit on an 8-year-old girl whom they deemed immodestly dressed; the chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army declined to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform; protesters depicted the Jerusalem police commander as Hitler on posters because he instructed public bus lines with mixed-sex seating to drive through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods; vandals blacked out women’s faces on Jerusalem billboards. ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/world/middleeast/israel-faces-crisis-over-role-of-ultra-orthodox-in-society.html