Two of the most-recognized paintings of the 20th century are in Chicago

 

Nighthawks  Edward Hopper (1882-1967) said that Nighthawks was inspired by "a restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet," but the image, with its carefully constructed composition and lack of narrative, has a timeless quality that transcends its particular locale.  One of the best-known images of 20th-century art, the painting depicts an all-night diner in which three customers, all lost in their own thoughts, have congregated.  Fluorescent lights had just come into use in the early 1940s, and the all-night diner emits an eerie glow, like a beacon on the dark street corner.  Hopper eliminated any reference to an entrance, and the viewer, drawn to the light, is shut out from the scene by a seamless wedge of glass.  The four anonymous and uncommunicative night owls seem as separate and remote from the viewer as they are from one another.  http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/111628

 

American Gothic  Grant Wood (1891-1942) adopted the precise realism of 15th-century northern European artists, but his native Iowa provided the artist with his subject matter.  American Gothic depicts a farmer and his spinster daughter posing before their house, whose gabled window and tracery, in the American gothic style, inspired the painting's title.  In fact, the models were the painter's sister and their dentist.  Wood was accused of creating in this work a satire on the intolerance and rigidity that the insular nature of rural life can produce; he denied the accusation.  American Gothic is an image that epitomizes the Puritan ethic and virtues that he believed dignified the Midwestern character.  http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/6565

Park School librarian Laura Amy Schlitz on Jan. 28, 2012 joined a select group of authors to be twice honored with one of the nation's top prizes for children's literature.  Her 2012 Victorian gothic, "Splendors and Glooms," was named one of three Newbery Honor Books by the American Library Association during a morning news conference in Seattle.  An honor book essentially is a runner-up; the winner of the 2013 award was Katherine Applegate's "The One and Only Ivan," about an easygoing gorilla who rescues a baby elephant from a rundown mall and a life of neglect.  Monday's award puts Schlitz in distinguished company.  Five years ago she won the big prize — the 2008 Newbery medal — for "Good Masters!  Sweet Ladies!  Voices from a Medieval Village," a series of monologues about life in an English village in 1255 as told by the local children.  http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/bs-ae-schlitz-newbery-honor-20130128,0,3977071.story

A predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence or word clause which is used to modify the subject, object, and phrases which are governed by the verb.  It is used to express something about the subject; its actions, state, and property.  It should always agree with its subject, but it is independent from other parts of the sentence.  Predicates are classified according to structure (simple or compound) and morphology (verbal or nominal).  Each of them may vary according to the sphere of their uses.  Predicates always need verbs to indicate the action of their subjects.  Verbs, on the other hand, can stand on their own as predicates.  A sentence with just a subject and a verb can be a complete sentence in itself although a sentence may also contain more than one verb as in the case of predicates with verb clauses.  Here are some examples:
Sarah’s voice is loud.  “Sarah’s voice” is the subject and “is loud” is the predicate.
She lives. Here the verb “lives” is the predicate, and the sentence is complete without needing any additional words.
The job was finished early.  The predicate in this sentence is the verb clause “was finished early” which contains two verbs, “was” and “finished.”  http://www.differencebetween.net/language/grammar-language/difference-between-verb-and-predicate/

Take a walk on Watership Down  Find the route marked out step by step and a map of the place which inspired the book of the same title by Richard Adams:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/jun/07/watership-down-hampshire-walking-guides

Link to pictures of Watership Down at:  http://www.picturesofengland.com/England/Hampshire/Kingsclere/Watership_Down

Find words from the Lapine language spoken by characters in Watership Down at:  http://watershipdown.wikia.com/wiki/Lapine_Glossary

Down  noun

1  (usually downs) a gently rolling hill:  the gentle green contours of the downs

(the Downs) ridges of undulating chalk and limestone hills in southern England, used mainly for pasture.
2  (the Downs) a stretch of sea off the east coast of Kent, sheltered by the Goodwin Sands.
Origin:  Old English dūn 'hill' (related to Dutch duin 'dune'), perhaps ultimately of Celtic origin and related to Old Irish dún and obsolete Welsh din 'fort', which are from an Indo-European root shared by town  http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/down--3

Originally a Cantonese custom, dim sum is inextricably linked to the Chinese tradition of "yum cha" or drinking tea.  Teahouses sprung up to accommodate weary travelers journeying along the famous Silk Road.  Rural farmers, exhausted after long hours working in the fields, would also head to the local teahouse for an afternoon of tea and relaxing conversation.  Still, it took several centuries for the culinary art of dim sum to develop.  At one time it was considered inappropriate to combine tea with food:  a famous 3rd century Imperial physician claimed this would lead to excessive weight gain.  As tea's ability to aid in digestion and cleanse the palate became known, tea house proprietors began adding a variety of snacks, and the tradition of dim sum was born.  Link to dim sum recipes at:  http://chinesefood.about.com/od/diningout/p/dim_sum.htm

 

A $300 million renovation of the New York Public Library’s ornate marble palace in midtown Manhattan will start by evicting 1.2 million books.   The plan, unveiled Dec. 19, 2012 and overseen by the London firm of Foster & Partners, keeps more books onsite than had been suggested in earlier proposals. Books will be stored in space under Bryant Park and in a Princeton, New Jersey, facility.  Many of the ousted books are now available digitally or rarely requested, which may mollify some of the proposal’s prominent critics.  The books’ absence makes room for the most dramatic aspect of the Central Library Plan:  curving balconies of bookshelves and reading tables that will look out over Bryant Park.  The project, announced by the library’s president, Anthony Marx, will bring the circulating collections from two branch libraries into the building.  The dilapidated Mid-Manhattan Library, across the street, will be sold once the new facility has been built; ditto the Science, Industry and Business Library on 34th Street.   James S. Russell  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/n-y-pubic-library-norman-foster-evict-a-million-books.html

Nine enormous, new bronze bells have arrived in Paris to give the medieval Notre Dame Cathedral a more modern sound.   The bells will be on display at the cathedral from February 2 to February 25.  Then they will be hoisted to its iconic twin towers, where they will replace older bells that had become discordant.   The bells are named after saints and weigh 23 tons altogether. Most were cast in a foundry in the Normandy town of Villedieu.  The new bells are part of celebrations marking 850 years since the beginning of the cathedral's construction in 1163. It took nearly 90 years to build.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9841028/Notre-Dame-Cathedrals-new-bells-arrive.html