Face the music  This phrase meaning to accept responsibility, suffer consequences is an Americanism dating to the mid-19th century.  The underlying metaphor is uncertain.  From the New Hampshire Statesman and State Journal of 17 February 1834:  We want no equivocation—“face the music” this time—Gove and Barton are able backers.  There are a couple of common explanations for the phrase, but none have any conclusive evidence to support them.  The first explanation is that it derives from the stage.  With the musicians in a pit before the stage, to face the music is to turn towards the audience and either their hoots or cheers.  Another is that it is military in origin, and refers to a ceremony where an officer is cashiered and is literally drummed out of the service.  Because of the early citations from New Hampshire, it has also been suggested that face the music may have originated in contra dancing, a social dance form that was popular in 19th century New England and is still practiced in New Hampshire today.  

http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/face_the_music/

National Library Week  April 14-20, 2013  Find information about NLW and nine other library celebrations in April at:  http://www.ala.org/conferencesevents/celebrationweeks  Check your local library for a list of festivities.   

Find 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month in April at:  http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/94

Of all the historical and high-end treasures that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis accumulated and left behind, her scrapbook of poems — copied and illustrated by her two children — are what her daughter, Caroline Kennedy, treasures most.  Every holiday, Caroline and her brother, the late John F. Kennedy Jr., each used to select a poem to write in their own hands and then illustrate as a gift to their mother.  “We used to complain about it, and it was a big chore,” Kennedy said.  “But then, we secretly liked it.  My mother saved them and looked at the scrapbook.”  The scrapbook fell apart a while ago, Kennedy said, so she had it rebound with marbleized paper and a leather spine.  That’s her copy.   For the rest of us, Kennedy, 55, has compiled “Poems to Learn By Heart,” an anthology illustrated by Jon J. Muth.  Nicole Brodeur  http://seattletimes.com/html/nicolebrodeur/2020703413_nicolecarolinexml.html

The Internal Revenue Service has issued its annual “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams, reminding taxpayers to use caution during tax season to protect themselves against a wide range of schemes ranging from identity theft to return preparer fraud.  The Dirty Dozen listing, compiled by the IRS each year, lists a variety of common scams taxpayers can encounter at any point during the year.  But many of these schemes peak during filing season as people prepare their tax returns.  "This tax season, the IRS has stepped up its efforts to protect taxpayers from a wide range of schemes, including moving aggressively to combat identity theft and refund fraud," said IRS Acting Commissioner Steven T. Miller.  "The Dirty Dozen list shows that scams come in many forms during filing season.  Don't let a scam artist steal from you or talk you into doing something you will regret later."  Illegal scams can lead to significant penalties and interest and possible criminal prosecution.  IRS Criminal Investigation works closely with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to shutdown scams and prosecute the criminals behind them.   See descriptions of the Dirty Dozen at:  http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Releases-the-Dirty-Dozen-Tax-Scams-for-2013

 

The Utah teapot or Newell teapot is a 3D computer model which has become a standard reference object (and something of an in-joke) in the computer graphics community.  It is a mathematical model of an ordinary teapot of fairly simple shape, which appears solid, cylindrical and partially convex.  A teapot primitive is considered the equivalent of a "hello world" program, as a way to create an easy 3D scene with a somewhat complex model acting as a basic geometry reference for scene and light setup.  Many libraries will even have functions dedicated to drawing teapots.  The teapot model was created in 1975 by early computer graphics researcher Martin Newell, a member of the pioneering graphics program at the University of Utah.   

See images at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_teapot

See Martin Newell's drawing of the Utah teapot and other images at:  http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/computer-graphics-music-and-art/15/206

Tenterhooks are hooks in a device called a tenter.  Tenters were originally large wooden frames which were used as far back as the 14th century in the process of making woollen cloth.  After a piece of cloth was woven, it still contained oil from the fleece and some dirt.  A craftsperson called a fuller (also called a tucker or wa[u]lker) cleaned the woollen cloth in a fulling mill, and then had to dry it carefully or the woollen fabric would shrink.  To prevent this shrinkage, the fuller would place the wet cloth on a tenter, and leave it to dry outdoors.  The lengths of wet cloth were stretched on the tenter (from Latin tendere, meaning "to stretch") using tenterhooks (hooked nails driven through the wood) all around the perimeter of the frame to which the cloth's edges (selvedges) were fixed, so that as it dried the cloth would retain its shape and size.  In some manufacturing areas, entire tenter-fields, larger open spaces full of tenters, were once common.  By the mid-18th century, the phrase "on tenterhooks" came to mean being in a state of tension, uneasiness, anxiety, or suspense, i.e. figuratively stretched like the cloth on the tenter.  The word tenter is still used today to refer to production line machinery employed to stretch polyester films and similar fabrics.  The spelling "stenter" is also found.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenterhook 

A verb is often defined as a word which shows action or state of being.  Recognizing the verb is often the most important step in understanding the meaning of a sentence.  In the sentence The dog bit the man, bit is the verb and the word which shows the action of the sentence.  In the sentence The man is sitting on a chair, even though the action doesn't show much activity, sitting is the verb of the sentence.  In the sentence She is a smart girl, there is no action but a state of being expressed by the verb is.  The word be is different from other verbs in many ways but can still be thought of as a verb.  Unlike most of the other parts of speech, verbs change their form . Sometimes endings are added (learn - learned) and sometimes the word itself becomes different (teach-taught).  The different forms of verbs show different meanings related to such things as tense (past, present, future), person (first person, second person, third person), number (singular, plural) and voice (active, passive).  Verbs are also often accompanied by verb-like words called modals (may, could, should, etc.) and auxiliaries (do, have, will, etc.) to give them different meanings.  http://eslus.com/LESSONS/GRAMMAR/POS/pos3.htm

The nine parts of speech  http://www.edb.utexas.edu/minliu/pbl/ESOL/help/libry/speech.htm

April 5, 2013  The British Library and four other "legal deposit libraries'" have the right to collect and store everything that is published online in the UK.  It is estimated around a billion pages a year will be available for research.  It follows 10 years of planning and will also offer visitors access to material currently behind paywalls.  The other institutions involved are the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, the University Library, Cambridge and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.  The archive will cover 4.8 million websites and will include magazines, books and academic journals as well as alternative sources of literature, news and comment such as Mumsnet, the Beano online, Stephen Hawking's website, and the unofficial armed forces' bulletin board, ARRSE.    The new databases will cover all areas of interest, for example the website Style Scout - a fashion blog documenting London Street Fashion - will give historians a snapshot of what people were wearing in 2013.  As part of the launch of the process, the British Library has commissioned a survey of the top 100 websites that ought to be preserved for historians and researchers.  Among the sites recommended to keep material from are eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Tripadvisor and Rightmove.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22028738