Recycle old pages
Thanks, Heidi
When using old books for crafts, avoid acid pages. "Acid in paper can lead to brittle pages. Left unchecked, these brittle pages
continue to deteriorate until the books are unusable, literally crumbling in
ones hands. The acid can come from the ground wood pulp used in fiber stock or
additives such as bleach." http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2010/12/deacidification/
In the 18th century most paper was made from clothing rags. Thus the fibers were cotton and linen. Today most paper starts with wood pulp, and
the fibers are cellulose. The first
risky invention was bleach, around 1810. Until then you could only make white paper
from white rags. Colored paper was
cheaper, since you could always dye the rags if needed. The cheapest paper was blue: it came from
sailor's uniforms. Next came the search
for other fibers, starting in the early 19th century with “esparto grass” (not
much used in the US) and then, around 1840, trees. Wood pulp cellulose is fine. But trees also contain some acids such as
lignin, and if all you do is smash the tree with rollers the lignin is still in
the mix. If you add acid, then of course
you have acidic paper. And acidic paper
turns yellow and brittle; you can smell the vinegar. But mechanical pulp is very cheap since nearly
all of the tree turns into paper. The
most familiar example is newsprint. Today
most decent paper is made by an alkaline process. Read much more at: http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~lesk/spring06/lis556/P-paper.pdf
Books may be
made into fanciful sculptures or lined on walls as decoration or as
firewalls. Card catalog cabinets may be made into display cabinets.
“A handful”
certainly sounds singular, yet we may acceptably write, “Among the farmers, a
lucky handful are prosperous.” Number
and percentage are among the words that shift back and forth depending on
sense. So do some academic subjects such
as economics and politics. Couple
usually is better when coupled with a plural verb. http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/csj/CSJDec04.html
A handful of nouns appear to be plural in form but take a singular verb:
The news is
bad. Gymnastics is fun to
watch. Economics/mathematics/statistics is
said to be difficult. ("Economics" can sometimes be a plural concept,
as in "The economics of the situation demand that . . . .")
Numerical expressions are usually singular, but can be plural if the
individuals within a numerical group are acting individually:
Fifty thousand dollars is
a lot of money. One-half of the faculty is retiring this summer.
One-half of the faculty have doctorates. Fifty percent of the students
have voted already.
And another handful of nouns might seem to be singular in nature but take a plural
form and always use a plural verb:
My pants are
torn. (Nowadays you will sometimes see
this word as a singular "pant" [meaning one pair of pants]
especially in clothing ads, but most writers would regard that as an
affectation.) Her scissors were stolen. The glasses have
slipped down his nose again.
When a noun names the title of something or is a word being used as a word, it is
singular whether the word takes a singular form or not.
Faces is the name of the new restaurant
downtown. Okies, which most people regard as a disparaging word, was
first used to describe the residents of Oklahoma during the 1930s.
Chelmsley Brothers is the best moving company in town. Postcards
is my favorite novel. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/plurals.htm
On March 27, 1902, the Chicago Daily News used the name “Cubs” for the first time in
print. The nickname was coined when Frank Selee (1902-1905) became the new
manager of the Chicago National League
Ball Club, Inc. The
nickname “Cubs” was derived from the new manager rebuilding the team with
young, unproven players to replace the veterans that had jumped leagues to play
in the American League for higher pay. Due
to new owner Jim Hart signing so
many young players the club had taken on the name “Chicago Spuds”, a name given by the Chicago Tribune that did not
appeal to the fans. When Frank Selee started to build what
would be the nucleus of a championship team, many felt a more appropriate
nickname was needed. http://chicagocubsonline.com/archives/2013/03/happy-birthday-cubs.php
From Brent Musburger: First time I saw the term ‘March Madness,’ it
was print, in an ad for a car dealer. It
was referring to the Illinois high school basketball tournament. [Ed. Note: the term originally comes from a
magazine writer describing the high school tournament in 1939: "A little March madness may complement
and contribute to sanity and help keep society on an even keel.”] When we got the rights to the NCAA tournament
in 1982, it was something that seemed appropriate to say.” The Illinois High School Association tried to
trademark “March Madness” in 1989. Then, in 1996, the IHSA sued the NCAA in an
effort to stop one of its corporate partners from using the term on a CD-ROM
game. Eventually, the two sides reached
a compromise: the IHSA can use the
phrase on the high school level, and the NCAA gets the college tournament. http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/list/201103/so-how-did-it-get-be-called-march-madness
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