Legally Sound

Q.  What singing group is called Legally Sound?  A.  Legally Sound is a student-run a cappella singing group at the University of Maryland School of Law.  Other law school choirs are at Brigham Young University, Howard University,  the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis and Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines.   

In the era of e-books and chain stores, the publishing industry now lives and dies by blockbusters and franchises.  The Franchise Four, according to the July 15, 2013 issue of Forbes, are:  E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter series), Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games) and Stephenie Meyer (Twilight).  The buzz is that Samantha Shannon's upcoming novel The Bone Season, the first of a planned seven-part series, will be a runaway bestseller.   

clef  noun   1570s in a musical sense, "character on a staff to indicate its name and pitch," from Middle French clef (12c.) "key, musical clef, trigger," from a figurative or transferred use of classical Latin clavis, which had only the literally sense "key".  The most common is the treble, violin, or G-clef, which crosses on the second line of the staff, denoting that as the G above middle C on the piano. 

roman  noun   "a novel," 1765, from French roman, from Old French romanz (see romance); roman à clef, novel in which characters represent real persons, literally "novel with a key" (French), first attested in English 1893.  http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=roman+a+clef 

Have you ever wondered what was the very first book purchased by the Toledo library system?  From 1875 through 1951, accession numbers were assigned to all items purchased for the collection.  Beginning with 0001 these volumes chronicle the history of a collection that grew to more than one million volumes by the time accession numbers were no longer tracked in 1951.  Still wondering about that first book?  Accession number 0001 is assigned to a novel written by Edmond About

(1828-1885) entitled Man with a Broken Ear. 

Toledo-Lucas County Public Library Online, July/August 2013 

THE MAN WITH THE BROKEN EAR TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF EDMOND ABOUT BY HENRY HOLT  NEW YORK  HOLT & WILLIAMS  1872 

Read at:  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20724/20724-h/20724-h.htm 

A doughnut or donut is a type of fried dough confectionery or dessert food.  The doughnut is popular in many countries and prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franchised specialty outlets.  They are usually deep-fried from a flour dough, and typically either ring-shaped or without a hole and often filled.  Other types of batters can also be used, and various toppings and flavorings are used for different types, such as sugar glazing, chocolate glazing, or maple glazing.  The two most common types are the toroidal ring doughnut and the filled doughnut—which is injected with fruit preserves, cream, custard, or other sweet fillings.  A small spherical piece of dough may be cooked as a doughnut hole. Other shapes include rings, balls, and flattened spheres, as well as ear shapes, twists and other forms.  Doughnut varieties are also divided into cake and risen type doughnuts.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doughnut 

NOTE that a doughnut may also refer to a circular skid mark or a small tire for temporary use. 

A traditional cruller (or twister) is a fried pastry often made from a rectangle of dough, with a cut made in the middle that allows it to be pulled over and through itself producing twists in the sides of the donut.  Crullers have been described as resembling "a small, braided torpedo" and having been "a staple of the New England diet since the Pilgrims' day".  Some other cruller styles are made of a denser dough somewhat like that of a cake doughnut formed in a small loaf or stick shape, but not always twisted.  Crullers may be topped with plain powdered sugar; powdered sugar mixed with cinnamon; or icing.  However, a "French cruller" is a fluted, ring-shaped doughnut made from choux pastry with a light airy texture.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruller 

Literary works on mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.  Find essay listing works in seven categories:  Early Works, Memoirs, Novels by Japanese Americans,  

The Camps as Experienced or Imagined by Non-Japanese Americans, Anthologies, Novels Influenced by Wartime Incarceration, Poetry and Drama and reference notes called "for more information.  http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Literary%20works%20on%20incarceration/

From the above list: 

Snow Falling on Cedars went virtually unnoticed when it was released in hardback.  Once it was published in paperback, however, the book's popularity gained momentum from word of mouth, and the book became a paperback bestseller.  In fact, David Guterson's novel became the fastest-selling book in Vintage Books' (the publisher that picked up the novel's paperback rights) history.  Overseas, the novel also enjoyed best-selling status; Snow Falling on Cedars has been translated into fifteen languages.  The success of the book enabled Guterson to quit his teaching job and focus on writing.  In addition, the novel won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1995.  http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-2592600022/snow-falling-cedars.html

Not from the above list, but of possible interest: 

Songs My Mother Taught Me, a seminal collection of Wakako Yamauchi's plays and stories was published in 1994.  Yamauchi is a distinguished playwright, short-story writer, poet and painter.  Through her creative work, she draws portraits of people who struggle with their dreams and passions, while facing the psychological trauma of prejudice, economic depression, and the concentration camps of World War II.  As a young child and adult, she witnessed the overt racism and harsh labor conditions her parents endured and later built these and other personal memories into the details of her work.  She was born Wakako Nakamura on October 24, 1924, in Westmorland, California to immigrant parents who farmed in the Imperial Valley, near the Mexican border.  When Yamauchi was seventeen years old, she and her family were incarcerated at Poston concentration camp in Arizona (in barrack apartment 12-1-A—the title of a play she would later write).  http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Wakako%20Yamauchi/ 

July 16, 2013  Thousands of descendants of Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians who the U.S. Army slaughtered at the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado never received the land and property promised them by treaty, a class action claims in Federal Court.  Lead plaintiff Homer Flute claims the United States has treaty obligations to as many as 15,000 descendants of the victims.  He and three other named plaintiffs sued the United States, the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs for an accounting of what is owed to each victim's family under the Treaty of Little Arkansas.  The class cites numerous breaches of federal trust responsibility, failure to account and violations of the Administrative Procedure Act.
They are represented by David Askman with Hunsucker Goodstein in Denver.  Sam Reynolds  http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/16/59394.htm