Tuesday, October 22, 2013


The Diary of a Nobody is an English comic novel written by the brothers George and Weedon Grossmith, with illustrations by the latter.  It originated as an intermittent serial in Punch magazine in 1888–89 and first appeared in book form, with extended text and added illustrations, in 1892.  The Diary records the daily events in the lives of a London clerk, Charles Pooter, his wife Carrie, his son Lupin, and numerous friends and acquaintances over a period of 15 months.  Before their collaboration on the Diary, the brothers each pursued successful careers on the stage.  George originated nine of the principal comedian roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas over 12 years from 1877 to 1889.  He also established a national reputation as a piano sketch entertainer and wrote a large number of songs and comic pieces.  Weedon, before embarking on his stage career, had worked as an artist and illustrator.  The Diary was the brothers' only mature collaboration.  Most of its humour derives from Charles Pooter's unconscious and unwarranted sense of his own importance, and the frequency with which this delusion is punctured by gaffes and minor social humiliations.  In an era of rising expectations within the lower-middle classes, the daily routines and modest ambitions described in the Diary were instantly recognised by its contemporary readers, and provided later generations with a glimpse of the past that it became fashionable to imitate.  Although its initial public reception was muted, the Diary came to be recognised by critics as a classic work of humour, and it has never been out of print.  It helped to establish a genre of humorous popular fiction based on lower or lower-middle class aspirations, and was the forerunner of numerous fictitious diary novels in the later 20th century.  The Diary has been the subject of several stage and screen adaptations, including Ken Russell's "silent film" treatment of 1964, a four-part TV film scripted by Andrew Davies in 2007, and a widely praised stage version in 2011, in which an all-male cast of three played all the parts.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Nobody 

Names of U.S. states with connection to England
#1     Delaware  named to honor Thomas West, 3rd (or 12th) baron, often named in history books simply as Lord Delaware or Lord De la Warr.   He served as governor of the Jamestown Colony, and the Delaware Bay was named after him. 
#2     Pennsylvania  named to honor Admiral William Penn and his son, William Penn, Pennsylvania's founder.
#3     New Jersey   James. Duke of York,  named the colony New Jersey to honor Sir George Carteret, who had been the Governor of Jersey, a British island in the English Channel.
#4     Georgia  named to honor King George II of England.
#7     Maryland  named to honor the Queen consort Henrietta Maria (1609-1669), the wife of Britain's King Charles I
#8     South Carolina  named to honor King Charles I (Carolus is Latin for Charles).
#9     New Hampshire named for Hampshire, England, by Captain John Mason.
#10   Virginia  named for Queen Elizabeth I of England (she was known as the Virgin Queen).
#11   New York  The English took over of the area that had been called "New Netherland" in 1664, and renamed it New York to honor the Duke of York (York is a city in England).
#12   North Carolina  North Carolina was named to honor King Charles I (Carolus is Latin for Charles).
#35   West Virginia  West Virginia was named for Queen Elizabeth I of England (she was known as the Virgin Queen). Sir Walter Raleigh may have suggested this name around 1584. 

The Constitution of the United States of America:  Analysis and Interpretation (popularly known as the Constitution Annotated) and including analysis of Supreme Court cases decided through June 26, 2013 contains legal analysis and interpretation of the United States Constitution, based primarily on Supreme Court case law.  This regularly updated resource is especially useful when researching the constitutional implications of a specific issue or topic.  The Featured Topics and Cases page highlights recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that demonstrate pivotal interpretations of the Constitution's provisions.  http://beta.congress.gov/constitution-annotated/ 

Neil Gaiman:  Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming, a lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens  Fiction has two uses.  Firstly, it's a gateway drug to reading.  The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it's hard, because someone's in trouble and you have to know how it's all going to end … that's a very real drive.  And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going.  To discover that reading per se is pleasurable.  Once you learn that, you're on the road to reading everything.  And reading is key.  Fiction can show you a different world.  It can take you somewhere you've never been.  Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in.  Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.   I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them.  If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally.  But that is to miss the point fundamentally.  I think it has to do with nature of information.  Information has value, and the right information has enormous value.  For all of human history, we have lived in a time of information scarcity, and having the needed information was always important, and always worth something:  when to plant crops, where to find things, maps and histories and stories – they were always good for a meal and company.  Information was a valuable thing, and those who had it or could obtain it could charge for that service.  In the last few years, we've moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut.  Read the entire lecture at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming 

'Rip and tuck'--something akin to 'fast and loose'--is first found in James Kirke Paulding's Westward ho!, 1832:  "There we were at rip and tuck, up one tree and down another."  The first known usage of 'nip and tuck' comes from an 1845 edition of The American Whig Review:  "The boys used to say, it was nip and tuck between Jack... and Castro, who would do the most foolhardy things."  I have found the expression in print a little earlier than that, although just as a name rather than an expression that implies the 'close result' meaning.  That is is the Milwaukie Sentinel, September 1843.  The paper reported on the suggestion that various adjoining mineworkings in the Wisconsin goldfields should be merged.  One of the sub-fields was call 'Nip and Tuck'.  Why 'nip' and why 'tuck'?  There are several meanings of both words but none of them suggests anything that relates directly to any sort of close race or result.  The phrase is somewhat similar to 'neck and neck', which has virtually the same meaning.  It is possible, although I'd admit, entirely speculative, that 'nip and tuck' is a deliberately garbled version of 'neck and neck'.  The phrase was later appropriated as the name of the minor cosmetic surgery 'skin-tightening'.  Gary Martin 
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nip-and-tuck.html 

At first glance — and even, quite frankly, after extended contemplation — there is little to hint that the quince is one of the most delicious of fall's fruits.  It is rough-hewn and blocky in appearance, like someone's first woodworking project gone horribly wrong.  And should you make the mistake of taking a bite of it raw, that's kind of how it tastes too.  But you know about judging things on first impressions.  Take that same quince, give it a little careful tending and you'll find a fruit that is utterly transformed.  Cook quince — slowly and gently, bathed in just a little bit of sugar syrup — and the flesh that was once wooden and tannic turns a lovely rose hue, with a silky texture and a subtly sweet, spicy flavor that recalls apples and pears baked with cinnamon and clove.  The traditional way to cook a quince is by poaching it in spiced simple syrup.  That's easy enough, but I've come to favor a slightly different technique from my old friend Deborah Madison's cookbook "Seasonal Fruit Desserts."  She bakes them in a syrup made partly with white wine and spiced with cinnamon, clove and cardamom along with tangerine or orange zest.  It seems to me when baked this way, quince takes less time to cook through, and it achieves that perfect rosy color more reliably.  Plus, there's that nice little bit of caramelization that the edges pick up.  Mmmm, caramelized quince syrup.  Russ Parsons  Link to recipe for candied quince and find tips for using cooked quince at:  http://www.latimes.com/food/la-fo-calcook-20131012,0,4350326.story 

Party affiliations, 2004-2013  Are you a Republican or a Democrat, or an independent?  If you are an independent, do you lean towards Republicans or Democrats?  See Gallup poll results and link to Gallup news stories at http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx 

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.  Sir Francis Bacon  English author, courtier, & philosopher (1561-1626)  http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/2856.html

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