The library of Celsus is an
ancient Roman building in Ephesus, Anatolia, now
part of Selçuk,
Turkey. It was built in honor of the Roman
Senator Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus
(completed in 135 AD) by Celsus' son, Gaius Julius Aquila (consul, 110 AD). Celsus had been consul in 92 AD, governor of Asia in 115 AD, and a wealthy and popular
local citizen. He was a native of nearby
Sardis and
amongst the earliest men of purely Greek
origin to become a consul in the Roman
Empire and is honored both as a Greek and a Roman on the library itself. Celsus paid for the construction of the
library with his own personal wealth. The
library was built to store 12,000 scrolls and to serve as a monumental tomb for
Celsus. Celsus is buried in a sarcophagus
beneath the library, in the main entrance which is both a crypt containing his sarcophagus
and a sepulchral monument to him. It was
unusual to be buried within a library or even within city limits, so this was a
special honor for Celsus. See images and link to list of libraries in the
ancient world at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Celsus
eponym word named for a person (real or
fictitious) Example: degree Celsius (unit of temperature) and Celsius
(Moon crater) Anders Celsius (1701-1744), was the Swedish astronomer
and scientist who invented a thermometer with 0 for the boiling point and 100
for the freezing point of water. After his
death in 1744 the scale was reversed to its present form. http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/eponyms/eponym_list_c.html
ananym
(AN-uh-nim) noun A name
formed by reversing letters of another name, often used as a pseudonym. [From Greek ana- (back) + -onym (name).] Examples:
Talk show host Oprah's production company is named Harpo. Doctor Seuss (Theodore Geisel) wrote many
books under the name Theo LeSieg. http://wordsmith.org/words/ananym.html
The
Literary Landmarks Association was founded in 1986 by former Friends of Libraries USA (FOLUSA) president Frederick
G. Ruffner to encourage the dedication of historic literary sites. The first dedication was at Slip F18 in Bahia
Mar, Florida, the anchorage of the Busted Flush, the houseboat home of novelist
John D. MacDonald's protagonist Travis McGee.
In 1989, the Literary Landmark project became an official FOLUSA
committee. Literary Landmarks continues
with United for Libraries, the division of American Library Association created
by the joining of FOLUSA and the Association for Library Trustees and Advocates (ALTA). Dedications have included homes of famous
writers (Tennessee Williams, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, William Faulkner),
libraries and museum collections, literary scenes (such as John's Grill in San
Francisco, immortalized by Dashiell Hammett, and Willa Cather's Prairie near
Red Cloud, Nebraska), and even "Grip" the Raven, formerly the pet of
Charles Dickens and inspiration to Edgar Allan Poe and now presiding (stuffed)
at the Rare Books Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia. The list of dedicated sites continues to grow. Link to
Literary Landmarks by author, state
and year at: http://www.ala.org/united/products_services/literarylandmarks
PLAY HOOKY -
"There is no widely accepted explanation for the word 'hookey' or 'hooky.'
An Americanism that arose in the late
19th century, when compulsory attendance laws became the rule in public
schools, 'hooky' may be a compression of the older expression 'hook it,' 'to
escape or make off,' formed by dropping the 't' in the phrase. Or it could be related to the old slang word
'hook,' meaning 'to steal,': kids stealing a day off from school. 'Hooky' has so often been associated with
going fishing that it may even owe its life to 'getting off the hook' the way a
fish can; anyway, school is often insufferable as a hook to schoolchildren and
many kids squirming in their seats all day look like they are on a hook." From "Encyclopedia
of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New
York, 1997). http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/6/messages/773.html
KANGAROO WORD carries its own baby words with the same
meaning. For example, the kangaroo word illuminated
contains the synonym lit among its letters. Similarly exists hides the word is
and deceased includes dead.
Test yourself trying to find synonyms in selected words at: http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/words/kangaroo-words
ANTI-KANGAROO WORD in recreational linguistics, a word that
contains its antonym. “The word covert is an anti-kangaroo word because it contains
overt. Thingamajigs
and Whatchamacallits: Unfamiliar Terms
for Familiar Things by Rod
L. Evans
The good news:
According to a new report
from the National Endowment for the Arts, more than half of American adults
read books for pleasure in 2012. The bad
news is that the percentage of adults reading works of literature -- in the NEA's
definition, novels, short stories, poetry or plays -- has declined since 2008,
returning to 2002 lows. Fifty-seven
percent of American adults read one or more books not required for work or
school in 2012 -- that's 128 million readers.
Some other interesting findings: More
women (64%) read than men (45%). The
biggest readers are older adults; 65- to 74-year-olds have the highest rate of
reading of any age group, with 61% reading at least one book in 2012. Hispanic Americans read at lower rates than any
other ethnic group (36%) but the percentage of Hispanic Americans reading for
pleasure has gone up since 2008 (when it was 33%). The worst news is for poets: People reading poetry for pleasure has plunged
in the last decade, dropping by 45%. Among
adults who read books for pleasure, less than 7% now say they read poetry. Carolyn Kellogg http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-american-adults-read-books-for-pleasure-in-2012-20130930,0,4379575.story
Tom Clancy, writer of
espionage and military science thrillers died Oct. 1, 2013 after a brief
illness at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. "When he published 'The Hunt for Red
October' he redefined and expanded the genre and as a consequence of that, a
lot of people were able to publish such books who had previously been unable to
do so," said Stephen C. Hunter, an author and former Pulitzer Prize-winning
film critic for The Washington Post. "He valued technical precision and
on-target writing that became the form of the modern thriller." Clancy was the author of numerous
best-selling novels, most of which featured the character Jack Ryan. Mr. Clancy began working on a novel in his
spare time, basing it loosely on a real-life, 1975 mutiny aboard a Soviet
frigate. The result, published in 1984,
was "The Hunt for Red October," a tale of superpower conflict
centered on a renegade Soviet nuclear submarine. The
book took off, selling 300,000 hardbacks and 2 million paperbacks in the first
two years. The hardcover version
spent 31 weeks on Publishers Weekly's bestseller list; the paperback, 37 weeks. "The Hunt for Red October" was made
into a film, as were several of his subsequent novels. His books also inspired several video games. Clancy was also a major financial player in
Baltimore sports in the 1990s, when the Orioles moved to Camden Yards and the
NFL returned to Baltimore.
Performance/Art Arrives at LAX
Airport by Jean
Lenihan Oct. 1,
2013 The current renovations and
re-branding of Los Angeles International Airport is delivering frustrating,
mixed cues for its art. Its first public
arts festival--Influx: Art at LAX”-- runs
through Dec. 31. Read about it at: http://www.artsjournal.com/pencil/2013/10/performanceart-arrives-at-lax-airport/
Ancient city
unearthed in Iraq may be 3,300 years old by Owen Jarus, LiveScience
Oct. 1, 2013 In the Kurdistan region
of northern Iraq archaeologists have discovered an ancient city called Idu,
hidden beneath a mound. Cuneiform
inscriptions and works of art reveal the palaces that flourished in the city
throughout its history thousands of years ago. Located in a valley on the northern bank of
the lower Zab River, the city's remains are now part of a mound created by human
occupation called a tell, which rises about 32 feet (10 meters)
above the surrounding plain. The
earliest remains date back to Neolithic times, when farming first appeared in
the Middle East, and a modern-day village called Satu Qala now lies on top of
the tell. The city thrived between 3,300
and 2,900 years ago, said Cinzia Pappi, an archaeologist at the Universität
Leipzig in Germany. At the start of this
period, the city was under the control of the Assyrian Empire and
was used to administer the surrounding territory. Later on, as the empire declined, the city
gained its independence and became the center of a kingdom that lasted for
about 140 years, until the Assyrians reconquered it. The researchers were able to determine the
site's ancient name when, during a survey of the area in 2008, a villager
brought them an inscription with the city's ancient name engraved on it. Excavations were conducted in 2010 and 2011,
and the team reported its findings in the most recent edition of the journal
Anatolica. See images at: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/ancient-kingdom-unearthed-iraq-may-be-3-300-years-old-8C11308803
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