LAS VEGAS   The dry piece of scrubby desert was named sometime in the 1800’s by the Spanish, who used the spot as a watering post along the Old Spanish Trail that connected Los Angeles with Santa Fe.  The name translates as The Meadows.  They came for the water, hidden underground in a series of artesian wells.  http://lasvegas.about.com/od/historylandmarks/ss/Odd-And-Interesting-Historical-Facts-About-Las-Vegas_2.htm

The present day bedtime story of the young girl who disrupts the home life of an anthropomorphic bear family dates in print back to 19th century Great Britain.  In 1831 a woman named Eleanor Mure printed a small, homemade booklet written in verse and called “The Story of the Three Bears Metrically Related with Illustrations.”  Mure had created the work as a present for her nephew.  Its subtitle, “The Celebrated Nursery Tale” implies that it was probably based on an earlier oral story.  Six years after Mure‘s work, British poet laureate Robert Southey wrote the “Story of the Three Bears” which appeared in his work, The Doctor.  Although his tale was extremely similar to the Mure work, it is unlikely that Southey knew of it.  Instead, he claimed that he had first heard the story from his uncle who, according to some folklorists, may have been aware of either Mure, the old oral version, or an old English folk tale called Scrapefoot , a story in which the protagonist is a fox.  In both stories, the main character is not a young girl, but a nameless, homeless and ill-tempered old woman who intentionally breaks into the bears’ home looking for food and shelter.  Later children story books have transformed the original tales.  In 1849 the British writer Joseph Cundall retold the story in his Treasury of Pleasure Books for Young Children.  Claiming that there were too many stories that featured old women, Cundall changed the Mure-Southey character to a young girl that he named “Silver Hair.”  A decade later, in Aunt Mavor's Nursery Tales, she was renamed “Silver-Locks.”  By the time that the young intruder appeared in Aunt Friendly's Nursery Book (1868), she had become “Golden Hair.”  In 1904, in Old Nursery Stories and Rhymes, she became known as "Goldilocks."  http://suite101.com/a/the-original-goldilocks-and-the-three-bears-a91839

That Ring Any Bells?  Recalling a memory; causing a person to remember something or someone.  There are numerous bell sounds we hear throughout our lives that all share the same purpose:  they serve as helpful reminders to us.  For example, school bells ring to remind students that class is about to start.  Alarm clocks ring to alert people that it's time to wake up and get ready for the day.  Police cars, while they use sirens today, used to have bells on their cars that they'd ring to remind pedestrians to get out of the way.  The sounds of a bell, then, are commonly used call to our minds important memories or thoughts.  Can the origins of this phrase be credited to a single bell?  Likely not.  It would be more logical to have formed from the collective purpose bells serve in general, which is acting as reminder.  Thus, when someone is able to recall something, it's as if a bell has sounded off in their heads that helped them remember.  An early recording of this phrase in the context we use it in today is found in the San Antonio Light newspaper, November 1937:  "Mariorie Weaver's name may not ring any bells in the movie-going public's consciousness now but wait until you see her in 'Second Honeymoon.'"

http://www.knowyourphrase.com/phrase-meanings/That-Ring-Any-Bells.html 

An Interview with Sculptor Lisa Snellings by Carl V. Anderson on November 5, 2008 in Interviews  I became an astute observer very early on.  Once I learned to read, everything changed. My dad took me to the library every Saturday morning.  I’ll always be grateful for that.  I read for countless hours lying on a metal porch bench (I still have the bench) and had a book with me everywhere I went.  Read the rest of the inverview and see fantasy sculptures including Poppets at http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/an-interview-with-lisa-snellings 

The Emily Dickinson Archive (EDA) provides high-resolution images of manuscripts of Dickinson’s poetry, along with transcriptions and annotations from selected historical and scholarly editions.  This first release focuses on gathering images of those poems included in The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, edited by R. W. Franklin (Cambridge:  Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1998).  These manuscripts vary from “scraps” written on envelope flaps and pieces of wrapping paper; to drafts; to finished poems sent to friends or copied into the manuscript books called “fascicles.”  This site is not a new edition of Dickinson’s poems.  It is, as its name says, an archive that seeks to make available in one virtual place those resources that seem central to the study of Dickinson’s work: images of her manuscripts; a selection of editions of those manuscripts; and selected print and electronic resources that serve as a starting point for the study of Dickinson’s manuscripts.  It should be viewed as a resource from which scholarship can be produced, rather than a work of scholarship itself.  The long-term goal of this Archive is to provide a single site for access to images of all surviving Dickinson autograph manuscripts.  Future priorities include: images of Dickinson letters; additional modern and historical editions of both poems and letters; additional metadata about the manuscripts; and additional tools for manipulation of the content of the site.  http://www.edickinson.org/about 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

mien  (meen)  noun   Appearance, bearing, or demeanor.   Probably a shortened form of demean (to conduct oneself in a specified manner), influenced by French mine (appearance).  Earliest documented use:  1522. 

Nov. 3, 2013  Cornell University is preparing to forfeit to Iraq a vast collection of ancient cuneiform tablets in what is expected to be one of the largest returns of antiquities by an American university.  The 10,000 inscribed clay blocks date from the 4th millenium BC and offer scholars an unmatched record of daily life in ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization.  New York antiquities collector Jonathan Rosen and his family began donating and lending the tablets to Cornell in 2000.  Many scholars have objected to the arrangement, suspecting the tablets were looted in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, which unleashed a wave of plundering in the archaeologically rich expanse of southern Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.  Among the tablets is the private archive of a 21st century BC Sumerian princess in the city of Garsana that has made scholars rethink the role of women in the ancient kingdom of Ur.  The administrative records show Simat-Ishtaran ruled the estate after her husband died.  Jason Felch  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-iraq-tablets-cornell-university-20131103,0,7036026.story#axzz2jbqIEHpf 

Everyone is a suspect in Murder for Two, a musical murder mystery with a twist:  one actor investigates the crime, the other plays all of the suspects and they both play the piano.  A 90-minute whodunit.  "They put the laughter in manslaughter."  Opening night Nov. 6, 2013 at New World Stages  http://www.murderfortwomusical.com/ 

Dodger Stages Theater (New World Stages)  340 W 50th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue. 

A collaboration of architect Beyer Blinder Belle, interior/set designer Klara Zieglerova, and theatre consultant Sachs Morgan Studio transformed Dodger Stages from a six-theatre multiplex cinema to a five-theatre off-Broadway complex.  A lighted double-height display wall draws focus in the lobby.  The wall is metal frame covered with translucent RP and scrim and colored with lighting washes top and bottom.  Large fluorescent numbers “1” thru “5” dominate the wall and directing ticket holders to their show.  

Lighting:  Roger Morgan and Steve Rust, Sachs Morgan Studio
Interior Design:  Klara Zieglerova
Architect:  Erik Chu, Beyer Blinder Belle, Architects and Planners

See this and other midtown venues with award-winning lighting designs at http://www.iesnyc.org/nightseeing/midtown.aspx