Tortillas are not always the healthiest bread option for sandwiches or other meals.  Oil or lard are common ingredients in many varieties of tortillas, which increases the calorie and fat content.  For example, a 10-inch flour tortilla wrap has more than 215 calories and nearly 5 grams of fat.  Corn tortillas are lighter in calories and fat, offering about 160 calories and about 2 grams of fat.  Replacing tortillas with other types of foods that make delicious wraps, adds variety to your favorite lunch meal.  Melodie Ann Coffman  Find alternative wraps, including lettuce, at http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/healthy-wraps-besides-tortillas-2801.html

Snout houses feature a protruding garage taking up most of the street frontage.  They may be built on small lots, and are sometimes called "single-nostril" or "double-nostril."

Michael Brown protesters interrupted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's concert on October 4, 2014, causing a brief delay in the performance at Powell Symphony Hall.  The orchestra and chorus were preparing to perform Johannes Brahms' Requiem just after intermission when two audience members in the middle aisle on the main floor began singing  "Which Side are You On?" - an organized labor tune with origins in the infamous 1931 Harlan, Kentucky coal strike.  They soon were joined, in harmony, by other protesters, who stood at seats in various locations on the main floor and in the balcony.  The protesters then unfurled three hand-painted banners and hung them from the Dress Circle boxes.  One banner listed the birth and death date of Brown, who was shot by Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9.  The five-minute interruption was met with a smattering of applause from some audience members, as well as members of the orchestra and chorus.  Others simply watched as the orchestra remained silent.  The protest ended quietly as participants left voluntarily, chanting, “Black lives matter.”  Conductor Markus Stenz resumed the concert shortly thereafter.  Steve Giegerich 

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_bfd2b377-8da4-56f8-aa8d-64bf714e0114.html

Robert Pinsky launches an Art of Poetry MOOC and thousands sign up by Claire Kelley  Former United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is teaching an eight-week MOOC (massive open online course) through Boston University and EdX this fall, and more than twelve thousand students have signed up for the course, which began on September 30.  The course is named “The Art of Poetry” and the syllabus promises to offer an experience that is “demanding, and based on a certain kind of intense, exigent reading, requiring prolonged in fact, repeated attention to specific poems.”  Some of the poems covered and discussed include Frank O’Hara’s “Why I Am Not a Painter,” “Nick and the Candlestick” by Sylvia Plath,  “To Waken an Old Lady” by William  Carlos Williams, “The Fascination of What’s Difficult” by William Butler Yeats and a couple contemporary poems like “Enough” by  Peterson. Pinsky says that “this course is based on the conviction that the more you know about an art, the more pleasure you will find in it” and rather than studying a specific school or time period, each week is dedicated to a pairing or collection of themes like Difficulty and Pleasure, Freedom and Meaning, and Teasing, Flirting, and Courting.  Form and the relationship between poetry and music will also be discussed.  http://www.mhpbooks.com/robert-pinsky-launches-an-art-of-poetry-mooc-and-thousands-sign-up/

No part of speech has had to put up with so much adversity as the adverb.  The grammatical equivalent of cheap cologne or trans fat, the adverb is supposed to be used sparingly, if at all, to modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs.  As Stephen King succinctly put it:  “The adverb is not your friend.”  Not everybody, however, looks askance at the part of speech.  Indeed, there is at least one place where the adverb not only flourishes but wields power—the American legal system.  Adverbs in recent years have taken on an increasingly important—and often contentious—role in courthouses.  Their influence has spread with the help of lawmakers churning out new laws packed with them.  A U.S. appellate court, for example, this past summer wrestled with the question of whether a defendant could have “knowingly” aimed a laser pointer at a helicopter if he mistakenly assumed the beam wouldn’t reach the aircraft.  Words such as “knowingly,” “intentionally” and “recklessly,” which deal with criminal intent, pop up most frequently, but plenty of other adverbs have enjoyed the spotlight.  When the U.S. Supreme Court in June recognized religious protections of closely held companies, justices pondered the significance of an adverb in a 1993 federal statute that guards against laws that “substantially burden” the exercise of religion.  “Indiscriminately” was pivotal in a federal appeals court ruling in January striking down the “net neutrality” rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission.  Preventing broadband providers from charging sites like Netflix more money for faster speeds would effectively treat them like common carriers, which are required by law to “serve the public indiscriminately,” the court said.  In a tax case from the summer, lawyers for the Internal Revenue Service defended their decision to freeze the bank accounts of a former Pennsylvania state senator, only to see their arguments founder on the word “quickly.”  Tax law allows the government to immediately freeze the assets of a suspected tax cheat who “appears to be designing quickly” to hide his wealth.  But the judge said there was nothing quick about the defendant’s cash and real-estate transactions, which spanned several years.  “Contrary to the ordinary view that adverbs are superfluous, law generally, and criminal law especially, emerges through its adverbs,” James M. Donovan, a legal anthropology professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, recently wrote in a paper on the subject.  Jacob Gershman  http://online.wsj.com/articles/why-adverbs-maligned-by-many-flourish-in-the-american-legal-system-1412735402

BBC unveils all-star version of God Only Knows by Michael Hann

Seventeen years ago, when the BBC first unveiled a megastar-laden lineup performing a beloved rock classic of a certain vintage, this paper had a withering take on matters.  The performance of Lou Reed’s Perfect Day, this paper said, offered “a none too subtle message:  keep writing the cheque”.  Now, with the corporation’s battle to retain the television licence fee getting almost tougher by the week, it has unveiled a new take on a beloved song with a new cast of performers, and its message is, if anything, even less subtle, given its chorus runs:  “God only knows what I’d be without you.”  The new version of God Only Knows was given its first airing across all BBC platforms on October 7, 2014.  The official reason for the new recording of the classic 1966 Beach Boys song is to mark the launch of BBC Music, which the corporation describes as “an ambitious wave of new programmes, innovative partnerships and ground-breaking music initiatives that amount to the BBC’s strongest commitment to music in 30 years”.  As with Perfect Day, the song will be released as a single to raise money for the BBC’s Children in Need appeal.  http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/07/bbc-god-only-knows-pharrell-stevie-wonder-chris-martin-lorde

The blood moon of October 8, 2014 was visible to observers in North America, western South America, parts of East Asia, Australia and other parts of the Pacific, weather permitting.  This total lunar eclipse is also the second in a four-eclipse-series called a "tetrad."  Some intrepid observers might have also been able to capture the planet Uranus very close to the eclipsed full moon as well.  The lunar eclipse reached totality just before dawn for observers on the East Coast of the United States.  If you missed this total lunar eclipse, you might have another chance to see a blood moon rise 2015.  The next eclipse in the tetrad series is set to grace the skies in April 2015, with the final in the tetrad occurring in September 2015.   Miriam Kramer  See pictures at http://www.space.com/27381-blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-wows-skywatchers.html

http://librariansmuse.blogpost.com  Issue 1201  October 8, 2014  On this date in 1956, New York Yankees's Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series.  On this date in 1982,  Cats opened on Broadway and ran for nearly 18 years before closing on September 10, 2000.