Q.Q From Steve Justino:  In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Nick the bartender says something to George Bailey that sounds like ‘And that’s another thing, I don’t know you from Adam’s oft ox’.  Am I hearing that correctly?  If so, I’ve never heard that expression before.  What does it mean?    

A.A Nearly right.  It’s actually Adam’s off ox.  Some discussion about this expression followed its use by President Clinton in a news conference in June 1993.  It puzzled many American commentators then, because it’s a phrase that is known only in some parts of the USA.  It’s one of a whole set of expressions of which the basic and oldest form is not to know somebody from Adam, meaning that the person is entirely unknown to the speaker.  That form is recorded from Britain in a report of a court case at the London Sessions as far back in 1784:   “Some man stopped me, I do not know him from Adam”.  It’s  almost certainly older in the spoken language.  This expression has so long been a familiar idiom that people have felt the need to make it more emphatic.  Speakers in various parts of the US have at times commented they don’t know somebody from Adam’s housecat, Adam’s brother, Adam’s foot, and Adam’s pet monkey.  Adam’s off ox is easily the most puzzling of these variations to us today, because the days of ox teams are now long past.  The off ox was the one on the off-side of the vehicle.  If you stood behind the team looking forwards it was the one on the right-hand side.  The driver walked on the left-hand side of the team, with the near-side ox at his right shoulder.  He would get to know the personality and idiosyncrasies of this ox very well.  However, the off ox was hidden behind the near-side one, and was yoked to it so that it could do nothing but follow it.  So the off ox was — figuratively at least — less well known.  The term is found in print from 1894 onwards, but must surely be older.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ada1.htm

  

Primarily known for his whimsical, and often quite dark, children’s books (James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox), Roald Dahl was also a novelist, screenwriter, and a writer of macabre short stories for adults (he won three Edgars, or mystery writer awards).  In 1958, Alfred Hitchcock Presents adapted Dahl’s story “Lamb to the Slaughter.”  And, two years later in 1960, Dahl’s story “Man from the South” provided the basis for AHP’s most popular episode.  The episode stars Steven McQueen as a young man talked into a grisly wager by a mysterious figure named Carlos, played by Peter Lorre.  “Man from the South” was adapted several more times in the following years:  in 1979 by Dahl himself in a television series called Tales of the Unexpected, again in the 1985 revival of AHP (starring John Huston as Carlos), and in 1995 as the basis for Quentin Tarantino’s segment in the film Four Rooms.   J. David Jones  http://www.openculture.com/2012/06/ialfred_hitchcock_presentsi_a_chilling_tale_by_roald_dahl_1960.html  Watch Man from the South (1969) in 26:02 video with Steve Macqueen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgi6Qcv5Ck or the 23:34 (1979) version with José Ferrer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RMVGXqCfI

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

solon  (SOH-luhn)  noun  1.  A wise lawgiver.  2.  A legislator.   After Solon (c. 638-558 BCE), an Athenian lawmaker who introduced political, economic, and moral reforms and revised the harsh code of laws established by Draco.  Earliest documented use:  1631.

mazarine  (maz-uh-REEN, MAZ-uh-reen, -rin)  adjective   A deep, rich shade of blue.   After either Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602-1661) or his niece, Duchess Hortense Mancini (1646-1699).  Why this color is associated with them is not entirely clear.  Earliest documented use:  1684.   (There is a butterfly named Mazarine Blue--also a PANTONE SMART 19-3864X Color Swatch Card.)

tontine  (TON-teen, ton-TEEN)  noun  A form of investment in which participants pool their money into a common fund and receive an annuity.  Each person's share increases as members die until the last survivor takes the whole.  From French tontine. Named after Lorenzo Tonti, a Neapolitan banker, who started the scheme in France.  Earliest documented use:  1765.  A tontine was also used a way to raise money for the state, often for fighting wars, as the fund went to the crown after the last person died.

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From:  Dave Alden  Subject:  solon  For baseball fans of a certain age, the immediate memory for the word Solon is the long-time minor league ballclub in Sacramento.  From Baseball-Reference.com, the Sacramento ballclub first became known as the Senators in 1918 before becoming the Solons in 1936, a name they retained until the coming of Major League baseball to the West Coast drove Sacramento out of affiliated baseball after the 1960 season.  After a brief Solon revival for the 1974 to 1976 seasons, the current Sacramento ballclub is the RiverCats.

From:  Serge Astieres  Subject:  Mazarine  Mazarin was Premier in 17th century France and conducted the affairs with shrewdness.  He was clever and succeeded in strengthening the power of the king vs. the rebelling nobles.  His name is associated with someone working in the shadow, plotting conspiracies to win the upperhand.  His name can also be used as a first name, especially for girls.

From:  Carolin Damm  Subject:  tontine

One of the novels in which "tontine" is used as a plot device is the great 4:50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie -- of course with an additional twist only Miss Marple is able to see through!

From:  Ron Gerard  Subject:  The Wrong Box  One of the funniest films of all time, The Wrong Box, is based on a tontine.  Thank you so much for reminding me about it.  The original book by Robert Louis Stevenson is hardly funny at all.  One of the rare examples of a great film from a not-so-great book.

The Heart of the Andes is a large oil-on-canvas landscape painting by the American artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900).  It depicts an idealized landscape in the South American Andes, where Church traveled on two occasions.  Its exhibition in 1859 was a sensation, and the painting established Church as the foremost landscape painter in the United States.  The Heart of the Andes was first exhibited publicly between April 29 and May 23, 1859 at New York's Studio Building on West 10th Street, the city's first "studio edifice" designed for artists.  The event attracted an unprecedented turnout for a single-painting exhibition in the United States:  more than 12,000 people paid an admission fee of twenty-five cents to view the painting.  Even on the final day of the showing, patrons waited in line for hours to enter the Exhibition Room.   Poetry was written in its honor, and a composer, George William Warren, dedicated a piece to it in 1863.  The painting and its 1859 exhibition is mentioned in the novel A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett.  Church eventually sold the work for $10,000—at that time the highest price ever paid for a work by a living American artist.  The painting was acquired by Margaret Dows, widow of David Dows, and bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art upon her death in February 1909.  In 1993, the museum held an exhibition that attempted to reproduce the conditions of the 1859 exhibit.  See picture at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heart_of_the_Andes

Chrysler Group, as a corporate name, is now history.  On Dec. 16, 2014, the company announced that its name has been changed from Chrysler Group to FCA US LLC.  The company said the name change "does not affect the company's headquarters location in Auburn Hills, Mich., its holdings, management team, board or brands."  The change also bolsters the company's ongoing integration into its global parent company, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (FCA), which officially adopted its new name in October when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange.  In Italy, Fiat Group's name has also been changed. FCA Italy SpA.  http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/chrysler/2014/12/16/chrysler-group-fca-us/20472365/

Dec. 16, 2014  What is it with politics and musicals these days?  In January, the Public Theater will present “Hamilton,” a new musical by and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, about Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.  Meanwhile, the theater company Les Freres Corbusier is currently workshopping “Here’s Hoover!”, a musical about the nation’s 31st president, Herbert Hoover.  Directed by Alex Timbers with songs by Michael Friedman and a book by Sean Cunningham, it runs through Dec. 21 at the Abrons Art Center at the Henry Street Settlement.  In 2003, Mr. Timbers directed a rock ’n’ roll musical about Warren Harding called “Warren Harding Is a Rock Star,” but he and Mr. Friedman are perhaps better known for “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” which presented the seventh president of the U.S. as having “emo” qualities.  Marshall Heyman  http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-herbert-hoover-musical-inspired-by-elvis-1418767951

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1231  December 17, 2014  On this date in 1807, John Greenleaf Whittier, American poet and activist, was born.  On this date in 1894, Arthur Fiedler, American conductor, was born.