From:  Anu Garg  Subject:  Pangramania  Thank you for your enthusiastic feedback for the new Pangram Finder.  So far A.Word.A.Day readers have found the shortest pangram in any book to be Catch-22 by Joseph Heller:  “Colonel Korn gave Major Danby’s shoulder a friendly squeeze without changing his unfriendly expression.” (88 letters)

From:  Eric Chaikin  Subject:  pangrams  Here’s an article on pangram windows I wrote for Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics a few years back.  It mentions the discovery of what at the time was the shortest known “naturally occurring” window (47 letters) which I found on an online movie review site:  “JoBlo’s mo(vie review of The Yards: Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Charliz)e Theron...”.  This was subsequently beaten by computer searches of both the Twittersphere and the Google corpus, setting the record at 36 letters.  Ben Zimmer’s 2014 article summarizes these.  But last week I discovered a 123-letter window in the lyrics of David Bowie’s “All the Young Dudes”:  . . . Freddy’s got spots from rip(ping off stars from his face Funky little boat race The television man is crazy Saying we’re juvenile delinquent wrecks Man, I need a TV when I’ve got T. Rex)

From:  Dharam Vir  Subject:  Pangram  Saving newborn planets from a fiery demise is just one step in the quest to understand cool earth-sized, earth-like extrasolar planetary systems.  I am from Astronomy and Astrophysics research field.  We are used to seeing appealing long titles for manuscripts so that they are picked, (not necessarily) read and cited.  Credit to above pangram goes to “Wandering Worlds - Saving newborn planets from a fiery demise is just one step in the quest to understand the mysterious planetary systems around other stars” (1663, Los Alamos Science and Technology Magazine, March 2011).  I had to add and delete just the right amount.

A xebec, also spelled zebec, was a Mediterranean sailing ship that was used mostly for trading.  It would have a long overhanging bowsprit and aft-set mizzen mast.  The term can also refer to a small, fast vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xebec

Mary Oliver was born on September 10, 1935, in Maple Heights, Ohio.  As a teenager, she lived briefly in the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, where she helped Millay’s family sort through the papers the poet left behind.  In the mid-1950s, Oliver attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College, though she did not receive a degree.  Her first collection of poems, No Voyage, and Other Poems, was published in 1963.  Since then, she has published numerous books, including Blue Horses (Penguin Press, 2014); A Thousand Mornings (Penguin Press, 2012); Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (Beacon Press, 2010); Red Bird (2008); Thirst (2006); Why I Wake Early(2004); Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays (2003); Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (Mariner Books, 1999); West Wind (1997); White Pine (1994); New and Selected Poems (1992), which won the National Book Award; House of Light(1990), which won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award; and American Primitive (1983), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.  The first part of her book-length poem The Leaf and the Cloud (Da Capo Press, 2000) was selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 1999 and the second part, “Work," was selected for The Best American Poetry 2000.  Her books of prose include Long Life: Essays and Other Writings (2004); Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse (Mariner Books, 1998); Blue Pastures (1995); and A Poetry Handbook (1994).  Her honors include an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001.  https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/mary-oliver  See also What Mary Oliver’s Critics Don’t Understand by Ruth Franklin at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/what-mary-olivers-critics-dont-understand

General tips for cooking grains such as quinoa, millet, rice, bulgur, sorghum*, barley*, rye berries*

Rinse grains, cook in a covered pot until tender in double the amount of water mixed with a little salt.  Remove from heat and let stand covered 10 minutes.  Fluff with fork.  Use immediately or spread on a rimmed baking sheet to cool.  *Stir occasionally.  Martha Stewart Living magazine  April 2018   Check your package or cook book for times for each grain.

Rudolf Hell was a manufacturer of teleprinter, fax and cipher machines, based in Kiel (Germany).  The company was founded in 1929 by Rudolf Hell, one of Germany's most important and most productive inventors of the previous century.  Rudolf Hell was born in 1901 and invented his first device, the so-called Hellschreiber in 1925.  It was patented in 1929 when he started his own company in Babelsberg, Berlin (Germany).  Rudolf Hell is also the inventor and patent-holder of the modern Fax (1956), a colour scanner (1963) and a CRT-based computer typesetter (Datensichtgerät, 1965).  Computer-based typesetters would be used by the printing industry for the next several decades, and is now commonly known as Desktop Publishing (DTP).  Hell died in 2002 at the age of 100.  http://www.cryptomuseum.com/manuf/hell/index.htm  See also http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/rudolf-hell-9269189.html and https://www.thocp.net/biographies/hell_rudolf.htm

Queen Victoria's Isle of Wight mansion   In 1845, describing her favourite royal estate, Victoria wrote:  'We have quite a charming beach to ourselves.  It is impossible to imagine a prettier spot.'  Victoria and her husband Prince Albert's love of the beach at Osborne Bay was one of their main motives for buying Osborne House from Lady Isabella Blachford in October 1845.  Albert chose to knock down the small Osborne House in place when they took over the estate to make way for his own design, in the style of an Italian Renaissance palazzo.  The work to rebuild the main private residence was carried out by London architect and builder, Thomas Cubitt, whose company built the main facade of Buckingham Palace for the royal couple in 1847.  After Victoria's death in 1901, Edward VII gave Osborne House to the nation as a memorial to his mother and part of Osborne became a convalescent home for officers.  In 1903, a Royal Navy College was set up at Osborne House to train cadets.  In 1989, Osborne was reopened to the public with new exhibitions on show including the recreated royal nursery suite, Queen Victoria's private beach and new presentations at the Swiss Cottage.  Today, it remains under the care of English Heritage and is deemed a tourist attraction, often hosting picnic-style concerts on the lawn or allowing for cottages within the estate to be rented out as holiday homes.  Emma Glanfield  See many pictures at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3270825/Inside-Queen-Victoria-s-Isle-Wight-residence-convalescent-home-military-officers-Robert-Graves-AA-Milne-treated.html

The Isle of Wight is part of the historic county of Hampshire.  It lies off the south coast of England, in the English Channel.  The island is separated from the mainland by a deep strait known as The Solent.  The Isle of Wight is diamond-shaped and extends 22.5 miles (36 km) from east to west and 13.5 miles (22 km) from north to south.  The backbone of the island is formed by a chalkridge that extends across the entire breadth of the island, from Culver Cliff in the east to The Needles in the west.  The ridge is the thickest bed of chalk in the British Isles.  https://www.britannica.com/place/Isle-of-Wight

"Make this tasty homemade chili sauce in a flash with ingredients you will have already in your cabinets.  Definitely less expensive than prepared, and you can adjust to your liking.  Keep covered and refrigerated between uses."  Find recipe by Karen at https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/237906/homemade-chili-sauce/

Most Indigenous languages in Australia likely originated from a remote spot in far north Queensland as recently as 4,000 years ago, before slowly spreading across the country, a new study has claimed.  The paper, published in the journal Nature on March 13, 2018 mapped the origins of the Pama-Nyungan family of languages, which encompasses about 90% of the continent.  It traced the dominant family of languages back to an area near an isolated place known today as Burketown.  Helen Davidson  https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/14/most-australian-indigenous-languages-came-from-just-one-place-research-claims

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1869  April 4, 2018