September 17, 2016  How Popular is your Birthday? by Matt Stiles  U.S. Average Daily Births:  1994-2014  Sept. 9 is most common in this dataset, though other days in that month are close.  Sept. 19 is second.  See table at http://thedailyviz.com/2016/09/17/how-common-is-your-birthday-dailyviz/

What Is Poke Sallet? by Joe York  “Film Bites” are very short films by Joe York.  If you like to live dangerously, poke sallet might be the leafy green for you.  Poke grows as a weed in much of North America.  In the South, it’s been foraged and eaten as a vegetable for centuries.  But here’s the catch:  Poke is poisonous.  So how do you cook it—and why would you want to?  Joe York investigates.  https://www.southernfoodways.org/film/poke-a-film-bite/  5:31

Noble and ignoble are antonyms, which are words that have opposite meanings.  Noble means belonging to a hereditary class of people by birth, rank or title.  Noble may also mean having lofty moral or personal qualities or being of superior quality.  Noble may also mean having an imposing appearance.  The word noble is derived from the Latin word gnobilis, which literally means knowable.  This stems from the idea that important Roman families were well known, even to the lower classes.  Related words are nobility, nobleness and nobly.  Ignoble means of humble birth, from common or lower class origins.  Ignoble may also mean dishonorable, despicable, inferior.  The word ignoble is unsurprisingly derived from the Latin word ignobilis, which means obscure, undistinguished, unknown, not noble, common.  Strictly speaking, most people could be described as being of ignoble or non-aristocratic origins, but the term is currently most often used to describe someone born into poverty, or something dishonorable or inferior.  Related words are ignobility, ignobleness, ignobly.  http://grammarist.com/usage/noble-vs-ignoble/

           

When you shop for oats, you'll see several types on the store shelves.  They're all based on "oat groats," which are the whole oat kernel.  Instant oats:  Oat groats that have been steamed and flaked.  Rolled oats (also called regular or old-fashioned oats):  Oat groats that have been steamed and rolled into flakes that are thicker (and thus take longer to cook) than instant oats.  Steel-cut oats (also called Irish oats): You get the whole oat kernel, cut up.  These take about 20 minutes to cook.  Scottish oats:  These are like steel-cut oats, but instead of being cut, they are ground.  Oat groats:  This is the whole oat--no cuts, flakes, or grinding.  They take longer to cook than other oats.  Give them 50-60 minutes to cook, after you bring the water to a boil.  You can cook oatmeal on your stove top, in your microwave, or in a slow cooker.  https://www.webmd.com/diet/oatmeal-benefits#1

Affixes:  the building blocks of English   Several common terms in -pathy have been imported entire from Greek and relate to feelings:  antipathy, apathy, empathy, sympathy.  Apart from these, the ending frequently indicates a disease or disorder (cardiopathy, psychopathy) or a method of treating a disorder (homeopathy, osteopathy).  Terms that refer to systems of treatment can have agent nouns in -path for a practitioner (naturopath, osteopath); less commonly, terms in -pathy for disorders have nouns in -path for a sufferer from the condition (psychopath, sociopath, though the former in common usage refers to a sufferer from a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behaviour).  Rarely, terms for therapists are formed in -pathist (homeopathist, hydropathist).  Adjectives are formed in -pathic:  apathetic, hydropathic, myopathic, sympathetic.  See list of terms at http://www.affixes.org/p/-pathy.html

FOR ALWAYS, a poem written by Martha Esbin for a Valentine's Day card to her husband, Jack.  The words START, STOP and WAIT came from a set of magnetic poetry.

Sip

The wine

As

Red as

The plum

Sit and

Tell me that

Our love is

Promised to each other for always

When we're

Apart

I'll wait patiently

To see you and love you again

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg   

listerize  (LIS-tuh-ryz)  verb tr.  To make antiseptic.  ANAGRAM:  listerize = sterilize  Coined after Joseph Lister (1827-1912) surgeon and a pioneer of antiseptic medicine.  Earliest documented use:  1888.  Besides this word, some other things named after Joseph Lister are Listerine (originally a surgical antiseptic), the bacterial genus Listeria, and the slime mold genus Listerella.  See the Anagram Hall of Fame at https://wordsmith.org/anagram/hof.html and the Internet Anagram Server at https://wordsmith.org/anagram/

sitomania  (sy-tuh-MAY-nee-uh)  noun   An abnormal craving for food  From Greek sito- (grain, food) + -mania (excessive enthusiasm or craze).  Earliest documented use:  1882.  The opposite is sitophobia.  A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:  If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages. - Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (17 Apr 1885-1962) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1876  April 17, 2018  

Word of the Day  kyriarchy  noun  A system of ruling and oppression in which many people may interact and act as oppressor or oppressed.  Romanian-born German feminist Roman Catholic theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, who coined the word in a 1992 book, was born on this day 80 years ago in 1938.