The Greek root arch means “rule.”  An archon was an upper-level magistrate or “ruler” in ancient Greece, and today can refer to any type of “ruler.”  A monarch is a single “ruler” such as a queen or king, a system of government referred to as a monarchy.  An oligarchy, on the other hand, is a “rule” by a few powerful and influential people, entitled oligarchs.  Matriarchs and patriarchs can lead smaller familial clans or communities, the former a rule by an older and powerful female (a matriarchy), the latter by a similar type of male (a patriarchy).  If a nation or community is under the throes of anarchy, it means that there is not a “ruler” at all, but rather a state of lawlessness.  An anarchist is one who supports no “rule” of law governing a people.  The word hierarchy originally referred to a state of “rule” by the holy, that is, the order of power that was held by different types of angels; in due course it began to refer to levels of power in the church, and then moved on to secular organizations.  An archive is a carefully guarded set of important historical records, a word which was formed from the core idea that governments or “rulers” tend to keep historical records.  See interesting graphic at http://membean.com/wrotds/arch-rule

May 6, 2018  New York City’s Trinity Church, a tourist attraction loved for its ties to colonial America and links to a Broadway hit, will be largely closed to visitors during a two-year renovation intended to brighten the church and improve disabled access.  The neo-Gothic church surrounded by soaring skyscrapers embarks Monday on a $98 million renovation that will put its nave, with its 66-foot vaulted ceiling, off limits.  A small chapel in the building’s northwest corner will be open, as will the church’s picturesque graveyard, where luminaries including Alexander Hamilton and his wife, Eliza, are buried, will remain open throughout the renovation.  An estimated 1.9 million people visited Trinity in 2017, according to the church.  Those numbers are swollen by fans of the musical “Hamilton,” who often leave flowers or other mementos on the founding father’s memorial stone and the tomb of his wife.  The church’s stained-glass windows will be restored and a new one will be installed at the front of the church facing Broadway.  A new organ with more than 7,500 pipes is being built in Germany at a cost of $11.4 million.  The renovations will add a wheelchair ramp to the church, lower the pews, which are now a 4-inch step up from the aisles, and increase seating capacity from 514 to 652.  The building being renovated is the third Trinity Church to occupy the site at the head of Wall Street.  The first was built in 1698 and burned in the great New York fire of 1776, which destroyed hundreds of buildings.  The second was built in 1790 and torn down after support beams bucked in 1838.  The current Trinity Church, designed by architect Robert Upjohn in the Gothic Revival style, was consecrated in 1846.  Its 281-foot steeple made it the tallest building in New York City until 1890.  The parish also includes St. Paul’s Chapel five blocks away, built in 1766 and operating continuously since then, which will host Trinity’s Sunday services during the renovation.  Karen Matthews  https://apnews.com/3ea653697f8846c289320da7cdd37b33

Poulsbo Bread was developed by Marion Sluys, the owner of Sluys' Bakery in Poulsbo, from a biblical recipe.  In 1974, after reading a passage in the Book of Ezekiel directing the baking of a specific type of multigrain bread, Sluys claims he decided to attempt to prepare the recipe in his Poulsbo bakery, naming the resulting product Poulsbo Bread.  The passage in question, Ezekiel 4:9, reads:  Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.  According to Sluys' Bakery, the bread was licensed to Franz Family Bakeries in the early 1980s for national and international distribution, with the license terms requiring Ezekiel 4:9 be imprinted on all packaging.  In 2011, Franz discontinued mass production of Poulsbo Bread due to lagging demand for the product, however, as of 2018 the bread continues to be hand-mixed at Sluys' Bakery for local sale.  Sluys' Bakery produces Poulsbo Bread in three varieties:  regular, dark, and raisin.  The bread has been variously described as "famous" and "world famous."  In 2008, a student of Libby High School in Libby, Montana, credited his decision to move to Kitsap County and attend Olympic College on an athletic scholarship to his affinity for Poulsbo Bread, saying he regularly purchased the product at his local grocery store and, after reading a description of the town of Poulsbo on the packaging of the bread, thought "it would be a cool place to live".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poulsbo_Bread

SOPHROSYNE, AND WHY WE NEED HER NOW by Vincent de Luise  "Essays and thoughts at the nexus of music, art and medicine and the transformative power of the humanities on the healing of the body and spirit"  http://amusicalvision.blogspot.com/2012/09/sophrosyne.html

Kernza is sometimes called a “perennial wheat.”  Chestnut-colored, skinnier, and more irregular in size than wheat berries, Kernza yields a little under a third as much in the field as conventional wheat.  But it has one major advantage over the grain that helped launch human civilization:  a long life span.  Wheat is an annual; it dies every year after it sets seeds, and farmers have to replant it again and again.  Kernza lives on, season after season.  While Kernza has the taste of a cereal, it has the habits of a prairie grass.  It sinks 15-foot-long roots into the soil and banks nutrients and carbon as organic matter.  It produces edible grain for five years, during which time it requires little or no tilling and less fertilizer than wheat does. To create and grow such a grain has been the dream of a group of scientists and sustainable-food advocates for four decades.  The 12,000-year history of grain agriculture is essentially a long-running set of experiments to turn grass into something that humans could reliably harvest and eat.  Humanity’s first crops—including barley and two varieties of wheat called emmer and einkorn—started, of course, as wild plants.  Hunter-gatherers probably sought those plants for their fat, nutritious seeds.  Around 10,000 bc, humans began to cultivate them, and the abundant calories those plants produce made it possible for civilization to flower in the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent.  Across a large area, the results of plowing and tilling can be disastrous, as became clear in the United States in the 1930s, when drought turned the heavily plowed soils of the Great Plains into the nightmare known as the Dust Bowl.  From that decade forward, the US government vigorously promoted soil-conservation measures, including methods like windbreaks.  Annual erosion rates have dropped decade after decade, but the United States still loses soil 10 times faster than nature can replace it.  The Land Institute, the University of Minnesota, and their partners are trying to hammer out other varieties of perennial crops:  a rice being tested in China, an oilseed akin to canola, a flaxseed native to North America.  And a small number of research programs into perennials have been started around the world.  The Bread Lab, a program of Washington State University, has been developing its own version of a wheatlike perennial called Salish Blue.  Madeline Ostrander  Read extensive article and see pictures at https://www.thenation.com/article/the-grain-that-tastes-like-wheat-but-grows-like-a-prairie-grass/

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Johnson Flucker   Subject:  written vs. pronounced English  John Huston’s 1963 thriller The List of Adrian Messenger uses discrepant written vs. pronounced English as a major plot point wonderfully.  The audience is advised (before George C. Scott’s detective character ‘twigs’) that the ancient family name Bruttenholm is pronounced “broom”.  Watch the moment wherein the incomparable Gladys Cooper excoriates her most recent husband (a toad-eating poodle-faker of Brobdingnagian scale) played masterfully by Marcel Dalio.  These very fine character performances lurk here at about 49’ 25”.
From:  John Bartlett  Subject:  Pronunciation   When a new library was built in Victoria, BC, city council consulted the Songhees and Esquimalt nations and selected the Lekwungen word for the James Bay area, sxÊ·eÅ‹xʷəŋ təŋəxÊ·, pronounced s-hweng hw-ung tongue-oo-hw.  See http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/new-james-bay-library-branch-given-lekwungen-name-1.23154333  What’s the betting it will just be called the James Bay Library?

From:  Peter Gross  Subject:  ceilidh  As a native English speaker I am amused when I hear people complain about pronunciation in a language like French, of which I know a little.  I point out to them that while romance languages may not be perfectly phonetic, they, unlike English, do follow some rules.  I then point out our different pronunciation of the letters o-u-g-h in the following five words:  enough, cough, through, bough, though.  Enough said?

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1885  May 9, 2018