The Oxford English Dictionary says cahoots came to English from the French by way of the Scots.  It turns up in Scots English in the 16th century as "cahute," French for a cabin or small hut.  However, that usage didn't last long.  "Cahoot" turned up again in American English in the 19th century with much of its present-day meaning.  It may have come from the French word "cohorte,'' which meant a companion or partner.  According to grammarphobia.com, it appeared in Chronicles of Pineville, a collection of sketches from the early 1800s about backwoods Georgia, by William T. Thompson, in which a character says, "I wouldn't swear he wasn't in cahoot with the devil."  The word went from singular to plural–cahoots–in the 1860s.  https://www.azcentral.com/story/claythompson/2014/05/26/clay-thompson-arizona-humor-word-origins-cahoots/9453983/ 

Pawpaw (Asimina triloba), also known as papaw, Indiana banana, Hoosier banana, Michigan banana, and poor man’s banana, is the only temperate member of the tropical Annonaceae family (custard apple family) and is the largest edible tree fruit native to the United States.  Pawpaws grow in the deep, rich fertile soils of river-bottom lands where they grow as understory trees or shrubby thickets.  They grow in 25 states in the eastern United States, ranging from northern Florida to southern Ontario (Canada) and as far west as eastern Nebraska, and are hardy in USDA Zones 5 to 8.  Pawpaws are ideally suited for the residential “edible” landscape due to their lush, tropical appearance, attractive pyramidal growth form, small tree size, vibrant yellow fall color, few insect or disease pests, and fruit that possesses hints of subtropical flavors.  In addition, pawpaws are suitable for butterfly gardens as they are the exclusive larval host plant of zebra swallowtails (Eurytides marcellus).  Taxonomically, fruits are oblong to cylindrical berries.  They are typically 1 to 6 inches long, 1 to 4 inches wide, and weigh from 7 ounces to as much as 2 pounds.  Borne singly or in clusters, the fruits resemble the “hands” of bananas (Musa spp.).  Some pawpaw clusters can weigh up to 3 pounds.  Pawpaw is an excellent food source that is high in carbohydrates.  It exceeds apple, peach, and grape in most vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and food energy values. For the best flavor, eat fully ripe pawpaw fruits.  Its intense tropical flavor and aroma are ideal for processed food products, including blended fruit drinks, baby food, and ice creams.  The flesh purees easily and freezes nicely.  Pawpaw can be a substitute for equal parts of banana in most recipes.  Pawpaw also makes a flavorful fruit wine.  https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/pawpaw/ 

Paw Paw Patch Children's Song  https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=2364 

Burning the candle at both ends leaves a lot of melted wax in the middle.  Killer Heat, Alexandra Cooper #10 novel by Linda Fairstein 

The road to hell is paved with good intentions means that it is not enough to simply mean to do well, one must take action to do well.  A good intention is meaningless unless it is followed by a good action.  The expression the road to hell is paved with good intentions was first published in its current form in Henry G. Bohn’s A Hand-book of Proverbs in 1855.  An earlier iteration was published in 1670 in A Collection of English Proverbs collected by John Ray:  Hell is paved with good intentions.  This is the version that Samuel Johnson was quoted as saying in James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D published in 1791.  Johnson is credited with creating the proverb, but as we have already seen, it predates him.  A still earlier influence is a quote supposedly uttered by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux who lived at the turn of the eleventh century:  L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs, which translates from the French as “hell is full of good intentions and wishes”.  However, this quote was reported by St. Francis de Sales in his Correspondence:  Lettres d’Amitié Spirituelle written in 1640, 500 years before St. Bernard’s death.  https://grammarist.com/proverb/the-road-to-hell-is-paved-with-good-intentions/ 

Blue Zones, the parts of the world that are home to the most centenarians, include the Greek island Icaria, the Japanese Okinawa, the Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica, the community in Loma Linda in California, and, of course, Sardinia.  On this beautiful Italian island, there are magical corners where the inhabitants arrive and often easily pass the milestone of 100 years.  Indeed, in the village of Seulo, in Barbagia, 20 centenarians were counted between 1996 and 2016, confirming itself as the longest-lived town in the world!  Some tips from these Blue Zones:  Consume plenty of plant foods at each meal; prefer vegetable fats such as those from olives, walnuts, almonds and fruit; prefer wholemeal bread and flour; choose legumes, eggs, cheeses and, to a lesser extent, and eat fish as sources of protein.  It is also important that foods are not very refined.  https://pinocchiospantry.com/blogs/news/healty-italian-food-blue-zone-the-secret-of-longevity-is-also-in-what-we-eat  See also https://www.christinacooks.com/your-kitchen-your-pharmacy/ 

A gerund (pronounced JER-und) is a verb that’s acting as a noun.  By that, we mean that the verb—the word that describes the action that’s happening, like “biking,” “thinking,” “running,” or “speaking”—becomes a thing, a concept that can now be the sentence’s subject, direct object, indirect object, or the object of a preposition.  It doesn’t stop being a verb, but the role it plays in a sentence shifts from describing the action to being a focal point.  Lindsay Kramer  https://www.grammarly.com/blog/gerund/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2573  October 5, 2022