Honeycomb toffee, honeycomb candy, sponge toffee, cinder toffee, seafoam, or hokey pokey is a sugary toffee with a light, rigid, sponge-like texture.  Its main ingredients are typically brown sugar (or corn syrup, molasses or golden syrup) and baking soda, sometimes with an acid such as vinegar.  The baking soda and acid react to form carbon dioxide which is trapped in the highly viscous mixture. When acid is not used, thermal decomposition of the baking soda releases carbon dioxide.  The sponge-like structure is formed while the sugar is liquid, then the toffee sets hard.  Owing to its relatively simple recipe and quick preparation time, in some regions it is often made at home, and is a popular recipe for children.  It is also made commercially and sold in small blocks, or covered in chocolate, a popular example being the Crunchie bar of Britain and Canada, or the Violet Crumble of Australia.  Find a list of honeycomb toffee known by  a variety of names at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeycomb_toffee   

Funeral March of a Marionette is a short piece by Charles Gounod.  It was originally written for solo piano in 1872 and orchestrated in 1879.  It is perhaps best known as the theme music for the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  While residing in London, England, between 1871 and 1872, Gounod started to write a suite for piano called Suite burlesque.  After completing this piece, Gounod abandoned the rest of the suite.  The piece was dedicated to Madame Viguier, a pianist and the wife of Alfred Viguier, the first violin in the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire.  In 1879, he orchestrated the piece with piccolo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in D, 2 trumpets in A, 3 trombones, ophicleide, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, and strings. The work is in the key of D minor with a central section in D major; the time signature is 6/8.   Find the storyline of the "Funeral March of a Marionette" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funeral_March_of_a_Marionette    

Benjamin Franklin is generally credited with the invention of bifocals.  He decided to saw his lenses in half so he could read the lips of speakers of French at court, the only way he could understand them.  Historians have produced some evidence to suggest that others may have come before him in the invention; however, a correspondence between George Whatley and John Fenno, editor of the Gazette of the United States, suggested that Franklin had indeed invented bifocals, and perhaps 50 years earlier than had been originally thought.  John Isaac Hawkins, the inventor of trifocal lenses, coined the term bifocals in 1824 and credited Benjamin Franklin.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifocals   

ROUNDS RESOUNDING:  You may sing the songs Three Blind Mice with Are You Sleeping and Row, Row, Row Your Boat with three people or three groups of people at the same time.    

Le droit d'aînesse ("The Birthright") is an opéra bouffe, a form of operetta, in three acts by Francis Chassaigne with a French libretto by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo.  The story concerns an arranged marriage intended to make a governor's heir, his nephew, an aristocrat.  Through a series of mishaps that place the governor's nephew and his niece each in danger, the niece, Falka, becomes the noble heir.  The opera premiered in Paris in 1883.  An English-language version titled Falka (after the name of the principal female character), with a libretto translated and adapted by Henry Brougham Farnie, was successfully premiered in London later that year followed by productions throughout the English-speaking world.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_droit_d%27a%C3%AEnesse    

November 24, 2025