Lawrence Welk (1903-1992) was an American accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted The Lawrence Welk Show from 1951 to 1982.  The program was known for its light and family-friendly style, and the easy listening music featured became known as "champagne music" to his radio, television, and live-performance audiences.   Welk, a native of North Dakota who was born to German immigrants from Russia, began his career as a bandleader in the 1920s in the Great Plains.  He gradually became more known throughout the country due to recordings and radio performances, and he and his orchestra were based in Chicago in the 1940s, where they had a standing residency at the Trianon Ballroom.  By the start of the next decade, Welk relocated to Los Angeles and began hosting his eponymous television show, first on local television, before going national when the show was picked up by ABC in 1955.  The show's popularity held through the following years, and with its focus on inoffensive entertainment, it was embraced by conservative audiences as an antidote to the counterculture of the 1960s.  Welk vigorously sought to uphold this "clean-cut" reputation, and was deeply involved in managing both the on- and off-camera reputations of his show's performers.  In 1971, ABC cancelled The Lawrence Welk Show as part of a broader trend away from programs aimed at older or more rural audiences.  Welk then continued his program in broadcast syndication until retiring in 1982.  In the remaining decade of his life, he managed various business interests and packaged reruns of his show for broadcast on PBS, where it has continued to appear into the 21st century.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Welk   Thank you, reader.    

Tilapia is the common name for nearly a hundred species of cichlid fish from the coelotilapine, coptodonine, heterotilapine, oreochromine, pelmatolapiine, and tilapiine tribes (formerly all were "Tilapiini"), with the economically most important species placed in the Coptodonini and Oreochromini.   Tilapia are mainly freshwater fish native to Africa and the Middle East, inhabiting shallow streams, ponds, rivers, and lakes, and less commonly found living in brackish water.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilapia    

"You're a Grand Old Flag" was written by George M. Cohan for his 1906 stage musical George Washington, Jr.  The song was introduced to the public in the play's first act on opening night, February 6, 1906, in New York's Herald Square Theater.  It was the first song from a musical to sell over a million copies of sheet music.  The original lyric for this perennial George M. Cohan favorite came, as Cohan later explained, from an encounter he had with a Civil War veteran who fought at Gettysburg.  The two men found themselves next to each other and Cohan noticed the vet held a carefully folded but ragged old flag.  The man reportedly then turned to Cohan and said, "She's a grand old rag."  Cohan thought it was a great line and originally named his tune "You're a Grand Old Rag."  So many groups and individuals objected to calling the flag a "rag," however, that he "gave 'em what they wanted" and switched words, renaming the song "You're a Grand Old Flag."  It was in George Washington, Jr. that Cohan worked out a routine with this song that he would repeat in many subsequent shows.  He took an American flag, started singing the patriotic song, and marched back and forth across the stage.  Music such as Cohan's "You're a Grand Old Flag" helped create a shared popular cultural identity as such songs spread beyond the stage, through sheet music and records, to the homes and street corners of America.  https://www.loc.gov/collections/patriotic-melodies/articles-and-essays/youre-a-grand-old-flag/ 

 

The World is an Open Book by Valerie Worth

A book is

The world

Made small:

So that even

Indoors on a

Rainy day

You can travel

Around it

Twice each way

And never

Get wet

At all.   

Acclaimed poet Valerie Worth Bahlke (1933-1994) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Swarthmore, where her father taught biology at Swarthmore College.  The family then moved to Tampa, Florida, and Bangalore, India, where they lived for one year.  Valerie returned to Swarthmore to attend college, graduating with an English degree and High Honors.  Shortly thereafter she married George Bahlke, a fellow Swarthmore graduate.   After settling in Clinton, NY, Valerie met Natalie Babbitt at Kirkland College, and Natalie began to illustrate Valerie's work, starting with Small Poems in 1972.  Three more volumes followed:  More Small Poems (1976); Still More Small Poems (1978); and Small Poems Again (1986).  All four volumes were issued in a single paperback, All the Small Poems (1987), and seven years later, All the Small Poems and Fourteen More was released and was then followed by a paperback edition in 1996.  In 2002, FSG posthumously published Peacock and Other Poems by Valerie Worth, with pictures by Natalie Babbitt, a collection of 27 poems which Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, said "heralds the joy of words."  School Library Journal, in a starred review, declared that "[Valerie Worth's] work gives children something to admire and aim for."  Valerie Worth was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in 1991 with its Poetry Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children, which acknowledges a body of work.  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/553588.All_the_Small_Poems_and_Fourteen_More   

December 5, 2025