John Angus McPhee (born March 8, 1931) is an American author.  He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction.  He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists).  In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career".  Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McPhee# 

JOHN MCPHEE carefully snips his ultralight fishing line with scissors.  He scrolls a finger through a clear plastic lure box and pulls out a small dart--pink and white with a flashy tail the color of abalone.  He ties it to his line, listening to the talk in the boat.  A couple of anglers are expounding on the low merits of the American shad as a table fish, and McPhee has heard these incriminations before.  He rises to the defense.  "I think it's a terrific fish to eat," McPhee says quietly, while tying his lure to the line.  "I love shad roe, and I love to bake the whole fish.  The name of this fish is Alosa sapidissima, which means 'savory fish.'  So somebody thought so, other than me."  Perhaps.  But it is also true that few people have considered the American shad as thoroughly as McPhee.  An avid fisherman and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, he wrote The Founding Fish, an engrossing book parsing every possible angle and attribute of the American shad and American shad fishing.  For McPhee, American shad are "ardent zeppelins" populating the streams "of sacred origin of American fly fishing."  To others, they are the "poor man's tarpon"--accessible to anglers from shore or boat, acrobatic when hooked, at times plentiful in the extreme.  And to increasing numbers of conservationists, the fish is a totem of the lost wildness of North America's dammed, polluted and otherwise diminished rivers--and of an incredible opportunity to restore them.  https://www.nwf.org/Magazines/National-Wildlife/2006/Ode-to-a-Founding-Fish 

A digital twin is a digital model of an intended or actual real-world physical product, system, or process (a physical twin) that serves as a digital counterpart of it for purposes such as simulation, integration, testing, monitoring, and maintenance.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_twin    

For example, one company is producing "digital twins" of owners' homes:  immersive views of any room in a 3D model, including appliances, allowing builders and homeowners to click on devices or areas for more information like warranty, user manual, paint color, etc.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2024/02/22/digs-puts-ai-in-the-center-of-building-a-home/?sh=5133f0a85346  Thank you, reader.    

“Don't want what you don't need and you'll be fine.  Don't want what you can't have . . .  Lila, a prequel to Gilead, by Marilynn Robinson   

Pond water-starwort, also known as Starwort, Water Chickweed, Common Starwort, European Water Starwort   Pond water-starwort thrives best in shallow, still, or slow-moving water, making it an undemanding aquatic plant ideal for ponds and water gardens.  Key care points include ensuring adequate light for optimal growth and preventing overcrowding by periodically thinning dense mats.  This species is resilient and tolerates a range of conditions, highlighting its ease of care for aquatic plant enthusiasts.   See picture at https://www.picturethisai.com/care/Callitriche_stagnalis.html   

Dec. 5, 2025  Frank Gehry, who in the second half of the 20th century forged a new language in architecture, becoming one of the most famous architects of his time, has died at the age of 96, according to a spokesperson at Gehry Partners.  He died at his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness.  Gehry was born in Toronto, Canada.  After studying architecture at the University of Southern California and urban planning at Harvard, he set up his practice in Los Angeles in 1962.  Redeveloping his own home using utilitarian materials—cinder blocks, plywood, corrugated metal and chain-link fencing—helped jump-start his career in 1978 in and around the state.  He was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989, which vaulted him and his work to international acclaim.  But Gehry was in his late 60s when he received the commission for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, perhaps the most critically-acclaimed and renowned building of his career.  In 1998, the late Philip Johnson, the godfather of American modern architecture, stood in the atrium and was moved to tears.  According to Vanity Fair, he anointed Gehry “the greatest architect we have today.”   Fish were a recurrent theme in Gehry’s work, but his designs were also sparked by ideas as diverse as the shape of Japanese Buddhist temples, ice hockey and Stratocaster guitars.  The Guggenheim led to a series of high-profile commissions: the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle (2000), Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris (2014) among them.  He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016.    https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/05/style/architect-frank-gehry-dies   

December 8, 2025

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

Hardtack (or hard tack) is a type of dense cracker made from flour, water, and sometimes salt.  Hardtack is very inexpensive and long-lasting, allowing it to be used for sustenance in the absence of perishable foods. It is commonly used during long sea voyages, land migrations, and military campaigns.  Along with salt pork and corned beef, hardtack was a standard ration for many militaries and navies from the 17th to the early 20th centuries.  The name is derived from "tack", the British sailor slang for food.  The earliest use of the term recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1830.   It is known by other names including brewis (possibly a cognate with "brose"), cabin bread, pilot bread, sea biscuit, soda crackers, sea bread (as rations for sailors), ship's biscuit, and pejoratively as dog biscuits, molar breakers, sheet iron, tooth dullers, Panzerplatten ("armor plates"; Germany) and worm castles.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack    

A rusk is a hard, dry biscuit or a twice-baked bread.   It is sometimes used as a teether for babies.   In some cultures, rusk is made of cake rather than bread:  this is sometimes referred to as cake rusk.  In the UK, the name also refers to a wheat-based food additive.   In Argentina, rusk is called tostadas de mesa (literally 'table toasts'), slices of twice-baked bread generally available in supermarkets in plain and sweetened variants.  Cake rusk is called bay biscuit; its ingredients are egg, sugar, oil, self-rising flour, and vanilla.  See other variations at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusk    

Possessing nearly unparalleled technical facility, a brilliant ear for tonal color, and innovative programming style, Peter Richard Conte is one the most admired “orchestral” organists of this era.  Appointed in 1989 as the fourth Wanamaker Grand Court Organist and presiding over the world’s largest fully functioning musical instrument (29,000 pipes) at the Wanamaker Building in downtown Philadelphia, Mr. Conte is a masterful and enthralling performer, arranger of jaw-dropping organ transcriptions, and creatively astute silent film accompanist who is equally at home with a work by Franck or accompanying a Charlie Chaplin film.  https://concertartists.com/artists/peter-richard-conte/    

A babka, or an Ugat Shmarim is a sweet braided cake or viennoiserie that originated in the Jewish communities of Poland and Western Ukraine.  It is popular in Israel where it is known as a yeast cake.  It is also popular in the Jewish diaspora.  It is prepared with a yeast-leavened dough that is rolled out and spread with a filling such as chocolate, cinnamon, fruit, or cheese, then rolled up and braided before baking.  Babka developed in Poland and next in the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe in the early 19th century.  Extra challah dough was rolled up with fruit jam or cinnamon and baked as a loaf alongside the challah.  Chocolate was not originally used, as it was not generally available; the chocolate babka was likely a mid-20th century American development.  Its name (though not necessarily the dish itself) may be related to a type of Easter cake popular in Poland and Ukraine known as baba or the diminutive babka, which means "grandmother", related to the Yiddish bubbe.  Although the Polish and Ukrainian babka are mutually synonymous with their Jewish counterparts, the appearance and preparation of each babka is drastically different.  The Eastern European babka is known for its tall, stout, fluted sides formed in a traditional pan, and reminiscent of a grandma's skirt.  In comparison, the variant introduced by émigrés to New York consists of strands of rich yeasted dough interwoven and baked in a loaf tin.  Thank you, reader.   

The official Oxford Word of the Year 2025 is rage bait.  Rage bait is defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content”.  With 2025’s news cycle dominated by social unrest, debates about the regulation of online content, and concerns over digital wellbeing, our experts noticed that the use of rage bait this year has evolved to signal a deeper shift in how we talk about attention—both how it is given and how it is sought after—engagement, and ethics online.  The word has tripled in usage in the last 12 months.  Rage bait was first used online in a posting on Usenet in 2002 as a way to designate a particular type of driver reaction to being flashed at by another driver requesting to pass them, introducing the idea of deliberate agitation.  The word then evolved into internet slang used to describe viral tweets, often to critique entire networks of content that determine what is posted online, like platforms, creators, and trends.    

December 3, 2025

The pinto bean is a variety of common bean.  In Spanish they are called frijoles pintos.  It is the most popular bean by crop production in Northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States, and is most often eaten whole (sometimes in broth), or mashed and then fried.  Prepared either way, it is a common filling for burritos, tostadas, or tacos in Mexican cuisine, also as a side or as part of an entrée served with a side tortilla or sopapilla in New Mexican cuisine.  In South America, it is known as the poroto frutilla, literally "strawberry bean".   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinto_bean#   

Pinto bean recipe   https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016030-a-big-pot-of-simmered-pintos    

bespoke  Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics professor, told The New York Times that "Americans associate it with the British upper class", adding that the word for Americans tapped into "our individualism.  We want everything made specially for us.  Even when it comes to salad bars."  As of 2012, there were 39 applications using the term bespoke at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, with half of those having been filed only in the previous 18 months.  The Wall Street Journal said that the term had started to proliferate in corporations and among investors a few years before that.  A writer in The Independent said that consumers no longer wanted to "keep up with the Joneses", but wanted to set themselves apart, saying that the bespoke drive was anti-tradition, and about a desire to be different rather than identify collectively with others.   Newsweek described the word as "monstrously distorted, abused and otherwise mangled into near meaninglessness", saying that anything can now be labeled "bespoke".  The same Newsweek writer used the word as a verb to describe ordering a custom-made pair of glasses ("bespeaking a pair of spectacles").  One French bespoke shirtmaker was said to offer 400 shades of white, to satisfy vendor-customer relationships and desire for custom-made items.  The New York Times devoted an article to bespoke cocktails, which they described as "something devised on the spot to a customer's precise and sometimes peculiar specifications".  In another article, The New York Times described bespoke perfumes' taking the "world of personalization to an entirely new level".  A 2016 article in The New York Times describes a satirical video about bespoke water and observed:   "The B word has become an increasingly common branding lure employed by interior design companies, publishers, surgeons and pornographers.  There are bespoke wines, bespoke software, bespoke vacations, bespoke barber shops, bespoke insurance plans, bespoke yoga, bespoke tattoos, even bespoke medical implants."   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bespoke   Thank you, reader.    

In Ancient Greek Theatre, there is an interesting similarity among the plays written during that time: there is always a chorus included.  Nowadays most people would associate a chorus with musicals, but playwrights like Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles included a chorus in their regular plays.  The chorus consisted of a group of 12 to 50 players who spoke or sang their lines in unison, wore masks, and functioned as one actor rather than a large group of many performers.  The purpose of the Greek chorus was to provide background and summary information to the audience to help them understand what was going on in the performance.  They commented on themes, expressed what the main characters couldn’t say (like secrets, thoughts, and fears) and provided other characters with information and insights.  Because Greek theatres were so large, the members of the chorus had to work hard to look and sound like one person.  Their diction and lines had to be presented crisply and clearly so the entire audience could easily hear them.  Their gestures were overly exaggerated.  Frequently a chorus leader, called a coryphaeus, would aid with comprehension.  https://www.theatrefolk.com/blog/exploring-greek-chorus   

A beef on weck is a sandwich found primarily in Western New York State, particularly in the city of Buffalo.  It is made with roast beef on a kummelweck roll, a roll that is topped with kosher salt and caraway seeds.  The meat on the sandwich is traditionally served rare, thin cut, with the top bun getting a dip in jus and spread with horseradish.  The sandwich, along with Buffalo wings and sponge candy, is one of the three best-known food specialties of Buffalo.   The origin and history of the beef on weck sandwich is not well established but is thought to predate the 1960s development of Buffalo wings by approximately a century.   It is believed that a German baker named William Wahr, who is thought to have immigrated from the Black Forest region of Germany, created the kummelweck roll while living in Buffalo, New York.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_on_weck    

November 26, 2025

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