The verb reek derives from two similarly pronounced words that were familiar in Old English times.  One meant “to emit smoke” and the other meant “to emit a strong smell.”  Today the verb reek may have either meaning.  By itself, wreak means “to give expression to; to vent.”  Bottom line:  Chimneys, cigars, and bad relationships “reek.”  Hurricanes, earthquakes, ice storms, droughts, and war wreak destruction and devastation.  http://www.dailywritingtips.com/reeking-and-wreaking/ 

Homonyms (also called homophones) are words that sound like one another but have different meanings.  Some homonyms are spelled the same, like bark (the sound a dog makes) and bark (the outer layer of a tree trunk).  Some homonyms are spelled differently, like one (the number) and won (having been victorious).  Note:  The Columbia Guide to Standard English defines homophones as words that are pronounced alike and have different spellings (like flower and flour), and defines homonyms as a more general term that includes both homophones and words that are spelled alike and have different meanings (like bank [the edge of a river] and bank [a financial institution]). However, the Random House Unabridged Dictionary (1993 edition) defines the terms homonym and homophone in such a way that each term includes words that are pronounced alike and have different spellings, and also words that are spelled alike and have different meanings.  Find a list of common homonymns, including reek and wreak, at http://www.enchantedlearning.com/english/homonyms/  

Tanzanite is a gemstone that was found in Tanzania in 1967.  Tanzanite comes from the mineral Zoisite.  It is made from calcium, aluminum and silica.  Zoisite can come in many colors; however Tanzanite is usually sold when it is either blue, bluish violet or blue with a hint of purple surrounding it.  Besides forming naturally, Tanzanite can be synthetically created.  It is interesting to note that when Tanzanite is created synthetically it is no longer has the mineral properties of Zoisite; it has different mineral properties called Fosterite.  Practically all Tanzanite is treated whether synthetically or natural.  It is usually heated with temperatures over 500 degrees Celsius. This treatment process enhances the color of the stone.  Tanzanite has a few shortcomings including the fact that it is not that hard, with only a score of 6.5 to 7 on Moh’s hardness scale.  It can also lose its color to extreme heat. While normal wear and tear shouldn’t affect the color of the stone, it has been known to change slightly.  http://www.gemstoneeducation.com/Tanzanite_2.htm

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston, MA 02125 (617) 514-1600  Toll free (866) JFK-1960  The Museum is open 7 days per week, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with the exception of New Year’s, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.  Last introductory film of the day is at 3:55 p.m.  Find details of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s plans to pay tribute to President Kennedy on November 22, 2013 at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Visit/Nov-22-2013.aspx  Search holdings at http://www.jfklibrary.org/  For assistance, contact reference staff at 617.514.1629 or Kennedy.Library@nara.gov. 

Yonaguni is a town located entirely on Yonaguni Island in Yaeyama District, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan.  It is the westernmost municipality in Japan, and is known for billfish fishing and as a diving spot.  Recently, a megalith known as the Yonaguni Monument was discovered on the seafloor off the southern edge of the island and has been in the spotlight as possible man-made, underwater ruins.  Animals of interest:  Yonaguni horse – One of eight traditional Japanese horses, the smallest horse in Japan.  Unable to be seen anywhere other than the island of Yonaguni.  Atlas moth – Called ayami habiru locally, this is the world’s largest moth.  In Japan, it is found only in Yonaguni.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonaguni,_Okinawa 

Q.  What do the works of Gregory Maguire and Jasper Fforde have in common?  A  They each write parallel novels. 

The Parallel Novel, or Reimagined Classic, is a piece of literature written within, or derived from, the framework of another work of fiction by another author.  This designation is distinct from franchised book series, which are typically works licensed by the publisher of the original work to use its settings and characters.  Generally, an author creating a parallel novel will choose a marginalized or potentially misunderstood character and recast the events from the perspective of that character.  The practice of appropriation in literature is clearly ancient (Aeneas, a minor character from Homer's The Iliad, is given his own epic story by Virgil), but it is relatively common in contemporary fiction.   See examples of parallel novels at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_novel

Gibe refers to a taunt or a derisive remark. It functions as both a verb (to taunt) and a noun (taunt).  Jibe has a nautical use (relating to turning the sail to go on an opposite tack), but it’s most often used to mean agree or to be in accord.  http://grammarist.com/usage/gibe-jibe-jive/

An action verb with a direct object is transitive while an action verb with no direct object is intransitive.  Some verbs, such as arrive, go, lie, sneeze, sit, and die, are always intransitive; it is impossible for a direct object to follow.  Other action verbs, however, can be transitive or intransitive, depending on what follows in the sentence.  Compare these examples:

Because of blood sugar problems, Rosa always eats before leaving for school.

Eats = intransitive verb.
If there is no leftover pizza, Rosa usually eats whole-grain cereal.
Eats = transitive verb; cereal = direct object.
During cross-country practice, Damien runs over hills, through fields, across the river, and along the highway.
Runs = intransitive verb.
In the spring, Damien will run his first marathon.
Will run = transitive verb; marathon = direct object.
http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/intransitiveverb.htm

Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin (1879–1954) was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published in 1901.  While she wrote throughout her life, her other major literary success, All That Swagger, was not published until 1936.  She was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature, and she actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals, and writers' organisations.  She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Franklin

Miles Franklin Award   "Without an indigenous literature, people can remain alien in their own soil."  Find 2013 winner and 2013 shortlist at http://www.milesfranklin.com.au/

Humans speak many languages, but we may be united in our confusion.  A new study examined languages from around the world and discovered what they say could be a universal word:  "Huh?"  Researchers traveled to cities and remote villages on five continents, visiting native speakers of 10 very different languages.  Their nearly 200 recordings of casual conversations revealed that there are versions of "Huh?" in every language they studied — and they sound remarkably similar.  For this study, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands set out to show that "Huh?" had earned the status of a full-fledged word, though an admittedly odd one.  They also wanted to see whether other languages had a similar word with a similar function.  The problem is that "Huh?" often seems like such an unimportant feature of language that it's not well documented, said Nick Enfield, a linguistic anthropologist who worked on the study.  The word doesn't crop up much in linguistic literature because researchers who record speakers of remote languages often ignore such forgettable filler.  The scientists knew that to find out whether "Huh?" had counterparts in other languages, they'd have to go looking themselves.  So they headed to remote villages in Ecuador, Laos, Ghana and Australia and spent weeks getting acquainted with the locals.  They felt they had to gain people's trust before they could record natural, casual conversations — and perhaps catch a few instances of "Huh?" in its natural environment.  The "Huh?"-hunters also visited family homes in Italy, Russia and Taiwan as well as laboratories in Spain and the Netherlands.  The languages studied were Cha'palaa, Dutch, Icelandic, Italian, Lao, Mandarin Chinese, Murriny Patha, Russian, Siwu and Spanish. (English wasn't included in the study.)  Across these languages, they found a remarkable similarity among the "Huhs?"  All the words had a single syllable, and they were typically limited to a low-front vowel, something akin to an "ah" or an "eh."  Sometimes this simple word started with a consonant, as does the English "Huh?" or the Dutch "Heh?"  (Spellings are approximate.)  Across all 10 languages, there were at least 64 simple consonants to choose from, but the word always started with an H or a glottal stop — the sound in the middle of the English "uh-oh."  Amina Khan  http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-huh-20131109,0,4266398.story#axzz2kAY2PhnV 

‘Stirring the Possum’ is an Aussie colloquialism or slang.  G.A. Wilkes’ A Dictionary Of Australian Colloquialisms now in it’s fourth edition, first published in 1978 reads: 

‘Stir-ring-the-Pos-sum’ To liven things up, create a disturbance; raise issues that others wish left dormant.   The term was used about the Mayan Calendar not leading to the end of the world in an article by Nicole Alexander titled ‘Stirring the possum; Mayan style’.  Nicole, an Australian storyteller, comes to the defence of the Mayans pointing out quite sensibly that “Mayans… have no idea about our doomsday approach to their calendar”.  There’s also a couple of books:  Stir the possum :  verse poetry, humour Australiana by John Mullally and Irene Patricia Sexton published in 1975.  The other Stirring the possum:  Legal aid and consumer interest by Jeffery Michael Giddings and published by Griffith University in 2000.  They’re so different in nature that you couldn’t make this stuff up.  http://possumtales.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/stirring-the-possum/ 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  Yiddish (literally, Jewish) is a language without a country.  (Israel's official languages are Hebrew and Arabic).  It started out as the language of the Ashkenazi Jews (from Germany).  The language has German as its base, includes a generous sprinkling of words from Hebrew and other languages, and is written in an alphabet based on Hebrew.

bupkis  (BUHP-kis)  noun  Absolutely nothing; worthless.  From Yiddish, short for kozebubkes (goat droppings), from bub/bob (bean).  Earliest documented use:  1937.   The word is also spelled as bobkes, bubkes, bopkes, bupkes, bupkus, bubkis, bubkes, etc.  The English equivalent of the term is beans, as in:  He doesn't know beans about computers.

schnozzle  (SHNOZ-ul) noun  A nose, especially a large one.   From Yiddish shnoytsl, diminutive of shnoyts (snout), from German Schnauze (snout), which also gave us the name of the dog breed schnauzer.  Earliest documented use:  1930.

schmo or schmoe or shmo  (shmo)  noun  A stupid, boring, or obnoxious person.   A truncated form of schmuck (an idiot), from Yiddish schmok (pen is).  Earliest documented use:  1948.  The word is also used in the phrase Joe Schmo, as a more colorful synonym for John Doe.

Find the youngest to oldest U.S. Presidents.  First five and last five listed here.

Theodore Roosevelt (42 years, 10 months, 18 days)
John F. Kennedy (43 years, 7 months, 22 days)
Bill Clinton (46 years, 5 months, 1 day)
Ulysses S. Grant (46 years, 10 months, 5 days)
Barack Obama (47 years, 5 months, 16 days)
Zachary Taylor (64 years, 3 months, 8 days)
George H. W. Bush (64 years, 7 months, 8 days)
James Buchanan (65 years, 10 months, 9 days)
William H. Harrison (68 years, 0 months, 23 days)
Ronald Reagan (69 years, 11 months, 14 days)  by Jennifer Rosenberg  http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldleaders/a/youngpresidents.htm

Presidential assassinations

Abraham Lincoln (1865)
James Garfield (1881)
William McKinley (1901)
John F. Kennedy (1963)

Presidential assassination attempts

Andrew Jackson (1835)
Theodore Roosevelt (1912) (as a Presidential candidate and former President)
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933) (as President-elect)
Harry S Truman (1950)
Gerald Ford (1975)
Ronald Reagan (1981)  Link to many resources at http://www.presidentsusa.net/assassinations.html

Google Inc on Nov. 14, 2013 won dismissal of a long-running lawsuit by authors who accused the Internet search company of digitally copying millions of books for an online library without permission.  U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan accepted Google's argument that its scanning of more than 20 million books, and making "snippets" of text available online, constituted "fair use" under U.S. copyright law.  The decision, if it survives an expected appeal, would let Google continue expanding the library, which it said helps readers find books they might not otherwise locate.  It is also turning point for litigation that began in 2005, when authors and publishers sued.  Google has estimated it could owe more than $3 billion if the Authors Guild, an advocacy group that demanded $750 for each scanned book, prevailed.  The case is Authors Guild Inc et al v. Google Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 05-08136. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/14/us-google-books-idUSBRE9AD0TT20131114

The American storytelling revival was jump-started in Jonesborough, Tennessee, by the first National Storytelling Festival in 1973.  The success of that first festival led to the founding of the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling (NAPPS), which changed its name to the National Storytelling Association (NSA) in 1994.  In 1998, in an effort to serve the needs of the diverse storytelling community better, NSA divided into two separate organizations, the National Storytelling Network (NSN) and the International Storytelling Center (ISC). National Storytelling Network now produces the National Storytelling Conference and other events and presents storytelling’s annual Oracle Awards.  Link to information including TELLABRATION!™ (always the Saturday before Thanksgiving) at http://www.storynet.org/about/index.html 

The Goldilocks zone or habitable zone or life zone is an area of space in which a planet is just the right distance from its home star so that its surface is neither too hot nor too cold.   http://science.howstuffworks.com/other-earth1.htm 

Curds and whey is a term for a very normal food:  cottage cheese.  There are some important differences between cottage, pot and farm cheese, chief among them how much liquid (or whey) remains. Of the three, cottage cheese has the highest whey content, followed by pot cheese and then farmer cheese, which is quite dry and crumbly.  Try cottage cheeses and cantaloupe.  Jamie Forrest  Link to recipes at http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/04/of-curds-and-whey.html 

Curds and Whey Solitaire  http://www.bvssolitaire.com/rules/curds-and-whey.htm

Q:  Whatever happened to Pittsburgh's "dancing" traffic cop?
A:  No one directed traffic like Victor S. Cianca Sr.  "(He) used as many as three limbs at once to hurry people along.  When someone drove too slowly, he would rest his cheek in his hands, miming sleep.  If a driver tried to explain away a traffic violation, he played an imaginary violin.  
"He took slow, silly bows, blew his whistles so hard they quit, and wore his white gloves so often" they are displayed at the police academy.  Cianca won fame on "Candid Camera" in 1964, in television commercials, and in a cameo in the 1983 movie "Flashdance."  He died Jan. 24, 2010, at the age of 92. -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2013/Nov/JU/ar_JU_110413.asp?d=110413,2013,Nov,04&c=c_13 

StoryCorps began with the opening of our first StoryBooth in Grand Central Terminal in October 2003.  On February 10, 2006, the StoryBooth was dedicated to Danny and Annie Perasa, and on May 17, 2008, we recorded the last interview in Grand Central.  This StoryBooth has seen marriage proposals, birthdays, and family reunions; and has recorded more than 5,000 stories from both New Yorkers and visitors from across the country.  Though we are sad to leave our first home, we hope you’ll visit us at Foley Square (also known as Tom Paine Park) in downtown Manhattan.  http://storycorps.org/record-your-story/locations/new-york-ny/ and http://storycorps.org/gct/ 

On the front of the cinder-block library on Cesar Chavez Avenue in East Los Angeles, near a building supplies warehouse and an auto parts shop, a rainbow-colored mural shows children reading books beneath lush trees.  Around the corner, a squat beige drop box awaits returned books and videos.  Only the name, the Anthony Quinn Public Library, gives a clue that this isn't your normal neighborhood branch of the Los Angeles County library system.  Inside, an oil portrait of the late actor smiles down on middle school students doing homework in the reading room.  A suit of armor stands guard in a Plexiglass case, a gift to Quinn from his mentor, John Barrymore, who had worn it in a stage production of "Richard III."  Zorba the Greek's hat, a memento of Quinn's signature role, is embossed in bronze in another case.  Built on the site of the home where Quinn grew up, the library is an unlikely repository of movie star glamour.  But it also offers a glimpse of how Hollywood treated ethnic minorities.  The library branch was named for Quinn 30 years ago, and, in 1987, the actor donated the large collection of personal papers, scrapbooks, movie scripts and financial documents.  Yet for all the time since, the 2,000 or so items were rarely visited and remained stored without proper safeguards.  Many Hollywood historians didn't know of the archive's existence and, without an inventory and sufficient library staff, it was difficult to determine what was there, let alone what was significant.  Now that is about to change.  Because of a $6,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the collection was recently reviewed by preservationists who recommended ways to ensure the archive's safety.  Library officials say that they are about to improve the storage and create a cataloging system and, if more funding becomes available, scan important items for online researchers.  David Roman, a USC professor of English and American Studies, is one of the few scholars to have explored the Quinn material.  He dug into it six years ago to research Quinn's Broadway stage career in the 1940s and how "a Mexican-born actor who grew up in poverty in East Los Angeles took on one of the most iconic roles in the American theater."  He was referring to how Quinn succeeded Marlon Brando as the male lead in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire."  The library materials, he recalled, "helped me get a fuller sense of his life as an actor."  But Roman said he was shocked at how jumbled the Quinn papers were and how vulnerable they seemed, with some old items already damaged.  Daniel Hernandez, who heads the county library system's Chicano Resource Center and was a prime mover in obtaining the federal grant, said the goal was to ensure that the Quinn collection "will be around for a long time" and make it more accessible to the public and researchers.  Much of it will be moved over the next few months to another facility in Huntington Park for better security and climate control, he said, but some will remain in its original library setting along with the unusual artifacts already on display in the library's reading room.  Quinn was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and his parents had fought in the Mexican Revolution before moving to Texas and later California, picking crops for a while before settling in Los Angeles.  Although he sometimes played Latino characters, such as the patriarch in "The Children of Sanchez," he had a portfolio of earthy pan-ethnic roles, including an Italian circus strongman in "La Strada," a Ukrainian pope in "The Shoes of the Fisherman," an Arab warlord in "Lawrence of Arabia," and several Greeks beyond his famous turn in "Zorba."    "With a name like Quinn, I wasn't totally accepted by the Mexican community in those days, and as a Mexican I wasn't accepted as an American," he told The Times in 1981.  "So as a kid, I just decided, well a plague on both your houses, I'll just become a world citizen.  So that's what I did.  Acting is my nationality."  Larry Gordon   http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c1-quinn-archives-20131106-dto,0,6780136.htmlstory#axzz2jyA6ygem 

Seven bidders pushed up the price of the triptych Three Studies of Lucien Freud by Francis Bacon to $142.4 million to make it the most expensive painting ever sold on Nov. 12, 2013.  The previous most expensive painting was a pastel of The Scream by Edvard Munch sold for $119.9 million in 2012.  The New York Times  Nov, 13, 2013  Read more and see images at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Studies_of_Lucian_Freud 

List of the 19 most expensive photographs sold, 2006-2012  Top two are Rhein II by Andreas Gursky for $4,388,500 and Untitled #96 by Cindy Sherman for $3,890,500.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_photographs  

The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, The Ohio State University Libraries, holds its Grand Opening Festival of Cartoon Art  November 16-17, 2013.  The galleries will have extended hours from 10 am to 5 pm.  Beginning November 19, 2013 the galleries will be open its regular hours, Tuesday through Sunday from 1 pm to 5 pm.  Check hours for holiday closings. There are three galleries featuring Treasures from the Collections of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, a permanent exhibition, and Substance and Shadow:  The Art of the Cartoon which will be open through March 2, 2014.  1813 N. High Street, Columbus, OH  614-292-0538   http://cartoons.osu.edu/  The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum was established in 1977 in two converted classrooms in the Journalism Building with the founding gift of artwork and papers of alumnus Milton Caniff.  Its collections of original art and manuscripts have been built primarily through gifts-in-kind.  The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum is now the largest and most comprehensive academic research facility documenting printed cartoon art.  Current holdings include more than 300,000 original cartoons, 45,000 books, 67,000 serials (including comic books), 3,000 linear feet of manuscript materials, 2.5 million comic strip clippings and newspaper pages.  http://cartoons.osu.edu/about-us/) ders pushed up the price of the triptych292-0538  http

An arm and a leg  means a large, possibly exorbitant, amount of money.  The tale is that portrait painters used to charge more for larger paintings and that a head and shoulders painting was the cheapest option, followed in price by one which included arms and finally the top of the range 'legs and all' portrait.  As so often with popular etymologies, there's no truth in that story.  Painters certainly did charge more for large pictures, but there's no evidence to suggest they did so by limb count.  It is in fact an American phrase, coined sometime after WWII.  The earliest citation I can find is from The Long Beach Independent, December 1949:  Food Editor Beulah Karney has more than 10 ideas for the homemaker who wants to say "Merry Christmas" and not have it cost her an arm and a leg.  'Arm' and 'leg' are used as examples of items that no one would consider selling other than at an enormous price.  It is a grim reality that, around that time, there were many US newspaper reports of servicemen who had lost an arm and a leg in the recent war.  It is possible that the phrase originated in reference to the high cost paid by those who suffered such amputations.  A more likely explanation is that the expression derived from two earlier phrases:  'I would give my right arm for...' and '[Even] if it takes a leg', which were both coined in the 19th century.  http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/arm-and-a-leg.html 

Playing-cards were seen by the Kings and Queens of England as a ready source of revenue, particularly when there were wars to be paid for.  So the makers, and later the purchasers, paid a tax on each pack.  Instances are recorded of taxes being raised in 1588, 1628, during Queen Anne's reign, and from 1711 onwards, until the tax was finally abolished in 1960 since by then it was more trouble to collect than it was worth.  http://i-p-c-s.org/faq/ace-of-spades.php 

Boogie-woogie  A style of blues music, with close links to jazz forms like ragtime and stride, usually played on the piano.  The origin of the term 'boogie-woogie' is uncertain.  The most likely explanation is that it is a reduplication of 'boogie', which was the name given to a rent party in early 20th century USA.  These parties were impromptu affairs, set up (pitched) to raise money to pay rent, at which a small entrance fee was charged.  Brian Rust, in his exhaustive directory of recorded jazz music - 'Jazz Records 1897-1942', records this line from from a 1929 piece:  "We're gonna pitch a boogie right here."  The term boogie-woogie is first recorded in print as the title of Clarence 'Pinetop' Smith's 1928 recording, Pinetop's Boogie Woogie, which includes these lyrics:

I want all of you to know Pinetop's Boogie Woogie

I want everybody to dance just like I say
And when I say 'hold it there'  I want all of you ... to stop
And when I say stop - don't move   And when I say git it
I want all of you to do a boogie-woogie  http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/boogie-woogie.html   

The repeating of parts of words to make new forms is called reduplication.  There are various categories of this:  rhyming, exact and ablaut (vowel substitution).  Examples, are respectively, okey-dokey, wee-wee and zig-zag.  The impetus for the coining of these seems to be nothing more than the enjoyment of wordplay.  Willy-nilly is over a thousand years old.  Riff-raff dates from the 1400s and helter-skelter, arsy-versy (a form of vice-versa), and hocus-pocus all date from the 16th century.  http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/reduplication.html 

One of the great cultural jewels of the West is back, with a wonderful new polish.  When the Huntington Library in San Marino reopened its main exhibition hall on Nov. 8, 2013 for a special press preview after a 17-month renovation, you could almost feel the presence of  its namesake at the front door.  Henry Edwards Huntington was a railroad baron who assembled one of the most magnificent collections of books, manuscripts and letters in private hands.  Entering the old hall (built in 1920), one turns to the left and encounters one of the oldest books in the collection, a manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” (written circa 1400). Huntington bought it from the Earl of Ellesmere in 1917, and it’s the source of most editions of the “Canterbury Tales” available today.  A few paces away there’s a Gutenberg Bible, and a first edition of John Milton’s 1667 poem “Paradise Lost.”  On the other side of the 3,400-square-foot room, largely unnoticed during the preview, rests a First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays, opened to the title page, with its iconic engraving of the bald bard of Stratford himself.   Near the back of the room there are Henry David Thoreau’s scribbles on the galleys of “Walden.”  Huntington died in 1927, but thanks to a big endowment his library has kept on collecting books, photographs and posters and other ephemera.  Not long ago, for example, it obtained the papers of the novelist Octavia Butler.  For two years, as they planned the main exhibition hall’s renovation, the Huntington Library staff faced a unique problem.  As Karina White, the designer of the new exhibit put it:  “How do we choose from 9 million objects?”  Working with the Huntington’s curators, White designed the new exhibit around 12 “key objects.”  In addition to the aforementioned works of Shakespeare, Milton and others, there is a map of Tenochtitlan that the conquistador Hernan Cortes had made after he destroyed that Aztec city; letters by Abraham Lincoln and Susan B. Anthony; and the manuscript of a Jack London novel that met a strange fate.  Hector Tobar  http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-a-first-glance-at-the-new-look-at-the-huntington-library-20131108,0,1050640.story#axzz2kAZacqnS 

The greatest spiritual practice is to transform love into service.

You must pass your days in song.  Let your whole life be a song.

Love one another and help others to rise to the higher levels, simply by pouring out love.  Love is infectious and the greatest healing energy.  Life is a song - sing it.  Life is a game - play it.  Life is a challenge - meet it.  Life is a dream - realize it.  Life is a sacrifice - offer it.  Life is love - enjoy it.
Sathya Sai Baba (1926-2011)  Indian spiritual leader, philanthropist and educator   http://www.vivaquotes.com/quotes/by/sai-baba?feature=qshow_rel_authors 

in memory of the "Commander" 

Maya Lin, Vietnam Memorial by Marla Hochman

Concern for the planet has always been a part of Maya Lin's life and is clearly reflected in her work as a designer, architect, and sculptor.  Growing up in southeastern Ohio, Lin was greatly affected by the rolling hills and serpent burial mounds of the Hopewell and Adena Indians.  Respect for the land and its safety and protection has provided an impetus for herto create works that compel people to become more aware of their surroundings.  Often her work is both aesthetic and political, and seeks to extend beyond present time to reach future generations.  Through words and images, Lin communicates our thoughts and ideas to those who have yet to inhabit the land.  As an undergraduate student at Yale, Maya Lin entered and won a competition to design a memorial for the veterans of the Vietnam War.  Almost immediately, controversy engulfed the decision to choose her entry.  In addition to personal attacks regarding Lin's Asian heritage, her design sparked anger among many veterans.  Lin proposed to cut a wedge in the land and to place within it two long, horizontal, perpendicular granite walls that appear to grow out of earth.  The two walls converge at their highest points, and inscribed on their surfaces in chronological order are the names of nearly 60,000 men and women who lost their lives during the conflict in Vietnam.  One end of the Memorial points to the Washington Monument, while the other aligns itself with the Lincoln Memorial.  The violent act of cutting open the earth and the healing process that would eventually occur parallel the violence of war and the healing that would await visitors to the Memorial.  In time the wound would heal, yet the cut would remain, symbolized by the large, flat surface of the wall.  See image at http://www.greenmuseum.org/c/aen/Issues/lin.php 

November 11:  Armistice Day in Belgium, France, New Zealand and Serbia; Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth; Independence Day in Angola (1975) and Poland (1918); Veterans Day in the United States  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_11

"Judging the Booker prize has made me wonder how worthwhile it take second, and third, literary looks" by Stuart Kelly   I had an awkward moment during this year's deliberations over the ManBooker prize.  We had just trudged through 151 novels (I actually read a few more than that – 183 in all to be precise – but that's a tale for a different time) and we began the process of re-reading the longlist.  As I re-cracked a spine, like some kind of literary Bane, it struck me that I don't re-read that often.  I re-read classics most:  Scott and Dickens, Eliot and Woolf, Melville and Zola most often.  I've read Ulysses more times than I can remember (but sometimes just sections), and Perec's Life:  A User's Manual certainly more than thrice.  But contemporary novels?  It was an embarrassing blank.  I've certainly read Midnight's Children more than once, and I've read Golding's Rites Of Passage and Byatt's Possession twice.  Occasionally, with a cold, I've re-read The Mouse And His Child by Russell Hoban.  I've dipped back into many books, from Finnegans Wake to The Recognitions by William Gaddis to Christine Brooke-Rose's Textermination.  But actually re-reading?  Less than a handful of modern novels.  The Man Booker judges are always in a strange situation, provided they do the work as assigned.  We will have read the winner more frequently and more stringently than the so-called average reader.  I should, for the record, say that no reader is average.  Each has a unique engagement with a text, and every one of those responses is valid, if not right.  But let's face it, not many of the slightly fictitious reading public are going to read any Man Booker winner three times.  When we came to re-re-read the shortlist, certain things became evident.  A crime novel would have to be more than just a crime novel to survive the second "re".  It might be impressive first time round, and the second time one could be impressed by the precision with which the solution had been placed and patterned.  Third time?  A comic novel will struggle too:  is there any joke that's funny the third time you hear or read it?  I lovedSteve Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole, and have recommended it to many people, but haven't actually re-read it (even though bits of it, in memory alone, make me laugh).  http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/oct/31/re-reading-rereading-man-booker

The Man Booker Prize promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year. Eleanor Catton was announced as the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize for her novel The Luminaries on Tuesday 15 October.  Find this year's nominees and judges at http://www.themanbookerprize.com/man-booker-prize-2013

Parodies  Derek Flint is a fictional world adventurer and master spy featured in a series of movies and comic books.  Flint is a parody of James Bond and Doc Savage.  Derek Flint is an agent for ZOWIE.  ZOWIE stands for the Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage.  In 1965, 20th Century Fox presented its own version of a master spy to take on United Artist's popular James Bond franchise.  The first three James Bond movies had already made considerable money for that studio so Fox decided to try for itself.  Their hero was wholly a celluloid creation, however, not a transfer from a book series.  Derek Flint was the creation of Hal Fimberg, whose writing credentials, though sparse, did go back quite a few years.  Whether it was in keeping with a growing trend to try to 'out-Bond Bond' or, more likely, to spoof the very macho Double-0 agent, Flint was the best at whatever he did and he did a lot.  The abilities and achievements of Derek Flint include a black belt in Judo, Olympic medals in at least 5 different events, degrees from 17 different universities, creation of highly prized paintings, and the ability to speak fluently in 45 various languages and dialects.  Flint was parodied in Eurospy films where Raimondo Vianello played "Derek Flit" in Il vostro super agente Flit (1966) and Italian comic book artist Franco Bonvicini played "Derek Flit" in Franco and Ciccio's Come rubammo la bomba atomica (1967)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Flint 

The Librarian films with Noel Wyle as librarian/explorer Flynn Carsen were parodies on the adventure genre, especially Indiana Jones with Harrison Ford.  "In the fictional world of The Librarian, a series of made-for-TV movies from TNT, there exists a secret society of Librarians who are the guardians of a wide range of magical and mythical relics.”   See The World of the Librarian franchise at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_The_Librarian_franchise

An individual’s genotype is the genetic code they carry in their cells that provides information for a particular trait.  Their phenotype is the visible, expressed trait, such as hair color.  The phenotype depends upon the genotype but can also be influenced by environmental factors.  http://www.diffen.com/difference/Genotype_vs_Phenotype  See also Genotype versus Phenotype including pictures at  http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIA1Genotypevsphenotype.shtml and Genotype and Phenotype at http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/ahp/BioInfo/SD.Geno.HP.html

 

Rodents are mammals of the order Rodentia, characterised by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws that must be kept short by gnawing.  About 40% of mammal species are rodents, and they are found in vast numbers on all continents other than Antarctica.  Common rodents include mice, rats, squirrels, porcupines, beavers, guinea pigs, and hamsters.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodent 

The Mustelidae (from Latin mustela, weasel), are a family of carnivorous mammals, including the otters, badgers, weasels, martens and wolverines.  Mustelids are diverse and the largest family in the order Carnivora.  The internal classification still seems to be rather unsettled, with rival proposals containing between two and eight subfamilies.  Mustelids vary greatly in size and behaviour.  The least weasel is not much larger than a mouse, while the giant otter can measure up to 2.4 m (7.9 ft) in length and sea otters can exceed 45 kg (99 lb) in weight.  The wolverine can crush bones as thick as the femur of a moose to get at the marrow, and has been seen attempting to drive bears away from their kills.  The sea otter uses rocks to break open shellfish to eat. The marten is largely arboreal, while the badger digs extensive networks of tunnels, called setts.  Some mustelids have been domesticated: the ferret and the tayra are kept as pets (although the tayra requires a Dangerous Wild Animals licence in the UK), or as working animals for hunting or vermin control.  Others have been important in the fur trade—the mink is often raised for its fur.  As well as being one of the most species-rich families in the order Carnivora, the family Mustelidae is one of the oldest.  Mustelid-like forms first appeared about 40 million years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of rodents.  The direct ancestors of the modern mustelids first appeared about 15 million years ago.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustelidae 

The best laid schemes of mice and men means the most carefully prepared plans may go wrong.  From Robert Burns' poem To a Mouse, 1786.  It tells of how he, while ploughing a field, upturned a mouse's nest.  The resulting poem is an apology to the mouse: 

 

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone] In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promised joy.

 

The poem is of course the source for the title of John Steinbeck's 1937 novel - Of Mice and Men.   http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-best-laid-schemes-of-mice-and-men.html

Numerous works have referred to or parodied aspects of the Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, perhaps most notably the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, which often had one character asking another, à la Lon Chaney's characterization of Lennie, "which way did he go, George; which way did he go?"  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Mice_and_Men

Top 25 Films of 1939  "Considered the greatest year in motion pictures and it's hard to argue."    http://www.imdb.com/list/dcgWab8PEAU/  The best movies of 1939 (85 most notable)  Of Mice and Men is 17th  on the list http://www.films101.com/y1939r.htm