Neapolitan ice cream is ice cream made up of blocks of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream side by side in the same container (typically with no packaging in between).  Neapolitan ice cream was named in the late 19th century as a reflection of its presumed origins in the cuisine of the Italian city of Naples, and the many Neapolitan immigrants who brought their expertise in frozen desserts with them to the United States.   Spumoni was introduced to the United States in the 1870s as Neapolitan-style ice cream.

https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Neapolitan_ice_cream.html

A Cold Night's Death:  The Allure of Scandinavian Crime Fiction by Jeremy Megraw  Maybe you've got the Nordic noir bug from reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium series or were enthralled earlier by Peter Høeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow or the Detective Wallander series of books.  However you encounter them, Scandicrime writers such as Henning Mankell, Larsson, or Jo Nesbø are like a good bag of chips, it's hard not to have another.  Find a guide to some notable authors and detective series from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and even some Nordic noir from Iceland, and what's better, a guide to pronouncing their names correctly over cocktails.  See pictures and read about the selected authors including Johan Theorin's Öland Quartet of novels.  In the first book Echoes From the Dead, the detective figure is a retired sailor named Gerlof who is seen throughout the series, sometimes only indirectly involved with solving the mystery at hand.  Theorin creates a deeply troubling atmosphere of murder, family secrets, and crossed destinies with a gothic feel set on the rugged coast of the Swedish island of Öland. http://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/01/14/scandinavian-crime-fiction

"A nonce word is one coined 'for the nonce'--made up for one occasion and not likely to be encountered again.  When Lewis Carroll coined it, frabjous was a nonce word.  Neologisms are much the same thing, brand-new words or brand-new meanings for existing words, coined for a specific purpose.  Analogy, especially with familiar words or parts of speech, often guides the coiner, and occasionally these words will enter the standard vocabulary."  (Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Columbia University Press, 1993)  http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/noncewordterm.htm

Nesselrode pie is named after one Count Nesselrode, as are a number of dishes that are made with chestnuts or chestnut puree.  This is according to Larousse Gastronomique, the French food encyclopedia.  Larousse doesn't say why chestnuts are associated with the Count, a 19th century Russian diplomat who negotiated the Treaty of Paris after the Crimean War, but it does note that nesselrode pudding was created for the count by his chef Monsieur Mouy.  The pie, as we know it in New York, however, was popularized by Hortense Spier, who started her business not as a pie bakery but as a brownstone restaurant on 94th St. between Columbus Ave. and Central Park West. The restaurant closed before World War II and Mrs. Spier baked her specialty pies for other restaurants after that.  Find more information and the recipe at http://www.thefoodmaven.com/radiorecipes/nesselrode.html

Mad About Saffron--It’s the world’s costliest spice for a reason.  Just a pinch can elevate even the humblest dish to special-occasion status by Charlotte Druckman  ‘IT IS NECESSARY to pick 150,000 crocuses in order to produce one kilogram of saffron,” reads the introduction to Australian poet Judith Beveridge ’s “The Saffron Picker.”  It underscores a poetic injustice explored in the verse and reminds us why this is the world’s most expensive spice.  Crocus sativus is an incandescently blue-violet flower whose fiery orange stigmas, once dried, become the prized spice, with its distinct flavor:  floral, astringent, musky.  According to Pat Willard, author of “Secrets of Saffron,” procuring it “is a lot like buying illicit drugs.  The concerns for purity and potency are the same, as are where it is grown and how it is processed.”   The Iranian strain is thought to be the best, but because of sanctions currently in effect, scoring it in the United States is difficult.  First discovered in Asia Minor, saffron is grown today in Macedonia and Greece and eastward, through Turkey and Syria to Kashmir.  You’ll also find it in Spain, Italy, Corsica and, lately, Afghanistan.  Sown in June and harvested in October, the plant does best in soil that matches that of its place of origin.  So you might be surprised to find Jim Robinson pulling his “lilac-colored torpedoes” from the earth in Port Angeles, Wash.  Link to recipes at http://online.wsj.com/articles/mad-about-saffron-1412371772

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.  Paul Boose  

The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.  Mahatma Gandhi  

http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2007/06/25/10-inspirational-quotes-on-forgiveness/

The game of Pall Mall, also known as Pel Mel, Pell Mell, Paille Maille, Palle-malle, Pelemele, Jeu de Mail (Game of Mail), is a genuinely Royal game that appears to have been played primarily by Western European royal families and the higher aristocracy.  A lot has been written about the game in England and the fact that a London Street is named after it gives it a certain momentum that it doesn't necessarily deserve - not only was it played by a tiny minority of the populace but only three Pall Mall alleys are known to have existed in the whole of Great Britain.   It is the close cousin of two wholly popular modern sports - Golf and Croquet.  There is no concrete evidence that Croquet is the modern descendent of Pall Mall and, in England there was gap of more than 100 years between the demise of Pall Mall and the emergence of Croquet around 1850.  The games have mallets, balls and hoops in common.  However, the balls and mallets were smaller, the hoop much bigger.  It is possible that there is a link from Pall Mall to modern croquet but it seems to me that Pall Mall is much more closely related to Golf as the objective was to whack the ball some distance several times towards the target hoop.  When close to the hoop, (according to the Lauthier rules), the striking implement was changed to a shaft with a spoon-like end for hoicking the ball through the high arch - adapted more for accuracy and less for power like a putter in the game of Golf.   Pall Mall seems to have been primarily enjoyed by the French but the earliest mention of the game indicates an Italian source.  A carnival song around 1500 from Florence mentions Palla a Maglio - in Italian "palla" - a ball and "maglio" - a mallet.  James Masters  Read more and see pictures at http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Pall-Mall.htm

Chicago for armchair travelers  http://www.openhousechicago.org/

Zilpha Keatley Snyder, the author of dozens of children's and young-adult novels centered on lonely kids with rich but chilling fantasy lives, died on October 7, 2014 in San Francisco.  She was 87.  With more than 40 books to her credit, Snyder won the Newbery Honor – one of the top awards in children's literature – three times.  Her winning novels were "The Headless Cupid," "The Witches of Worm" and "The Egypt Game" – a 1967 story involving preteens who secretly re-create ancient Egyptian rituals at a makeshift shrine as a child killer lurks in the neighborhood.  For Snyder, it was, like many of her books, drawn from bits and pieces of her own life.  As a girl in rural Ventura County, she was entranced with Egypt and, for a time, walked to school each morning as an incarnation of the elegant and mysterious queen Nefertiti.  Born May 11, 1927, in Lemoore, Calif., Zilpha Keatley spent her school years in Santa Paula and Ventura, where her father William, a rancher and oil-driller, had been transferred.  In her early teens, she left her country school for a larger one "in the big city of Ventura," as she wrote, and the pressure drove her even more deeply into reading stories and daydreaming.  "Disney wanted to option The Egypt Game for a film but wouldn't guarantee a multiracial cast," her longtime editor Karen Wojytla said in an interview.  "She was very forward-thinking, and wouldn't sell them the rights."  Witchcraft was a central theme in "The Headless Cupid," which became No. 98 on the American Library Assn.'s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990-2000.  Steve Chawkins  http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-zilpha-keatley-snyder-20141019-story.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1206  October 20, 2014  On this date in 1632, Christopher Wren, English architect, was born.  On this date in 1711, Timothy Ruggles, American American lawyer, jurist, and politician, was born.

Nature abounds with structures built by animals other than humans, or animal architecture, as it is commonly termed, such as termite mounds, wasp and beehives, burrow complexes of rodents, beaver dams, elaborate nests of birds, and webs of spiders.  Often, these structures incorporate sophisticated features such as ventilation, temperature regulation, structural strength, multiple escape routes, traps, bait, special-purpose chambers and many other features.  They may be created by individuals or complex societies of social animals with different forms carrying out specialised roles.  These constructions may arise from complex building behaviour of animals such as in the case of night-time nests for chimpanzees, from inbuilt neural responses, which feature prominently in the construction of bird songs, or triggered by hormone release as in the case of domestic sows, or as emergent properties from simple instinctive responses and interactions, as exhibited by termites, or combinations of these.  The process of building such structures may involve learning and communication, and in some cases, even aesthetics.  Tool use may also be involved in building structures by animals.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structures_built_by_animals

"Animal Architecture," by Ingo Arndt and Jürgen Tautz, with a foreword by Jim Brandenburg, is a beautiful new science/photography book exploring the mystery of nature through the "complex and elegant structures that animals create both for shelter and for capturing prey."  Arndt is a world-renowned nature photographer based in Germany, whose work you may have seen in National Geographic, GEO and BBC Wildlife.  See pictures at http://boingboing.net/2014/04/22/animal-architecture-an-aw.html

The Packard Motor Car Company comes to life again in America's Packard Museum. The museum was founded in 1992 by Dayton attorney and long-time car collector Bob Signom.  Located in the original Packard Dealership Building which was built in 1917, the museum has officially taken the name of the original dealership - The Citizens Motorcar Company - but has become known as "America's Packard Museum".  The January 1998 edition of Car Collector magazine named the museum one of the "Top Ten" Museums in The United States.  In 2004, the Society of Automotive Historians conferred the prestigious James J. Bradley Award upon the Museum for its exemplary efforts in preserving motor vehicle resource materials.  Signom brought The Citizens Motorcar Company "back to life," as the only restored Packard dealership operating as a museum.  The museum features over 50 automobiles on display in the restored Art Deco showroom, service department and pavillion.  In addition, significant artifacts from the Packard Motorcar Company are on display.  420 S. Ludlow St.  Dayton, Ohio 45402   Office 937.226-1710  http://www.americaspackardmuseum.org/the_story.html

Find recipients of the James J. Bradley Distinguished Service Awards at http://www.autohistory.org/index.php/james-j-bradley-distinguished-service-award

The noble gases make a group of chemical elements with similar properties:  under standard conditions, they are all odorless, colorless, monatomic gases with very low chemical reactivity.  The six noble gases that occur naturally are helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and the radioactive radon (Rn).  Read much more and see graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas  Hear excerpts from Daniel Gawthrop's Four Noble Gases (Argon-Krypton-Xenon) played by David Pickering (1996 Wolff/Bales Recital Hall, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS) Grace Notes Media 0701 (the last piece of a two-hour program) from 102:50 to 112:17 at http://pipedreams.publicradio.org/listings/2014/1434/

Be an armchair traveler and visit the villas of Tuscany at http://www.villas-of-tuscany.info/

Using a 3D printer in the Maker Lab at the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, a Boy Scout troop printed resin wheels for its robot team.  In Chattanooga, a man used a 3D printer at the public library to create a robotic device that allows his child who was born without arms or legs to eat independently.  In Kansas, a high school junior created a functioning prosthetic hand for a nine-year-old family friend using the 3D printer at the Johnson County Public Library.  What are 3D printers capable of?  What are the legal implications of 3D printing in the library?  Read about it at http://www.ala.org/offices/sites/ala.org.offices/files/content/3d_printing_tipsheet_version_8_Final.pdf

Like Victor Frankenstein, Tony Dighera was determined to bring a new creature to life. Though he was fairly new to farming, Mr. Dighera saw profit to be made in strangely shaped pumpkins.  So he created a “pumpkinstein.”  Grown in a plastic mold, the pumpkins bear the distinctive face of the Frankenstein monster, and Mr. Dighera has harvested roughly 5,500 of them in 2014.  With a slight smile, a wide button nose, a slightly furrowed brow and ears sticking out just slightly, the pumpkins are easy to mistake for something carved from wax. 

“People never believe it’s real the first time they see it; they all want to touch it to make sure,” Mr. Dighera said, holding one of his creations on his 40-acre organic farm north of Los Angeles, as workers harvested cilantro and dill one recent morning.  “The point was to make something that would get attention.”  Their distinctive if unnatural shape is so far a major success.  Mr. Dighera sold out his crop to suppliers months ago, offering the pumpkins wholesale for $75 each.  Retailers expect each to fetch $100 or more in the weeks leading up to Halloween.  Halloween has grown beyond the simple days of trick-or-treating and into a $7 billion business, according to the National Retail Federation, as retailers go to greater lengths each year to try to surpass the previous season.  Just over $2 billion was spent last year on candy alone, according to industry figures.  And long ago it stopped being just a sweets-fueled holiday for children.  Among the biggest money earners are adult costumes, with costs typically ranging from $30 to well over $100.  And last year, consumers spent $310 million on costumes for their pets.  Decorations now account for nearly a third of Halloween spending, and the fast-growing category is one of the most competitive aspects of the industry.  Cue pumpkinstein and Mr. Dighera, who got his start in oddly shaped produce several years ago, after coming across a website that featured square watermelons grown in Japan.  In 2010, Mr. Dighera began experimenting with plastic molds and watermelon varieties.  Was this mold too sharp, that plastic too strong, the shade too dark?  If the fruits were too small, they would not take the shape, but if they were too big, they would crack.  After trying dozens of seed varieties and experimenting with how much sun the crops received, he produced a sweet, crisp, red-fleshed, cube-shaped watermelon.  Elated, he moved on to a heart-shaped mold.  This year, Mr. Dighera sold the square and heart-shaped watermelons for $40 each, primarily through local upscale markets.  At the same time, he figured out how to use a mold to imprint logos:  Whole Foods received its own branded melons, the letters perfectly pressed into the rind.  It took Mr. Dighera 27 varieties of pumpkin — and roughly $400,000 — before he found the right one to take the monster shape.   Jennifer Medina  See picture at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/13/us/its-alive-and-it-grows-into-a-jack-o-lantern.html

How We Got to Now with Steven Johnson is a six part series that reveals the story behind the ideas that made modern life possible.  Airs Wednesday, October 15-November 12, 2014 on PBS.  Find details and watch the first two episodes, Clean and Time, at http://video.pbs.org/program/how-we-got-now/  

Future episodes will be on cold, light, sound and glass. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1205  October 17, 2014  On this date in 1903, Nathanael West, American author and screenwriter, was born.  On this date in 1910, Ester Wier, American author was born.

What does a bagel have in common with lox or a maven with a golem?  They all are words that have come to us from Yiddish.  While Yiddish has words to describe almost everything its speakers need it for, there's no match to its stockpile of colorful words to describe people.  From schlemiel to schlimazel to schmo to schnook. 

luftmensch  (LOOFT-mensh)  noun  An impractical dreamer.  From Yiddish, from luft (air) + mensch (man, person), from German.  Earliest documented use:  1907.

ganef  (GAH-nuhf)  noun  A thief, swindler, or rascal.  From Yiddish, from Hebrew gannabh (thief).  Earliest documented use:  1920.

macher  (MAHKH-uhr)  noun  1.  A person of influence, one who gets things done.  2.  A self-important overbearing person.  From Yiddish makher, from German macher (maker or doer).  Earliest documented use:  1911.

kibitzer  (KIB-it-suhr) noun  An onlooker who offers unwanted advice or criticism, for example at a card game.  From Yiddish kibitsen, from German kiebitzen (to look on at cards), from Kiebitz (busybody, literally pewit or lapwing, a shorebird with a bad reputation as a meddler).  Earliest documented use:  1927.   A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Jonathan Gellman  Subject:  ganef...gonoph  What the Dickens!  Actually, with the spelling gonoph, ganef has been in published English since Charles Dickens used it in Bleak House in 1853:  "He's as obstinate a young gonoph as I know."

From:  Barry Palevitz  Subject:  macher  The word macher is usually preceded by the word 'big'.  That is, a big macher.  It adds an additional connotation: somebody who's a big shot.

From:  Michael Barr   Subject:  kibitzer  Back when I played bridge, we recognized three kinds of onlookers:  kibitzers, dorbitzers, and tsitsitzers.  A kibitzer had permission of a player and is permitted to talk to that player but to no one else; a dorbitzer had permission from a kibitzer and could speak to that person but to no one else; a tsitsitzer had no one's permission and could speak to no one -- he could only sit there and say tsi-tsi.

Jules E. Mastbaum was a self-made movie tycoon who, by the early 1920s, owned more movie houses that anyone in the United States.  He named his business the Stanley Company of America in honor of his dead brother.  In 1923, Mastbaum visited Paris and began to buy pieces from every period of French sculptor Auguste Rodin's life.  In 1926, he hired architects to design a building and gardens on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia.  Mastbaum's  collection is in the Rodin Museum, opened in 1929.

Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre in 1911.  Two radical modernists were wrongly detained during trhe investigation, one of them, Pablo Picasso.  The real thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, a craftsman who helped build the wood and glass box that protected Mona Lisa, was convicted in 1914 and spent less than a year in prison.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn painted or sketched more than sixty self-portraits.  They might have been considered forms of autobiographies or a way of promoting the artist.

North Carolina's original copy of the Bill of Rights, stolen in 1865, has had a long and checkered journey before it finally returned to the state in 2005.  

Read the history and link to a digital copy at http://ncpedia.org/bill-rights

Priceless:  How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures 

by Robert K. Wittman

Nicholson Baker was born in New York City on January 7, 1957.  Nicholson Baker is a Professor of Poetry at European Graduate School (EGS) and a celebrated writer of fiction and non-fiction.  As a novelist, Baker's work focuses on the thoughts of characters during otherwise inconsequential moments.  His novels generally de-emphasize narrative and focus instead on careful description and characterization.  From 1970 to 1975 Nicholson Baker studied at The School Without Walls in Rochester, New York.  In 1975 he studied briefly at the Eastman School of Music and received a B.A. in philosophy from Haverford College in Pennsylvania.  He lives with his family in South Berwick, Maine. Nicholson Baker is the great-grandson of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ray Stannard Baker (1870-1946).  Nicholson Baker is also an activist for the protection and archiving of newspapers.  His campaign arose after he discovered that many major libraries destroy the paper originals once a microfilm copy has been made.  In 1997, Baker received the San Francisco–based James Madison Freedom of Information Award in recognition of these efforts.  In 1999, he established a non-profit corporation, the American Newspaper Repository, to rescue old newspapers from destruction by libraries.  These discoveries prompted Baker to write Double Fold:  Libraries and the Assault on Paper, a book that has received a great deal of media attention and for which he also received a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2001.  http://www.egs.edu/faculty/nicholson-baker/biography/

Sept. 29, 2014  WESTPORT, Conn.—They have blinking eyes and an unnerving way of looking quizzically in  the direction of whoever is speaking.  They walk, dance and can talk in 19 different languages. About the height of a toddler, they look like bigger, better-dressed cousins of Buzz Lightyear.  And soon, "Vincent" and "Nancy" will be buzzing around the Westport Library, where officials next week will announce the recent acquisition of the pair of humanoid "NAO Evolution" robots.  Their primary purpose:  to teach the kind of coding and computer-programming skills required to animate such machines.  While it isn't unusual for public libraries to offer instruction in programming or robotics, Westport is the first in the nation to do it with sophisticated humanoid bots made by the French robotics firm Aldebaran.  In a brief demonstration last week, Alex Giannini, the library's digital-experience manager, had Vincent kicking a small soccer ball, doing tai chi and taking bows.  Westport isn't the only public library with robots.  In May, the Chicago Public Library, in partnership with Google Inc.,  made 500 "Finch" robots available to patrons at six of its branches.  The dot-eyed, half-domed machines, the size of dinner plate on wheels, are also used to teach computer programming and coding.  Aldebaran said it has sold about 6,000 robots world-wide, mostly to museums and schools.  At nearly $8,000 a machine, the NAO Evolution models, which were acquired by Westport with private funds, cost considerably more than the Finch machines, which run $99 each.  But the Aldebaran robots are also more complex—equipped with two cameras, four microphones, motion sensors and sonar to detect walls.  Loretta Waldman  See pictures and read more at http://online.wsj.com/articles/coming-soon-to-the-library-humanoid-robots-1412015687

Q:  What is the National Radio Quiet Zone?
A:  It is 13,000 square miles straddling West Virginia and Virginia where radio transmissions have been restricted since 1958 to minimize interference with two federal listening posts about 30 miles apart.  One is the Robert C. Byrd Jr. National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia, used by the National Science Foundation to study space.  The other is the Navy Information Operations Command at Sugar Grove, West Virginia, used by the National Security Agency to tap international communications in the eastern United States.  Most electronic devices, even musical greeting cards, can interfere with operations.  So, cellphones, Wi-Fi, most electronic devices, and radio transmissions of nearly all kinds are forbidden or restricted, especially in Pocahontas and Pendleton counties, home to about 15,000 West Virginians.  Pay telephones are plentiful.  Federal technicians seek to quiet all nearby radio transmissions, even those of spark plugs in a farmer’s tractor, an aging heating pad, and a broken toaster.  Wired, Slate, The New York Times  http://thecourier.com/opinion/columns/2014/09/22/what-is-the-radio-quiet-zone/

The first Man Booker prize to allow American nominees was on October 14, 2014 won by an Australian, with Richard Flanagan triumphing for a “magnificent novel of love and war” that tells the harrowing stories of prisoners and captors on the Burma railway.  Flanagan won for The Narrow Road to the Deep North as he became the third Australian to win the prize, following on from Thomas Keneally and Peter Carey.  The novel is an incredibly personal book for Flanagan, whose father was a survivor of Japan’s campaign to build the railway.  He died aged 98 on the day Flanagan emailed his final draft to his publisher.  “I grew up, as did my five siblings, as children of the Death Railway,” Flanagan said.  “We carried many incommunicable things and I realised at a certain point … that I would have to write this book.”  Over 12 years he wrote five drafts that he deemed deficient and burned, but he was intent on finishing before his father died.  Mark Brown

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/14/richard-flanagan-wins-man-booker-prize-2014

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1204  October 15, 2014  On this date in 1764, Edward Gibbon observed a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspired him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  On this date in 1878, the Edison Electric Light Company began operation.

The Pacific Islands region of the South Pacific Ocean is called Oceania when Australia and New Zealand are included.  There are approximately 25,000 islands, atolls and islets in Oceania.  Within the Pacific Islands region are the subregions of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia.  The islands of Tonga, Tahiti, and Fiji are located within two of these three areas.  Polynesia means "many islands," and includes within its 5 million squares miles the Kingdom of Tonga and the Territory of French Polynesia, where Tahiti is located.  Samoa and Hawaii are also found in Polynesia.  Read much more at http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Le-Pa/Pacific-Islander-Americans.html

Tales of the South Pacific is a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories about World War II, written by James A. Michener in 1946 and published in 1947.  It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1948.  Michener's writing career began during World War II, when as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, he was assigned to the South Pacific Ocean as a naval historian.  He later turned his notes and impressions into Tales of the South Pacific, that was his first book that was published.  His tales, about the South Pacific, were based on observations and anecdotes he collected while stationed as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy on the island of Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides Islands (now known as Vanuatu) . The stories take place in and surrounding the Coral Sea and the Solomons.  The musical play South Pacific (which opened on Broadway on April 7, 1949), by Rodgers and Hammerstein, was based on Michener's stories.

http://www.examiner.com/article/james-michener-s-first-book-published-tales-of-the-south-pacific

Interjections are words used to express strong feeling or sudden emotion.   Interjections are included in a sentence (usually at the start) to express a sentiment such as surprise, disgust, joy, excitement, or enthusiasm.  Commas may be used to offset interjections--for example:  Yes, I've won.  Indeed, you have.  An interjection at the start of sentence can also be followed by an exclamation mark.  For example:  Yes! I've won.  Find more examples at http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/commas_after_interjections.htm

Very, pretty, so, and really are both adjectives and intensifiers.  In everyday, casual speech, Americans often use these words to describe the extent of something or the amount of something.  Find example sentences with intensifiers at http://www.elementalenglish.com/very-pretty-so-really/

The cucumbers used to make cornichon, commonly called gherkins, are the same species (Cucumis sativus) as cucumbers grown for fresh consumption, but are from a different cultivar group.  See pictures and read how a Long Islander made homemade cornichon at

http://hungrynaturalist.blogspot.com/2012/07/vol-2-no-17-homemade-cornichon.html

Construction of the Gherkin was commissioned by Swiss Re, a reinsurance company.  The 41-story skyscraper was built in 2004 after a modern glass and steel design by the architectural firm of Foster and Partners.  Originally known as the Swiss Re Building, it was later renamed to its street address 30 St. Mary Axe after Swiss Re sold the building in 2007.  Even before its construction was complete Londoners dubbed the building the 'Gherkin' for its distinctive shape, and it is still known by that name.  The cigar-shaped structure has a steel frame with circular floor plans and a glass facade with diamond-shaped panels.  The swirling striped pattern visible on the exterior is the result of the building's energy-saving system which allows the air to flow up through spiraling wells.  Its unique, bold and energy efficient design has won the Gherkin many awards including the Stirling Prize, the London Region Award, and the Emporis Skyscraper Award.  See pictures at http://www.aviewoncities.com/london/gherkin.htm

The German word 'reich' means 'empire', although it can also be translated as government.  In 1930's Germany the Nazi party identified their rule as a third Reich, and in doing so gave English speakers around the world a new, and wholly negative, connotation to the word.  The First Reich: The Holy Roman Empire (800/962-1806)  Although the name dates to the twelfth century reign of Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Empire was created over 300 years earlier.  In 800 AD Charlemagne was crowned emperor of a territory which covered much of western and central Europe; this created an institution that would remain, in one form or another, for over a thousand years.  The Empire was reinvigorated by Otto I in the tenth century, and his imperial coronation in 962 has also been used to define the start of both the Holy Roman Empire, and the First Reich.  By this stage Charlemagne's empire had been divided, and the remainder was based around a set of core territories, occupying much the same area as modern Germany.  The Second Reich: The German Empire (1871-1918)  The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, combined with a growing feeling of German nationalism, led to repeated attempts at unifying the multitude of German territories, before a single state was created almost solely by the will of Otto von Bismarck. Between 1862 and 1871 this great Prussian politician used a combination of persuasion, strategy, skill and outright warfare to create a German Empire dominated by Prussia, and ruled by the Kaiser.  This new state, the Kaiserreich, grew to dominate European politics at the close of the 19th, and start of the 20th, century.  In 1918, after defeat in the Great War, a popular revolution forced the Kaiser into abdication and exile; a republic was then declared.  The Third Reich: Nazi Germany (1933-1945)  In 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of the German State.  Dictatorial powers and sweeping changes soon followed, as democracy disappeared and the country militarised.  The Third Reich was to have been a vastly extended German Empire, expunged of minorities and lasting for a thousand years, but it was removed in 1945 by a combined force of allied nations, which included Britain, France, Russia and the US.

http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/germany/a/Otherreichs.htm

Librarians at the University of Leeds have dusted off what is thought to be the one of first portable and travel sized library of books.  The miniature library was contained in a wooden case, bound in brown turkey leather, disguising it as a large folio volume, containing three shelves of gold-tooled vellum-bound books.   Stella Butler, University Librarian and Keeper of the Brotherton Collection, said:  'The Jacobean travelling library - one of only four made - dates from 1617 and is one of the most curious items in the Brotherton Collection.  The miniature books are contained in a wooden case disguised to look like a large book.  The catalogue inside the front cover is arranged in three columns of text within an architectural structure of arches and columns painted on a sheet of vellum.  The miniature books are a collection of about 40 mainly classical texts divided into three sections:  theology and philosophy, history, poetry.  They include works by Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Horace and Julius Caesar.  The library was reportedly commissioned by William Hakewill MP (1574-1655) for a friend at the turn of the year 1617/1618.  Within a period of five years he ordered three other such libraries to be made for his friends or patrons.  These are now held at the British Library, the Huntington Library California, and the Toledo Museum of Art Ohio.  The recipient of the University of Leeds copy seems to have been a member of the Irish Madden family, whose arms are clearly painted beneath the catalogue of the library inside the front board.  See remarkable pictures at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2781378/First-kind-Kindle-Researchers-University-Leeds-thought-travel-sized-library.html#ixzz3FKj89CCt

The names of the ships Christopher Columbus took on his famous 1492 trip across the Atlantic Ocean,  probably weren’t really named Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria.  The Santa Maria was also known at the time as La Gallega, meaning The Galician.”  The Niña is now believed to be a nickname for a ship originally called the Santa Clara, and the Pinta was probably also a nickname, though the ship’s real name isn’t clear.  Columbus didn’t “discover” America — he never set foot in North America.  During four separate trips that started with the one in 1492, Columbus landed on various Caribbean islands  that are now the Bahamas as well as the island later called Hispaniola.  He also explored the Central and South American coasts.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/14/christopher-columbus-3-things-you-think-he-did-that-he-didnt/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1203  October 13, 2014  On this date in 1792, in Washington, D.C., the cornerstone of the United States Executive Mansion (known as the White House since 1818) was laid.  On this date in 1958, Paddington Bear, a classic character from English children's literature, made his debut.

French author Patrick Modiano, whose work focuses on the Nazi occupation and its effect on his country, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature October 9, 2014.  The Swedish Academy gave the 8 million kronor ($1.1 million) prize to Modiano "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation."  Modiano, 69, whose novel "Missing Person" won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1978 — was born in a west Paris suburb two months after World War II ended in Europe in July 1945.  His father was of Jewish Italian origins and met his Belgian actress mother during the occupation of Paris — and his beginnings have strongly influenced his writing.  Modiano, who lives in Paris, is known to shun media, and rarely gives interviews. http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/books/patrick-modiano-wins-nobel-prize-literature-n221911

Has Floating Architecture’s Moment Finally Arrived? by Rachel Keeton    In a quiet, shady street in Rijswijk, the Netherlands, Koen Olthuis and the design team at Waterstudio are changing the world.  From this deceptively nondescript headquarters, Waterstudio is designing the cities of the future.  If Olthuis has his way, they will be safer, more flexible and more resilient than current cities.  How will he do this?  Olthuis is designing floating cities.  As we sit down at the table, the busy office buzzing around us, my first question to Olthuis is direct:  “How realistic are floating cities?”  Olthuis grins and nods, he’s heard this question before.   Floating cities have captivated society’s imagination for centuries, from the development of Venice a millennium ago to Triton, designed for Tokyo Bay by Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s.  But it wasn’t until the last decade or so that more fully realized, just-might-actually-happen sea-based urban endeavors have emerged, made more urgent by rising sea levels and rural-to-urban migration.  In the last six months, Business Insider, Bloomberg and The Guardian have all run stories asking the same question:  “Has the time come for floating cities?”  

See a picture of "The Sea Tree" and read much more at http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/floating-architecture-cities-build-on-water

redundant

ATM machine (automated teller machine machine); LCD display (liquid crystal display display); PIN number (personal identification number number); Lake Tahoe (lake lake);

La Brea tar pits (the tar tar pits); Minnehaha Falls (waterfall falls); Sahara Desert (deserts desert); El Camino Way (the way way); Mississippi River (big river river); East Timor (east east).  Find a list of redundant acronyms and initialisms at http://www.fun-with-words.com/redundant_acronyms.html

Q: Which state has been home to more U.S. presidents:  Ohio or Virginia?

A:  It’s either Virginia, Ohio or a tie, depending on how you count.

FULL QUESTION  Your Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008, Fact of the Day stated, "More U.S. presidents have been from Ohio than any other state.  Eight Ohio natives have been elected to the top office."  But the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, Michael Dobbs, says that only seven Ohioans have been U.S. presidents.  Who is right?

FULL ANSWER  First a mea culpa:  Our answer was inaccurate.  It’s not true that eight Ohio "natives" have been elected to the top office.  Nor is it entirely accurate to claim that Ohio has produced more U.S. presidents than any other state.  We found three different ways of counting: one results in a Virginia win, one in an Ohio win, and one in a tie.

We took the information for our Fact of the Day from the Ohio Secretary of State and the Ohio Public Library Information Network, which lists eight presidents who have been "elected from the Buckeye State."  Their list:  William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William H. Taft, and Warren G. Harding.

The Fact Checker maintains that it’s Virginia that leads the way with eight U.S. presidents, offering this list as evidence:  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson.  You’ll notice that both lists contain William Henry Harrison.  That’s because he was born in Virginia and studied at Virginia’s Hampden-Sydney College.  But in 1791, Harrison joined the Army and spent much of his remaining life in what was then the Northwest Territory (later Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota).  After a stint as the territorial governor of the Indiana Territory, Harrison moved to Ohio, where he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and as a U.S. senator before being elected the 9th U.S. president in 1840.  So Dobbs is correct that, counting from place of birth, Virginia has produced the most U.S. presidents.  But Ohio also has a claim, since W.H. Harrison was actually living in Ohio when he was elected.  Unfortunately, it gets complicated here.  You see, to get its eight presidents, Ohio has added W.H. Harrison to its seven native-born Ohioans.  That’s reasonable enough, since the elder Harrison was in fact living in Ohio when he was elected.  But using that standard, Benjamin Harrison would not count as an Ohio president, since he was living in Indiana at the time of his election.  For that matter, Ulysses S. Grant had moved to Illinois before he was elected president, so it’s not clear that he should count, either.  Ohio can claim eight U.S. presidents only by employing a hybrid standard:  everyone either born in the state or living in the state at the time of his election counts.  But that standard results in a tie with Virginia.  There is, however, a way of counting under which Ohio can claim the title of having produced more U.S. presidents than any other state, but it requires giving up two of its eight.  If we use living in a state at the time of election as our standard, then Ohio can claim six presidents to Virginia’s five (Harrison, Taylor and Wilson lived elsewhere at the time of their election).  So we’re going to rule that both states have sufficient bragging rights and call it a day.  Joe Miller

http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/home-to-more-presidents-ohio-or-virginia/

The U. S. Government Printing Office (GPO) annually recognizes an exceptional Federal depository library with a Library of the Year Award. These libraries further the Federal Depository Library Program’s mission of ensuring that the American public has free access to its Government's information in extraordinary ways.  Link to Library of the Year recipients from 2003-2014 at:  http://www.fdlp.gov/library-of-the-year

Two villages estimated to be 1,300 years old have been discovered in the high desert of northern Arizona.  The sites, recently acquired by Petrified Forest National Park, feature walls and floors lined with slabs of sandstone.  “Last year we found a large habitation site, and this summer we found a match, less than a mile away, a site that has dozens and dozens of different features.  We have now two large groups of pit house structures, both of them with probably more than 50 structures associated with them,” park archaeologist William Reitze told Western Digs.  He and his team also recovered ceramics and stone points from the late Basketmaker period, when the residents of the village were transitioning from nomadic foraging to a more sedentary society based upon agriculture.  http://www.archaeology.org/news/2562-141002-arizona-basketmaker-settlements

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1202  October 10, 2014  On this date in 1964, the opening ceremony of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, was broadcast live in the first Olympic telecast relayed by geostationary communication satellite.  On this date in 1971, sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopened in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

Tortillas are not always the healthiest bread option for sandwiches or other meals.  Oil or lard are common ingredients in many varieties of tortillas, which increases the calorie and fat content.  For example, a 10-inch flour tortilla wrap has more than 215 calories and nearly 5 grams of fat.  Corn tortillas are lighter in calories and fat, offering about 160 calories and about 2 grams of fat.  Replacing tortillas with other types of foods that make delicious wraps, adds variety to your favorite lunch meal.  Melodie Ann Coffman  Find alternative wraps, including lettuce, at http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/healthy-wraps-besides-tortillas-2801.html

Snout houses feature a protruding garage taking up most of the street frontage.  They may be built on small lots, and are sometimes called "single-nostril" or "double-nostril."

Michael Brown protesters interrupted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's concert on October 4, 2014, causing a brief delay in the performance at Powell Symphony Hall.  The orchestra and chorus were preparing to perform Johannes Brahms' Requiem just after intermission when two audience members in the middle aisle on the main floor began singing  "Which Side are You On?" - an organized labor tune with origins in the infamous 1931 Harlan, Kentucky coal strike.  They soon were joined, in harmony, by other protesters, who stood at seats in various locations on the main floor and in the balcony.  The protesters then unfurled three hand-painted banners and hung them from the Dress Circle boxes.  One banner listed the birth and death date of Brown, who was shot by Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9.  The five-minute interruption was met with a smattering of applause from some audience members, as well as members of the orchestra and chorus.  Others simply watched as the orchestra remained silent.  The protest ended quietly as participants left voluntarily, chanting, “Black lives matter.”  Conductor Markus Stenz resumed the concert shortly thereafter.  Steve Giegerich 

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_bfd2b377-8da4-56f8-aa8d-64bf714e0114.html

Robert Pinsky launches an Art of Poetry MOOC and thousands sign up by Claire Kelley  Former United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is teaching an eight-week MOOC (massive open online course) through Boston University and EdX this fall, and more than twelve thousand students have signed up for the course, which began on September 30.  The course is named “The Art of Poetry” and the syllabus promises to offer an experience that is “demanding, and based on a certain kind of intense, exigent reading, requiring prolonged in fact, repeated attention to specific poems.”  Some of the poems covered and discussed include Frank O’Hara’s “Why I Am Not a Painter,” “Nick and the Candlestick” by Sylvia Plath,  “To Waken an Old Lady” by William  Carlos Williams, “The Fascination of What’s Difficult” by William Butler Yeats and a couple contemporary poems like “Enough” by  Peterson. Pinsky says that “this course is based on the conviction that the more you know about an art, the more pleasure you will find in it” and rather than studying a specific school or time period, each week is dedicated to a pairing or collection of themes like Difficulty and Pleasure, Freedom and Meaning, and Teasing, Flirting, and Courting.  Form and the relationship between poetry and music will also be discussed.  http://www.mhpbooks.com/robert-pinsky-launches-an-art-of-poetry-mooc-and-thousands-sign-up/

No part of speech has had to put up with so much adversity as the adverb.  The grammatical equivalent of cheap cologne or trans fat, the adverb is supposed to be used sparingly, if at all, to modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs.  As Stephen King succinctly put it:  “The adverb is not your friend.”  Not everybody, however, looks askance at the part of speech.  Indeed, there is at least one place where the adverb not only flourishes but wields power—the American legal system.  Adverbs in recent years have taken on an increasingly important—and often contentious—role in courthouses.  Their influence has spread with the help of lawmakers churning out new laws packed with them.  A U.S. appellate court, for example, this past summer wrestled with the question of whether a defendant could have “knowingly” aimed a laser pointer at a helicopter if he mistakenly assumed the beam wouldn’t reach the aircraft.  Words such as “knowingly,” “intentionally” and “recklessly,” which deal with criminal intent, pop up most frequently, but plenty of other adverbs have enjoyed the spotlight.  When the U.S. Supreme Court in June recognized religious protections of closely held companies, justices pondered the significance of an adverb in a 1993 federal statute that guards against laws that “substantially burden” the exercise of religion.  “Indiscriminately” was pivotal in a federal appeals court ruling in January striking down the “net neutrality” rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission.  Preventing broadband providers from charging sites like Netflix more money for faster speeds would effectively treat them like common carriers, which are required by law to “serve the public indiscriminately,” the court said.  In a tax case from the summer, lawyers for the Internal Revenue Service defended their decision to freeze the bank accounts of a former Pennsylvania state senator, only to see their arguments founder on the word “quickly.”  Tax law allows the government to immediately freeze the assets of a suspected tax cheat who “appears to be designing quickly” to hide his wealth.  But the judge said there was nothing quick about the defendant’s cash and real-estate transactions, which spanned several years.  “Contrary to the ordinary view that adverbs are superfluous, law generally, and criminal law especially, emerges through its adverbs,” James M. Donovan, a legal anthropology professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law, recently wrote in a paper on the subject.  Jacob Gershman  http://online.wsj.com/articles/why-adverbs-maligned-by-many-flourish-in-the-american-legal-system-1412735402

BBC unveils all-star version of God Only Knows by Michael Hann

Seventeen years ago, when the BBC first unveiled a megastar-laden lineup performing a beloved rock classic of a certain vintage, this paper had a withering take on matters.  The performance of Lou Reed’s Perfect Day, this paper said, offered “a none too subtle message:  keep writing the cheque”.  Now, with the corporation’s battle to retain the television licence fee getting almost tougher by the week, it has unveiled a new take on a beloved song with a new cast of performers, and its message is, if anything, even less subtle, given its chorus runs:  “God only knows what I’d be without you.”  The new version of God Only Knows was given its first airing across all BBC platforms on October 7, 2014.  The official reason for the new recording of the classic 1966 Beach Boys song is to mark the launch of BBC Music, which the corporation describes as “an ambitious wave of new programmes, innovative partnerships and ground-breaking music initiatives that amount to the BBC’s strongest commitment to music in 30 years”.  As with Perfect Day, the song will be released as a single to raise money for the BBC’s Children in Need appeal.  http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/07/bbc-god-only-knows-pharrell-stevie-wonder-chris-martin-lorde

The blood moon of October 8, 2014 was visible to observers in North America, western South America, parts of East Asia, Australia and other parts of the Pacific, weather permitting.  This total lunar eclipse is also the second in a four-eclipse-series called a "tetrad."  Some intrepid observers might have also been able to capture the planet Uranus very close to the eclipsed full moon as well.  The lunar eclipse reached totality just before dawn for observers on the East Coast of the United States.  If you missed this total lunar eclipse, you might have another chance to see a blood moon rise 2015.  The next eclipse in the tetrad series is set to grace the skies in April 2015, with the final in the tetrad occurring in September 2015.   Miriam Kramer  See pictures at http://www.space.com/27381-blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-wows-skywatchers.html

http://librariansmuse.blogpost.com  Issue 1201  October 8, 2014  On this date in 1956, New York Yankees's Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series.  On this date in 1982,  Cats opened on Broadway and ran for nearly 18 years before closing on September 10, 2000.