Broadway luminaries Sherie Rene Scott and Dick Scanlan, RTA’s newest volunteers, along with volunteer Sean Fischer, donated their formidable talents to guide the prisoner-participants in Rehabilitation Through The Arts on a powerful theatrical journey. The workshop “Theatricalizing the Personal Narrative” took place over several months in Woodbourne Correctional Facility, a medium security men’s prison in Sullivan County, and ended with a riveting presentation on June 9th of monologues performed by prisoners for invited prisoner and outside guests. Some pieces were light, but most, dealing with confusion, loss and remorse, were wrenching – a child torn from his mother, a brutal incident in the prison yard, a 14 year old girl caught in the crossfire. The audience was moved by the men’s talent, as well as their courage to speak so deeply and honestly about their lives, displaying, as Sherie commented, a “level of commitment and bravery it takes some actors years to go to”. http://www.rta-arts.com/blog

Space Shuttle Discovery 360VR Images June 22, 2011 Move the mouse in any direction to scan.
http://360vr.com/2011/06/22-discovery-flight-deck-opf_6236/index.html

Analysis of new images of a curious “hot spot” on the far side of the Moon reveal it to be a small volcanic province created by the upwelling of silicic magma. The unusual location of the province and the surprising composition of the lava that formed it offer tantalizing clues to the Moon’s thermal history. The hot spot is a concentration of a radioactive element thorium sitting between the very large and ancient impact craters Compton and Belkovich that was first detected by Lunar Prospector’s gamma-ray spectrometer in 1998. The Compton-Belkovich Thorium Anomaly, as it is called, appears as a bull’s-eye when the spectrometer data are projected onto a map, with the highest thorium concentration at its center. Recent observations, made with the powerful Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) optical cameras, have allowed scientists to distinguish volcanic features in terrain at the center of the bull’s-eye. High-resolution three-dimensional models of the terrain and information from the LRO Diviner instrument have revealed geological features diagnostic not just of volcanism but also of much rarer silicic volcanism. The volcanic province’s very existence will force scientists to modify ideas about the Moon’s volcanic history, says Bradley Jolliff, PhD, research professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, who led the team that analyzed the LRO images. The work is described in the July 24 advance online issue of Nature Geoscience. Lunar volcanism is very different from terrestrial volcanism because the Moon is a small body that cooled quickly and never developed rock-recycling plate tectonics like those on our planet. The Moon, thought to have been created when a Mars-size body slammed into Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, was originally a hellish world covered by a roiling ocean of molten rock some 400 kilometers deep. http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/22512.aspx

In the Morse Museum of American Art's jaw-dropping 12,000-square-foot wing devoted to Laurelton Hall, Louis Comfort Tiffany's huge estate on the North Shore of Long Island, there are layers and layers—of materials, of meaning, of history. A walk through the first-floor galleries (upstairs are offices and an expanded library) with museum curator Jennifer Perry Thalheimer made clear how Tiffany's blue-and-white dining room—the original seated 150—with its marble mantle, unadorned except for its three built-in clocks telling the hour, day and month, related to the outdoor Daffodil Terrace, which in turn connected the house with its gardens, whose pond, pools and streams were fed by water from inside the house. Laurelton's three-story reception hall was the fountain court, seemingly right out of the Alhambra. Liquid pouring from the mouth of a tall, narrow vase into its basin—continually changing hues thanks to the rotations of an underwater pair of lead, brass and glass color wheels—was the source for elaborate hydraulics that sent a stream flowing through a rill that pierced the exterior wall to feed outside water features of the 580-acre estate, itself overlooking Cold Spring Harbor. The main house was built from 1902 to 1905 and had 84 rooms, including a smoking room where Tiffany could puff away under a mural depicting an opium dream. There also were accommodations for student artists; greenhouses; a bowling alley; a working farm; and a lighted, cork-lined tunnel leading to the beach on Long Island Sound. Tiffany (1848-1933), son of the founder of the famous jewelry store, began his career as an Orientalist painter. His travels in North Africa inspired the smokestack-disguised-as-minaret at Laurelton Hall, the detailed architect's model of which survived the 1957 fire that gutted the mansion, as did those color wheels in the fountain. So, too, did an elaborately carved pair of massive teakwood doors that granted entrance to the estate's art gallery. They came from India, and were imported by the decorating firm Tiffany operated with the artist and furniture designer Lockwood de Forest. In all, more than 250 art and architectural objects associated with the estate are on view in the Morse's new wing. The Morse Museum opened at its current location in 1995, displaying Tiffany's creations as well as work by John La Farge, Daniel Chester French, John Singer Sargent and Frank Lloyd Wright plus Arts and Crafts furniture and pottery. A 1999 addition houses the magnificent Byzantine-Romanesque interior of the chapel Tiffany created for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703453804576191023428412608.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art is located at 445 North Park Avenue, Winter Park, FL 32789. (407) 645-5311 http://www.morsemuseum.org/

Eggplant fries from Terzo Piano at The Art Institute of Chicago
Dipping sauce:
1 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1 tablespoon chopped kosher pickle or pickle relish
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano
Kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
Fries:
1 1-pound eggplant, cut crosswise into 1/2" rounds, then into 1/2"-thick strips
Vegetable oil (for frying)
1 cup rice flour
2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 tablespoons za'atar
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt plus more for seasoning
Serves six
Ingredient Info: Za'atar is a Middle Eastern spice blend that includes sumac, herbs, and sesame seeds. It's available at specialty foods stores, Middle Eastern markets, and igourmet.com
Read directions at: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Eggplant-Fries-366730 Chefs at Terzo Piano soak the eggplant strips in ice water before frying. When the cold water-logged eggplant hits the hot oil, a crispy coating forms.
Bon Appetit magazine August 2011

In the space of three and a half decades, the Pittsford Carriage Association’s Walnut Hill Carriage Competition has grown from an informal marathon drive of 14 vehicles to a six-day, internationally recognized, driving “event” which is forced to turn away competitors each year. Association President, William Remley, was understandably proud to say that Walnut Hill is the largest show of its kind in the world. Coincidentally, and most fortunately for the Walnut Hill Carriage Driving Competition, 1972 was also the year Bill was asked to be president of the Rochester-Canandaigua Horse Show, a revival of the old Rochester Exposition. With the successful achievement of this first venture fresh in his thoughts, Bill Remley began investigating carriage shows, only to find that there were precious few driving classes offered in any area shows and even fewer bonafide driving shows. Since carriage driving appeared to be the stepchild of the equestrian sport, Bill and his small group of fellow enthusiasts entertained the idea of developing a showcase specifically for carriages. Their intention was to bring together people who enjoyed driving in a relaxed, congenial atmosphere. The Pittsford Carriage Association was born and declared its major objective the use of carriages and other animal drawn vehicles for the promotion of public interest in their contributions to our country’s cultural, social and economic history. See more plus pictures at: http://www.walnuthillfarm.org/History.html

"Hard cider has become my new drink," says Mario Batali. "I have it as an aperitivo, even back in New York."
Mario Batali's vacation spot is a former trout-fishing camp on Michigan's Leelanau Peninsula, a 30-mile spindle of land with Lake Michigan to one side, a bay of Lake Michigan to the other, and even more water on the ground in the form of the peninsula's 8,600-acre Lake Leelanau. All of this water moderates Michigan's famous cold weather, allowing true European grape varieties such as Riesling and Cabernet Franc to grow. Apples and other fruits also thrive on this balmy bit of land south of the Manitou Islands, and there's also a thriving micro-brew scene. See recommended wines at:
http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/2011/07/wine-beer-drink-traverse-city-michigan-mario-batali.html

Mario Batali on eating in and around Traverse City, Michigan There's a place in Leland called The Cove that has killer chicken sandwiches and burgers. My favorite restaurant in Traverse City is The Cook's House. It's farm-to-table and it's delicious. There's a seafood place on the east side of Grand Traverse Bay called Siren Hall. We take a boat across the bay to the little harbor there, tie up, and walk 200 yards to the restaurant. It feels so good.
Bon Appetit magazine August 2011

There is a Missouri class action set for trial next month, which is worth following. The case claims that LegalZoom.com, which sells do-it-yourself wills, leases and other documents online, is illegally practicing law in the state of Missouri. Last week, Missouri federal judge Nanette K. Laughrey partially rejected LegalZoom’s motion for summary judgment and set the case for trial on August 22. In a statement issued yesterday, LegalZoom said that if the plaintiffs win at trial, it could dramatically impact the availability of self-help legal books and forms in Missouri. “If the plaintiffs are successful, we believe it is going to become a lot more expensive for small businesses and individuals to obtain basic legal forms,” Chas Rampenthal, Legal Zoom’s General counsel, said in the statement. “Missouri would become the only state in the nation to take away a consumer’s right to access online legal document software.” David Butsch, counsel to the plaintiffs’ said the consists of as many as 15,000 users of LegalZoom products.
The suit contends that by selling online legal documents, LegalZoom is violating a Missouri law that bars non-lawyers from preparing legal documents.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/07/27/class-action-claims-online-legal-forms-pose-threat-to-consumers/

Q. Is news an acronym for north south east west? A. No.
news late 14c., plural of new (n.) "new thing," from new (adj.), q.v.; after Fr. nouvelles, used in Bible translations to render M.L. nova (neut. pl.) "news," lit. "new things." Sometimes still regarded as plural, 17c.-19c.
Meaning "tidings" is early 15c.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/IS_News_an_acronym_for_north_east_west_south#ixzz1SroZHSoT
See also: http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/news.asp

A bookshop going places by Lee Rourke
First we had slow food, then slow writing and now, quite naturally it seems, we have slow bookselling. Several months ago, I received an email from The Book Barge informing me that my debut novel The Canal was their bestseller. Obviously, I investigated further and was amazed to find out that The Book Barge was indeed a floating bookshop on a canal boat (57' Cruiser Stern) in Lichfield, Staffordshire. It is the brainchild of Sarah Henshaw. "By setting up on a canal boat," she explained, "we hope to promote a less hurried and harried lifestyle of idle pleasures, cups of tea, conversation, culture and, of course, curling up with an incomparably good Book Barge purchase." I was immediately sold. But why a canal boat? "I hoped that by creating a unique retail space, customers would realise how independent bookshops can offer a far more pleasurable shopping experience than they're likely to find online or on the discount shelves at supermarkets." A few months later I received another email from Sarah. This time she informed me that she was about to embark on a six-month tour of the UK's canal network, incorporating a series of onboard author events along the way, including David Vann and Per Petterson, and wondered if I would like to read at one of her book clubs in London. The tour is a mammoth undertaking, as Sarah will be living on The Book Barge, hoping to swap books for the odd meal, or for the use of a shower along the way. (Most recently she offered to swap books for a mechanic to have a look at the engine – I hope she found one). The Book Barge is a breath of genuinely fresh air and quite possibly the coolest bookshop in the UK. With a wonderful kids' section and an excellent selection of contemporary and secondhand fiction and non-fiction it makes for a pleasurable book-buying visit. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/13/bookshop-book-barge

Fractal forms—complex shapes which look more or less the same at a wide variety of scale factors, are everywhere in nature. From thefluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation to the coastlines of continents, courses of rivers, clouds in the sky, branches of plants and veins in their leaves, blood vessels in the lung, and the shape of seashells and snowflakes, these fractal or self-similar patterns abound. A chou Romanesco is so visually stunning an object that on first encounter it's hard to imagine you're looking at a garden vegetable rather than an alien artefact created with molecular nanotechnology. Romanesco is a member of the speciesBrassica oleracea L., which includes cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collard greens, kohlrabi, and numerous other “cultivars” (cultivated variations). All of these plants can and have been crossed, resulting in such innovations as broccolini (a cross of Chinese kale and broccoli) and broccoflower (a cross of broccoli and cauliflower which superficially resembles Romanesco but lacks its near perfect self-similar fractal form.) The French name, chou Romanesco literally translates to “Romanesco cabbage”, placing it in the cabbage family even though it doesn't much resemble any cabbage you've ever seen. In German, it's Pyramidenblumenkohl: “pyramid cauliflower”; in Italy, where it was first described in the sixteenth century, it's called broccolo romanesco: “Romanesco broccoli”, but sometimes cavolo romanesco: “Romanesco cabbage”. Finally, in English it's usually called “Romanesco broccoli”, but you'll also it referred to as "Romanesco cauliflower". See amazing pictures at: http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/Romanesco/
Buy seeds at: http://www.seedsavers.org/Details.aspx?itemNo=350

Feedback from muse reader: In 2004 I hiked the Wainwright Trail through the Lake District and across England, from the Irish Sea to the North Sea. 192 miles and 25,000 feet of elevation gain in 13 days on the trail. A magnificent adventure! It was unbelievably beautiful. Read about it at http://www.sherpa-walking-holidays.co.uk/tours/britain/wccrc.asp, which is the B&B/sherpa service that I used. I note that now they do it in 15 days, as at 13 days the hardest day, day 6, was immediately followed by the second hardest day, which was a killer pair. David Grogan

Martha: I got out my trail book to refresh my memory. It was day 4 and 5 that were the killers. Day 4 was Patterdale to Shap, 16 miles and 2,700 feet of ascent, with almost all of the ascent in the first 5 miles climbing Kidsty Pike. I was hiking with a couple of young, former British Army buddies. At the top of Kidsty Pike we collapsed for lunch next to an ancient shepherd's hut, and this goat kept trying to sneak up behind us to grab a bite. From the top, we had a magnificent view down along the Haweswater (a long, narrow dammed lake) to our destination of Shap 11 miles away. We gave back 1,700 feet of that hard-earned altitude in less than two miles. The next day, Shap to Kirby Stephen, was only 1,600 feet in elevation gain but 21 miles with a nice, sharp 600 foot gain right at the end. My dogs were barking! About a mile out of town, there was an advertisement painted on the side of a two-story barn for a chiropractor in Kirby Stephen (this was on the trail and nowhere near a road, so it was just for hikers to see), but I was too tired to look for him. The next morning, a troop of gypsies came down the street right in front of my B&B with their brightly painted wagons and horses. Just amazing. I was hiking the first two weeks of June, and every tree, bush, shrub, and meadow was blooming in Technicolor. David

Personal voices from the Library of Congress, including links to Ask a Librarian, Digital Collections and Library Catalogs http://blogs.loc.gov/

The bright-orange sea-buckthorn berry may sound like something from Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. In fact, it's one of Scandinavian cuisine's star ingredients, which are driving adventurous foodies to forage in cutting-edge restaurants, Pacific-Northwest wine bars, local health-food stores and IKEA outlets. "I love the boom," says Marcus Samuelsson, the Swedish-raised New York chef who helped pioneer awareness of Scandinavian cuisine in the U.S. when he was executive chef at Aquavit, which he co-owns. Mr. Samuelsson uses aromatic cloudberries—"the king of berries," he calls them—in sorbet and serves the sour sea-buckthorn berries with game meats. He sometimes spikes a sauce with Norwegian brunost, a sweet brown cheese traditionally made from caramelized goat's milk whey. "It's like goat-cheese butter," Mr. Samuelsson says. Andrea Rowe, vice president of Marina Market, a food importer and wholesaler near Seattle specializing in Scandinavian fare, says Norwegian brown cheese "is a very big seller." In Poulsbo, Wash., MorMor Bistro & Bar tops cheesecake with cloudberry preserves infused with Riesling wine and orange zest. The Swedish food section in IKEA stores sell cloudberry jam, which Swedes often serve with hot waffles. The juice of sea-buckthorn berries—which are sometimes called a "superfruit" because of their high antioxidant content—can be found in local health-food and organic grocery stores. Birch, in the form of a varnish-colored syrup, is a signature flavor for many young chefs in Scandinavia. In winter, Fäviken serves roasted beets flavored with butter and a drizzle of birch syrup. The estate-made birch syrup, which is much more concentrated than maple syrup, "is very good with vegetables," Mr. Nilsson says. See more plus pictures at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903461104576457893839972506.html

The term gad, is the correct old spelling of the word which we now spell goad, in its two meanings of (1) a prick (2) the pole to which the prick is fastened. Thus a gad-fly, is a goad-fly, or stinging fly; and &gad also came to mean a wand, a measuring-rod, a fishingrod, &c., and at gad-whip meant a long whip for goading oxen. It is from the Anglo Saxon gad, a goad, the point of a weapon, a prick. Shakespeare says :—"I will go get a leal of brass, And with a gad of steel will write these words." Titus Androniats, iv. I. http://books.google.com/books?id=kEJFAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA92&lpg=RA1-PA92&dq=gad-fly+goad-fly+goading+gad-whip&source=bl&ots=Se_ph1dqXi&sig=1fL5ALrZkJf0tu-cduoN56v1zbw&hl=en&ei=HzMgTtXwFY3VgAen5v3jBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=gad-fly%20goad-fly%20goading%20gad-whip&f=false

Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or (in the Saussurean tradition) semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. Semiotics is often divided into three branches:
Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning
Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures
Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics. However, many modern linguists and philosophers of language consider his ideas outdated. Some philosophers of language believe that these critics are themselves applying outdated argumentation to portray Saussurean ideas as obscurantist or deliberately distorted. While Saussure's concepts—particularly semiotics—have received little to no attention in modern linguistic textbooks, his ideas have significantly influenced the humanities and social sciences. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

Opinion concerning "anymore" vs "any more" divides roughly into three camps:
· There is no such word as "anymore". It is simply a misspelling.
· "Anymore" and "any more" are two ways of spelling the same thing, and the two have the same meaning.
· There is a useful difference in meaning between the two.The difference in meaning considered useful by the third camp is that "anymore" is an adverb meaning "nowadays" or "any longer", while "any more" can be either adverb plus adjective, as in "I don't want any more pie", or adjective plus noun, as in "I don't want any more." The difference between the two meanings is illustrated in the sentence: "I don't buy books anymore because I don't need any more books." http://alt-usage-english.org/anymore.html

Anyway or any way? The compound word anyway is an adverb meaning "regardless." Any way is simply the word way modified by the word any. It means "any manner" or "any method." http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000283.htm

Packet, Packet, Who's Got the Packet? In order to retrieve this article, your computer had to connect with the Web server containing the article's file. First, you open your Web browser and connect to our Web site. When you do this, your computer sends an electronic request over your Internet connection to your Internet service provider (ISP). The ISP routes the request to a server further up the chain on the Internet. Eventually, the request will hit a domain name server (DNS). This server will look for a match for the domain name you've typed in (such as www.howstuffworks.com). If it finds a match, it will direct your request to the proper server's IP address. If it doesn't find a match, it will send the request further up the chain to a server that has more information. The request will eventually come to our Web server. Our server will respond by sending the requested file in a series of packets. Packets are parts of a file that range between 1,000 and 1,500 bytes. Read more at: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet2.htm

packet First use: 15th century Origin: Middle English pekette, pakat, from Anglo-French pacquet, of Germanic origin; akin to Middle Dutch pak pack More information at: http://www.memidex.com/packet+collection#etymology

The term byte was coined by Dr. Werner Buchholz in July 1956, during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer. It is a respelling of bite to avoid accidental mutation to bit. Early computers were designed for 4-bit BCD code (binary coded decimal) or 6-bit code for printable "graphic set", which included 26 alphabetic characters (only uppercase), 10 Numerical digits, and from 11 to 25 special graphic symbols. To include the control characters and allow digital devices to communicate with each other and to process, store, and communicate character-oriented information such as written language, and lowercase characters, a 7-bit ASCII code was introduced Since with just only one bit more an eight bits allows two four-bit patterns to efficiently encode two digits with binary coded decimal, the eight-bit EBCDIC character encoding was later adopted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

Documentaries to look for
The documentary “Buck,” which won a Sundance audience award this year and opened in June in New York and Los Angeles, details his shaman-like skills around horses and the people who ride them. Mr. Brannaman, who has been riding since before he could reach the stirrups, uses a mystical empathy to calm horses, forgoing the casual violence that is so much a part of horse breaking. For three decades in clinics all over the country Mr. Brannaman, 49, has taught that riding a horse is like dancing, a combination of wooing, leading and mutual respect. A cult figure among both the horsey set and working cowboys, he is about to reach a much wider audience courtesy of "Buck," an 88-minute documentary distributed by Sundance Selects from a first-time director, Cindy Meehl. The movie may gallop along on four legs, but it is not about horses so much as the two-legged creatures who saddle them. A minute into the film he states it plainly: “A lot of times, rather than helping people with horse problems, I’m helping horses with people problems.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/movies/buck-brannaman-horse-whisperer-and-now-movie-star.html?pagewanted=all

The documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress Revolutionary Spanish eatery El Bulli is a Michelin three-star restaurant in Roses, Spain (two hours northeast of Barcelona); each night, it serves a tasting menu of 30+ courses, prepared by over 40 chefs, to a single seating of up to 50 guests. For the current season, its last before transforming into a culinary academy, over two million requests were received for the 8,000 available seats. For six months of the year, renowned Spanish chef Ferran Adrià closes his restaurant El Bulli — repeatedly voted the world's best — and works with his culinary team to prepare the menu for the next season. An elegant, detailed study of food as avant-garde art, the fllm is a rare inside look at some of the world's most innovative and exciting cooking. The documentary opens at New York's Film Forum July 27 before being released to other cities. See a list of playdates at: http://www.elbullimovie.com/ Note that the kitchen will close indefinitely this month.

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From: Millie Webb Subject: Wainwright Def: One who builds or repairs wagons.
My host brother in Germany (I was an exchange student in high school, many years ago) is a master wainwright (in effect - Stellmacher actually translates to wheelwright) in Northern Germany today. For a while, our family despaired he was ever going to find a career that suited him. This was perfect! There are only a few such positions left in the whole country, and one apprenticeship opened up at exactly the right time for him. He loves it, and has worked on carriages for the royal families of Europe, including England. The detail-work is amazing.
From: Mark Newlands Subject: Wainwright
The Lake District National Park in the UK contains some of the world's most beautiful mountains (more commonly called fells). The principal fells are known as wainwrights after the famous writer Alfred Wainwright who produced the legendary hand-written guide books to the Lake District fells So here in the UK a wainwright describes multiple nouns and is also an eponym
From: Steven Frais Subject: wainwright
Probably the best known incidence of the use of the word wain for wagon is in John Constable's 1821 painting The Hay Wain.
From: Janet Rizvi Subject: occupations as surnames
I particularly liked this week's theme for the reason that my maiden name was Clarke (Clark, Clerk) and my mother's was Smith. As well as your examples of Baker, Gardener and Cook, people continue to follow the calling of Mason and Farmer, even Fisher and Shepherd; while there remain but few professional Carters and Thatchers. Most obsolete of all as a profession is perhaps Fletcher [also see fletcherize]. No enormous demand for arrow-featherers these days, unless possibly the makers of arrows for archery as a sport continue to be identified by the term?

An Israeli orchestra is set to perform a work by Adolf Hitler's favorite composer, Richard Wagner, in a taboo-breaking concert in Germany. The Israel Chamber Orchestra's concert in Wagner's hometown alongside the annual Bayreuth opera festival on Tuesday, July 26 will mark the first time an Israeli orchestra has played Wagner in Germany, Nicolaus Richter, the head of Bayreuth city's cultural affairs department, said Monday. The orchestra started rehearsing the Wagner piece, the Siegfrid Idyll, only upon their arrival in Germany Sunday due to the sensitivities in Israel. "They didn't rehearse it at home in order not to create any resistance," he said. "They rehearsed yesterday, they are doing it for all of today and tomorrow they'll be ready," Richter said. Music by composers banned by the Third Reich, including Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn, will also be played during the concert.
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=14150060

Works by Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the contemporary Israeli composer Zvi Avni will be complementing Wagner’s music. The concert, scheduled for July 26 in Bayreuth’s Stadthalle (town hall), is part of „Lust auf Liszt“, a series of events celebrating the 200th birthday of Bayreuth’s famous son, Franz Liszt. http://english.getclassical.org/2011/07/21/the-israel-chamber-orchestra-in-bayreuth-%E2%80%93-a-conversation-with-principal-conductor-roberto-paternostro/

Q: Has the height of the pitcher's mound changed?
A: Not for 43 years. Its height helps keep the competitive balance between pitching and hitting. It was set at no higher than 15 inches in 1903 or 1904. After pitchers developed a statistical advantage over hitters, it was lowered to 10 inches after the 1968 season. historicbaseball.com. http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2011/Jul/JU/ar_JU_072511.asp?d=072511,2011,Jul,25&c=c_13

According to a recent census, London planes represent 15% of the New York City's tree population and nearly 30% of its canopy. Despite its name, the London plane is actually a cross between the American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) and the Oriental plane of central Asia (Platanus orientalis), first propagated at the Oxford Botanic Garden about 1670. Though long known in New York, the tree was planted only sporadically prior to the 1930s. The London plane was planted in great numbers by King Umberto I after Unification in 1870. By 1900 it was the most common street tree in Rome, constituting 35% of the urban forest; the storied Pinus pinea made up only 1%. Respighi's "Pines of Rome" notwithstanding, the Italian capital is really a city of planes. It was via Rome that the plane came to have such universal presence in New York. The conduit was Michael Rapuano, a young landscape architect with Italian roots of his own. Son of Neapolitan immigrants, Rapuano studied landscape architecture at Cornell University and in 1927 won a coveted Rome Prize fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. He noted planes in his travels around Europe, and knew well the great trees shading Roman thoroughfares near the academy—on the Janiculum and Viale di Trastevere and along the Tiber. A latter-day Xerxes, Rapuano fell in love with the plane and carried his affections back to New York. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304314404576414091335186456.html

The producers of a Broadway musical about the 1960s all-girl Doo-wop group The Shirelles are accused in a suit joined by singer Dionne Warwick of pilfering the names and likenesses of the original members. Three of the four members -- surviving member Beverly Lee, who owns the trademark to "The Shirelles" name and the estates of Doris Coley Jackson and Addie Harris McFadden -- brought the suit April 26, 2011 in New York Supreme Court. The complaint targets "Baby It's You!" a play billed as the story of Florence Greenberg, a suburban housewife from New Jersey who discovered the all-girl group and created Scepter Records, according to the play's website. The four were high school friends from Passaic, N.J., when they formed the group in 1958. The fourth, Shirley Owens, was not part of the complaint. F ellow plaintiffs Warwick and singer Chuck Jackson were also signed to Scepter Records, the complaint says. They accuse Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Broadway Baby LLC, of "cashing in on plaintiffs' stories and successes, while using plaintiffs' names, likenesses and biographical information without their consent and in violation of the law," the complaint says. Paul McGuire, a Warner Bros. spokesman, declined comment. The plaintiffs had been in discussions with Warner Bros., but they could not resolve their differences and took legal action, Warshavsky said. He said the timing of the suit on the eve of opening night was a coincidence. The bulk of the 11-page complaint touts the history of Warwick, Jackson and the quartet, "the first major female vocal group of the so-called 'rock-n-roll era,'" the suit says. The group is known for lyrics from the 1960s that include "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," "Dedicated to the One I Love" and "Soldier Boy." They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. They accuse the defendants of violating the New York Civil Rights Law for using their likenesses for advertising and trade without the plaintiffs' written consent. They also allege unjust enrichment. The case is Beverly Lee et al, New York Supreme Court, No. 651100-2011. http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/New_York/News/2011/04_-_April/Shirelles,_Dionne_Warwick_sue_new_Broadway_show/ View complaint and information on the Shirelles' trademark at: http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/copyright-trademarklaw/blogs/musicindustrylaw/archive/2011/05/01/shirelles-sue-in-response-to-broadway-play-baby-it-s-you-play-allegedly-advertised-and-promoted-as-the-shirelles-musical-free-download.aspx

Books and other fetish objects by James Gleick I got a real thrill in December 1999 in the Reading Room of the Morgan Library in New York when the librarian, Sylvie Merian, brought me, after I had completed an application with a letter of reference and a photo ID, the first, oldest notebook of Isaac Newton. First I was required to study a microfilm version. There followed a certain amount of appropriate pomp. The notebook was lifted from a blue cloth drop-spine box and laid on a special padded stand. I was struck by how impossibly tiny it was — 58 leaves bound in vellum, just 2 3/4 inches wide, half the size I would have guessed from the enlarged microfilm images. There was his name, “Isacus Newton,” proudly inscribed by the 17-year-old with his quill, and the date, 1659. “He filled the pages with meticulous script, the letters and numerals often less than one-sixteenth of an inch high,” I wrote in my book “Isaac Newton” a few years later. “He began at both ends and worked toward the middle.” Apparently historians know the feeling well — the exhilaration that comes from handling the venerable original. It’s a contact high. In this time of digitization, it is said to be endangered. The Morgan Notebook of Isaac Newton is online now (thanks to the Newton Project at the University of Sussex). You can surf it at: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/diplomatic/NATP00001
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/opinion/sunday/17gleick.html?_r=1

Darby Conley is an American cartoonis best known for the popular comic strip Get Fuzzy. Conley was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1970, and grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. His first cartoons appeared in the Doyle High Trailblazer, his school paper in Knoxville, Tennessee. His single-panel strip of weirdness won him first place in a News-Sentinel student cartoon competition in 1986, thus planting the idea of someday becoming a professional cartoonist. He went on to earn a Fine Arts and Art History degree from Amherst College. After submitting his Gary Larson-esque efforts to syndicates for years, a few representatives advised Conley that a strip with regular characters and some continuity might prove easier to "sell". As an animal lover, Conley decided to feature a cat and dog; some fine-tuning resulted in the strip Get Fuzzy. Comics syndicate United Media agreed in 1999 to publish Conley's new strip, which first appeared in September of that year. Get Fuzzy began its run in 75 papers, an unusually high number for a newcomer. But the strip’s runaway popularity was even more unprecedented. With remarkable rapidity, the circulation had more than doubled, the first book of collected strips was published, and talks were being conducted over the production of plush toys, a TV show, and even a movie. Comics that Conley has cited as personal favorites include Bloom County, The Far Side and The Adventures of Tintin. Conley has also stated that his sense of humor was shaped in part by the likes of comedy/science fiction author Douglas Adams and legendary comic troupe Monty Python. Many "one-shot" Get Fuzzy strips feature wordplay and puns that reflect these influences. He is also a fan of the band Ween. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Conley

Darby Conley named his characters in Get Fuzzy after baseball players Bucky O'Neil and Satchel Paige, and Rob Wilco after two of his friends with the same first name. Bucky's and Satchel's personalities are extreme simplifications of the stereotypes of "cat" and "dog". The unusual title of the strip came from a concert poster he once created for his brother's band, the Fuzzy Sprouts. "Life's too short to be cool," the poster read, "Get Fuzzy." http://www.nya-nya.us/getfuzzy/conley.html

King of the Sea “The head of an average-sized whale is from fifteen to sixteen feet [about one-third the length], and the lips open some six or eight feet; yet to such a mouth there is scarcely any throat, not sufficiently large to allow a herring to pass down it. This little scaly fellow [the herring], some fourteen inches in length, would choke a monster whale, and is hence called `the king of the sea.” —C.Thomson: Autobiography, p. 132. http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/king-sea.html

King of the Sea story from the Isle of Man http://www.isleofman.com/heritage/ePedia/Arts/Literature/folklore/ManxFairyTales/06-herringKing.aspx

The herring is the king of the sea
The herring is the fish for me
The herring is the king of the sea
Sing whack-fol-do-dol-lay.
The Herring's Head (extract) See more lyrics at: http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=2923

Charles Cros (1842-1888) was a French poet and inventor. He was born in Fabrezan, Aude, France, 35 km to the East of Carcassonne. He developed various improved methods of photography including an early color photo process. He also invented improvements in telegraph technology. He is perhaps most famous as the man who almost, but not quite, invented the phonograph. No one before M. Charles Cros had thought of reproducing sound by making an apparatus capable of registering and reproducing sounds which had been engraved with a diaphragm. The inventor gave the name of Paleophone (voix du passé) to his invention. On April 30, 1877 he submitted a sealed envelope containing a letter to the Academy of Sciences in Paris explaining his proposed method. The letter was read in public on the 3rd December following. In his letter, after having shown that his method consisted of detecting an oscillation of a membrane and using the tracing to reproduce the oscillation with respect to its duration and intensity. Cros added that a cylindrical form for the receiving apparatus seemed to him to be the most practical, as it allowed for the graphic inscription of the vibrations by means of a very fine-threaded screw. An article on the Paleophone was published in "la semaine du Clergé" on October 10, 1877, written by l'Abbé Leblanc. Before Cros had a chance to follow up on this idea or attempt to construct a working model, Thomas Alva Edison introduced his first working phonograph in the USA. Edison used a cylinder covered in tinfoil for his first phonograph, patenting this method for reproducing sound on January 15, 1878. Edison and Cros apparently did not know of each other's work in advance. In the early 1870s Cros had published with Mallarmé, Villiers and Verlaine in the short-lived weekly Renaissance littéraire et artistique, edited by Emile Blémont. His poem The Kippered Herring inspired Ernest Coquelin to create what he called monologues, short theatrical pieces whose format was copied by numerous imitators. The piece, translated as The Salt Herring, was translated and illustrated by Edward Gorey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Cros

In 2010, Rui Saito, a Japanese tango dancer, and her Korean partner were competing in the prestigious competition in Buenos Aires known as El Metropolitano when Ms. Saito says an Argentine woman in the audience came up to them and said she didn't appreciate their presence. "'What are foreigners doing dancing tango?'" Ms. Saito said the woman told her. "'You don't know tango.'" Later, Ms. Saito says the woman heckled them as they danced. This year, things got more bleak for foreigners at the Metropolitano. Organizers inserted a new rule stipulating that the May event would be open only to "aficionados and/or professionals of Argentine nationality." In a hearing last month, Metropolitano organizers argued that they had a right to impose entry restrictions because the winners will represent Buenos Aires here this August in the finals of a larger event it calls the "Dance World Cup," which last year attracted 460 couples from 21 countries. City tango spokeswoman Valeria Solarz says that, of course, foreigner dancers will be welcomed with open arms to the World Cup. But she adds that it's only fitting that dancers bearing the hopes of Buenos Aires in the World Cup have roots here. In a concession to the foreign litigants, Metropolitano organizers offered to hold special side competitions for non-Argentines—and Judge Liberatori now says that may be the best outcome foreigners can realistically hope for. But shunting non-Argentines into a "tango ghetto" just isn't acceptable, according to Christian Rubilar, the foreign dancers' Argentine lawyer. "The dance floor is supposed to be the most democratic space in Argentina," says Mr. Rubilar, who is not only a constitutional law expert but also a tango dancer himself. Mr. Rubilar says that in 2010, Ms. Saito and her Korean partner, the pair that was heckled, might have won the Metropolitano, but they were barred from the finals by requirements that at least one of the pair have resided three years in Buenos Aires. Ms. Saito said they had the proof, but organizers kept demanding more paperwork. In court filings, city lawyers said that many foreigners didn't have their paperwork in order and discrimination hasn't been a factor. It seems paradoxical, in light of the present dispute, that tango originated among European immigrants here and in Uruguay in the late 19th century. The dance is "a blend of sex and chess," says tango expert Christine Denniston. After some down decades, tango started a renaissance in the 1980s, coinciding with the end of a repressive dictatorship in Argentina and the launch of a wildly successful international dance and musical show called "Tango Argentina." Last year, 100,000 foreign visitors came to Buenos Aires for August's "World Cup" and accompanying festival—a doubling of attendance in just two years. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303661904576456210544473444.html

College students are flocking to North Dakota in ever greater numbers. Out-of-state students account for about 55% of the 14,500 enrolled at North Dakota State University, as well as at similarly sized University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Nonresident students at North Dakota's 11 public colleges constitute a higher ratio than in almost every other state. High school juniors and seniors scouring online college guides find North Dakota universities are inexpensive and well-regarded, with modest-sized classes typically taught by faculty members rather than adjuncts or graduate students. This isn't happening by accident. A dozen years ago, a years-long decline in the number of state high school graduates was accelerating. Faced with the prospect of closing academic departments or entire schools, university leaders instead moved to attract more students, particularly from beyond state borders. The state poured money into improving academics. In the National Science Foundation's rankings by federal research expenditures—a key measure of prestige for research universities—North Dakota State and University of North Dakota each jumped ahead of more than 30 other institutions over the past 11 years, to the 147th and 143rd spots, respectively. While improving its schools, North Dakota kept tuition low. In recent years, state revenues gushing from an oil boom in western North Dakota have given the state more resources to lure nonresidents. The state has a long tradition of spending generously on higher education. Some in the heavily Republican state have complained that it is academically "socialist." To make sure no North Dakotans had to travel far to attend college, the state has 11 public colleges, including half as many four-year institutions as Minnesota—a state with eight times as many people. In 1999, the state legislature assembled a committee of 63 leaders of government and business to debate whether to cut classes and departments. After all, North Dakota in 1999 produced fewer than 9,000 high school graduates, down from 10,740 in 1980. In the end, however, the so-called "Roundtable" committee vowed to bolster their university system in a bid to exploit its potential as an economic development asset. All along, North Dakota's 11 public colleges had provided economic stability to up-and-down agricultural towns like Mayville and Dickinson. In a May 2000 report, the committee laid out a plan to attract ever-greater numbers of nonresident students to North Dakota universities, and help those universities spawn private enterprise that would hire those students upon graduation. Higher education would become a "primary engine in reversing" the state's economic and demographic woes, the report said. A key to attracting out-of-staters was undercutting other states on price. The highest-priced public colleges in North Dakota—UND and NDSU—officially charge nonresident students about $17,000 in tuition and fees. That's half what nonresident students pay at many public colleges elsewhere. And it's less than some in-state rates at public colleges in places like Illinois and Pennsylvania. But as it happens, few nonresidents at UND or NDSU pay anywhere near that rate. That's because North Dakota belongs to consortiums in which it and about 20 other states agreed to charge each other's students no more than 1.5 times in-state rates. As others raised tuition, North Dakota held its price down. In many cases, North Dakota waived the premium, enabling out-of-staters to enroll full-year for about $7,000, lower than resident tuition in most other states. Read more at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304231204576406042109860376.html?mod=WSJ_comments_MoreIn_Education

Amazon said that it would push a voter initiative in California that could eliminate sales tax for virtual sellers with only a modest physical presence in the state. Its move instantly escalated the company’s long-running battle with many states over collecting sales tax, taking the question directly to voters. And it has sharply intensified its dispute with physical retailers like Wal-Mart Stores and Target, which have vowed to fight the measure. Some political science and business professors say the conflict could take on the polarizing nature of Proposition 13, a decades-old referendum that limited property tax increases and remains a lightning rod in the state. Political experts say Amazon’s proposed referendum is likely to gather the signatures necessary to appear on the ballot as early as next February. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/technology/amazon-takes-sales-tax-war-to-california.html?_r=1&ref=technology

The downtown Walnut Creek (CA) Library, which opened a year ago, was recently awarded the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design "gold" status. Known as LEED, this internationally recognized green building certification system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council endorses the library's design, construction, operations and maintenance as environmentally friendly and sustainable. The library's green elements include an Energy Star-rated roof, stormwater management, daylight harvesting control, use of recycled and regionally manufactured materials, water efficient landscaping and plumbing and a raised flooring system to provide efficient heating and cooling. A kiosk in the library details how and why the building is sustainable and environmentally friendly. http://lisnews.org/happy_first_anniversary_walnut_creek_library_energy_efficiency_winner

When I got my library card, that’s when my life began. Rita Mae Brown
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration. Andrew Carnegie
Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.
Barbara Kingsolver, in Animal Dreams
http://jjbrownauthor.com/2011/06/12/public-libraries-where-life-begins-again-and-friends-live-forever/

"I was glad to think that among the last memorable beauties which had glided past us, and softened in the bright perspective, were those whose pictures, traced by no common hand, are fresh in most men's minds; not easily to grow old, or fade beneath the dust of Time: the Kaatskill Mountains, Sleepy Hollow, and the Tappaan Zee."
from Chapter 14: Return to Cincinnati. A Stage-coach Ride From That City to Columbus, and Thence to Sandusky. So, by Lake Erie, to the Falls of Niagara.; Chapter 15: In Canada; Toronto; Kingston; Montreal; Quebec; St. John's. In the United States Again; Lebanon; the Shaker Village; West Point. American Notes, by Charles Dickens, pp. 243-288 from JOURNAL OF A COMPULSIVE READER by Charles Matthews. See his blog at:
http://tenpagesormore.blogspot.com/2011/02/8-american-notes-by-charles-dickens-pp.html
You may want to make the tenpagesormore blog http://tenpagesormore.blogspot.com/ one of your favorites. Look at the list of authors, including John McPhee, Saul Bellow, John Milton and Herman Melville.

Between Pittsfield, Massachusetts and Salisbury, Connecticut, identified by large maples and a heap of stones lies the site of Sky Farm, now almost obliterated by forest growth. Here lived the Goodale sisters, Elaine and Dora, the "Apple Blossom Poets", whose verse was popular in the 1870s, and whose stories appeared in The Youth's Companion.
Massachusetts; a Guide to its Places and People by Federal Writers Project, 1937. p. 583 http://books.google.com/books?id=HCnn3t_nH_MC&pg=PA583&lpg=PA583&dq=%22apple+blossom+poets%22+goodale&source=bl&ots=LE-ow9qlAO&sig=q1Hg8Qhq1YY6_TJVLSt9oS3cpVY&hl=en&ei=MkMgTon8JpPqgQeZl6TkBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=%22apple%20blossom%20poets%22%20goodale&f=false

Goodale sisters Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863-1953) and Dora Read Goodale (1866-1915) were American poets and sisters, who published their first poetry as children still living at home, and were included in Edmund Clarence Stedman's classic An American Anthology (1900). Elaine Goodale taught at the Indian Department of Hampton Institute, started a day school on a Dakota reservation and became Superintendent of Indian Education for the Two Dakotas by 1890. She married Dr. Charles Eastman (also known as Ohiyesa), a Santee Sioux who was the first Native American physician, and lived with him and their growing family in the West for several years. She collaborated with him extensively with writing about his childhood and Sioux culture; his nine books were popular and made him well known on a public lecture circuit. She also continued her own writing, publishing her last book of poetry in 1930, and a biography and last novel in 1935. Dora Read Goodale published a book of poetry at age 21 and continued to write. She became a teacher of art and English in Connecticut. Later she was a teacher and director of the Uplands Sanatorium in Pleasant Hill, Tennessee. She attracted positive reviews when she published her last book of poetry at age 75 in 1941, in which she combined modernist free verse with use of Appalachian dialect to express her neighbors' traditional lives.
Find a bibliography of their works at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodale_Sisters Then, you may want to borrow some of their writings at libraries through WorldCat: http://www.worldcat.org/


Uses for chicken wire
Replace fronts of cabinet doors with chicken wire to give a rustic look and allow airflow.
Attach chicken wire to back of freestanding open shelving units to keep contents from falling of the back.
Affix chicken wire around the base of deck or porch, burying the bottom edge a few inches below the soil to prevent animals from nesting under your house.
This Old House Magazine August 2011

Today, customers at BarnesandNoble.com snap up three digital books for every one physical book. When it reported results for its fiscal year ended April 30, the company noted that sales of digital products boosted same-store sales 0.7% for the year, more than compensating for the decline in consumer book sales. The traditional company, based at 122 Fifth Ave. near New York's Union Square, still focuses on its 705 consumer bookstores, which stock up to 200,000 titles, and its 636 college bookstores. Keeping up with rivals like Amazon in e-readers may be hard to sustain. Amazon, with market capitalization of $98 billion, recently announced plans to launch a new tablet and two updated versions of its Kindle. Barnes & Noble has a market cap of about $1 billion. But the new economics of e-book sales have grown more appealing. Under the recently adopted "agency pricing" model in which publishers set the consumer price of their digital titles and sellers get 30%, Barnes & Noble earns more money on some digital titles than on new-hardcover sales. For example, it sells the e-book edition of George R.R. Martin's best-seller "A Dance with Dragons" for $14.99, earning $4.50 a sale. Meanwhile, it sells the hardcover edition for $19.25. If it pays half the $35 list price, it would make a profit of $1.75 a title.
http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/markets/newsfeeditem.aspx?id=153856465966073

Borders Group Inc.'s imminent demise marks the first major casualty of the digital era in buying and reading books. But the store closings also will mean fewer opportunities for shoppers to wander the book aisles, a loss that will affect publishers as well as competitors and authors. The bookseller is expected to ask a bankruptcy judge July 21 to approve plans to start liquidating as soon as Friday, July 22. By the end of September, the remaining 399 stores of the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain will be shut down for good. Tom and Louis Borders started the company 40 years ago in Ann Arbor, Mich. by stocking rich assortments of books that rivals couldn't match. Now, many consumers prefer having books delivered to their doorsteps or downloading them to electronic devices by touching a screen. Amazon.com Inc., the nation's dominant online bookseller by sales, is driving those changes that felled Borders. Apple Inc. and Google Inc., too, have started selling books. Underscoring Borders's inability to adapt, the company handed its Internet operations to Amazon about a decade ago and didn't relaunch its own website until 2008. For several weeks, Borders looked like it might survive. Jahm Najafi, a vice chairman of the Phoenix Suns who runs private-equity firm Najafi Cos., had agreed last month to buy it. But Mr. Najafi's agreement didn't preclude him from later liquidating the chain. That didn't fly with creditors, who felt they could get paid more by liquidators. Borders reluctantly consented to a deal with liquidators after discussions with Mr. Najafi collapsed last week amid concerns about support from landlords and publishers.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304567604576456430727129532.html

Word of the Day Refection rih-FEK-shun (noun) Refreshment of mind, spirit or body; especially, nourishment; the taking of refreshment; food and drink together; repast www.merriam-webster.com
Website of the Day The Hemingway Society www.hemingwaysociety.org
Mark writer Ernest Hemingway's birthday with this site, which serves as an excellent resource for all things Hemingway. There are an impressive number of links to articles by Hemingway, information about his books, recipes inspired by the author and more.
Number to Know 15 million: Number of copies of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" -- the final book in the Harry Potter series -- sold within 24 hours of it being released, according to Forbes. The book came out on this day in 2007.
This Day in History July 21, 1969: Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the moon, which took place during the Apollo 11 mission. http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/x910602931/Morning-Minutes-July-21#axzz1Sjs6hltB

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon 42 years ago today. But what would have happened if tragedy had fallen on the Apollo 11 mission? In 1969, Richard Nixon was president and William Safire was his speechwriter. The first spacewalk was a huge deal for Nixon, who was mired in a Vietnam quagmire. In a piece he wrote for the New York Times on the 20th anniversary of the lunar landing, Safire recalled that Frank Borman, the White House liaison with the astronauts, told him that he should not just have a victory speech planned for Nixon, but something prepared if the mission didn't succeed. Frank Borman, our liaison with the astronauts, brought the image-making up short with: ''You want to be thinking of some alternative posture for the president in the event of mishaps.'' To blank looks at this technojargon, he added, ''like what to do for the widows.'' Suddenly we were faced with the dark side of the moon planning. Death, if it came, would not come in a terrible blaze of glory; the greatest danger was that the two astronauts, once on the moon, would not be able to return to the command module. See the Safire piece at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/07/neil-armstrong-and-buzz-aldrin-the-tragic-speech-nixon-was-prepared-to-give.html

Esther Edwards Burr (1732-1758) was the author of a letter-journal that provides one of the earliest extensive accounts of a colonial American woman's daily life. Most women of her era wrote primarily for exchange with friends and circulation among acquaintances, and the letter-journal that Esther Burr exchanged with Sarah Prince was no exception. Writing on vellum with quill pens, Esther Burr recorded daily entries of varied lengths and then she bundled them into "paquets" of up to twenty pages whenever a suitable courier was available. These "paquets" also contained "privacies," secret enclosures recording candid opinions on mutual acquaintances that Sarah burned after reading them. Parts of the journal were first published by Jeremiah Rankin in 1902, in a volume that drew on Burr's manuscript but embellished it freely to create a document largely of Rankin's own invention. In 1930 Josephine Fisher published authentic excerpts and commentary in a scholarly journal. The complete work first appeared in Laurie Crumpacker's 1978 dissertation, and Crumpacker and Carol F. Karlsen edited the full journal for publication in 1984. The semiprivate nature of Burr's work, its history of distorted and partial publication, and her relationship to three of the most prominent men in early America--Jonathan Edwards, Aaron Burr Sr., and Aaron Burr Jr.--all promoted the long eclipse of her literary significance. Since the publication of her complete letter-journal, Burr has emerged as an important contributor to the development of women's writing in America.
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/esther-edwards-burr-dlb/2.html

A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in the United Kingdom and in Australia. In parts of Australia, a shire is an administrative unit, but it is not synonymous with "county" there, which is a land registration unit. In the British Isles, "shire" is the original term for what is usually known as a county; the word county having been introduced at the Norman Conquest of England. The two are synonymous. Although in modern British usage counties are referred to as "shires" mainly in poetic contexts, terms such as Shire Hall remain common. Shires in England bearing the "shire" suffix include: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, and Yorkshire. These counties, on their historical boundaries, cover a little more than half the area of England. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shire

Berks County is a county located in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the population was 411,442. The county seat is Reading. Berks County is part of the Reading, PA, metropolitan statistical area and as of 2005, is also considered part of the Philadelphia combined statistical area. Reading developed during the 1740s when the inhabitants of northern Lancaster County sent several petitions requesting that a separate county be established. With the help of German immigrant Conrad Weiser, the county was formed on March 11, 1752 from parts of Chester County, Lancaster County, and Philadelphia County. It was named after William Penn's family home of Reading, Berkshire, England. Berks County began much larger than it is today. The northwestern parts of the county went to the founding of Northumberland County in 1772 and Schuylkill County in 1811, when it reached its current size. In 2005, Berks County was added to the Delaware Valley Planning Area due to a fast-growing population and close proximity to the other communities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berks_County,_Pennsylvania

The Old Clock on the Stairs by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Somewhat back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all,--
"Forever--never!
Never--forever!" (first verse) The house commemorated in the poem is the Gold house, now known as the Plunkett mansion, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the homestead of Fanny Appleton’s (Longfellow’s second wife), grandfather. The poem was not written until November1845, suggested by the words of Bridaine, an old French missionary, who said of eternity, c'est une penduledont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement dans le silence des tombeaux,--Toujours, jamais! Jamais, toujours! Etpendant ces effrayables révolutions, un réprouvés'écrie, "Quelle heure est-il?" et la voix d'un autre misérablelui répond, "L'Eternité."'" The English translation reads: "This is a clock of which the pendulum says and repeats endlessly those two words only in the tombs'5 silence, -- Always, never! Never, always! And during these frightening changes, a condemned one cries out, `What time is it?' and the voice of another wretched one replies, `Eternity.'" See entire poem plus commentary at: A Critical Edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Poem, “The Old Clock on the Stairs” http://www.etsu.edu/writing/amlit1_sum06/longfellow_edjulie.htm

“The best tonic is the Housatonic.” OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
“The Valley of the Housatonic: a ‘Happy Valley’ indeed! A beautiful little river wanders singing from side to side in this secluded paradise.” FANNY KEMBLE, ACTRESS, 1835
“I was born by a golden river and in the shadow of two great hills.” W.E.B. DUBOIS, Darkwater http://www.upperhousatonicheritage.org/pdfs/pubs/UHVNHABrochure.pdf
Note: I now understand why the Happy Valley Guitar Orchestra http://www.hvgo.org/about.html based in Northampton, Massachusetts chose its name.

Florida names connected to last fall's mortgage "robo-signing'' scandal are turning up on documents again. County officials in at least three states say they have received thousands of mortgage documents with questionable signatures in the past eight months. Lenders say they are working with regulators to fix the problem but cannot explain why the practice, which led to a nationwide halt of home foreclosures, has continued. "Robo-signing is not even close to over," says Curtis Hertel, the recorder of deeds in Ingham County, Mich. "It's still an epidemic." In Guilford County, N.C., the office that records deeds says it received 456 documents with suspect signatures from Oct. 1, 2010, through June 30. The documents, mortgage assignments and certificates of satisfaction, transfer loans from one bank to another or certify a loan has been paid off.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/banking/known-florida-robo-signing-names-turn-up-on-mortgage-documents-elsewhere/1181163

Website of the Day Apollo 11: Scenes from the Moon www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/23232 This photo gallery of the Apollo moon landing from Life magazine captures the day 41 years ago when the first humans walked on the moon.
Number to Know 3: Weeks the Apollo 11 crew spent in quarantine after returning to Earth. Officials wanted to make sure the men didn’t bring back any contaminants or viruses.
This Day in History July 20, 1976: Hank Aaron hits his 755th home run, the final home run of his career.
Today’s Featured Birthday Musician Carlos Santana (64)
Daily Quote “People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.” - Sir Edmund Hillary, who was born on this date in 1919. http://www.dodgeglobe.com/lifestyles/x910598157/Morning-Minutes-July-20

Auto-antonym has Greek roots meaning a word that is the opposite of itself. They have variously been called contranyms, contronyms, antilogies, Janus words (after the two-faced Greek mythical figure, from which "January" also derives), and enantiodromes. See a list of such words at: http://www.fun-with-words.com/nym_autoantonyms.html

Answer to Who am I
Our eighth president, Martin Van Buren was the first bilingual president. He was raised in a community where Dutch was more common than English reflecting New York’s beginning as a colony of Holland. As a boy he spoke Dutch at home with his parents, siblings, and throughout the Village of Kinderhook. http://www.nps.gov/mava/historyculture/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Van_Buren_National_Historic_Site
Martin Van Buren was born in the village of Kinderhook, New York, on December 5, 1782, approximately 25 miles south of Albany. His father, Abraham Van Buren (1737–1817) was a farmer, the owner of six slaves, and a tavern-keeper in Kinderhook. Abraham Van Buren supported the American Revolution and later the Jeffersonian Republicans. He died while Martin Van Buren was a New York state senator. Martin Van Buren's mother was Maria Van Alen (née Hoes) Van Buren (1747–1818). Van Buren was the first president born a citizen of the United States, as all previous presidents were born before the American Revolution. His great-great-great-grandfather Cornelis Maessen Van Buren had come to the New World in 1631 from the village of Buren, Gelderland, Dutch Republic, present day Netherlands. Van Buren was also the only President who spoke English as a second language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Van_Buren

Borders Group Inc. said it would liquidate after the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain failed to receive any offers to save it. Borders, which employs about 10,700 people, scrapped a bankruptcy-court auction scheduled for July 19 amid the dearth of bids. It said it would ask a judge Thursday to approve a sale to liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Group. The company said liquidation of its remaining 399 stores could start as soon as Friday, and it is expected to go out of business for good by the end of September. Borders filed for bankruptcy-court protection in February. It has since continued to bleed cash and has had trouble persuading publishers to ship merchandise to it on normal terms that allowed the chain to pay bills later, instead of right away. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303661904576454353768550280.html

An exhibit, Jim Henson's Fantastic World, opened July 16 in New York. The master puppeteer and media innovator behind pop culture icons such as Kermit the Frog and Big Bird was a creative thinker who understood the opportunities that television and technology presented, said Karen Falk, archivist for The Jim Henson Co. and curator of "Jim Henson's Fantastic World." "Jim was the first one to recognize that you can use television and get these incredibly expressive and believable performances out of puppets," Falk said. "This was his innovation; he was the one who started this whole thing. This is why puppetry looks like this on television, because of this man." The touring exhibit is making its last stop of a multi-year trip at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, where it will be on display into January. The museum is near Kaufman Astoria Studios, where Sesame Street is taped.
There are sketches that show Henson's original ideas for some of his puppets, like a drawing that shows how the Big Bird puppet would be operated (with a puppeteer's arm and hand stretched upright to function as the neck and head.) There are video clips showing early incarnations of Kermit, as well as samples of the work Henson did while in college, and the commercial work he did after that. His movie efforts like "The Dark Crystal" and "Labyrinth" also are included. And of course, there are Muppets. The museum is hosting a range of programming to go along with the exhibit. It includes screenings of Henson's short and feature-length films, workshops for children on puppet-making and sound effects, and a talk by Jane Henson, his widow. http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/N-Y-exhibit-reveals-the-man-behind-the-Muppets-1468491.php

The Toledo History Museum (THM) was founded through a governing board in 2005, incorporated on July 1, 2006; and received federal tax-exempt status in September 2007. The volunteer Board consists of four officers and nine at-large trustees who meet monthly and are elected by vote of the general membership at the November business meeting. The museum, located in the Milmine-Stewart House at 2001 Collingwood Boulevard was built in 1874. It is open weekends from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Public programs are offered in March, May; September and November, featuring guest speakers presenting talks regarding Toledo's history. http://toledohistorymuseum.org/

Toledo Blade outdoors editor Steve Pollick and a small team canoed 130 miles of the Maumee River from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Toledo, Ohio. The trip was 37 hours and 32 minutes of paddling in a canoe, and a descent of 190 feet in elevation along the way. The Maumee River was known as "Miami of the Lake" in 1984.
June 29 article http://www.toledoblade.com/sports/2011/06/29/Quality-of-Maumee-improved-over-years.html
June 30 article http://www.toledoblade.com/sports/2011/06/30/Generosity-abounds-on-river.html
July 1 article http://www.toledoblade.com/Amateur/2011/07/01/Hot-day-turns-into-slog.html
July 2 article http://www.toledoblade.com/sports/2011/07/02/4-day-trip-shows-why-river-is-a-treasure-to-cherish.html

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From: Cyril Duff Subject: ravel
Def: 1. To fray or to become disjoined; to untangle. 2. To entangle or to become tangled.
I was first introduced to "ravel" as a schoolboy in Dublin nearly 70 years ago by my English master. He quoted Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 2 scene 1; "The innocent sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care." I thought it was a wonderful image -- and still do.
From: Eileen Baxter Subject: ravel
Several years ago, an enterprising and clever young couple developed a website called Ravelry. It is devoted to the needle arts, primarily knitting and crocheting -- think Facebook for knitters. You can post pix of completed projects, inventory yarns and books, discuss projects, yarns and even non-yarny things. I think it's interesting since many knitters have had to unravel tangles that this is the name they came up with. Thousands of knitters revel in Ravelry, and don't know how they managed without it.
From: Sandria Parsons Subject: Avocation
Def: 1. One's regular job or occupation. 2. An activity taken up besides the regular work; a hobby.
This section of a poem by Robert Frost says it like it is for me:
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.
(from Two Tramps in Mud Time)
From: Stuart Showalter Subject: Inure
Def: verb tr.: To accustom to something unpleasant . verb intr.: 1. To become beneficial. 2. To take effect.
I was glad to see that your definition of inure included the intransitive meanings: "to become beneficial" and "to take effect. I n US law an organization may qualify for tax exemption if "no part of [its] net earnings ... inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual." This provision confuses some readers because dictionaries often list only the transitive meaning ("to accustom or harden"). As my Shorter OED notes, the legal meaning more closely approximates "to accrue".
From: Christel Haag Subject: ravel
An example of confusion caused by different meanings of a word was told us last week by our travel guide in Ecuador. When, at a rafting tour, the boat had overturned and one of the tourists asked the guide what he should do, the guide answered: "Nada!". In Spanish "nada" means either "nothing" or is the imperative form of "swim".

One obvious way to eliminate unnecessary copyrights is to require authors who care about copyright to register their claims, put copyright notices on copies of their works, and/or periodically renew copyrights after a period of years instead of granting rights that attach automatically and last far beyond the commercial life of the overwhelming majority of works. Copyright lawyers speak of such requirements as “formalities,” for they make the enjoyment or exercise of copyright depend on taking some steps to signal that copyright protection is important to their creators.
While many countries abandoned formality requirements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the U.S. maintained notice-on-copies and registration-for-renewal formalities until 1989. The U.S. still requires registration of copyrights as a precondition for U.S. authors to bring infringement actions, as well as for eligibility for attorney fee and statutory damage awards. Formalities do a good job weeding out who really cares about copyrights and who doesn’t. So why did the U.S. abandon formalities? In the late 1980s, U.S. copyright industries persuaded one of their own—President Ronald Reagan—that the U.S. needed to join the Berne Convention in order to exercise influence on international copyright policy. And so in 1989, under Reagan’s leadership, the U.S. joined the Berne Convention and abandoned the notice-on-copies and registration requirements that had served the nation well since its founding. In the late 1880s when the Berne Union was first formed, each of the 10 participating countries had its own unique formality requirements for copyright protection. One of the goals of the Berne Union was to overcome obstacles
to international trade in copyrighted works such as burdens of complying with multiple formalities. The initial solution to the problem of too many formalities was a Berne Convention rule that provided if an author had complied with formalities of his/her own national copyright law, other Berne Union countries would respect that and not insist on compliance with their formality requirements. Read more at: http://0-delivery.acm.org.millennium.lib.cyut.edu.tw/10.1145/1970000/1965736/p29-samuelson.pdf?ip=163.17.17.188&CFID=34746319&CFTOKEN=58170645&__acm__=1310562112_5bc5893c4641fcb4b8bc743d7a33044e

Bath salts contain manmade chemicals like mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, or MDPV, also known as substituted cathinones. Both drugs are related to khat, an organic stimulant found in Arab and East African countries that is illegal in the United States. Though they come in powder and crystal form like traditional bath salts — hence their name — they differ in one crucial way: they are used as recreational drugs. People typically snort, inject or smoke them. Poison control centers around the country received 3,470 calls about bath salts from January through June, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, up from 303 in all of 2010. “Some of these folks aren’t right for a long time,” said Karen E. Simone, director of the Northern New England Poison Center. “If you gave me a list of drugs that I wouldn’t want to touch, this would be at the top.” At least 28 states have banned bath salts, which are typically sold for $25 to $50 per 50-milligram packet at convenience stores and head shops under names like Aura, Ivory Wave, Loco-Motion and Vanilla Sky. Most of the bans are in the South and the Midwest, where the drugs have grown quickly in popularity. But states like Maine, New Jersey and New York have also outlawed them after seeing evidence that their use was spreading. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/us/17salts.html

A Michigan law school filed two lawsuits July 14 – one against a New York law firm and another against four anonymous internet commentators – accusing them of defamation. In one lawsuit, Thomas M. Cooley Law School, located in Lansing, Michigan, claims that it has been the victim of ads on Craigslist and Facebook – posted by attorneys at Kurzon Strauss LLP – seeking former Cooley law students to join in on a potential class action suit against the school. (Click here for an example.) One of Cooley’s concerns with Kurzon Strauss’ online postings regard the school’s student loan default rate, James Thelen, the school’s general counsel, told the WSJ Law Blog. For instance, the law firm allegedly claimed that there were reports of Cooley law grads “defaulting on loans at an astounding 41 percent” in various online posts, according to the papers filed by the school. Thelen claims the actual rate is 2.2 percent. In the second lawsuit, also filed July 14, the school claims that four “John Doe” defendants have been blogging and perpetuating online comments damaging to the school’s reputation, Thelen said.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/07/15/law-school-sues-new-york-law-firm-for-defamation/
Kurzon Strauss attorney David Anziska said his firm has not crossed any legal lines. "This is the most ridiculous, absurd lawsuit filed in recent history," he said one day after the suit was filed in Michigan state court. "We fully intend to countersue and hold accountable both Thomas Cooley and their lawyers at [Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone] for abusing the legal system with their blatantly idiotic lawsuit." The National Law Journal July 15, 2011

Who am I?
I was the first president born under the U.S. flag. I was the first bi-lingual president. I was the first president not of British descent, and the first president to be born an American citizen.
Answer is forthcoming.

Website of the Day Indexed thisisindexed.com
On this intriguing blog, Jessica Hagy posts a small chart, graph or Venn diagram each weekday that offers introspective and sharp conclusions on the relationships between things. From pop culture to school to politics, the insights are smart.
Number to Know 27: Years that Nelson Mandela spent in prison during apartheid.
This Day in History July 18, 1976: Nadia Comăneci became the first person in Olympic Games history to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics. It happened at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
Today’s Featured Birthday Nelson Mandela (93)
Daily Quote
“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.” Nelson Mandela
http://www.therolladailynews.com/newsnow/x401787673/Morning-Minutes-July-18

Starting this fall, the state Department of Education will no longer require Indiana’s public schools to teach cursive writing. State officials notified school leaders on April 25 that instead of cursive writing, students will be expected to become proficient in keyboard use. The Times of Munster reports the memo says schools may continue to teach cursive as a local standard, or they may decide to stop teaching cursive altogether. http://www.indianasnewscenter.com/news/local/Indiana-Schools-Ending-Cursive-Writing-Requirement-124767644.html

Ant factoids According to different estimates, ants can carry 10 - 50 times their body weight. Scientists have described over 12000 ant species. Many more have yet to be discovered, especially in the tropics. The total weight of all ants on Earth is close to that of humans. Ants communicate mainly using chemicals, which they sense with their antennae. In addition, nestmates recognize one another by chemicals on their bodies. They eat other insects, pollinate plants, disperse seeds, move soil, and circulate nutrients.
http://askabiologist.asu.edu/content/ant-factoids

Edible garden Throughout the spring and summer, visitors to the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden in The New York Botanical Garden, open daily 1:30-6 p.m. during the vegetable gardening season, will be able to see a cornucopia of fresh food growing in Mario Batali's Edible Garden display beds: oregano, onions, basil, tomatoes, eggplants, wheat, sweet peppers, and hot peppers in "The Otto Pizza Garden;" escarole, endives, radicchio, fennel, parsley, chard, rosemary, broccoli, arugala, fava beans, shallots, beets, dandelion greens, kale, lettuce, and turnips in "The Babbo Beets, Beans, Garlic, and Greens Garden;" and strawberries and a variety of raspberries in "Batali's Berry Patch." Beginning August 27, Mario Batali's Edible Garden program will allow families to enjoy daily gardening activities and cooking demonstrations that showcase kid-friendly recipes with the chance to sample and search for ingredients in the garden. See what's growing at: http://www.nybg.org/gardens/mario-batali-edible-garden.php

Japanese scientists have discovered that songbirds are using their own form of grammar. The study challenges the belief that only humans are able to use grammatical rules to process strings of sound such as sentences. The experiments, described in Nature Neuroscience in June 2011, were carried out on Bengalese finches by Kentaro Abe and Dai Watanabe of the University of Kyoto in Japan. Bird song can be thought of as being like a sentence, with the different sounds being like words. The scientists played jumbled-up bird songs to individual finches to see whether the birds responded with the usual burst of calls to the jumbled songs. To their surprise they found that there were some jumbled songs that elicited a call-burst response and some that did not. Even more surprising: all the birds responded in the same way. If one bird ignored a jumbled call, all the other birds ignored that call too. http://news.discovery.com/animals/finches-songs-grammar-110627.html

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born November 30, 1835, in Florida, MO, died April 21, 1910, in Redding, CT, and is buried in Elmira, NY. He wrote under the psudonym Mark Twain, and sometimes contributed to periodicals under pseudonyms Quentin Curtius Snodgrass, Josh, and S. L. C. Read about his career, awards, and writings at: http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/twainbio.html

Tiny Dublin, Texas Dr Pepper Bottling Co. has been selling the sweet-tasting Dr Pepper soft drink from this small town since 1891. A handful of diehard fans love the soda so much they regularly make pilgrimages to the rural community, and some buy the cane-sugar-sweetened "Dublin Dr Pepper" off the Internet. Now the world's oldest Dr Pepper bottler is locked in an escalating dispute with the owner of the Dr Pepper brand over modern-day trademark rights, Internet sales and cane sugar as it tries to extend its reach across the country. Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc., which owns the brand and licenses territory to Dublin Dr Pepper, sued the bottler, with sales of $7 million a year, in late June. Dr Pepper Snapple—the third-largest U.S. soda company, with revenue of $5.6 billion last year—says Dublin Dr. Pepper is diluting the Dr Pepper brand, as well as stealing sales from other Dr Pepper bottlers by selling outside its approved territory. In a lawsuit filed in a federal court in Sherman, Texas, Dr Pepper Snapple Group is demanding the bottler remove "Dublin'' from its "Dr Pepper'' labels and stop selling the soda beyond a 44-mile radius around Dublin. Dublin Dr Pepper sells less than 1% of Dr Pepper's annual U.S. volume. But its sales and cachet have grown in recent years as it has promoted its status as the oldest Dr Pepper bottler and the fact that it has always used cane sugar to sweeten its soda. By contrast, most bottlers began switching to less-costly high-fructose corn syrup in the 1970s. Miles Gilman, owner of Granny Clark's, a Dublin diner, says customers start ordering the local version when he opens his doors at 6 o'clock in the morning and estimates about one-third are tourists.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584404576440234236392462.html

Website of the Day Cost to Drive costtodrive.com Whether you’re planning a road trip or just trying to save on gas money, this site will tell you how much it costs. Enter your route and car information, and find out approximately how much it will cost you in gas and the size of your carbon footprint.
Number to Know 3: Ranking of Canada in the State of World Liberty Index, which ranks countries according to the degree of economic and personal freedoms that their citizens enjoy. Today is Respect Canada Day.
This Day in History July 15, 1979: President Jimmy Carter gives his famous "malaise" speech, where he characterizes the greatest threat to the country as malaise. (See below for excerpt.)
Daily Quote “I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. … I do not refer to the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might. The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. …” Jimmy Carter
http://www.mysuburbanlife.com/news/x2108621846/Morning-Minutes-July-15

We have returned from a 10-day vacation and enjoyed fresh country air in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts while staying in a former 1849 schoolhouse converted to a private home over a century ago. The building is near one of the entrances to the Appalachian Trail. http://www.appalachiantrail.org/about-the-trail/terrain-by-region/massachusetts We attended the 10th annual Berkshire Arts Festival in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and heard the California Guitar Trio at Infinity Music Hall & Bistro in Norfolk, Connecticut http://infinityhall.com/ We spent a few hours at The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute, usually referred to simply as "The Clark," an art museum with a large and varied collection located in Williamstown, Massachusetts. In June 2008 it expanded with the addition of the Stone Hill Center, a 32,000-square-foot (3,000 m2) building designed by Tadao Ando on a nearby wooded hillside that contains exhibition space and a conservation studio. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Art_Institute

The Clark http://www.clarkart.edu/museum/exhibitions-current.cfm

We began our journey in Rochester, New York and ended it in Corning. Rochester was founded in 1811 as Rochesterville, and in 1834 became known as Rochester. Some of its nicknames are Flour City (was the largest flour-producing city in the world in the 1830s), Young Lion of the West and Flower City. It's also been called Birthplace of Amateur Photography, Picture City, Kodak Town and The World's Image Centre. In the 1840s, Frederick Douglass founded a newspaper called The North Star. In 1853, John Jacob Bausch opened an optical shop; he later created with Henry Lomb the company known today as Bausch and Lomb. The Susan B. Anthony house still stands, where she was arrested for voting in 1872. http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/index.php In 1888, Kodak founder George Eastman invented a box camera and roll film. In 1921 Eastman founded the Eastman School of Music and built the Eastman Theatre. In 1928, Eastman and Thomas Edison introduced color motion pictures to the world from the Eastman estate. In 1938, Chester Carlson developed the first xerographic image.

The Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, New York, explores every facet of glass, including art, history, culture, science and technology, craft, and design. Conceived of as an accredited educational institution and founded in 1950 by the Corning Glass Works (now Corning Incorporated), the Museum has never been a showcase for the company or its products, but rather exists as a non-profit institution that preserves and expands the world's understanding of glass. The Museum is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of glass--more than 45,000 glass objects, spanning 3,500 years of glassmaking history. Visitors can also explore the science and technology of glass in a hands-on exhibit area, see live narrated glassmaking demonstrations and try their hand at glassworking in short daily workshops. When the Museum officially opened to the public in 1951, it contained a significant collection of glass and glass-related books and documents: there were 2,000 objects, two staff members, and a research library, housed in a low, glass-walled building designed by Harrison & Abramovitz. In June 1972, disaster struck as Hurricane Agnes emptied a week's worth of rain into the surrounding Chemung River Valley. On June 23rd, the Chemung River overflowed its banks and poured five feet four inches of floodwater into the Museum. When the waters receded, staff members found glass objects tumbled in their cases and crusted with mud, the library's books swollen with water. According to Martin and Edwards, 528 of the museum's 13,000 objects had sustained damage. At the time, Buechner described the flood as "possibly the greatest single catastrophe borne by an American museum." Museum staff members, under the directorship of Robert H. Brill were faced with the tremendous task of restoration: every glass object had to be meticulously cleaned and restored, while the library's contents had to be cleaned and dried page by page, slide by slide, even before being assessed for rebinding, restoration, or replacement. On August 1, 1972, the Museum reopened with restoration work still underway. By 1978, the Museum had outgrown its space. Gunnar Birkerts designed a new addition, creating a flowing series of galleries with the library at their core, linked to the old building via light-filled, windowed ramps. With memories of the hurricane still fresh, the new galleries were raised high above the flood line on concrete pillars. The new Museum opened to the public on May 28, 1980, exactly 29 years after its first opening. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corning_Museum_of_Glass

At the Corning museum, we saw Sasanian glass, crystallophone, micromosaics, offhand wares, Hedwig beaker, demonstration of glass optical fiber, telescopes, lenses, and an explanation of the difference between fakes and forgeries. Fake means altered genuine object. Forgery means copy or imitation.

Sasanian Glass is the glassware produced between the 3rd and the 7th centuries AD within the limits of the Sasanian Empire, namely Northern Iraq, Iran and Central Asia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanian_glass

Libraries visited during our recent vacation:
Massachusetts: New Marlborough, Stockbridge (also houses museum and historical archives), Williamstown--library at The Clark Art Institute.
New York: Corning, Central Library of Rochester & Monroe County with two large buildings connected by an underground walkway and a secluded reading garden accessible from one of the buildings.

A battle is shaping up in California that pits two big retailers against a big insurer over who will pick up the costs of a new breed of consumer class-action litigation tied to merchants' collection of ZIP codes for credit-card purchases. Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. is resisting efforts by Crate & Barrel and Children's Place Retail Stores Inc. to use their liability-insurance policies to pay legal bills in defending against lawsuits alleging violation of consumers' privacy, according to court filings by Hartford. The insurer maintains that the insurance policies exclude coverage for alleged violations of certain privacy statutes. Hartford's fight against the two retailers is believed to be the first of many showdowns to come as insurers seek court rulings that their policies don't obligate them to pony up what is likely to total hundreds of millions of dollars for the costs of defending against the burgeoning number of ZIP-code lawsuits. The two retailers are among more than 100 merchants facing separate lawsuits in California courts since February. That is when the California Supreme Court ruled that ZIP codes qualify as personal-identification information under a longstanding state privacy statute. The statute prohibits merchants from requesting personal-identification information when customers pay by credit card. The court noted that ZIP codes can be used by retailers to deduce a customer's full address, which can be sold to other businesses. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584404576440122023916928.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

July 13, 2011 Morning Minutes
Website of the Day Artocracy www.artocracy.org
This digital marketplace for original art helps connect artists with those who are looking for original, affordable prints. Prices range from $20 to $50 for individual prints, and artists benefit from exposure and sales. Check it out; you might find something you like.
Number to Know 400 million: Estimated number of people who watched the Live Aid concert on TV on this date in 1985.
This Day in History July 13, 1923: The Hollywood sign is officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. It originally reads "Hollywoodland," but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949. http://www.mysuburbanlife.com/news/x977394258/Morning-Minutes-July-13

The term limnology was coined by François-Alphonse Forel (1841–1912) who established the field with his studies of Lake Geneva. Interest in the discipline rapidly expanded, and in 1922 August Thienemann (a German zoologist) and Einar Naumann (a Swedish botanist) co-founded the International Society of Limnology (SIL, for originally Societas Internationalis Limnologiae). Forel's original definition of limnology, "the oceanography of lakes", was expanded to encompass the study of all inland waters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limnology

Lake Vostok lies in the heart of the Antarctic continent hidden beneath 4 kilometers of ice. As big as Lake Ontario in North America, Lake Vostok is one of the world's biggest freshwater lakes. Lake Vostok has been covered by the vast Antarctic ice sheet for up to 25 million years. The lake was named for the Russian research station that sits above its southern tip. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~mstuding/vostok.html

The Rhine River rises in two headstreams high in the Swiss Alps. The Vorderrhein emerges from Lake Toma at 7,690 feet, near the Oberalp Pass in the Central Alps, and then flows eastward past Disentis to be joined by the Hinterrhein from the south at Reichenau above Chur. (The Hinterrhein rises about five miles west of San Bernardino Pass, near the Swiss–Italian border, and is joined by the Albula River below Thusis.) Below Chur, the Rhine leaves the Alps to form the boundary first between Switzerland and the principality of Liechtenstein and then between Switzerland and Austria, before forming a delta as the current slackens at the entrance to Lake Constance. In this flat-floored section the Rhine has been straightened and the banks reinforced to prevent flooding. The Rhine leaves the lake via its Untersee arm. From there to its bend at Basel, the river is called the Hochrhein (“High Rhine”) http://www.history.com/topics/rhine-river

The Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center officially opened its doors on Dec. 4, 1998, with students and teachers from the Bradford Academy in Montclair being the first public visitors. The YBMLC - a 501 © 3 nonprofit organization is located on the campus of Montclair State University, New Jersey’s fastest growing and second-largest university, adjacent to Yogi Berra Stadium, home of the minor-league New Jersey Jackals and Montclair State Red Hawks. http://www.yogiberramuseum.org/museum/yogi-berra-museum-history

Quotes from and about Yogi Berra
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/quoberra.shtml

Music and sports are so intertwined it's hard to imagine one without the other. Boston fans sing "Tessie" and "Sweet Caroline" to rally the Red Sox. The Alan Parsons Project greets the Bulls. "One Shining Moment" gift-wraps the Final Four. T he action on the field has a built-in sound track—a perfect score. It works the other way too: Sports is infused in music as much as music is infused in sports. Last year John Fogerty was honored at the National Baseball Hall of Fame on the 25th anniversary of "Centerfield." This month singer-songwriter Terry Cashman will receive the same nod for "Talkin' Baseball." In recent years Fenway Park has been a literal bandbox, hosting shows by Springsteen and the Stones, among others; in 2005, Jimmy Buffett (a monster Cubs fan and part-owner of a minor league team) played the first concert at Wrigley Field. Joe Frazier crooned, Bernie Williams strums, Ron Artest and Kobe Bryant rap (unfortunately) and former defensive tackle Mike Reid churns out beautiful country melodies. And the list of artists with sports-themed songs spans the breadth of popular music: Bob Dylan, Jay-Z, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Common, New Order, Miles Davis, the Pogues, Snoop Dogg . . . and on and on. That is the rich vein from which Sports Illustrated has mined its first collection of Sports' Greatest Hits. See playlist of 40 songs as selected by Greg Kelly at: Sports Illustrated, July 4, 2001 issue, p. 128 or at: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1187838/index.htm

Neon lights Glass tubes are heated over a flame and bent into shapes (usually letters). After that, neon gas is injected inside the tube to give it a desired glow. In 1898, English chemist Morris Travers and Scottish chemist William Ramsey cooled a sample of the atmosphere until it became a liquid. Ramsey then captured the gases within after boiling the liquid, one of which was neon. Georges Claude invented neon tubing and applied for a patent for his invention in 1911. This led to neon tubing as a vehicle for advertising starting in the 1920s. In 1922, The Packard Agency became the first company in America to use neon lights to advertise their products. http://www.ehow.com/facts_7497836_fun-neon-lights.html

The arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "surface decorations based on rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, often combined with other elements. Within the very wide range of Eurasian decorative art that includes motifs matching this basic definition the term "arabesque" is used consistently as a technical term by art historians to describe only elements of the decoration found in two phases: Islamic art from about the 9th century onwards, and European decorative art from the Renaissance onwards.
See pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabesque

In Ballet: Arabesque (ballet position), a classical ballet position
In Music: Arabesque (Turkish music), a music genre Arabesque (classical music), a kind of classical piece Arabesque (1 & 2), two impressionist pieces by Claude Debussy Arabesque (group), a 70's European disco music band Arabesque (rapper) (born 1981), hip hop artist from Toronto Arabesque, British band formed by Keith Girdler and Paul Stewart of Blueboy Arabesque, a 1999 album by Korekyojin Arabesque Records, a jazz record label Arabesque: Geçmiş, Geçmemiş Hiç..., an album by Işın Karaca
Other: Arabesque (film), a 1966 film by Stanley Donen, with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren Arabesque (gay film), a 2005 pornographic film released by Raging Stallion Studios Arabesk trilogy, a series of novels by Jon Courtenay Grimwood Arabesque TV, an Arabic-language TV station Arabesque Software, the makers of Ecco Pro Arabesque, a manga series by Ryōko Yamagishi Arabesque, distributed by Big Fish Games Arabesque (Beanie Baby), a Beanie Baby lamb produced by Ty, Inc. Arabesques (literature), an international multilingual poetry and literary journal and publisher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabesque_(disambiguation)