Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on.  It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has evolved to have distinct meaning of its own, but which shares the distinction of being poetry in which the visual elements are as important as the text.  The term was coined in the 1950s.  In 1956 an international exhibition of concrete poetry was shown in São Paulo, Brazil, by the group Noigandres (Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari and Ronaldo Azeredo) with the poets Ferreira Gullar and Wlademir Dias Pino.  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll contains a similar effect in the form of the mouse's "Tale", which is in the shape of a tail.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_poetry 

See The Mouse's Tale at:  http://bootless.net/mouse.html  See also:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse's_Tale

Rummy games  In this large group of draw and discard games, the object is generally to improve one's hand by forming it into sets of matching cards (usually groups of the same rank or sequences in a suit).  The basic move is to draw one (or more) cards from an undealt stock or from the (face up) discard pile, possibly meld a set or sets, putting them face up on the table, and then discard a card. 

Basic Rummy Games
Conquian group, Asian Rummy Games, Contract Rummy Games, Manipulation Rummy Games'
Knock Rummy Games, Meld Scoring Games, Canasta Group, Other Rummy web sites, Software and Online Games  http://www.pagat.com/rummy/

Feb. 9, 2013  From Matt Kahn  For this blog I plan, among other things, to read and review every novel to reach the number one spot on Publishers Weekly annual bestsellers list, starting in 1913.  Beyond just a book review, I'm going to provide some information on the authors and the time at which these books were written in an attempt to figure out just what made these particular books popular at that particular time.   I decided to undertake this endeavor as a mission to read books I never would have otherwise read, discover authors who have been lost to obscurity, and to see how what's popular has changed over the last one hundred years.  I plan to post a new review every Monday, with links, short essays, and the like between review posts.  See list of books to be reviewed at Kahn's Corner  http://kahnscorner.blogspot.com/2013/02/100-years-94-books.html

Paraprosdokians are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently humorous.  Winston Churchill loved them. 
1.  Where there's a will, I want to be in it.
2.  The last thing I want to do is hurt you.  But it's still on my list.
3.  Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
4.  If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
5.  We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
6.  War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
7.  Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
8.  To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
9.  I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
10.  In filling out an application, where it says, 'In case of emergency, Notify:' I put 'DOCTOR'.
11.  Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.
12.  You do not need a parachute to skydive.  You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
13.  I used to be indecisive.  Now I'm not so sure..
14.  To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
15.  Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
16.  You're never too old to learn something stupid.
17.  I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to find one now.  Thanks, David

EASY SOUP
Mix and heat leftover vegetables and sauces.  Add  fresh vegetables, water, broth, canned tomatoes, small pasta (such as ditalini), shredded lettuce or cabbage if desired. 

Neuroscientists have discovered that women are better at distinguishing among subtle distinctions in color, while men appear more sensitive to objects moving across their field of vision.  Scientists have long main- tained that the sexes see colors differently.  But much of the evidence has been indirect, such as the linguistic research showing that women possess a larger vocabulary than men for describing colors.  Experimental evidence for the vision thing has been rare.  That’s why Israel Abramov, a psychologist and behavioral neuroscientist at CUNY’s Brooklyn College, gave a group of men and women a battery of visual tests.  Abramov has spent 50 years studying human vision—how our eyes and brain translate light into a representation of the world.  He’s curious about the neural mechanisms that determine how we perceive colors.   In one study, Abramov and his research team showed subjects light and dark bars of different widths and degrees of contrast flickering on a computer screen.  The effect was akin to how we might view a car moving in the distance.  Men were better than women at seeing the bars, and their advantage increased as the bars became narrower and less distinct.  But when the researchers tested color vision in one of two ways—by projecting colors onto frosted glass or beaming them into their subjects’ eyes— women proved slightly better at discriminating among subtle gradations in the middle of the color spectrum, where yellow and green reside.   http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Where-Men-See-White-Women-See-Ecru-192104511.html

Make your own Easter egg dye  (For hard-boiled eggs, bring eggs and water to a full boil.  Turn off the heat.  Cover the pan and let the eggs soak for 14-17 minutes.  Cool the eggs with cold water.) 

• Orange — Add 2 tablespoons of annatto seeds to a cup of boiling water with a teaspoon of vinegar.  Let simmer for 10 minutes.  Strain the seeds. 

• Faint pink — Add a can of sliced beets to 2 cups of boiling water with a teaspoon of vinegar. Let simmer for 10 minutes.  Strain the beets. 

• Blue — Add a cup of blueberries to 2 cups of boiling water with a teaspoon of vinegar.  Let simmer for 10 minutes.  Strain the blueberries. 

• Brown — Add a teaspoon of vinegar to a cup of hot coffee.  The stronger the coffee, the darker the dye. 

• Purple -- Add a teaspoon of vinegar to a cup of boiling grape juice.

• Light green — Add 2 tablespoons of green tea powder to a cup of boiling water with a teaspoon of vinegar.  Let simmer for 10 minutes.
• Light orange — Add a tablespoon of paprika powder to a cup of boiling water with a teaspoon of vinegar.
• Bright yellow — Add a tablespoon of turmeric powder to a cup of boiling water with a teaspoon of vinegar.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/23/artificial-food-dye-alternatives/1979881/

Annatto, sometimes called roucou or achiote, is derived from the seeds of the achiote trees of tropical and subtropical regions around the world.  The seeds are sourced to produce a carotenoid-based yellow to orange food coloring and flavor.  Its scent is described as "slightly peppery with a hint of nutmeg" and flavor as "slightly nutty, sweet and peppery".  In commercial processing, annatto coloring is extracted from the reddish pericarp which surrounds the seed of the achiote (Bixa orellana L.).  Historically, it has been used as coloring in many cheeses (e.g., Cheddar, Gloucester, Red Leicester), cheese products (e.g. American cheese, Velveeta), and dairy spreads (e.g. butter, margarine).  Annatto can also be used to color a number of non-dairy foods such as rice, custard powder, baked goods, seasonings, processed potatoes, snack foods, breakfast cereals and smoked fish.  It has been linked to cases of food-related allergies.  Annatto is commonly used in Latin American and Caribbean cuisines as both a coloring and flavoring agent.  Central and South American natives use the seeds to make body paint and lipstick.  For this reason, the achiote is sometimes called the "lipstick-tree".  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annatto

The Vegetale Cathedral of Giuliano Mauri, has the size of a real gothic cathedral:  she comprises three aisles formed by twelve meters high and one meter in diameter eighty columns of twisted branches, within each column is planted a young hornbeam.  These plants will grow by around 50 centimeters every year.  With the cuts and the pruning she will be adapted to form a real Vegetale Cattedrale.  The structure has a square base of 82 meters for 15, the height of 12 meters and covers an area of 1,230 square meters.  Over the years, the built to accompany the growth of the plants support-columns, will rot and will leave the place to the hornbeams.  See pictures of the organic cathedral at:  http://www.papaissue.com/2010/10/giuiano-mauri/

Misquotes

"Blood, Sweat, and Tears" – Winston Churchill
Correct quote:  "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."  The quote appeared in the book Metropolis, written by Thea von Harbou (wife of Metropolis director Fritz Lang), first published in 1926.  The text, describing Freder Fredersen who has just finished his first day working to keep the machines of Metropolis alive, states, "He tasted a salty taste on his lips, and did not know if it was from blood, sweat, or tears."  Notes:  A similar quote from Winston Churchill can be found in a recorded speech he gave to the House of Commons where he says " I have never promised anything but blood, sweat and tears, now however we have a new experience.  We have victory. a..a remarkable victory.  A bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts."
"Music hath/has charms to soothe the savage beast."

A misquotation of William Congreve's play, The Mourning Bride, (1697).

Actual quote:  "Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast.  To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak."
"The rest is science"
Correct quote:  "The rest is silence" – William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
"To gild the lily"

Correct quote:  "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily" – William Shakespeare (The Life and Death of King John, Act IV, Scene II, line 13)

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations

"This is the kind of tedious [sometimes "pedantic"] nonsense up with which I will not put!" 
—Alleged marginal note by Churchill, 27 February 1944, to a priggish civil servant's memo objecting to the ending of a sentences with prepositions.  The New York Timesversion reported that the Prime Minister underscored “up” heavily.  The source are a cable reports by The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, 28 February 1944. The Yale Book of Quotations quotes The Wall Street Journal of 30 September 1942 which in turn quoted an undated article in The Strand Magazine:  "When a memorandum passed round a certain Government department, one young pedant scribbled a postscript drawing attention to the fact that the sentence ended with a preposition, which caused the original writer to circulate another memorandum complaining that the anonymous postscript was 'offensive impertinence, up with which I will not put.'"   Verdict: An invented phrase put in Churchill’s mouth.  http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/quotations 

You start with the stone, aquamarine, a word that means “seawater,” but not the deep-ocean blue that is the sea’s homage to the sky, nor the gray-green swells crashing on a shore, but the soft blue-green of a lagoon on a clear tropical morning.  Chemically, it is almost identical to an emerald.  What makes a stone one or the other is a handful of atoms scattered among the crystalline ranks: chromium for emerald, iron for aquamarine.  Then you must have light.  Aquamarine comes to life under the blues and cyans of daylight, as a ruby does near firelight.  Next, consider the object itself, an obelisk of a little more than 10,000 carats, shot through with radiant starbursts of astonishing intricacy and precision.  Thus you have described the latest addition to the Smithsonian’s National Gem and Mineral Collection, the Dom Pedro Aquamarine, one of the few objects in the world that can hold its own in a display case just 30 feet from the Hope Diamond.  Sometime in the 1980s, prospectors found the stone in a mine in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil.  Originally three feet long and weighing nearly 100 pounds, it was dropped by the prospectors, breaking into three pieces—two of which were sold by the mine owner to be cut into anonymous stones for jewelry.  The largest piece escaped that fate; it was named the Dom Pedro, after the first emperor of Brazil, in the 19th century, and his son of the same name, who was the last.  The stone traced a circuitous path to the German workshop of gem artist Bernd Munsteiner who, in the early 1990s, was moving toward using crystals as the raw material of sculpture, rather than for rings and pendants.   Read more and see picture at:  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Introducing-the-Dom-Pedro-Aquamarine-192099841.html

Library celebrates 175 years 

In 1838, abolitionist and author Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery.  That same year, Charles Dickens published The Life and Adventures of Nickolas Nickelby; Edgar Allan Poe published his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket; and The American Frugal Housewife came to print, containing tips for preserving food, cleaning, and creating home remedies on the homestead.  The year 1838 also marked the beginning of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library system.  TLCPL will be celebrating its 175th anniversary starting in mid-April, with the public kickoff on Sunday, April 14, 2013 and culminating the evening of September 7 with a gala dinner, featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning Author David McCullough.  

Seven Outdated Grammar Rules

1.  Never split an infinitive.
2.  Active verbs are always better than passive verbs.
3.  Never start a sentence with a conjunction (and, or, but).
4.  Never start a sentence with there are or there is.
5.  Never end a sentence with a preposition.
6.  Always use more than instead of over with numbers.
7.  Data is plural, so the verb must always be plural.
Find explanations and examples at:  http://www.ecoscribe.com/freestuff/sevenrules.htm

In 2000, Nathalie Miebach was studying both astronomy and basket weaving at the Harvard Extension School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She was constantly lugging her shears and clamps with her into the room where she’d study projections of stars and nebulas on the wall.  Understanding the science of space could be tricky, she found.  “What was so frustrating to me, as a very kinesthetic learner, is that astronomy is so incredibly fascinating, but there’s nothing really tactile about it,” says Miebach.  “You can’t go out and touch a star.”  Soon, something in the budding artist clicked.  Her solution?  Turn space data into visual art, so that she and other learners like her could grasp it.  Miebach’s final project for her basket weaving class was a sculpture based on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a well-known astronomy scatter plot measuring stars’ luminosities against their surface temperatures.  Temperature readings travel downward from left to right, and the wider the diameter of the star, the higher the luminosity.  The graph is used to track stars as they evolve, showing how they move along the diagram as shifts in their structure cause changes in temperature, size and luminosity.  The artist has taken this same approach with her latest project:  translating scientific data into musical scores.  When Miebach relocated from the coast of Maine to Omaha and then Boston in 2006, she realized the cityscape influenced weather dramatically, and not in the same way that the shoreline did.  “In an urban environment, you have infrastructure, you have heat bubbles that hover over cities, you have the lack of vegetation, and all these create very localized fluctuations in weather data that the weather instruments are very sensitive in picking up,” she says.  Miebach found that she could not accurately express in her basket weaving the subtle fluctuations in weather that cities foster.  Instead, she began experimenting with musical notation as a medium, which she says provided the flexibility she needed in artistically representing weather data at the street level.  See many pictures at:  http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/artscience/2013/03/transforming-raw-scientific-data-into-sculpture-and-song/   

Chicago’s northern suburbs are home to tens of thousands of Assyrians, Aramaic-speaking Christians driven from their Middle Eastern homelands by persecution and war.  Aramaic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic, was the common tongue of the entire Middle East when the Middle East was the crossroads of the world.  People used it for commerce and government across territory stretching from Egypt and the Holy Land to India and China.  The number of Aramaic speakers alive today is difficult to calculate.  Though some estimates set the figure as high as a half-million, that number is misleading.  Because of its ancient lineage, lack of standardization and the isolation of speakers from one another, the modern tongue, known as Neo-Aramaic, has more than 100 dialects, most with no written analogue.  Many dialects are already extinct, and others are down to their last one or two speakers.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ideas-innovations/How-to-Save-a-Dying-Language-187947061.html?c=y&page=1   

In July of 1852, a 32-year-old novelist named Herman Melville had high hopes for his new novel, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, despite the book’s mixed reviews and tepid sales.  That month he took a steamer to Nantucket for his first visit to the Massachusetts island, home port of his novel’s mythic protagonist, Captain Ahab, and his ship, the Pequod.  Like a tourist, Melville met local dignitaries, dined out and took in the sights of the village he had previously only imagined.  And on his last day on Nantucket he met the broken-down 60-year-old man who had captained the Essex, the ship that had been attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in an 1820 incident that had inspired Melville’s novel.  Captain George Pollard Jr. was just 29 years old when the Essex went down, and he survived and returned to Nantucket to captain a second whaling ship, Two Brothers.  But when that ship wrecked on a coral reef two years later, the captain was marked as unlucky at sea—a “Jonah”—and no owner would trust a ship to him again.  Pollard lived out his remaining years on land, as the village night watchman.  Read Captain Pollard's story at:  http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/03/the-true-life-horror-that-inspired-moby-dick/

Restored Grant boyhood home to be rededicated April 6, 2013  Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's parents, Jesse and Hanna Grant, built the original portion of the home in 1823, when they moved to Georgetown, Ohio from Point Pleasant, Ohio, where Grant had been born the year before.  A large kitchen was added the following year.  About 1829, they built a new two-story home in front of, and attached to, the 1823 house.  While growing up there, Grant -- born Hiram Ulysses Grant -- went to school, worked in his father's tannery and spent hour upon hour in his favorite pastime:  working with horses.  Grant lived in the house in Georgetown with his parents and four siblings until 1839 when he left to attend West Point.  It was at West Point that, through a bureaucratic error, his name was listed as Ulysses Simpson Grant.  Georgetown's nationally-known wildlife artist, John Ruthven, and his late wife Judy, who was an active preservationist, bought the Grant Boyhood Home in 1977 to ensure its preservation.  The Ruthvens restored and furnished the house, with one room dedicated to Grant memorabilia.  It has been open to the public since 1982, when it was named a National Historic Landmark, the highest designation awarded to historic properties in the United States by the federal government (all National Historic Landmarks are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places).  In 2002, the Ruthvens donated the Grant Boyhood Home to the State of Ohio, which placed it under the auspices of the Ohio Historical Society.  Also in Georgetown is the Grant Schoolhouse.  http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/enews/042612e.shtml

U.S. Grant timelines  http://presidentusgrant.com/

A roasted egg is a traditional part of the Seder on Passover called the Beitzah.  Traditionally these eggs were cooked by being buried overnight in the embers of a fire.  These eggs have a deep, savory, roasted caramel flavor.  They’re way easy to prepare, and there are many ways to do so, including boiling the egg first, or roasting it over a grill.  I’m giving you a method from Paula Wolfert, author of Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking.

8 whole eggs, at room temperature 

Preheat your oven to 225.  Place the eggs in warm water while preheating the oven.  When the oven is ready, remove the eggs from the water and set them directly in the oven’s middle rack.  Bake for 4-5 hours.  The eggs turn a rich, caramel color.  For a variety of shades, remove a few eggs at a time starting at the 4 hour mark.  Remove the eggs and let cool for a few minutes.  Gently roll and press the eggs to crackle the shells.  Place them into a bowl of cold water for at least five minutes.  Slip off the shells and arrange on a plate.  Serve with condiments of your choosing.  Tom Herndon 

http://www.hippkitchen.com/recipes/scrambled-just-the-start

 

There is a bit of controversy as to when the ice cream soda first appeared, apparently in the 1870s, and who gets credit for it.  However, there’s no dispute that the bevy of lovely ladies enjoying drinks at a soda fountain by artist Clarence F. Underwood appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on July 27, 1912.  Under the cuter-than-the-law-should allow category, a small boy and girl at the soda fountain on the June 6, 1936, cover face a predicament:  He can’t find his money.  Look at his face, and tell us you don’t want to pinch his cheek.  Rockwell’s teenage soda jerk seems much more interested in the female customers than in serving up ice cream, but definitely more interested in the ice cream than the girl is the black and white dog intently watching the melting ice cream illustrated by Ellen Pyle on the August 12, 1922 cover.  Cover artists were apparently fond of melting ice cream, as we see in two covers:  Rockwell’s boy of July 13, 1940, and Stevan Dohanos’ girl with two hands full of cones on the July 29, 1944 cover.  See pictures of ten Saturday Evening Post covers at:  http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2009/07/04/art-entertainment/art-and-artists/ice-cream-soda-fountain-covers.html

Ice cream, one of the most spectacularly successful of all the foods based on dairy products, has a comparatively short history.  The first ice creams, in the sense of an iced and flavoured confection made from full milk or cream, are thought to have been made in Italy and then in France in the 17th century, and to have been diffused from the French court to other European countries.  However, although the French did make some ice creams from an early date, they were more interested in water ices.  The first recorded English use of the term ice cream (also given as iced cream) was by Ashmole (1672), recording among dishes served at the Feast of St George at Windsor in May 167I ‘One Plate of Ice Cream’.  The first published English recipe was by Mrs Mary Eales (1718).  Read much more at:  http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/07/i-scream-you-scream/

We all know the words. “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!”  Well, we know that much, at least.  The song was actually recorded in 1929 by a group called “Waring’s Pennsylvanians.”  As the name implies, the band was from Pennsylvania (the founder and leader attended Penn State) and included as many as 12 members.  In the video below (this is a real treat for ice cream fans), you can hear the ode to ice cream in its entirety.  The “frog-voiced drummer,” so called in this article on the band, became popular after this song was released and was known to play melodies on his teeth!  For those who want to sing along, the complete lyrics can be found here.  http://icecreamjournal.turkeyhill.com/index.php/2010/12/13/the-history-of-the-i-scream-you-scream-song/

Majorca or Mallorca  It is claimed locally that Christopher Columbus was born in Felanitx, Mallorca and named the first island he discovered San Salvador after the hill in his native land.  Other claims to fame in the area are wine and "green pearls"--capers.

Time Out Mallorca & Menorca: And Menorca By Time Out, p. 193

Minorca or Menorca from Latin: Insula Minor, later Minorica "minor island") is one of the Balearic Islands located in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to Spain.  Its name derives from its size, contrasting it with nearby Majorca.  The island is known for its collection of megalithic stone monuments:  navetes, taules and talaiots, which speak of a very early prehistoric human activity.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minorca

Sept. 13, 2010  Earthquake lightning by Philip Duncan

I have to admit, I've never heard of this before - but Earthquake Lights, or "Lightning", is a well documented phenomena.  When I was in the big Christchurch quake two Saturday's ago I noticed three or four brilliant blue flashes that lit up the sky (but didn't light up the city itself, as normal lightning would do).  My first instinct was that it was power transformers exploding.  However on reflection I realised the lights were simply too bright and lit up too much of the night sky.  I had a few comments posted here and at WeatherWatch about the lights being caused by the quake itself.  So I decided to find out - I called GNS (Geological and Nuclear Sciences) in Wellington.  Dr Martin Reyners was the Seismologist I spoke to and he indeed confirmed that what I saw was most likely a direct result of the earth shifting.  Oddly, they hadn't had any other eyewitness reports.  However I'm now starting to hear via my Twitter account that others saw it too.  I suppose most people didn't have a 7th floor view of Christchurch at the time the quake struck so I was in a prime viewing position.  Dr Reyners says with shallow quakes this has been widely documented.  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10673092

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

polylemma  (pol-ee-LEM-uh) noun
A choice involving multiple undesirable options.
From Greek poly- (many) + dilemma, from lemma (proposition).  Earliest documented use:  1856.  
palimpsest  (PAL-imp-sest) noun
1.  A writing surface such as a parchment that has been reused after partially or completely erasing the original text.
2. Something reused but still showing traces of its earlier form.
From Greek palimpsestos, from palin (again) + psestos + (scraped). Earliest documented use:  1661
nineteenth hole  (NYN-TEENTH hol)  noun
The clubhouse or another place, such as a bar or a restaurant, where golfers gather after playing a round.  A standard round of golf has eighteen holes, so the next stop after the game, a bar or a restaurant, is called the nineteenth hole.  A similar term is the fifth quarter in (American) football. Earliest documented use:  1901.
bromide  (BRO-myd)  noun

1.  A tired or meaningless remark.  2.  A tiresome or boring person.

From bromine, from Greek bromos (stench).  Earliest documented use:  1836.   In earlier times, potassium bromide used to be taken as a sedative.  So any statement that was intended to be soothing ("Don't worry, everything will be OK.") acquired the name bromide.  Eventually any commonplace or tired remark and anyone uttering such remarks came to be known as a bromide.
The term was popularized in the title of Gelett Burgess's 1906 book "Are You a Bromide?"  It was to promote this book that Burgess coined the term "blurb".

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

nineteenth hole  Ah, but modern golf course design is not only slowing down the game, and scaring off new players, it is also damaging this fine old expression.  More and more really top end clubs include a 19th hole, to settle bets, when contestants finish the normal round tied.  I have personally seen one, and have heard of another half-dozen -- including one 14-hole which is a very odd, one family, golf course, where a "round" is the original 13 holes, and the 14/19th was added for the purpose described above.  Plus, a few courses have added an extra hole, which allows one hole to be taken entirely out of rotation for serious refurbishment.  All that said, I expect 19th hole will keep the meaning described, except at the very few venues described above.   

The Wikipedia reference desk works like a library reference desk . You can leave a question at the reference desk and Wikipedia volunteers work to help you find the information you need.  Before asking a question, please try using the search boxes at right to search Wikipedia as a whole or the Reference Desk archives.  You can often find the answer you're looking for more quickly with a search than by waiting for a response.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk 

Have a taste of Toledo delivered to your door, learn the Polish word of the week--and link to recipes at:  http://www.stanleysmarket.com/ 

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge.  The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.  See links at upper left for more information at:  http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/

The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that copyright law does not extend to prohibiting the resale of books bought overseas.   

KIRTSAENG, DBA BLUECHRISTINE99 v. JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT  No. 11–697.  Argued October 29, 2012—Decided March 19, 2013
Link to case at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/supreme-court-eases-sale-of-certain-products-abroad.html?_r=0  See also:   http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-copyright-kirtsaeng-supreme-court-20130320,0,780431.story

Signaling horns

The abeng is the horn of an animal or a wind musical instrument, which is blown to produce a variety of sounds, and is used for communication.  http://www.anngel.com/ACIJ/history-abeng.htm
A foghorn or fog signal or fog bell is a device that uses sound to warn vehicles of hazards or boats of the presence of other vehicles in foggy conditions.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foghorn

Simple and old fashioned

cambric tea  a hot drink of water, milk, sugar, and often a small amount of tea
first known use:  1859  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cambric%20tea  NOTE that the variation I grew up with was half tea and half milk.
bread and butter, hard-boiled eggs
milk toast, a breakfast food consisting of toasted bread in warm milk, typically with sugar and butter.  Salt, pepper, paprika, cinnamon, cocoa, raisins and other ingredients may be added.  In the New England region of the US, milk toast refers to toast that has been dipped in a milk-based white sauce.  Milk toast was a popular food throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially for young children and for the ailing, for whom the food was thought to be soothing and easy to digest  See variations from various countries at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_toast

Heritage Recipes "sharing old fashioned recipes and traditions"  http://www.heritagerecipes.com/

Opera, like great litigation, involves powerful storytelling, which evokes a variety of audience emotions.  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke about her love of both mediums at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago Aug. 2-5, 2012, in a CLE program titled, "Arias of Law: The Rule of Law at Work in Opera and the Supreme Court."  The panel, moderated by Chicago lawyer Craig Martin and sponsored by the ABA Section of Litigation, also included U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and Anthony Freud, general director of Chicago's Lyric Opera.  Afterward, Ginsburg sat down with the ABA Journal to chat about operas she listens to at work, music she recommends to law clerks and operas featuring legal dramas. She also talks about the time she was serenaded by Plácido Domingo.  Stephanie Francis Ward  See video of the interview and the serenade by Domingo at:  http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/justice_ginsburg_talks_about_arias_and_the_law/  See also:  http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/08/07/158382779/is-there-a-lawyer-in-the-opera-house 

The books of Dr. Seuss, the pen name of Theodor Geisel, depend on what Donald Pease, a professor of English literature at Dartmouth, refers to in his biography of Geisel as “plausible nonsense.”  “Children will grant you any premise, but after that—you’ve got to stay on the same key,” Geisel told one interviewer.  “What I have tried to do is use implausible facts to create a plausible world.”  Justice Clarence Thomas said that back in Savannah in 1955, listening to librarians reading from Dr. Seuss gave him an affinity for learning.  Read opinions on how his books may relate to current events including two cases under Supreme Court consideration at: 

The New Yorker  Mar. 18, 2013  p. 22-23   

Five engineers who helped create the Internet were on Mar. 18 awarded a $1.5 million prize which British organisers hope will come to be seen as equivalent to a Nobel prize for engineering.  Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf and Marc Andreessen of the United States will share the first ever £1 million (1.2 million euro) Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering with Louis Pouzin of France and Tim Berners-Lee of Britain.  "The emergence of the Internet and the web involved many teams of people all over the world," said Alec Broers, chair of the judging panel.  "However, these five visionary engineers, never before honoured together as a group, led the key developments that shaped the Internet and web as a coherent system and brought them into public use."  Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who gives her name to the prize, will present the award to the winners in a formal ceremony in London in June.  Organisers said Kahn, Cerf and Pouzin had made "seminal" contributions to the design and protocols that make up the fundamental architecture of the Internet.  Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, the information-sharing system built on top of the Internet which allows us to use it in the way we do today.  Andreessen, meanwhile, created the first widely-used web browser, Mosaic. 

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/internet-creators-kahn-cerf-andreessen-pouzin-berners-lee-share-15-million-engineering-prize-344387

Robocalls starting with words such as "The FBI reports a home invasion every 60 seconds" or "The FBI is reporting that there are a rising number of home-invasion robberies" are being received around the country.  You may file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission if you received an unwanted call after your number was on the National Registry for 31 days.  You may also file a complaint if you received a call that used a recorded message instead of a live person (whether or not your number was on the Registry).  Even if your number is registered, charities, political organizations, and telephone surveyors may continue to call you.  Companies with which you do business may also continue to call, unless you have asked them to stop calling you.  If you have asked them to stop calling, please keep a record of the date you made the request and include that information in the comment section of any complaint you submit against that company.    https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx?panel=2 

Mar. 18, 2013  You can explore some of the most famous mountains on Earth, including Aconcagua (South America), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mount Elbrus (Europe) and Everest Base Camp (Asia) on Google Maps.  These mountains belong to the group of peaks known as the Seven Summits—the highest mountain on each of the seven continents.  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/explore-everest-kilimanjaro-and-more.html

The Toledo Museum of Art's 2013 “The Art of Writing” Poetry Contest invites you to submit an original poem inspired by a work of art in the Museum’s collection.  Submissions are due March 28, 2013.  This spring the Museum will host a showcase of notable entries and a reception for writers and their guests.  Cash and membership prizes are awarded.   Register in one of four ways at:  http://www.toledomuseum.org/learn/writingcontest/   

Q:  What was the life expectancy of a 65-year-old in 1940 when Social Security began sending benefit checks?  What's the life expectancy of a 65-year-old today?
A:  On Jan. 31, 1940, Ida May Fuller, 65, of Brattleboro, Vt., was issued the first check, for $22.54, under the Social Security Act of 1935.  Then, she could expect to live another 14.7 years, and a man at 65 could expect to live another 12.7 years.  Now, at 65, a woman can expect another 20.9 years, and a man can expect another 18.9 years.  "Increases in life expectancy are a factor in the long-range financing of Social Security," the government says.  "But other factors, such as the sheer size of the baby boom generation, and the relative proportion of workers to beneficiaries, are larger determinants of Social Security's future financial condition." -- Social Security Administration.   http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2013/Feb/JU/ar_JU_022513.asp?d=022513,2013,Feb,25&c=c_13   

The vocal folds, also known popularly as vocal cords, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx.  They vibrate, modulating the flow of air being expelled from the lungs during phonation.  Another name for the airway at the level of the vocal cords is the glottis, and the opening between the cords is called the glottic chink.  The size of the glottic chink is important in respiration and phonation.  Open during inhalation, closed when holding one's breath, and held apart just a tiny bit for speech or singing; the folds are controlled via the vagus nerve.  They are white because of scant blood circulation.  The folds vibrate when they are closed to obstruct the airflow through the glottis, the space between the folds: they are forced open by increased air pressure in the lungs, and closed again as the air rushes past the folds, lowering the pressure (Bernoulli's principle).  A person's voice pitch is determined by the resonant frequency of the vocal folds.  http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/v/vocal_folds.htm

 

phonation   Etymology:  Gk, phone, sound; L, atio, process

the production of speech sounds through the vibration of the vocal folds of the larynx
Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition  © 2009 Elsevier
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/phonation

Established in 1996, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Awards celebrate authors who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community.  Nominations are solicited from past winners, other prominent writers, members of the publishing community, and Poets & Writers' Board and staff.  These nominations are reviewed and winners selected by a committee comprised of current and past members of the Board of Directors.  Title of the award has been given to Barnes & Noble in appreciation of their extraordinary support of Poets & Writers.  Recipients of the 2013 Writers for Writers Award are Steve Berry, Rigoberto González, and Judith Kelman. The awards will be presented at Poets & Writers’ annual dinner, In Celebration of Writers, on Monday, March 18, 2013 in New York City.  Find biographies of current winners, and see list of winners from 1996-2012 at:  http://www.pw.org/about-us/writers_writers_award_and_editors_award

History is the story of who we are.  It is writings, images, art, and memorabilia, much of which is donated to museums and archives.  However, of the more than 1.7 billion rare and unique books, periodicals, and scrapbooks currently in collections, at least 16%, 270,000,000, are endangered because of poor conservation. Of the 21,000,000 paintings, sculptures, and decorative art now in those collections, 26%, 5,500,000, are threatened.  What if these rarities are not preserved?  Quite simply, links to our past will be irretrievably broken.  If you have or know of a historical project that needs attention, Steve and Elizabeth Berry are here to help.  Contact them at historymatters@steveberry.org.  http://www.steveberry.org/berry-history.htm

Established in 2008, Visible Ink offers patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering the opportunity to work individually with an experienced writer, editor, or teacher on a writing project of their choice, which need not be disease related.  The program is free of charge and open to all interested inpatients and outpatients, regardless of their writing level or experience.  To date, more than 500 patients have enrolled and 35 writers, editors, teachers, and graduate writing students have signed on as volunteers.  Visible Ink promotes self-expression, stress reduction, personal growth, and individual success for participants who have experienced a serious illness.  Patients benefit from the opportunity to tell their stories in a positive, supportive framework.  Visible Ink participants have produced more than 15,000 pages of written work, including novels, short stories, blogs, personal experience essays, journals, letters, poems, stage scripts and screenplays, song lyrics, and articles.    Each year, Visible Ink participants are invited to submit up to two written works from which a committee selects pieces to be published in our anthology and included in our staged reading.  The anthology is distributed at the staged reading.  Copies of the anthology are also sold in Memorial Sloan-Kettering gift shops.  For more information on the anthology and staged reading please contact: 

Judith Kelman  Visible Ink Founder & Team Leader  Judith.kelman@gmail.com  212-535-3985

Greg Kachejian Artistic Director & Administrator  Kachejig@mskcc.org  212-639-7579
http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/counseling-support/writing-visible-ink

Scarlett O'Hara, born Katie Scarlett O' Hara (credited as Scarlett Hamilton - Kennedy - Butler), is the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name.  Scarlett was born in 1845.  She also is the main character in the 1970 musical Scarlett and the 1991 book Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind that was written by Alexandra Ripley and adapted for a television mini-series in 1994.  During early drafts of the original novel, Mitchell referred to her heroine as "Pansy", and did not decide on the name "Scarlett" until just before the novel went to print.  In the 1939 film version of Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara is similar to the character in the original novel, but there are some noticeable differences.  In the book, Scarlett gives birth to three children:  Wade Hampton Hamilton, Ella Lorena Kennedy, and Eugenie Victoria "Bonnie Blue" Butler.  In the film version, only Bonnie is featured.  In the sequel book, Scarlett, she has another daughter with Rhett, Katie Colum O'Hara more commonly known as "Cat".  Scarlett is by far the most developed character in Gone with the Wind.  She stands out because she is strong and saves her family but is incredibly selfish and petty at the same time.  She challenges nineteenth-century society's gender roles repeatedly, running a store and two lumber mills at one point.  Scarlett is in some ways the least stereotypically feminine of women (in other ways the most), and the more traditional Melanie Wilkes is in many ways her foil. But Scarlett survives the war, several marriages, the birth of children, and even a miscarriage.  Melanie, on the other hand, struggles with fragile health and a shy nature.  Without Melanie Wilkes, Scarlett might simply be seen as harsh and "over the top," but beside Melanie, Scarlett presents a fresher, deeper female characterization; she lives a complicated life during a difficult period of history.  Some of Scarlett's lines from Gone with the Wind, like "Fiddle-dee-dee!," "Tomorrow is another day," "Great balls of fire!" and "I'll never go hungry again!", have become modern catchphrases.  http://gonewiththewind.wikia.com/wiki/Scarlett_O'Hara  NOTE that a home in my family was one of the homes considered for Tara, but it was not chosen.