Taste of the South:  Cheese Grits  The combination of tangy sharp Cheddar and mild Monterey Jack creates a perfect balance of creaminess and flavor.  Link to recipes for Two-Cheese Grits, Shrimp and Grits, and Cheddar Cheese Grits Casserole at http://www.southernliving.com/food/kitchen-assistant/cheese-grits-recipes

The metropole, from the Greek metropolis for 'mother city' is the British metropolitan centre of the British Empire, the United Kingdom itself.  It is sometimes extended even further, in the sense of London being considered the metropole of the British Empire, insofar as its politicians and businessmen determined the economic, diplomatic, and military character of the rest of the Empire.  By contrast, the periphery was the rest of the Empire, outside the United Kingdom itself.  http://ebooklibrary.org/article/WHEBN0001222812/Metropole 

Metropol may refer to:  Metropolitan police, Hotel Metropol, various hotels, Neues Schauspielhaus, a theatre and concert hall destroyed in World War II, whose facade survived and was renamed Metropol, Metropol TV, a Norwegian television channel, Metropol (album), 1998 debut album by UK big beat group Lunatic Calm, Metropol, a font designed by Aldo Novarese (1967) Metropol Verlag, a German publishing house, Metropol Parasol, a building in Seville, Spain, Minto Metropole, a building in Ottawa, Canada

http://ebooklibrary.org/article/WHEBN0014291744/Metropole

“Change is inevitable.  Change for the better is a full time job.”   “All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.”  “I offer my opponents a bargain:  if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them”  Adlai E. Stevenson II (1900-1965)  American lawyer, politician  https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/652427.Adlai_E_Stevenson_II

When musicians first started varying their renditions of The Star Spangled Banner, there was an uproar.  Today, there is a whole new audience and a sense of anticipation as you wonder what to expect from a performance of our national anthem.  Once called unsingable, the piece has reached an unexpected popularity.  I am teaching music to a class of children this summer and, to my surprise, they sing The Star Spangled Banner easily and request it.

Electrolyte is a "medical/scientific" term for salts, specifically ions.  Electrolytes are important because they are what your cells (especially nerve, heart, muscle) use to maintain voltages across their cell membranes and to carry electrical impulses (nerve impulses, muscle contractions) across themselves and to other cells.  Your kidneys work to keep the electrolyte concentrations in your blood constant despite changes in your body.  Find list of major electrolytes in the human body at http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/information/question565.htm

In the world of auto repair, most of us have been privileged to know someone who was able to fix our cars on their driveway.  These shade tree mechanics would take on auto repair jobs as simple as changing motor oil, or as complex as replacing an entire engine.  Cars were easy to work on a couple decades ago.  Times have changed however, and so have our cars and trucks.  Gone are the days when you could slide under a vehicle with two wrenches and then slide back out ten minutes later with a starter motor in you hands.  Today's motor vehicles are carefully engineered puzzles of sensors, relays, circuits, and space age connectors which demand tools and knowledge not always readily available to Joe average.  People I know, who still have the inclination to work on vehicles at home, tell me horror stories about basic engine repairs which are nearly impossible to reach, and tools which they've never before even heard of.  Gary E. Sattler  http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/04/08/25-things-vanishing-in-america-part-2-the-shade-tree-mechanic/

For 40 years, until shortly before his death in 1996, Willis Conover’s shortwave broadcasts on the Voice of America constituted one of his country’s most effective instruments of cultural diplomacy.  He interviewed virtually every prominent jazz figure of the second half of the 20th century.  His use of the VOA’s “special English”—simple vocabulary and structures spoken at a slow tempo—made him, in effect, a teacher of the language to his listeners.  The Voice of America broadcast most of the early N ewport Jazz Festivals, with Conover as master of ceremonies for many of the concerts. That increased his fame abroad and also made him known to festival audiences who, because of the Smith-Mundt Act, couldn’t listen to his broadcasts.  He produced concerts at other festivals, notably the 1969 New Orleans Jazz Festival, remembered as one of the greatest of all such events.  Its Stars included Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Eubie Blake and a host of Crescent City luminaries headed by Pete Fountain.  Conover’s VOA theme music was Duke Ellington’s “Take The ‘A’ Train.”  Early in the first term of President Richard Nixon, he suggested that the president give Ellington a 70th birthday party at the White House.  In April 1969, Conover assembled an all-star band that included Clark Terry, Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, with guest pianists Dave Brubeck, Earl Hines, Billy Taylor and Willie “The Lion” Smith.  The all-stars serenaded Ellington with new arrangements of his music.  Mr. Nixon played the piano and led the guests in singing “Happy Birthday.”  Then he awarded Ellington the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  In the New Yorker, Whitney Balliett wrote that Ellington “was finally given his due by his country.”  Doug Ramsey  http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-radio-broadcaster-who-fought-the-cold-war-abroad-but-remained-unheard-at-home-1437512977  Read about and explore the Willis Conover Collection, University of North Texas at http://www.library.unt.edu/collections/music/willis-conover  Link to the original text of the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, commonly known as the Smith-Mundt Act, as enacted January 27, 1948 at http://www.state.gov/pdcommission/library/177362.htm  See also that a longstanding federal law making it illegal for the US Department of State to share domestically the internally-authored news stories sent to American-operated outlets broadcasting around the globe was changed effective July 2, 2013 when the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) was given permission to let US households tune-in to hear the type of programming that has previously only been allowed in outside nations.  http://www.rt.com/usa/smith-mundt-domestic-propaganda-121/

The words “today,” “tonight,” and “tomorrow” include the implied preposition “to.”  In fact, they were once written as “to day,” “to night,” and “to morrow.”  Later, hyphens were added (as in Macbeth’s “sound and fury” soliloquy), then the hyphens fell away and the words were joined.  Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman 

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/02/on-to-morrow-and-to-morrow-and-to-morrow.html

While browsing among used books, I picked up a copy of The 100 Best Poems of All Time edited by Leslie Pockell.  The book contains The Raven and Casey at the Bat which convinced me to buy it.  Poems range in roughly chronological order from Homer (b. 850 BCE?) http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/iliad/characters.html to Maya Angelou (b. 1928) http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/maya-angelou/still-i-rise/

Mox nix! – From the German phrase, "Es macht nichts!"  Often used by U.S. servicemen to mean "It doesn't matter" or "It's not important".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudo-German_words_adapted_to_English

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1330  July 30, 2015   On this date in 1956, two years after pushing to have the phrase “under God” inserted into the pledge of allegiance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a law officially declaring “In God We Trust” to be the nation’s official motto.  The law, P.L. 84-140, also mandated that the phrase be printed on all American paper currency.  On this date in  1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare, a health insurance program for elderly Americans, into law.  Former President Harry S. Truman was enrolled as Medicare’s first beneficiary and received the first Medicare card.  Johnson wanted to recognize Truman, who, in 1945, had become the first president to propose national health insurance, an initiative that was opposed at the time by Congress.  The Medicare program, providing hospital and medical insurance for Americans age 65 or older, was signed into law as an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935. Some 19 million people enrolled in Medicare when it went into effect in 1966.