A.Word.A.Day with
Anu Garg If you’ve ever felt exhausted after
traveling, know that it’s in the word itself.
The word ‘travel’ is ultimately the same word as ‘travail’. Imagine the era when travel time was measured
in months; there were no in-boat movies during the trip, and no Holiday Inns
waiting at the destination. That’s if
you reach the destination at all. Travel
could be torture (travel/travail are from Latin trepaliare: to torture). Yet travel can be rewarding. It enriches us, broadening our outlook. Words also travel, hopping across continents,
across languages, enriching our vocabulary.
popinjay (POP-in-jay)
noun Someone who indulges in vain
and empty chatter. Via French and
Spanish from Arabic babbaga (parrot).
The last syllable changed to jay because some thought the word referred
to that bird instead of a parrot.
Earliest documented use: 1322.
brio (BREE-oh)
noun Vigor or vivacity. From Italian brio (liveliness), from Spanish
brio (spirit), from Celtic brigos (strength).
Earliest documented use: 1731.
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From: Chris
Papa
Subject: Popinjay W.S. Gilbert famously used this word in The
Yeomen of the Guard, when main character, the lovelorn jester, Jack Point,
introduces himself in Act 1 and sings a tale of how a common lady, in reality
the young lady who performs with him (Elsie), may be attracted to a man of
higher station, but who will ultimately be rejected. Of course, as the opera unfolds, just the
opposite happens and, in the end, Elsie will marry royalty and it is the jester
who collapses in loneliness as the curtain falls. Point:
It’s a song of a popinjay, bravely born,
Who turned up his noble nose with scorn
Elsie: From the peacock popinjay,
bravely born, Who turned up his noble nose with scorn
From: Marley Stec Subject: brio Being an equine owner, personal assistant, to
three Colombian Paso Fino competition horses, we say our horses have brio. This can be mistaken for “nervous” unless one
is capable of understanding the marvelous willingness to respond and asks
appropriately for what one wants. For
there is nothing that horses hate more than a rider that confuses them or
doesn’t feel their quick response. For
us it means yes, spirit, but also movement and energy. They are eager and
quick to respond to our direction or request, for they wish to please. It makes the Paso Fino, with its four-beat
lateral gait a mighty fine, brilliant and most congenial partner.
The A to Z Guide to Cheese Plus
Pungent Pairings by Tia Keenan Domestic
cheeses now claim a place next to European stalwarts like Parmigiano Reggiano
and Roquefort. We’re witnessing the
coming-of-age of a culture of cheese making—a willingness to explore who we are
and what we know (and don’t)—as well as cheese eating. See pictures and descriptions of 26 cheeses and learn how to build a cheese
board at http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-a-to-z-guide-to-cheeseplus-pungent-pairings-1457536832?mod=e2tw
Tia Keenan is a
fromager, writer and cook. Her book “The
Art of the Cheese Plate” will be published in the fall of 2016 by Rizzoli.
"Everything surprises us, if we lack
knowledge of it." "How much more sonorous was the voice of gold
than those of virtue and reason!"
The Mosaic Crimes, Dante Alighieri Mystery #2 by Giulio Leoni
Giulio Leoni (born 1951) is a professor of
Italian literature and history. He lives
in Rome with his family. Also known as J.P. Rylan, author of the fantasy series of Anharra. http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/147152.Giulio_Leoni
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of
colored glass, stone, or other materials.
The earliest known examples of mosaics made of different materials were
found at a temple building in Ubaid, Mesopotamia, and are dated to the second half of 3nd
millennium BCE. They consist of pieces
of colored stones, shells and ivory. Excavations at Susa and Choqa Zanbil show evidence of the
first glazed tiles, dating from around 1500 BCE. Mosaics of the 4th century BCE are found in
the Macedonian palace-city of Aegae and they enriched the floors
of Hellenistic villas,
and Roman dwellings from Britain to Dura-Europos. Splendid mosaic floors are found in Roman
villas across north Africa,
in places such as Carthage,
and can still be seen in the extensive collection in Bardo Museum in Tunis,
Tunisia. The most famous mosaics of the
Roman world were created in Africa and in Syria,
the two richest provinces of the Roman Empire. Many Roman mosaics are found in Tunisian
museums, most of which date from the second to the seventh century CE. http://www.ancient.eu/Mosaic/
The Congressional Directory is the official directory of the U.S. Congress,
prepared by the Joint Committee on Printing, and includes:
short biographies of each
member of the Senate and House, listed by state or district, committee
memberships, terms of service, administrative assistants and/or secretaries,
and room and telephone numbers for Members of Congress, and lists of officials
of the courts, military establishments, and other federal departments and
agencies, including D.C. government officials, governors of states and
territories, foreign diplomats, and members of the press, radio, and television
galleries. Link to the 2015-2016
Official Congressional Directory, 114th
Congress at https://www.govinfo.gov/features/featured-content/CDIR-114
Adversity makes strange bedfellows The underlying idea of this saying is that an adverse situation brings together those whose interests wouldn't normally be aligned. For example, the main Allied powers during World War II were Britain, Russia, and the United States. However, even though those nations were allied in their efforts to defeat their common enemy, the fact that they had so few things in common politically eventually led to the Cold War. The first use of the saying was somewhat more literal when it appeared in Act II Scene II of The Tempest (Shakespeare 1611): Alas, the storm is come again! my best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabouts: misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows. In this scene Trinculo is talking about physically sharing a bed with someone else in order to find shelter from a severe storm, but by the time Charles Dickens wrote Pickwick Papers in 1837, the meaning was obviously more figurative: Illustrative ... of the old proverb, that adversity brings a man acquainted with strange bedfellows. The saying also has a couple of variants, such as 'politics makes strange bedfellows', first used in P. Hone's Diary entry from 9 July 1839. In 1982, The Times used the headline 'Poverty makes strange bedfellows', showing that the saying has come to be modified in various ways. http://fandom-grammar.livejournal.com/138973.html
Only once in American history has a major political party granted its prize to
someone whose principal qualification was to have served as a corporate chief
executive. That was in 1940, when
Wendell Willkie was the Republican candidate against President Franklin
Roosevelt, who was seeking a third term. “I’m in business and proud of it,” the
48-year-old Willkie told a Nebraska crowd that spring. “Nobody can make me
soft-pedal any fact in my business career. After all, business is our way of life, our
achievement, our glory.” Soon Willkie was leading in national polls. Arriving in the convention city of
Philadelphia, he boasted that he had been personally covering his travel and
telephone expenses and said that if nominated, “I will be under obligation to
nobody except the people.” He won the
nomination on the sixth ballot, vaulting over Taft and Dewey. Willkie, who resided in an apartment on Fifth
Avenue in New York, sought to make himself more voter-friendly by returning to his
birthplace, Elwood, Indiana, for his formal acceptance speech. He also patched things up—at least for the
campaign’s duration—with his wife, Edith, from whom he had grown distant. Of her smiling public appearances with her
newly nominated husband, Mrs. Willkie reputedly noted in private that “politics
makes strange bedfellows.”
Michael Beschloss http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/upshot/before-trump-or-fiorina-there-was-wendell-willkie.html
What do you do--you've just finished the last forkful of your favorite spaghetti alle
cozze (spaghetti with mussels) and now you're dying to relish that last little
bit of sauce still left on your plate? You've
exhausted all efforts to scoop it up with your cutlery, and you've completely
ruled out the possibility of sneaking the plate up to your mouth for a quick
swipe, unnoticed. So now what? You assure yourself, it's not just gluttony--it's
truly a pity to waste such a ben di Dio (loose translation: gift of God). You look at that plate--still warm and
irresistible--and you know that your relationship with it is not over! Some well-meaning
waiter might look at that plate and think the time has come for you to move on,
but he doesn't see it the way you do. If
you're Italian--the answer is obvious: bread!
Bread is the solution and there is a
method. There's even a word for it: scarpetta.
Scarpetta means "little
shoe" in Italian. Fare la
scarpetta means when you find yourself in the situation described above, you
simply take a piece of bread from the basket--which part of the bread you
choose is important and strategic--and propel it into the sauce. At this very moment, that piece of bread
transforms into a tiny shoe--and the sauce is the soft ground in which your
little shoe is sinking.
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1443
March 18, 2016 On this date in 1990, in the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings,
collectively worth around $300 million, were stolen from the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
On this date in 2010, BearManor Media
released a restored edition of Frankenstein, a 1910 film made by Edison Studios.
This 16-minute short film with an
unbilled cast was the first motion picture adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Quote of the Day Shelved
rows of books warm and brighten the starkest room, and scattered single volumes
reveal mental processes in progress--books in the act of consumption,
abandoned but readily resumable, tomorrow or next year. - John Updike, writer
(18 Mar 1932-2009)
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