From Wordsmith Anu Garg  In Internet terms, it sounds prehistoric now, but 22 years ago, on March 14, 1994, I started what became Wordsmith.org.  Time flies when you are having fun.  Every morning I can’t wait to wake up and start playing with words, exploring their origins, identifying their cousins, and more, and sharing them with you.  There isn’t a word for a 22nd anniversary, but we can coin one.  It can be a duovicennial (vicenary:  relating to 20 years, from Latin viginti:  twenty).  We’ll be playing with words.  I have selected words about having fun with words. 

rebus  (REE-buhs)  noun  A representation of a word or phrase using pictures, symbols, letters, etc.  From Latin rebus (by things), from res (thing).  Earliest documented use:  1605.

calligram  (KAL-i-gram)  noun  A word, phrase, or piece of text arranged to form a picture of the subject described.  From French calligramme, from Greek calli- (beautiful) + -gram (something written).  Earliest documented use:  1923.  One of the best-known practitioners of the form was the French poet and writer Guillaume Apollinaire, whose work was published in the book Calligrammes.

ambigram  (AM-bi-gram)  noun  A word or phrase written in a manner that it reads the same (sometimes, a different word or phrase) when oriented in a different way, for example, when reflected or rotated.   From Latin ambi- (both) + -gram (something written).  Earliest documented use:  1985.  “Come In & Go Away Doormat.  This graphic uses an ambigram to greet and dismiss your visiting guests: ‘come in’ on arrival ‘go away’ when leaving.”  Wipe Your Feet in Style This Winter; The Kent and Sussex Courier (Tunbridge Wells, UK); Oct 4, 2013.

pangram  (PAN-gram, -gruhm, PANG-)  noun  A sentence that makes use of all the letters of the alphabet.  From Greek pan- (all) + -gram (something written).  Earliest documented use:  1873.  The best-known pangram is:  The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.  Here’s a pangram that makes use of the whole alphabet in a 26-letter sentence:  Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.  What pangrams can you come up with?  Share them at http://wordsmith.org/words/pangram.html or email words@wordsmith.org.  

acrostic  (a-KRAW-stik, a-KRAWS-tik)  noun  A composition in which the first letter of each line spells out a word or message.  From Latin acrostichis, from Greek akrostikhis, from akron (head) + stikhos (line).  Earliest documented use:  1585.  A word with the same root is acrophobia.  When the spelled-out word is in the middle (instead of from the initial letters), it’s called a mesostic (example).  Also see, a meta acrostic.  FIND FEEDBACK, including graphics at http://wordsmith.org/awad/awadmail716.html

Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery Singing The Folks Who Live On The Hill  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKa96ch4q-A  3:29  BIG - film scene with Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yu62StlsMY  2:18  Other actor-musicians are Johnny Depp and Bruce Willis. 

U.S. PRESIDENTS WHO PLAYED INSTRUMENTS  Find 13 from Thomas Jefferson (violin and cello) to Bill Clinton(saxophone) at http://minormusicllc.com/?p=20

"Go to any gallery and you'll see aimless scribbles passed off as masterpieces.  Art is ninety-nine per cent bluffing."  "It's so quiet you can hear the snails saying their prayers."  Down Among the Dead Men, Peter Diamond mystery #15 by Peter Lovesey  Most of Peter Lovesey's writing has been done under his own name.  However, he did write three novels under the pen name Peter Lear.  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/30746.Peter_Lovesey

The History of Gettysburg, PA  The story of Adams County begins well before the 1863 American Civil War battle.  It starts even before the 1800 act of Assembly naming it an official Pennsylvania County and Gettysburg as the County Seat.  In 1736, the land now comprising the center of Adams County was purchased from the Iroquois Indians by the family of William Penn.  At that time, this land was known as Marsh Creek, the main tributary.  Many of these settlers were Scots-Irish who had fled Northern Ireland to escape English persecution.  In 1761, one of these early settlers, Samuel Gettys, established a tavern in the area.  Just twenty-five years later, his son James had laid out a town of 210 lots with a central town square on the land surrounding the tavern.  The town today is Gettysburg. At this time, Gettysburg was part of York County.  But by 1790, the growing population of the area decided to separate from York County.  A new county was approved by the state legislature in 1800 and was named after the President at the time, John Adams.  Gettysburg was chosen as the county seat.  By 1860, the town of Gettysburg had grown to 2,400 citizens.  Ten roads lead into the town, creating a few small but thriving industries.  Approximately 450 buildings housed carriage manufacturing, shoemakers, and tanneries as well as the usual merchants, banks and taverns.  There were also several educational institutions.  These roads and industries would lead two armies into the county in 1863.  By the summer of 1863, the Confederate Army, led by General Robert E. Lee, had achieved many victories, and was ready to invade the North, moving both armies from the war torn Northern Virginia.  By invading the north, and by chance securing a victory, it could cause disenchanted northerners to pressure the Lincoln Administration to seek a settlement toward peace, thus ending the war.  This decision would lead the two armies to the small, rural town of South Central Pennsylvania--Gettysburg.  Read the Gettysburg Address and link to a video of the Battle of Gettysburg at http://www.destinationgettysburg.com/history-of-gettysburg.asp

Culinary chat rooms clamor with debate over whether couscous is a grain or a pasta.  Let’s resolve the foodie feud by saying that, technically, it’s neither.  Traditionally, couscous was made by rolling moistened semolina (the hard cracked wheat produced by the first crushing in the milling process) in a bowl of flour.  Since it isn’t made with a conventional dough, it’s not a true pasta-and the flour coating takes it past the point of being simply a grain.  Most Western couscous is pre-steamed and requires no actual cooking.  Just soften in boiling water; in minutes, it’s ready to eat.  http://www.gazettetimes.com/lifestyles/food-and-cooking/couscous-it-s-neither-grain-nor-pasta/article_0545407c-c07a-11df-81d8-001cc4c03286.html

An autogyro,also known as gyroplane, gyrocopter, or rotaplane, is a type of rotorcraft which uses an unpowered rotor in autorotation to develop lift, and an engine-powered propeller, similar to that of a fixed-wing aircraft, to provide thrust.  While similar to a helicopter rotor in appearance, the autogyro's rotor must have air flowing through the rotor disc to generate rotation.  Invented by the Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva to create an aircraft that could fly safely at slow speeds, the autogyro was first flown on 9 January 1923, at Cuatro Vientos Airfield in Madrid.  De la Cierva's aircraft resembled the fixed-wing aircraft of the day, with a front-mounted engine and propeller in a tractor configuration to pull the aircraft through the air.  Under license from Cierva in the 1920s and 1930s, the Pitcairn & Kellett companies made further innovations.  Late-model autogyros patterned after Etienne Dormoy's Buhl A-1 Autogyro and Igor Bensen's designs feature a rear-mounted engine and propeller in a pusher configuration.  The term Autogiro was a trademark of the Cierva Autogiro Company, and the term Gyrocopter was used by E. Burke Wilford who developed the Reiseler Kreiser feathering rotor equipped gyroplane in the first half of the twentieth century.  The latter term was later adopted as a trademark by Bensen Aircraft.  Read more, see uses in fiction and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogyro

James Patterson is to target new avenues for selling books with a series of shorter, cheaper novels he is calling BookShots.  In the US, Patterson will publish between two and four of the 150-page, $5 novels a month via publisher Little Brown, telling the New York Times he hopes they might appeal to people who do not normally read at all.  "You can race through these--they're like reading movies," he said.  In the UK, PRH's Cornerstone has confirmed that it will publish BookShots in all its territories, but has so far released no further details.  In the US, the plan is for BookShots to be stocked in the usual booksellers, but according to the NYT Patterson and Little Brown want to target retail outlets that don't usually sell books, such as pharmacists and grocery stores.  "These venues are very inhospitable to traditional publishing, but we think this is a type of book that could work very well there," Hachette Book Group chief executive Michael Pietsch said.  HBG is planning to publish 21 BookShots in 2016, including thrillers, sf, mysteries and romances.  The first two, to be published in June, are Cross Kill starring Alex Cross and Zoo II, an sf thriller written by Patterson with Max DiLallo.  All the books in the BookShots series will be written or co-written by Patterson, aside from the romances, which will be branded "James Patterson Presents."  BookShots will later include non-fiction, "with a focus on short, newsy books that play off current events."   http://www.thebookseller.com/news/patterson-targets-new-readers-brief-bookshots-324793

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1449  March 31, 2016  On this date in 1732, Joseph Haydn, Austrian pianist and composer, was born.   On this date in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was officially opened.  On this date in 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps was established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.