Originally intended as a
small part of the Peace Day events of July 1919, The
Cenotaph in Whitehall, London, was designed and built by Edwin Lutyens at
the request of the then Prime Minister Lloyd George. The Cenotaph--which literally means Empty
Tomb in Greek---was initially a wood and plaster construction intended for the
first anniversary of the Armistice in 1919.
At its unveiling the base of the monument was spontaneously covered in
wreaths to the dead and missing from The Great War. Such was the extent of public enthusiasm for
the construction it was decided that The Cenotaph should become a permanent and
lasting memorial. The Cenotaph, made
from Portland stone, was unveiled in 1920. The inscription reads simply "The
Glorious Dead". Services of Remembrance are held at war memorials
and cenotaphs throughout Britain and the Commonwealth nations. While the style and size of these memorials
vary considerably from place to place, an exact replica of Lutyens' Cenotaph
stands proudly in London, Canada. http://www.bbc.co.uk/remembrance/how/cenotaph.shtml
Portland Stone
(quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset) is a type of limestone which formed
slowly over the last 150 million years or so as tiny grains of
sediment grew and compacted. It is very
similar to Bath Stone, but has a subtly unique texture, grain and colour. Portland Stone is actually a family of
closely related limestone variants, each owing their subtle unique qualities to
the age of the stone. The three variants
are: Basebed--the most pure of colour
and grain (from the bottom layers of Portland Stone when quarried i.e. the
oldest); Whitbed--slightly more textured and with a touch more variation in the
colour; Roach--the youngest Portland Stone (from the top layer) with the most
colour variation and texture, often including impressions of shells and other
marine life. While the different
variants have these distinct qualities, they all share some common
characteristics too: They are all
off-white to light grey, notably uniform in colour but interspersed with small
dark specks, or ‘grain’. Used since
Roman times, Portland Stone has been a hugely popular building material particularly
where the desired architectural effect was one of grandeur. It has notably been used in political,
financial, regal, civil and commemorative architecture. In fact a staggering number of hugely
significant buildings—particularly in London—were constructed with Portland
Stone between the mid-1700’s and the 1930’s.
It was popularised by Sir Christopher Wren, who is accredited with
having rebuilt over 50 churches in London after the Great Fire. His masterpiece was St. Paul’s Cathedral,
which was constructed in Portland Stone and completed in 1711. Other
famous London landmarks constructed in Portland Stone include: Buckingham Palace, Palace of Westminster, The
Cenotaph, Bank of England, Tower of London, and London Bridge.
The myth of the
pineapple as a symbol of hospitality is a
powerful one. You hear it in most historic houses, usually in a dining
room or bedroom when the tour guide points to a pineapple table centerpiece or
a pineapply-carved bedpost and explains that the pineapple was served to guests
as an expression of hospitality because it was so rare. Rare it was
indeed, and relatively expensive, coming all the way from the West Indian
tropics to American ports—the pineapple would have been a treat on any early
American table. But there is not a shred
of evidence that anyone at the time thought of the fruit as a symbol of
hospitality. That idea came much later,
in fact, not until the early twentieth century.
So how did this widely believed myth get started? Early
Spanish and Portuguese explorers were the first Europeans to discover the
pineapple, called na-na, by the natives.
The Portuguese ananaz and the French ananas no doubt derive from
this native word, but the English called the new fruit a “pine-apple,” a word
heretofore interchangeable with “pine-cone,” because it so resembled the
pinecones they already knew. The pinecone had strong and ancient ties to
Dionysus, the Greek god of wine—Bacchus to the Romans—who carried a thyrsus, a
staff entwined with grape vines and topped by a pinecone. (That
association related to the use of pine resin in the making of wine, Bacchus’s
favorite beverage.) Ever since classical
times, the pinecone has symbolized fertility and regeneration and it has been
used over the centuries as a decorative motif. It is really the pinecone
that the colonists were using in their decorative arts, evoking the classical
symbolism that they, educated in the classics, understood very well.
Amateur historian Melvin Fulks, who has spent decades gathering information
about the origins of pineapple/pinecone symbolism, says that the earliest
incidence of the “pineapple as hospitality” story he has been able to find
comes from a 1935 book about Hawaii, a Dole publication encouraging people to
eat canned pineapple and visit lovely Hawaii.
Mary Miley Theobald https://historymyths.wordpress.com/tag/hospitality-and-pineapples/
Congressional Redistricting Law: Background and Recent Court Rulings by L. Paige Whitaker, Legislative Attorney March 23, 2017 Congressional Research Service 7-5700
www.crs.gov R44798 Read 20-page report
at https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44798.pdf
After a one-year hiatus,
Washington, DC returns to the top spot in the 13th annual
survey of America’s Most Literate Cities by
Central Connecticut State University. The
study is conducted by Dr. Jack Miller, president emeritus of Central. It reports on a key measure of America’s
social health by ranking the reading habits and resources of the nation’s 82
largest cities. The top 10 cities this
year are: Washington, D.C., Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco,
Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., Cincinnati, St. Paul and Boston. The complete rankings are available online
at: www.ccsu.edu/AMLC2016. According to Miller, being literate involves
far more than being able to read. It
involves actually reading. Do people in
a city support bookstores, do they have an excellent library system, do they
read a local newspaper, do they practice online literacy, and so on.
The 'Grammar Vigilante': Defender Of Truth, Justice And The Grammarian Way by Colin Dwyer The campaign began under cover of darkness. It opened with a skirmish or two in Bristol more than a decade ago—a superfluous apostrophe scratched off a street sign here, a possessive rendered plural with the stroke of some tape there. But now, the battle between one mysterious man and the grammatical mistakes besieging the British city has spilled into the harsh light of international media. The BBC says it has discovered the identity of the "Banksy of punctuation"—a mild-mannered engineer by day, who by night transforms (presumably in a telephone booth) into the intrepid superhero of sentences everywhere. The network will not reveal his identity, but it says he has allowed reporters on something of a ride-along, to watch him as he moves from sign to sign to put apostrophes in their proper places. "I'm a grammar vigilante. I do take it to heart—I think it's a cause worth pursuing," he told the BBC, in a documentary called The Apostrophiser airing April 3, 2017 on BBC Radio Four. "People might say what I am doing is wrong, but it is more of a crime to have the apostrophes wrong in the first place." The documentary borrows its name from the man's device of choice: the long-handled "apostrophizer," which he uses to reach otherwise unreachable surfaces . . . . and apply tape to them. With it, he can add or cover up apostrophes that have lost their way. As soon as the documentary was announced, people around the world stretched out their arms in relief and celebration—by immediately addressing the masked man with requests to come fix the local mistakes that have been plaguing them. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/03/522463016/the-grammar-vigilante-defender-of-truth-justice-and-the-grammarian-way Thank you, Muse reader!
When life gives you scraps, make quilts https://www.jigidi.com/jigsaw-puzzle/9T8KQ81L/When-life-gives-you-scraps
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1688
April 5, 2017 On this date in
1710, the Statute of Anne received
the Royal Assent establishing the Copyright
law of the United Kingdom. On
this date in 1722, Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovered Easter Island.
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