U.S. States 21-30, Illinois through Wisconsin

21	Illinois  Illinois comes from the word Illini, a confederation of the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Moingwena, Peoria and Tamaroa Indian tribes.	December 3, 1818
22	Alabama Alabama means "tribal town" in the language of the local Creek Indians	December 14, 1819
23	Maine Maine refers to the mainland.	March 15, 1820
24	Missouri Missouri was named for an Algonquian Indian word that means "river of the big canoes."	August 10, 1821
25	Arkansas Arkansas is from the Quapaw (Sioux) word "acansa," which means "downstream place" or "south wind."	June 15, 1836
26	Michigan Michigan is from an Algonquian Chippewa Indian word "meicigama" that means "big sea wate" (referring to the Great Lakes).	January 26, 1837
27	Florida Ponce de Leon named the state "Pascua de Florida," meaning "Feast of Flowers" and claimed it for Spain	March 3, 1845
28	Texas The Caddo Indians of eastern Texas called their group of tribes the "Tejas," meaning "those who are friends".	December 29, 1845
29	Iowa The name Iowa comes from Ioway, the French word for the Bah-kho-je Indian tribe that lived in the area.	December 28, 1846
30	Wisconsin Wisconsin is from an Indian word, but the origin is uncertain. It is perhaps an Algonquian Indian word that means "long river," a Chippewa/Ojibwa/Anishinabe word, "Ouisconsin," that means "grassy place," or "gathering of the waters."	May 29, 1848

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/usa/states/statehood.shtml

The Suwannee River area has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years.  During the first millennium AD it was inhabited by the people of the Weedon Island archaeological culture, and around 900 a derivative local culture, known as the Suwanee River Valley culture, developed.  By the 16th century the river was inhabited by two closely related Timucua tribes: the Yustaga, who lived on the west side of the river, and the Northern Utina, who lived on the east side.  Jerald Milanovich states that "Suwannee" developed through "San Juan-ee" from the 17th-century Spanish mission of San Juan de Guacara, located on the river known to the Spanish as "Guacara".  William Bright says the name "Suwanee" comes from the name of a Cherokee village, .  This river is the subject of the Stephen Foster song "Old Folks at Home," in which he calls it the Swanee River.  Foster had named the Pedee River of South Carolina in his first lyrics.  It was called Swanee River because Foster had misspelled the name.  When crossing the river by car today, the sign greeting visitors announces that they are crossing the Historic Suwannee River, complete with the first line of sheet music from the song.  "Old Folks at Home" is the state song of Florida, designated as such in 1935.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suwannee_River 

"On, Wisconsin!" is the fight song of the Wisconsin Badgers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.  With modified lyrics, it is also the official state song of Wisconsin.  "On, Wisconsin!" was also the cry that Arthur MacArthur, Jr. used in the Battle of Chattanooga at Missionary Ridge, in the Civil War.  The tune was composed in 1909 by William T. Purdy, with the intention of entering it into a competition for a new fight song at the University of Minnesota.  Carl Beck, a former University of Wisconsin–Madison student, convinced him to withdraw it from the contest at the last minute and allow his alma mater to use it instead.  Beck then wrote the original, football-oriented lyrics, changing the words "Minnesota, Minnesota" to "On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin.  The lyrics were rewritten for the state song in 1913 by Judge Charles D. Rosa and J. S. Hubbard.  The song was widely recognized as the state song at that time, but was never officially designated.  Finally in 1959, "On, Wisconsin!" was codified in Chapter 170, Laws of 1959, and is incorporated in Section 1.10 of the statutes.  "On, Wisconsin!" was regarded by John Philip Sousa as "the finest of college marching songs".  It has become one of the most popular fight songs in the country, with some 2,500 schools using some variation of it as their school song.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On,_Wisconsin!

Word Craft by Lee Child   Every word in a book—dialogue or not—must propel the reader irresistibly forward.  I take a lot from rock 'n' roll lyrics.  I want that kind of subliminal, pulsing backbeat.  Think about this line from Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode": "There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood."  "Made of earth and wood" is a luxury in such a fast, tight song.  But the extra words throw the whole thing forward, to what we know is going to be a rhyme. They build a flowing momentum.  Dialogue in novels doesn't—shouldn't—rhyme.  But I try to capture the same kind of momentum.  In my latest novel, my longtime protagonist Jack Reacher advises an FBI agent to place a precautionary phone call.  She replies: "You mean, if we fail to get the job done and I'm the only survivor?"  "Obviously there's a number of possible outcomes."  "And that's one of them?"  "That's two of them.  We might fail to get the job done with no survivors."  I hoped that the three internal "rhymes" in that passage—done, one, done—would serve as little motors to speed the reader to the end of the chapter, as well as raising the narrative stakes in the conventional literary sense.  And, of course, rhythm—and the characterization of a taciturn man—sometimes calls for silent beats.  Hence a frequent line of "dialogue" in all my books:  "Reacher said nothing."  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444004704578030890808804084.html

An Israeli judge has ruled that a huge trove of documents written by Franz Kafka and his friend Max Brod that have been hidden from view for decades must be turned over to Israel’s national library, which plans to publish them online.  The ruling, made public on October 14, came after a lengthy legal battle that divided literary scholars around the world and pitted the government of Israel against the reclusive daughter of Mr. Brod’s former secretary, who had possession of the papers and sold some of them for millions of dollars.  When Mr. Brod, who had been the administrator of Kafka’s estate, died in 1968, he bequeathed to his secretary, Esther Hoffe, his and Kafka’s papers.  Ms. Hoffe stashed them in her Tel Aviv apartment, where a scholar was last permitted to examine them in the 1980s; in 1988, she sold Kafka’s manuscript for “The Trial” for $2 million.  When she died in 2007, the materials passed to her daughters.  One of them, Eva Hoffe, said in a 2008 interview that she was destitute and saw Mr. Brod’s archive as her only asset; she said she wanted to write a book about Mr. Brod.  The German Literary Archive had supported her legal position, demanding the right to purchase the papers.  But Judge Kopelman Pardo rejected Ms. Hoffe’s claim that the papers were a gift from Mr. Brod to her mother, instead viewing them as a trust she was to administer.  The judge noted that Mr. Brod’s 1948 will instructed that his archive go to a “public Jewish library or archive in Palestine,” and that he later specified Hebrew University, where Israel’s national library is housed.  Ms. Hoffe plans to appeal the decision, her lawyer said.   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/woman-must-relinquish-kafka-papers-judge-says.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper 

Nobel prizes 2012  http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/year/?year=2012

NPR’s “Morning Edition” has one of the most peculiar formats of any morning show on radio or television:  it’s split between the East Coast, with the co-host Steve Inskeep in Washington, and the West, with Renee Montagne.  The director cues Ms. Montagne through a videoconferencing system, and the co-hosts routinely add what they call “splits” to their scripts, so that they share the responsibility for introductions and interviews.  “We are functionally sitting next to one another,” Ms. Montagne said, yet by staying on separate coasts, they are reflecting the audience’s geographic diversity.  The format is working for “Morning Edition,” the highest-rated news program on radio, which is holding onto its audience at a time when declines are the norm across the fractionalized media landscape.  The program is adapting to the Web by letting listeners download episodes to music.  Each day, the audience is 6.6 million, a number that compares favorably to the two biggest morning shows on television, ABC’s “Good Morning America” and NBC’s “Today.”  Each of those shows averages four million to five million viewers a day.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/business/media/nprs-morning-edition-broadcast-by-a-bicoastal-team.html?pagewanted=1&ref=todayspaper

The rise of license-plate tracking is a case study in how storing and studying people's everyday activities, even the seemingly mundane, has become the default rather than the exception.  Cellphone-location data, online searches, credit-card purchases, social-network comments and more are gathered, mixed-and-matched, and stored in vast databases.  Data about a typical American is collected in more than 20 different ways during everyday activities, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.  During the past five years, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has distributed more than $50 million in federal grants to law-enforcement agencies—ranging from sprawling Los Angeles to little Crisp County, Ga., pop. 23,000—for automated license-plate recognition systems.  A 2010 study estimates that more than a third of large U.S. police agencies use automated plate-reading systems.  The information captured is considerable.  Through a public-records act request, The Journal obtained two years' worth of plate information from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department in California.  From Sept. 10, 2010, to Aug. 27, 2012, the sheriff's cameras captured about 6 million license-plate scans. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578004723603576296.html

The Federal Voting Assistance Program at the Pentagon and other groups have been working recently to make it easier for overseas Americans and those in the military to register to vote online and to download their ballots.  The question is whether it's safe to return the voted ballot online.  Some election officials say it's a trade-off between security and convenience.  Bob Carey, director of FVAP, told a group of bloggers in October that there are risks to online voting, but also "inherent security risks with the current system," such as people not getting their ballots on time and losing the opportunity to vote.  Carey added that "there's not going to be any electronic voting system that's ever going to be 100 percent secure, but also the current paper-based system is not 100 percent reliable either."  The Pentagon is exploring the possibility of expanding e-voting opportunities for the military and overseas Americans.  A handful of states are also considering pilot programs that would allow voters to vote directly online, as West Virginia did in 2010.  The District of Columbia had to cancel its online voting plans in 2010 after University of Michigan computer experts were able to infiltrate the system and remotely change votes.  http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/03/29/149634764/online-voting-premature-warns-government-cybersecurity-expert

In June 2010, the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation announced that it had been selected by the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics (BOEE) to support a project to allow Internet voting for military and overseas voters, starting with the upcoming September primary.  The BOEE had optimistically planned a "public review period" in advance of the primary in which everyone was invited to try to attack the system in a mock election.  While the system was not ready for the primary, a public test was eventually scheduled to run from September 28 to October 6, with midterm election voting scheduled to begin October 11 or 12. 

The break-in.  By October 1 people testing the system reported hearing the University of Michigan fight song following a 15-second pause after they submitted their ballots.  A Michigan team had taken over the system within 36 hours of the start of the tests by exploiting a shell-injection vulnerability, thereby gaining almost total control over the BOEE server.  The attackers remained in control for two business days, until the BOEE halted the test after noon on October 1.   An attacker intent on subverting a real election would not leave such an obvious calling card.  The delay between the break-in and the shutdown of the system reveals how difficult it is to determine that a break-in has occurred, even when the "culprits" announce themselves with music.  Read entire article, Internet Voting in the U.S. by Barbara Simons and Douglas W. Jones, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 55 No. 10, Pages 68-77 at:  http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/10/155536-internet-voting-in-the-us/fulltext

A federal judge on October 10 threw out a copyright infringement lawsuit against universities that participated in a massive book-digitization project in conjunction with Google without permission from rights holders.  U.S. District Judge Harold Baer of New York dismissed an infringement lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and other writers’ guilds, saying the universities had a fair use defense.  The guild accused the University of California, University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, Cornell University and University of Michigan of wanton copyright infringement for scanning and placing the books into the so-called HathiTrust Digital Library.  The trust consists of 10 million digital volumes, 73 percent of which are protected by copyright.  The trust provides full-text searches only with a rights holder’s permission, and gives full-text access for readers with “certified print disabilities,” Baer said.  Google has scanned the books for the universities as part of its Google Books project.  The Authors Guild is suing Google in related litigation, which is stalled on appeal.  Several publishers, also suing Google, settled with Google last week for undisclosed terms.  Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement and may be invoked for purposes such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research, the judge noted.  He said the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) also played a major factor.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/fair-use-book-scanning/

Tucked into the U.S. Supreme Court’s busy agenda this fall is a little-known case that could upend your ability to resell everything from your grandmother’s antique furniture to your iPhone 4.  At issue in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law, which allows you to buy and then sell things like electronics, books, artwork and furniture as well as CDs and DVDs, without getting permission from the copyright holder of those products.  Under the doctrine, which the Supreme Court has recognized since 1908, you can resell your stuff without worry because the copyright holder only had control over the first sale.  Put simply, though Apple has the copyright on the iPhone and Mark Owen does on the book “No Easy Day,” you can still sell your copies to whomever you please whenever you want without retribution.  

That’s being challenged now for products that are made abroad and if the Supreme Court upholds an appellate court ruling it would mean that the copyright holders of anything you own that has been made in China, Japan or Europe, for example, would have to give you permission to sell it.  http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-10-04/finance/34240922_1_copyright-iphone-john-wiley-sons
 

The Facts So Far from http://facethefactsusa.org/facts-so-far/   "Face the Facts USA delivers provocative facts about big issues to help Americans debunk myths, hold better conversations, get involved, and make choices as smarter citizens."  See 100 facts unfold leading up the election.

A federal appeals court ruled October 11 http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/12a0359p-06.pdf that Ohio boards of elections must count provisional ballots with errors caused by poll workers.  The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit was the second major voting-related court decision in as many days.  On October 10, a special three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., blessed South Carolina’s voter new identification law but suspended its enforcement until after the 2012 elections, to give the state time to educate voters and fully implement the measure.  The Ohio ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by a union and two community groups in June seeking to block enforcement of a law that, as interpreted by the state’s Supreme Court, allowed elections boards to throw out provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct.  A federal judge ruled in August that the measure was likely unconstitutional, prompting the state to appeal to the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit.  Voters can cast provisional ballots if their name isn’t on the voter registration list in their precinct on Election Day.  The state counts them later, when the voters’ information is verified.  The appeals court ruled that the state must count provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct but at the right polling place, as long as the error was the fault of a poll worker.  (Some polling places serve voters from several precincts.)  A federal district court found that Ohio rejected more than 14,000 wrong-precinct ballots in 2008 and 11,000 more in 2010.  http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/10/11/sixth-circuit-ohio-must-count-votes-cast-in-wrong-precinct/?mod=djemlawblog_h

Faking It:  Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

Metropolitan Museum of Art  in New York  October 11, 2012–January 27, 2013
The urge to modify camera images is as old as photography itself—only the methods have changed.  Nearly every type of manipulation we now associate with digital photography was also part of the medium's pre-digital repertoire: smoothing away wrinkles, slimming waistlines, adding people to a scene (or removing them)—even fabricating events that never took place.  This international loan exhibition traces the history of manipulated photography from the 1840s through the early 1990s, when the computer replaced manual techniques as the dominant means of doctoring photographs.  Most of the two hundred pictures on view were altered after the negative was exposed—through photomontage, combination printing, overpainting, retouching, or, as is often the case, a blend of several processes.  In every instance, the final image differs significantly from what stood before the camera at any given moment.  Through today's eyes, we can see that the old adage "the camera never lies" has always been photography's supreme fiction.  See images at:  http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/faking-it

Almost a decade after the last family farm within New York City’s boundaries closed, basil and bok choy are growing in Brooklyn, and tomatoes, leeks and cucumbers in Queens.  Commercial agriculture is bound for the South Bronx, where the city recently solicited proposals for what would be the largest rooftop farm in the United States, and possibly the world.   Fed by the interest in locally grown produce, the new farm operations in New York are selling greens and other vegetables by the boxful to organically inclined residents, and by the bushel to supermarket chains like Whole Foods.  The main difference between this century and previous ones is location:  whether soil-based or hydroponic, in which vegetables are grown in water rather than soil, the new farms are spreading on rooftops, perhaps the last slice of untapped real estate in the city.   “In terms of rooftop commercial agriculture, New York is definitely a leader at this moment,” said Joe Nasr, co-author of “Carrot City: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture” and a researcher at the Centre for Studies in Food Security at Ryerson University in Toronto.  “I expect it will continue to expand, and much more rapidly, in the near future.”  For city officials, the rise of commercial agriculture has ancillary benefits, as well.  Rooftop farms have the potential to capture millions of gallons of storm water and divert it from the sewer system, which can overflow when it rains.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/nyregion/in-rooftop-farming-new-york-city-emerges-as-a-leader.html

Queens County Farm Museum's history dates back to 1697; it occupies New York City's largest remaining tract of undisturbed farmland and is the only working historical farm in the City.  The farm encompasses a 47-acre parcel that is the longest continuously farmed site in New York State.  The site includes historic farm buildings, a greenhouse complex, livestock, farm vehicles and implements, planting fields, an orchard, herb garden and vineyard.  http://www.queensfarm.org/

Archaeologists suspect that archery may have begun up to 15,000 years ago, but the earliest concrete evidence is between 8,000 and 9,000 years old.  The bow probably originated for use in hunting, and was then adopted as a tool of warfare.  Archery was practiced in antiquity on every continent except Australia.  Classical civilizations, notably the Macedonians/Greeks, Iranian Parthianns, Indians and Chinese, fielded large numbers of archers in their armies.  Arrows proved exceptionally destructive against massed formations, and the use of archers often proved decisive.  Archers sometimes rode on horseback, combining range with speed. Apollo, Odysseus, and other mythological characters are often depicted with a bow.  The phrase "A parting shot" comes from 'The Parthian shot' as a rider turned in the saddle to shoot as he rode away from the enemy.  The term "Second String" (or the phrase 'to have more than one string to your bow') derives from the fact that medieval archers would carry a second string in the event that their "first string" snapped.  http://www.boredgourd.com/activity/172/archery.html

“The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule.” 123 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1474 (1975)  The note, written by William S. Stevens when he was a law student at the University of Pennsylvania, was an immediate sensation.  It was cited in judicial opinions within a year of publication, and it is credited with inspiring the law and baseball movement, “a thriving branch of legal studies devoted to the law and its social context,” as The New York Times described it.   http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/10/08/the-infield-fly-rule-and-the-law/

Read the 8-page article published anonymously at:  http://www.pennumbra.com/issues/pdfs/157-1/Infield_Fly_Rule.pdf
The infield fly rule is a rule in baseball intended to prevent infielders from intentionally dropping pop-ups in order to turn double plays (or triple plays).  Without this rule, a defense could easily turn a pop fly into a double play when there are runners at first and second base.  If the runners stay near their bases to tag up, the defense could let the ball drop, throw to third base and then to second, for a force-out at each base.  If any of the runners stray too far from their bases, the defense could catch the pop-up, and double-off any runner that failed to tag up.
When the rule is invoked, the batter is out (and all force plays removed) regardless of whether the ball is caught, thus negating the possibility for multiple outs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infield_fly_rule
Read about American lawyer William Stanley Stevens (c. 1948 – December 8, 2008) here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Stevens
 

THOMPSON, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, et al. v. WESTERN STATES MEDICAL CENTER et al.  certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit  No. 01-344.  Argued February 26, 2002--Decided April 29, 2002

Drug compounding is a process by which a pharmacist or doctor combines, mixes, or alters ingredients to create a medication tailored to an individual patient's needs.  The Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997 (FDAMA) exempts "compounded drugs" from the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) standard drug approval requirements under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), so long as the providers of the compounded drugs abide by several restrictions, including that the prescription be "unsolicited," 21 U. S. C. §353a(a), and that the providers "not advertise or promote the compounding of any particular drug, class of drug, or type of drug," §353a(c).  Respondents, a group of licensed pharmacies that specialize in compounding drugs, sought to enjoin enforcement of the advertising and solicitation provisions, arguing that they violate the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.  The District Court agreed and granted respondents summary judgment, holding that the provisions constitute unconstitutional restrictions on commercial speech under Central Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp. v. Public Serv. Comm'n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 557, 566.  Affirming in relevant part, the Ninth Circuit held that the restrictions in question fail Central Hudson's test because the Government had not demonstrated that the restrictions would directly advance its interests or that alternatives less restrictive of speech were unavailable. 

Held:  The FDAMA's prohibitions on soliciting prescriptions for, and advertising, compounded drugs amount to unconstitutional restrictions on commercial speech.  Read entire case at:  http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=01-344

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who helped design Beijing's Olympic Stadium and has since drawn tough scrutiny for his political activism, is opening the first North American retrospective exhibition of his work in Washington.  The show is on view through February before traveling to Indianapolis, Toronto, Miami and New York City.  "Ai Weiwei: According to What?" takes up an entire floor of the Hirshhorn Museum with the outspoken artist's photographs, videos, sculptures, installations and, on the walls, thought-provoking quotations.  It also features 7,000 digital photographs -- many of them inoffensive snapshots of his cats -- that Ai would have shown the world via the Internet had the Chinese government not shut down his access to social media.  It includes new works created since the last major exhibition in Tokyo.  One piece involves 3,200 porcelain crabs called "He Xie."  The Chinese words for river crab sound like the Chinese word for "harmonious," part of the Communist Party's slogan of "the realization of a harmonious society."  The term has become Internet slang for online censorship.  Several works emerged from Ai's response to the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008 that killed more than 5,000 children in poorly constructed schools that collapsed.  One wall lists all of their names.  A snake on the ceiling is made of children's backpacks in their honor.  And a sculptural piece, entitled "Straight," was created from 38 tons of twisted steel from collapsed buildings.   Visitors will find a photo montage covering the gallery's walls and floors of the "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium under construction.  Smithsonian leaders celebrated the exhibit's opening in the U.S. political capital near diplomats from more than 200 countries.  Hirshhorn Director Richard Koshalek called it one of the museum's most important installations.  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/chinese-artist-ai-weiwei-smithsonian-showcase-article-1.1176014

Canajoharie is a village in the town of Canajoharie in Montgomery County, New York.  As of the 2010 census, the village had a population of 2,229.  The name is said to be an Iroquois term meaning "the pot that washes itself," a reference to the "Canajoharie Boiling Pot," a circular gorge in the Canajoharie Creek, just south of the village.  The village of Canajoharie is at the north border of the Town of Canajoharie and is east of Utica and west of Amsterdam.  Canajoharie is home to one of at least three operating "dummy-lights" in the United States, located downtown at the intersection of Church, Mohawk and Montgomery Streets.  It is a traffic signal on a pedestal which sits in the middle of an intersection, first installed in 1926. The other two are also located in New York State, in Beacon and Croton-on-Hudson.  The Erie Canal passes the north side of the village.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canajoharie_(village),_New_York 

Arkell Museum at Canajoharie  Bartlett Arkell, the founder and first president of the Beech-Nut Packing Company built the original Canajoharie Gallery in 1927 based on galleries he had experienced in his travels to Europe.  A museum designed by Ann Beha and DesignLAB Architects was added in 2007 to the existing Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery to provide inspiring new space for exhibitions and programs.  Almost all of the paintings in the permanent collection were purchased by Bartlett Arkell for the people of Canajoharie. The American painting collection includes 21 works by Winslow Homer, and significant paintings by many distinguished artists, including George Inness, William M. Chase, Childe Hassam, Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Robert Henri, and other members of The Eight.  Permanent and changing exhibitions also feature selections from the museum’s Mohawk Valley History collection as well as the Beech-Nut archives of early twentieth-century advertising material.  http://www.arkellmuseum.org/  See also:  Hidden in the Valley  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443884104577647630328919876.html?mod=ITP_personaljournal_2

Lettuce (Lactuca sativa) is an annual plant of the aster or sunflower family Asteraceae.  It is most often grown as a leaf vegetable, but sometimes for its stem and seeds.  Lettuce was first cultivated by the ancient Egyptians who turned it from a weed, whose seeds were used to make oil, into a plant grown for its leaves.  Lettuce spread to the Greeks and Romans, the latter of whom gave it the name "lactuca", from which the English "lettuce" ultimately derived.   The species was first described in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus in the second volume of his Species Plantarum.  The Romans referred to lettuce as lactuca (lac meaning milk in Latin), an allusion to the white substance, now called latex, exuded by cut stems.  This word has become the genus name, while sativa (meaning "sown" or "cultivated") was added to create the species name.  The current word lettuce, originally from Middle English, came from the Old French letues or laitues, which derived from the Roman name.  The name romaine came from that type's use in the Roman papal gardens, while cos, another term for romaine lettuce, came from the earliest European seeds of the type from the Greek island of Cos, a center of lettuce farming in the Byzantine period.  Lettuce's native range spreads from the Mediterranean to Siberia, although it has been transported to almost all areas of the world.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettuce

Medigap:  a primer  by Carol Rapaport   

Congressional Research Service 7-5700  www.crs.gov   R42745 

Medicare is a nationwide health insurance program for individuals aged 65 and over and certain
disabled individuals.  The basic Medicare benefit package (termed “Original Medicare” in this
report) provides broad protection against the costs of many, primarily acute, health care services.
However, Medicare beneficiaries may still have significant additional costs, including
copayments, coinsurance, deductibles, and the full cost of services that are not covered by
Medicare.  In 2008, about 17% of Medicare beneficiaries purchased the private supplemental
insurance known as Medigap to fill some of the cost gaps left by Original Medicare.  All Medigap plans cover some percentage of Medicare’s cost-sharing.  Some plans offer additions
to these basics, including various combinations of greater coverage of Medicare cost-sharing, and care associated with foreign travel emergencies.  The most popular plans are the most
comprehensive, and cover all deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance not covered by Medicare.   Medigap generally does not cover medical treatments not covered by Medicare, although it does extend coverage for certain covered services, such as coverage for additional hospital days beyond the Medicare benefit.  Read 32-page report at:  http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42745.pdf

For well over a century and a half the people of Indiana have been called Hoosiers.  It is one of the oldest of state nicknames and has had a wider acceptance than most.  But where did Hoosier come from?  What is its origin?  We know that it came into general usage in the 1830s. John Finley of Richmond wrote a poem, "The Hoosier's Nest," which was used as the "Carrier's Address" of the Indianapolis Journal, Jan. 1, 1833.  It was widely copied throughout the country and even abroad.  Finley originally wrote Hoosier as "Hoosher."  Apparently the poet felt that it was sufficiently familiar to be understandable to his readers.  A few days later, on January 8, 1833, at the Jackson Day dinner at Indianapolis, John W. Davis offered "The Hoosher State of Indiana" as a toast.  And in August, former Indiana governor James B. Ray announced that he intended to publish a newspaper, The Hoosier, at Greencastle, Indiana.  A few instances of the earlier written use of Hoosier have been found.  The word appears in the "Carrier's Address" of the Indiana Democrat on January 3, 1832.  G. L. Murdock wrote on February 11, 1831, in a letter to General John Tipton, "Our Boat will [be] named the Indiana Hoosier."   

Read popular theories of origin of the term at:  http://www.in.gov/history/2612.htm

Q:  Did Ronald Reagan say, "Win one for the Gipper!"?
 A:  Not in "Knute Rockne, All-American" (1940).  It's actor Pat O'Brien who says:  "The last thing George said to me, 'Rock,' he said, 'sometime, when a team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper.'"
O'Brien played Rockne. Reagan played George Gipp. -- Various sources.
Q:  I know what "between the devil and the deep blue sea" means, but what's its origin?
A:  A theory:  The "devil seam" is a curved deckboard near the side of the ship.  If a sailor slipped, he could find himself between the seam and the sea. -- Various sources.
Q:  What part of the world was first called "America"?
A:  The name was first used for central Brazil in honor of Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.  America is the feminine form of his name.   It was applied to the whole western world by Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator in 1538. -- U.S. Archives.  http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2012/Sep/JU/ar_JU_092412.asp?d=092412,2012,Sep,24&c=c_13

Ancient Egyptians did not speak to posterity only through hieroglyphs.  Those elaborate pictographs were the elite script for recording the lives and triumphs of pharaohs in their tombs and on the monumental stones along the Nile.  But almost from the beginning, people in everyday life spoke a different language and wrote a different script, a simpler one that evolved from the earliest hieroglyphs.  These were the words of love and family, the law and commerce, private letters and texts on science, religion and literature.  For at least 1,000 years, roughly from 500 B.C. to A.D. 500, both the language and the distinctive cursive script were known as Demotic Egyptian, a name given it by the Greeks to mean the tongue of the demos, or the common people.  Demotic was one of the three scripts inscribed on the Rosetta stone, along with Greek and hieroglyphs, enabling European scholars to decipher the royal language in the early 19th century and thus read the top-down version of a great civilization’s long history.  Now, scholars at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago have completed almost 40 years of research and published online the final entries of a 2,000-page dictionary that more than doubles the thousands of known Demotic words.  John Noble Wilford  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/new-demotic-dictionary-translates-lives-of-ancient-egyptians.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www