Posts Tagged ‘ABC Wednesday’
May 21st, 2013 | 
Author: 
When I was twelve or thirteen, I had a newspaper route, and thus, my own money, so I joined the Capitol Record Club. For those too young to remember, one would order on a postcard 12 albums for a penny, plus postage and handling; then I had to buy 10 or 12 more at full retail, plus P&H.
Ordering those first dozen albums, I got my first six Beatles albums, plus a Herman’s Hermit album. But what else should I select? One I picked at random was Goldfinger by Billy Strange. It turned out Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | 
Tags: ABC Wednesday, Billy Strange, Capitol Record Club, Goldfinger, James Bond, music | 
14 Comments »
As I’ve undoubtedly noted, the name Roger comes from the Germanic roots meaning spear bearer, specifically “famous with the spear.”
When you think of the first name Roger, who are the first people you think of? (I mean besides me, of course.) That was the question in this segment of the TV show Family Feud; I’m sorry it is incomplete.
Here’s a list of celebrities whose first names are Roger. The ones that immediately came to mind are some Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: ABC Wednesday, baseball, Constitution, football, movies, music, Pink Floyd, racism, religion, Rhode Island, Roger B. Taney, Roger Clements, Roger Federer, Roger Moore, Roger Rabbit, Roger Staubach, Roger Waters, Roger Williams, slavery, sports, Supreme Court, tennis, Who Framed Roger Rabbit |
31 Comments »
I love the fact that many words we use every day come from literature. The notion of quixotism “appeared after the publication of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha in 1605. Don Quixote, the hero of this novel, written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, dreams up a romantic ideal world which he believes to be real, and acts on this idealism…”
Merriam-Webster’s first definition of quixotic is “foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals.” I happen Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: ABC Wednesday, books, Man of La Mancha, movies, musical, plays, quest, quixotic, The Impossible Dream |
31 Comments »
Poland 1920-1939
1971 edition
From this PBS story from December 2012 entitled American Voices: Judy Norsigian-
The Library of Congress recently named Our Bodies, Ourselves as one of 88 books that shaped America. It’s had a profound impact on our consciousness, on the ability of women to see the importance of asking questions, not to just take whatever a doctor says.
Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s…there was so little information, even college educated women knew very little about our bodies, about pregnancy, about birth, about birth control.
Read the rest of this entry »
You are almost certainly familiar with the music from The Nutcracker, a two-act ballet, with “a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on Sunday, 18 December 1892… Although the original production was not a success, the twenty-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was.” Jaquandor shared a link to all the music.
The Nutcracker Suite is also “an album by American pianist, composer and bandleader Duke Ellington recorded… in 1960 featuring jazz interpretations of ‘The Nutcracker’ by Tchaikovsky, arranged by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized |
Tags: ABC Wednesday, dance, music, Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky |
25 Comments »
I have this friend Bruce who turned 70 late last year. I’ve only known him about a decade, so I didn’t know him when he was raising his children. At his party, I learned that one of the primary messages to his kids was that “math is everywhere.” I definitely believe that.
I’ve been hooked on numbers ever since I realized that if you add up the digits in a long number and the total adds up to 9, the number is divisible by 9. Obviously that same number, if even, is divisible by 18. If it ends with a 5, is divisible by 45, and if it ends with a zero, is divisible by 90. My daughter thinks multiplying by 9 is cool too. You multiply by 10, then subtract the number you multiplied by. So 7X9=7X10-7X1=70-7=63.
I was also fascinated that 5X5=25 and 6X4=24, 6X6=36 and 7X5=35, et al. Thus Y squared =(Y+1) (Y-1) +1. So I know if 123 squared=15129, then I know that 124×122=15128. My daughter is starting to figure this out, too.
Speaking of The Daughter, this problem in her third grade math homework really bugged me. Read the rest of this entry »