Rings of Earth

Found on Reddit.

Want to Listen For Free?

Go to any of these sites for free audio books:
Librivox, ProjectGutenburg, LearnOutLoud, Audible, BooksShouldBeFree, ListenToGenius, LiteralSystems, InternetArchive, FreeClassicAudioBooks and LoudLit.

Unfriend

Created by Wordle

Check out the Word of the Year at the Oxford University Press.

The Hilarious Mr. Bean

Thanks to Library Link of the Day

All For the Best

Hide and Seek - Lyrics and Music by Imogen Heap
where are we?
what the hell is going on?
the dust has only just begun to form
crop circles in the carpet
sinking feeling

spin me round again
and rub my eyes,
this can't be happening
when busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
all those years
they were here first

oily marks appear on walls
where pleasure moments hung before the takeover,
the sweeping insensitivity of this still life

hide and seek
trains and sewing machines (oh, you won't catch me around here)
blood and tears (hearts)
they were here first

Paying It Forward

Read my entire column in the Norwood Bulletin and Transcript this week.

Last month I wrote about Ben Franklin in my column about Daylight Savings Time. Imagine my surprise when I would come across Ben again in this week’s research.
Franklin’s wisdom and understanding of paying it forward was exemplified in April of 1784 when he wrote in a letter to a Benjamin Webb: “I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money.”
(And while Ben Franklin gets the credit for writing the letter above we must give credit where credit is due. Robert Heinlein actually coined the phrase, “paying it forward” in his book “Between Planets,” in 1951.)

Eating Crow

One of our newest books in the library is the just-published “I’m Not Hanging Noodles In Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World,” by Jag Bhalla. The useful information in this book might be learning what not to say. The cover of the book includes the information that the expression (in Bengali) of “thighs shaped like banana trees” is a compliment to women.

One might avoid the expression in this country, however.

Some of my favorite expressions explained in Bhalla’s book are Hindi. To address the ground? To be dejected. To loosen the turban? To be crestfallen. To drink a mouthful of blood? Essentially, to eat crow. In any language it’s a humiliating experience.

Read my entire column this week in the Norwood Bulletin and Record.