• When he was a child, Daniel Keyes, author of Flowers for Algernon, played at his mother’s beauty shop — their apartment was on the floor above. One day, a mother and her very young daughter came in, and as the mother was getting her hair done, her daughter kept crying. Young Danny tried to play with her, but nothing stopped her crying. Finally, he went upstairs, got an armload of books, and started “reading” one of the books to the young girl, who stopped crying as he said, “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess ….” The girl’s mother was impressed and thought that young Danny could read, even though he was only three and a half years old. She even thought that he was a genius! But of course, there was a trick — his mother had read the books so many times to him that he had memorized them. Later, after Daniel was still very young but had learned how to read, his father ran a junk salvage operation. Sometimes Daniel’s father took him to the junk shop, where he was fascinated by Book Mountain — a huge pile of books that were to be baled, then pulped to make cheap paper. One of Daniel’s treats was to climb Book Mountain, look over the books to see which were worth saving, and take home with him six or seven books to read.
• When she was very little, Sarah Hughes, the gold-winning medalist in women’s figure skating at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, was unwilling to be left behind with a sitter while her mother and older siblings went to interesting places — such as the ice skating rink. If she ever thought that she might be left behind with a sitter, she would dress herself and wait by the door. Eventually, her mother and older siblings would show up and be forced to take little Sarah with them. Being so motivated to skate helped three-year-old Sarah learn things — such as how to tie her shoes. On an early trip to the rink, her mother tied Sarah’s ice skates first, and little Sarah jumped up and ran to the rink, with her mother — who was pregnant — vainly trying to catch up to her. On the next trip to the rink, her mother thought that she would tie Sarah’s ice skates last; that way, Sarah would be forced to wait until her mother could keep an eye on her. It didn’t work. Sarah pulled the laces tight, then concentrated. She figured out how to tie her ice skates, jumped up, and ran to the rink.
• When he was three years old, children’s book author Tomie dePaola attended the birthday party of Buddy, his older brother. For this party, their mother wanted to have a Tiny Tot Wedding, complete with a little groom and a littler bride. However, Buddy didn’t want to be the groom, and since it was his birthday, his mother said that he didn’t have to and she would ask another boy to be the groom. Unfortunately, Buddy got the other boys to say that they didn’t want to be the groom, either. That left young Tomie, who said that he was too short to be the groom — since he was only three years old, that was true. Nevertheless, Buddy and Tomie’s mother was resourceful. Carol Crane, the tallest girl at the party, made a wonderful groom, and standing beside her was a shorter bride. A woman asked Buddy who the pretty little bride was, and he replied, “That bride is my brother.”
• When children’s book author Judy Blume was growing up, she was very much into reading and loved the library. (She even imitated the librarians by pasting card pockets inside the back covers of her personal copies of books.) Her parents encouraged her to read, although her mother told her that she had to be older to read John O’Hara’s A Rage to Live. When Judy was older and a junior in high school, she was delighted to find out that she had to read a book — any book — by John O’Hara, and she marched to the library to borrow A Rage to Live. Unfortunately, the librarian told her that A Rage to Live was on a restricted shelf and so Judy would have to have her mother’s written permission to borrow the book. Judy complained to her family, and her aunt lent her a copy of the book. Judy read it, then she read everything else she could find by Mr. O’Hara.
In the Middle Ages, what precious stone was considered to provide great luck because it was believed to possess all the virtues of each gemstone whose color was represented in it?
In the Middle Ages, opal was considered a stone that could provide great luck because it was believed to possess all the virtues of each gemstone whose color was represented in the color spectrum of the opal. It was also said to grant invisibility if wrapped in a fresh bay leaf and held in the hand. Following the publication of Sir Walter Scott's Anne of Geierstein in 1829, opal acquired a less auspicious reputation. In Scott's novel, the Baroness of Arnheim wears an opal talisman with supernatural powers. When a drop of holy water falls on the talisman, the opal turns into a colorless stone and the Baroness dies soon thereafter. Due to the popularity of Scott's novel, people began to associate opals with bad luck and death. Within a year of the publishing of Scott's novel in April 1829, the sale of opals in Europe dropped by 50%, and remained low for the next 20 years or so.
Opal is considered the birthstone for people born in October.
Source
Mark. was first, and correct, with:
Opal.
Billy in Cypress U.S.A. said:
Opal
Randall wrote:
Opal
Alan J answered:
An Opal.
Jon L replied:
I'm guessing opal.
Dave responded:
Opal.
Cal in Vermont wrote:
I would think the answer is the opal.
Jim from CA, retired to ID, said:
I really hate daylight savings time....In the Middle Ages, opal was considered a stone that could provide great luck because it was believed to possess all the virtues of each gemstone whose color was represented in the color spectrum of the opal.
Deborah, the Master Gardener wrote:
Opal — my birthstone. I have 2 Ethiopian opals that have bright red and brilliant avocado green highlights. If you look at them straight on the colors are muted, milky, but when the light’s right, put your shades on.
Busy weekend…glad to be unwinding to the sound of rain.
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I found a Jessica McClintock dress in a little shop in Alamosa, CO, in July of 1981, barely a month before my wedding. I was familiar with her work, and really liked her floral, wallpaper-adjacent prints. The dress was on closeout and cost a pittance. I love it, I’ve never been that size again, still have it, and now want to have it framed for display.
We were married it Texas and moved to California 5 years after our wedding. Until I read this article, I was unaware the Ms. McClintock was a San Francisco native. *cue creepy music* RIP, Jessica.
“AVOCADO!!!” yelled as a fictional epithet and cry for help in a scene such as the hazing of freshmen in the movie “ANIMAL HOUSE”.
Everyone with the correct answer will get my sincere thanks for their knowledge and their choice of television shows, along with the “Distinguished Service Medal To Informed Citizens” in recognition of their support of our UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, "The Wizard of Oz", and also the GOP who needs the HELP. .
CBS opens the night with a FRESH'The Neighborhood', followed by a FRESH'Bob Hearts Abishola', then a FRESH'All Rise', followed by a FRESH'Bull'.
Scheduled on a FRESHStephen Colbert are Ringo Starr and Eric Andre.
Scheduled on a FRESHJames Corden, OBE, are Venus Williams and Picture This.
NBC begins the night with a FRESH'The Voice', followed by a FRESH'Debris'.
Scheduled on a FRESHJimmy Fallon are John Oliver, Brian Tyree Henry, and Japanese Breakfast.
Scheduled on a FRESHSeth Meyers are Jennifer Garner, Rep. Jamie Raskin, and Valerie June.
Scheduled on a FRESHLilly Singh is M. Night Shyamalan.
Scheduled on a FRESHABC fills the night with a FRESH'The Bachelor'.
Jimmy Kimmel are Gwen Stefani and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
The CW offers a FRESH'Bulletproof', followed by a FRESH'Black Lightning'.
Faux has a RERUN'9-1-1', followed by a FRESH'America's Most Wanted'.
MY recycles an old 'L&O SVU', followed by another old 'L&O: SVU'.
A&E has 'Intervention', another 'Intervention', followed by a FRESH'Intervention'.
AMC offers the movie 'Escape Plan', followed by the movie 'Law Abiding Citizen', then the movie 'Legion'.
BBC -
[6:00AM - 11:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE
[12:00PM - 4:00PM] STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION
[5:00PM - 11:00PM] LAW & ORDER
[12:00AM] GOLDFINGER
[2:30AM] FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
[5:00AM] STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (ALL TIMES ET)
Bravo has 'Below Deck Sailing Yacht', another 'Below Deck Sailing Yacht', followed by a FRESH'Below Deck Sailing Yacht', then a FRESH'Watch What Happens: Live'.
FX has the movie 'Fantastic Four', followed by the movie 'Ghostbusters'.
History has 'American Pickers', another 'American Pickers', followed by a FRESH'American Pickers'.
IFC -
[6:00am - 10:30am] Parks And Recreation
[11:00am - 2:30pm] Saved By The Bell
[3:00pm - 6:30pm] Three's Company
[7:00pm - 12:30am] Two And A Half Men
[1:00am - 2:30am] Three's Company
[3:00am] Baroness Von Sketch Show - Women Love Breadcrumbs
[3:30am - 5:30am] Community (ALL TIMES ET)
Sundance -
[6:00am - 12:00pm] hogan's heroes
[12:30pm] groundhog day
[3:00pm] ghostbusters
[5:30pm] ghostbusters ii
[8:00pm] 48 hrs.
[10:00pm] another 48 hrs.
[12:00am] hoodlum
[3:00am] ministry of evil: the twisted cult of tony alamo - Episode 3
[4:00am] ministry of evil: the twisted cult of tony alamo -Episode 4
[5:02am] gomer pyle, u.s.m.c.
[5:31am] gomer pyle, u.s.m.c. (ALL TIMES ET)
SyFy has the movie 'Cold Pursuit', followed by the movie 'The Fifth Element'.
Newly vaccinated Massachusetts residents were treated to a mini concert over the weekend when famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma brought out his instrument after getting his second coronavirus shot.
A masked-up Ma took a seat along the wall of the observation area Saturday at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield and played for about 15 minutes to applause from the other attendees.
The renowned musician, who lives part-time in the area, said he “wanted to give something back,” The Berkshire Eagle quoted Richard Hall of the Berkshire COVID-19 Vaccine Collaborative as saying.
The quick concert came exactly one year after Ma started posting recordings of himself using the hashtag #SongsOfComfort on social media in an effort to ease anxiety throughout the early days of the pandemic.
Disney's family film Raya and the Last Dragon stayed atop the domestic box office chart in its second weekend with $55 million.
The good news: the computer-animated film fell only 35 percent, while roughly half of indoor theaters in North America are now open. The bad news: capacity is capped at 25 percent at New York City theaters, which began reopening a week ago, while Los Angeles County cinemas won't be back online until this week.
Overseas, Raya grossed another $11.5 million for a subdued global total of $52.6 million. A number of major circuits both abroad and internationally refused to play the title after asking for more lucrative terms since Raya is also available on Disney+ for a premium price of $30.
The biggest headline of the weekend was Avatar, which on Saturday once again became the top-grossing pic of all time at the global box office after getting re-released in China. It reclaimed the crown from Avengers: Endgame on Saturday when jumping the $2.8 billion mark, compared to $2.797 for Endgame.
Back in North America, Warner Bros.' family film Tom & Jerry wasn't far behind Raya, grossing $4.1 million for a domestic total of $28.2 million and $66.9 million globally.
Elvis Presley fans will have a chance to claim a bit of musical history when a guitar used during an iconic performance by the king of rock ‘n’ roll goes up for grabs later this month.
Kruse GWS Auctions is putting the flaming red Hagstrom Viking II guitar on the block.
The instrument was used by Presley during his nationally televised 1968 “Comeback Special” after the star had devoted much of the previous seven years to his movie career.
The eye-catching instrument was also featured on the cover of the “From Elvis in Memphis” album in 1969.
The guitar belonged to American guitarist Al Casey, who was asked by producers to let Elvis use it during his TV special because of the guitar’s flashy and fiery appeal. According to the auctioneers, it has not been offered for auction since the 1990s.
Dressed all in purple, bent-over women held long rakes aloft as they walked in a line to a lavender field to carry out some pruning on an island in southwest South Korea.
Inspired by their native balloon flower, residents of the Banwol and Bakji Islands, known as the 'Purple Islands', have painted their houses, roads and bridges in shades of the hue, and planted purple flowers such as lavender and asters to transform their town into a tourist attraction.
The tiny, tranquil islands have a little over a hundred residents and were picked for a tourism project supported by the government.
Since 2015, Shinan county has invested 4.8 billion won ($4.25 million) to turn the islands purple, including painting more than 28,000 square metres of roofs lilac.
Visitors can walk three purple footbridges connecting the two islands to the larger one near it, with benches decorated with the 'I purple you' slogan made popular by K-pop band BTS' member Kim Tae-hyung, more commonly known as V, which means 'I trust, love and support you.'
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R-Stepford)’s outspoken business-as-usual approach throughout the coronavirus pandemic has made her a darling of national conservatives and allowed her to hopscotch across the country as a fundraising force.
But the public cannot see emails on how she made her decisions or how much state taxpayers are spending for her traveling security detail.
Despite Noem’s 2018 promise “to throw open the doors” of government, the South Dakota governor’s office has denied requests for both records, citing broad exemptions to the state’s sunshine law. Her state is among half a dozen where governors’ offices routinely block access to executive records, keeping the public in the dark about decision making and possible influence peddling by special interests.
In most states, sunshine laws give the public insight into the governor’s decisions. Since last year, governors across the country have provided thousands of pages of emails in response to requests filed by The Associated Press, revealing how some pushed economic interests ahead of public health guidance as they battled the pandemic.
But Noem and governors in five other states — Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, Michigan and New Jersey — have thwarted records requests by citing exemptions.
Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger accused fellow Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of lying "for profit" after she claimed that a House bill would create a "national gun registry".
Mr Kinzinger was responding to a tweet from Ms Greene in which she said: "HR 8 would create a national gun registry, which we all know is the first step towards ‘mandatory buybacks’ aka confiscation.
HR 8 or the "Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021" would establish "new background check requirements for firearm transfers between private parties (i.e., unlicensed individuals)".
It would prohibit "a firearm transfer between private parties unless a licensed gun dealer, manufacturer, or importer first takes possession of the firearm to conduct a background check".
Despite Ms Greene's claims, the bill specifically says: "Nothing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to authorize the establishment, directly or indirectly, of a national firearms registry."
Perched high in the craggy Inyo Mountains, between the dusty Owens Valley floor and Death Valley National Park, looms a rugged, nearly roadless chunk of desert terrain teeming with wildlife and scarred by mining operations.
Conglomerate Mesa’s charcoal smelters helped give birth 150 years ago to the nearby rip-roaring silver town of Cerro Gordo, where ingots were produced and shipped off to the small pueblo of Los Angeles by steamboat and a 20-mule team.
Now, the 22,500-acre tableau of Joshua trees, pińon pines and limestone boulders bristling with fossil shells is turning to mining again. Spurred by the rising price of gold, K2 Gold Corp., of Vancouver, Canada, is drilling and trenching in hopes of selling its findings or partnering with a bigger company that would, perhaps, transform the public lands into an open pit cyanide heap leach mine, just a few miles from Death Valley.
But environmental groups and tribal nations have drawn a line in the alluvial sands overlooking the community of Lone Pine, population 2,000, on the eastern flanks of the Sierra Nevada range: No mining in Conglomerate Mesa, not ever again.
On a recent weekday, Bryan Hatchell, 27, desert policy associate for the nonprofit Friends of the Inyo, and Jeremiah Joseph, 36, a cultural expert for the Lone Pine Paiute Shoshone Tribe, led a group on a hike across two miles of scruffy mountains and sweeping plains managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to an area where the group of Canadian investors has launched an exploratory drilling program.
A controversial new anti-conversion law that criminalises interfaith love has put Hindu-Muslim couples on edge. Now, they face the wrath of not just their families, but also the Indian state.
Ayesha and her boyfriend, Santosh (both their names have been changed) are on the run. "My parents have come to look for me and they are outside somewhere," Ayesha said. "We are scared. We have been asked to stay inside."
The couple, both 29, fled their home town in the western state of Gujarat. For now, they are living in a safe house - a nondescript two-story building - in Delhi. Also hiding with them is another couple from Uttar Pradesh state in India's north.
In November 2020, Uttar Pradesh became the first state to pass a law - Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance - banning "unlawful conversion" by force, fraudulent means or marriage. It was in response to what right-wing Hindu groups call "love jihad", an Islamophobic term denoting a baseless conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of seeking to make Hindu women fall in love with them with the sole purpose of converting them to Islam.
Interfaith marriages in India are registered under the Special Marriage Act, which mandates a 30-day notice period. But couples live in fear of reprisals throughout this time and even more so now, with a new law that targets such marriages.
In 2016, European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake shared a photo of a quarter-inch dent gouged into a glass window of the International Space Station (ISS). The culprit? A tiny fleck of space junk.
The piece of debris, perhaps a paint flake or a metal fragment from a satellite, was only a few thousandths of a millimeter across — not much bigger than a single cell of E. coli.
The energy of an impact isn't just related to the size of an object; velocity (speed and direction) are equally important. That's why a small bullet can cause so much damage; when moving at a high enough velocity, any object could be dangerous, Reddy told Live Science.
Keep in mind that velocity is additive, said Kerri Cahoy, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. So, if two objects are moving toward one another when they collide, that increases the energy of their impact.
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U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
