Readymades: American Roadside Artifacts

Jeff Brouws' Photographs at the Robert Koch Gallery

Cool Bikes

Quick Reference Sources

Vocabulary Prep

5000 Collegiate Words with Brief Definitions

Sparknotes 1000 Most Common SAT Words

Princeton Review Word du Jour

Dictionary.Com Word of the Day

New York Times Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

More Cool Word Sites

A.Word.A.Day -- About: "Wordsmith.org is a worldwide online community of some half-million readers who share a love for words, wordplay, language, and literature."

Etymologic: the toughest etymology (word origin) game on the Web: "In this etymology game you'll be presented with 10 randomly selected etymology (word origin) or word definition puzzles to solve; in each case the word or phrase is highlighted in bold, and a number of possible answers will be presented. You need to choose the correct answer to score a point for that question. Beware! The false answers will often also seem quite plausible, and some of the true answers are hard to believe, but we have documentation!
Oh, and in case you're wondering, the word etymology comes from the Greek word 'etumos', which means real, or true, and the -ology ending indicates that it's the study of, or science of. Put them together and you get the study or science of the real or true. Impressive, eh?"

The Word Spy: "This Web site is devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren't 'stunt words' or 'sniglets,' but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources."

CNN.com - Jedi, Klingons invade new dictionary - Sep. 25, 2002: "LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Science fiction's 'Jedi' warriors and 'Klingon' bad guys have entered the newest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, along with 'asylum seekers,' 'asymmetrical warfare' and 'spin control.' "

Etymologically Speaking...: "What follows is a list of some curious word origins. Some of these are English, but some are French and German words from which we get some English words."

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

James Wright - The Academy of American Poets

Another American Phenomenon

Check out the History of Levis. and Levi Fun Facts.



"The 501 is an icon representing a blank canvas of personal expression, crossing all social, racial and gender barriers." - Levis NYC Exhibit.

Banned Books Week: September 25–October 2, 2004

Celebrate Your Freedom to Read

Challenged and Banned Books: "Banned Books Week emphasizes the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them."

American Library Association announces author Judy Blume ranks as second most censored author of past 15 years.

The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999.

National Museum of the American Indian

The National Museum of the American Indian opened in Washington D.C. this past week.



Edward S. Curtis at The U.S. Library of Congress.

Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe

Goodbye (Again), Norma Jean NYTimes, DEBORAH SOLOMON, September 19, 2004.

"Like any number of male intellectuals, Arthur Miller is not always wise when the subject turns to women. His ''After the Fall'' opened on Broadway in 1964, and many viewers considered it offensive. They could not understand why a playwright known for his lofty principles, for his famously sturdy and unshakable conscience, would have depicted his former wife so harshly. Marilyn Monroe was no longer alive to protest the character of Maggie, a popular singer who is addicted to pills and tyrannizes her husband with her implacable demands."

The irony of Andy Warhol's 'Marilyn' is that it is an icon of an icon created by an icon.

"Using the same cool detachment he used to create the Campbell Soup silkscreens that first made him famous, Warhol's 'Marilyn' is no different from a soup can on a grocery shelf. She is no longer a human being but a consumer product, one created by Hollywood to satisfy the demands of the marketplace. This illusion is emphasized by Warhol's depersonalizing colors and the silkscreen medium, which, because it is so reproducible, blurs the line between art and commodity.

At the same time, Warhol is also celebrating Monroe. Although the series was created five years after her death in 1962, she is in many ways the perfect embodiment of Warhol's ideal: the sexy and the tragic wrapped up in one famous package."

Harper's Magazine: Pilgrim's progress - George Plimpton

Pilgrim's progress - Notebook - George Plimpton
Lewis H. Lapham
"If you come to my funeral, Come dressed in red. 'Cause I got no business being dead." --Langston Hughes

Is America Still a Melting Pot?

One Nation, Indivisible: Is It History?

Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism

Moblogs Seen as a Crystal Ball for a New Era in Online Journalism
"But futurist Howard Rheingold says the ultimate democratization of the media will not be about technological advances; rather, it will entail upholding old-fashioned standards to earn viewers' trust."
From: Online Journalism Review - USC

Whatever happened to serendipity?: "Moblogs are what happen at the intersection of people, place, and information...."

Wired 11.12: The Great Library of Amazonia

Wired 11.12: The Great Library of Amazonia: "Even as the Internet has revived hope of a universal library and Google seems to promise an answer to every query, books have remained a dark region in the universe of information. We want books to be as accessible and searchable as the Web. On the other hand, we still want them to be books.
An ingenious attempt to illuminate the dark region of books is under way at Amazon.com. Over the past spring and summer, the company created an unrivaled digital archive of more than 120,000 books. The goal is to quickly add most of Amazon's multimillion-title catalog. The entire collection, which went live Oct. 23, is searchable, and every page is viewable."

TerraServer Maps

TerraServer 6.0 Homepage: "TerraServer contains 3.3 tera-bytes of high resolution USGS aerial imagery and USGS topographic maps. You can locate imagery by clicking on the map above, entering a city or town name in the 'Search TerraServer' form at the top of the page, or entering a U.S. street address. Click on Advanced Find to see other methods for searching our imagery database."

American Icons

The New York Times on the Times

Daniel Okrent is public editor of The New York Times. He is a longtime magazine editor and author who has served as managing editor of Life and editor of Time Inc.'s new media operations. Okrent will be given an unfettered opportunity to address readers' comments about The Times's coverage, to raise questions of his own and to write about such matters, in commentaries that will be published in the newspaper as often as he sees fit. See Daniel Okrent's Web Journal.

Links to Individual Newspapers Information USA is an authoritative resource for foreign audiences seeking information about American society, political processes, official U.S. policies and culture.

The E Pluribus Unum Project

The E Pluribus Unum Project: "The E Pluribus Unum Project, designed for the use of students, teachers, and other researchers who wish to examine the attempt to make 'one from many' in three critical decades of American life: the 1770s, the 1850s, and the 1920s. "

Ted Kooser: Plains Verse

New U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, interviewed by Deborah Solomon, September 12, 2004. More here.



Poems by Poet Laureate Ted Kooser

Randomhouse Reader Resources

Randomhouse.com Resources for Book Groups

Useful Links

KnowItNow - Live online information service provided free of charge for the citizens of Ohio by the State Library of Ohio and your local public library. Professional librarians are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to answer your reference questions and assist you in finding information.

NEW SAT - The class of 2006 will be the first class to take the new SAT for college admissions. SAT Question of the Day.

AP Central - General information about the AP Program is available from this page. Access the most up-to-date and comprehensive information on AP courses and exams, as well as unique resources and tools.

John Lennon's Jukebox

John Lennon's Jukebox


An in-depth performance documentary that celebrates the songwriter's craft, this fascinating program traces the influences on one of music's most inspirational figures by revealing the secrets of his private record collection.

Fearful Symmetry

"Does a Tiger Lurk in the Middle of a Fearful Symmetry?"
This headline in Sunday's NYTimes brings to mind the following poem by William Blake:

The Tiger
by William Blake, 1757–1827

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?