North Dakota Has Its First Ever Miss America -- Less Than One Week After President Trump Visits Bismarck-Mandan -- September 11, 2017

Link here. Archived.

From Twitter --

I had forgotten that she was crowned Miss North Dakota in my hometown. Wow.

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The Secret Life of Words:
How English Became English

Henry Hitchings

c. 2008

DDS: 422HIT

It begins, and I find it most interesting:

On a smoky October morning in 1697, a Puritan magistrate called Samuel Sewall went to visit the Lieutenant Governor at Dorchester, which is now a suburb of Boston on the American east coast. Sewall,

• born in England, in a rural part of Hampshire;
• Sewall had arrived in America as an adolescent;
• he had studied at Harvard;
• had managed the Boston printing press;
• in 1692 had been one of the nine judges appointed to hear the Salem witch trials;
• not long before his trip to Dorchester he had publicly expressed shame over his role in the last of these; but,
• that October morning he had more appetizing business on this mind.

Dorchester seems to have been a place to go for good things to eat; Sewall had once taken his wife, Hannah, there so they could feast on cherries and raspberries. 

At the Lieutenant Governor's he met with his friend Samuel Torrey, a man chiefly distinguished for having declined the presidency of Harvard College, and together they breakfasted on 'Venison and Chockalatte', with Sewall amusedly reflecting that 'Massachuset and Mexico met at his Honour's Table.'

I assume "chockalatte"  was a chocolate latte coffee -- perhaps brewed at one of the local Starbucks coffee and ale houses. 

With so much attention on one aspect of American history in the past few weeks, slavery, it's easy to forget all the other "stuff" of which America can be very, very proud.

My hunch is that most of the paid protestors tearing down statues have never read much American history. But I could be wrong.

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Raspberry Pi

Speaking of raspberries, there were no less than six magazines devoted to Raspberry Pi on the Barnes and Noble bookshelves. Arianna and Olivia have their own interests now and are not interested in Raspberry Pi, but in a couple of years, maybe Sophia will be interested.

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The Sports Page

Hey, about those Dallas Cowboys, winning 19-3 over New York Giants. It should have been a blowout based on how both teams were playing. It really looked like Dallas was "toying" with New York. We'll never know but it looks like a game that the former Dallas quarterback could have found a way to lose.

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Three-Year-Olds At School

First the iPad. These four iPads are "windowed" into a piece of wood. The iPads are brand new this year, and have not less than twenty different applications that the children can use. They are provided minimum instruction on how to use the iPads and they "learn" on their own.

The second photo is a bit dark but it's one of my favorites.  Resting under a tree during "recess" and looking very, very content.