pRoofed ePistle

 Famous First Words: My lords, the law of nature moveth me to sorrow... Elizabeth I's first speech as queen.

Happy Homemade Bread Day! What do you call a Jewish bread that the Black Panther bakes for Thor's party? T'calla's challah for the Val'Halla gala. / The Jews on the starship Enterprise often hung out on the challah deck.

..........If you've been down too long.........Gordon Lightfoot …..Rainy Day People

Monarchs ought to put to death the authors and instigators of war, as their sworn enemies and as dangers to their states. --Elizabeth I

It is a bright, clear Friday morning. There are no clouds to block the pale blue sky and the sun rising above the house spotlights the willow's faded leaves dancing in a light wind. The mulberry is bare and barely bothers to move with the breeze. Amazingly, it is 39°F early on a mid-November dawn. No birds can be seen or heard outside my window. Puck has been out this morning and is now sleeping it off on my foot. His faint snores add counterpoint to the hum of the computer. Now spent sandalwood incense fills my room with hints of bonfires and walks in the woods. I like it; it adds texture and dimension. My coffee cup is near empty so I think I'll refresh it and then send you this letter.

Hope your weekend rises to the occasion, ePistliers.

First Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: In Wilson's scale of evaluations breakfast rated just after life itself and ahead of the chance of immortality. --Robert Heinlein

In court, baguettes are considered breadly weapons. / Little known fact, virgin olive oil is olive oil into which no one has dipped a baguette.

..........You can't jump a jet plane like you can a freight train.........Gordon Lightfoot …..Early Morning Rain

Trivia Questions: Happy 109^th Birthday to the Panama Canal!

• ^ What is the main purpose of the Panama Canal?
• ^^ How many people died building the canal?
• ^^^ How heavy is traffic on (?in) the canal?
• ^^^^ How much revenue does the canal generate?
• ^^^^^ Is the canal still big enough for today's ships?

Big Hello: Moin – Low Saxon (Germany) https://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hello.htm

Second Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: The hardest decision a woman can make isn't yours. --Submitted by SDS

Image of the Week: Our new used car -Nissan Sentra

Fake Library Statistics of the Week: 75% of librarians are upset to learn that the patron who shares a name with a celebrity looks nothing like the celebrity. https://www.facebook.com/FakeLibStats/?fref=ts

Betty Baguette was so excited to audition for a big role. / Nine flour bread is just chasing grain bows.

..........You make the best of each new day.........Gordon Lightfoot …..Race Among The Ruins

Question of the Week: Why do banks have branches if money doesn't grow on trees?

Puzzle of the Week: From listener Al Gori of Cozy Lake, N.J.: It involves a spoonerism, in which you reverse the initial consonant sounds in one phrase to make another phrase. For example, if you spoonerize "light rain," you get "right lane." Name part of a truck in two words. Spoonerize it. You'll name something FEMA uses. What is it? NPR Sunday Puzzle 7/7/13

Next Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: I think the proper term for “senior” women should be: Queen-agers. --Tina Rapp

Moonbeam: A philosopher is a fool who torments himself while he is alive, to be talked of after he is dead. --Jean d'Alembert

Santa's favorite bread is Ciabatta. It's right there in the song, ...ciabatta watch out, ciabatta not cry... / This French bread always spreads out of its pan...container brioche.

..........To make you laugh and bend your ear.........Gordon Lightfoot …..Minstrel of the Dawn

^ It's a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Panama Canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama in a narrow land bridge between North and South America. Prior, ships had to sail around the tip of South America. It takes about 8 hours to cross the Canal's 50 miles (77km). That saves days. If a ship had to navigate down and around Cape Horn at the tip of South America and back up the other side, it would have to travel nearly 12,500 miles (20,000 km).

Almanac: It is Friday, November 17, 2023. The moon will go into the first quarter on Monday (11/20) and is in Capricorn. It is Homemade Bread Day, National Unfriend Day, Petroleum Day, and World Prematurity Awareness Day.

Among those born on this day were Il Bronziono (1503), Jean d'Alembert (1717), August Ferdinand Mobius (1790), Titian Ramsey Peale (1799), Lee Strasberg (1901), Isamu Noguchi (1904), Jack Lescoulie (1917), Rock Hudson (1925),David Amram (1930), Gordon Lightfoot (1938), Martin Scorsese (1942), Lauren Hutton (1943), Danny De Vito (1944), and Traci Lords (1962).

On November seventeenth Elizabeth I ascended the English throne (1558), the US Congress held it's first session in DC (1800), Mignon premiered (Paris, 1866), the Suez Canal opened (1869), the American Theosophical Society was founded (1875), the Panama Canal opened (1913), LBJ married ladybird (1934), Dulles International Airport was dedicated (1962), the Leonids meteor shower peaked at 150,000/ hour (1966), Surveyor 6 became the first earth machine to life off the moon (1967), Bhutto won the election in Pakistan (1988), and Bret Saberhagen signed a record $2,966,667 contact with the Royals (1989).

Night Sky, 11/17: Look south-southwest at nightfall for the waxing crescent Moon. It forms a huge, nearly equilateral triangle with Saturn far to its upper left and Altair far to its upper right. Each side of the triangle is nearly four fists at arm's length long. http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/sky-at-a-glance/

Fraternal Picture of the Week: Pumpkin Night at the ballpark

This Week: Saturday, November 18 – International Day of Islamic Art & National Adoption Day & National Survivors of Suicide Day

Sunday, November 19 – Do Dah Day & International Men's Day & Rocky & Bullwinkle Day

Night Sky, 11/19: This evening and tomorrow evening the Moon passes Saturn while going through the first-quarter phase. Here are the (probably) two most popular telescopic objects in the sky, just a few degrees apart.

Monday, November 20 – Name Your PC Day* & National Child's Day & Transgender Day of Remembrance …....... * Mine is named Lucille after BB King's guitar.

Tuesday, November 21 – National Red Mitten Day & World Hello Day & World Television Day

Wednesday, November 22 – Humane Society Day & National Jukebox Day & Tie One On Day (honors aprons)

Night Sky, 11/22: The bright waxing gibbous moon will pass the faint but fascinating “Circlet” asterism in Pisces the Fish on the evenings of November 21 and 22, 2023. The moon and the Circlet will be visible as darkness falls and will set around midnight.

Thursday, November 23 – Doctor Who Day & Fibonacci Day & Thanksgiving!!!

The gingerbread man just ordered cookie sheets for his newly remodeled bedroom. / Biscuits are fried wheat flour covering baked wheat flour – a Kansas treat.

..........What a tale my thoughts could tell.........Gordon Lightfoot …..If You Could Read My Mind

^^ Construction cost over 25,000 lives. At times, more than 43,000 people were working on the Panama Canal at once. Workers had to deal with heat, jungles, swamps - and all the creatures in them, including rats that carried bubonic plague. Plus mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever and malaria. Over 20,000 workers died during French building efforts. After the scientific links between the insects and disease had been discovered, Americans undertook intensive and successful anti-mosquito initiatives. Even so, another more than 5000 workers perished during the American building phase.

Preantepenultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Has anyone ever lived long enough to buy a second bottle of Worcestershire sauce? --Submitted by INRITH

Moonbeam: Everything is sculpture. Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture. --Isamu Noguchi https://www.noguchi.org/artworks/collection/

Video of the Week: Bud Abbott explains who's on first to Jack Lescoulie Long Address

Not So Late Night Snacks of the Week: I'm the voice so beautiful I can walk into any grocery store and use the intercom without asking. Bill Kurtis ... "...telling quote great stories unquote; these are all movies that are now going back into production: Deadpool 3, Gladiator 2, Venom 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Beetlejuice 2. --Peter Sagal Wait Wait Don't Tell Me 11/11/23

The stone often recoils on the head of the thrower. --Elizabeth I

Emily Dickinson used to bake Poet-ryee. / There was a big melee at the bakery last week. It was a rye it. / I bought a loaf of rye the other day and when I got home and opened the bag there was a baseball card of Yogi Berra between two slices. Catcher in the Rye.

..........The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down.........Gordon Lightfoot …..The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

^^^ Over 1 Million Vessels have transited the canal since it opened. In 1914, the year it opened, about 1000 ships used the canal. Today, nearly 15,000 ships pass through the Isthmus of Panama via the Canal annually. The 1 Millionth ship crossed the canal in 2010, 96 years after it opened. In 1934 it was estimated that the maximum traffic of the canal would be around 80 million tons of shipping a year, but by 2015, canal traffic exceeded 340 million tons of shipping – over 4 times the original maximum estimate.

Antepenultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: I just turned off the news and put on a serial killer documentary to relax.

Weird Word of the Week: Jobation – rebuke, take to task, haul over the coals. https://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-job2.htm

Dragon of the Week: Vietnamese Dragon Bread

Wacky Uses for Common Products: Help to prevent potted perennials from freezing in the winter. Line the inside of the planter with Bubble Wrap before planting. Do not line the bottom of the planter to allow for drainage. https://www.wackyuses.com/wacky/bubblewrap2.html

If I poison the pita bread dip am I guilty of hummus-cide? / Pita bread is second to naan.

...........I wonder how the old folks are tonight.........Gordon Lightfoot …..Carefree Highway

^^^^ $2 Billion in Tolls are Collected Annually. Every ship that passes through the canal pays a toll based on its size, type and volume of cargo. Tolls are set by the Panama Canal Authority. Tolls for the largest cargo ships can run about $450,000. Cruise ships pay by berths (number of passengers in beds). The per-berth fee set in 2016 was $138; a large cruise ship can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to sail through the Canal. The smallest toll recorded was paid by American Richard Halliburton in 1928, who paid 36 cents to swim the Canal.

Penultimate Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: Behind every strong woman is a dog who follows her to the bathroom. --Submitted by bu of ks

Science Fiction Convention of the Week: CONjuration (17-19, Atlanta, GA) Magical Fantasy Convention https://www.conjurationcon.com/

Actual Science Conference of the Week: American Vacuum Society Mid-Atlantic Symposium (17, Raleigh, NC) Building a Semiconductor Workforce https://avs.org/about-avs/events-calendar/

Answer to Puzzle of the Week: Mud flap – Flood map

I was going to write my own pun about bread, but by the time I finished it was stale. / Life Hack: You can use garlic bread to kill a gluten free vampire.

..........The radio is playin' a soft country song.........Gordon Lightfoot …..Second Cup of Coffee

^^^^^ The Panama Canal was expanded for bigger ships in 2016. The original canal locks are 110 feet (33 meters) wide and ten times as long. For a century, they accommodated shipping, and the term 'Panamax' ships was used to describe ships built to fit through the canal. But ships kept getting bigger, and in 2007, work began on a multi-billion dollar expansion of the Canal. In 2016, a third, wider lane of locks opened for commercial shipping, capable of handling 'Post-Panamax' ships that can carry 14,000 20-foot shipping containers (nearly 3 times Panamax ship capacity). In spite of that giant leap forward in 2016, the world's largest container ships - that can carry 18,000 shipping containers – can't pass through the Panama Canal. https://www.avantiworldtravel.com/blog/8-facts-about-the-panama-canal

Day of the Week: National Unfriend Day – Sometimes getting unfriended on Facebook is magical...Really, it's like the trash took itself out.

Quote of the Week: Music is a conspiracy to commit beauty. --José Abreu

Final Funniest Thing I Read of the Week: If you can't say something nice say something surrealistic.

Today's Peace of History, November 17, 1980: Hundreds were arrested at the Women's Pentagon Action protest of patriarchy and its war-making.

The local library started a Sourdough Bread club. But it never got anything done. Everyone was a loafer. / Sourdough bread is just white bread with a yeast infection.

..........And she knows it's a long way down.........Gordon Lightfoot …..Daylight Katy

Masthead of the Week: Friday ePistle, 2023, pRoofed ePistle. Online at: http://fridayepistle.blogspot.com/ Exclusive editor: Christine Smith. Lawrence, KS.

Moonbeam: People come into your life who you have a good time with, and time goes by and you still have a good time with them and you do stupid stuff with them. To me, that's life. --Danny DeVito

Cost of War:

• As of 11/16/23 State Department War Costs since 2001: $221,694,850,216.
• As of 11/09/23 State Department War Costs since 2001: $221,143,213,594.
• As of 11/16/23 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $1,178,320,284.859.
• As of 11/09/23 Interest on War Debt since 2001: $1,176,779,447,672
• As of 11/16/23 Homeland Security since 2001: $1,152,513,482,262.
• As of 11/09/23 Homeland Security since 2001: $1,151,914,348,502.
• As of 11/16/23 Veterans Care since 2001: $3,357,231,711,941.
• As of 11/09/23 Veterans Care since 2001:$3,345,553,949,879.
• As of 11/16/23 Military Costs since 2001: $3,054,335,974,510.
• As of 11/09/23 Military Costs since 2001: $3,053,166,305,233.
• As of 11/16/23 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $8,964,098,427,547.
• As of 11/09/23 Total Cost of Wars since 2001: $,8,948,559,763,692.

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/cost-of/

The past cannot be cured. --Elizabeth I

Famous Last Words: Ne'er shall thou leave us more. --Ambroise Thomas Mignon

..........'Cause we've been friends through rain or shine.........Gordon Lightfoot …..Beautiful

Was the cornbread stuffing afraid of the turkey? No, just the goblin. / I was going to end with a favorite bread but naan of the above apply.

May Peace proof your flour

And Joy raise your dough

prairie mama

christine

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