Bennet is the name of a hypermarket / supermarket chain with 59 retail locations in northern Italy. The business was founded by Enzo Ratti in 1964 and the head office is still located in Montano Lucino. Most of the commercial outlets are located in the states of Lombardy (23) or Piedmont (24);
The gift shop of the New York Review of Books sells a $ 79 “Pride and Prejudice literary scarf” with a floral print and a quotation in calligraphy, Mr. Darcy’s words of love to Elizabeth Bennet: "“My affections and wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence me forever. If, however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love you, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on ….”
However, only the first sentence is a quote from Austen’s book; the rest of it comes from the script of the 2005 film adaptation.
The Piedmont is a plateau region in the eastern United States. It sits between the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the main Appalachian Mountains. It stretches from Alabama in the South through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
It does not quite reach New York.
Donald Trump is only the second U.S. President to have been born in New York City; the first was Theodore Roosevelt. Both were Republican. Roosevelt was a war hero, rancher, naturalist, historian, police commissioner, assistant secretary of the Navy, and Vice President of the United States; Trump has been none of those things.
“The Last Trump” is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. Unlike the current US president, the 'Trump ’ refers to the last trumpet, or the end of the world.
*Note: there is so much I could have played off of our current president, but I decided not to politicize the game. YMMV, of course.
Noted science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was fond of limericks, particularly ribald ones.
A favorite limerick of mine:
There was an old man in a spa
Who unhooked his girl friend’s bra
When he came up for air
He admired her pair
And that was his last hoorah
On November 3, 1914, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted a patent to Mary Phelps Jacobs for the garment she called a “brassiere.” Jacobs had first created the undergarment a year earlier to replace the corset; the first design was fashioned out of handkerchiefs and pink ribbon.
A year earlier:
Ethnologists up with the Sioux
Wired back “Send three punts, one canoe”.
The reply the next day
Said “Broads on the way
But what the hell’s a panoe?”
A millenium earlier, when the hordes of Mongolia were not amused by ribaldry:
There was an old man in a yurt
Who hadn’t even a shirt
He’d beg for a dime
But most of the time
His plate held only some dirt
The word “dime” is ultimately derived from the Proto-European word for “ten”:
PIE root “*dekm-” “ten” => Latin “decima” (pars) “tenth” (part) => Old French “disme” “a tenth part” => dime “a tenth, tithe” (late 14c.).
In Modern French, dîme has the meaning of “a tenth part,” and also the ecclesiastical meaning of “tithe.”
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? is one of the best-known American songs of the Great Depression. It was written in 1930 and was part of the 1932 musical revue Americana. The song became best known through recordings by Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee. The Crosby recording made on October 25, 1932 became the best-selling record of the period.
Bing Crosby, although a Republican, was a friend of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy once visited him in Palm Springs, reportedly enraging Frank Sinatra, who had expected the President to stay with him instead.
The lyrics to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” were written by E. Y. “Yip” Harburg, who approved of President Roosevelt. Wikipedia says
A lyrical reply to the likes of Harburg:
Beware, the best poems can hurt
Their verses are downright too pert
You’ll cringe at the rhymes
Of bards who do crimes
So issue a poet alert
Limerick is a city in Ireland, located in the province of Munster. The main railway station in Limerick is called Colbert station, named after West Limerick man Con Colbert who was executed following the Easter Rising of 1916.
The French Navy missile cruiser Colbert was a museum ship in Bordeaux from 1993-2007 before she was scrapped, due largely to the expense of maintaining her. I wrote to American late-night TV show host Stephen Colbert, urging him to make saving the ship a (humorous) crusade, but never heard back from him.
Stephen is the patron saint of deacons, headaches, horses, coffin makers, and masons.
A distinction is often made between a coffin and casket: the latter is generally understood to denote a four-sided (almost always rectangular) funerary box, while a coffin is usually six-sided. A casket was originally regarded as a box for jewelry; use of the word “casket” in this burial sense began as a euphemism introduced by the undertaker’s trade.
The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, a prominent United Church of Christ clergy leader, civil rights, gay rights and peace activist, in earlier life served in the U.S. Army and as a CIA agent. He was a Yale University classmate and friend of George H.W. Bush.