Oriental Pearl Tower (is a TV tower in Shanghai. Its location at the tip of Lujiazui in the Pudong New Area by the side of Huangpu River, opposite The Bund, makes it a distinct landmark in the area. Its principal designers were Jiang Huan Chen, Lin Benlin, and Zhang Xiulin. Construction began on July 30, 1991, and the tower was completed on October 1, 1994, and put into use on May 1, 1995. The tower has fifteen observatory levels. The highest (known as the Space Module) is at 351 metres (1,150 ft). The lower levels are at 263 metres (863 ft) (Sightseeing Floor) and at 90 metres (300 ft) (Space City). There is a revolving restaurant at the 267 metres (876 ft) level. The project also contains exhibition facilities and a small shopping center. There is also a 20-room hotel called the Space Hotel between the two large spheres. The upper observation platform has an outside area with a 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) glass floor)

Inside.............

FYI: From my Architecture topic folder

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Calling it a night.....................

Pack Horse Library Project - was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program that delivered books to remote regions in the Appalachian Mountains between 1935 and 1943. Women were very involved in the project which eventually had 30 different libraries serving 100,000 people. Pack horse librarians were known by many different names including "book women," "book ladies," and "packsaddle librarians." The project helped employ around 200 people and reached around 100,000 residents in rural Kentucky. Because of the Great Depression and a lack of budget money, the American Library Association estimated in May 1936 that around a third of all Americans no longer had "reasonable" access to public library materials. Eastern, rural Kentucky is a geographically isolated area, cut off from much of the country. Prior to the creation of the Pack Horse Library Project, many people in rural Appalachian Kentucky did not have access to books. The percentage of people who were illiterate in eastern Kentucky was at around 31 percent. People who lived in rural, mostly inaccessible areas wanted to become more literate, seeing education as a way to escape poverty. While there were traveling libraries, which were created by the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs starting in 1896, the lack of roads and population centers in eastern Kentucky discouraged the creation of most public library services in those locations. 

The first Pack Horse Library was created in Paintsville in 1913 and started by May F. Stafford. It was supported by a local coal baron, John C.C. Mayo, but when Mayo died in 1914, the program ended because of lack of funding. Elizabeth Fullerton, who worked with the women's and professional projects at the WPA, decided to reuse Stafford's idea. In 1934, A Presbyterian minister who ran a community center in Leslie County offered his library to the WPA if they would fund people to carry the books to people who could not easily access library materials. That started the first pack horse library, which was administered by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) until the WPA took it over in 1935. By 1936, there were eight pack horse libraries in operation.

Comment: I came up with this because of a book I read recently - "The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek" by Kim Michele Richardson. I read the book for two reasons - 1) someone recommended it to me and 2) I heard of Troublesome Creek in the news when we had the really bad flooding in eastern KY last summer. It was a good book and I have the sequel - "The Book Woman's Daughter" - on hold with Libby.

Trails were often treacherous

A pack horse librarian delivering books to a Kentucky family

A pack horse librarian reads aloud to a man in the Kentucky mountains.

YouTube

Book Trailer: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

A young outcast braves the hardships of Kentucky's Great Depression and brings truly magical objects to her people: books.Inspired by the true blue-skinned p...

YouTube

Pack Horse Librarians (Appalachian Region) | Kentucky Life | KET

In the years of the Great Depression, the people of Appalachia faced the same problems that challenged the rest of the country, unemployment, and even someti...

Quanjude (is a Chinese restaurant known for its Peking roast duck and its longstanding culinary heritage since its establishment in 1864 in Beijing, China. The restaurant chain sells over 2 million roast ducks served in 400 different styles to over 5 million customers annually. After a merger in 2004 with Beijing New Yansha Group, Quanjude is now a part of the Beijing Tourism Group. Quanjude was established in 1864 during the Qing dynasty under the reign of the Tongzhi Emperor. Although Peking duck can trace its history many centuries back, Quanjude's heritage of roast duck preparation – using open ovens and non-smoky hardwood fuel such as Chinese date, peach, or pear to add a subtle fruity flavor with a golden crisp to the skin – was originally reserved for the imperial families. The first Quanjude manager, Yang Renquan, who started out selling chicken and ducks, paid a retired chef from the palace for the imperial recipe. Soon after, Quanjude began to serve roast duck from the imperial kitchen to the common masses. Yang Renquan opened his first, small Dejuquan (???, the three characters being reversed from the current name) inside Yangrou Hutong in Qianmen (??), which at the time was one of the busiest areas in Beijing. His restaurant became an instant success and has since grown into the current branch in Qianmen that employs over 400 staff members and can occupy 900 guests at one time. The Qianmen restaurant, along with the many other Quanjude branches, together form one of the largest food enterprises in the nation)

FYI: Had this on a sticky note on my computer under Misc

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Off to work....................

Rich Strike - (foaled April 25, 2019) is an American Thoroughbred racehorse that won the 2022 Kentucky Derby, racing at 80–1 odds. Rich Strike is the second-biggest longshot to have won the Kentucky Derby after Donerail (91–1 odds) in 1913. He was not in the field until Ethereal Road was scratched the day before, with Rich Strike being added from the also-eligible list for the Derby. Owner Richard Dawson found out about the change just 30 seconds before the deadline.

Take a look at the payout for the Superfecta. Hey, even the Exacta wasn't bad.

YouTube

Kentucky Derby 2022 (FULL RACE) | NBC Sports

Watch the 148th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Saturday, May 7, 2022! #NBCSports #HorseRacing #KentuckyDerby» Subscribe to NBC Sports: https://www.yout...

YouTube

Overhead view shows how Rich Strike pulled off the impossible at 2022 Kentucky Derby | NBC Sports

Take a bird's-eye view of Rich Strike's improbable win at the 148th Kentucky Derby. #NBCSports #HorseRacing #KentuckyDerby» Subscribe to NBC Sports: https://...

STEM (is an umbrella term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The term is typically used in the context of education policy or curriculum choices in schools. It has implications for workforce development, national security concerns (as a shortage of STEM-educated citizens can reduce effectiveness in this area) and immigration policy, with regard to admitting foreign students and tech workers. There is no universal agreement on which disciplines are included in STEM; in particular whether or not the science in STEM includes social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. In the United States, these are typically included by organizations such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Labor's O*Net online database for job seekers, and the Department of Homeland Security. In the United Kingdom, the social sciences are categorized separately and are instead grouped together with humanities and arts to form another counterpart acronym HASS (Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences), rebranded in 2020 as SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy). Some sources also use HEAL (health, education, administration, and literacy) as the counterpart of STEM)

If you add an "A" you get STEAM which is designed to integrate STEM subjects with arts subjects into various relevant education disciplines. These programs aim to teach students innovation, to think critically, and use engineering or technology in imaginative designs or creative approaches to real-world problems while building on students' mathematics and science base. STEAM programs add arts to STEM curriculum by drawing on reasoning and design principles, and encouraging creative solutions. 

Under the "you can't make this s*** up"...........

Guess she wasn't a "STEM girl"......................

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Off to work...................

OMG ... 

Tic-Tac-Toe (American English), noughts and crosses (Commonwealth English), or Xs and Os (Canadian or Irish English) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players who take turns marking the spaces in a three-by-three grid with X or O. The player who succeeds in placing three of their marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row is the winner. It is a solved game, with a forced draw assuming best play from both players. The different names of the game are more recent. The first print reference to "noughts and crosses" (nought being an alternative word for 'zero'), the British name, appeared in 1858, in an issue of Notes and Queries. The first print reference to a game called "tick-tack-toe" occurred in 1884 but referred to "a children's game played on a slate, consisting of trying with the eyes shut to bring the pencil down on one of the numbers of a set, the number hit being scored". "Tic-tac-toe" may also derive from "tick-tack", the name of an old version of backgammon first described in 1558. The US renaming of "noughts and crosses" to "tic-tac-toe" occurred in the 20th century. 

Games played on three-in-a-row boards can be traced back to ancient Egypt, where such game boards have been found on roofing tiles dating from around 1300 BC. An early variation of tic-tac-toe was played in the Roman Empire, around the first century BC. It was called terni lapilli (three pebbles at a time) and instead of having any number of pieces, each player had only three; thus, they had to move them around to empty spaces to keep playing. The game's grid markings have been found chalked all over Rome. Another closely related ancient game is three men's morris which is also played on a simple grid and requires three pieces in a row to finish, and Picaria, a game of the Puebloans. 

In 1952, OXO (or Noughts and Crosses), developed by British computer scientist Sandy Douglas for the EDSAC computer at the University of Cambridge, became one of the first known video games. The computer player could play perfect games of tic-tac-toe against a human opponent. In 1975, tic-tac-toe was also used by MIT students to demonstrate the computational power of Tinkertoy elements. The Tinkertoy computer, made out of (almost) only Tinkertoys, is able to play tic-tac-toe perfectly. It is currently on display at the Museum of Science, Boston.

MIT Tinkertoy computer

Variants in entertainment -

The Price Is RIght

U.S. Mint (is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury responsible for producing coinage for the United States to conduct its trade and commerce, as well as controlling the movement of bullion. It does not produce paper money; that responsibility belongs to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The first United States Mint was created in Philadelphia in 1792, and soon joined by other centers, whose coins were identified by their own mint marks. There are currently four active coin-producing mints: Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco, and West Point. The first authorization for the establishment of a mint in the United States was in a resolution of the Congress of the Confederation of February 21, 1782, and the first general-circulation coin of the United States, the Fugio cent, was produced in 1787 based on the Continental dollar. The current United States Mint was created by Congress with the Coinage Act of 1792, and originally placed within the Department of State. Per the terms of the Coinage Act, the first Mint building was in Philadelphia, the then capital of the United States; it was the first building of the Republic raised under the Constitution. Today, the Mint's headquarters (a non-coin-producing facility) are in Washington D.C. It operates mint facilities in Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco, and West Point, New York and a bullion depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Official Mints (Branches) were once also located in Carson City, Nevada; Charlotte, North Carolina; Dahlonega, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana; and in Manila, in the Philippines. Originally part of the State Department, the Mint was made an independent agency in 1799. It converted precious metals into standard coin for anyone's account with no seigniorage charge beyond the refining costs. Under the Coinage Act of 1873, the Mint became part of the Department of the Treasury. It was placed under the auspices of the Treasurer of the United States in 1981. Legal tender coins of today are minted solely for the Treasury's account)

Philadelphia.................

Calling it a night……………

Viceroy 

A viceroy is an official who reigns over a polity in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. The term derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of" and the French word roy, meaning "king". He has also been styled the king's lieutenant. The term has occasionally been applied to the governors-general of the Commonwealth realms, who are viceregal representatives of the monarch. Viceroy is a form of royal appointment rather than noble rank. An individual viceroy often also held a noble title, however, such as Bernardo de Gálvez, 1st Viscount of Galveston, who was also Viceroy of New Spain.

Joaquín de la Pezuela, penultimate viceroy of Peru (1825)

The viceroy (Limenitis archippus) is a North American butterfly. It was long thought to be a Batesian mimic of the monarch butterfly, but since the viceroy is also distasteful to predators, it is now considered a Müllerian mimic instead. The viceroy was named the state butterfly of Kentucky in 1990.

Viceroy is an American brand of cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in the United States and British American Tobacco outside of the United States.

Comment: This is the brand my father smoked when I was a kid. He quit smoking when I was about 20 years old.

Wedding (is a ceremony where two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes. Most wedding ceremonies involve an exchange of marriage vows by a couple, presentation of a gift (offering, rings, symbolic item, flowers, money, dress), and a public proclamation of marriage by an authority figure or celebrant. Special wedding garments are often worn, and the ceremony is sometimes followed by a wedding reception. Music, poetry, prayers, or readings from religious texts or literature are also commonly incorporated into the ceremony, as well as superstitious customs)

Just reported yesterday that the average cost of a wedding, nationally, this year is $29,000, up $1,000 from 2022, according to online wedding planning site Zola. And in some big U.S. cities, the cost is $35,000 and above, so a soon to be bride might need this.......................

FYI: From my Customs/Traditions topic folder

Love that last cartoon. Sad thing is ... it's probably true.

Xylobium - abbreviated Xyl in horticultural trade, is a genus of plants in family Orchidaceae. It contains about 35 species native to tropical America. It comes in many colors and formations.