Pi is a Greek letter, pronounced "pie"

The Greek letter π is a symbol used by mathematicians to denote the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.  Rounded to eight decimal places, the number is 3.14159265.  Here's a photo of the symbol baked into a pie crust:

Let's play with numbers as well as words today.  So thinking of 3.14, take a look at the calendar.  March is the 3rd month of the year, and today is the 14th day of March, making this 3-14 or 3/14.  Use a period instead of a dash or a slash, and we get 3.14 making today Pi Day.  Wow!

What do you think of when I say, "Pie"?  Well, you may think of desert, while I'm thinking about lunch.  So take your pick.

Or even better, we could have BOTH pizza pie and an apple pie for desert on this Pi Day and call it a meal.  Yeah, sounds good to me!

Hmm, I haven't added any books today.  Does it matter?  No, not really.

I'll "eat humble pie," if necessary.  You know that phrase means I will humbly apologize, if you aren't happy that I failed to include books in this blog post, right?

Coexisting is the bee's knees

"The bee's knees" is idiomatic and colloquial.  In the Roaring 20s it meant a highly admired person or thing — similar to other nonsensical expressions of approval like "it's the cat's pajamas" or "it's the cat's whiskers."  So it basically means a thing or person is excellent, top notch, or really cool.  Here's a YouTube video to learn more about this idiom, and you may also want to see what I wrote about other bee-related sayings a few days ago:  HERE.

Word of the Day

co·ex·ist /ˌkōəɡˈzist / verb = to exist in mutual tolerance despite different ideologies or interests.  Example:  "My neighbor and I are very different, but we have learned how to coexist."

Quotes from The Teacher of Warsaw by Mario Escobar (2022, historical fiction, 368 pages):

• "As long as we remember the ones who lived, they are still among us" (p. 48).
• "The best lesson we can ever teach is to show love to those around us without expecting anything in return" (p. 77).
• "Long ago I had learned that the only way to knock down the walls of prejudice and hatred toward difference was coexisting and building friend-ships that allowed the children to fight and then be reconciled again" (p. 18).
• "History always denies us the chance to recognize when we are at the beginning of an epoch-defining movement" (p. 45).
• "I felt closer than ever to my origins.  Being a Jew was the worst of crimes" (p. 80).
• "If God puts a starving child in front of me, what can I do?  Ignore him?  I don't have the stomach for that" (p. 76).
• "I would certainly have liked to shoot them all, but I knew all too well that it would not fix anything" (p. 65).
• "I admired many things about Jesus.  I appreciated his love for his enemies, his desire for peace, his mercy, and most of all his optimism" (p. 80).
• "We did not realize that our long walk had been the last we would take in freedom.  In a few days we would no longer be masters of our own destinies" (p. 50).

Here's a longer quote from Chapter 7, page 60:

We supported the man 'til an orderly met us and helped him into a bed.  An old friend of mine from my medical days, Dr. Jkobski, came out to meet us. 

"Korczak, what are you doing with these Germans?" he asked in Polish.

"The driver's appendix is about to burst.  You'll have to operate immediately."

 

"They're the enemy.  Let their Nazi doctors cure them."

 

I smiled and touched his shoulder.  "Love our enemies, remember?"

LOOKING AT HISTORY

My friend Shirley mailed me an article she'd clipped from the local paper dated last June, which says Chattanooga High School (CHS) will be 100 years old in 2024.  Shirley and I went to school there from 1955 until we graduated in 1958.  Back then the students went to high school for 10th, 11th, and 12th grades, with junior high school for 7th, 8th, and 9th grades.  No, those cars were not on the road when we went there!  We aren't THAT old, though some of those vehicles may have been around when my parents went to school there in the 1930s.

Library Loot

The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners ~ by Lauren Groff (Editor), Jenny Minton Quigley (Series Editor), 2023, short story anthology, 432 pages

Continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, this year's edition contains twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year.  Guest editor Lauren Groff has brought her own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and emerging voices and including several stories in translation.  The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Groff, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts the Sunday Salon

A word and an idiom

One day, another resident here was trying to remember a name and asked me, "What's the name of that polyglot who lives on your floor?"  I turned to her in surprise that she used that word, which I think I've only seen in books and articles and never before heard in a conversation.  The look on my face must have made her think I hadn't a clue what she's just said, so she revised it by saying something like, "Who is that person on your floor who knows a bunch of different languages?"

pol·y·glot /ˈpälēˌɡlät / noun = a person who knows and is able to use several languages.  Example:  "My neighbor Sharon is a translator and is fluent in half a dozen languages besides English."

What does it mean when someone says, "It's all Greek to me"?  Basically, it means that "I don't understand it at all."  Dictionary.com gives this definition:

This expression was coined by Shakespeare, who used it literally in Julius Caesar (1:2), where Casca says of a speech by Seneca, deliberately given in Greek so that some would not understand it, "For mine own part, it was Greek to me."  It soon was transferred to anything unintelligible.

Trying to figure out my dream

Dreams are strange things, if you think of it.  They are so strange that some people devote a lifetime to studying them.  I'm thinking about dreams this morning because I woke up thinking of a word that I have probably never spoken in my life.  Yes, you heard that right.  Why would I ever have had an occasion to say "endorphin" unless it was in a school science class?  Yet, I woke up spelling it out to myself so I wouldn't forget the word:  E-N-D-O-R-P-H-I-N.  Okay, let's define that word.

Word of the Day

en·dor·phin /ˌenˈdôrfēn/ noun = any of a group of hormones secreted within the brain and nervous system and having a number of physiological functions.  They are peptides which activate the body's opiate receptors, causing an analgesic effect.

What?!?  My first degree was a double major:  (1) in Philosophy and Religion and (2) in English.  I did not major in science, though I took all the science classes I could because it does interest me:  biology, chemistry, physics.  Now I need to look up more definitions, just to know what I'm seeing in this definition.  But first let's look at the plural.

Word of the Day (plural)

"Endorphins are the body's natural painkillers.  Endorphins are released by the hypothalamus and pituitary gland in response to pain or stress, this group of peptide hormones both relieves pain and creates a general feeling of well-being."

Or this from Wikipedia:

"Endorphins are endogenous opioid neuropeptides and peptide hormones in humans and other animals.  They are produced and stored in the pituitary gland.  The classification of molecules as endorphins is based on their pharmacological activity, as opposed to a specific chemical formulation."

I can see now this could get pretty involved, trying to suss out the word and why it was in my dream at all.  Okay, first I'll define the phrase "suss out":

suss out = British, informal: to find or discover (something) by thinking.  Or to put it simply = figure out.  Example:  "They had to suss out whether he was telling the truth."

Yesterday, I took the first exercise class I have had in two years, not since the beginning of lockdown in 2020.  All our public spaces were closed on March 16, 2020.  At the time, I had just begun a class in Chair yoga.  We had done only one class of the six that were planned.  I taught myself how to Zoom so I could help our teacher figure out how to do a Zoom class.  Over these past two years of the pandemic, I have taken a couple of online exercise classes (though not from that teacher).  But still, I did not do nearly the amount of exercising I had been doing, when some of us also met on Friday afternoons to lead our own exercise class.

That's the long way to say, I'm out of shape.  When an elderly body spends a couple of years, mostly alone in her apartment, she gets very out of shape!  Therefore, after a half hour of pushing this ole body to do what the nimble instructor did during our "Music and Movement" class, I was achy.  I could really feel it last night.  I fell asleep aware of muscles complaining and woke up with the word "endorphins" and a desire to remember the word. I looked online for an illustration for "endorphins," and found this:

How weird is this?  The illustration is an exercise class!  The participants are younger than the elderly folks in my class yesterday, here in my senior retirement center.  We stand behind our chairs, putting a hand (or two) on the chair to keep from falling as we bend and twist.  I notice that the girl on the right needs a chair to keep from falling.

Can you read the five benefits mixed in among the people exercising?

• Betters self-esteem
• Regulates appetite
• Reduces anxiety and depression
• Enhances your immune system
• Decreases pain

And . . . we're right back to my back pain (yes, I chose "back" and "back" on purpose).  Now for some good news:  The article where I found this picture is all about endorphins!  Wow!  My brain was apparently remembering something I learned somewhere along the way and giving me instructions on how to brush up on both the word and its meaning, and thus get over the achiness of exercising yesterday.  Here's a quote from the article "What Are Endorphins?"

"Endorphins are responsible for that feeling you get after a great workout, after eating a piece of dark chocolate, or after having a good laugh with a friend.  They are the chemicals in your brain that help you cope with pain and feel good overall."

Enough for today.  My brain apparently remembers things from decades ago and has to grab my attention in a dream to help me work through yesterday's aches and pains from exercising.  Thank you, brain.  (Brain:  "You're welcome.")  Here's the article about brain regions where I found this illustration.  I love it that Reading and Language are all cozy there in the middle.  By the way, everything I've been reading this morning says exercise is important for our brains.  So I'm right back to where I started.

Sunday Salon

What's wrong with this poster?  I'll tell you what I see wrong in a comment, but I'd like you to think about it first.  What do you notice?

Middle School English

My friend Donna, who died in July, taught middle school English.  As I helped her sister clean out Donna's apartment, I saw that she had a copy of a book she had recommended to me in the 1990s, back when we first became friends.  And there was also a teacher guide for the YA novel, published in 2000.  Her sister let me have both books, and I'll probably read (and re-read) those soon.  When I first read the novel, it was long before blogging, so I don't know what I rated it.  But I do know I was very impressed by the book and wrote about it in 2010 when I mentioned this book and posted this photo of Avi, saying that Donna and I had met him.

Nothing But the Truth: A Documentary Novel ~ by Avi, 1991, YA fiction, 213 pages

In this thought-provoking examination of freedom, patriotism, and respect, ninth grader Philip Malloy is kept from joining the track team by his failing grades in English class.  Convinced that the teacher just doesn't like him, Philip concocts a plan to get transferred out of her class.  Breaking the school's policy of silence during the national anthem, he hums along, and ends up in a crisis at the center of the nation's attention.

Teacher Guide ~ by Phyllis A. Green, 2000, for grades 7-8, 36 pages

Each Teacher Guide includes a story summary, prereading activities, vocabulary exercises, comprehension strategies, discussion questions, critical thinking challenges, literary analysis questions and activities, assessment tools, graphic organizers, writing ideas, art ideas, and more (it says, adding an exclamation mark).

Idiom on my mind

bee in her bonnet = to keep talking about something again and again because you think it is very important.  Example:  "She never stops talking about healthy eating; she has a bee in her bonnet about it."  Speaking of bees:

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz hosts the Sunday Salon, where we talk about our lives, our books, and what we have been reading.

Words ~ towing the party line

Someone on Facebook said something about "towing the party line," and I had to dash over to my blog to post something about the misuse of the word.  I have visions of someone pulling (towing) something heavy ("the party") on a long line, the way this horse is towing a barge in a canal.

"Toe the line" is an idiomatic expression, according to Wikipedia, meaning either to conform to a rule or standard — or to stand poised at the starting line in a footrace.  I can use this idiom by saying that I expect people to toe the line when it comes to correct word usage.