Celebrate Poetry Month!

Ten years ago, Knopf Publishers began a tradition of celebrating National Poetry Month by sending a poem a day by e-mail for 30 days to anyone who asked to receive them. Now, with over 35,000 subscribers, they are continuing with a whole new series of daily poems. Each day during the month of April you will receive a poem from some of the best poets in the world including Mark Strand, Mary Jo Salter, Julia Hartwig, and Richard Kenney, as well as classics from Frank O’Hara, Rudyard Kipling, Kenneth Koch and more. This year, they will also be featuring special podcasts, gorgeous printable broadsides, signed books and more. If you want to receive a poem-a-day and join the Poem-a-Day party, visit randomhouse.com/knopf/poetry/poemaday/ to sign up.

Learn More About Lucia di Lammermoor

If you’re intrigued about the new Opera Club and the coming presentation of Donizzetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at the Ivoryton Playhouse in October, here’s a link to a synopsis of the opera provided by the Metropolitan Opera.

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/history/stories/synopsis.aspx?id=128

The Center For Disease Control’s 2008 Yellow Book

The Center For Disease Control (CDC) publishes their Yellow Book every two years for use by those (mainly physicians) who give advice regarding health risks for international travelers. It can be yours for a mere $24.95 but it is also available for free online. New this year: an expanded, user-friendly index, new and updated maps, updated yellow fever requirements and recommendations, vaccine information and updated chapters.

http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/contentYellowBook.aspx

Shhh…A Texting Tutorial For Parents

Someone at AT&T must have a teenager who, while texting their friends on their cellphone, rolled their eyes once too often when asked “What does that mean?” If you ever want to experience icy contempt, just ask your teenage son or daughter to teach you how to text on your cellphone. AT&T has come to the rescue with a texting tutorial just for parents. If you can’t beat them…

with Teens – A Parent’s TXT Tutorial

Learn Practical Skills In 5 Minutes

Thank you to Bridget Quinn-Carey for sending us this website. 5min.com lets you watch 5- minute instructional videos that teach one how to properly slice a mango, darkslide on your skateboard, add more sources to your iPhone, or how to charge an iPod with onions and many other valuable lessons. The idea behind 5min is very simple: any solution can be visually explained in no more than 5 minutes.

http://www.5min.com/

Play A Game, Feed The Hungry

Talk about a win-win enterprise. Freerice.com is a website that asks you to play a vocabulary game and for each question you answer correctly, they donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. More than 177 million grains of rice were donated yesterday alone. Build your vocabulary or just test your knowledge and help feed hungry people! Thank you to Rita Christopher for letting us know about this website.
http://www.freerice.com/index.php

10 Emerging Technologies To Change The Way We Live

Technology Review, published by MIT, has recently published their 10 Emerging Technologies 2008–an annual review of the most exciting emerging technologies they believe will change the way we live. Check out these 10–personally, I’m eagerly awaiting wireless electricity so I don’t have to lug around laptop power cords anymore.

http://www.technologyreview.com/specialreports/specialreport.aspx?id=25

Tips For Using Excel

If you can’t find an Excel For Dummies book, try Allen Wyatt’s site: ExcelTips. It provides more than 1,700 tips for using Microsoft’s Excel program. Each tip is labeled as to which version of Excel it applies to. Learn tips on formatting and page setup, how to prepare a chart, formulas and data entry.

http://exceltips.vitalnews.com/

Celebrate Ray Bradbury

It’s not his birthday but we think Ray Bradbury is worth celebrating anyway because he’s a long-time advocate for the importance of reading. In his words: ‘You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.’ Check out his website for more information about this influential and inspirational author.

http://www.raybradbury.com/index.html