Join us for the ‘DCDL After Hours Concert’ Nov. 16

Join us for a spe­cial one-of-a-kind con­cert at the Delaware County Dis­trict Library Main Branch from 7 to 8 p.m. on Fri­day, Nov. 16. This excit­ing “DCDL After Hours Con­cert,” enti­tled “A Songwriter’s Jour­ney through Amer­i­can Music” fea­tures singer/songwriter Angela East­er­ling who will per­form many of her own orig­i­nal songs inter­spersed with selec­tions of clas­sic folk, roots, coun­try and rock tunes. She will also dis­cuss the craft of song­writ­ing and tell the sto­ries behind her songs, weav­ing in some of the his­tory of roots music and the artists who have influ­enced her writing.

Easterling’s albums include “Earn­ing her Wings,” cho­sen as the “Amer­i­cana Pick of the Year,” and “Black­Top Road.” The title song tells of her family’s strug­gle to hold onto their farm­land in the face of wide­spread devel­op­ment. She was named a 2009 and 2010 Keerville New Folk Final­ist, a 2011 Tel­luride Trou­ba­dour and a 2012 Wildflower.

We have set up a lis­ten­ing sta­tion at the library pre­loaded with sev­eral of her songs, and there is a link from the library’s web­site, delawarelibrary.org to her music, as well. The con­cert on Novem­ber 16th is free and open to the public.

At 2 p.m. Sun­day, Oct. 28, local author Ron Gabriel will be in the mez­za­nine of the Delaware Main Library to dis­cuss his mem­oir, Sonny, a true account of grow­ing up in Delaware.

What do the M’s in “M & M” candy stand for?

M&M’s were named after the sur­names of For­rest Mars Sr. & Bruce Mur­rie of Hershey’s. M&M’s orig­i­nated in the United States in 1941. For­rest Mars Sr. invented the idea for the candy in the 1930s dur­ing the Span­ish Civil War when he saw sol­diers eat­ing choco­late pel­lets with a hard shell of tem­pered choco­late sur­round­ing the inside, pre­vent­ing the can­dies from melt­ing. Mars received a patent for his own process on March 3, 1941. I found that infor­ma­tion in The Emper­ors of Choco­late, where I also learned that Reese’s Peanut But­ter Cups were cre­ated in 1928 by H. B. Reese, a for­mer dairy farmer and ship­ping fore­man for Mil­ton S. Hershey.

How did “May Day” become the inter­na­tional code word for an emergency?

Accord­ing to Facts on File Ency­clo­pe­dia of Word and Phrase Ori­gins, “May­day” was orig­i­nated in 1923 by Fred­er­ick Stan­ley Mock­ford, a senior radio offi­cer at London’s Croy­don Air­port who was given the task of com­ing up with a unique and eas­ily under­stand­able emer­gency code word. Most of the air traf­fic at Croy­don was either com­ing from or going to Le Bour­get Air­port in Paris, so Mock­ford chose may­day because of its sim­i­lar­ity to the French m’aider (“come help me”). The call is always given three times in a row to pre­vent mis­tak­ing it for some similar-sounding phrase under noisy con­di­tions, and to dis­tin­guish an actual May­day call from a mes­sage about a May­day call.

Who was the Bell Witch?

What a great ques­tion for Hal­loween! The Bell Witch is a pur­ported pol­ter­geist leg­end from South­ern folk­lore, cen­tered on the 19th cen­tury Bell fam­ily of Adams, Ten­nessee. The haunt­ing began with noises in the walls and grew to include peo­ple being slapped and pinched, objects being thrown and ani­mals spook­ing with­out vis­i­ble cause. The activ­ity cen­tered on the Bells’ youngest daugh­ter, Betsy and wors­ened after she became engaged to Joshua Gard­ner. Richard Pow­ell, a local school­teacher, was sus­pected of caus­ing the strange hap­pen­ings in the Bell home, per­haps to scare Gard­ner away so that Pow­ell could marry Betsy. Read An Amer­i­can Haunt­ing : The Bell Witch : Being the Eye Wit­ness Account of Richard Pow­ell Con­cern­ing the Bell Witch Haunt­ing of Robert­son County, Ten­nessee 1817–1821 for the rest of the story.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Oct 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.