Cimke: Anecdotes

Who Knew? : Answers to Questions About Classical Music You Never Thought to Ask

Did you ever leave an opera performance wondering why the singers use so much vibrato? Or a symphony, wondering who decided where on stage the orchestra members should sit, or why they tune their instruments to an oboe rather than an electronic tuner? Why is Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture played on the 4th of July? And how does a composer choose what key to compose in? In Who Knew?: Answers to Questions about Classical Music You Never Thought to Ask, master music educator Robert A. Cutietta provides lucid answers to these and more than 140 other questions submitted by listeners to his popular weekly radio program.

Mammoth Cave Curiosities: A Guide to Rockphobia, Dating, Saber-toothed Cats, and Other Subterranean Marvels

Sir Elton John, blind fish, the original Twinkie, President Ronald Reagan’s Secret Service detail, and mummies don’t usually come up in the same conversation — unless you’re at Mammoth Cave National Park! Home to the earth’s longest known cave system, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is one of the oldest tourist attractions in North America. Although this remarkable place has been immortalized in works ranging from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to H. P. Lovecraft’s’The Beast in the Cave,’the realities of life at Mammoth Cave can be stranger than fiction. In this charming book, Colleen O’Connor Olson takes readers on a tour through a labyrinth of topics.

Travels of a Country Woman

The former Lera Margaret Ussery, born in post-Victorian Tennessee, began her colorful adventures in 1896. Travels of a Country Woman, begins with the family’s emergence from the Depression, initially by way of a trip from Columbia, Tennessee, to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933. They traveled by “Elizabeth T,” the family Model T Ford and Lera wrote articles about the “Flivver” trip for the Nashville Banner.