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Waldorf Salad is from the Waldorf Astoria in NY

W is for Waldorf Salad

A curious fruity salad from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NY. Originally two separate places - The Waldorf and The Astoria. One for Waldorfians and the other for Astorians, they merged to yield a unfied Upper Crust.

The Waldorf Salad recipe from NYT

The Double U

The double U is a parvenu – like the single U it derives from. A straggler to the English alphabet, it waltzed in late, accompanied by the letter J . The letter gets its name from the original letterform. Sometime around the introduction of the printing press (and the end of the practice of burning witches) it was a pair of 'U's.

The macabre has been with us for a long time. Will we ever evolve? Source: Wikimedia

I can see it now... if you are going to have to mess up all the upper and lower case-work by adding the letter U, why not just double things up to make the letter UU and call it a day. WooWoo – The pub calls.

Alphabets & Numbers of the Middle Ages, Henry Shaw - (1845) Source: fromoldbooks.org

The letterform eventually merged into the double V we know, but its name did not – at least not in English – at least not yet. Maybe in the future, it will become something else entirely.

There's a long history of the alphabetical evolution of English Letterforms, including how the letter Z got booted to last place.

A chart of The Evolution of the Alphabet, by Matt Baker Source: usefulcharts.com

A coda for the birders - the Warbling Vireo!

Warbling Vireo Sounds, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
The rich song of the Warbling Vireo is a common sound in many parts of central and northern North America during summer. It’s a great bird to learn by ear, because its fast, rollicking song is its most distinctive feature. Otherwise, Warbling Vireos are fairly plain birds with gray-olive upperparts and white underparts washed with faint yellow. They have a mild face pattern with a whitish stripe over the eye. They stay high in deciduous treetops, where they move methodically among the leaves hunting for caterpillars.


As always, thanks for reading and indulging!
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