Primrose

Because it blooms so early in the springtime ) throughout much of Europe), the common primrose is given its name.  The word"primrose" is from Old French primerose through medieval Latin prima rosa, meaning "first rose." The plant is actually not closely related to the rose family, though that may not have been known when it entered English in the first half of the fifteenth century.

Primula vulgaris is a species native to western and southern Europe and east to Germany, Ukraine, the Crimea, and the Balkans and into northwest Africa and southwest Asia.

It is an edible plant and its flowers can be made into wine.

The Evening Primrose (Oenothera) is a genus of about 125 species of herbaceous flowering plants, native to North and South America. It is also known as suncups and sundrops. Although they share the name, they are not closely related to the true primroses and not really related to early spring.

This was a plant we had in our home garden and as a child I loved the fact that unlike all the other flowers, they opened within minutes of  "evening."

Most of the species have yellow flowers but there are white (especially desert plants), purple, pink and red. a few.

Primrose has become a more popular baby name recently because of the books and movies of the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Primrose Everdeen is the name of the main character's beloved kid sister who follows in the herbal healing ways of her mother.

Primrose is also the name of some American towns including ones in Alaska, Nebraska, Rhode Island
and Wisconsin.

The Hooters

cover of Definitive Collection

The Hooters are an American rock band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They gained major commercial success in the United States in the mid-1980s via MTV airplay with their album Nervous Night and songs such as "All You Zombies", "Day by Day", "And We Danced" and "Where Do the Children Go." The album achieved gold and platinum status all over the world.  



Rolling Stone magazine named The Hooters the "Best New Band of the Year" in 1985.

Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman originally met in 1971 at the University of Pennsylvania and had played in a Philly-bbased band called Baby Grand, which also featured local singer, David Kagan.

Hyman and Bazilian, along with producer Rick Chertoff, wrote and played on Cyndi Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual and Rob Hyman and Cyndi co-wrote her classic song "Time After Time."

The Hooters formed and played their first show in the summer of 1980. Their eclectic blend of rock, reggae, ska and folk music brought them commercial success, particularly in Europe, in the late 1980s and 1990s. They opened the Philadelphia portion of the Live Aid benefit concert in 1985, and they played at The Wall Concert in Berlin in 1990.

The band went on hiatus in 1995, reunited in 2001, toured in Europe and released their first album of new material since 1993, Time Stand Still.

Though the likely guess for the origin of the band's name would probably be that it is a reference to the slang term for breasts, or the restaurant chain by the same name, or possibly some allusion to owls, all of those are wrong.

The name references the nickname for the melodica (AKA pianica, blow-organ or key-flute), a keyboard harmonica popularized in the U.S. by the Hohner company and of German origin. Rob Hyman plays the melodica in a number of songs by The Hooters and it became a distinctive part of their sound.

The Hooters released five studio albums between 1983 and 1993, a live album in 1994, and retrospective collections in 1996 and 2001. In addition, numerous other collections, live recordings and bootlegs were released in the U.S. and Europe. More recently, a new studio album was released in 2007, a double live album in 2008, and a five song EP in 2010.

The current lineup is Eric Bazilian: lead vocals, guitars, mandola, harmonica; Rob Hyman: lead vocals, piano, organ, accordion, melodica; John Lilley: guitars, lap steel; Fran Smith, Jr.: bass, backing vocals; Dave Uosikkinen: drum.

The Hooters will be doing a European tour in Summer 2013.



    Music video for "And We Danced" with melodica opening

She was a be-bop baby on a hard day`s night.
She was hangin on Johnny , he was holdin` on tight
I could feel her coming from a mile away.
There was no use talking, there was nothing to say
When the band began to play and play.
And we danced like a wave on the ocean, romanced
We were liars in love and we danced
Swept away for a moment by chance
And we danced and danced danced...

SOURCES

• Official Site  http://www.hootersmusic.com
• The Hooters on Facebook
• The Hooters Official Fan Site
• The Hooters Official Fan Forum
• The Hooters at MySpace 
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_We_Danced
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hooters

Band Members

Kick the Bucket

The literal translation (word-by-word) of idioms generally does not work well from language to language.

One example is the American English idiom "to kick the bucket" meaning to die. However, there are idoims from other languages that are analogous to "kick the bucket" in English.

Bulgarian: da ritnesh kambanata (да ритнеш камбаната) 'to kick the bell'
Danish: at stille træskoene 'to take off the clogs',
Dutch: het loodje leggen 'to lay the piece of lead',
Finnish: potkaista tyhjää 'to kick the void',
French: manger des pissenlits par la racine 'to eat dandelions by the root',
German: den Löffel abgeben 'to give the spoon away' or ins Gras beißen 'to bite into the grass' or sich die Radieschen von unten ansehen 'look at the radishes from underneath'
Greek: τινάζω τα πέταλα 'to shake the horse-shoes'
Italian: tirare le cuoia 'to pull the skins',
Latvian: nolikt karoti 'to put the spoon down'[7]
Norwegian: å parkere tøflene 'to park the slippers',
Polish:kopnąć w kalendarz 'to kick the calendar',
Portuguese: bater as botas 'to beat the boots',
Romanian:a da colțul 'to take a corner',
Russian:сыграть в ящик (s'igrat' v yaschik) 'to play with box',
Spanish: estirar la pata 'to stretch one's leg',
Swedish: trilla av pinnen 'to fall off the stick',
Ukrainian: врізати дуба 'to cut the oak, as in building a coffin'.

In Brazil, the expression chutar o balde 'to kick the bucket' exists but has a completely different meaning. It means "to give up on a difficult task" since a person coming to the end of their patience might kick a bucket in frustration.



The subject of death is a common one for idioms and expressions.  As far as the origin of the idiom "kick the bucket" itself, there are many, but no conclusive, origin theories. Here are three reasonable possibilities.

The idiom might come from a method of execution such as hanging, or perhaps suicide, dating back to the Middle Ages. A noose would be tied around the neck while standing on an overturned bucket and when the pail is kicked away, the victim is hanged.

"Bucket" can also be a beam or yoke used to hang or carry things on including a beam on which slaughtered pigs are suspended. The animals may kick when on the bucket. This usage probably comes from the French word trébuchet or buque, meaning balance. Shakespeare used the word in this sense in his play Henry IV Part II with "Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket."

Another possibility comes from the Catholic custom of holy-water buckets which would be brought from the church and put at the feet of the corpse when it was laid out. When friends came to pray... they would sprinkle the body with holy water. If the bucket was placed there near death, a person in the moment of death would be likely to kick out his legs (in Spanish Estirar la pata means 'to die') and kick the bucket placed there. This is parodied in one of the early scenes in the comedy film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World when a character literally kicks a bucket when he dies.

The more recent idiom "bucket list"  means a list of things you want or need to do before you "kick the bucket."


Information: The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms

Pie In The Sky

"Pie in the sky" comes from a song that was written by the Industrial Workers of the World (AKA the WW or Wobblies). They were an early American union.

In 1911, they used a rallying song with the line "Work and pray, live on hay, you'll get pie in the sky when you die."

The idiom came to mean an empty wish or promise since no one would really want "pie in the sky" but would want something here on Earth.

German Cities

Looking at the suffixes used in naming cities can tell you something about the language and the geographical or topographical setting of that city.

One example I came across recently deals with the names of German cities. Of course, all of these have come over to America in the naming of cities by early German immigrants.

For example, cities with the suffix -dorf or -torf  which mean "village" and was used for small towns. Of course, after hundreds of years, that village may have become a city, such as Düsseldorf.

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and center of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. Düsseldorf is an international business and financial center and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. This "village" has a population of 592,393 (2011) and an area of 83.78 sq miles (217 km²). Doesn't sound like a village to you? Well, imagine it back when it was founded - in 1288.

Copper-engraving of a view of Düsseldorf by Matthäus Merian.
Published in "Topographia Germaniae" edition: "Topographia Westphaliae" in 1647.

Here are some other German suffixes associated with cities:

with the suffix -furt ("ford"). Examples: Erfurt, Frankfurt.

with the suffix -brücken or -brück ("bridge"). Examples: Saarbrücken, Osnabrück, Innsbruck.

with the suffix -hausen ("house"). Examples: Mülhausen (Mulhouse), Mühlhausen, Schaffhausen.

with the suffix -feld ("field"). Examples: Bielefeld, Mansfeld.

with the suffix -werth, -wörth, or -ort ("holm"). Example: Kaiserswerth, Donauwörth, Ruhrort

with the suffix -roth or -rath, -rode, -reuth, -rade ("clearing"). Example: Roth, Wernigerode, Overath. It can also be used as the prefix -Rade: Radebeul, Radevormwald.