Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

Today's edition of Saturday Sharing offers a few sites with a lot of words, plus links to a collection of recipe manuscripts and a photostream of historically important documents.

✦ Those of you who are fans of Mary Oliver will learn here whatever you want to know about the poet, and get to read her Poem of the Month. Publisher Beacon Press, Boston, Massachusetts, maintains the site.

Mary Oliver on FaceBook and YouTube

Beacon Press on FaceBook, Twitter, Scribd, and YouTube 

Beacon Press Blog, Beacon Broadside

✦ The United States National Archives on Flickr offers a fascinating look at such documents as Ernest Hemingway's 1923 passport photograph, an eyewitness account of the Trinity explosion, Civil War casualty lists, Matthew Brady's Civil War photographs, and Harpo Marx's telegram to John F. Kennedy. The photostream comprises hundreds of pages of images that will keep you returning as your time allows.

✦ I've written several times about the fabulous Wellcome Collection exhibitions. What I haven't shared until now is this resource's library of recipe manuscripts online. It comprises more than 270 16th Century to 19th Century volumes ranging over such topics as food history, domestic medicine, herbal practice, and recipes as autobiography. You'll find here a tutorial for browsing the recipe manuscripts and here a delightful image gallery that includes a handy recipe for peacock roasting.

✦ Have you ever wondered how to get hold of some of the wonderful content that comes out of Harvard University? If you have a computer (like the one you're using to read this), you need go no further than iTunes U, where Harvard offers through the Apple iTunes Store audio interviews with Harvard Press authors, talks with world leaders, arts programs and performances, and more. Podcasts from Harvard Business Review's IdeaCast and the 375th Anniversary recordings collectively grouped as Harvard Voices also are available. Best of all, the content's free!

✦ The interactive Save the Words site (it's just a bit addictive) is more than a combination online dictionary and thesaurus. It's a place to learn about "lost" words that have been reclaimed and to find out about words you might never have heard or used: squiriferous or macellarious or misqueme. The site suggests not only how you might help spread the word about an underused word; it also allows you to adopt a word of your very own, provided you're willing to pledge you'll use the word in conversation and correspondence. You may even sign up for a Word a Day; one quick registration and Oxford Dictionaries will send you every day via e-mail a new word.  

✦ What happens when you put poets in front of a video camera? You create Poeteevee on Tumblr. Produced by Alex Abelson, the site offers readings — most running approximately 20 minutes — by Dorothea Lasky, Eileen Myles, and other poets, some perhaps introduced to you for the first time.