The Postnasal Drip Weekly Link Round-Up

My intro this week is going to be short and sweet. 

If you've taken a look at the photo to the right and assumed that I've been ill, you'd be 2,000% correct. 

It's been unusually wet the past couple of months here in the Sonoran Desert. I'm certainly not about to complain about the amount of rain we've been receiving, but it is so much more than we've gotten the past several years that something in close proximity has gone hog-wild. Normally this something only wakes me up in the middle of the night with an itchy nose and a sneeze or two for about a week, but this moisture made it morph into a full-blown allergy attack that had me taking to my bed for a couple of days.

I am well on the way to full recovery and am currently rejoicing. What's got me dancing on my patio? The neighbor who'd made me long for fried chicken has decided that raising fowl is not for him. It probably didn't help that his next-door neighbors (and mine) have two big hounds that love to bark whenever a gnat passes gas two blocks away. (That would put my egg-laying production off, too....)

I will stop dancing along enough to head out to the link corral. I've got quite a few for you this week!

►Books, Movies & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• Doris Lessing's library: a life in 4,000 books.
• For food manufacturers, "sell by" labels may have reached their expiration date. 
• How to edit your Facebook friend list visibility-- and why you should. 
• This baby loves books so much he is heartbroken every time a story ends. 
• Library Hand, the fastidiously neat penmanship made for card catalogs. (Remember those?)
• A Canadian professor has discovered what could be the only footage of Marcel Proust. 
• Not sitting quietly anymore: how librarians are fighting Trump. 
• Oxford Dictionaries add "clicktivism" and "haterade" as new words for angry times.
• A survey in the UK shows that one in five cannot name a single author of literature. Personally, I don't think it's any better here. Do you? 
• Building a world of empathy through the simple yet profound act of reading aloud. 
• How the potato changed the world.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• Treasure hunters have unearthed a trove of Iron Age gold. 
• An ancient prayer book is shedding new light on Richard III.
• Archaeologists have discovered an incredible Mayan jade pendant. 
• Archaeologists in Scotland are trying to find the body of murdered King James I. 
• Ancient DNA is yielding unprecedented insights into the mysterious Chaco civilization. 
• This is the most elusive piece of pearl jewelry from Christie's 250-year-old archives. 
• Transport back in time to ancient Roman sites with virtual reality.
• A Rembrandt drawing "hidden" in a museum for 250 years has been found. 
• A 1,700-year-old untouched tomb in Mexico has yielded an elaborate headdress figurine. 
• The discovery of late Bronze Age weapons has been hailed as the find of a lifetime. 
• Archaeologists just discovered a huge 3,000-year-old royal Egyptian tomb. 

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• Pet-directed speech may convey intentions in subtle ways. 
• Scientists are telling us that the woolly mammoth is on the verge of resurrection. 
• See award-winning underwater photos from around the world. 

►Fascinating Folk◄

• John Simpson, the selfie-taker and the dictionary-maker. 
• Freda DeKnight: a "Hidden Figure" and titan of African-American cuisine. 

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• The best twenty-five things to do in Phoenix, Arizona. 
• A million people live in these underground nuclear bunkers in China. 
• Sixteen underrated U.S. National Parks to add to your bucket list.
• Your ticket aboard the world's first cruise ship. 
• Climate change is unfreezing the 200,000-year-old "doorway to hell."
• Take a literary vacation with Rail Europe. 

►I ♥ Lists & Quizzes◄

• U.S. Poets Laureate and the presidents they served under. 
• The hardest "A Series of Unfortunate Events" quiz you'll ever take. 
• Ranking America's largest publishers. 
• Ten fun facts about Winnie the Pooh. 
• Thirteen quotes from 1984 that are relevant in 2017. 

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!