Above is a boar located at the excellent Boar’s Head Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Below is a potpouri of reading links. This week includes a space shuttle launch, someone fighting shadows with a sword, how to make a pan flute, and lots of recommended science fiction, fantasy, and horror books …

As noted in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 27, Thomas Jefferson writes, after touring through the vineyards of France:

There are four crops of them more famous than all the rest. These are Chateau-Margau, Tour de Segur, Haut-brion, and de la Fite. They cost 3 livres bottle, old: But are so …