“And it takes a night, and a girl, and a book of this kind…”

Life intervenes, as it must, but here’s a drizzle of neat Friday links.

My favorite linguist throws a wet blanket on two babbling babies.

Ruff Notes shows you what Washington National Cathedral almost looked like.

“Inside,” says Hats and Rabbits, “we are all great pipe organs waiting for the right wind to bring us alive. But it seems to me that, often, the delicate pipes go unused until they rust and fall into disrepair.”

Too few of us know what bioethics commissions do.

The Book Haven remembers how the United States saved Russians from starvation.

Anecdotal Evidence walks Chaucerian among the dogwood.

National Poetry Month is kind of silly, but The Economist digs up a nice quip about poetic clothing from John Ashbery.

Paul Laurence Dunbar would have liked this recitation of his poem “Sympathy.”

Edwin Arlington Robinson would have liked this recitation of “Miniver Cheevy.”

Bibliographing reads All Things Shining.

Interpolations reads The Easter Parade.

Don’t let publishers mislead you! Write Better Book Titles.

Here’s the world’s greatest bluegrass cover of “Walk Like an Egyptian.”