Spelling Bee Today

Besides meeting the Claremont City Council at the Farmers' Market today or attending the Japan Day fundraiser at the Claremont Colleges this afternoon, you can also check out the 6th Annual Friends of the Claremont Library Spelling Bee at Taylor Hall in Claremont's Cahuilla Park.

The Bee begins at 2pm, and there will be plenty of familiar faces on hand. The Friends of the Library have a new website with details about the event, as well as photo albums from years past. We borrowed a couple, courtesy of our friends The Friends:

Bee Prepared

The Friends of the Claremont Library have announced that they are accepting applications for the fifth annual Friends community spelling bee. The event takes place Sunday, April 18, at Claremont's Taylor Hall, located near the corner of Scripps Rd. and Indian Hill Blvd.

Here's the information for the event :

CALLING ALL SPELLERS and FANS OF SPELLERS

• Teams consist of 3 Adult Spellers who spell the words as a team.
  
  
• Past teams have included Claremont City Council, Rotary, Kiwanis, League of Women Voters, House of Ruth, Claremont School Board & other local groups.
  
  
• Teams can be any three adults who want to join together to support the library and literacy (perhaps a book group?) .
  
  
• Registration form will be available on-line. First 24 teams to send in registration form & payment will be taken.
  
  
• Team Registration fee is $300 ~ all supporters will be listed in the program.
  
  
• Oh, you don’t like to spell? Consider sponsoring your favorite group in town or sending in a donation for a partial sponsorship of a team ~ we would be happy to find spellers for you if you would like to sponsor a team.

For registration forms, check out the Friends website.

You may remember that the Claremont Rotary Club's Phun Club won for the second time last year. Get a couple of your own friends together and join in the fun, or just show up and watch the happenings. The money goes to a good cause and a good time is usually had by all.

Got a Bee In Your Bonnet?

The Claremont Sunrise Rotary Club's "Phun Club" was the winner of the Fourth Annual Friends of the Claremont Library Spelling Bee. They reclaimed the title that they last won in 2007 and lost to the House of Ruth team in 2008.

The Phun Club won the grueling third round by correctly spelling "rubefacient." They faced strong competition, however, from the likes of the Jane Austen Book Club (don't let their bluestocking name fool you! Real Janeites are tough competitors!), the Ruthless Spellbinders (from the House of Ruth), and the widows'-weeds-bedecked trio, the Tombstone Terminators (Friends of Oak Park Cemetery).

The Claremont Courier also had a team this year...which is interesting, as the Courier has had an ongoing run of mispelled words in its issues.

The El Roble cheer squad performed "YMCA" for the crowd and "The Flight of the Bumblebee" accompanied the spellers as they took their seats (which were decorated with bee-shaped containers of honey).

A great time was had by all, and the emcees entertained the crowd with many a pun and poked fun at several city staples, such as the infamous Claremont trolley (how do you spell "bus"?).


Think you have what it takes to spell in the bee next year? Here are some of the words from today's bee:

stridulated (which, when read to the competitors, really sounded like "strigulated")
palladium
plenilune
speleology (this one elicited a collective gasp from the audience when it came up!)
lackadaisical
cinematheque
teratology
habiliments
brunneous
ormolu
gammelost
ghurry (don't feel so bad about missing this one...read here about a speller in Hawaii that struggled with it in 2005)
seicento
sederunt
rapprochement
Pentateuchal

Spelling Bee Set for March 28th

The Friends of the Claremont Library will be holding their 4th Annual Spelling Bee on March 29th, 2009, in Claremont's Taylor Hall. According to the Friends, any three adults can put a team together and enter. The spelling is done as a team.

In the past teams have come from groups like the Claremont Sunrise Rotary Club, the Claremont Kiwanis Club, the CUSD Board of Education, the Claremont Community Foundation, the Claremont Chamber of Commerce, the Claremont College presidents, the Claremont City Council, Claremont Heritage, the Claremont League of Women Voters, the Claremont Courier, and many other organizations.

Registration opens January 16th, and entry forms will be available on the Friends website at www.claremontlibrary.org. The registration fee is $300.