Putnam County

Putnam County is the name of nine counties in the United States of America:

Other meanings

See also

Department of Corrections

A Department of Corrections is a governmental agency responsible for overseeing the incarceration of persons convicted of crimes within a particular jurisdiction. Entities serving that purpose include:

Spelling bee

A spelling bee (also sometimes a "Spelling B") is a competition in which contestants are asked to spell a broad selection of words, usually with a varying degree of difficulty. The concept is thought to have originated in the United States, and spelling bee events, along with variants, are now also held in some other countries around the world. The first winner of an official spelling bee was Frank Neuhauser, who won the 1st National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. in 1925 at age eleven.

Etymology

Historically the word bee has been used to describe a get-together where a specific action is being carried out, like a husking bee, a quilting bee, or an apple bee. Its etymology is unclear but possibly derived from the Old English word bēn, meaning prayer.

History

The earliest known evidence of the phrase spelling bee in print dates back to 1850, although an earlier name, spelling match, has been traced back to 1808. A key impetus for the contests was Noah Webster's spelling books. First published in 1786 and known colloquially as "The Blue-backed Speller," Webster's spelling books were an essential part of the curriculum of all elementary school children in the United States for five generations. Now the key reference for the contests is the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary.

Georgia Department of Corrections

The Georgia Department of Corrections is an agency of the U.S. state of Georgia operating state prisons. The agency is headquartered in Forsyth.

Headquarters

The GDC has its offices in the State Offices South at Tift College in Forsyth, Georgia. The corrections divisions has its offices in Gibson Hall.

Until 2009, the Georgia Department of Corrections headquarters was in the James H. "Sloppy" Floyd Veterans Memorial Building in Atlanta. In 2006, Governor Sonny Perdue announced that the agency planned to move its headquarters to Tift College by 2009. The state estimated that the relocation would bring around 400 jobs to Forsyth. A 2007 employee survey indicated that 49% of the headquarters staff who responded to the survey planned to move with the agency and continue employment at the new headquarters. The agency plans to relocate to the former Tift College by 2010. The ordered relocation will occur in September of that year.

Five GDOC offices in Atlanta are merging into one facility in Tift. After the move was announced in 2006, many employees have moved south of Atlanta, and as of 2010 increasing numbers of employees who live on the south side of Atlanta were hired. Some employees left GDOC for other jobs after the move was announced. Four years of planning and $45 million funded the move. The Georgia Corrections Academy moved to Tift in Fall 2009. In September 2010 the administration began to move into Tift. Employees will reverse commute to Forsyth instead of commuting with traffic into Downtown Atlanta.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a long one-act musical comedy conceived by Rebecca Feldman with music and lyrics by William Finn, a book by Rachel Sheinkin and additional material by Jay Reiss. The show centers on a fictional spelling bee set in a geographically ambiguous Putnam Valley Middle School. Six quirky adolescents compete in the Bee, run by three equally quirky grown-ups.

The 2005 Broadway production, directed by James Lapine and produced by David Stone, James L. Nederlander, Barbara Whitman, Patrick Catullo, Barrington Stage Company and Second Stage Theater, earned good reviews and box-office success and was nominated for six Tony Awards, winning two, including Best Book. The show has spawned various other productions in the U.S., including a national tour with performances in Canada, and Australian productions.

An unusual aspect of the show is that four real audience members are invited on stage to compete in the spelling bee alongside the six young characters. During the 2005 Tony Awards, former Presidential candidate Al Sharpton competed. Another amusing aspect of the show is that the official pronouncer, usually an improv comedian, provides ridiculous usage-in-a-sentence examples when asked to use words in a sentence. For instance, for the word "palaestra", he says, "Euripides said, 'What happens at the palaestra stays at the palaestra.'" At some shows, adult-only audiences (over age 16) are invited for "Parent-Teacher Conferences," also known as "adult night at the Bee." These performances are peppered with sexual references and profanity inspired by R-rated ad-libs made during rehearsals.