"Maria" was the name of the storm in George R. Stewart's novel _Storm_ (1941), which reputedly was the origin of the meteorologists' custom of naming storms. In his introduction to the 1947 edition, he specifically advises us to "put the accent on the second syllable, and pronounce it `rye'". It is conceivable that the naming influenced Lerner (_Paint Your Wagon_, 1951).

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: The wish to maximize the size of an audience is prima facie evidence of moral turpitude. :||