Tweeting by Caroline555  https://www.jigidi.com/solve/80qry0f7/tweeting/   

Possibly originally from post to pillar, perhaps a reference to the rapid movement of the ball in real tennis; The Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs (1993) notes that from post to pillar dates to at least the 15th century.   Hyphenation:  from pil‧lar to post  adverb

from pillar to post  (not comparable) 

(idiomatic)  From one place (or person, or task) to another; from post to pillar, hither and thither. quotations ▼  The term normally implies a harassing situation.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/from_pillar_to_post#Adverb   

Shoofly pie is a type of American pie made with molasses associated with Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine.  While shoo-fly pie has been a staple of Moravian, Mennonite, and Amish foodways, there is scant evidence concerning its origins, and most of the folktales concerning the pie are apocryphal, including the persistent legend that the name comes from flies being attracted to the sweet filling.  The name shoo-fly was borrowed from a brand of molasses that was popular in parts of the U.S. during the late 19th century.  Possibly related to the Jenny Lind pie (a soft gingerbread pie), it may have originated among the Pennsylvania Dutch in the 1880s as molasses crumb cake, and is sometimes called molasses crumb pie. Traditionally it was not served as a dessert pie, but instead as a breakfast food with hot coffee.  Shoo-fly pie has been described as a crumb cake baked in a pie crust.  The primary ingredients of the filling are molasses, brown sugar, and water.  Serving the cake in pie crust made it easier for people to eat it with their hands in the 19th century.  It comes in two different versions:  wet-bottom and dry-bottom.  The dry-bottom version is baked until fully set and results in a more cake-like consistency throughout.  The wet-bottom version is set like cake at the top where it was mixed in with the crumbs, but the very bottom is a stickier, gooier custard-like consistency.  Different recipes for the wet and dry versions appeared in the early 20th century--the dry version was suitable for dunking in a cup of coffee.  Shoo-fly pie began as a crust-less molasses cake called centennial cake in 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.  There is no evidence of it being made before the American Civil War.  Precursors include Jenny Lind pie, a type of gingerbread cake that was named for the famed Swedish opera star, Jenny Lind, after her tour of America in the 1850s.  Because shoo-fly pie traditionally contains molasses but no eggs, historians conclude that it was typically baked during the winter, when chickens laid fewer eggs and molasses could be stored in the cold weather without fear of it fermenting.  

A Montgomery pie is similar to a shoo-fly pie, except lemon juice is used in the bottom layer.  Treacle tart is a pie with a filling made from light treacle.  Shoo-fly pie has been described as a crumb cake baked in a pie crust.  The primary ingredients of the filling are molasses, brown sugar, and water.  Serving the cake in pie crust made it easier for people to eat it with their hands in the 19th century.   It comes in two different versions:  wet-bottom and dry-bottom.  The dry-bottom version is baked until fully set and results in a more cake-like consistency throughout.  The wet-bottom version is set like cake at the top where it was mixed in with the crumbs, but the very bottom is a stickier, gooier custard-like consistency.  Different recipes for the wet and dry versions appeared in the early 20th century--the dry version was suitable for dunking in a cup of coffee.  The modern name comes from a particular brand of molasses from Philadelphia, Shoo-fly Molasses.  The name "shoo-fly pie" was used in the 1880s, but its first appearance in print was after World War I.  The "Shoo-fly Molasses" brand was named after a popular circus animal that toured in Pennsylvania in the 19th century, "Shoo-fly the Boxing Mule".  The mule, in turn, may have been named after a song that became popular half a century before:  "Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me". The pie is mentioned in the song "Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy", popularized by Dinah Shore in the 1940s.  In the Pennsylvania Dutch language, shoo-fly pie is called Melassich Riwwelboi or Melassichriwwelkuche (molasses crumb cake).  Before its modern name became popular during the 20th century, it was molasses crumb pie or soda rivvel cake (rivels are lumps of food).   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoofly_pie   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2888  December 20, 2024

December 10, 2024  Scrabble star wins Spanish world title–despite not speaking Spanish.  Nigel Richards has also been champion in English and– after memorising dictionary in nine weeks – French.  More than 150 competitors representing 20 countries descended on a hotel on the outskirts of Granada last month to battle it out at the Spanish World Scrabble Championships.  Now, weeks after the letter tiles were meticulously placed and the points tallied, news of the tournament’s winner, Nigel Richards, has made waves across Spain, with many scratching their heads over the fact he does not speak Spanish.  “An incredible humiliation” was how one news presenter described it this week, while another report labelled it “the height of absurdity”.  But for those who have tracked the rise of Richards, a Malaysia-based New Zealander hailed as the Tiger Woods of Scrabble, the feat seemed fitting.  “This is someone with very particular, incredible abilities; he’s a gifted guy,” Benjamín Olaizola, who came second to Richards in the Spanish-language tournament, told the broadcaster Cadena Ser.  “We are talking about a New Zealander who has won multiple championships in English–at least five of them.”  The Spanish title wasn’t the first time Richards’ Scrabble skills had shattered linguistic barriers:  in 2015 he made headlines when he won the francophone world championships without being able to speak or understand French.  Instead he reportedly memorised the entire French Scrabble dictionary in nine weeks.  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/10/scrabble-star-nigel-richards-wins-spanish-world-title-despite-not-speaking-spanish    

October 31, 2024  No artist captured the essence of Iowa quite like Grant Wood, whose bucolic landscapes and portraits of salt-of-the-earth  Midwesterners earned him the nickname “America’s painter of the soil.”  Yet Wood’s artistic range extended far beyond regionalist works such as American Gothic, the painting that catapulted him to fame nearly a century ago.  In his early years, Wood experimented with impressionism after traveling to Europe, and for a time he operated a jewelry and fine metalwork shop in Chicago.  The former University of Iowa professor also crafted furniture, sculptures, and stained glass, and he was deeply interested in architecture and interior design.  Wood was so prolific, in fact, that the full scope of his work remains unclear to scholars.  To address this, a new UI research project aims to illuminate the breadth of Iowa’s most famous artist by building a comprehensive database of Wood’s works, helping fortify his legacy.  The three-year initiative will create a digital scholarship tool—known in the art world as a catalogue raisonné—that will detail Wood’s paintings, prints, drawings, murals, and decorative work in metal and wood, as well as his public and private commissions.  The project will also establish a multidisciplinary arts and humanities laboratory at Iowa dedicated to studying Wood’s life and work.  “If we’re really trying to elevate Grant Wood to his well-earned spot in art history, then we need to have this kind of resource available for scholars and the next generation of students,”   says Maura Pilcher, director of the UI-based Grant Wood Art Colony.  “A lot of the texts not only overlook Grant Wood, but regionalism in general, and that’s a huge part of our cultural legacy as Midwesterners—and for the United States.  It was a truly American style at a time when a lot of people were looking to Europe and other locations for inspiration.”  Wood, who grew up in Anamosa and Cedar Rapids, taught at Iowa from 1934 to 1941 in his studio at the original Art Building.  The Grant Wood Art Colony, in partnership with UI Libraries and the UI Stanley Museum of Art, secured a grant for $296,743 from the Carver Charitable Trust to fund three years of the catalogue raisonné project.  Further grants and private fundraising will support the full scope of the endeavor.  The project team will include a graduate research assistant, undergraduate interns, and an advisory panel of scholars and legal experts.  Researchers will partner with museums and sift through records and published materials in search of forgotten works, track provenance details of known pieces, and ultimately create a database of Wood’s output.  The web-based resource will also serve as a repository for scholarship and creative works related to Wood and the regionalism movement he championed.  It will be freely available to scholars, museums, art dealers, and the public.  Says Pilcher: “Wood was never an elitist, so we want an accessible database where everybody can dig in.”  Publication Source:   Iowa Magazine  https://grantwood.uiowa.edu/news/iowa-art-experts-set-out-catalogue-grant-woods-prolific-career

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2887  December 18, 2024

double cross  First recorded in 1834 from thieves' slang cross (or on the cross) to refer to something dishonest, a play on straight/square: a crook going back on his partners would therefore be crossing the crossers, or double-crossing. 

verb  double-cross (third-person singular simple present double-crosses, present participle double-crossing, simple past and past participle double-crossed)

To betray or go back on; to deceive someone after having gained their trust and led them to believe that they were being aided.  (plant breeding, animal breeding) 

noun  double-cross (plural double-crosses)  An instance of betrayal of one who had been led to believe that the betrayer was assisting them.  (plant breeding, animal breeding)  The hybrid product of double-crossing.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/double-cross#:~:text=Etymology,crossers%2C%20or%20double%2Dcrossing.

Succotash recipe  Prep Time:  15 mins  Cook Time:  30 mins  Servings:  6  https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/25269/succotash/  Easy version:  combine cans of corn and lima beans.  Serve hot or cold.    

Favorite books read by The Muser in 2024:  Radetzky March (1933) by Joseph Roth, translated from the German by Geoffrey Dunlop 

Talent (2019) by Juliet Lapidos

The Boys in the Boat (2013) by Daniel James Brown 

The Mystery of the Smoldering Mattress:  A Nancy Drouillard Mystery   (Nancy Drouillard Mysteries) (2023) by Kathryn Crabtree 

Lessons in Chemistry (2022) by Bonnie Garmus

When We Meet Again (2016) by Kristin Harmel 

The Stationery Shop (2019) by Marjan Kamali 

Need to Know (2018) by Karen Cleveland    

Joseph Radetzky, a veteran of Marengo, Wagram and other smoky battles of the Napoleonic wars, of the military glories of the now defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire.  He lived to be over 90.  For years he fought the red-tape artists who taught that military science, like the Rock of Ages, never changed.  But the Radetzky March played on.  It is one of the devices by which Joseph Roth manages to bind together his study of the disintegration of an empire, "Radetzky March."  Through the novel the two-four military time keeps its beat, but at the close the feet of the marchers are lagging, and many are out of step.  Francis Joseph himself is dead; and the wind sown by Gavril Princip, who murdered the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to Francis Joseph's throne, is about to blow down the flimsy structure of the monarchy.    John Chamberlin  https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/10/31/specials/roth-march.html?module=inline    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2886  December 16, 2024

Most of Alaska uses Alaska Time, which spans three standard time zones.   The state used two time zones until 1983, when it placed the capital, Juneau, in the same time zone as the more populous Anchorage and Fairbanks.  China spans four time zones but uses only one.  The time difference between Bangkok, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is one hour, although the two capitals are on almost the same longitude.  The Aleutian Islands, a spur of Alaska, and the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean are 3,750 km (2,330 mi) apart but lie at similar longitudes.  Hawaii–Aleutian Standard Time (HST) UTC--10 h; Hawaii does not observe daylight saving time.  The Alaskan Aleutian Islands observe Hawaii–Aleutian Daylight Time (HDT) UTC−9 h  UTC:  Coordinated Universal Time  Time zones around the world are expressed as positive or negative offsets from UTC or GMT (arguably the same as Coordinated Universal Time).  Local time is UTC and the time zone offset for that location, e.g., Eastern Standard Time (EST) = UTC −5 hours.  UTC replaced Greenwich Mean Time on 1 January 1972 as the basis for the main reference time scale or civil time in various regions.  One of the driving forces behind the development of time zones was the increasing use of faster modes of transportation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  In the US, much of the national rail network was completed by 1900.  In March 1918, Congress officially established the standard timekeeping system that is associated with this arrangement of time zones in the United States.   One of the driving forces behind the development of time zones was the increasing use of faster modes of transportation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  In the US, much of the national rail network was completed by 1900.  In March 1918, Congress officially established the standard timekeeping system that is associated with this arrangement of time zones in the United States.   Before the Industrial Revolution, when life was dominated by farming and artisan crafts, the times to sow, fertilize and harvest were important.  With the progress of technology and the sciences and as the world moved closer together through ever faster means of transport such as steamships and the railroad, people started to think about how to get the time problem under control.  Time zones are an invention of modern time.  Before the creation of standard time zones, every place had its own time.  With the spread of the telegraph and the construction of railroad networks in the 19th and early 20th centuries, communication and travel gained new dimensions--and new problems. Due to the lack of time standardization, it was difficult to coordinate train schedules on the mostly single-track lines; a signal at the wrong time could lead to fatal collisions.  Time zones became important in commercial air travel, especially for scheduling and coordinating flights. 

Before the introduction of time zones, there were between 140 and 300 different local time zones in North America.  As the story goes, a missed train in Ireland by Sandford Fleming led eventually to the creation of a coordinated Universal Time for the whole planet.  Fleming, a Scottish-born Canadian engineer, was one of the leaders in the effort to develop a worldwide system of keeping time.  He proposed a system of time zones in 1879 and presented it at several international conferences.  The British already had a standardized time.  In 1847, the national Railway Clearing Union ordered that Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) should apply at all railroad stations.  The British Post Office transmitted time signals from Greenwich by telegraph to most parts of the country to set the clocks.  Since 1875, Cleveland Abbe, an astronomer, meteorologist, and the first head of the U.S. Weather Bureau, had lobbied the American Meteorological Society (AMS) for a uniform standard time.  In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference was held in Washington, D.C., "for the purpose of fixing upon a meridian proper to be employed as a common zero of longitude and standard of time-reckoning throughout the globe international basis of civil and scientific time, was introduced.  The unit of UTC is the atomic second.  UTC replaced Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), based on the motion of the Earth, as the World Standard for time in 1972.  https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/US-timezone_map.htm#:~:text=Most%20of%20Alaska%20is%20in,(UTC%20%E2%88%92%2010%20h). 

Easy dessert:  sour cream on unfrosted chocolate cake   

The Oneida Community was a perfectionist religious communal society founded by John Humphrey Noyes and his followers in 1848 near Oneida, New York.  The Oneida Community practiced communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions), group marriage, male sexual continence, Oneida stirpiculture (a form of eugenics), and mutual criticism.  The community's original 87 members grew to 172 by February 1850, 208 by 1852, and 306 by 1878.  There were smaller Noyesian communities in Wallingford, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; Putney and Cambridge, Vermont.  The branches were closed in 1854 except for the Wallingford branch, which operated until the 1878 tornado devastated it.  The Oneida Community dissolved in 1881, converting itself to a joint-stock company.  This eventually became the silverware company Oneida Limited, one of the largest in the world.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community    

December 13 is celebrated in the United States as the National Day of the Horse, which recognizes the contribution of horses to the economy, history, and character of the country.  It was established by a Senate resolution in 2004.    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2885  December 13, 2024

Robinson Crusoe is an English adventure novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719.  Written with a combination of epistolary, confessional, and didactic forms, the book follows the title character (born Robinson Kreutznaer) after he is cast away and spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.  The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" (now part of Chile) which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966.  Pedro Serrano is another real-life castaway whose story might have inspired the novel.  The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and that the book was a non-fiction travelogue.  Despite its simple narrative style, Robinson Crusoe was well received in the literary world and is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre.  Some allege it is a contender for the first English novel.  Before the end of 1719, the book had already run through four editions, and it has gone on to become one of the most widely published books in history, spawning so many imitations, not only in literature but also in film, television, and radio, that its name is used to define a genre, the Robinsonade.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe    

David Elliot Grann (born March 10, 1967) is an American journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and author.  His first book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, was published by Doubleday in February 2009. After its first week of publication, it debuted on The New York Times bestseller list at #4 and later reached #1.  Grann's articles have been collected in several anthologies, including What We Saw: The Events of September 11, 2001, The Best American Crime Writing of 2004 and 2005, and The Best American Sports Writing of 2003 and 2006.  He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grann   

December 10, 2024  NEW YORK (AP) — Nikki Giovanni, the poet, author, educator and public speaker who rose from borrowing money to release her first book to decades as a literary celebrity sharing her blunt and conversational takes on everything from racism and love to space travel and mortality, has died.  She was 81.  Giovanni, subject of the prize-winning 2023 documentary “Going to Mars,” died Monday with her life-long partner, Virginia (Ginney) Fowler, by her side.  Author of more than 25 books, Giovanni was a born confessor and performer whom fans came to know well from her work, her readings and other live appearances and her years on the faculty of Virginia Tech among other schools. Poetry collections such as “Black Judgement” and “Black Feeling Black Talk” sold thousands of copies, led to invitations from “The Tonight Show” and other television programs and made her popular enough to fill a 3,000-seat concert hall at Lincoln Center for a celebration of her 30th birthday.  https://apnews.com/article/nikki-giovanni-obit-e2232d5a003442afb76f084fe7c1b4a3     

December 9, 2024  Kennedy Center Honors Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt, The Apollo & More  Counterculture mingled with high arts culture at the 47th Kennedy Center Honors.  Shakedown Street wound its way to the nation’s capital on Sunday (Dec. 8) as counterculture mingled with high arts culture at the 47th Kennedy Center Honors, where legendary rockers the Grateful Dead; blues rock songstress and guitarist Bonnie Raitt; acclaimed filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola; and jazz trumpeter, pianist and composer Arturo Sandoval were inducted.  In a first, the Honors this year inducted a venue, Harlem’s fabled The Apollo, in celebration of nine decades of the theater championing Black artists and culture.  Musical star power included Brandi Carlile, Sheryl Crow, Maggie Rogers, Dave Matthews, Queen Latifah, Leon Bridges, James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Don Was, Sturgill Simpson, The War and Treaty, Jackson Browne, Trombone Shorty, Doug E. Fresh, Raye, Grace VanderWaal and Keb Mo.  https://www.billboard.com/music/awards/kennedy-center-honors-grateful-dead-bonnie-raitt-apollo-1235848089/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2884  December 11, 2024

There’s nothing American about apple pie.  In fact, neither apples or pie originated in North America:  the ancient Egyptians get the credit for creating pie, and modern apples originated in the mountains of Kazakhstan, then spread along the Silk Roads from Central Asia to Europe.  https://cookingenie.com/content/blog/american-as-apple-pie-not-so-fast/ 

In one respect, we’re all pretty much always under the weather by default of living beneath the atmosphere.  But that might not be the most welcome response when someone tells you they’re under the weather—meaning they don’t feel well.  While people generally agree that the idiom has nautical origins, it’s not entirely clear what those origins are.  One popular theory posits that ailing sailors recuperated belowdecks, putting them literally under the weather decks (those exposed to the elements).  An offshoot of that explanation claims that crewmen and passengers would go belowdecks during bad weather in order to forestall seasickness.  First of all, although a ship’s infirmary (or “sick-bay”) would’ve been belowdecks—and passengers no doubt would’ve sheltered below during a storm—sources touting the aforementioned theories lack examples of the phrase under the weather in those contexts.  Moreover, many 19th-century instances of being under the weather have nothing to do with poor physical health. It was variously used in reference to personal financial troubles, a political party’s impotence, or an entire city’s failure to prosper.  It’s also worth pointing out that weather in nautical circles doesn’t always refer to what’s happening in the sky. The weather side of a ship or island is the one that faces the wind: the windward side.  Throughout the 19th century, the words under the weather were frequently followed by a term related to the weather side—including under the weather bow, under the weather quarter, and under the weather shore—as opposed to the weather in the sky.  https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/under-the-weather-meaning     

hubbub  whobub (obsolete)

Mid 16th c. Perhaps from Irish; compare Irish ababú!, abú! (battle-cry), Scottish Gaelic ub! ub! (expressing contempt, etc.), ubh ubh! (expressing disgust). 

noun  hubbub (plural hubbubs)

A confused uproar, commotion, tumult or racket. synonym ▲quotations ▼

Synonyms: see Thesaurus:commotion

verb  hubbub (third-person singular simple present hubbubs, present participle hubbubing or hubbubbing, simple past and past participle hubbubed or hubbubbed)

(intransitive) To cause a tumult or racket. quotations ▼

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hubbub 

 

The War of Jenkins' Ear (Spanish: Guerra del Asiento, lit. 'War of the Agreement') was a conflict lasting from 1739 to 1748 between Britain and Spain.  The majority of the fighting took place in New Granada and the Caribbean Sea, with major operations largely ended by 1742.  It was related to the 1740 to 1748 War of the Austrian Succession.  The name was coined in 1858 by British historian Thomas Carlyle, and refers to Robert Jenkins, captain of the British brig Rebecca, whose ear was allegedly severed by Spanish coast guards as they searched his ship for contraband in April 1731.  Response to the incident was tepid until opposition politicians in the British Parliament, backed by the South Sea Company, used it seven years later to incite support for a war against Spain, hoping to improve British trading opportunities in the Caribbean.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Jenkins%27_Ear   

Vincent Price graduated from Yale University with a degree in Art History.  He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, youngest of the four children in 1911.  His father was president of the National Candy Company.  His grandfather formulated ‘Dr. Price’s Baking Powder’, the first cream of tartar baking powder.  After starting his career as a character actor, Price ventured into horror films in 1939 alongside Boris Karloff in the film Tower of London.  In 1940, he would star in the lead role of the classic film The Invisible Man Returns.  He starred in a number of horror movies throughout the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s.  When horror movies where less popular in the 1970’s, Price went on to use his voice in a number of voice overs and characterizations.  Price hosted and starred in the BBC Radio’s horror and mystery series The Price of Fear in the early 1970’s.  He would often recite dramatic readings of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.  In 1975, his voice work after an advertisement of Milton Bradley’s Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture was used on Alice Cooper’s first solo album “Welcome to my Nightmare.”  In 1977, Price recorded a cover single of Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s, “The Monster Mash“, putting his voice rendition and remake of the song.  This set the backdrop to his most famous ‘Rap” in Thriller.  https://theblogidentity.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/thriller-alert-how-i-miss-vincent-price-on-halloween/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2883  December 9, 2024