Wednesday, October 17, 2012


The Circle Museum is a registered Columbia County Museum in Austerlitz, New York  consisting of over 100 large-scale works of sculpture.  In this location for 25 years, BIjan Mahmoodi is the owner of the museum and the artist.  His art reflects his fascination with hard-to-find Industrial Era fabricated metals and bronze casting.  Inside the artist's studio, also on the property, is a collection of Bijan's oil paintings that explore the circle motif you see in most of his sculptures.  Why is it called the Circle Museum? Bijan explains.... "Because our planet is based on the circle - the sun, the planets, the moon and life itself is cyclical.  The circle is what inspires me."  See images at:  http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2008/08/27/the-circle-museum

New York World's Fair 1939  The Beech-Nut Circus, a traveling model circus, was used by the company to promote its products.  A 1/4 inch scale animated model circus showed the layout of a traveling circus.  Billed as the “Biggest Little Show on Earth,” the Beech Nut Company provided an entertaining circus with more than 500 acrobats, aerialists, animals, and clowns at the World's Fair.  Six buses, sponsored by Beech-Nut Foods of Canajoharie, New York, traveled across the United States in the 1930s.  Several were exhibited at the 1939 New York World's Fair.  The last remaining Beechnut Circus Bus is owned by the New York State Museum.  http://canajohariestories.com/beechnut_circus.htm
The Ice Cream Sundae is said to have had its beginning in Ithaca, NY on Sunday, April 3, 1892.  After religious service, the Reverend John M. Scott stopped at the Platt and Colt Pharmacy for his usual dish of ice cream.  Mr. Platt added cherry syrup and a dark candied cherry to the dish of ice cream…inventing the Cherry Sundae!  It was a smash hit. H owever, the city of Two Rivers in Wisconsin claims that the ice cream sundae was invented there…the “fight” continues this day.  In 1891 the Imperial Packing Company in Canajoharie, New York sold Beech-Nut smoked ham and bacon as their main products.  Then, in 1899 the company changed its name to the Beech-Nut Packing Company and expanded their product line to include products such as ketchup, mustard, mints, fruit drops and Beech-Nut Chewing Gum.  There were various flavors including spearmint, peppermint, and pepsin. The town of Canajoharie was referred to as “Flavor-Town” in magazine ads for Beech-Nut Gum.  In 1897, Pearle Wait, a carpenter from Le Roy, NY decided to experiment with gelatin and soon developed and patented a fruit flavored dessert.  Wait and his wife, Mary, named the dessert Jell-O.  In 1899 Wait sold his business, including the formula and the name Jell-O to Frank Woodward for $450.  Woodward was not successful in selling the gelatin product and sold the business including the name for $35.  In 1900 the Jell-O name was first used in advertising by Genesee Pure Food Company.  It became a family favorite dessert and by 1902 the sales were $250, 000.  The Moon Lake House in Saratoga Springs is where in 1853 a chef named George Crumm created the first Potato Chip.  Originally the potato dish, known as French-Fried potatoes, was served as thick slices that were eaten with a folk and knife.  One day a customer complained that the potatoes were too thick and soggy.  Crumm, the chef, agitated with the customer cut the potatoes very, very thin then fried them very crispy and showered them with a generous amount of salt.  They were an instant success!  There are many more food stories in the exhibit,  New York’s Good Eats – Our Fabulous Foods” at the Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown, NY through October 31, 2012.  http://www.teafoodhistory.com/blog/

According to the "Oxford English Dictionary," bully pulpit means "a public office or position of authority that provides its occupant with an outstanding opportunity to speak out on any issue."  It was first used by Theodore Roosevelt, explaining his view of the presidency, in this quotation -- "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!"  The word bully itself was an adjective in the vernacular of the time meaning "first- rate," somewhat equivalent to the recent use of the word "awesome."  The term "bully pulpit" is still used today to describe the president's power to influence the public.  Theodore Roosevelt was one of the four presidents chosen to be honored at the monument on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.  The monument was the brainchild and project of sculptor Gutzon Borglum.  He lobbied to include TR, along with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, because TR was one of his personal heroes. The head of Roosevelt was the last to be dedicated, in 1939. 

By the skin of your teeth  Narrowly; barely.  Usually used in regard to a narrow escape from a disaster.  The phrase first appears in English in the Geneva Bible, 1560, in Job 19:20, which provides a literal translation of the original Hebrew:  "I haue escaped with the skinne of my tethe."  Teeth don't have skin, of course, so the writer may have been alluding to the teeth's surface or simply to a notional minute measure - something that might now be referred to, with less poetic imagery than the biblical version, as 'as small as the hairs on a gnat's bollock'.  http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/83000.html

The phrase "toe the line" is equivalent to "toe the mark," both of which mean to conform to a rule or a standard.  The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002; ed. by Glynnis Chantrell) says, "The idiom toe the line from an athletics analogy originated in the early 19th century".  The specific sport referred to is foot-racing, where the competitors must keep their feet behind a "line" or on a "mark" at the start of the race--as in "On your mark, get set, go!"  So one who "toes the line" is one who does not allow his foot to stray over the line.  In other words, one who does not stray beyond a rigidly defined boundary.  http://grammartips.homestead.com/toetheline.html

In 1996, David Kessler, then the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, warned Congress that tiny drug-compounding pharmacies would spawn a "shadow industry" of unapproved drugs that "could result in serious adverse effects, including death."  Today, Dr. Kessler, who worked for Republican and Democratic administrations, seems eerily prophetic.  A painkilling steroid from the New England Compounding Center has exposed as many as 14,000 patients to fungal meningitis, sickened 203 people and killed 15 people.  The center has shut down, and health officials warn that the number of cases is expected to rise.  How these firms escaped closer regulation shows how little happens in Washington absent an emergency.  Top lawmakers and federal officials tried for years to increase regulation.  A countereffort by the industry and a series of court decisions helped beat that back.  Federal agencies debated about who should crack down on the industry.  Lawmakers eventually abandoned their push after deciding the issue wasn't important enough.  From 2001 to this year, the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists spent about $1.1 million on lobbying, according to disclosure reports filed with Congress.  In a newsletter to members, the academy described how it defeated a 2007 bipartisan draft bill that would have given the FDA more authority to regulate compounding pharmacies after hundreds of its pharmacists canvassed Capitol Hill urging lawmakers to abandon the proposed legislation.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444657804578052972230404046.html?mod=googlenews_wsj  NOTE that some links do not open to a full article, possibly because once a cite is displayed electronically the link may become inactive.  If this is the case, search with keywords to retrieve the full article. 

About Congress.gov  Presented by the Library of Congress using data from the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, and the Government Printing Office, Congress.gov will eventually incorporate all the information on THOMAS.gov.   http://beta.congress.gov/  Congress.gov is the successor to THOMAS.gov and was launched September 19, 2012.  Thanks, Julie.

The young-adult author Mary O’Connell’s first novel for grown-ups will feature perhaps the most famous young adult in literary history:  Holden Caulfield.  Amy Einhorn Books recently acquired rights to “In the Rye,” in which “Caulfield steps out of the pages of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ and into the life of a high school senior searching Manhattan for her missing American lit teacher,” according to the announcement of the deal on the Web site Publishers Marketplace.   In the past, J. D. Salinger’s estate has aggressively acted to keep other artists from drawing on his work.  In 2009, a writer using the pen name John David California was legally barred from publishing in the United States. his own novel starring Caulfield as an old man unloosed from the page.  That book, “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,” was published overseas. 

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