Bookbinder’s was a Philadelphia restaurant with excellent food and an impressive history over a hundred years in the making.  Bookbinder’s was established in 1865 by Samuel Bookbinder.  He choose red brick building near the docks of the Delaware River, not because of the historic neighborhood in which the building stood, but for the location near the docks where he could purchase the foods, spices, teas, and liquors from all over the word.  A wealth of marvelous seafood – lobsters, shad, clams, oysters – was all brought to market near Bookbinder’s door.  Bookbinder’s has many stories in its past; one of the more charming tales is about a pair of Austrian boys that landed on the docks near the restaurant around a hundred years ago.  They knew very little English but were seeking to make a living in their stock and trade; binding books.  As they began to head into the city the spied the sign boldly proclaiming ‘Bookbinder’s.” so they headed for it and asked for jobs. They were offered jobs as dish washers until they finally made it clear that they were quite literally book binders.  They were sent up the street to the National Publishing Company were they remained well into the late 1970s and had a hand in publishing several well known cookbooks including the one produced by Vincent Price and his wife Mary.  Bookbinder’s received rave revues for many of their custom dishes, but their most famous dish by far was the Snapper Soup which was made from five pound snapping turtles.  These creatures are not the most commonplace to find, but if you search fresh markets with a little persistence you can find what you need; even if you don’t you can make a “mock” version using red snapper.  Whether you are serving real or mock Snapper Soup, you should serve it with a beaker of sherry so that each person can lace their own portion with the wine according to their tastes.  Bookbinder’s closed their doors in 2009 due to financial difficulties.  Find recipe for Bookbinder's snapper soup at http://cookingannie.hubpages.com/hub/A-Philadelphia-Institution-The-Old-Original-Bookbinders

The African Great Lakes are a series of lakes constituting the part of the Rift Valley lakes in and around the East African Rift.  They include Lake Victoria, the second largest fresh water lake in the world, and Lake Tanganyika, the world's second largest in volume as well as the second deepest.  The term Greater Lakes is also used, less commonly, for some of them. Countries in the African Great Lakes region include Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Great_Lakes  NOTE that besides the Great Lakes in the United States, we have:  Great Lake (Britain), a lake on the River Poulter in Nottinghamshire, England; Great Lake, Tasmania, a lake in Australia; and The Great Lakes District, another named for the Perth Wetlands in Perth, Western Australia.

The Great Lakes islands in North America consist of about 35,000 islands (scattered throughout Great Lakes) created by uneven glacial activity in the Great Lakes Basin.  The largest of these is Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron in Canada's province of Ontario.  At 1,068 square miles (2,766 km²), it is the largest lake island in the world.  See a list of notable Great Lakes islands and archipelagos at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islands_of_the_Great_Lakes   Find a list of populated islands (with a specified year-round population of over 50 residents) of the Great Lakes and connecting rivers at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populated_islands_of_the_Great_Lakes

On January 8. 2014, Delaware's governor Jack A. Markell nominated Leo E. Strine, Jr as the next chief justice of the state's supreme court, in a widely expected promotion for one of corporate law's biggest personalities.  Mr. Strine is about the closest thing to a celebrity in the buttoned-up world of corporate law.  His courtroom demeanor—sometimes charming, sometimes caustic, often unpredictable— has earned him both fans and detractors.  Mr. Strine has a tendency to opine on legal issues not technically before him, a habit that has earned him unusual public rebukes from the state's supreme court.  A fast riser in the legal world, he spent just two years as an associate at corporate-law powerhouse Skadden, Arps, Slate Meagher & Flom LLP before coming the top legal counselor to then-Gov. Tom Carper.  In 1998 he was named the youngest judge in the history of the Chancery Court, and was promoted to its chief in 2011.  Liz Hoffman   http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304347904579308432948927494

A few weeks after Delaware Governor Markell nominated Leo E. Strine, Jr. as chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court in early January 2014, Strine  was confirmed unanimously and without debate by the state Senate.  “Delaware’s judiciary is widely recognized as the finest in the nation,” Markell said.  “With his superior intellect, incredible work ethic and substantial judicial experience, Leo Strine is well-positioned to build upon our courts’ deserved reputation for excellence.”  The state supreme court 's five justices serve 12-year terms.  The court settles many major corporate disputes because so many U.S. corporations—more than half—have their legal headquarters in Delaware.  Strine majored in political science at the University of Delaware and then earned his law degree at the University of Pennsylvania.  http://www.udel.edu/udmessenger/vol22no1/stories/alumni-strine.html

Coffee buyer Timothy Hill has reinvented the wheel, and it is causing quite a stir.  The 31-year-old purchaser for Durham, N.C., roaster Counter Culture Coffee has rolled out a new version of a tool long used by coffee tasters to elicit the adjectives that may be on the tip of the tongue: a flavor wheel.  Flavor wheels are colorful reference tools that aid food and beverage tasters of all stripes.  Mr. Hill's pastel-hued downloadable disc includes 140 terms, each representing a food or flavor that may be used to describe a cup of coffee, from snow peas to black currant, from clementine to "meat-like."  The terms are ones the wheel's defenders say are accessible to most coffee drinkers.  His new wheel is gaining traction, challenging the industry standard: the nearly 20-year-old flavor wheel of the Specialty Coffee Association of America, a trade group whose members include Mr. Hill's employer.  Leslie Josephs  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303825604579515983284673014?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303825604579515983284673014.html

Caution on fava beans:  Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency ( G6PD) deficiency is closely linked to favism, a disorder characterized by a hemolytic reaction to consumption of fava or broad beans, with a name derived from the Italian name of the broad bean (fava).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose-6-phosphate_dehydrogenase_deficiency  Thank you, muse reader. 

World Book Night U.S.  I was in the right place at the right time on April 23, 2014 when an enthusiastic reader offered free books (Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple) to restaurant patrons.  World Book Night is an annual celebration dedicated to spreading the love of reading, person to person.  Each year on April 23, tens of thousands of people go out into their communities and give away half a million free World Book Night paperbacks.  Successfully launched in the U.K. in 2011, World Book Night was first celebrated in the U.S. in 2012.  Who wouldn't want a free book?  Find a list of all the 2014 books at http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/books/2014/item/486-2014-book-list

The Andy Warhol Museum announced April 24, 2014 the discovery of new works by the pop artist, works which had been trapped on floppy disks for close to 30 years.  They were made on an Amiga computer in 1985 and were unlocked by the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Club and its Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, according to a statement from the museum.  The works were commissioned by the now-defunct Commodore International to showcase the computer's capabilities.  They include doodles and experiments with Warhol's iconic images, like the Campbell's soup can.  The works might have been lost forever if it had not been for Cory Arcangel, an artist who watched a YouTube clip showing Warhol promoting the release of the Amiga 1000 in 1985.  He started to poke around, eventually approaching the museum's chief archivist to talk about the possibility of searching for the files amid The Warhol's archives collection.   The works have since been extracted and backed up so they can be saved, even if the floppy disks fail.  See images at http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/24/us/andy-warhol-lost-art/?hpt=hp_t3

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1140  April 25, 2014  

On this date in 1846, open conflict began over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican–American War.  In 1898, the United States declared war on Spain beginning the Spanish-American War.  In 1901, New York became the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates.