Monday, March 30, 2015

Dysphania ambrosioides, formerly Chenopodium ambrosioides, known as wormseed, Jesuit's tea, Mexican-tea, paico, epazote, or herba sancti Mariæ, is an herb native to Central America, South America, and southern Mexico.  Epazote is used as a leaf vegetable, a herb and a herbal tea for its pungent flavor.  Raw, it has a resinous, medicinal pungency, similar to anise, fennel, or even tarragon, but stronger.  Although it is traditionally used with black beans for flavor and its carminative properties (less gas), it is also sometimes used to flavor other traditional Mexican dishes as well:  it can be used to season quesadillas and sopes (especially those containing huitlacoche), soups, mole de olla, tamales with cheese and chili peppers, chilaquiles, eggs, potatoes, and enchiladas.  It is often used as an herb for white fried rice and an important ingredient for making the green salsa for chilaquiles.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphania_ambrosioides  
Find recipes for lentil soup, mixed bean salad and Maya black bean soup at http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/herb-epazote.aspx

Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York.  Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."  On March 11, 2013 it was designated a National Historic LandmarkIt offers residencies to artists working in choreography, film, literature, musical composition, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video.  Collectively, artists who have worked at Yaddo have won 66 Pulitzer Prizes, 27 MacArthur Fellowships, 61 National Book Awards, 24 National Book Critics Circle Awards, 108 Rome Prizes, 49 Whiting Writers' Awards, a Nobel Prize (Saul Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976), and countless other honors.  The estate was purchased in 1881 by the financier Spencer Trask and his wife, the writer Katrina Trask.  The first mansion on the property burned down in 1893, and the Trasks then built the current house.  Yaddo is a neologism invented by one of the Trask children and was meant to rhyme with "shadow".  In 1900, after the premature deaths of the Trasks' four children, Spencer Trask decided to turn the estate into an artist's retreat as a gift to his wife.  He did this with the financial assistance of philanthropist George Foster Peabody.  The first artists moved in 1926.  The success of Yaddo encouraged Spencer and Katrina later to donate land for a working women's retreat center as well, known as Wiawaka Holiday House, at the request of Mary Wiltsie Fuller.  Yaddo has hosted more than 6,000 artists, including Hannah Arendt, Newton Arvin, Milton Avery, Dawn Powell James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, John Cheever, Aaron Copland, Sari Dienes, Mary Beth Edelson, Kenneth Fearing, Jonathan Franzen, Daniel Fuchs, Steve Giovinco, Philip Guston, Daron Hagen, Ruth Heller,Patricia Highsmith, Langston Hughes, Ted Hughes, Alfred Kazin, Ulysses Kay, Stanley Kunitz, Jacob Lawrence, Alan Lelchuk, Michael Lenson, Robert Lowell, Flannery O'Connor, Stephen Peles, Sylvia Plath, Katherine Anne Porter, Mario Puzo, Ned Rorem, Henry Roth, Philip Roth, Clyfford Still, Virgil Thomson, Colm Tóibín, Lionel Trilling, Anne Truitt, Byron Vazakas, Joe Draper, and David Foster Wallace.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaddo

Realizing that there was no equivalent for the Pulitzer Prize in radio, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to establish a prestigious award for excellence in broadcasting.  The manager of WSB Radio in Atlanta Lambdin Kay asked John Drewry, the dean of Grady School of Journalism, to sponsor the award.  They named the award for George Foster Peabody, a highly successful investment banker and recently deceased benefactor to the University of Georgia.  Since 1940 the Peabody award has steadily grown from being the “Pulitzer Prize for Radio” to recognizing excellence in a wide range of electronic media.  In 1948 the Peabody Awards began recognizing television programs, and eventually cable TV was included beginning in 1981.  By 2003, the first website had been included in the list of winners and 2012 saw the first Peabody Award given to a blog.  http://www.peabodyawards.com/about

In 1991, Suzanne Collins began her professional career writing for children’s television.  She worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows, including the Emmy-nominated hit Clarissa Explains it All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo.  For preschool viewers, she penned multiple stories for the Emmy-nominated Little Bear and Oswald.  She also co-wrote the Rankin/​Bass Christmas special, Santa, Baby! with her friend, Peter Bakalian, which was nominated for a WGA Award in Animation.  Most recently she was the Head Writer for Scholastic Entertainment’s Clifford’s Puppy Days,and a freelancer on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!  While working on a Kids WB show called Generation O! she met children’s author and illustrator James Proimos, who talked her into giving children’s books a try.  Thinking one day about Alice in Wonderland, she was struck by how pastoral the setting must seem to kids who, like her own, lived in urban surroundings. In New York City, you’re much more likely to fall down a manhole than a rabbit hole and, if you do, you’re not going to find a tea party.  What you might find...?  Well, that’s the story of Gregor the Overlander, the first book in her five-part fantasy/​war series, The Underland Chronicles, which became a New York Times bestseller.  Her next series, The Hunger Games Trilogy, is an international bestseller.  The Hunger Games has spent over six years to date on The New York Times bestseller list since publication in September 2008, and has also appeared consistently on USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists.  It has been sold into 56 territories in 51 languages.  In 2010 Collins was named to the TIME 100 list as well as the Entertainment Weekly Entertainers of the Year list.  In September 2013, Suzanne released a critically acclaimed autobiographical picture book, Year of the Jungle, illustrated by James Proimos.  It deals with the year she was six and her father was deployed to Viet Nam.  It has been sold into 12 territories in 11 languages.  Her first picture book, When Charlie McButton Lost Power, about a boy obsessed with computer games, was illustrated by Mike Lester and came out in 2005.  Her books have sold over 87 million copies worldwide.  http://www.suzannecollinsbooks.com/bio.htm  
See also Katniss the Cattail:  Name Meanings in The Hunger Games at http://www.academia.edu/9379745/Katniss_the_Cattail_Name_Meanings_in_The_Hunger_Games

The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation (popularly known as the Constitution Annotated) contains legal analysis and interpretation of the United States Constitution, based primarily on Supreme Court case law.  This regularly updated resource is especially useful when researching the constitutional implications of a specific issue or topic.  The Featured Topics and Cases page highlights recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that demonstrate pivotal interpretations of the Constitution's provisions.  https://www.congress.gov/constitution-annotated#

Defining a cult book is not easy.  To begin, a cult book should have a passionate following.  Buckets of books fall into this category, including classics like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and On the Road by Jack Kerouac.  But even mega sellers Harry Potter and 50 Shades of Grey can be considered cult lit by that definition.  A cult book should have the ability to alter a reader’s life or influence great change, and for the purpose of this list, it should also be a bit odd and a tad obscure.  Many of the titles we've selected have barely seen the light of day beyond their incredibly dedicated and perhaps obsessive following.  Only five copies of Leon Genonceaux’s 1891 novel The Tutu existed until the 1990s because Genonceaux was already in trouble with French police for immoral publishing when he wrote it and feared a life in prison if he distributed the book to the public.  Similarly, The Red Book by Carl Jung was reserved for Jung’s heirs for decades before it was made available to a wider audience.  Some of the books on our list are more widely known (though not necessarily widely understood).  Robert M. Pirsig introduced the Metaphysics of Quality, his own theory of reality, in his philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  The book was rejected by over 100 publishers before it was finally published by William Morro.  Jessica Doyle  See a selection of titles from AbeBooks at http://www.abebooks.com/books/features/cult-books.shtml  Thank you, Muse reader! 

50 Best Cult Books by Telegraph reporters   Cult books are somehow, intangibly, different from simple bestsellers – though many of them are that.  And people have passionate feelings on both sides.  Our critics present a selection of the most notable cult writing from the past two centuries.  Find the list with brief descriptions of each title at

How to opt out of everything from credit card offers to group texts


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1277  March 30, 2015  On this date in 1822,the Florida Territory was created in the United States.  On this date in 1909, the Queensboro Bridge in New York City opened, linking Manhattan and Queens.

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