John Ringling was one of the early 20th century’s most prolific collectors of art.  The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is his legacy.  In 1905 Ringling married Mable Burton, a woman who shared his love for and taste in art.  Soon after their marriage they became fixtures in New York’s art auction houses, buying paintings, furniture and tapestries from the homes of the wealthy and socially prominent for their own growing collection.  In 1924, the Ringlings met the prominent German art dealer Julius Böhler, a relationship that would prove crucial to Ringling and his growing interest in collecting art.  The Ringlings had been traveling through Europe for years and had fallen in love with Baroque art.  In 1925 he hired architect John H. Phillips to design and build a museum on his Sarasota property to house his ever-growing collection.  What Phillips designed was a U-shaped pink palace with 21 galleries to house Ringling’s treasure trove of paintings and art objects, highlighted by a collection of masters that would eventually include Velazquez, El Greco, Van Dyke, Veronese, Tiepolo, Gainsborough and Rubens.  http://www.ringling.org/history-museum-art

The Howard Bros. Circus is a ¾-inch-to-the-foot scale replica of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus located on the Ringling Estate in Sarasota, Florida.  It includes a complete reproduction of the entire circus (circa the 1920s).  The name for the Circus comes from the name of the creator, Howard C. Tibbals.  Tibbals asked Ringling management if he could use their name for his circus when he started building it, but they refused.  So he called it The Howard Bros. Circus instead.  There never was a full-scale Howard Bros. Circus.  Tibbals began toying with circuses in 1943, at the age of 7.  At 12 he was given a lathe and jigsaw, which advanced his model building.  Tibbals started working on the model in earnest in 1956.  Much of the circus was completed by 1974, but it did not premiere until the 1982 World Fair in Knoxville, TN.  In 2004, Tibbals set up the Circus at its current location in the Ringling Estate's Tibbals Learning Center, which includes a full-scale replica of Tibbals's workshop.  It took Tibbals over one year to set up the circus in its current location.  Some interesting facts about the circus:  It contains 42,143 items, not including small pieces such as thousands of railroad stakes.  It consists of eight large tents, 152 circus wagons, 1,500 workers and performers, 7,000 folding chairs and more than 500 hand-carved animals.  Everything can be packed up into the 55 train cars, also individually hand-crafted.  The display includes seven miniature video stations positioned in various tents with documentary footage of circus life from the 1920s and 1930s.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Howard_Bros._Circus  See also https://fsu.edu/news/2005/07/21/miniature.circus/ and http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/36897

CIRCUS WORLD  As the glory days of the great railroad circuses began to fade, John M. Kelley, personal attorney for the Ringling brothers, who had retired to Baraboo, Wisconsin, saw the need to preserve the colorful history of the circus.  To this end he joined forces with members of the Gollmar Family, first cousins to the Ringlings and circus owners themselves.  The team incorporated Circus World Museum as a historical and educational facility in 1954.  Following Circus World’s opening on July 1, 1959, the site was deeded debt-free to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.  In 1960, Charles Phillip “Chappie” Fox became director of the tiny Baraboo museum.  Knowing there were scores of 19th and early 20th century circus wagons laying in disrepair across the United States and Europe, he championed the acquisition, preservation and restoration of these vehicles.  What began in 1959 with less than an acre of land, six old circus wagons and a boatload of passion, has now become an internationally recognized and respected institution encompassing 64 acres, 30 permanent structures, seven winter quarters buildings along Water Street, plus the Ringling Bros. Circus Train shed complex.  http://www.circusworldbaraboo.org/our-treasures/history-of-circus-world/

Alphanumeric refers to a character set with alphabetic characters (A-Z) and numerals (0-9).  Other characters also may be included in an alphanumeric character set.  Alphanumeric is also known as alphameric.  A stored alphanumeric character with a six-bit length is smaller than a stored American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) code character with an eight-bit length.  For increased security, computer users are encouraged to use alphanumeric characters when setting up passwords, usernames and other identifiers.  It is more difficult to break an alphanumeric code than a code of all alphabetic characters or all numbers.  Special characters and upper and lower-case alphabetic characters are included, in certain cases.

http://www.techopedia.com/definition/930/alphanumeric

Sarcophagus, our term for a stone coffin located above ground, has a macabre origin befitting a macabre thing.  Its ultimate source is the Greek word sarkophagos, "eating flesh, carnivorous," a compound derived from sarx, "flesh," and phagein, "to eat."  Sarkophagos was also used in the phrase lithos ("stone") sarkophagos to denote a kind of limestone with caustic properties from which coffins were made in the ancient world.  The Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder 

describes the remarkable properties of the stone as follows:  "It is well known that the bodies of the dead placed in it will be completely consumed after forty days, except for the teeth."   http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sarcophagus

ORMOLU  noun  golden or gilded brass or bronze used for decorative purposes (as in mounts for furniture)  origin:  French or moulu, literally, ground gold   first known use:  1765  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ormolu

If you don’t do a lot of medieval cuisine, you’ve probably never heard of poudre fort and poudre douce — literally, strong powder and sweet powder.  They’re both spice blends, one spicy and one sweet, and there’s no standard recipe for either of them.   You may use poudre douce blend for French toast, cookies, pumpkin pie, the spices in my jam, you name it, if it’s sweet, it will go well.  Poudre fort is great with pork, beef, and chicken, especially in stews and slow cooking.  If you want some heat in your sweet dishes, you can use poudre fort there too.

Poudre Douce   5 parts ground cinnamon; 3 parts ground ginger; 2 parts ground nutmeg; 1 part ground cloves.  Combine all ingredients, mix well, and store in an airtight container.

Poudre Fort   4 parts poudre douce; 2 parts ground cubebs; 1 part ground peppercorns.  Combine all ingredients, mix well, and store in an airtight container.  http://www.auntiepasto.com/?p=255

Cubeb or tailed pepper, or shital chini / kabab chini in Hindi is a plant in genus Piper, cultivated for its fruit and essential oil.  It is mostly grown in Java and Sumatra, hence sometimes called Java pepper.  The fruits are gathered before they are ripe, and carefully dried.   Commercial cubebs consist of the dried berries, similar in appearance to black pepper, but with stalks attached – the "tails" in "tailed pepper".  The dried pericarp is wrinkled, and its color ranges from grayish-brown to black.  The seed is hard, white and oily.  The odor of cubebs is described as agreeable and aromatic and the taste as pungent, acrid, slightly bitter and persistent.  It has been described as tasting like allspice, or like a cross between allspice and black pepper.  See pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubeb

France and Luxembourg lost their battle to apply reduced VAT rates to ebooks on March 5, 2015 when a top European court agreed with EU regulators that only paper books qualified for lower taxes.  EU rules allow member states to set lower rates of value-added tax on printed books but the European Commission decided two years ago that the 5.5 percent and 3 percent rates imposed by France and Luxembourg respectively, were illegal.  The EU executive said reduced VAT rates did not apply to ebooks as they were an electronically provided service and were not in the list of goods and services granted this privilege.  The vast majority of the EU's 28 countries levy VAT rates ranging from 18 to 25 percent, according to Commission data.  VAT on paper books in contrast ranges from 0 to 10 percent, with the exception of three member states.  Foo Yun Chee  http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/05/us-europe-ebooks-tax-idUSKBN0M11A120150305

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1266  March 9, 2015  On this date in 1009, was the first known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg.  On this date in 1842, Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, Nabucco, received its première performance in Milan; its success establishes Verdi as one of Italy's foremost opera writers.