Daughters of Revolution is a satirical painting by American artist Grant Wood, who claimed that it was his only satire.  The painting depicts the founding fathers as cross-dressing members of the Daughters of the American Revolution standing in front of a recreation of Washington Crossing the Delaware.  In 1927, Wood was commissioned to create a stained glass window in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Unhappy with the quality of domestic glass sources, he used glass made in Germany.  The local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution complained about the use of a German source for a World War I memorial and the window was not put into use until 1955.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughters_of_Revolution   See all Grant Woods artwork sorted by year at http://www.wikiart.org/en/grant-wood/daughters-of-revolution-1932

Toll House Cookies were developed in Whitman, Massachusetts at the Toll House Restaurant in the 1930’s.  They are an original New England recipe.  “Their origin and development is really a story by itself.” (from Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes, 1949)   Since Ruth was always in search of new recipes a comparison was made of the ingredients in the Toll House Cookies to other cookies recipes from the 1920’s and early 1930’s.  Not surprisingly Ruth’s cookies have some strong similarities to two different cookies recipes from the time period.  They are the German Chocolate Cookies published in the Boston Cooking School Cook Book from 1910 through 1933 (p. 641) and the Icebox Cookies first published in the Settlement Cook Book (Milwaukee, Wis.) starting in 1921 (p. 496) and later under the name Refrigerator Cookies in the  Boston Cooking School Cook Book (1933 ed., p. 638).  The Toll House Cookies recipe called for 2 bars of chocolate the same as the German Chocolate Cookies recipe.  The Toll House Cookies recipe called for half brown sugar and half granulated (white) sugar the same as the Icebox/Refrigerator Cookies recipe.  The Toll House Cookies recipe combined chocolate, brown sugar and chopped nuts the same as the German Chocolate Cookies recipe.  There are too many exact matches to be coincidental or accidental.  The German Chocolate Cookies recipe was the only recipe in the Boston Cooking School Cook Book that called for sweet chocolate.  All other recipes called for unsweetened chocolate.  This is a key factor as Ruth’s Toll House Cookie called for semi-sweet chocolate.  Semi-sweet chocolate can be eaten as is whereas unsweetened chocolate is bitter and is not eaten as is.  The Toll House Cookies recipe appears to be a combination of the German Chocolate Cookies and Icebox/Refrigerator Cookies.  The actual Toll House Cookies recipe altered the quantities of the ingredients slightly and ultimately developed a unique cookie that Ruth was able to successfully market under the Toll House name.  Find comparisons of recipes at http://www.newenglandrecipes.org/html/toll-house-cookies.html

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Republic has been Plato’s most famous and widely read dialogue.  As in most other Platonic dialogues the main character is Socrates.  The dialogue explores two central questions.  The first question is “what is justice?”  Socrates addresses this question both in terms of political communities and in terms of the individual person or soul.  He does this to address the second and driving question of the dialogue: “is the just person happier than the unjust person?” or “what is the relation of justice to happiness?”  http://www.iep.utm.edu/republic/#SH1a  Read the Republic by Plato, written 360 B.C.E., translated by Benjamin Jowett at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html  See also http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/republic/about-platos-republic

To the manner born or to the manor born?  To begin at the beginning, the original phrase was definitely “to the manner born.”  It was coined, as many of our best idioms were, by William Shakespeare, in this case in Hamlet, Act I, Scene iv, when Hamlet observes of the drunken atmosphere at Elsinore, “But to my mind, though I am native here / And to the manner born, it is a custom / More honour’d in the breach than the observance.”  Though Hamlet was a prince, he was not referring to his noble birth when he spoke of “manner.”  He was saying that he had been born into an environment where such a “manner”—customs or behavior—was expected, and thus not surprising.  In the mid-19th century, however, a variant of “to the manner born” appeared.  “To the manor born,” meaning “born into, or naturally suited to, upper-class life,” substituted “manor” (the house on an estate; a mansion) as a symbol of an aristocratic lifestyle for “manner” meaning simply “customs or habits.”  It’s unclear whether this new form was the result of an error (“manner” and “manor” being pronounced identically by most English-speakers) or a deliberate pun by some obscure Victorian wit.  The rise of “manor” in place of “manner” set the stage, however, for a long-running battle over which is the “correct” form, and made “to the manor born” a favorite target of scorn for usage scolds. Complicating the question, however, is the fact that although the two phrases had, at their outset, substantially different meanings, “to the manner born” is rarely used today in its original sense of “born into certain habits or customs.”  On those increasingly rare occasions when it crops up, “to the manner born” is most often used synonymously with “to the manor born” to mean “suited to wealth” (probably because “manners” and “mannered behavior” are popularly associated with the wealthy).  So it appears that “to the manor born” has won and “to the manner born,” at least in its original sense, is headed for extinction.  http://www.word-detective.com/2011/10/to-the-manner-manor-born/

Paraphrases from the novel Four Below by Peter Helton  

Cruise ships are shopping malls afloat.  

A free pizza is a glittering prize.

Peter Helton is a German-born English author.  He divides his time between painting and writing.  Find a list of Helton's books at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/453790.Peter_Helton

When you mean “for example,” use e.g.  It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase exempli gratia.  When you mean “that is,” use “i.e.”  It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase id est.  Either can be used to clarify a preceding statement, the first by example, the second by restating the idea more clearly or expanding upon it.  Because these uses are so similar, the two abbreviations are easily confused.  If you just stick with good old English “for example” and “that is” you won’t give anyone a chance to sneer at you.  http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/e.g.html

In describing the system of wires that comprises the Internet, Neal Stephenson once compared the earth to a computer motherboard.  From telephone poles suspending bundles of cable to signs posted warning of buried fiber optic lines, we are surrounded by evidence that at a basic level, the Internet is really just a spaghetti-work of really long wires.  But what we see is just a small part of the physical makeup of the net.  The rest of it can be found in the coldest depths of the ocean.  

Find 10 things you might not know about the Internet’s system of undersea cables at http://mentalfloss.com/article/60150/10-facts-about-internets-undersea-cables

HAVANA The Teatro Nacional, a 2,056-seat theater on the Plaza de la Revolución, was sold out.  Two dozen photographers and videographers swarmed the aisles.  The Minnesota Orchestra’s concert here on May 15, 2015 was greeted not only as a rare chance to hear an orchestra from overseas, but as a symbol of the rapprochement between the United States and Cuba.  The concert, the first by a large United States orchestra here in more than 15 years, was greeted with several standing ovations – and huge cheers when the Minnesotans teamed up with the Cuban pianist Frank Fernández and two Cuban choirs to perform Beethoven’s “Choral Fantasy.”   Familiar to Minnesota audiences, or really any concert hall these days:  a cellphone went off during a quiet passage in the Funeral March in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, the “Eroica.”  The Minnesotans played an all-Beethoven program—not counting the sprightly Finnish polka that the orchestra’s music director, Osmo Vanska, who is from Finland, chose for an encore.  The “Eroica” was a nod to history:  the first time the orchestra played in Cuba, in 1929, when it was known as the Minneapolis Symphony, it closed its concert with the work.  Michael Cooper    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/arts/music/minnesota-orchestra-in-groundbreaking-cuba-tour-sells-out-house.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1298  May 18, 2015  On this date in 1631, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, John Winthrop took the oath of office and became the first Governor of Massachusetts.  On this date in 1652, Rhode Island passed the first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal.