Thousands of tree species grow across our world, shaped, like all living
things, by their environments. But few
trees reflect the succeed-at-all-cost aspect of nature's handiwork as clearly
as the giant baobab trees of Africa, Madagascar and Australia. These species of Adansonia (named in honor of
French botanist Michel Adanson) are native to harsh, sun-soaked plains where
rainfall is a rarity. In response,
they've evolved with obese water-storing trunks, stubby branching, sparse
foliage and deeply plunging root systems. Remarkably, baobabs, particularly the African
baobab (Adansonia digitata), thrive in our humid climate if planted on sunny,
well-drained sites. Also known as
upside-down tree, the African baobab, among Earth's longest-lived plants,
slowly grows 75 feet tall with a trunk circumference that can exceed 85 feet. Its crown of short, thick, tapering branches,
covered with twiggy stems that are frequently leafless, strongly resembles a root system,
making the baobab seem like a tree that's been yanked from the ground and
shoved back upside down. When cultivated
in wetter climes, such as Florida and Hawaii, the African baobab develops more
foliage and retains it most of the year. The glossy, moisture-hoarding leaves are
composed of several 6-inch-long leaflets.
Increased numbers of those handsome leaves mean heavy production of the
baobab's bizarre, wonderfully fragrant flowers. These strange-looking blossoms, dangling on
lengthy stems, are about 6 inches in diameter with snow-white petals that curl
back to reveal masses of red stamens.
Charles Reynolds http://www.theledger.com/article/20090807/COLUMNISTS/908075002
NOTE that one
of the largest collections of Madagascan baobab trees under glass is in the Cleveland
Botanical Garden & Conservatory. http://www.cbgarden.org/come-visit/the-eleanor-armstrong-smith-glasshouse/madagascar.aspx
and http://www.gundpartnership.com/Cleveland-Botanical-Garden-and-Conservatory
List of states by order of admission into the union Take a guess
on a particular state's date of admission and then find the answer here: http://www.50states.com/statehood.htm?sort_by_date#.VWyHoc9VhBc
John Rogers (1829–1904) was an American sculptor who produced very popular, relatively
inexpensive figurines in the latter 19th century. He became famous for his small genre
sculptures, popularly termed "Rogers Groups", which were
mass-produced in cast plaster. Often
selling for $15 apiece, the figurines were affordable to the middle class. Instead of working in bronze and marble, he
sculpted in more affordable plaster, painted the color of putty to hide dust. Rogers was inspired by popular novels,
poems and prints as well as the scenes he saw around him. John Rogers portrayed in his plaster
statuettes ordinary, everyday, urban and rural people doing ordinary, everyday
things. Through his Rogers Groups he
offered an unrivaled transcript of the manners, sports, amusements, social
customs, domestic interests, costumes, and even modes of furnishing of the
period. John Rogers made statues of
Civil War soldiers, family groups, literary topics, theater scenes and historical
figures. His statues ranged from eight
to forty-six inches tall. Between 1860
and 1893 Rogers sculpted approximately 85 different, mostly patented groups of
statuary. During that period, some 25
workman in his New York factory turned out thousands of plaster castings of his
works. Of some subjects executed by John
Rogers, only a few copies were cast and sold. Of other John Rogers Groups, thousands were
sold. In Rogers' 30-year career, the
artist sold over a million dollars of sculpture, a lot of money for art in
those days. It is estimated that a total
of 80,000-100,000 plaster casting of his groups were produced during John
Rogers’ lifetime. His studio at The New Canaan Historical Society, 13 Oenoke Ridge, New Canaan Connecticut, now known
as the John
Rogers Studio, was designated a U.S. National
Historic Landmark in 1965. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rogers_%28sculptor%29
2013: The
Astor family name conjures up images of the Gilded Age and one of
American’s richest families at a time of great prosperity and optimism for the
country, but the family’s 420-acre estate has fallen on hard times. Rokeby in Hudson Valley, New York has been
owned by the Astors for nearly 180 years.
The 43-room main house was built in 1815 and then added to by every new
owner so that it came to represent the classic 'American Gothic style.' Today it remains home to a slew of
less-than-wealthy heirs to the Astor and Livingston fortunes, but looks more
like a rundown museum than the home of what was once one of America's richest
families.
See pictures at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2314414/Inside-crumbling-mansion-broke-heirs-super-rich-Astor-family-continue-live-near-squalor.html
2012: Icelandic
artist Ragnar Kjartansson's nine-screen installation The
Visitors (2012)
is a pop-music video in extremis, breaking every protocol for the genre. It's long (at 64 minutes), slow and
repetitive. There are no quick cuts,
cool costumes or visual hijinks. The
work—one of the most enthralling I've seen in years—was created at Rokeby Farm,
a once magnificent but now faded Hudson Valley mansion (still inhabited by an
eccentric cast of descendants of the original owners). While playing a spare, enigmatic song, from a
poem ("A pink rose, in the glittery frost, a diamond heart, and the orange
red fire . . . ") by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir—Kjartansson's former wife—the
musicians were isolated in different rooms and filmed on single, stationary
cameras. Their performances were
recorded in one take, and while they could hear the others through headphones,
they couldn't see one another, making for a poignant mix of togetherness and
solitude. Gregory Volk http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/ragnar-kjartansson/
2010: See 16
slides of Rokeby at http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/07/20/garden/20100722-hudson-slideshow.html
Gravadlax
(also called gravlax, grav laks, cured salmon) is Scandinavian
salmon,"lax" being the Middle
English word for that mighty fish, and “grave” a relic of the time when fish
was put into holes in the ground and covered in salt to preserve it for the
wild and freezing winter ahead. Felicity
Cloake Find pictures and recipe at http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2015/jan/07/how-to-make-perfect-gravadlax-cured-salmon-recipe See also http://www.marthastewart.com/319516/gravad-lax
On June 17, 2015 the Unicode Consortium released Unicode
8, which includes 37 new emojis such as the Face
With Rolling Eyes, Hugging
Face, Taco,Cheese
Wedge and Hockey—both ice and field varieties. Five emoji
modifiers are included
with Unicode 8, bringing the total number of new characters to 41.
Unicode is a standardised encoding system
that provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform,
no matter what the program, no matter what the language, without any risk of
corruption. Before Unicode, no single
encoding could contain enough character to cover all languages used by European
Union. The Unicode Standard has been adopted by such industry leaders as
Apple, HP, IBM, JustSystem, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun, Sybase, Unisys and
many other products. Unicode is the
official way to implement ISO/IEC 10646 (Universal Multiple-octet Code
character Set or UCS) Members of the
Unicode Consortium (non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and
promote use of the Unicode Standard) include major computer corporations,
software producers, database vendors, research institutions, international
agencies, various user groups, and interested individuals. http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/standards/unicode/index_en.htm
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1313
June 19, 2015 On this date in
1586, English colonists left Roanoke
Island, after failing to establish England's
first permanent settlement in
North America. On this date in 1910, the
first Father's
Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington.
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