A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg using words coined by Lewis Carroll in his poem “Jabberwocky”, part of his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass.  The title of the poem itself is a coined word and has become a word in the English language.

galumph  (guh-LUMF) verb. intr.  To move clumsily or heavily.  A blend of gallop + triumph.

slithy  (SLY-thee)  adjective  Smooth and active; slimy; slithery.  A blend of slimy + lithe.

chortle  (CHOR-tuhl)  noun  A joyful laugh.  verb tr., intr.  To laugh in a joyful manner.  A blend of chuckle + snort.

frabjous  (FRAB-juhs)  adjective  Wonderful; delightful.  A blend of fair, fabulous, and joyous.

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From:  Ileana Arroyo  Subject:  Galumph!   I love this week’s theme.  I grew up in a family that used this word all the time.  We had a fluffy, black kitty cat that could often be seen galumphing across our backyard.  We called him “blump”--a word first used by my younger brother.

From:  Stephanie Lovett  Subject:  Lewis Carroll  The Lewis Carroll Society of North America just enjoyed a fabulous Spring meeting in the DC/VA/MD area, and as we departed, we loved seeing this week’s theme.  Carroll enthusiasts and scholars can join us and the British Lewis Carroll Society.  Two terrific exhibitions are up in the DC area:  The Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland is hosting an exhibition celebrating Alice’s 150th anniversary and in Baltimore, Geppi’s Entertainment Museum is hosting items from the Crandall collection of Disney Alice.

From:  Kimberly Cohn  Subject:  ‘Twas brillig!  Thank you for this week’s words!  My seven-year-old and I have loved seeing which new word would appear each day as we have long been fans of the poem, especially the book with Graeme Base’s renderings. 

From:  Khay Ooi  Subject:  Words coined by Lewis Carroll  I’m glad you picked words coined by Lewis Carroll, one of my favourite authors.  For a very entertaining analysis of the Alice books, I recommend Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice.   For a fascinating insight into Charles Dogdson, I heartily recommend The White Knight, by A.L Taylor, first published in 1952.

In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote that “the whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.”  He could have been writing about World Bank reports, it turns out.  A computer analysis of more than 65 years of the bank’s annual reports found a sharp decline in factual precision, replaced by what the researchers call management discourse, a bureaucratic gobbledygook whose meaning is hard to decipher.  The trend is probably not a surprise to anyone with a glancing interaction with international institutions.  But the numbers and examples are amusing.  Dominique Pestre, a historian at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in France, and Franco Moretti, co-director of the Stanford Literary Lab, conducted the analysis.  They used the lab’s techniques to map changes in the bank’s language, syntax and grammar over time, revealing unspoken patterns, priorities and politics.  The unusual collaboration was hatched in the spring of 2013 when Mr. Pestre and Mr. Moretti, a literary critic by trade, met while working in Berlin.  The result is titled “Bankspeak,” a play on doublespeak, referring to language that is intentionally ambiguous, meant to obscure or confuse.  In the last 20 years, that kind of nuts-and-bolts language disappears, Mr. Pestre said.  Verbs are turned into nouns--something that linguists have argued converts specific actions taken by named actors into “abstract objects.”  (People and countries no longer “cooperate,” for example; there is just “cooperation.”)  At the same time, the use of adverbs that refer to a particular time frame (such as “now,” “recently” or “later”) declined by more than 50 percent.  Past tense verbs grew rarer, while jargon and acronyms proliferated.  The pamphlet, which was published by the Stanford Literary Lab and appeared in the New Left Review, will be translated into Italian and German in 2016.  Patricia Cohen  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/upshot/at-the-world-bank-a-shortage-of-concrete-language.html

A report issued by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), “Documented Library Contributions to Student Learning and Success: Building Evidence with Team-Based Assessment in Action Campus Projects,” shows compelling evidence for library contributions to student learning and success.  The report focuses on dozens of projects conducted as part of the program Assessment in Action: Academic Libraries and Student Success (AiA) by teams that participated in the second year of the program, from April 2014 to June 2015.  Synthesizing more than 60 individual project reports (fully searchable online) and using past findings from projects completed during the first year of the AiA program as context, the report identifies strong evidence of the positive contributions of academic libraries to student learning and success in four key areas.  Read more at http://www.acrl.ala.org/value/?p=1075

Chemically there is virtually no difference between table salt, kosher salt, and fancy sea salt.  All of them are close to 100 percent pure NaCl (sodium chloride), with a few trace elements thrown in.  In the case of table salt, those additives are there to prevent it from caking.  Regular table salt is comprised of many minute, regularly-shaped cubes.  This allows them to pack together tightly in a given space.  Kosher salt, on the other hand, forms large, craggly flakes that don't fit together very well.  Put them into a container, and you also end up with plenty of air space.  What does this mean for cooking?  It means that if you are measuring by volume, different types of salt are not interchangeable.  A cup of table salt will have twice the salting power of a cup of Diamond Crystal Kosher salt.  There is one occasion when table salt actually has a small leg up over kosher salt:  when you need to dissolve it quickly in a liquid.  When making a high salinity solution (such as a brine), table salt will dissolve a little faster than kosher salt due to the smaller size of its crystals.  http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/ask-the-food-lab-do-i-need-to-use-kosher-salt.html

The first thing everyone notices and best remembers about "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920) is the film's bizarre look.  The actors inhabit a jagged landscape of sharp angles and tilted walls and windows, staircases climbing crazy diagonals, trees with spiky leaves, grass that looks like knives.  These radical distortions immediately set the film apart from all earlier ones, which were based on the camera's innate tendency to record reality.  A case can be made that "Caligari" was the first true horror film.  There had been earlier ghost stories and the eerie serial "Fantomas" made in 1913-14, but their characters were inhabiting a recognizable world.  "Caligari" creates a mindscape, a subjective psychological fantasy.  "Caligari" is said to be the first example in cinema of German Expressionism, a visual style in which not only the characters but the world itself is out of joint.  I don't know of another film that used its extreme distortions and discordant angles, but its over-all attitude certainly cleared the way for "The Golem," "Nosferatu," "Metropolis" and "M."  http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari-1920  Find sequels, remakes and musical works at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cabinet_of_Dr._Caligari  

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) - full movie  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrg73BUxJLI   

Bubble Tea is the catch-all name for endless unusual names of this drink such as:  tapioca pearl drink, tapioca ball drink, pearl shake, pearl tea, black pearl tea, big pearl, boba tea, boba ice tea, boba nai cha, milk tea, bubble drink, zhen zhu nai cha, momi, momi milk tea, QQ, BBT, PT, and possibly many other names.  This drink is far from the plain-looking tea that you are generally familiar with and it is hard to explain to the uninitiated.  It is non-alcoholic and non-carbonated.  The tea is sweet, though it has less sugar than a typical soft drink.  There are a huge variety of flavors to try, depending on the tea house or stand you visit.  The drink is usually a mix of tea, milk, sugar, and giant black tapioca balls.  The "bubble" refers to the foam created by shaking the freshly brewed tea with ice (the drink must always be shaken and not stirred).  For the first-timers, ordering a Bubble Tea can be an event.  The tea is likely to be in pastel colors of pink, green or yellow.  The unique ingredient of Bubble Tea is the tapioca pearls.  About the size of pearls or small marbles, they have a consistency like gummy candy (soft and chewy).  Being heavier than the drink they tend to always stay near the bottom of the glass.  These drinks are usually served in large see-through plastic containers with an extra-wide straw to sip these jumbo pearls.  Just sucking on the translucent straw creates a show, with pearls floating up in succession.  Find recipe at http://whatscookingamerica.net/BubbleTea.htm

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1466  May 4, 2016  On this date in 1776, Rhode Island became the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III.  On this date in 1921, Patsy Garrett, American actress and singer, was born.