Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Originally intended as a small part of the Peace Day events of July 1919,  The Cenotaph in Whitehall, London, was designed and built by Edwin Lutyens at the request of the then Prime Minister Lloyd George.  The Cenotaph--which literally means Empty Tomb in Greek---was initially a wood and plaster construction intended for the first anniversary of the Armistice in 1919.  At its unveiling the base of the monument was spontaneously covered in wreaths to the dead and missing from The Great War.  Such was the extent of public enthusiasm for the construction it was decided that The Cenotaph should become a permanent and lasting memorial.  The Cenotaph, made from Portland stone, was unveiled in 1920.  The inscription reads simply "The Glorious Dead".  Services of Remembrance are held at war memorials and cenotaphs throughout Britain and the Commonwealth nations.  While the style and size of these memorials vary considerably from place to place, an exact replica of Lutyens' Cenotaph stands proudly in London, Canada.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/remembrance/how/cenotaph.shtml

Portland Stone (quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset) is a type of limestone which formed slowly over the last 150 million years or so as tiny grains of sediment grew and compacted.  It is very similar to Bath Stone, but has a subtly unique texture, grain and colour.  Portland Stone is actually a family of closely related limestone variants, each owing their subtle unique qualities to the age of the stone.  The three variants are:  Basebed--the most pure of colour and grain (from the bottom layers of Portland Stone when quarried i.e. the oldest); Whitbed--slightly more textured and with a touch more variation in the colour; Roach--the youngest Portland Stone (from the top layer) with the most colour variation and texture, often including impressions of shells and other marine life.  While the different variants have these distinct qualities, they all share some common characteristics too:  They are all off-white to light grey, notably uniform in colour but interspersed with small dark specks, or ‘grain’.  Used since Roman times, Portland Stone has been a hugely popular building material particularly where the desired architectural effect was one of grandeur.  It has notably been used in political, financial, regal, civil and commemorative architecture.  In fact a staggering number of hugely significant buildings—particularly in London—were constructed with Portland Stone between the mid-1700’s and the 1930’s.  It was popularised by Sir Christopher Wren, who is accredited with having rebuilt over 50 churches in London after the Great Fire.  His masterpiece was St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was constructed in Portland Stone and completed in 1711.  Other famous London landmarks constructed in Portland Stone include:  Buckingham Palace, Palace of Westminster, The Cenotaph, Bank of England, Tower of London, and London Bridge.

The myth of the pineapple as a symbol of hospitality is a powerful one.  You hear it in most historic houses, usually in a dining room or bedroom when the tour guide points to a pineapple table centerpiece or a pineapply-carved bedpost and explains that the pineapple was served to guests as an expression of hospitality because it was so rare.  Rare it was indeed, and relatively expensive, coming all the way from the West Indian tropics to American ports—the pineapple would have been a treat on any early American table.  But there is not a shred of evidence that anyone at the time thought of the fruit as a symbol of hospitality.  That idea came much later, in fact, not until the early twentieth century.  So how did this widely believed myth get started?  Early Spanish and Portuguese explorers were the first Europeans to discover the pineapple, called na-na, by the natives.  The Portuguese ananaz and the French ananas no doubt derive from this native word, but the English called the new fruit a “pine-apple,” a word heretofore interchangeable with “pine-cone,” because it so resembled the pinecones they already knew.  The pinecone had strong and ancient ties to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine—Bacchus to the Romans—who carried a thyrsus, a staff entwined with grape vines and topped by a pinecone.  (That association related to the use of pine resin in the making of wine, Bacchus’s favorite beverage.)  Ever since classical times, the pinecone has symbolized fertility and regeneration and it has been used over the centuries as a decorative motif.  It is really the pinecone that the colonists were using in their decorative arts, evoking the classical symbolism that they, educated in the classics, understood very well.  Amateur historian Melvin Fulks, who has spent decades gathering information about the origins of pineapple/pinecone symbolism, says that the earliest incidence of the “pineapple as hospitality” story he has been able to find comes from a 1935 book about Hawaii, a Dole publication encouraging people to eat canned pineapple and visit lovely Hawaii.  Mary Miley Theobald   https://historymyths.wordpress.com/tag/hospitality-and-pineapples/

Congressional Redistricting Law:  Background and Recent Court Rulings by L. Paige Whitaker, Legislative Attorney  March 23, 2017  Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov R44798  Read 20-page report at https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44798.pdf

After a one-year hiatus, Washington, DC returns to the top spot in the 13th annual survey of America’s Most Literate Cities by Central Connecticut State University.  The study is conducted by Dr. Jack Miller, president emeritus of Central.  It reports on a key measure of America’s social health by ranking the reading habits and resources of the nation’s 82 largest cities.  The top 10 cities this year are:  Washington, D.C., Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., Cincinnati, St. Paul and Boston.  The complete rankings are available online at:  www.ccsu.edu/AMLC2016.  According to Miller, being literate involves far more than being able to read.  It involves actually reading.  Do people in a city support bookstores, do they have an excellent library system, do they read a local newspaper, do they practice online literacy, and so on.

The 'Grammar Vigilante':  Defender Of Truth, Justice And The Grammarian Way by Colin Dwyer   The campaign began under cover of darkness.  It opened with a skirmish or two in Bristol more than a decade ago—a superfluous apostrophe scratched off a street sign here, a possessive rendered plural with the stroke of some tape there.  But now, the battle between one mysterious man and the grammatical mistakes besieging the British city has spilled into the harsh light of international media.  The BBC says it has discovered the identity of the "Banksy of punctuation"—a mild-mannered engineer by day, who by night transforms (presumably in a telephone booth) into the intrepid superhero of sentences everywhere.  The network will not reveal his identity, but it says he has allowed reporters on something of a ride-along, to watch him as he moves from sign to sign to put apostrophes in their proper places.  "I'm a grammar vigilante.  I do take it to heart—I think it's a cause worth pursuing," he told the BBC, in a documentary called The Apostrophiser airing April 3, 2017 on BBC Radio Four.  "People might say what I am doing is wrong, but it is more of a crime to have the apostrophes wrong in the first place."  The documentary borrows its name from the man's device of choice:  the long-handled "apostrophizer," which he uses to reach otherwise unreachable surfaces . . . . and apply tape to them.  With it, he can add or cover up apostrophes that have lost their way.  As soon as the documentary was announced, people around the world stretched out their arms in relief and celebration—by immediately addressing the masked man with requests to come fix the local mistakes that have been plaguing them.  http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/03/522463016/the-grammar-vigilante-defender-of-truth-justice-and-the-grammarian-way  Thank you, Muse reader!

When life gives you scraps, make quilts  https://www.jigidi.com/jigsaw-puzzle/9T8KQ81L/When-life-gives-you-scraps



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1688  April 5, 2017  On this date in 1710, the Statute of Anne received the Royal Assent establishing the Copyright law of the United Kingdom.  On this date in 1722, Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen discovered Easter Island.

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