Origins of Georgia Populism  In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the price of cotton steadily fell in the American South.  Exorbitant railroad freight rates added to the misery of farmers.  Many, both white and black, desperately sought relief.  In the late 1880s an agricultural society called the Farmers' Alliance swept across the South, enrolling more than 100,000 members.  Arguing that the American political and economic systems were rigged to serve the interests of the rich, the Alliance demanded that the government expand the money supply by printing more money and coining more silver.  Such action would cause inflation (a general increase in the cost of goods and services) and drive up cotton prices.  The Farmers' Alliance also called for banking reform, government ownership of the railroads, and the direct election of U.S. senators.  (Until 1913 U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures instead of directly by citizens.)   In 1892 the Populist Party ran James B. Weaver of Iowa as its first presidential candidate.  In Georgia the party nominated William L. Peek of Rockdale County for governor.  By far, however, the party's most exciting candidate was Tom Watson of McDuffie County.  Watson, who was one of the state's most promising young politicians, had been elected to Congress in 1890 as a Southern Alliance Democrat.  Within a year he shocked Georgians by quitting his party, joining the Populists, and founding a newspaper called the People's Party Paper.  His campaign to win reelection to Congress eventually drew national attention.  Populists eagerly awaited the presidential election of 1896.  They firmly believed the Republicans and Democrats would nominate conservatives for president and thus split the ranks of their enemies.  In this, they were only half right.  The Republicans did as expected and nominated a conservative, William McKinley of Ohio.  But the Democratic convention was taken over by its silver wing, which called for moderate inflation by means of the coinage of silver.  After delivering his famous "Cross of Gold" speech, William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska received the Democratic nomination for president.  McKinley defeated Bryan, and William Y. Atkinson, the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, took nearly 60 percent of the vote.  For all practical purposes, the Populist Party was dead.  http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/populist-party

Populism is a mode of political communication that is centred around contrasts between the "common man" or "the people" and a real or imagined group of "privileged elites", traditionally scapegoating or making a folk devil of the latter.   Historically, academic definitions of populism vary, and people have often used the term in loose and inconsistent ways to reference appeals to "the people", demagogy, and "catch-all" politics.  The term has also been used as a label for new parties whose classifications are unclear.  Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell define populism as an ideology that "pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous 'others' who are together depicted as depriving (or attempting to deprive) the sovereign people of their rights, values, prosperity, identity, and voice".  In the United States and Latin America, populism has generally been associated with the left, whereas in European countries, populism is more associated with the right.  In both, the central tenet of populism—that democracy should reflect the pure and undiluted will of the people—means it can sit easily with ideologies of both right and left.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism

Words Coined in 2011  53 PERCENTER  An American in a household that pays income tax.  Coined by conservatives who believe that the economy would improve if those who do not pay income taxes did.  99 PERCENT, 99 PERCENTERS  People claimed by the Occupy movement to be at a financial or political disadvantage when compared with the 1 percenters, those who protesters say have too much money and too much political control.  DEATHER  Someone who doubts that Osama bin Laden was killed by American troops.  HUMBLEBRAG  A complaint, wry remark or self-deprecation that also reveals how famous, rich or important the speaker or writer is.  Popularized by the comedian Harris Wittels, a writer for the NBC series "Parks and Recreation.”  LIKEJACKING  Tricking users of a social media site, especially Facebook, into posting spammy content in their accounts or on their pages.  Usually activated by clicking a “like,” “fave” or “thumbs up” button.  PLANKING  Posing for a photograph with the body in a stiff prone position, especially in odd situations or places.  Similar popular pastimes in 2011:  horsemaning, posing for a two-person picture that makes it look as though a supine headless body is holding a severed head, and Tebowing, kneeling as if praying in the manner of the Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, with one knee down and one up, and one’s head resting on one’s fist.  TWINKLING  Silently affirming a speaker by raising one’s hands, palms outward, and wiggling the hands and fingers.  Grant Barrett  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-words-that-defined-2011.html

Take a bao:  Chinese steamed buns are easier than you think to make at home by Bill Daley   If you’ve ever ordered Peking duck at a Chinese restaurant, you know the pleasures of a good bao, the steamed bun into which you pile a helping of the meat, eat and repeat. (Bao can refer to several types of steamed buns; we’re talking about the open-sided kind, comparable in shape to a taco shell.)  Andrea Nguyen, a food writer from Santa Cruz, Calif., is seeing a lot of culinary crossover with bao.  In her 2014 cookbook, “The Banh Mi Handbook,” she pointed to Chicago’s Saigon Sisters restaurant as an example of how ingredients used in banh mi, the famed Vietnamese sandwich, would be equally at home in a Chinese steamed bun.  Meanwhile, at New York City’s BaoHaus, order bao filled with fried chicken or fish; at Saucy Porka, an Asian-Latin fusion restaurant in Chicago, bao filling options include pork carnitas, braised short rib and tofu.  Like Southern biscuits, bao are great sauce swabbers.  That absorbency makes them work well with braised meats and other juicy foods, says Saucy Porka co-owner Amy Le.  Jumping on the trend at home is surprisingly easy; all it takes to make bao is a simple yeast dough rolled into rounds, folded over and cooked as is.  No filling until it hits the table, no pleating dough, no real mess.  If you don’t have a steamer, a wok or covered roaster works fine (just make sure to keep the steaming plate above the boiling water).  Find recipe at http://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/take-a-bao-chinese-steamed-buns-are-easy-to-make-at-home/

Massaro House is a private island residence inspired by designs of a never-constructed project conceived by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is named for its owner, Joseph Massaro.  It is located on the privately owned Petre Island (sometimes spelled Petra Island) in Lake Mahopac, New York.  In 1949, architect Frank Lloyd Wright received a commission from an engineer named A. K. Chahroudi to build a house on the 10-acre (40,000 m²) Petre Island, which Chahroudi owned.  Chahroudi would later state that during a lunch meeting he had with Wright and Edgar Kaufmann, the owner of Wright’s celebrated Fallingwater, the architect told Kaufmann:  "When I finish the house on the island, it will surpass your Fallingwater".  Wright worked on designing a one-story, 5,000-square-foot (460 m²) house for three months, but the project was cancelled when Chahroudi realized he was not able to afford the $50,000 budget that Wright envisioned for the project, nor a second more modest version requested of Wright.  Instead, Wright designed a 1,200-square-foot (110 m²) cottage for Chahroudi for the island.  In 1996, Petre Island was purchased for $700,000 USD by Joseph Massaro, a sheet metal contractor.  Though he had seen the original Wright drawings for the main home years earlier, he initially intended merely to restore the island’s guest cottage.  Massaro received those renderings as part of the purchase of the island.  Massaro sold his sheet metal business in 2000 to focus on the creation of the house, the construction phase of which took place between 2003 and 2007.  All that survived of the original Chahroudi commission were five Wright drawings, including a floor plan with ideas for built-in and stand-alone furniture, a building section, and three elevations.  Massaro hired Thomas A. Heinz, an architect and Wright historian, to complete the unfinished design.  Heinz employed 3D CAD/CAM computer software to model aspects of Wright's design not self-evident in the original renderings.   His design also provided updated heating and cooling solutions that were not part of the original Wright concept, such as air conditioning and radiant heating.  It was also determined to add chimney caps, which Wright characteristically demurred, for the home’s six fireplaces.  In common with Fallingwater, the house’s design does not merely accommodate but actually incorporates the island’s topography.  A 12-foot (3.7 m)-high, 60-foot (18 m)-long rock forms the exterior to the entry and an interior wall, while a smaller rock doubles as a kitchen and bathroom wall.  Again, like Fallingwater's signature terraces, the house features a cantilevered deck that stretches 25 feet (7.6 m) over Lake Mahopac.  Its 18-foot (5.5 m)-high living area is illuminated with 26 triangular skylights.  Throughout the construction, Massaro was in conflict with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which was established by the architect in 1940 to conserve his intellectual property.  Massaro told interviewers that the foundation requested $450,000 to render working drawings from Wright's sketches and supervise construction of the house.  Instead, Massaro hired Heinz and the foundation filed a lawsuit, which ended in a settlement that limited Massaro to referring to the structure as being "inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright".  The foundation refuses to recognize Massaro House as an official Frank Lloyd Wright creation.  Philip Allsopp, the foundation’s chief executive office, has stated:  “It’s not a Frank Lloyd Wright house, because it hasn’t been certified by the foundation.”  Massaro stated that he believed that Wright would rather the house be built than not built at all.  See picture at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massaro_House  Petre Island was listed for sale in the August 31, 2017 issue of The Wall Street Journal. 

Thiols are a organosulfur compound that contains a carbon-bonded sulfhydryl (-C-SH or R-SH) group (where R represents an alkane, alkene, or other carbon-containing moiety).  They are used as odourants to assist in the detection of natural gas (which in pure form is odourless), and the "smell of natural gas" is in fact due to the smell of the thiol used as the odourant.  Thiols are often referred to as mercaptans.  The term mercaptan is derived from the Latin mercurium captans (capturing mercury) because the thiolate group bonds so strongly with mercury compounds.  Thiols are also responsible for a class of wine faults caused by an unintended reaction between sulfur and yeast.  However, not all thiols have unpleasant odours.  For example, grapefruit mercaptan, a monoterpenoid thiol, is responsible for the characteristic scent of grapefruit.  This effect is present only at low concentrations.  The pure mercaptan has an unpleasant odour.  updated by Maria Mergel  http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Mercaptans

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1765  September 3, 2017  On this date in 301, San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world's oldest republic still in existence, was founded by Saint Marinus.  On this date in 1802, William Wordsworth composed the sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_3