PARAPHRASES from Nor All Your Tears, #3 in the Dr. Lance Elliot mysteries by Keith McCarthy  Bereavement is a disability that empowers you, yet also tethers you.  *  He declared ten a rubbish number, undermining with a single sentence some thousands of years of civilization.

Keith McCarthy was born in 1960 in Croydon, Surrey, first educated at Dulwich College, and then at St. George's Hospital Medical School.  He took specialist pathology training, received a research doctorate, and became a member of Royal College of Pathologists in 1995.  He wrote as a teenager, and began again as a junior pathologist.  He has written mysteries under the pseudonym Lance Elliot.   http://www.keithmccarthy.co.uk/pages/about-keith-mccarthy.php

Periodic Table of Elements  http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/  Periodic Table Of Elements Song   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8dtquYDXEU  1:35  The NEW Periodic Table Song (Updated)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgVQKCcfwnU  2:53 

Dutch Baby, a large, fluffy pancake, is excellent for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dessert any time of year.  And it comes together in about five blessed minutes.  Just dump all of the ingredients into a blender, give it a good whirl, pour it into a heated skillet sizzling with butter, and pop it into the oven.  Twenty-five minutes later?  Bliss.  Florence Fabricant  Find recipe at https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/6648-dutch-baby?mcubz=3

The chemical compound hydrochloric acid (or muriatic acid) is the aqueous (water-based) solution of hydrogen chloride gas (HCl).  This strong acid is highly corrosive and must be handled with appropriate safety precautions.  It is the major component of gastric acid.  It is routinely used in chemical research laboratories and manufacturing plants.  Its applications include the large-scale production of certain compounds (such as vinyl chloride for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic), removal of rust and scale from metals, petroleum production, and ore processing.  Smaller-scale applications include the production of gelatin and other ingredients in food, and leather processing.  An estimated 20 million metric tons of hydrochloric acid are produced annually.  http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Hydrochloric_acid

When you're cooking up a big pot of greens, don't toss out what may be the most nutritious part—the brothy water that's left in the pot.  Lots of the beneficial nutrients cook out of the greens.  And what's left?  Well, if you learned to cook in a traditional Southern kitchen, you'd call it pot liquor.  (Though some insist it's "potlikker.")  As I explain in my conversation with Here & Now, some people drink it as a tonic. Others use it as a soup base.  And James Huff, chef de cuisine at Pearl Dive in Washington, D.C., who learned his trade in some of New Orleans' top kitchens, uses pot liquor to create some incredible entrees.  Allison Aubrey  Find James Huff's recipe for pot liquor at http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/08/06/209543044/pot-liquor-a-southern-tip-to-save-nutritious-broth-from-greens  See also Pot Liquor Soup from Southern Living at http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/pot-liquor-soup

A PAGE FROM THE PAST  June 9, 1973  Original Old Capitol Library Catalog Being Developed    Before Robert Lucas left Ohio in June of 1838 to become the first governor of Iowa Territory, he and "several literary friends" had already selected the contents of a territorial library.  Now Martha Esbin is trying to rebuid that library.  She's been at work since last November on a one-year halftime appointment as bibliographer for Iowa's Old Capitol restoration project.  A University of Iowa campus landmark, Old Capitol is being restored as a "living museum" of its period as Iowa's first permanent capitol, from 1842 to 1857.  Restoration of the library is a major part of the overall project.  Ms. Esbin's first major task was to develop an accurate catalog of the original library collection.  A clue she found during her first day's work in the University of Iowa Library led to her discovery of the 1839 and 1845 Iowa Territorial Library catalogs in the Iowa Masonic Library in Cedar Rapids.  Authored by Iowa's first territorial librarian, Theodore Parvin, the 1839 catalog concludes with a report that library holdings totaled 1,568 volumes, valued at "$3.80 cash per volume."  The collection was classified by subject--biography, education, history, law, medicine, periodicals, poetry, politics, science, theology, voyages, maps and miscellaneous. The titles reflected a selection of important contemporary works.  By 1857, when the library was moved to Des Moines along with the rest of Iowa's governmental offices, the library collection had grown to approximately 3,000 volumes.  In addition to the 1839 and 1845 catalogs, Ms. Esbin has searched the first Iowa State Library accessions book, dated 1875; all Iowa legislative journals and laws of the period; and various histories, periodicals, catalogs and state librarians' reports.  The first Old Capitol "original" acquired for the restoration is the paperback "Journal of the Seventh Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Iowa", printed in 1845.  Ms. Esbin has also confirmed that two volumes in the University Library were part of the original Old Capitol collection.  Beyond its part in showing what Old Capitol looked like during its frontier years, restoration of as much of the original serration specialist on the University Libraries staff, is checking and cleaning the volumes acquired for the restoration. The constant temperature and humidity controls essential to preservation of the collection must be provided in the structural restoration of Old Capitol, which will begin next winter.  In the interim, Ms. Esbin is taking steps to keep the acquisitions as well-housed as possible in temporary quarters.  https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/23342753/  See also Old Capitol Library:  Its History, Contents, and Restoration at http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10961&context=annals-of-iowa

A blue slip is the name for a piece of paper a home state senator returns to the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee to show his or her approval of a federal judicial nominee.  The United States Constitution does not mandate the use of blue slips, but they are considered a senatorial courtesy.  Under current usage of blue slips, though United States senators have the power to prevent a federal judicial nominee from receiving a hearing and subsequently being confirmed, they are not required to ever state a reason.  On October 11, 2017, in comments published in The Weekly Standard, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) indicated that the practice of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where a home state senator's withholding of a blue slip prevented a judicial nominee from receiving confirmation hearings, would no longer be practiced.  The Weekly Standard article quoted McConnell as indicating, "'The majority'—that is, Republicans—will treat a blue slip 'as simply notification of how you’re going to vote, not as an opportunity to blackball,' . . .  The use of blue slips, he noted, is not a Senate rule and has 'been honored in the breach over the years.'  Now it won’t be honored at all."  An article published in Politico, however, indicated that the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), had not given his assent to the plan.  https://ballotpedia.org/Blue_slip_(federal_judicial_nominations)

Nora Johnson, writer who created 'The World of Henry Orient,' dies at 84 by Steve Marble   Nora Johnson, who died October 5, 2017 in Dallas, was a child when her parents split—her father planting himself in Beverly Hills, her mother moving to New York.  At casual glance, there was a storybook charm to it all.  Summers in Hollywood meant playing croquet with Tyrone Power, going to Shirley Temple’s birthday parties, looking across the lawn of her father’s house and noticing “Judy Garland standing in front of me, her eyes ablaze, her small swaying body lit up with some tragic fire.”   During the school year she had New York, from the ice rink at Rockefeller Center to Broadway.  But she felt disassociated with both cities, and—to varying degrees—both parents.  Hollywood felt artificial and her father was so charismatic, Johnson said she felt as if she had to line up to get his affection.  She worried that she bored him.  “The things I saved up for months to tell him, never seemed worth bringing up when I was with him,” she wrote in “Coast to Coast.”  Her first marriage took her to Saudi Arabia, where she wrote “The World of Henry Orient,” the story of two schoolgirls who build romantic fantasies about a famous concert pianist.  Cloaked in humor, the girls’ efforts to spy on the pianist form a story of both obsession and youthful exuberance.  Johnson divorced, married again and then divorced a second time.  Her father, sensing his daughter was going through a grim time, reached out to her and suggested they collaborate on a film script for “Henry Orient.”  Peter Sellers was cast as the pianist in the 1964 film version of the story.  Don Ameche played the role in a subsequent Broadway musical adaptation of Johnson’s novel.  Both were deemed successes.  In a 1986 interview, Johnson said that, as much as anything else, she wrote to please her father.  “Even now when I write a passage that pleases me especially, I find myself thinking, ‘How he’d like this … I hope.’”  After her father’s death in 1977, Johnson seemed to write furiously—turning out novels like “Tender Offer” and “Perfect Together” and writing book reviews and reflections.  Though she made New York her home, she returned to Los Angeles frequently.  In 1985, she reminisced about her childhood summers in Beverly Hills in a story for the Los Angeles Times Magazine.  http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-nora-johnson-20171011-story.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1783  October 13, 2017  On today's date in 1991, Dennis Russell Davies conducted a Carnegie Hall concert by the American Composers' Orchestra that included the premiere performance of a new orchestral work entitled "Black Light."  Its composer was Daniel Asia, a Seattle native who has emerged as one of the most productive contemporary composers of orchestral works.   Asia has written four symphonies to date, and a number of concertos and shorter orchestral works.  The final page of the score for Asia's "Black Light" is inscribed, "October 15, 1990—In Memoriam Leonard Bernstein."  Bernstein had died the previous day, as Asia was just finishing his new score, and a year later, almost to the day, Asia's "Black Light" was premiered in New York.  Bernstein was a composer that Asia openly acknowledges as a big influence in his own work.  Composers Datebook