GREEN GOLD  Sicily is the only Italian region where the pistachio ("pistacia vera") can be cultivated and produced.  Bronte, with nearly three thousand hectares of land dedicated and specialized for this purpose, expresses principal area of cultivation (80% of the regional surface), with a production that has peculiar characteristics.  Bronte is the Italian capital of the pistachio.  Unlike the  product coming from America or Asia, whose kernel is nearly always yellowish, the bronte's  pistachio is a fruit of high value, much appreciated in much appreciated in the European and Japanese markets, for its intense green coloration.  It is a precious fruit from ancient and noble origins, always a protagonist in the more refined kitchens, sought-after for its aromatic and pleasant taste.  In particular, today, is utilized in the sphere  of sweets and salami factories (confectionery, salami), but also in chemistry and cosmetics (well known the active principles of its oil, to beautify the skin).  The oil extracted from the fruit, particularly delicate, finds application in dermatology for its high emollient and softening quality.  Every year in some small streets and squares of Bronte's inner cen­ter, in the period September-October, goes on, since several years, the feast of the Sagra del Pistacchio, (the Pistachio feast).  It is the occasion that the city offers to its many visitors to let them know the refined "gold of Bronte".  The highlight of the Feast is the tasting of the fruit and of the pista­chio related products that go from sausages to pistachio pastry, from sweets to ice cream, and lots of other delicious things.  http://www.bronteinsieme.it/BrIns_en/4ec_en/pist_en.html

Anouk Markovits never intended to write about the Satmar Hasidic community in which she grew up, but then came 9/11, and Markovits thought, “I’ve had personal experience with fundamentalist environments.”  Still, writing about that world didn’t come easily.  Whether fiction or memoir, most books set in these environments are written by and about those who, like Markovits, have left, and that wasn’t the story she wanted to tell.  Which raised the question:  “Could I possibly write a book about the people who stayed?”  Markovits’s English-language debut, the novel I Am Forbidden (Hogarth Press), in which the outside world remains always outside, a place of temptation, opportunity, or of no interest whatsoever, is that book.  Though compact (it started out “humongous” Markovits says, “but the longer I worked on it, the shorter it got”), the story spans 70 years—from the start of WWII to the present—and three locations:  Transylvania, Paris, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Martha Schulman  https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/51076-inside-out-anouk-markovits.html

In 1912 Henry Flagler arrived aboard the first train into Key West, marking the completion of the Florida East Coast (FEC) Railway's Over-Sea Railroad to Key West.  With the completion of the Over-Sea Railroad the entire east coast of Florida, from Jacksonville to Key West, was linked by a single railroad system.  The FEC was the product of Flagler's resources and imagination.  Flagler's construction of hotels at points along the railroad and his development of the agricultural industry through the Model Land Company established tourism and agriculture as Florida's major industries, which remain so even now more than a century later.  In essence, Henry Flagler invented modern Florida.  Amazingly, Flagler accomplished these feats after retiring from his first career and having reached an age equal to the average life expediency for an American male of the time.  Flagler had co-founded Standard Oil with partners John D. Rockefeller and Samuel Andrews, long before becoming interested in Florida.  When Flagler first visited Florida in 1878, he recognized the state's potential for growth but noticed a lack of hotel facilities.  Flagler returned to Florida and in 1885 with an eye toward developing the area around St. Augustine and began building a grand hotel, the Hotel Ponce de Leon.  Flagler realized that the key to developing Florida was a solid transportation system and consequently purchased the Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax Railroad.  He also noticed that a major problem facing the existing Florida railway systems was that each operated on different gauge systems, making interconnection impossible.  Shortly after purchasing the Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax Railroad, he converted the line to standard gauge.  In September 1895, Flagler's system was incorporated as the Florida East Coast Railway Company and by 1896, it reached Biscayne Bay, the largest and most accessible harbor on Florida's east coast.  To further develop the area surrounding the Fort Dallas railroad station, Flagler dredged a channel, built streets, instituted the first water and power systems, and financed the town's first newspaper, the Metropolis.  When the town incorporated in 1896, its citizens wanted to honor the man responsible for the city's development by naming it, "Flagler."  He declined the honor, persuading them to use instead the native american name for the river running through the settlement, "Miama" or “Miami.”  When the United States announced in 1905 its intention to build the Panama Canal, Flagler embarked on perhaps his greatest challenge:  the extension of the Florida East Coast Railway to Key West, a city of almost 20,000 inhabitants located 128 miles beyond the end of the Florida peninsula.  A train depot in Key West, the United States' closest deepwater port to the Canal, could not only take advantage of Cuban and Latin America trade, but significant trade possibilities with the west via the new Canal.

https://flaglermuseum.us/history/florida-east-coast-railway

There will be two full moons, both supermoons, in January 2018.  A supermoon occurs when a full moon is at its closest point in its monthly orbit around earth.  The next one, due to occur on Jan. 2, will be a super-close supermoon.  The full moon that takes place on Jan. 31 will take place during a total lunar eclipse.  January and March will each have two full moons.  The second full moon in a season is commonly called a blue moon, which is how we got the saying “once in a blue moon.”  Now if you’re an expert on the night sky, you’ll know the actual blue moon of 2018 won’t occur until Dec. 22.  But for the rest of us, the colloquial definition is just fine to use.  February will have no full moon.  Jamie Drake  http://www.somdnews.com/independent/sports/outdoors/two-blue-moons-coming/article_ddf71ad0-3aa0-5ade-86e0-164767b4a5d1.html

10 Films In Which Actors Play Multiple Roles  “Kind Hearts & Coronets” (1949)  Alec Guinness; “Coming To America”(1988)  Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall; “The Incredible Shrinking Woman” (1981)  Lily Tomlin; “Cloud Atlas” (2012)  Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess and Hugh Grant all feature in all six of the film’s storylines as different characters in each, while Jim Broadbent, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Zhou Xun, Keith David, David Gyasi and Susan Sarandon play at least three each; “Joe Versus The Volcano” (1990)  Meg Ryan; "The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp” (1943)  Deborah Kerr; “The Nutty Professor” (1996)  Eddie Murphy; “The Mouse That Roared” (1959)  Peter Sellers;  “Back to the Future II” (1989)  Michael J Fox; “Dr. Strangelove” (1964)  Peter Sellers.  See pictures, descriptions, and names of characters played in the ten films.  Also find other films mentioned at http://www.indiewire.com/2014/05/10-films-in-which-actors-play-multiple-roles-86252/

There are 35 blood-group systems, organized according to the genes that carry the information to produce the antigens within each system.  The majority of the 342 blood-group antigens belong to one of these systems.  The Rh system (formerly known as “Rhesus”) is the largest, containing 61 antigens.  The most important of these Rh antigens, the D antigen, is quite often missing in Caucasians, of whom around 15 percent are Rh D-negative (more commonly, though inaccurately, known as Rh-negative blood).  Rh_null blood was first described in 1961, in an Aboriginal Australian woman.  Until then, doctors had assumed that an embryo missing all Rh blood-cell antigens would not survive, let alone grow into a normal, thriving adult.  By 2010, nearly five decades later, some 43 people with Rh_null blood had been reported worldwide.  Read extensive article, The Most Precious Blood on Earth, by Penny Bailey  at https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/the-most-precious-blood-on-earth/381911/

Rose Marie 1924-2017:  The Music Beyond The Comedy by Rich Kienzle   Before Sally Rogers and The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rose Marie, who died December 28, 2017 at 94, had been through stardom that began in childhood, in part because of her skills as a singer that began very early.  Link to videos of some of the high points through her musical side starting with her child star beginnings as "Baby Rose Marie" including the Van Dyke show and beyond at http://communityvoices.post-gazette.com/arts-entertainment-living/get-rhythm/item/41204-rose-marie-1924-2017-the-music-beyond-the-comedy

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1818  December 29, 2017  On this date in 1916, Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra by Max Bruch, commissioned by an American duo piano team, Ottilie and Rose Suttro, gave the work’s premiere performance with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.  The Suttro Duo drastically revised and even rewrote parts of Bruch’s score for their 1916 performance, unbeknownst to the composer.  It wouldn’t be until 1971 that the Concerto was performed as he had actually written it.  Composers Datebook  Thought for Today  Here is my first principle of foreign policy:  good government at home. - William Ewart Gladstone, British prime minister (29 Dec 1809-1898)