Cocoa Banana Bread by Alison Roman This version
of banana bread is a chocolatey, buttery, almost decadent thing and probably
not appropriate for anyone to eat first thing in the morning. While mascarpone will give you the richest,
moistest cake with the best flavor, sour cream or yogurt will get the job done;
just make sure they are full-fat. https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/cocoa-banana-bread?utm_campaign=TST_Weekend_20180217&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_Newsletter&utm_content=
When John McCrae's poem "In Flanders
Fields" was first published in an English magazine on Dec. 8, 1915, it
instantly struck a chord with people.
Verses from the poem were put to music, written on billboards and became
part of advertisements for war bonds and military recruitment campaigns. Soldiers wrote out the lines of the poem on
paper and carried it around with them in their uniform pockets. Some people were so moved they wrote poems in
response to McCrae's words. "The
poem just took off, I think, because it truly spoke to the situation at the
time," says Bev Dietrich, curator of Guelph Museums. "People had thought the war would have
been over by then, but it was still going on and the loss of lives had been
tremendous. People felt strongly about
the importance of remembering those who had died." "We still have war
situations today, which is why the poem is still as relevant as it was in 1915
when McCrae wrote it," says Dietrich.
Not surprisingly, the City of Guelph, where McCrae was born, is home to
a majority of the tributes to the famous poet.
The most obvious is the McCrae House where he lived with his
family. The small limestone cottage was
designated decades ago as a place of national historical significance and is
visited by close to 6,000 people each year.
Deirdre Healey https://www.guelphmercury.com/news-story/5562437-mccrae-s-famous-words-referenced-far-and-wide-from-stamps-to-currency/ See poem In Flanders Field at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47380/in-flanders-fields See also http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/museum-in-flanders-fields.htm
and
The day after Donald Trump was elected, the songwriter
Gabriel Kahane decided to go on a listening tour: crisscrossing America
by train and talking to as many people as he could. Leaving his cellphone and the internet
behind, he spent two weeks and nearly 9,000 miles on Amtrak,
collecting conversations and stories for what would become “8980: Book of Travelers,” a song cycle and solo
concert—Mr. Kahane accompanying himself on piano—that had its premiere on
November 30, 2017 at the BAM Harvey Theater. A video backdrop, designed by Jim Findlay,
showed landscapes, urban and rural, seen from trains in motion. Mr. Kahane has built a career where classical
music, musical theater and art-song pop meet, alongside occasional
collaborators like Sufjan Stevens, Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) and
Andrew Bird. He’s fond of narratives
rooted in geography; his 2014 album (and a Brooklyn Academy of Music theatrical
production), “The Ambassador,” based songs on Los
Angeles locations, and he toured in 2013 with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
performing “Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States,” based
on WPA guidebooks. He finds comedy in a
widow’s online dating stories and quiet grief in other passengers’ tales of
loss. And he receives unexpected
acceptance from members of an Amish-like traditionalist sect, the Old
Order German Baptist Brethren, when he offers to sing with them
since he can read the music in their hymnbooks. Hymns about “traveling on” to a “heavenly
home” are threaded through the cycle: sometimes accompanied by harplike strumming
inside the piano, sometimes reharmonized with more unstable, modernist
chords. Jon Pareles https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/arts/music/gabriel-kahane-8980-book-of-travelers-review.html
The Taklamakan
Desert, also spelled "Taklimakan" and
"Teklimakan", is a desert in
southwest Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region, northwest China. It is bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to
the south, the Pamir Mountains and Tian Shan (ancient Mount Imeon) to the
west and north, and the Gobi Desert to
the east. The name may be an Uyghur borrowing
of the Persian tark,
"to leave alone/out/behind, relinquish, abandon" + makan,
"place". Some sources claimed
it means "Place of No Return", more commonly interpreted as
"once you get in, you'll never get out" or similar. Another
plausible explanation suggests it is derived from Turki taqlar makan,
describing "the place of ruins".
The Taklamakan Desert has an area of
337,000 km2 (130,000 sq mi), making it
slightly smaller than Germany, and includes the Tarim Basin, which is 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) long and 400
kilometres (250 mi) wide. It is
crossed at its northern and at its southern edge by two branches of the Silk Road as travellers sought to avoid the arid
wasteland. It is the world's second
largest shifting sand desert with about 85% made up of shifting sand dunes,
ranking 16th in size in a ranking of the world's largest
deserts. This desert was explored by
several scientists as Xuanzang, a monk in
the 7th century and
by the archaeologist Aurel Stein in
the 20th century. Atmospheric studies have shown that dust
originating from the Taklamakan is blown over the Pacific, where it contributes
to cloud formation over the Western United States. Studies have shown that a specific class of
mineral found in the dust, known as K-feldspar, triggers
ice formation particularly well. K-feldspar is particularly susceptible to
corrosion by acidic atmospheric pollution such as nitrates and phosphates. Exposure to this pollution reduces the
ability of the dust to trigger water droplet formation. Further, the traveling dust redistributes
minerals from the Taklamakan to the western U.S.A. via rainfall. The desert is
the main setting for Chinese film series Painted Skin and Painted
Skin: The Resurrection. The Chinese TV series Candle in
the Tomb is mostly spent in this desert as they are
searching for the ancient city of Jinjue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taklamakan_Desert
Sven
Anders Hedin (1865–1952)
was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer,
travel writer, and illustrator of
his own works. During four expeditions
to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known
in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and
the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From
Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between
the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While
traveling, Hedin visited Constantinople(Istanbul), Caucasus, Tehran, Mesopotamia (Iraq), lands of the Kyrgyz people, India, China, Asiatic Russia,
and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central
Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life’s work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Hedin
Read Preservation magazine Winter 2018 and find out about the Lower East Side Tenement
Museum in Manhattan, Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, Ghost Fleet of the
Potomac, the largest ship graveyard in the Western Hemisphere, a Michigan
Midcentury home as mini-art museum, and the Boston Public library https://savingplaces.org/preservation-magazine/issues/winter-2018#.WpAY9oPwaUk Join the National Trust for Historic
Preservation, 800-944-6847, and get your own copy.
Ursa Minor, or the Little Dipper, is a small
constellation in the northern hemisphere.
In Latin, its name means "little bear." The constellation was originally listed by
the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century. Ursa Minor is usually
depicted as a small bear with a long tail. It is said that the tail is so long because
the bear is held by its end and spun around the pole. In Greek mythology,
Ursa Minor is associated with Ida, one of the nymphs that nursed the god Zeus
as an infant. In another myth, the seven
stars of Ursa Minor are identified with the Hesperides, the seven daughters of
Atlas who guarded Hera's temple and orchard in which apples that gave
immortality grew. The stars of Ursa
Minor were once considered to be part of the constellation Draco and formed an asterism called the Dragon's
Wing. The Greeks also sometimes referred to Ursa Minor as the
Phoenician. Phoenicians used Ursa Minor
for navigation more than they did Ursa Major because, even though it was smaller and
fainter, Ursa Minor was closer to the north pole and a better pointer to the
north. The constellation Ursa Minor occupies an area of 256 square
degrees and contains one star with known planets. It can be seen at latitudes between +90° and
-10° and is best visible at 9 p.m. during the month of June. The North Star, Polaris, is a well known
star in many cultures. It is one of the
navigational stars, used for orientation at sea because of its brightness and
location in the sky. The Bedouin call it
"the billy goat" and use it as one of the main stars for wandering at
night (the other being [1668] Canopus,
alpha Carinae). http://www.topastronomer.com/StarCharts/Constellations/Ursa-Minor.php
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1849
February 27, 2018 On this date in
1860, Abraham Lincoln made a speech at Cooper Union in the city of New York that
was largely responsible for his election to the Presidency. On this date in 1922,
a challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,
allowing women the right to vote, was
rebuffed by the Supreme
Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_27
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