Monday, April 16, 2018


Cucumber Salad
Combine 1 tsp. soy sauce, 1 tbsp. white vinegar, 1 tbsp. sugar, 2 tsp. sesame seed oil, 1/4 tsp. Tabasco and 1/2 tsp. salt.  Add 2 medium cucumbers, peeled and diced.  Cover and chill.

A backhanded (or left-handed) compliment is an ambiguous statement that seems to be or is intended to be a compliment but is actually critical and could be seen as an insult; an insult disguised as praise.  When someone pays you a backhanded compliment, they are actually being condescending.  Since at least the late 1800's, the term 'backhanded' has been used figuratively to mean "oblique in meaning; indirect, devious, equivocal, ambiguous, or sarcastic.  The variant left-handed compliment comes from the use, dating from around 1600 of the word left-handed to mean "questionable" or "doubtful." (American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms).  This use, in turn, derived from the left long being associated with wrongness or evil.  The word sinister was the Latin word left or "one the left side" which became through Old French, our modern word sinister.  http://www.idioms.online/backhanded-compliment

In his 47 years at the Boston Athenaeum, Stanley Cushing has handled everything from a magnetic “Squid Book” to an autobiography bound in its author’s skin.  The Boston Athenaeum—a 211-year-old independent library in the center of Beacon Hill—is home to about 150,000 rare books.  Some are old, and some are brand new.  Some are huge, and some are tiny.  Some are made of lead, some are made of shredded army uniforms, and one is, famously, made of human skin.  Cushing began his career at the Athenaeum in 1970, right after he graduated from college.  He ended up staying for 47 years—“longer than anybody else in the last hundred years or so,” he says—working as a bookbinder and conservator, then as the Chief of the Conservation Department, and finally as the first-ever Curator of Rare Books.  While in this last position, he began the library’s artists’ books collection, and took the opportunity to  scoop up everything from bark cloth catalogs to anti-war tracts.  Cushing retired in late 2017 (he is now the Rare Books Curator Emeritus) but his legacy remains on the Athenaeum’s shelves, in the form of the many additions he has made to them.  The Athenaeum is an unusual library in that it doesn’t de-accession.  It doesn’t de-accession by use:  If you go into the stacks, and you see a book that hasn’t been used in a hundred years, it’s still waiting for you.  And we’re not going to get rid of it, because somebody intelligent bought it in the past, and we think someone intelligent will use it in the future.  When we run out of space, we have typically given whole collections to other institutions.  Our medical books, which we used to have a lot of, we gave to the Countway Library at Harvard.  We had an enormous collection of bound newspapers, which take up a huge amount of space.  We kept the ones that are of local interest, but we gave a great number of them to the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, because they collect bound newspapers.  Cara Giaomo  Read extensive article with many pictures at http://lisnews.org/exit_interview_i_curated_rare_books_for_a_200yearold_library
                                         
Trail mix these days goes way beyond basic GORP (good old raisins and peanuts).  From sweet to savory, there are thousands of combinations to appeal to any palate or snack craving.  Combine any favorite (dry) ingredients and stash the mix in an airtight container in a cool, dry location to prevent spoilage, and you’re good to go.  Trail mix was invented (according to legend, in 1968 by Hadley Food Orchards) to be eaten while hiking or doing another strenuous activity.  It’s lightweight, portable, and full of energy-dense ingredients like dried fruit, nuts, and chocolate—perfect for trailside noshing.  For those same reasons, trail mix can pack a hefty caloric punch, especially when we mindlessly munch while sitting around at work or home.  Keep serving size to a quarter-cup or less to keep this yummy snack from sneaking into “dangerfood” territory.  Sophia Breene

Homeric   adjective   Resembling or relating to the epic poetry of Homer.  Of or pertaining to Greece during the Bronze Age, as described in Homer's works.  Fit to be immortalized in poetry by Homer; epic, heroic.  Wiktionary

April 15, 2018   Ray Bradbury won over generations of readers to science fiction with "Fahrenheit 451" and other works during a writing career that spanned much of the 20th century and produced a mountain of manuscripts, correspondence and memorabilia.  That sprawling collection, much of which Bradbury's family donated after his death in 2012 at age 91, is now entering a long-running preservation project at its home on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.  The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies , which is devoted to the study of the science fiction-fantasy author's works, won a $50,000 grant this month from the National Endowment for the Humanities to begin planning the giant archive's conservation.  "This is a national treasure and we have the great, good fortune to be able to preserve his legacy here for years to come," said Jonathan Eller, who befriended Bradbury in the 1980s and directs the center, which he co-founded in 2007.  Although Bradbury wrote his most famous titles in the mid-20th century, including "Fahrenheit 451," a novel about a dystopian future in which "firemen" hunt down and burn books to keep society in a state of ignorance, Eller said many of his works remain relevant because of their warnings about the misuse of technology and the importance of safeguarding the human imagination.  Bradbury's major works, including "The Martian Chronicles" and "The Illustrated Man," remain in print and HBO will next month air a version of "Fahrenheit" starring Michael Shannon, Michael B. Jordan and Sofia Boutella.  Meanwhile, the Bradbury center, which is near downtown Indianapolis and features a replica of the basement office in Los Angeles where the author wrote for decades, is preparing to delve into the collection he left behind for what's expected to be a yearslong preservation effort.  http://triblive.com/aande/books/13540146-74/trove-of-author-ray-bradburys-papers-set-for-preservation

April 15, 2018  Facebook gets some data on non-users from people on its network, such as when a user uploads email addresses of friends.  Other information comes from “cookies,” small files stored via a browser and used by Facebook and others to track people on the internet, sometimes to target them with ads.  “This kind of data collection is fundamental to how the internet works,” Facebook said in a statement to Reuters.  Asked if people could opt out, Facebook added, “There are basic things you can do to limit the use of this information for advertising, like using browser or device settings to delete cookies.  This would apply to other services beyond Facebook because, as mentioned, it is standard to how the internet works.”  Facebook often installs cookies on non-users’ browsers if they visit sites with Facebook “like” and “share” buttons, whether or not a person pushes a button.  Facebook said it uses browsing data to create analytics reports, including about traffic to a site.  The company said it does not use the data to target ads, except those inviting people to join Facebook.  David Ingram  Read more at  

The Hip-Hop Architecture Movement  Michael Ford and the Urban Arts Collective are forging a critique of Modernism, the style of architecture that birthed a new American culture by   If challenged to list more than six African-American architects or designers, could you do it?  Of those you can name, how many of them changed the practice of architecture or shaped a community with a revolutionary approach  If Michael Ford isn’t on your list of black designers changing our industry, keep reading.  Ford, co-founder of the Urban Arts Collective and self-proclaimed hip-hop architect, was born and raised in Detroit.  Motown boasts architectural marvels by Daniel Burnham, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, and Isamu Noguchi; it has also groomed award-winning hip-hop artists including Eminem, Big Sean, and J Dilla.  But if you ask Ford, Detroit’s premier hip-hop artists—or those from any American city—didn’t hone their craft by spending time around groundbreaking architecture.  Their contributions to hip-hop culture, and the development of the cultural movement, were the results of deplorable physical conditions that moved its inhabitants to create a new art form in diametric response to their environment.  For Ford, and many other cultural scholars, hip-hop isn’t an isolated musical genre, a fashion style, or a variety of dance.  “Hip-hop is a culture curated mostly by African-American and Latino youth as a response to challenging economic, political, and physical environments,” Ford explains.  His thesis pairs these physical environments with Robert Moses’ inverted application of Le Corbusier’s principles for the City of Tomorrow.  Instead of glass prisms surrounded by green space for Paris, the Bronx got brick towers in-filled with concrete, divided by the Cross Bronx Expressway that siphoned residents from the island of Manhattan.  Those who could afford relocation—upper- and middle-class residents—fled the borough leaving the economically disenfranchised residents in isolation.  Moses’ implementation of displacement is what Ford calls “the worst remix in history.”  And so it is no coincidence that the Bronx is the widely agreed-upon birthplace of hip-hop.  Read much more and see pictures at http://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/the-hip-hop-architecture-movement_o
AIA Toledo and Toledo-Lucas County Public Library will collaborate a Hip Hop Architecture Camp in the main library's creativity lab July 9-14, 2018.  The camp is based on "4 Cs"--creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1875  April 16, 2018  Word of the Day  sprachbund  noun A group of languages sharing a number of areal features (similar grammarvocabulary, etc.) which are primarily due to language contact rather than cognation.  Russian linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy, who coined the German word Sprachbund from which the English word is derived, was born on this day in 1890.  Wiktionary

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