Janne Teller (born 1964), Danish novelist of Austrian-German background.  Her literature includes essays and short stories, has received numerous literary awards and grants, and is today translated into more than 26 languages.  Always confronting the larger philosophical questions of life and modern civilization, her books often spark controversial debate.  Janne Teller has published ia, the novel Odin's Island (1999), a modern Nordic saga and parable of political, historical and religious dispute, Europa, All that you Lack (2004) about the significance of history in war and love, Come, an existential novel about ethics in art and modern life, and most recently the novella African Roads (2013), and the short story collection Everything (2013).  She has also published the existential YA/crossover novel Nothing (2000) which was first banned, then has become an international bestseller, winning numerous international prizes and is today by many critics already deemed a modern classic.  Her unique passport-shaped book War, what if it were here about life as a refugee, she transforms to each country in which it is published--by now 16, and still growing (something, to the best of our knowledge, no author in the world has done before).  http://www.janneteller.dk/?English

Spaghetti with Lemon by Ruth Rogers, Sian Wyn Owen, Joseph Trivelli and Rose Gray   This recipe comes from a small trattoria outside of Positano.  We only make this in the summer when the basil is sun-drenched and the Amalfi lemons are fresh and ripe.  It is incredibly easy to make but be sure to cook the spaghetti al dente and follow the quantities in the recipe, as the flavors need to be balanced correctly.  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/spaghetti-with-lemon?utm_campaign=TST_WNK_20180328&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_Newsletter&utm_content=Spaghetti%20with%20Lemon

The Brinton 1704 House is one of the oldest and best preserved historic homes in America, a hidden gem located in the heart of the Brandywine Battlefield.  The Brinton family, led by William the Elder, notable for his elderly age and “wild white hair,” settled the frontier of Pennsylvania with his wife and son to avoid persecution in England for his Quaker beliefs.  Although the family spent their first winter living in a cave, William’s son—affectionately known as William “the Builder” by Brintons today—eventually built the 1704 house where he lived with his own family, his wife Jane and their six children.  In 1950, Brinton descendants repurchased their ancestral home and spent the next seven years restoring it to its original appearance.  The furniture, objects, and artifacts in the home are authentic to the 17th and 18th centuries; a few of the objects of note include a beehive oven, a mortar and pestle brought by the Brintons to the colony, and the Brinton family Bible box.  Today members of the Brinton family travel from far and wide to visit the ancestral Quaker home of their family:  a house whose family history stretches back more than 300 years in Pennsylvania and nearly a millennia in England.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/brinton-1704-house

Born in Macon, Georgia, to Mac Hyman and Gwendolyn Holt Hyman, Gwyn Hyman Rubio grew up in south Georgia in the small town of Cordele, not far from Plains.  Her father was a writer himself and published the bestseller No Time for Sergeants in 1954 when he was only 31 years old.  It was turned into a popular play and film, starring Andy Griffith.  Upon graduating from Florida State University with a B.A. in English, Gwyn joined the Peace Corps, serving in Costa Rica and working as a preschool program coordinator and teacher in a village, without running water or electricity, near the Panamanian border.  She married her husband, Angel, also a volunteer, six months after her arrival.  They have been married now for over 40 years.  Gwyn’s youth was spent frantically running from her father’s vocation—seeking any other occupation—because she felt the stress of writing had precipitated his early death of a heart attack at the age of 39.  Throughout the 1970s, one job followed another until the couple wound up in 1980 in Berea, Kentucky.  In 1983 Gwyn could no longer run away from writing, from the realization that this was what she was meant to do.  Therefore, she applied and was accepted into the MFA Program for Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.  Not until her graduation in 1986 did she dedicate herself completely to writing.  Gwyn’s collection of short stories, Sharing Power, was nominated for a Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award.  Her short fiction has been published and anthologized around the country.  Her short story “Little Saint” received the Cecil Hackney Literary Award for first prize in the National Short Story Competition and later appeared in Prairie Schooner.  She has received grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.  In July, 1998, her first novel was published by Viking/Penguin.  Highlighted in Time Magazine by Barnes & Noble, Icy Sparks was one of several novels chosen to represent “The Next Wave of Great Literary Voices” in the Discover Great New Writers program.  http://gwynhymanrubio.com/bio.html

In many countries, white chocolate is not classified as chocolate at all, as it contains no cocoa solids, which gives it the smooth ivory or beige color.  White "chocolate" is the most fragile form of all chocolates and close attention must be paid to it while heating or melting as it will burn and seize very easily unless heated very slowly.  White chocolate originates from the cocoa (cacao) plant but lacks "chocolate" flavor due to the absence of the chocolate liquor which is what gives dark and milk chocolate their intense, bitter flavor and color.  White chocolate contains cocoa butter, milk solids, sugar, lecithin and flavorings (usually including vanilla).  Look for a brand that contains cocoa butter.  There are cheaper versions that don't contain any cocoa butter, and their flavor is inferior.  Link to recipes using  white chocolate at http://www.geniuskitchen.com/about/white-chocolate-225

stridulation  noun  A high-pitched chirping, grating, hissing, or squeaking sound, as male crickets and grasshoppers make by rubbing certain body parts together.  from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English   The act of making shrill sounds or musical notes by rubbing together certain hard parts, as is done by the males of many insects, especially by Orthoptera, such as crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts.  The noise itself.  Etymologies  from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License  1838, from earlier term stridulous; from Latin strīdulus ("giving a shrill sound, creaking"), from strīdō ("utter a shrill or harsh sound; creak, shriek, grate, hiss").  https://www.wordnik.com/words/stridulation

(1)  Mary Regula, who led a successful campaign to establish a national library to research and commemorate the disparate and often unsung roles played by presidential spouses, died on April 5, 2018  at her family’s farm in Navarre, Ohio. She was 91. 

(2)  Growing up in the 1960s, Storm Reyes lived and worked in migrant labor camps across Washington state.  When she was 8 years old, she began working full-time picking fruit for under a dollar an hour.  At StoryCorps, Storm shared stories of her difficult childhood with her son, Jeremy Hagquist, and remembers the day a bookmobile unexpectedly arrived, opening up new worlds and bringing hope.

(3)  From an article in The New York Times, a judge imposes juveniles to read from a list of books and report on their reactions.  A Virginia judge handed down an unusual sentence last year after five teenagers defaced a historic black schoolhouse with swastikas and the words “white power” and “black power.”  Instead of spending time in community service, Judge Avelina Jacob decided, the youths should read a book.  But not just any book.  They had to choose from a list of ones covering some of history’s most divisive and tragic periods.  The horrors of the Holocaust awaited them in “Night,” by Elie Wiesel.  The racism of the Jim Crow South was there in Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”  The brutal hysteria of persecution could be explored in “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller.  http://lisnews.org/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1878  April 21, 2018  Word of the Day  gens  noun  (Ancient Rome, historical)  A legally defined unit of Roman society, being a collection of people related through  a common ancestor by birth, marriage or adoption, possibly over many generations, and sharing the same nomen gentilicium.  (anthropology)  A tribal subgroup whose members are characterized by having the same descent, usually along the maleline.

Rome is traditionally regarded as having been founded on April 21.  Wiktionary