Monday, May 14, 2018

Chia seeds are known for their abundance of Omega-3 fatty acids.  These tiny seeds actually have more beneficial fats than salmon.  The gel that is formed around the seed with the help of water has no calories and makes you feel more full.  These seeds contain an abundance of antioxidants, as well as complete protein, a rarity in plant sources.  They balance your blood sugar and give you steady energy that lasts for hours.  Chia seeds are also a great source of fiber; they have both soluble and insoluble fibers.  Chia seeds are amazingly sturdy and rarely get rancid, even if kept at room temperature for months at a time.  Still, it doesn’t hurt to keep them in a tightly lidded container or jar in the refrigerator.  Flaxseeds contains lignans, which are chemical compounds that carry antioxidants and enzymes that have many benefits.  Flax is also a good source of a type of soluble fiber that helps maintain ideal cholesterol levels.  It provides Omega-6 fatty acids and many essential minerals.  Ground flaxseeds can be added to oatmeal, baked goods, smoothies, cereal, and more.  Until recently, it has been necessary to buy whole flaxseeds and grind them in a spice or coffee grinder to get their full benefits.  Now, pre-ground flaxseeds are available, making them handy to use without extra preparations.  Both flaxseeds and flax oil are highly perishable, so keep them refrigerated.  Another way to reap flaxseeds’ fatty acid benefits is by using the oil in salads or dressings (direct exposure to heat damages the nutrients).  Keep your ground flax in the freezer so it keeps longer and retain nutrients.  If you have whole flax, just keep in a sealable bag or mason jar in the refrigerator, as they are highly perishable.  Hemp seeds are packed with easily digestible proteins and contain all 10 essential amino acids, putting them among the rare plant-based foods that provide complete protein.  These seeds are abundant in omega-3 fatty acids, as well as a specific omega-6 fatty acid (GLA) not found in any other food; hemp oil contains even more GLA.  Hemp seeds are high in fiber and are rich in minerals including magnesium, iron, zinc, and potassium.   Unlike flaxseeds, you need not grind them to reap their benefits.  While chia and flaxseeds have the edge in terms of soluble fiber, hemp is higher than the other two seeds in protein.  posted by Jordan St. Clair-Jackson  http://www.vegkitchen.com/nutrition/health-benefits-of-chia-flax-and-hemp-seeds/

Steve Inskeep and biographer Jon Meacham discuss the American presidency, the rise of populism and Americans' sense of a shared history for the last conversation in our series, History of Our Time.  (portions of an interview heard on July 4, 2017 on Morning Edition)  I think we are as divided as we have been since the 1850s.  And we know how well that turned out.  Jon Meacham is a wide-ranging thinker and historian, former editor of Newsweek.  His books range from an exploration of religion to the life of Thomas Jefferson to a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Andrew Jackson.  Granting that history is an argument over what really happened and what really mattered, is it becoming more of one?  Do we no longer have a common history that we can agree on, more or less?  And we are tribal.  We live in silos.  We want to have our biases confirmed.  There's much too little mixing, not only between ethnic groups and races but between those of different classes, economic levels.  My favorite definition of a nation comes from St. Augustine who said, a nation is a multitude of rational beings united by the common objects of their love.  https://www.npr.org/2017/07/04/535470981/whats-it-like-to-be-a-historian-at-this-political-time-every-day-is-christmas

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”  attributed to St. Augustine.
Wikiquote takes care of this one handily:  Attributed to Augustine in “Select Proverbs of All Nations” (1824) by “Thomas Fielding” (John Wade), p. 216, and later in the form “The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page”, as quoted in 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1995) by Evan Esar, p. 822; this has not been located in Augustine’s writings, and may be a variant translation of an expression found in Le Cosmopolite (1753) by Fougeret de Monbron:  “The universe is a sort of book, whose first page one has read when one has seen only one’s own country.”  https://fauxtations.wordpress.com/2015/01/04/augustine-the-world-is-a-book/

Peter Mayer, a number one mainstream and impartial writer of the previous half century who acquired such million-selling books as “Up the Down Staircase” and “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” died May 11, 2018 at age 82.  Mayer was a London native and Columbia College graduate who broke into e book publishing within the early 1960s.  At Avon Books he demonstrated a knack for locating sudden best-sellers, particularly throughout an period when totally different firms typically launched a e book’s hardcover and paperback editions.  Mayer had pushed a taxi for a number of years and was advised by one other driver a few coming-of-age novel written within the 1930s and lengthy forgotten:  Henry Roth’s “Name it Sleep.”  Mayer discovered a replica on the New York Public Library, tracked down the proprietor of the e book’s copyright and, for $2,500, bought paperback rights for a novel that went on to promote greater than one million copies and was praised as a literary basic.  After “Name it Sleep,” Mayer had comparable success with “Up the Down Staircase,” Bel Kaufman’s beloved novel about an idealistic college trainer; Thomas A. Harris’ pop psychology favourite “I am OK—You are OK” and Richard Bach’s “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.”  He was an early fan of John Irving and, at Pocket Books, which he joined in 1976, Mayer acquired the paperback for Irving’s breakthrough “The World In keeping with Garp.”

As a war-torn Europe was rebuilding itself in the 1950s, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)—based in Switzerland—set up an ad hoc committee to search for ways of bringing together the countries of the EBU around a "light entertainment programme".  The name "Eurovision" was first used in relation to the EBU's network by British journalist George Campey in the London Evening Standard in 1951.  The first contest was held in the town of Lugano, Switzerland, on 24 May 1956.  Seven countries participated—each submitting two songs, for a total of 14.  This was the only contest in which more than one song per country was performed:  since 1957, all contests have allowed one entry per country.  The 1956 contest was won by the host nation, Switzerland.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest

May 13, 2018  Israel erupted this weekend into a state of national exhilaration--expressed with chicken-inspired dance move--following Netta Barzilai’s win at the Eurovision song contest.  Fans poured into the streets of Tel Aviv in the early hours of Sunday after the 25-year-old was announced a champion in Lisbon for her techno dance tune Toy, a pop anthem filled with clucks and synthesised beats.  Exuberant crowds blocked traffic and many jumped into the public fountain at Rabin Square in front of city hall to rejoice in the win for the national sensation who had previously sung with the Israeli navy band.  Israel’s victory means it will host next year’s finals, expected to take place in Jerusalem.  Public figures across the country rushed to express their glee. Gal Gadot, an Israeli actor who played Wonder Woman, said Netta represented “the real wonder in women”.  Oliver Holmes  Read more and see pictures at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/13/israel-celebrates-after-netta-barzilai-eurovision-win
           
2,592 ALL NATURAL COLORS  To celebrate the opening of Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color at Cooper Hewitt (May 11, 2018-January 13, 2019), Object of the Day this month will feature colorful objects from the exhibition.  Before Pantone, there was the Wiener Farbenkabinet (Viennese Color Collection or Complete Book of Samples of all Natural, Basic, and Combined Colors).  This manual is one of only four known copies in the United States; detailing the various formulaic compositions of naturally made color shades for schwartz (black), wieß (white), rot (red), gelb (yellow), blau (blue), braun (brown), and grün (green) to name a few.  This manual contains 2,592 hand-colored natural dye specimens, along with details on how to apply them to silk, cotton, wool, leather, wood, bone, paper, and many other materials.  Published in 1794 by Johann Ferdinand Ritter von Schönfeld and before the discovery of synthetic dyes in 1856, this manual reveals an extraordinary and vibrant system of calibrated, named and numbered colors organized prismatically.  This multi-volume guidebook is a valuable resource for conservators and anyone interested in color materials, techniques and applications.  Schönfeld’s publication is featured in the Creating Colors section of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s exhibition Saturated:  The Allure and Science of Color.  Divided into several thematic categories, this section is devoted to how objects are colored, featuring various examples of naturally and synthetically dyed objects.  Printed in the German Blackletter typeface Fraktur that dates to the early 16th century, it is not machine-readable and requires manual transcription in order to provide full text searching. Using the power of crowdsourcing through Smithsonian Digital Volunteers:  Transcription CenterWiener Farbenkabinet has been transcribed by over 600 contributors and is near completion as of this post.  The Smithsonian Transcription Center seeks to engage the public in making collections more accessible by working hand-in-hand with digital volunteers to transcribe historic documents and collection records to facilitate research from archives all around the world.  A fully digitized version of the Weiner Farbenkabinet can be found here in Smithsonian Libraries online catalog, SIRIS.  posted by Sylvia Ferguson  https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2018/05/02/2592-all-natural-colors/  The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum is located at 2 East 91st Street in Manhattan. 

Saturated explores the elusive, complex phenomenon of color perception and how it has captivated artists, designers, scientists, and sages.  Featuring over 190 objects spanning antiquity to the present from the extraordinary collections of Smithsonian Libraries and Cooper Hewitt, the exhibition reveals how designers apply the theories of the world’s greatest color thinkers to bring order and excitement to the visual world.  More than three dozen magnificent and rare books from the Smithsonian Libraries are installed throughout the exhibition,  emphasizing the ongoing theoretical and practical discourse on color.  Illustrated with spheres, cones, grids, wheels, and other graphic means for organizing color’s hues and harmonies, the works include texts written by designers, naturalists, and chemists, as well as some of the  most important color treatises of the Enlightenment, such as Sir Isaac Newton’s 1704 Opticks and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s  1810 Theory of Colors.  Also on view, a very rare surviving volume of Jacob Christophe Le Blon’s 1725 Coloritto, the first book to document the mixing of primary colors to create secondary colors that became the foundation of modern color printing.  posted by Alix Finkelstein  https://www.cooperhewitt.org/exhibition/saturated-the-allure-and-science-of-color/  Thank you, Muse reader!

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1887  May 14, 2018  

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