The Story of Louis Braille by Sherrill Kushner   Louis Braille spent his spare time at his school for the blind trying to improve on a night writing system so blind students could learn to read and write.  Louis' classmates at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth tried out his new alphabet system, and were delighted to find how well it worked.  Now they could take notes in class.  Memorizing long class lectures wasn't necessary any more.  They didn't need anyone's help to read or write.  The school director wrote to the French government and asked if Louis' dot alphabet could be made the official system of writing for the blind.  In the meantime, Louis became an assistant teacher at the institute.  His classes were very popular.  He also spent a lot of time copying books into his code.  He even added symbols so that blind musicians could read and write music.  He eventually had a book published describing his new code.  Louis also learned to play the organ.  He played so well, he worked as an organist at a nearby church.  He soon became a full-time teacher at the institute.  In 1834, Louis demonstrated his dot alphabet at the Exhibition of Industry held in Paris.  He worked on writing books and music in his dot system.  He died in Paris in 1852.  Two years later, the French government approved the dot system.  It was called "Braille" after Louis' last name.  In 1878, the World Congress for the Blind voted to make Braille the system of reading and writing for all blind people worldwide.  With the help of the United Nations, Braille has been adapted to almost every known language.  To see the Braille alphabet, go to http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/braille/index.html?id=orEf2eop.  Braille Bug http://www.afb.org/braillebug/ by the American Foundation for the Blind, features an assortment of games and activities for learning Braille that are both fun and educational. The website is for both sighted and visually impaired students in grades two through six.  It also includes biographies of Helen Keller and Louis Braille.  http://www.pathstoliteracy.org/story-louis-braille

Apple pie is not an American invention.  In the 14th century, farmers in England began wrapping apples into inedible containers known as “coffins,” a pie prototype.  Only in 1697 did the concept reach the United States—through European immigrants.  Though fans of apple pie with cheese exist everywhere, they seem to be concentrated in the American Midwest, New England, and parts of Canada and Britain. Vermont even has a 1999 law on the books requiring that proprietors of apple pie make a “good faith effort” to serve it with ice cream, cold milk, or “a slice of cheddar cheese weighing a minimum of 1/2 ounce.”  The idea appears to have originated in England, where all sorts of fillings were added to pies.  At some point, the 17th-century trend of adding dairy-based sauces to pies morphed into a tradition of topping them with cheese.  Michael Waters  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cheese-apple-pie

The history of the menu isn’t all that long, and its origins are murky.  Menus were needed once restaurants became gathering places that served a variety of foods, starting in 18th-century Paris.  Later banquets often provided printed menus as souvenirs for attendees, who could take a soup-spattered piece of paper home to dream about delicacies past.  Today, nearly every restaurant has a menu, and some even let you take one home.  Not many libraries have menus collections, but they are still a vital part of the historical record that reveals tastes, trends, and even local environmental conditions.  Menu collections are often passion projects, gathered by enthusiasts over a lifetime.  Perhaps the most famous examples are Frank M. Buttolph, who collected 25,000 menus that eventually ended up at the New York Public Library, or Louis Szathmary, a chef whose collection is split between two universities and ranges from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural ball to a space-age feast.  The Conrad N. Hilton Library in New York is a part of the other CIA, the Culinary Institute of America.  The library houses 30,000 menus from 80 countries dating back to 1855, and features notable examples from famed restaurateurs and chefs.  But it also has a furry menu, which is a bit of a mystery.  It was donated to the library by a Patty O’Neill, and it’s almost certainly a novelty item, offering delicacies such as “Flat Cat,” “Caribou Stew,” and a range of dog dishes, from “German Shepard Pie” to “Collie Hit by a Trolley.”  Anne Ewbank  See graphics and read about menu collections in other libraries at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/menus-unusual-libraries

kith  noun  Old English cȳthth, of Germanic origin; related to couth.  The original senses were ‘knowledge’, ‘one's native land’, and ‘friends and neighbours’.  The phrase kith and kin originally denoted one's country and relatives; later one's friends and relatives.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/kith

food web  noun  A diagram showing the organisms that eat other organisms in a particular ecosystem, predators being higher in the web than their prey.  Wiktionary

A citron is a large ovoid semitropital fruit with a rough, uneven, thin yellowish-green rind, that looks like a huge lumpy lemon.  The edible part of the fruit is small and surrounded with a thick white inner rind grown mainly for it's peel, which is candied.  Before being candied, the peel is processed in brine and pressed to extract citron oil, used to flavor liqueurs and to scent cosmetics.  It is difficult to find in the U.S. and is most commonly available around the holiday season.  It is generally sold in a small dice, often part of a premixed candied fruit mix intended for use in fruit cake.  The fingered citron, which looks like a yellow, multi-tentacled octopus, is used as a flavoring rather than being eaten out-of-hand.  http://www.geniuskitchen.com/about/citron-639

Recipes for desserts using vinegar  Vinegar Pie  https://delishably.com/desserts/What-is-a-Vinegar-Pie  Chess Pie  http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/classic-chess-pie

Little New York may refer to"  Little New York, Alabama, Little York, California, formerly called Little New York, Staten Island  a 2009 film also titled Little New York, and Little New York, Texas.  Some streets and restaurants are named Little New York.  Welch, West Virginia was once known as Little New York and the "nations's coal bin." Wikipedia, Google, CNN

nemesis  word origin and history   1570s, Nemesis, "Greek goddess of vengeance, personification of divine wrath," from Greek nemesis "just indignation, righteous anger," literally "distribution" (of what is due), related to nemein "distribute, allot, apportion one's due".  With a lower-case -n-, in the sense of "retributive justice," attested from 1590s.  General sense of "anything by which it seems one must be defeated" is 20c.  http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/nemesis

May 24, 2018  At the traveling Museum Of Ice Cream pop-up, currently in San Francisco, for a frequently sold-out $38 entrance fee, not only can you partake of the classic frozen treat, you can even dive into a pool full of sprinkles.  After a few years on the pop-up Instagram circuit, the Museum Of Ice Cream is now headed for a more permanent home.  The Washington Post reports that “the museum announced Wednesday that it’s planning to open a new concept, the Pint Shop” and is launching its own brand of ice cream. The ice cream will be available in Target Stores with flavors like “Piñata, ‘vanilla ice cream with iced animal cookies, frosted cupcake bites, fizzy cotton candies and rainbow sprinkles,’ and Sprinkle Pool, which contains the titular ingredient.  There’s also Vanillionaire, Chocolate Crush, Cherrylicious, the cinnamon and churro-filled Churro Churro and Nana Bread, a banana ice cream with salted caramel almond butter swirls.”  Gwen Ihnat  https://thetakeout.com/an-ice-cream-museum-and-bbq-ice-cream-top-today-s-ice-c-1826299120

The Man Booker International Prize is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom.  The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize was announced in June 2004.  Sponsored by the Man Group, from 2005 until 2015 the award was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation.  It rewarded one author's "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage", and was a recognition of the writer's body of work rather than any one title.  Since 2016, the award has been given annually to a single book in English translation, with a £50,000 prize for the winning title, shared equally between author and translator.  The 2018 winner is Olga Tokarczuk (Poland), Jennifer Croft (translator), for Flights (Fitzcarraldo Editions)  Tokarczuk is the first Polish author to win the award.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Booker_International_Prize

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1893  May 28, 2018