Friday, June 8, 2018


Picasso's poetry and other written works created by Pablo Picasso, are often overlooked in discussion of his long and varied career.  Despite being immersed in the literary sphere for many years, Picasso did not produce any writing himself until the age of 53.  In 1935 he ceased painting, drawing and sculpting, and committed himself to the art of poetry; which in turn was briefly abandoned to focus upon singing.  Although he soon resumed work in his previous fields, Picasso continued in his literary endeavours and wrote hundreds of poems, concluding with The Burial of the Count of Orgaz in 1959.  Arriving in Paris at the dawn of the 20th century, Picasso soon met and associated with a variety of modernist writers.  Poet and artist Max Jacob was one of the first friends Picasso made in Paris, and it was Jacob who helped the young artist learn French.  Through Max Jacob, Picasso met one of the most popular members of the Parisian artistic community; writer, poet, novelist, and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire, who encouraged the new-wave of artists to "innovate violently!"  Picasso was the focus of Apollinaire's first important works of art criticism—his 1905 pieces on Picasso also provided the artist with his earliest major coverage in the French press.  Picasso wrote two "surrealist" plays, Desire Caught by the Tail in the winter of 1941, followed by Les Quatre Petites Filles (The Four Little Girls) which was published in 1949.  In 1952 Picasso wrote a second version of The Four Little Girls using the same title.  The works employ a stream of consciousness narrative style, and some critics believe that Picasso never meant for the plays to be staged, only read.  Desire Caught by the Tail was first performed as a reading. Jean-Paul SartreValentine Hugo and Simone de Beauvoirstarred alongside Picasso, while Albert Camus directed.  It was restaged in 1984 (with David Hockney acting) by the Guggenheim Museum.  Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso%27s_poetry

Shawarma, also spelled shawurma or shawerma, is a Levantine meat preparation, where lambchickenturkeybeefveal, or mixed meats are placed on a spit (commonly a vertical spit in restaurants), and may be grilled for as long as a day.  Shavings are cut off the block of meat for serving, and the remainder of the block of meat is kept heated on the rotating spit.  Shawarma can be served on a plate (generally with accompaniments), or as a sandwich or wrap.  Shawarma is usually eaten with tabboulehfattoushtaboon breadtomato, and cucumber.  Toppings include tahinihummus, pickled turnips, and amba.  Shawarma is one of the world's most popular street foods, especially in the countries of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula.  Grilling a vertical spit of stacked meat slices and cutting it off as it cooks was developed in the 19th century in Ottoman Turkey.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawarma

The Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean.  In its narrowest sense, it is equivalent to the historical region of Syria.  In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all of the eastern Mediterranean with its islands; that is, it included all of the countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores, extending from Greece to Cyrenaica.  The term entered English in the late 15th century from French.  It derives from the Italian Levante, meaning "rising", implying the rising of the sun in the east.  The Levant has been described as the "crossroads of western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, and northeast Africa", and the "northwest of the Arabian plate".  The populations of the Levant share not only the geographic position, but cuisine, some customs, and a very long history.  They are often referred to as Levantines.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant

Horsefeathers--like poppycock, balderdash, and tommyrot--is a three-syllable explosion of derision usually followed by an exclamation point when standing alone.  Horsefeathers had an early building-trade use referring to the tapered boards laid to provide a flat surface for asphalt roof shingles, also called ''feathering strips.''  But this word's use as a euphemism for a barnyard epithet was coined in the 1920's by the cartoonist William De Beck, creator of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, and later became the title of a popular song.  William Safire  Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/1985/09/01/magazine/on-language-codswallop-poppycock-and-horsefeathers.html

Who were the Cumans?  A Turkic nomadic people  from the Black Sea area  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oev4pLV-pDs  2:16  See also http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CC%5CU%5CCumans.htm and

What are combining forms?  You can think of them as Lego (from Danish, leg:  play + godt:  well) bricks of language.  As the term indicates, a combining form is a linguistic atom that occurs only in combination with some other form which could be a word, another combining form, or an affix (unlike a combining form, an affix can’t attach to another affix).  Five words made using these combining forms are:  megal- (large), lepto- (thin), sapro- (rotten), ecto- (outside), carcino- (cancer) and -mania (excessive enthusiasm or craze), -dermous (skin), -genic/genous (producing).  A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Silbury Hill is the largest artificial prehistoric mound in Europe.  Probably built over a short period between about 2470 and 2350 BC, it is one of the most intriguing monuments in the prehistoric landscape of the Avebury World Heritage Site.  We do not know its purpose, or its meaning for the late Neolithic people who built it, but its enduring presence in the landscape has inspired myths and legends as people have sought to explain its purpose.  Silbury Hill stands 30 metres high and 160 metres wide, and its construction is estimated to have involved about 4 million hours of work.  Half a million tonnes of material, mostly chalk, were used to create it.  The monument we see today was not conceived and built in a single campaign, but enlarged over several generations.  Over time, the project became more ambitious, with huge quantities of chalk dug from the surrounding ditch to build the mound.   Read more and see pictures at http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/silbury-hill/history/

The Lichtenstein Foundation Is Closing   On June 6, 2018, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation announced that it will close its doors and give the remainder of its holding to museums.  In its first round of donations, the foundation is gifting around 400 works—about half of its holdings—to New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and 500,000 documents to the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.  As part of the agreement, a selection of the donated works will go to the Whitney’s Roy Lichtenstein Study Collection, which will be the largest of its kind.  Whitney curators chose five paintings, 17 sculptures, and 145 prints that will form the basis of the study center and complement the museum’s existing collection of 26 Lichtenstein works.  And in the fall, the artist’s former studio, located only four blocks from the museum, will begin hosting lectures and classes.  Meanwhile, the archives donated to the Smithsonian will be digitized and made publicly available online in a joint effort between the Smithsonian and the foundation that’s expected to take between five to seven years.  It is relatively rare for organizations representing an artist of Lichtenstein’s caliber to cease functioning.  But the Lichtenstein Foundation insists that the process of shuttering and giving its remaining inventory to museums is part of its mission to widely disseminate the artist’s work and make it available to the public.  Henri Neuendorf  https://news.artnet.com/art-world/lichtenstein-foundation-closing-1298477

Anthony Bourdain, a gifted storyteller and writer who took CNN viewers around the world, has died.  He was 61.  Bourdain was in France working on an upcoming episode of his award-winning CNN series "Parts Unknown."  His close friend Eric Ripert, the French chef, found Bourdain unresponsive in his hotel room June 8, 2018.  The Smithsonian once called him "the original rock star" of the culinary world, "the Elvis of bad boy chefs."  In 1999 he wrote a New Yorker article, "Don't Eat Before Reading This," that became a best-selling book in 2000, "Kitchen Confidential:  Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly."  The book set him on a path to international stardom.  First he hosted "A Cook's Tour" on the Food Network, then moved to "Anthony Bourdain:  No Reservations" on the Travel Channel.  "No Reservations" was a breakout hit, earning two Emmy Awards and more than a dozen nominations.  The book set him on a path to international stardom.  https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/08/us/anthony-bourdain-obit/index.html

The Belmont Stakes race is scheduled to start at 6:37 p.m. on June 9, 2018 and be broadcast on NBC. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1899  June 8, 2018   Word of the Day  eustasy  noun  worldwide change in sea level, especially one caused by melting ice or tectonic activity.  Today is World Oceans Day, a day recognized by the United Nations to highlight the importance of conserving and protecting the world’s oceans.

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