The Meal, Ready-to-Eat--commonly known as the MRE--is a self-contained, individual field ration in lightweight packaging bought by the U.S. Department of Defense for its service members for use in combat or other field conditions where organized food facilities are not available.  While MREs should be kept cool, they do not need to be refrigerated.  MREs replaced the canned MCI, or Meal, Combat, Individual rations, in 1981, and is the intended successor to the lighter LRP ration developed by the United States Army for Special Forces and Ranger patrol units in Vietnam.  MREs have also been distributed to civilians during natural disasters.   Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal,_Ready-to-Eat  MREs are available to the general public from various sources on internet.

Wagyu  mass noun, often as modifier  Any of several breeds of Japanese cattle producing tender, marbled beef that typically contains a high percentage of saturated fat.  The beef obtained from Wagyu cattle.  Origin  Japanese, from wa ‘Japanese’ + gyu ‘cattle, beef’.  Pronunciation  Wagyu  /ˈwɑːɡjuː/  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/wagyu  NOTE that Wagyu has various pronunciations, among them WAG-you and WOG-you.  See also 7 Japanese Foods You Didn’t Know You Were Pronouncing Wrong by Natsuko Mazany at https://spoonuniversity.com/lifestyle/7-japanese-foods-youve-been-pronouncing-wrong

February 8, 2018  Njideka Akunyili Crosby didn’t pick up a paintbrush until she was 16 years old and was taking a community college class in Philadelphia.  Now she’s 35 and is one of the biggest rising stars in the art world.  Last year she won a MacArthur Genius grant, her paintings sell for millions of dollars to private collectors and museums.  Large-scale reproductions of some of her paintings are now covering the walls of LA’s MOCA building, visible to drivers headed down Grand Avenue.  “Super Blue Omo” is one of the pieces that appears in the MOCA mural.  The title is actually based on a Nigerian commercial for laundry detergent, that Akunyili Crosby remembers from growing up in the 80s.  She described the jingle for “Super Blue Omo” as the soundtrack to her childhood, a song that every Nigerian will recognize.  In Nigeria at that time, most people didn’t have satellite television so there were only a handful of commercials.  “So I probably heard it every 30 minutes from six in the evening to ten at night,” she said.  In her piece, “Super Blue Omo,” her sister sits in a blue room (a reference to the commercial jingle) in front of a Nigerian tea set, inherited from the country’s time as a British colony.  All around her are prints of old family photographs from Akunyili Crosby’s childhood.  “The work is really asking,what is it to be an immigrant?  It is to straddle multiple places at once and carry differing histories with you at the same time.  So I’m trying to make works that speak to that and I’m trying to look at that in-between space.”  Akunyili Crosby’s mural will be up on the MOCA building through the end of 2018.  You can see more of her work at http://www.njidekaakunyili.com/  Gina Pollack   https://curious.kcrw.com/2018/02/njideka-akunyili-crosby-from-nigeria-to-la  The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is located in Los Angeles.  http://www.virgini.moca.org/visit

The National Book Foundation has announced its 2018 5 Under 35 honorees.  The list is “a selection of debut fiction writers under the age of 25 whose work promises to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape,” according to the organization.  Nominees are chosen by previous National Book Award winners, finalists and longlisted authors, or writers previously recognized by the 5 Under 35 program.  The 2018 5 Under 35 honorees are as follows:  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, for his story collection Friday Black; Hannah Lillith Assadi, for her novel Sonora; Akwaeke Emezi, for the novel Freshwater; Lydia Kiesling, for the novel The Golden State; and Moriel Rothman-Zecher, for his novel Sadness Is a White Bird.  The honorees were chosen because of their handling of “issues of race, cultural identity, loyalty, displacement and more,” according to the NBF’s press release.  The honorees will be celebrated at an invitation-only ceremony on November 12, 2018.  They will also receive a $1,000 prize.  Justin Kamp  https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/09/national-book-award-releases-list-of-5-under-35-ho.html

Tahini (also tahina, Tehina, Ardeh ), is a condiment made from toasted ground hulled sesame.  Tahini is served as a dip on its own or as a major component of hummus, baba ghanoush, and halva.  Tahini is used in the cuisines of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, as well as parts of North Africa. It is also used in Chinese and Southeast Asian cuisine.  Tahini is a loanword from Arabic.  There is also a sweet spread made from it called Halawa Taḥīniyya, which roughly translates as sweet Tahini.  The word "tahini" appeared in English by the late 1930s.  Plain, unprocessed sesame paste with no added ingredients is sometimes known as raw tahini.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahini

See the Mesmerizing Pie Designs Instagram Is Obsessed With--Meet an amateur baker on the rise by Zoe Donaldson   Lauren Ko's exactingly patterned pies and tarts (often studded with motifs like dragon fruit trapezoids and kiwi triangles) belong with the cream of the crop—now she's been catapulted into confectionary stardom.  http://www.oprah.com/food/meet-lauren-ko-the-instagram-famous-pie-baker  See also https://www.lokokitchen.com/  Lauren Ko is a writer, artist, and self-taught baker with roots in San Diego.  She is currently based out of Seattle, WA. 

May 8, 2018  A highly acclaimed documentary about the Greek island of Patmos and the world-famous monastery of St. John the Theologian describes how the history of Patmos and of the Monastery, from the 1st century AD to the Roman era, Byzantium, Ottoman Empire and finally to modern Greece, shaped Western civilization.  It also highlights the fact that during Ottoman rule the Patmos monastery saved much of ancient Greek literature.  Texts of Aristotle, Plutarch, of the three tragic poets and other great ancient classics are today found in the monastery’s library and museum.  Tasos Kokkinidis  https://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/05/08/patmos-the-greek-island-of-revelation-features-in-new-film-video/

Museum and Library in Patmos  The Monastery of St. John the Evangelist along with the Cave of the Apocalypse, are World Heritage monuments by the educational, scientific and cultural organization of the United Nations, UNESCO (Year of membership 1999).  The Monastery of St. John the Evangelist, is the first monument that collaborated with the Google Art Project, so that Internet users can now admire more than 116 artifacts in digital form at https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/patmos-monastery   In the inner narthex of the monastery, visitors can admire the icon of St. John the Evangelist, donated by the emperor Alexios Komninos to Saint Christodoulos.  In the same area, there is a chapel of Virgin Mary with frescoes of the 12th century.  Last but not least, there is a rich library with more than 2,000 texts, 900 codes and 13,000 documents, associated with the history of the monastery and some of the first manuscripts of its founder, Saint Christodoulos.  https://www.patmosaktis.gr/en/location/patmos/sightseeing/159-museum-and-library-of-the-monastery#

Anna Burns won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction October 16, 2018 for "Milkman," a vibrant, violent story about men, women, conflict and power set during Northern Ireland's years of Catholic-Protestant violence.  Burns is the first writer from Northern Ireland to win the 50,000-pound ($66,000) prize, which is open to English-language authors from around the world.  The 56-year-old Belfast-born novelist said she was "stunned" to have won.  Burns said her books took a long time to complete, and she has often struggled financially since her first novel, "No Bones," was released in 2001.  The writer said the germ of "Milkman" came to her in the image of a teenage girl walking down a street in a divided city while reading the novel "Ivanhoe."  https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/10/16/anna-burns-wins-man-booker-prize-for-milkman

The volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman city of Pompeii probably took place two months later than previously thought, Italian officials said on October 16, 2018.  Historians have traditionally dated the disaster to Aug. 24 79 AD, but excavations on the vast site in southern Italy have unearthed a charcoal inscription written on a wall that includes a date which corresponds to Oct. 17.  The writing came from an area in a house that was apparently being renovated just before the nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii under a thick blanket of ash and rock.  “Being charcoal, fragile and evanescent, which could not last a long time, it is more than likely that it was written in October 79 AD,” said Massimo Osanna, head of the Pompeii site.  The Aug. 24 date derives from an account of the blast given by Pliny the Younger, who witnessed the eruption and wrote about it almost 30 years after the event in two letters to his friend, the Roman historian Tacitus.  However, previous excavations have uncovered a calcified branch bearing berries that normally only come out in autumn.  The discovery of some braziers over the years also suggested the disaster did not strike at the height of summer.  Osanna suggested the correct date might have been Oct. 24.  Giulia Segreti  See pictures at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-pompeii/charcoal-inscription-points-to-date-change-for-pompeii-eruption-idUSKCN1MQ2CR

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1971  October 17, 2018  290th day of the year