Tuesday, November 27, 2018


Christie's Auction House has posted a listing for the 84-page scrapbook kept by Kurt Vonnegut's family in 1944 and 1945.  The book includes 22  signed letters to Vonnegut's family, photographs, telegrams and more.  It has an estimated price of between $150,000 and $200,000, according to the listing.  Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis on Nov. 11, 1922.  He wrote for the school paper as a student at Shortridge High School, an served as managing editor of The Cornell Daily Sun as a chemistry major at Cornell University.  In January 1943, Vonnegut enlisted in the United States Army.  "He was assigned to study mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Tennessee before deployment to Europe with the 106th Infantry Division in late 1944," said the Christie's listing.  "During the Battle of the Bulge that December he was captured and held as a Prisoner of War in Dresden, where he famously survived the Allied bombing in the meat locker of a slaughterhouse.  "It was an experience that would inform the writing of his best-known and most influential work, the semi-autobiographical novel 'Slaughterhouse-Five.'"  The scrapbook, which is green cloth with 106th Infantry Division Golden Lion insignia mounted to the upper cover, was kept by his sister, Alice, and his father, Kurt Vonnegut Sr.  After the war, he worked at the Chicago City News Bureau and then in public relations for General Electric.  "Player Piano," Vonnegut's first novel, was published in 1952, but was dismissed by critics.  His work reached a large audience with "Cat's Cradle" in 1963.  By the late 1960s, Vonnegut had emerged as one of the most influential writers of his generation.  Kurt Vonnegut died April 11, 2007, after a fall at his New York home.  He was 84.  Justin L. Mack  Read more and see pictures at https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2018/11/18/kurt-vonnegut-world-war-ii-scrapbook-inspired-slaughterhouse-five-christies-auction/2047269002/

FRIED rice lovers rejoice.  Scientists have found that you can cut your calories by simply adding an ingredient while cooking your rice by Miranda Larbi   Experts looked at 38 different types of rice from Sri Lanka.  And they found that adding the oil to the water before adding the rice, simmering for 40 minutes then refrigerating for 12 hours, there was 10 times more resistant starch, compared to normal rice.  Adding oil to the water changes the structure of the rice’s starch granules—making them resistant to our digestive enzymes.  That basically means that by making rice more starch resistant, fewer calories from it get absorbed into the body.  To reduce the risk of food poisoning, the NHS recommends:  1.  Serving rice as soon as it’s been cooked   2.  Cooling rice as quickly as possible if you’re not going to eat it immediately   3.  Keeping it in the fridge for no more than one day until reheating  4.  Making sure the rice is piping hot when you do reheat  5.  Don’t reheat more than once.  Read more and see pictures at

"One person's plovers were another's princesses."  "The war had not yet taught her that it was critically important to forgive sooner rather than later."  "You are a vision of . . . of . . . of dazzlingness."  "Dazzlingness?"  "Is that a word?  "It may not be . . . "  The Good at Heart, a novel by Ursula Werner  In the acknowledgments, the author mentions numerous resources, including Susan Chehak Taylor and all the inspirational writers of her 2013 advanced novel class, and the Iowa Summer Writers Workshop.

Ursula Werner is a writer and attorney currently living in Washington, D.C., with her family. Throughout her legal career, Ms. Werner has pursued creative writing, publishing two books of poetry, In the Silence of the Woodruff (2006) and Rapunzel Revisited (2010).  The Good at Heart (2017) is her first novel.

Kugel with Cottage Cheese, Leeks, & Dill by Tia Keenan  serves 4 as a main or 8 as a side  Cottage cheese was a favorite of early colonial settlers, who made it at home in their “cottages.” 

Cereal vs serial  Cereal is an edible grain, the grasses that produce an edible grain or the food product composed of an edible grain.  Some cereals are wheat, oats, corn, rye, and millet.  Cereal may be used as a noun or an adjective, the plural is cereals. Cereal comes from the Latin word cerealis which means of grain, derived from the name of the Roman goddess of agriculture, Ceres.  Serial means arranged in successive parts in successive intervals, or a behavior that occurs repeatedly in a predictable fashion.  Serial may be used as a noun or adjective, the adverb form is serially, the verb form is serialize.  In the mid 1800s, many of Charles Dickens’ novels were first published in magazines in serial form, popularizing the use of the word serial, a word made by combining the word series and the suffix -al.  https://grammarist.com/homophones/cereal-vs-serial/

A serials librarian is in charge of materials in the library that arrive on a periodic basis.  Before the advent of computerized materials, the serials librarian took care of newspapers, magazines and professional journals.  With today’s technology, the serials librarian often maintains print periodicals in the library as well as online databases and information systems.  https://work.chron.com/serials-librarian-job-description-11946.html

Random musings from a serialist  See blog of an eclectic librarian at http://eclecticlibrarian.net/blog/

2nd Lt. Harry Spring  from Dayton, Indiana kept a diary of his war experiences in the United States, France and Germany between 1917 and 1919.  The diary of Harry Spring (1888-1974) discusses his training in Kansas (1917), combat support in the Meuse-Argonne in France (1918), postwar occupation in Coblenz, Germany (1919), and his return to Lafayette.  Bob Kriebel  Read more and see graphics at

Patricia Hall went to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in 2016 hoping to learn more about the music performed by prisoners in World War II death camps.  The University of Michigan music theory professor heard there were manuscripts, but she was "completely thrown" by what she found in the card catalogs:  Unexpectedly upbeat and popular songs titles that translated to "The Most Beautiful Time of Life" and "Sing a Song When You're Sad," among others.  More detective work during subsequent trips to the Polish museum over the next two years led her to several handwritten manuscripts arranged and performed by the prisoners, and ultimately, the first performance of one of those manuscripts since the war.  "I've used the expression, 'giving life,' to this manuscript that's been sitting somewhere for 75 years," Hall told The Associated Press on November 26, 2018.  "Researching one of these manuscripts is just the beginning—you want people to be able to hear what these pieces sound like. . . . I think one of the messages I've taken from this is the fact that even in a horrendous situation like a concentration camp, that these men were able to produce this beautiful music."  Sensing the historical importance of resurrecting music for modern audiences, Hall enlisted the aid of university professor Oriol Sans, director of the Contemporary Directions Ensemble, and graduate student Josh Devries, who transcribed the parts into music notation software to make it easier to read and play.  Although the prisoners didn't compose the songs, they had to arrange them so they could be played by the available instruments and musicians.  Jeff Karoub  https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/michigan-professor-unearths-inmates-music-auschwitz-59429830

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  November 27, 2018  Issue 1993  331st day of the year  Thought for Today  Use only that which works and take it from any place you can find it. - Bruce Lee, martial artist and actor (27 Nov 1940-1973)  Word of the Day  mirative  noun (uncountable, grammar)  A grammatical mood that expresses (surprise at) unexpected revelations or new informationquotations ▼  (countable, grammar) (An instance of) a form of a word which conveys this mood.  adjective (not comparable) (grammar)  Of or relating to the mirative moodhttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mirative#English

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