"Always be nice to people.  My mom taught me that."  Ed Sheeran  "The most powerful nourishment is also the simplest:  shhhh!  Practicing stillness is a venerable art in many spiritual traditions, usually in the form of meditation."  Martha Beck  "When so much of our politics is trying to manage this clash of cultures brought about by globalization and technology and migration, the role of stories to unify--as opposed to divide, to engage rather than to marginalize--is more important than ever."  Barack Obama  "For an unexpected twist on hummus, try swapping chickpeas for fava beans . . . "  Richard Blais  O, the Oprah Magazine  July 2017         

Food is more than survival.  With it we make friends, court lovers, and count our blessings.  The sharing of food has always been part of the human story.  From Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv comes evidence of ancient meals prepared at a 300,000-year-old hearth, the oldest ever found, where diners gathered to eat together.  Retrieved from the ashes of Vesuvius:  a circular loaf of bread with scoring marks, baked to be divided.  “To break bread together,” a phrase as old as the Bible, captures the power of a meal to forge relationships, bury anger, provoke laughter.  Children make mud pies, have tea parties, trade snacks to make friends, and mimic the rituals of adults.  They celebrate with sweets from the time of their first birthday, and the association of food with love will continue throughout life—and in some belief systems, into the afterlife.  Consider the cultures that leave delicacies graveside to let the departed know they are not forgotten.  And even when times are tough, the urge to celebrate endures.  In the Antarctic in 1902, during Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery expedition, the men prepared a fancy meal for Midwinter Day, the shortest day and longest night of the year.  Hefty provisions had been brought on board.  Forty-five live sheep were slaughtered and hung from the rigging, frozen by the elements until it was time to feast.  The cold, the darkness, and the isolation were forgotten for a while.  “With such a dinner,” Scott wrote, “we agreed that life in the Antarctic Regions was worth living.” — Victoria Pope  Read more and see pictures at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/joy-of-food/  See also Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) at http://www.sfa-auvillar.com/GOUT/2012_03_vienne_autriche/documents/le-diner-de-babette_ENGLISH.pdf

Mushrooms & Garlic Cream by Matt McConnell with Jo Gamvros  We first had this in Sydney in a funny little tapas bar we used to go to called Capitan Torres.  When we were in Spain we discovered that it was a staple of most traditional tapas bars.  We liked the fact that you could use a plain cultivated mushroom and turn it into something with so much flavor.  Find recipe serving 4 at https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/mushrooms-garlic-cream  Recipe excerpted with permission from Eat at the Bar by Matt McConnell with Jo Gamvros, published by Hardie Grant Books October 2018

FLATTENED, CUT THROUGH, GONE  Some of  Seattle's numerous hills, ridges, and bluffs left behind by the retreat of the Vashon Glacier some 14,000 years ago have been flattened or regraded.   http://www.historylink.org/File/4131    What was left of Pearl Hill in Kansas City in 1922 was an irregular rock formation around 150 feet long and fifty feet high jutting from the ground.  In 1928, the last piece of Pearl Hill was graded and carried away.  See incredible pictures at https://newsantafetrailer.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-pioneer-neighborhood-kansas-city.html

Favorite books read by the Muser in 2018:  The Good at Heart by Ursula Werner (Based on the author’s discoveries about her great-grandfather, this debut novel takes place over three days in 1944 when World War II comes to the doorstep of a German family living in an idyllic, rural village near the Swiss border.  A portrait of a family torn between doing their duty for their country and doing what’s right for their country, and especially for those they love.)  The Third Son by Julie Wu  (As one autocracy replaces another in Taiwan, the least-favored son struggles to free himself from family and culture.)  The Sister, also titled The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams (In a decaying mansion, a reclusive woman waits for her younger sister, who has not set foot in the house for nearly fifty years.)  Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (story takes place in Chromatacia, an alternate version of the United Kingdom where social class is determined by one's ability to perceive color.  Eddie Russet belongs to the House of Red, and sees only that color--anything else is seen as shades of grey and must be artificially colored.)   The Undoing Project:  A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis  (Decision- making and the combination of economics and psychology affect our lives, policies and law.)    See https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-two-friends-who-changed-how-we-think-about-how-we-think  Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen  (A struggling circus during the Great Depression goes from one town to another.)  The Stonecutter (Swedish:  Stenhuggaren) by Camilla Läckberg.  (A psychological thriller set in a resort with plot shifting between narratives that is unexplained until the very end.)  Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford (life in Seattle's Chinatown during the Depression)  Crazy Rich Asians (witty gossipy story of three clans and their extravagance)

"Thank God Singapore has only two seasons--hot and hotter  . . . "  "The number eight is considered by the Chinese to be an extremely lucky number, since in both Mandarin and Cantonese it sounds similar to the word for prosperity or fortune.  Triple-eight means triple the luck."  Kueh Lapis, also known as “thousand-layer cake,” is a decadently buttery cake with dozens of thin golden stripes is created by baking each layer of batter separately.  Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan  See recipe for Ah Ma’s Kueh Lapis and link to Literary Food & Drink Lists at https://36eggs.com/2016/02/08/ah-mas-kueh-lapis/

Quite frankly I talk about the fact that I'm a feminist as often as I can, and every time I do it gets huge reaction and media reacts and the Twitterverse explodes and things like that, because here I am saying I'm a feminist.  I will keep saying that until there is no more reaction to that when I say it, because that's where we want to get to. - Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada (b. 25 Dec 1971)

A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. A Christmas Carol recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.  He was influenced by the experiences of his own youth and by the Christmas stories of other authors including Washington Irving and Douglas Jerrold.  Dickens had written three Christmas stories prior to the novella, and was inspired following a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several establishments for London's street children.  Published on 19 December, the first edition sold out by Christmas Eve; by the end of 1844 thirteen editions had been released.  The story was illicitly copied in January 1844; Dickens took legal action against the publishers, who went bankrupt, further reducing Dickens's small profits from the publication.  He went on to write four other Christmas stories in subsequent years.  In 1849 he began public readings of the story which proved so successful he undertook 127 further performances until 1870, the year of his death.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Carol

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  December 26, 2018  Issue 2010  360th day of the year