Julian Hawthorne (1846-1934) was an American writer and journalist, the son of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody.  He wrote numerous poems, novels, short stories, mystery/detective fiction, essays, travel books, biographies, and histories.  As a journalist, he reported on the Indian Famine for Cosmopolitan magazine and the Spanish–American War for the New York Journal.  His parents had difficulty choosing a name for eight months.  Possible names included George, Arthur, Edward, Horace, Robert, and Lemuel.  His father referred to him for some time as "Bundlebreech" or "Black Prince", due to his dark curls and red cheeks.  He studied civil engineering in the United States and Germany, was engineer in the New York City Dock Department under General McClellan (1870–72), spent 10 years abroad, and on his return edited his father's unfinished Dr. Grimshawe's Secret (1883).  His sister Rose, upon hearing of the book's announcement, had not known about the fragment and originally thought her brother was guilty of forgery or a hoax.  She published the accusation in the New York Tribune on August 16, 1882, and claimed, "No such unprinted work has been in existence . . .  It cannot be truthfully published as anything but an experimental fragment".  He defended himself from the charge, however, and eventually dedicated the book to his sister and her husband George Parsons Lathrop.  While in Europe he wrote the novels:  Bressant (1873); Idolatry (1874); Garth (1874); Archibald Malmaison (1879); and Sebastian Strome (1880).  Hawthorne wrote two books about his parents, called Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (1884–85) and Hawthorne and His Circle (1903).  In the latter, he responded to a remark from his father's friend Herman Melville that the famous author had a "secret".  Julian dismissed this, claiming Melville was inclined to think so only because "there were many secrets untold in his own career", causing much speculation.  The younger Hawthorne also wrote a critique of his father's novel The Scarlet Letter that was published in The Atlantic Monthly in April 1886.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Hawthorne  Borrow books by Julian Hawthorne  from a library or link to them at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Hawthorne%2C%20Julian%2C%201846-1934

           

madcap  adjective  amusingly eccentric, done without considering the consequences; foolish or reckless.  noun  an eccentric or reckless person.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/madcap  "Madcap" today is usually used as an adjective, it was originally, when it first appeared in the 16th century, a noun meaning "a madman, a maniac."  The "mad" element is straightforward, simply meaning "insane," a usage more common in the UK than the US, where we are more likely to use "mad" to mean "angry."  The "cap" part might be thought a reference to the unusual headgear often worn by the deranged (foil-lined pith helmets, Mets caps, etc.), but it is actually a very old (and now obsolete in any other use) sense meaning "head."  So a "madcap" was originally a "mad-head."  http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question108550.html

Quartet for the End of Time is a 2014 novel by Giller Prize–winning author Johanna Skibsrud.  The novel takes its name and structure from Quatuor pour la fin du temps a piece of chamber music by the French composer Olivier Messiaen.  Like the musical piece it takes its name from, the novel is divided into seven sections and an interlude with each section told from the point of view of either Sutton, Douglas or Alden.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartet_for_the_End_of_Time_(novel)

Peace on earth  In FY2017, the Peace Corps funded 828 volunteer-led projects in 56 countries, benefitting more than 1 million people.  One hundred percent of the donations received by the Peace Corps go to communities all over the globe.  They may facilitate malaria prevention workshops, install clean cook stoves, lead mentoring programs for youth, or create a safe school environment for girls.  You may direct your contribution to a type of program in a particular area.  For additional information about agency programs, contact https://www.peacecorps.gov/donate/

Play the PIG game using a die when exchanging inexpensive wrapped gifts.  There are many variations on rules.  Here's just one set:  Roll die, and take actions.  One means steal a gift, two means pass gifts to the left, three means pass gifts to the right, four means open your gift, five means keep your gift, six means steal a gift.  Appoint a referee before you begin the game.  Piggies here, piggies there, piggies are not everywhere.  Piggies new, piggies true, piggies plentiful, not few.  Be a pig when time is right like Christmas day or Christmas night.

Sir Edmund William Gosse CB (1849–1928) was an English poet, author and critic.  His account of his childhood in the book Father and Son has been described as the first psychological biography.  His translations of Ibsen helped to promote that playwright in England, and he encouraged the careers of W.B. Yeats and James Joyce.  Gosse started his career as assistant librarian at the British Museum from 1867 alongside the songwriter Theo Marzials.  Trips to Denmark and Norway in 1872–74, where he visited Hans Christian Andersen and Frederik Paludan-Müller, led to publishing success with reviews of Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in the Cornhill Magazine.  He was soon reviewing Scandinavian literature in a variety of publications.  He became acquainted with Alfred, Lord Tennyson and friends with Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy and Henry James.  In the meantime, he published his first solo volume of poetry, On Viol and Flute (1873) and a work of criticism, Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe (1879).  Gosse and Robert Louis Stevenson first met while teenagers, and after 1879, when Stevenson came to London on occasion, he would stay with Gosse and his family.  From 1884 to 1890, Gosse lectured in English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, despite his own lack of academic qualifications.  He made a successful American lecture tour in 1884 and was much in demand as a speaker and on committees as well as publishing a string of critical works as well as poetry and histories.  He became, in the 1880s, one of the most important art critics dealing with sculpture (writing mainly for the Saturday Review) with an interest spurred on by his intimate friendship with the sculptor Hamo Thornycroft.  Gosse would eventually write the first history of the renaissance of late-Victorian sculpture in 1894 in a four-part series for The Art Journal, dubbing the movement the New Sculpture.  In 1904, he became the librarian of the House of Lords Library, where he exercised considerable influence till he retired in 1914.  He wrote for the Sunday Times, and was an expert on Thomas Gray, William Congreve, John Donne, Jeremy Taylor, and Coventry Patmore.  Gosse was instrumental in getting official financial support for two struggling Irish writers, WB Yeats in 1910 and James Joyce in 1915.  This enabled both writers to continue their chosen careers.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Gosse  See also Edmund Gosse letters, 1890-1928, at http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/html/mss0099_0092.html

The Danish inventor and engineer Valdemar Poulsen is largely unknown amongst the general public, yet his invention of the telegraphone--telegrafoon in Danish---has laid the foundation of today’s recording industry.  This makes him the founding father of the audio cassette, the CD and DVD, the computer disk and diskette, the credit card, the iPod and every other piece of equipment today that records sound or data.  Poulsen was born on November 23, 1869, in Copenhagen, Denmark, as the son of a judge in the Danish High Court.  At school he was more interested in physics and drawing than mathematics.  In 1900 Poulsen demonstrated his telegraphone at the World Exposition in Paris where he managed to record the voice of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria.  This recording still exists and is the oldest magnetic sound recording surviving today.  His invention created considerable interest and he was awarded a Grand Prix for his machine.  Despite this success he battled to find sufficient financial backing for the manufacture and sale of his machines.  One of his other inventions was the Arc Transmitter, developed in 1903, which enabled speech to be transmitted up to a radius of 150 miles.  By 1920 the Poulsen Arc transmitter had a range of up to 2,500 miles--a great improvement in wireless radio and telegraphy.  This technology was widely adopted by the US Navy.  Poulsen died in July 1942 in Copenhagen, Denmark.  In 1927, the American inventor J.A. O'Neill replaced Poulsen’s steel wire with a magnetically coated ribbon resulting in the magnetic tape recorders we know today.  They’ve been used for audio recording and (in computers) for the recording of information.  http://wvegter.hivemind.net/abacus/CyberHeroes/Poulsen.htm

Christmas Porchetta by Yvette van Boven  serves 8-10  This pork roast needs to be cooked in the oven for more than 3 hours, so plan accordingly.  The result will be quite something, though.  Yes, it’s very fatty meat, but that’s what makes this so delicious.  The dish is impossible to ruin; if you leave it in the oven for 30 minutes too long it won’t matter.  This recipe is after Darina Allen’s recipe from Forgotten Skills of Cooking.  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/christmas-porchetta

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  December 21, 2018  Issue 2008  355th day of the year