The Romans did not count days in the month as a simple number, as we do, but backwards from one of three fixed points in the month:  the Kalends, the Nones, and the Ides.  The Kalends are always the first of the month.  The Nones fell on the 7th day of the long months (March, May, Quinctilis, October), and the 5th of the others.  (Note that this long-short distinction refers to their length in the republican calendar, not the later version.)  Likewise, the Ides fell on the 15th if the month was long, and the 13th if the month was short.  http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=calhistory/earlier/roman/kalends

Pearl S. Buck was born in 1892 in West Virginia,  the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries.  She wrote more than 100 books from her Green Hills Farm in Hilltown Township.  She died in 1973 at the age of 80.  Buck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for "The Good Earth," a novel about peasant life in China, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938; adopted seven children from various ethnic backgrounds; founded one of the country's first biracial adoption agencies; started a foundation to aid poor children in foreign countries, primarily Asia.  Her foundation, Pearl S. Buck International, based at her Bucks County, Pennsylvania estate, has arranged more than 7,000 adoptions and supports international programs that help disabled, orphaned and displaced children and their families.  http://articles.mcall.com/2007-06-28/news/3723754_1_manuscript-bucks-county-buck-s-son  The best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932 is the first book in a trilogy that includes Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935).  A Broadway stage adaptation was produced by the Theatre Guild in 1932, written by the father and son playwriting team of Owen and Donald Davis, but it was poorly received by the critics, and ran only 56 performances.  However, the 1937 film, The Good Earth, which was based on the stage version, was more successful.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Earth

An artist trained as an architect, Tomás Saraceno deploys insights from engineering, physics, chemistry, aeronautics and materials science in his work.  He creates inflatable and airborne biospheres with the morphology of soap bubbles, spider webs, neural networks or cloud formations, which are speculative models for alternate ways of living for a sustainable future.  His ongoing residency has focused on advancing new work for the ongoing Cloud Cities, Hybrid Webs and Aerocene series.  Saraceno’s investigation of the intricate geometry of spiderwebs aligned with research by Markus Buehler, Professor and Head, MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering, on the complex, hierarchal structure of spider silk and its amazing strength.  Saraceno developed an original tomographic method, using a laser sheet, to scan a three-dimensional web and make accurate three-dimensional data of the web.  Buehler’s lab created a computer simulation of the data set generated by this project to reveal how the strands behave and interact in the physical web.  Subsequently, Saraceno and Buehler developed new mechanisms for tracking spiders, scanning webs and generating computer models.  Link to biography and events at https://arts.mit.edu/artists/tomas-saraceno/#about-the-residency

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer who wrote exclusively in English.  In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself.  His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his sonorous voice with a subtle Welsh lilt became almost as famous as his works.  His best-known works include the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night".   Appreciative critics have also noted the craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my Craft or Sullen Art", and the rhapsodic lyricism in "And death shall have no dominion" and "Fern Hill".  Read bibliography and link to poems at https://www.poemhunter.com/dylan-thomas/biography/

A villanelle is a poetic form with nineteen lines and a strict pattern of repetition and a rhyme scheme.  Each villanelle is comprised of five tercets (i.e., a three-line stanza) followed by one quatrain (a stanza with four lines).  The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated in an alternating pattern as the final line of each next tercet; those two repeated lines then form the final two lines of the entire poem.  The rhyme scheme calls for those repeating lines to rhyme, and for the second line of every tercet to rhyme.  Thus, the rhyme scheme looks like this: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.  Though the structure may sound complicated, in practice it is easy to see how the rules work.  The word villanelle comes originally from the Italian word villano, meaning “peasant.”  The villanellas and villancicos of the Renaissance period were Italian and Spanish songs made for dancing, which featured the pastoral theme appropriate for peasant dances.  The contemporary definition of villanelle thus has changed quite a bit since its conception as a verse without strict rhyme scheme or repetition.  http://www.literarydevices.com/villanelle/

Codename Villanelle is a 2018 fictional thriller novel by British author Luke Jennings.  A compilation of four serial e-book novellas published in 2014–2016, Codename Villanelle is the basis of BBC America's television series Killing Eve which debuted in April 2018.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codename_Villanelle

Luke Jennings is an author  and journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Time.  He is the author of Blood Knots, short-listed for the Samuel Johnson and William Hill prizes, and the Booker Prize-nominated Atlantic.  With his daughter, Laura, he wrote the teenage stage-school novels Stars and Stars:  Stealing the Show.  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/j/luke-jennings/

           

An age old tradition in the life of a Provençal family, are enjoyed after Gros Souper, which is equivalent to our Christmas dinner.  The origin of the Thirteen Desserts seems to be part of the tradition of opulence in the Mediterranean regions.  Combined with the religious element, this tradition gave the Christmas season its festive character well before gifts inundated households.  The thirteen desserts are in reference to Jesus and his twelve apostles at the Last Supper.  As tradition goes, there must be at least thirteen sweets available.  They are all served at once, and each guest must have at least a small bite of each dessert.  Find a list of the 13 desserts at http://www.onlyprovence.com/blog/desserts-of-noel-in-provence/

Baking Bread Tips by Jennifer McGavin   Use a baking stone for a great crust and spring.  They are heavy and take a long time to heat up but baking stones help create a brick oven atmosphere for the bread.  The crust does not crack on the bottom and the bread can bake through without over browning.  Calibrate your oven.  Especially if your loaves are coming out too dark or too wet or taking longer to bake than the recipe says they should.  Also, breads may need lower temperatures when your baking stone is properly preheated.   If you don't have an oven thermometer and want to fix an overly dark loaf today, turn your oven down by 25°F.  And I have the best results when I turn my oven to 450°F, not 500°F as they say in some books.  Preheat the oven. With or without a baking stone, I have found that heating the oven for 1/2 an hour with no stone or 1 hour with a stone is essential for professional-looking and tasting results.   Know which crust you want.  Artisan, chewy style crust needs steam for the first few minutes, then dry heat.  Dusting with flour gives a rustic look to the loaf.  Egg wash turns the bread golden and gives a softer crust.  Milk washes in the last few minutes is good for a sandwich style loaf and gives a glossy brown, soft crust.  Brush loaves or rolls with oil or water and roll in seeds or grains to coat before baking.  Oil softens the crust, water keeps it crisper.  Slash top of loaves 1/4 inch deep 15 -20 minutes before baking, if not longer, to give the ultimate slash and rise look to the bread.  Let the bread cool before slicing.  The bread should reach an internal temperature of at least 180°F before you take it out of the oven.  At this point, the bread is still baking and drying out.  Let it cool two hours before slicing.  If you cut into it before that it will look underdone or soggy.  http://germanfood.about.com/od/breadbaking101/a/bread-baking-101_2.htm

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  December 4, 2018  Issue 1997  338th day of the year