Tuesday, March 12, 2019


Fire-and-Ice Ohio Chili  Jeni Britton-Bauer adds richness to this wonderful chili with a surprise ingredient:  dark chocolate ice cream.  She loves serving the chili over spaghetti because it has a great sauce-like consistency.  Serves 8  Find recipe at https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/fire-and-ice-ohio-chili

In 2015, the Obama White House put out a call to amateur historians to search their attics and archives for a relic of women’s history:  the original, signed copy of the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New York, one of the nation’s first organized events for women’s rights.  Back then, about 300 people gathered for the two day convention in upstate New York and more than 100 women and men signed the manifesto, declaring it time for women to claim their rights in society.  Located in a hamlet in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, this event launched the women’s rights movement and spawned subsequent conventions.  But unlike the Declaration of Independence—on which the Declaration of Sentiments was modeled—the original manuscript may no longer exist.  The search yielded a few clues, but no manuscript with either notes in the margin or signatures at the end.  But Seneca Falls did propel subsequent conventions for women’s rights, and three years later, Susan B. Anthony would join the growing suffrage movement.  In September 1848, following the Rochester Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton forcefully reflected on the ridiculousness of being excluded:  “To have the rights of drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rum selling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, whilst we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens—it is too grossly insulting to the dignity of woman to be longer quietly submitted to.  The right is ours, have it we must—use it we will.”  The content of the Declaration of Sentiments is widely available.  Liz Robbins and Sam Roberts  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/09/nyregion/declaration-of-sentiments-and-resolution-feminism.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

Pugliese bread refers to the southeastern Italian region of Apula (Puglia in Italian).  The bread falls in the rustic category because the hydration is in excess of 65 percent.  Pugliese utilizes a blend of durum and regular bread flours.  See pictures and recipe from Cathy at
https://www.breadexperience.com/pugliese-bba/  makes two 1-pound loaves (or use part or all of the dough to make pizza)

To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius.  And easier.  Because it's true.  It's a new world every heart beat.”  *   “Nothing like poetry when you lie awake at night.  It keeps the old brain limber.  It washes away the mud and sand that keeps on blocking up the bends.  Like waves to make the pebbles dance on my old floors.  And turn them into rubies and jacinths; or at any rate, good imitations.”  ― Joyce Cary, The Horse's Mouth  https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/76129.Joyce_Cary

In the words of his biographer, Alan Bishop, Joyce Cary (1888-1957) was 'a prolific, independent, wide-ranging writer with a place in three literatures (English, Irish, Nigerian) difficult to categorize because his writing integrates the traditional and experimental.'  Faber & Faber is reissuing twelve of his works:    Mister JohnsonHerself SurprisedTo Be a PilgrimThe Horse's MouthA Prisoner of GraceExcept the LordNot Honour MoreCastle CornerCharley is My DarlingA House of ChildrenThe Moonlight and A Fearful Joy.  Although never fashionable, Joyce Cary has always had his admirers:  'This novelist has exemplified the rule that when a writer dies, he or she may suffer a lapse in attention.  You say to someone ''Joyce Cary'' and they say ''Who?''  Amazing!  He was a marvellous writer, fresh, funny and popping with life.'  Doris Lessing  https://www.faber.co.uk/author/joyce-cary/

March 8, 2019  Crab is considered a delicacy, a dish most people are not going to make back home.  Crab legs are also easy to heap onto the plate in a giant pile.  Combine a luxury food with the intensity of the buffet experience, and you have a recipe for flaring tempers.  In 2013, a 7-year-old and his family were kicked out of a Sarasota, Fla. buffet when the restaurant’s staff informed the family that the boy—who suffered from autism—was eating too many crab legs.  “Obviously ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet was not correct and I’m upset that my 7-year-old son’s birth day was ruined,” his mother told ABC Action News at the time.  Three years later, a brawl broke out in a Manchester, Conn. restaurant.  According to the Hartford Courant, the initial police report from the April 3, 2016 incident noted the fight “appears to have started during a dispute about crab legs in the buffet line.”  Multiple people were involved in the fight, and a woman used pepper spray on another diner.  Huntsville, Ala. police officer Gerald Johnson was just trying to enjoy his Friday evening dinner at the Meteor Buffet on Feb. 22, 2019 when the crab-craziness sparked unrest.  “Literally, as I sat down and maybe took two bites out of my plate,” Johnson told Huntsville’s News 19, pandemonium struck.  “There’s a woman who’s beating a man,” Johnson recounted.  “People are moving around, plates are shattering everywhere.”  The officer moved in to break up the fracas.  He watched as two diners, an elderly man and adult woman, started fencing one another with the metal tongs used to pick up crab legs.  A day later, and almost 1,000 miles away, a similar outburst interrupted the dinner rush at the Queens Buffet in Queens, N.Y.  On Feb. 23. a woman—only identified by the New York Post as Christine — watched as her 10-year-old son attempted to get some crab legs.  An adult woman nudged the boy away from the line with her hip.  “I was like, ‘Can you please do me a favor?  I would appreciate it if you kept your hands off my child.’  And the mother comes over and she was like ‘You already had the first two batches,’” Christine told the New York Post.  “I said ‘Listen, he’s 10-years-old, he’s going to grab maybe six or seven and we’re leaving.  We’re gonna’ keep it moving,’" she told the paper.  When the woman then called her a slur, she said, “everybody came over and started screaming.”  A brawl exploded inside the restaurant.  Video from the fight showed hair pulling and flailing arms.  According to the restaurant’s manager, Budi Chan, two groups mixed it up, one pack of 16 people facing off against a group of seven.  Kyle Swenson  https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/03/08/crab-legs-sparked-brawl-buffet-day-later-hundreds-miles-away-it-happened-again/?utm_term=.a5f3401fecfe

LONGSWORD DANCING  Although commonly referred to as Sword dancing, there are two distinct forms.  The sword of the north east of England tends to be a double-handled flexible metal strip known as a rapper.  In Yorkshire the implement is more sword-like, being single-handled, and rigid and called a longsword.  The dance is basically six or eight men in a circle, each holding the end of his neighbours sword.  They perform circling and intertwining “figures” without breaking the circle or letting go the swords, except at the climax of the dance when the swords are interlocked to form the “lock” which is then held aloft.  The traditional time of performance is Christmas and after, although nowadays, many teams may be seen throughout the year at festivals, fetes and concerts.  https://themorrisring.org/about-morris/longsword  See also List of Morris and Sword Sides by Dance Style at http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/morris/style.html and Morris Dancing, Sword Dancing, Clog Dancing etc at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLq-p1Oyhj0  9:30  Over 20 groups performed on the streets of Lincoln - Saturday September 6th, 2014. 

The Eastern Screech-Owl, a robin-sized nightbird, does not screech; the voice of this species features whinnies and soft trills.  https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/eastern-screech-owl

The Western Screech-Owl's most distinctive vocalization is its "bouncing ball" song:  a series of 5–9 short, whistled hoots, speeding up ping-pong-ball fashion toward the end. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Western_Screech-Owl/sounds 

Owls don't have eyeballs.  The eyes are long and shaped more like a tube.  Owl eyes can't turn in their sockets because of this shape.   Owls and the related nightjars (including Whip-poor-wills and nighthawks) are among the only birds that have a larger upper eyelid than lower eyelid.  That, their forward-facing eyes, and feather-covering at the base of their beak, make them appear more human-like than other birds.  Their human-sounding voices are one reason so many cultures throughout the world have stories and folklore about owls.  https://journeynorth.org/tm/spring/OwlFacts.html

Reader feedback to story on size of Detroit:  Detroit at 140 square miles is quite small when one considers Jacksonville, Florida at nearly 875 sq. miles.  However, Jacksonville incorporated the entire county.  Thank you, Muse reader! 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2061  March 12, 2019 

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