For years, Linear B was seen as the Mount Everest of linguistic riddles.  First discovered on clay tablets at the palace of Knossos in Crete in 1900, it was an unknown script, writing an unknown language.  "It really was the linguistic equivalent of the locked room mystery in a detective novel," says Margalit Fox, author of a new book on Linear B, The Riddle of the Labyrinth.  How do you ever find your way into a seemingly closed system like that?  A solution took more than half a century to arrive.  In 1952, a young British architect, Michael Ventris, did discover the meaning of Linear B.  Some experts now argue that Ventris would never have been able to crack the code, had it not been for an American classicist, Alice Kober.  The importance of her contribution has only come to light now that her archives--held at the University of Texas at Austin--have been catalogued.  "Alice Kober is the great unsung heroine of the Linear B decipherment," says Fox.  "She built the methodological bridge that Ventris triumphantly crossed.  "As is so often the case in women's history, behind this great achievement lay these hours and hours of unseen labour by this unheralded woman," she says.  In the search for clues, Kober learnt a whole host of languages--from Egyptian to Akkadian to Sumerian and Sanskrit.  Kober was rigorous in her work--refusing to speculate on what the language was, or what the sounds of the symbols might be.  Instead, she set out to record the frequency of every symbol in the tablets, both in general, and then in every position within a word.  She also recorded the frequency of every character in juxtaposition to that of every other character.  It was a mammoth task, performed without the aid of computers.  In addition, during the years surrounding World War II, writing materials were hard to come by.  Kober recorded her detailed analysis on index cards, which she made from the backs of old greetings cards, library checkout slips, and the inside covers of examination books.  By hand, she painstakingly cut more than 180,000 tiny index cards, using cigarette cartons as her filing system.  Alex Gallafent  Read more and find graphics at https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22782620

Linear A is a writing system used by the Minoans (Cretans) from 2500 to 1450 BC.  Along with Cretan hieroglyphic, it is one of two undeciphered writing systems used by ancient Minoan and peripheral peoples.  Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization.  It was discovered by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans.  It is related to the Linear B script, which succeeded the Linear A and was used by the Mycenaean civilization.  In the 1950s, Linear B was largely deciphered and found to encode an early form of Greek.  Although the two systems share many symbols, this did not lead to a subsequent decipherment of Linear A.  Using the values associated with Linear B in Linear A mainly produces unintelligible words.  If Linear A uses the same or similar syllabic values as Linear B, then its associated language, dubbed "Minoan", appears unrelated to any known language.  Archaeologist Arthur Evans named the script "Linear" because its characters consisted simply of lines inscribed in clay, in contrast to the more pictographic characters in Cretan hieroglyphs that were used during the same period.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A  Other sources state that  Linear A developed around 1700 BCE. 

Grapes need to be washed well before freezing.  If you're using non-organic grapes, it's important to cleanse the skins well.  Drain grapes in a colander and/or salad spinner.  You want grapes to be dry before you freeze them, so even after draining or spinning, lay them out on an old bath towel, and blot them gently with another towel.  https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/gardens/garden-to-table/can-you-freeze-grapes

The Georgetown Car Barn is a historic building in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C.  Designed by the architect Waddy Butler Wood, it was built between 1895 and 1897 by the Capital Traction Company as a union terminal for several Washington and Virginia streetcar lines.  The adjacent Exorcist steps, later named after their appearance in William Friedkin's 1973 horror film The Exorcist, were built during the initial construction to connect M Street with Prospect Street.  Intended for dual use as a passenger station and as a storage house for the streetcars, the Car Barn began Washington's only cable car system.  Almost immediately after the building opened, the system was electrified and the Car Barn was converted to accommodate electric streetcars.  The building has undergone several renovations, the most extensive in 1911, when the original Romanesque Revival façade was significantly modified and the interior was almost completely gutted.  Not long after its opening, the building fell into disrepair.  Changing ownership over time, it maintained its original function of housing streetcars until 1950, when it was redeveloped as office space.  Among its occupants was the International Police Academy, an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, which operated out of the Car Barn in the 1960s and 1970s.  Today, it is used as an academic building by Georgetown University.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown_Car_Barn

humbug  noun  Origin unknown; the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states that “the facts as to its origin appear to have been lost, even before the word became common enough to excite attention”.   It has been suggested that the word possibly derives from hummer (“(slang) An obvious lie”), or from hum (“(dialectal and slang) to cajole; delude; impose on”) + bug (“a goblin, a spectre”).  In his Slang Dictionary (1872), English bibliophile and publisher John Camden Hotten (1832–1873) suggested a link to the name of the German city of Hamburg, “from which town so many false bulletins and reports came during the war in the last century”.  Hotten also said he had traced the earliest occurrence of the word to the title page of Ferdinando Killigrew’s book The Universal Jester which he dated to about 1735–1740.  This dating has therefore been adopted by other dictionaries.  However, the OED dates the word to about 1750, as the earliest edition of Killigrew's work has been dated to 1754.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/humbug

Mmuseumm 4 Cortlandt Alley  New York, NY 10013 will reopen for the 2019 season Friday April 26th, 2019 at 7pm sharp.  Mmuseumm public hours:  Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays 11am-6pm.  Write info@mmuseumm.com to schedule a private tour.  Visitors may view Mmuseumm installations at the National Center for Architecture and Design in Sweden, the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and The Color Factory in New York City.  Link to the collection at http://www.mmuseumm.com/visit

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  In the end, the poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see--and what we see is life. - Robert Penn Warren, novelist and poet (24 Apr 1905-1989)

On this date in 1913, the Woolworth Building, an early American skyscraper located at 233 Broadway in Manhattan, opened.  Designed by architect Cass Gilbert, it was the tallest building in the world from 1913 to 1930, with a height of 792 feet (241 m).  More than a century after its construction, it remains one of the 100 tallest buildings in the United States as well as one of the 30 tallest buildings in New York City.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolworth_Building

The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States.  It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States.  The Library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.; it also maintains the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia.  The Library's functions are overseen by the Librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the Architect of the Capitol.  The Library of Congress has claimed to be the largest library in the world.  Its "collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 450 languages."  The Library of Congress moved to Washington in 1800 after sitting for 11 years in the temporary national capitals in New York City and Philadelphia.  The Library's primary mission is to research inquiries made by members of Congress, carried out through the Congressional Research Service.  The Library is open to the public, although only high-ranking government officials and Library employees may check out books and materials.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress

                                                                                                                 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2086  April 24, 2019