International Dance Day was created by the Dance Committee of the International Theatre Institute ITI, the main partner for the performing arts of UNESCO.  Since its creation in 1982, the International Dance Committee and the International Theatre Institute ITI select an outstanding dance personality to write a message for International Dance Day each year.  This day is a celebration day for those who can see the value and importance of the art form “dance”, and acts as a wake-up-call for governments, politicians and institutions which have not yet recognised its value to the people and to the individual and have not yet realised its potential for economic growth.  https://www.international-dance-day.org/  April 29th was picked as the day to celebrate it by the committee because that was when Jean-Georges Noverre, the creator of the modern ballet, was born in 1727.  The committee created the day to help bring people together in the language of dance, a language that can transcend borders and cultural barriers.  http://www.holidayscalendar.com/event/international-dance-day/

Assigning human characteristics to non-human things is a time-honored writing technique.  Most writers are not only aware of and familiar with the idea of personification—describing something as a person when it definitely is not—but at some point in their educations they’ve been encouraged to use it.  Countless writers have used the technique before them:  Homer (“rosy-fingered dawn”) and Shakespeare (innumerable times, one of the most well-known being “But look, the morn in russet mantle clad/Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill”); but you can hardly pick up a work of fiction and not find examples.  Tolkien, Fitzgerald, Roth, Atwood—take your pick of author, genre, or era.  You’ll even find it in titles:  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein readily comes to mind (and that example is both personification and metaphor—there’s overlap in literary technique).  There’s a similar idea  called anthropomorphism which likewise assigns human characteristics to something not human.  Anthropomorphism is generally frowned upon in good science writing, and rightly so.  But it can be difficult to stamp out.  It’s very easy for humans, including writers, to see human-like behavior in the actions not only of other animals but also of objects and natural phenomena.  There’s nothing wrong with using it in fiction.  For a very clear description of the problem of anthropomorphism in academic writing and a nice variety of examples (positive and negative), check Basics of Anthropomorphism  at https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/apa/other/anthropomorphism  Christopher Daly  Read more at https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2019/03/30/anthropomorphism-always-a-bad-idea-outside-of-fiction/

The Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa will display “Bob Dylan:  Face Value and Beyond” from May 10 to Sept. 15, 2019 the Tulsa World reported.  The exhibit  will showcase 12 pastel portraits the musician painted, and is filled with pieces from the Bob Dylan Archives, which has more than 100,000 items from his 60-year career.  It’s the first major show from the archives since it was acquired by the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the University of Tulsa in 2016.  The paintings highlight Dylan’s multifaceted artistic capabilities, said Michael Chaiken, the archive’s curator.  “He’s best known for his music, but Dylan is also a writer of prose, a filmmaker, and someone who has been involved in the visual arts for decades,” Chaiken said.  The portraits were first shown in London in 2013.  The only time they were on display in the U.S. was during a two-month exhibit in Ohio in 2016.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/tulsa-museum-to-feature-musician-bob-dylans-paintings/2019/03/30/521a53d0-530e-11e9-bdb7-44f948cc0605_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d083dac255c8

mudsill  noun  "1685, 'lowest sill of a house,' from mud + sill.  The word entered U.S. political history in a speech by James M. Hammond of South Carolina, March 4, 1858, in U.S. Senate, alluding to the very mudsills of society, and the term subsequently was embraced by Northern workers in the pre-Civil War sectional rivalry." (OED, 2007)  The lowest sill of a structure, usually placed in or on the ground.  (figuratively)  A particularly low or dirty place/state; the nadir of something (see rock bottom)  The Pre-Historic Era was the mudsill of human development. (dated, Southern US)  A person of low status or humble provenance. quotations ▼ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mudsill

The first recipe any Mexican will cook as soon as they move out of their parents’ home and live on  their own is chicken tinga.  It is easy, reminds everyone of home, and the ingredients are very accessible. Although it is better made with dried chipotle chiles, canned chipotles work if in a pinch.  It can be a soupy stew served over white rice and with tortillas.  If you cook it down to thicken a bit more, it is a great topping on a tostada with fresh shredded lettuce, some crema, cheese, and fresh salsa.  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/chicken-tinga-tinga-de-pollo  Serves 2-4   10 minutes prep, 45 minutes cooking

Game Of Thrones is a full-on dominant pop-cultural phenomenon.  It is also a TV show set in some desolate medieval alternate reality.  As such, it doesn’t have too many opportunities to intersect with popular music.  There are tie-in products, of course:  A soundtrack album, some guitars, Hodor’s DJing career.  But within the world of the show itself, famous musicians have only made a few brief cameos:  Ed Sheeran playing a wandering soldier (who actually gets to sing for a minute), Sigur Ròs making a cameo as wedding musicians, members of Mastodon showing up among the army of the dead.  Up to this point, the show’s best-remembered musical moment is probably the end-credits moment where the National covered “The Rains Of Castamere,” a ballad from the show itself.  We got another moment like that in the final season with Florence Welch singing.  Florence + The Machine recorded a new version of “Jenny Of Oldstones,” a song adapted from the Game Of Thrones novels.  George R.R. Martin wrote the lyrics, so he gets songwriting credit, along with score composer Ramin Djawadi and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (here credited as Dan Weiss).  Florence is the only artist featured on the final season of Game Of Thrones.  Tom Breihan  Link to 3:22 video at https://www.stereogum.com/2040622/florence-the-machine-jenny-of-oldstones/music/

Under way vs. under weigh vs. underway  The Dutch, who were European masters of the sea in the seventeenth century, gave us—among many other nautical expressions—the term onderweg, meaning “on the way”.  This became naturalised as under way and is first recorded in English around 1740, specifically as a maritime term (its broader meanings didn’t appear until the following century).  Some over-clever individuals connected with the sea almost immediately linked it erroneously with the phrase to weigh anchor.  Weigh here is the same word as the one for finding out how heavy an object is.  Both it and the anchor sense go back to the Old English verb, which could mean “raise up”.  The link between the senses is the act of raising an object on scales.  It’s easy to find a myriad of examples of under weigh from the best English authors in the following two centuries, such as William Makepeace Thackeray, Captain Marryat, Washington Irving, Thomas Carlyle, Herman Melville, Lord Byron, and Charles Dickens.  It was still common as recently as the 1930s (“He felt her gaze upon him, all the same, as he stood with his back to her attending to the business of getting under weigh.” — The Happy Return by C S Forester, 1937) but weigh has dropped off almost to nothing now.  This paralleled another change, starting around the same time, in which the two words began to be combined into a single adverb, underway (though many style manuals still recommend it be written as two words).  It may be that the influence of other words ending in -way, especially anyway, encouraged the shift in spelling back to the original and in the process killed off a persistent misunderstanding.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-und2.htm

National Arbor Day is always celebrated on the last Friday in April, but many states observe Arbor Day on different dates throughout the year based on best tree planting times in their area.  Check a map to find out when your state observes Arbor Day and link to Arbor Day dates around the world at https://www.arborday.org/celebrate/dates.cfm

Winners for the 23rd annual Webby Awards were announced on April 23, 2019.  Chance the Rapper, Childish Gambino, Kesha, Ellen DeGeneres and Ryan Reynolds are among the winners selected by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.  Hosted by actress and comedian Jenny Slate, the upcoming Webby Awards ceremony will celebrate the best work on the Internet.  The 23rd Annual Webby Awards will take place May 13 at Cipriani Wall Street.  Tallie Spencer  Find 2019 winners, special achievement winners and multiple winners at https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/awards/8508158/2019-webby-awards-winners

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2087  April 26, 2019