We use our Instant Pot to make a classic Indian stew from The Complete Indian Instant Pot Cookbook by Chandra Ram.  Her recipe for Chana Masala brings together chickpeas, tomatoes, onion and greens with a blend of warm, delicious spices.  It can be made vegetarian as is, but also works well with chicken added.  Helpful tip:  Chandra points out that she’ll cook extra chickpeas in advance so that she can put this meal together even quicker with less cook time.  serves 6  1 hour, 15 min. total time  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/chana-masala-for-instant-pot

Lollapalooza  is an annual 4-day music festival based in Chicago, Illinois at Grant Park.  Performances include but are not limited to alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock, hip hop, and electronic music.   Lollapalooza has also provided a platform for non-profit and political groups and various visual artists.  The music festival hosts more than 160,000 people each year.  Conceived and created in 1991 by Jane's Addiction singer Perry Farrell as a farewell tour for his band, Lollapalooza ran annually until 1997, and was revived in 2003.  From its inception through 1997 and its revival in 2003, the festival toured North America.  In 2005, Farrell and the William Morris Agency partnered with Austin, Texas–based company Capital Sports Entertainment (now C3 Presents) and retooled it into its current format as a weekend destination festival in Chicago at Grant Park.  In 2010 it was announced that Lollapalooza would debut outside the United States, with a branch of the festival staged in Chile's capital Santiago on April 2–3, 2011 where they partnered up with Santiago-based company Lotus.  In 2011, the company Geo Events confirmed the Brazilian version of the event, which was held at the Jockey Club in São Paulo on 7 and 8 April 2012.  In September 2013, Buenos Aires was selected as the third Lollapalooza in South America, starting on April 2014, and in November 2014, the first European Lollapalooza was announced, which was held at the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin.  The word—sometimes alternatively spelled and pronounced as lollapalootza or lalapaloosa or "lallapaloosa" (P.G. Wodehouse, "Heart of a Goof") dates from a late 19th-/early 20th-century American idiomatic phrase meaning "an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance."  Its earliest known use was in 1896.  In time the term also came to refer to a large lollipop.  Farrell, searching for a name for his festival, liked the euphonious quality of the by-then-antiquated term upon hearing it in a Three Stooges short film.  Paying homage to the term's double meaning, a character in the festival's original logo holds one of the lollipops.  The word has also caused a slang suffix to appear in event-planning circles as well as in news and opinion shows that is used synonymously with other suffixes like "a-go-go", "o-rama", etc.  The suffix "(a) palooza" is often used to imply (often in hyperbolic language) that an entire event or crowd was made over that term, e.g.: "Parks"-apalooza, popular Chicago sushi restaurant "Roll"-apalooza, etc.  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lollapalooza

From:  Alex Forbes  A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:  No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. - Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)  This bit of Robert Frost’s poetic wisdom is particularly relevant in my line of work.  As a professional songwriter, I’ve learned the hard way that listeners instinctively respond in exact proportion to my (and my collaborator’s) willingness to “go there” emotionally during the writing process.  If I’m crying when I write it, they cry when they hear it.  If I’m dancing joyfully, so do they.  And if I’m merely “dialing it in”, they tune out immediately.  My current challenge is to use whatever talents I have to help usher out the divisive haters currently in power and restore a communal sense of love and compassion, inspired by songs like “We Shall Overcome”, “Respect”, and “Imagine”.  It’s a high bar! 
From:  David Sanders  A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:  No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. - Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)  These words by Robert Frost come from the essay, “The Figure a Poem Makes,” which Frost used to preface all editions of his Collected Poems beginning in 1939, and was adapted from Horace’s “Ars Poetica”.  As many know, and many more do not, Frost was an avid and accomplished reader of Classical literature, especially in Latin.  He also prided himself on creating excellent verse in “a language absolutely unliterary.”  Accordingly, Horace’s advice to his fellow poets, something like “If you would have me weep, you must have shed tears yourself,” becomes in Frost’s hands the more direct, concise, and idiomatic “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”

Shepherd's Pie  serves eight  time required:  1 hour, 30 minutes  recipe courtesy of Alton Brown

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/shepherds-pie-recipe2-1942900

The United Nations has declared 2019 the “International Year of the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements,” to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first periodic table and recognize the important role chemistry plays today in promoting sustainable development and providing solutions to global challenges.  In 1869, Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleev wanted to see if there was a pattern to the chemical properties of the elements he knew.  He found one by listing elements by their increasing atomic number and arranging them in a chart--creating the first periodic table.  This structured order helped Mendeleev, and other scientists, identify similarities and differences among elements to help predict future chemical reactions.  While Mendeleev’s periodic table included 63 elements, he anticipated that others would one day be discovered, so he left open spaces in his table for additions.  Today, the 118 chemical elements identified on the periodic table include the materials that make up all known objects in the universe.  Iron (Fe) is the most abundant element (by mass) making up Earth, while oxygen (O) is the most common element in the Earth’s crust.  https://www.chemicalsafetyfacts.org/celebrating-150-years-of-the-periodic-table-of-elements/

See also https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/resources/highschool/chemmatters/past-issues/2018-2019/february-2019/periodic-table-turns-150.html and https://www.sciencenews.org/article/periodic-table-history-chemical-elements-150-anniversary

The full moon of April, called the Pink Moon, occurs April 19, 2019 at 7:12 a.m. EDT (1112 GMT).  The moon will be three days past perigee, the point in its orbit where the natural satellite is nearest to Earth, so it will almost be a "supermoon," appearing larger than average.  For observers on the U.S. East Coast, the Pink Moon will rise at about 8 p.m. the evening of April 19 and set at around 7 a.m. the next morning, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. The moon will be in the constellation Virgo. The sun will rise about an hour before moonset on April 20, so for about an hour, the nearly full moon and the sun will both appear in the sky.  Despite its moniker, the Pink Moon isn't actually pink. The name "Pink Moon" comes from the bloom of ground phlox, a pink flower common in North America, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac.  It has also been called the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon and the Fish Moon.  Jesse Emspak  https://www.space.com/36040-april-full-moon.html

TIME 100 The most influential people in 2019  http://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2019/  Click on person's name for information.

Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 election released April 18, 2019  Read highlights from the two-volume, 448-page report and link to the full redacted report at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mueller-report-released-read-and-download-redacted-report-by-special-counsel-released-by-justice-department/

Word of the Day  Bronx cheer  (US, idiomatic) Synonym of raspberry (“a sound intended to resemble flatulence made by blowing airout of the mouth while the tongue is protruding from and pressed against the lips, used humorously or to express disdain or scorn”).  On this day in 1912, Bronx County in New York City, New York, USA, was constituted, the change taking effect in 1914.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2084  April 19, 2019