The Sweet Life  Chocolate--the universally beloved food!  We bake it into cookies and brownies, we drink it, and we give it to our sweethearts each February 14^th.  We’ve molded it into bunnies at Easter, and jolly old Saint Nick every Christmas, and it’s all thanks to the Quakers.  English Quaker families like Cadbury, Fry, Rowntree, and Terry monopolized the chocolate confectionery market for over a century.  While chocolate has become a staple of the modern American household, the obsession all began with chocolate drinks (hot cocoa) in 19th century England.  Quakers, concerned about the ill effects of alcohol and its perceived widespread misuse, began marketing this chocolate drink as an alternative.  Not only was it delicious, but it was cheap and widely available, not to mention easy to make.  Who can’t boil water?  Soon the Quakers moved on to producing chocolate bars and they invested in new and advanced machinery to produce them.  This foresight and investment gave them a competitive edge that helped them dominate the market for more than a generation.  Today, these household names such as Fry, Cadbury, and Rowntree that emerged out of the Quaker tradition in England have been taken over by transnational companies such as Kraft and Nestle.  Next time you take a bite into your favorite chocolate bar, you might stop to think about the history of our favorite sweet, and the Quaker traditions and beliefs from as early as the 1700s that led to its widespread popularity.  {Source: “How did the Quakers conquer the British Sweet Shop, by Peter Jackson, BBC News}  https://brinton1704.tumblr.com/

Thomas Hart Benton was eighty-four in 1973 when he came out of retirement to paint a mural for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.  His assignment was to describe the regional sources of the musical style known as “country,” and Benton couldn’t resist the opportunity to paint one last celebration of homegrown American traditions.  Benton himself was a skilled harmonica player who had been raised on the old-time music of the Missouri Ozarks.  It was during his lifetime that the multimillion-dollar country-music industry in Nashville had replaced the community-based music of rural America.  https://picturingamerica.neh.gov/downloads/pdfs/Resource_Guide_Chapters/PictAmer_Resource_Book_Chapter_18A.pdf

Find picture of Benton's Sources of Country Music mural in Nashville Country Music Hall of Fame at http://brianloudenslager.com/2016/03/26/thomas-hart-bentons-last-painting-the-sources-of-country-music/



SOME ACCOUNTS OF TALKING TO THE SUN posted by Jesse McCarthy

Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee To warme the world, that’s done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art every where; This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.  John Donne  [c.1601]

The Sun woke me this morning loud and clear, saying “Hey! I’ve been trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes.  Don’t be so rude, you are only the second poet I’ve ever chosen to speak to personally.  Frank O’Hara [1958]

Beyond the village gaped a hole and into that hole, most likely, the sun sank down each time, faithfully and slowly.  And next morning, to flood the world anew, the sun would rise all scarlet.  Vladimir Mayakovsky [1920]   Read three complete poems at https://poetry.princeton.edu/2013/05/07/some-accounts-of-talking-to-the-sun/



"Mille Feuille” means a thousand leaves, which is an appropriate name for this dessert.  Traditionally, the Mille Feuille is made up of three layers of puff pastry and two layers of pastry cream.  But, it’s also sometimes glazed with vanilla and chocolate fondant, which creates a lovely design on the top, but isn’t really necessary.  Just as often, it’s dusted with a layer of confectioner’s sugar or cocoa--a much simpler option.  Rebecca Blackwell  Prep Time: 40 minutes  Cook Time: 45 minutes  Total Time: 1 hour, 25 minutes  This recipe makes two Classic French Napoleons for a total of 12 servings.  It can easily be halved, if 6 servings are preferable.  Find recipe at https://ofbatteranddough.com/napoleon-dessert-mille-feuille/



October 18, 2019  This week, the Bangor, Maine City Council approved a request by the prolific author and his wife, Tabitha King to rezone their Victorian mansion for use as a nonprofit.  The move would allow the Kings to convert their property on 3.27 acres at 39 and 47 West Broadway into an archive and writers' retreat.  The Kings own two homes behind the looming gate and have plans to use both for the preservation of their legacy.  One house will act as a retreat for up to five writers to stay and work, while the mansion where the Kings raised their family will be used for his personal archive maintained by the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation.  Elizabeth Wolfe and Brian Ries  See picture of house at https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/stephen-king-house-writers-retreat-trnd/index.html



The artist Ed Clark, whose radiantly colored abstractions charted exhilarating, inventive, and elegant new paths for painting, died October 18, 2019 at the age of 93 in Detroit.  Over the course of more than 60 years, Clark earned a reputation as a ceaseless innovator—one of the key abstract painters of the postwar period.  In 1957, he showed one of the first shaped canvases.  Just a year earlier, he had begun developing a method of producing luminous, action-packed paintings on his studio floor by pushing paint with a broom, a technique he honed thereafter.  Andrew Russeth  Read much more and see graphics at http://www.artnews.com/2019/10/19/ed-clark-painter-dead-at-93/



Since the first Open House New York Weekend in 2003, buildings and sites throughout the five boroughs have opened their doors to the public in October; Open House New York Weekend (October 18-20 in 2019)  unlocks the doors of New York City’s most important buildings, offering an extraordinary opportunity to experience the city and meet the people who design, build, and preserve it at hundreds of sites.  While the majority of OHNY Weekend sites are Open Access, meaning they can be visited free-of-charge during open hours, some sites and tours require reservations and a $5 fee per person.  One of the new sites is Center for Fiction, the only nonprofit organization in the U.S. dedicated to celebrating fiction.  The Center’s new headquarters, designed by BKSK Architects, is home to 70,000 titles, a bookstore, an auditorium, and workspaces.  Michelle Cohen  Read much more and see graphics at https://www.6sqft.com/the-2019-open-house-new-york-weekend-schedule-is-here/



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2171  October 21, 2019