Colleen Margaretta McCullough AO (married
name Robinson,
previously Ion-Robinson; 1937-2015)
was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds and The Ladies of
Missalonghi. McCullough was born in Wellington,
in the Central West region
of New South Wales, to
James and Laurie McCullough. Her father was of Irish descent and her
mother was a New Zealander of part-Māori descent. During her childhood, the family moved around
a great deal and she was also "a voracious reader". Her family eventually settled in Sydney where she attended Holy Cross
College, Woollahra, having a
strong interest in both science and the humanities. She had a younger brother, Carl, who drowned
off the coast of Crete when he was 25
while trying to rescue tourists in difficulty. She based a character in The Thorn
Birds on him, and also wrote about him in Life Without the
Boring Bits. Before her tertiary
education, McCullough earned a living as a teacher, librarian and journalist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleen_McCullough
The Ladies of Missalonghi is a short novel by Australian
writer Colleen
McCullough commissioned for
the Hutchinson
Novellas series and published in
the United States in the Harper
Short Novel series in 1987. Set in the
small town of Byron in the Blue
Mountains of Australia in the
years just before World War I, the novel is the story of Missy Wright and the
Hurlingford family. The book closely
resembles The Blue Castle,
a 1926 novel by L.M. Montgomery, best known as the author of Anne of Green
Gables. The plot and character
details are nearly identical. Gillian
Whitlock and Mary Jean DeMarr have described the history of the
allegations of plagiarism, and McCullough's defence of subconscious recollection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ladies_of_Missalonghi The frugal sisters save soap slivers and use
them to provide pleasant scents.
Let no
one tell me that silence gives consent, because whoever is silent
dissents. Maria Isabel Barreno * Silence is one of the hardest things to
refute. Josh Billing * Silence is sometimes the severest criticism. *
Charles
Buxton Dictionary of Quotations in
Communications
Why are
apartment buildings known as “arms”? It
seems that back in 1945, a fellow named Arthur Minton published an article in
American Speech (the journal of the American Dialect Association) entitled
“Apartment-House Names.” Minton’s focus was primarily the five boroughs
of New York City, where, he estimated, one fourth of the apartment buildings at
that time had names. Approximately one-third of those names included the
words “Court” or “Arms,” and a lesser but still significant number of buildings
ended in “Hall” (e.g., “Harrowick Hall,” etc.). The remainder of named
buildings sported less grandiose names such as “Terrace,” “Gardens,” “Towers”
and “Plaza.” New York being New York, some people didn’t know when to
stop, and Minton mentions such florid creations as the “Manor Palace” and the
“Palais de Mosholu” (on Mosholu Parkway in the Bronx). At the other end
of the scale, he found the weirdly recursive “Arms Apartments,” also in the
Bronx, whose name, Minton notes, “suggests an unprecedented exhaustion of the
imagination.” The terms “Hall,” “Court”
and “Arms” in the names of apartment buildings are preceded in most cases by
British or pseudo-British personal or place names (“Kensington Arms,”
“Mountbatten Court,” etc.) that attempt to lend an air of historical grandeur,
prestige and tradition to what is, in most cases, a fairly utilitarian
building. But while such grandiose names for apartment houses are largely
an American affectation, we got the idea from the Brits themselves. Back when England was awash with Dukes, Earls
and similar nobility, many happy centuries before motel and restaurant chains,
the local inn or pub (or, indeed, the whole town) frequently sat on land owned
by the Duke of Earl, or whomever. This was also a time when many people
were illiterate. So pubs and inns relied on highly recognizable graphic
signs, perhaps calling themselves “The Blue Swan,” signified for non-readers by
a blue swan on the sign. In many cases, the most recognizable symbol in
town was the coat of arms of the local nobility, so if one paid rent to the
Duke of Norfolk, it made sense to feature the Norfolk family coat of arms on
your sign and to call your establishment “the Norfolk Arms.” Incidentally, although today we use “coat of
arms” to mean the heraldic insignia of a noble family or other group, usually
featuring a shield, a motto and perhaps some fierce animals, the original
meaning took “coat” very literally. A “coat of arms” was a linen or silk
coat, worn by a knight over his armor on formal occasions, and decorated with
his (or his sponsor’s) heraldic emblem.
Outside of UBS’ New York
headquarters in the heart of Manhattan are futuristic mushroom-shaped tables
and chairs designed by the late artist Scott Burton in 1984. Officeworkers and tourists gather on the
granite seats at lunchtime, or for a rest during the day as they walk the busy
streets, grabbing food from nearby food trucks. Now, they can also glimpse contemporary
artwork through the tall glass windows, and if they have the time, and
inclination, they might walk inside to find a public gallery sprawling across
the lobby. In May 2019, UBS officially
opened the “gallery” within the newly renovated lobby of 1285 Sixth Ave., to
share their collection of 30,000 pieces of art—typically only seen by clients
in offices across the globe—with the public.
While the cafe artwork by Burton, Urban
Plaza South, 1985-86, isn’t owned by UBS, Mary Rozell, global
head of the bank’s art collection, believes its presence will naturally bring
visitors to the works inside the building.
The UBS gallery is divided in two, with a North Gallery featuring
permanent installations, and a South Gallery featuring rotating special
exhibitions, beginning with A History and a Moment,
a selection of photographs, paintings, mixed media, and works on paper, that
UBS has collected since the 1960s. An
exhibition in the fall will feature UBS-owned works by the pop American artist
Ed Ruscha, while the bank plans to partner with nonprofit institutions for
future shows beginning next year. Among
the permanent installations in the North Gallery is Sarah Morris ’ 42-foot
wide UBS Wall Painting,
2001-2019, a redesign of a 2001 piece Morris was commissioned
to do for the bank’s Swiss headquarters, but had to be demolished along with
the building in 2015. Morris agreed to
re-imagine the piece, visible from Sixth Avenue, in part because one of the
first works that UBS acquired from her, Midtown-PaineWebber
(with Neon), 1998, is an image of the building where the bank
now sits. Midtown-PaineWebber also
happens to be featured in A History and a Moment.
“So it’s kind of coming full circle,”
Rozell says. Also in the North Gallery
is a new minimalist sculpture by Eva Rothschild, whose work was featured at the
Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and a parabolic lens work by the Los
Angeles artist Fred Eversley, a member of the “L.A. Light & Space”
movement, which Rozell says was purchased for this location. “His work is technically beautiful and
perfect,” Rozell says. The permanent
installation also includes a second commission that was reimagined for UBS—a
chromo-kinetic sculpture by the Venezualan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez that was
originally commissioned for a UBS building in Zurich in 1975. The bank worked with Cruz-Diez’s studio to
repurpose the work as a permanent piece for the lobby, she says. UBS began collecting art in the ’60s simply
to have something to put on the walls of its offices across the globe, now
numbering about 700. But it chose to
focus on contemporary art out of a belief that it reflects innovative thinking,
and “that’s what the bank wants to reflect,” Rozell says. Abby Shultz
https://www.barrons.com/articles/sales-under-2-million-lead-transaction-surge-in-prime-central-london-01571322491 Thank you, Muse reader!
National Book Awards
Handed To Susan Choi, Arthur Sze And More by Colin Dwyer More than 1,700 books began the autumn with a chance at
winning a National Book Award. Now,
after a swanky ceremony November 20, 2019 in Manhattan, the folks behind just
five of those books have each emerged with a trophy, a purse of $10,000 and the
right to slap that precious gold medallion on the front cover of
their work. The winners of the 70th
annual National Book Awards are: Fiction:
Susan Choi's Trust Exercise; Nonfiction:
Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House; Poetry: Arthur
Sze's Sight Lines; Translated literature: Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming, by
László Krasznahorkai and translator Ottilie Mulzet; and Young people's
literature: Martin W. Sandler's 1919: The Year That Changed
America.
Apple
Music Gets Into the Muzak Business Apple
Music has been quietly piloting a version of its music-streaming service for
businesses including Levi Strauss and Harrods stores. Wall Street Journal November 21, 2019 p. B1
WORD OF THE DAY well-boat
noun (nautical) a fishing vessel designed to carry live fish in a tank or well.
November 21 is World Fisheries Day, which was established by the World
Fisheries Forum to advocate sustainable fishing practices and policies
Wiktionary
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. - Voltaire,
philosopher (21 Nov 1694-1778)
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2185
November 21, 2019
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