The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library champions the literary, artistic, and cultural contributions of the late writer, artist, teacher, and Indianapolis native Kurt Vonnegut.  The library continues Kurt Vonnegut’s fight against censorship and supports language and visual arts education through programs and outreach activities such as:  Teaching Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut and Jane Cox Vonnegut Writing Awards, Banned Books Week, So It Goes:  The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, Night of Vonnegut, VonnegutFest, Vonnegut Sessions, school tours and partnerships, original exhibits and art shows, traveling speakers and a traveling exhibit that you can request for your own local venues.  https://www.vonnegutlibrary.org/what-is-the-vonnegut-library/   Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library  543 Indiana Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46202, (317) 423-0391, founded in 2011

The famed “sword of Damocles” dates back to an ancient moral parable popularized by the Roman philosopher Cicero in his 45 B.C. book “Tusculan Disputations.”  Cicero’s version of the tale centers on Dionysius II, a tyrannical king who once ruled over the Sicilian city of Syracuse during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.  Though rich and powerful, Dionysius was supremely unhappy.  His iron-fisted rule had made him many enemies, and he was tormented by fears of assassination—so much so that he slept in a bedchamber surrounded by a moat and only trusted his daughters to shave his beard with a razor.  As Cicero tells it, the king’s dissatisfaction came to a head one day after a court flatterer named Damocles showered him with compliments and remarked how blissful his life must be.  “Since this life delights you,” an annoyed Dionysius replied, “do you wish to taste it yourself and make a trial of my good fortune?”  When Damocles agreed, Dionysius seated him on a golden couch and ordered a host of servants wait on him.  He was treated to succulent cuts of meat and lavished with scented perfumes and ointments.  Damocles couldn’t believe his luck, but just as he was starting to enjoy the life of a king, he noticed that Dionysius had also hung a razor-sharp sword from the ceiling.  It was positioned over Damocles’ head, suspended only by a single strand of horsehair.  From then on, the courtier’s fear for his life made it impossible for him to savor the opulence of the feast or enjoy the servants.  After casting several nervous glances at the blade dangling above him, he asked to be excused, saying he no longer wished to be so fortunate.  The parable later became a common motif in medieval literature, and the phrase “sword of Damocles” is now commonly used as a catchall term to describe a looming danger.  Likewise, the saying “hanging by a thread” has become shorthand for a fraught or precarious situation.  https://www.history.com/news/what-was-the-sword-of-damocles 

Babette's Feast is a 1987 Danish drama film directed by Gabriel Axel.  The film's screenplay was written by Axel based on the story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen).  Produced by Just Betzer, Bo Christensen, and Benni Korzen with funding from the Danish Film Institute, Babette's Feast was the first Danish cinema film of a Blixen story.  It was also the first Danish film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.  The elderly and pious Protestant sisters Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodil Kjer) live in a small village on the remote western coast of Jutland in 19th-century Denmark. Their father was a pastor who founded his own Pietistic conventicle.  With their father now dead and the austere sect drawing no new converts, the aging sisters preside over a dwindling congregation of white-haired believers.  The story flashes back 49 years, showing the sisters in their youth.  The beautiful girls have many suitors, but their father rejects them all, and indeed derides marriage.  Each daughter is courted by an impassioned suitor visiting Jutland--Martine by a charming young Swedish cavalry officer, Lorens Löwenhielm, and Philippa by a star baritone, Achille Papin, from the Paris opera, on hiatus to the silence of the coast.  Both sisters decide to stay with their father and spurn any life away from Jutland.  Thirty-five years later, Babette Hersant (Stéphane Audran) appears at their door.  She carries only a letter from Papin, explaining that she is a refugee from counter-revolutionary bloodshed in Paris and recommending her as a housekeeper.  The sisters cannot afford to take Babette in, but she offers to work for free.  Babette serves as their cook for the next 14 years, producing an improved version of the bland meals typical of the abstemious nature of the congregation and slowly gaining their respect.  Her only link to her former life is a lottery ticket that a friend in Paris renews for her every year.  One day, she wins the lottery of 10,000 francs.  Instead of using the money to return to Paris and her lost lifestyle, she decides to spend it preparing a delicious dinner for the sisters and their small congregation on the occasion of the founding pastor's hundredth birthday.  More than just a feast, the meal is an outpouring of Babette's appreciation, an act of self-sacrifice.  Babette tells no one that she is spending her entire winnings on the meal.  The sisters accept both Babette's meal and her offer to pay for the creation of a "real French dinner".  Babette arranges for her nephew to go to Paris and gather the supplies for the feast.  The ingredients are plentiful, sumptuous, and exotic, and their arrival causes much discussion among the villagers.  As the various never-before-seen ingredients arrive and preparations commence, the sisters begin to worry that the meal will become a sin of sensual luxury, if not some form of devilry.  In a hasty conference, the sisters and the congregation agree to eat the meal, but to forgo speaking of any pleasure in it and to make no mention of the food during the dinner.  Martine's former suitor, Lorens, now a famous general married to a member of the Queen's court, comes as the guest of his aunt, the local lady of the manor and a member of the old pastor's congregation.  He is unaware of the other guests' austere plans and as a man of the world and former attaché in Paris, he is the only person at the table qualified to comment on the meal.  He regales the guests with abundant information about the extraordinary food and drink, comparing it to a meal he enjoyed years earlier at the famous Café Anglais in Paris.  Although the other celebrants refuse to comment on the earthly pleasures of their meal, Babette's gifts break down their distrust and superstitions, elevating them physically and spiritually.  Old wrongs are forgotten, ancient loves are rekindled and a mystical redemption of the human spirit settles over the table.  The seven-course menu in the film consisted of:  "Potage à la Tortue" (turtle soup) served with Amontillado sherry, "Blinis Demidoff" (buckwheat pancakes with caviar and sour cream) served with Veuve Cliquot Champagne, "Cailles en Sarcophage" (quail in puff pastry shell with foie gras and truffle sauce) served with Clos de Vougeot Pinot Noir, an endive salad, "Savarin au Rhum avec des Figues et Fruit Glacée" (rum sponge cake with figs and candied cherries) served with Champagne, assorted cheeses and fruits served with Sauternes, and coffee with vieux marc Grande Champagne cognac.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babette%27s_Feast

The 1904 St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exhibition looms largest among fans of fair food.  The list of treats attributed to that fair is long, if somewhat inaccurate, and includes hot dogs, hamburgers, ice cream cones, banana splits, iced tea, Dr Pepper, cotton candy and peanut butter.  In reality, hot dogs had existed in some form in Germany for years, and iced tea had been mentioned on menus for at least 40 years before the fair.  Travelers to Germany had reported eating ice cream from edible cones in Düsseldorf since the late 1800s, and Dr Pepper had been sold in Waco, Texas, since 1885.  While these foods may have first been popularized at the fair, St. Louis can’t take all the credit for some of our favorite snacks.  Stephanie Butler   https://www.history.com/news/foods-of-the-worlds-fairs

25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites by Judith Herman  Includes off, go, and toss out.  The contronym (also spelled “contranym”) goes by many names, including auto-antonym, antagonym, enantiodrome, self-antonym, antilogy and Janus word (from the Roman god of beginnings and endings, often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions).  Can’t get enough of them?  The folks at Daily Writing Tips have rounded up even more.  Thank you, Muse reader!  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/25-words-that-are-their-own-opposites?utm_source=pocket-newtab

On Jan. 2, 2020, a collection of 1,131 letters from Nobel laureate and renowned writer Thomas Stearns Eliot, better known as T.S. Eliot, to his lifelong friend Emily Hale opens for research at Princeton University Library.  Dating from 1930 to 1957, the letters are the largest single series of Eliot’s correspondence and among the best-known sealed literary archives in the world.  Hale donated the letters to the Princeton University Library (PUL) more than 60 years ago.  She gave the letters with the stipulation that they remain sealed until 50 years after the death of Eliot or Hale, whoever survived the other.  Eliot died in 1965 and Hale soon thereafter, in 1969.  A Boston native, Hale was a speech and drama teacher at Simmons College, Milwaukee-Downer College, Scripps College and Smith College.  She and Eliot initially met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1912 when Eliot attended Harvard University, and they rekindled their friendship in 1927.  When Eliot moved abroad to England, the pair corresponded frequently.  When the collection was initially unsealed at PUL in October for processing and cataloging, the letters were still in their original envelopes and bundles, as Hale presumably kept them, according to Chloe Pfendler, processing archivist for the manuscripts division in PUL’s Special Collections.  The Eliot letters are under copyright until 2035 and will not be available for access online.  Researchers can access the collection on a first-come, first-served basis in Firestone Library’s Special Collections, located on C floor.   For more information about accessing the collections, visit the Special Collections website.  Stephanie Ramírez, Princeton University Library  Read more at https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/12/30/ts-eliot-letters-among-best-known-sealed-literary-archives-open-princeton-after-60

Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. - Douglas William Jerrold, playwright and humorist (3 Jan 1803-1857)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2205  January 3, 2020