Monday, February 17, 2020


No-Cook One-Minute Soup  Mix pesto and whole milk.  Add buttered toast and let soften.  Serve cold or hot.  Add finely diced vegetables, if desired.

Ice Breakers and Team Builder:  includes games (Name Game, Solemn and Silent), tips (use rituals like raising hands to indicate game is over), resources (books and websites).

A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice a year.  During the solstice, the tilt of the Earth’s axis is most inclined towards the Sun, causing it to reach its highest point visually in the sky. This means it takes the most amount of time to cross the sky.  The word solstice is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).  https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/summer-solstice-five-big-questions/

Equinox  noun  1: either of the two points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator intersects the ecliptic  2either of the two times each year (as about March 21 and September 23) when the sun crosses the equator and day and night are everywhere on earth of approximately equal length.  Equinox descends from aequus, the Latin word for "equal," and nox, the Latin word for "night"—a fitting history for a word that describes days of the year when the daytime and nighttime are equal in length.  In the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox marks the first day of spring and occurs when the sun moves north across the equator.  (Vernal comes from the Latin word ver, meaning "spring.")  The autumnal equinox marks the first day of autumn in the northern hemisphere and occurs when the sun crosses the equator going south.  In contrast, a solstice is either of the two moments in the year when the sun's apparent path is farthest north or south from the equator.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equinox


January 28, 2020  Nicci French on the greatest long shot in film history, and what novelists can learn from building tension in a single take. | CrimeReads   Jerry Craft’s New Kid won this year’s Newbery Medal—the highest honor for children’s literature in the US—becoming the first graphic novel to win the prize. | The New York Times   https://lithub.com/

Yoshitomo Nara (born 5 December 1959 in HirosakiAomori Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese artist.  He lives and works in Tokyo, though his artwork has been exhibited worldwide.  Nara has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions since 1984.  His art work has been housed at the MoMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA).  His most well-known and repeated subject is a young girl with piercing eyes.  "Nara first came to the fore of the art world during Japan's Pop art movement in the 1990s.  The subject matter of his sculptures and paintings is deceptively simple:  most works depict one seemingly innocuous subject (often pastel-hued children and animals drawn with confident, cartoonish lines) with little or no background.  But these children, who appear at first to be cute and even vulnerable, sometimes brandish weapons like knives and saws.  Their wide eyes often hold accusatory looks that could be sleepy-eyed irritation at being awoken from a nap—or that could be undiluted expressions of hate."  Nara, however, does not see his weapon-wielding subjects as aggressors.  "Look at them, they [the weapons] are so small, like toys.  Do you think they could fight with those?" he says.  "I don't think so.  Rather, I kind of see the children among other, bigger, bad people all around them, who are holding bigger knives . . . "  Lauded by art critics, Nara's bizarrely intriguing works have gained him a cult following around the world.  Large original paintings regularly sell for millions of dollars.  

Libbey, Inc., (formerly Libbey Glass Company and New England Glass Company) is a glass production company headquartered in Toledo, Ohio.  It was originally founded 201 years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts as the New England Glass Company in 1818, before relocating to Ohio in 1888 and renaming to Libbey Glass Co.  After it was purchased in 1935, it operated as part of the Libbey-Owens-Ford company and as a division of the Owens-Illinois glass company until 1993, when it was separated back into an independent company.  The company manufactures a number of glassware products, primarily tablewaredrinkware and stemware.  Historically, it was also involved in producing other types of glass products, such as automotive glass, glass drinking bottles, and light bulbs.  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libbey_Incorporated  See also Holy Toledo!  Ohio’s ‘Glass City’ is worth a trip by Alan Solomon at https://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/ct-trav-toledo-ohio-1022-story.html and The New England Glass Companies by Bill Lockhart, Beau Schriever, Bill Lindsey and Carol Serr at https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/NewEnglandGlass.pdf

January 27, 2020  Best procrastination ever:  Did Tolkien write The Lord of the Rings because he was avoiding his academic work? | Lit Hub  The bad news is that the machines are coming; the good news is that they still haven’t mastered metaphor, as evidenced by these poems. | Lit Hub Tech  Most peculiar! The Nancy Drew series celebrates the heroine’s 90th anniversary by killing her off—and putting the Hardy Boys on the case. | Polygon  https://lithub.com/

 Sculptor Peter Barstow Rockwell, the youngest son of iconic artist Norman Rockwell, died February 13, 2020 in Danvers, a suburb of Boston, spending his last weeks visited by children and grandchildren.  He was 83.  News of his death was shared by the Norman Rockwell Museum, which reported that, at his death, he was wearing his favorite shirt, painted by his son, John, with his whimsical clay monsters and sketchbook by his side.  The family plans a memorial gathering in May at St. Paul's Within the Walls Church in Rome, where his work is displayed.  Sites housing his sculptures include the Rockwell Museum, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., his alma mater, Haverford (Pa.) College, a convent in Chioggia, Italy, and the Women's Memorial Bell Tower at the Cathedral of the Pines, an open-air installation in Rindge, N.H., built as a memorial to American war dead.  Peter Rockwell is known for his playful monsters, soaring acrobats, climbing sculptures, humorous terra cottas, bronze work and his deeply spiritual religious iconography, according to the statement released by the museum.  The largest assemblages of Peter's sculpture is in the permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum, including his climbing acrobats, a massive stone carving named Grendel, and a cherished collection of sculptures he had given to his father.  His works are found on the museum grounds, in front of his father's studio and along the walking paths.  Many videos and interviews with Peter are available on the museum's YouTube channel.  In 2009, curated by Stephanie Plunkett, a comprehensive exhibition of the artist's work and career, "The Fantastical Faces of Peter Rockwell:  A Sculptor's Retrospective," was organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum.  After its initial installation in Stockbridge, it traveled to the Butler Museum in Youngstown, Ohio.  In 2014, the Norman Rockwell Museum brought its major Norman Rockwell exhibition, "American Chronicles," to the Fondazione Roma-Arte-Musei at the Palazzo Cipolla in Rome.  There, Peter greeted museum trustees, patrons, staff and officials, providing tours with local insight for many of the travelers.  Last summer, he offered visitors to the Norman Rockwell Museum a tour of his sculptures on the grounds.  As an expert on sculpting techniques, Peter is the author of several rare books on stone carving in Italy and India, including "The Art of Stoneworking," "The Unfinished: Stone Carvers at Work on the Indian Subcontinent" and "The Compleat Marble Sleuth."  Clarence Fanto  https://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/rockwell-son-peter-who-wielded-ebullient-creative-force-as-sculptor-dies-at-83,596992

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  Time is the fairest and toughest judge. - Edgar Quinet, historian (17 Feb 1803-1875)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2225  February 17, 2020

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