Tuesday, March 3, 2020


Béarnaise sauce is a sauce made of clarified butter emulsified in egg yolks and white wine vinegar and flavored with herbs.  It is considered to be a "child" of the mother Hollandaise sauce, one of the five mother sauces in the French haute cuisine repertoire.  The difference is only in the flavoring:  Béarnaise uses shallotchervilpeppercorns, and tarragon in a reduction of vinegar and wine, while Hollandaise is more stripped down, using a reduction of lemon juice or white wine. The sauce was accidentally invented by the chef Jean-Louis Françoise-Collinet, the accidental inventor of puffed potatoes (pommes de terre soufflées), and served at the 1836 opening of Le Pavillon Henri IV, a restaurant at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, not far from Paris.  This assumption is supported by the fact that the restaurant was in the former residence of Henry IV of France, a gourmet himself, who was from Béarn, a former province now in the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques in southwestern France.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9arnaise_sauce

Names talk.  Every baby name choice speaks of parents’ values and dreams.  Every personal name tells a miniature story of culture and identity.  And naming patterns, across time and around the world, speak even louder.  They’re a candid window on society: a fossil record of culture.  Namerology.com is the home for name enthusiasts, and anyone with a naming question that they’d like answered with an analytical mindset and a positive attitude.  Namerology founder Laura Wattenberg is the author of the Baby Name Wizard books and the original founder of BabyNameWizard.com.  Her research-based approach to names, and groundbreaking tools like the NameVoyager grapher and MatchMaker name finder, have helped change the way the world views baby names.  Namerology, founded in March 2019, is still in its infancy.  It will grow to include new tools and new ways of exploring names.  https://namerology.com/about/  See also “Naming a Kid for a Fictional Character Is High Stakes; the Jolenes and Daeneryses of the world have some baggage to contend with” by Julie Beck at

Mathematics illuminates the patterns that shape the world around us.  Visit the National Museum of Mathematics and discover a side of math you’ve never seen before.  The Museum is located at 11 East 26th Street in Manhattan and is open from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, seven days a week, 364 days a year (MoMath is closed on Thanksgiving Day).  MoMath closes early the first Wednesday of every month, at 2:30 pm.  https://momath.org/visit/  Explore the connection between math and music; discover how a bicycle with square wheels rides smoothly over a rough surface; ponder why a pentagon-shaped bathroom sink is more efficient than a square one; and play with algorithms that make lights change color when you move your body.  You might even discover the mathematics of language, such as iambic pentameter, the math-structured pattern of much of our favorite poetry, including rap.  Which means there is a strong math connection to the hit Broadway show Hamilton.  Opened in 2012, this museum, also known as MoMath, surprisingly is the only museum in North America dedicated to math.  https://www.nyconthecheap.com/2015/08/best-nyc-museums-momath/  This description of MoMath is excerpted from the article “The Best NYC Museums You Never Heard Of” written by NYC on the Cheap editor Evelyn Kanter, published in the May/June 2015 issue of AAA World.

Jonathan Pryce was born on June 1, 1947 in Holywell, Wales.  He is a two-time Tony and two-time Olivier Award-winning actor of the stage and a Golden Globe and two-time Emmy-nominated screen actor.  He is perhaps best known for his TV role as The High Sparrow in HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones,” as Cardinal Wolsey on the BBC/PBS series “Wolf Hall,” for his film roles in the likes of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Evita,” “Tomorrow Never Dies,” “The Wife,” and Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, and for originating the role of The Engineer in Miss Saigon in London’s West End and on Broadway.  In his early years, John Price (his birth name) attended Holywell Grammar School in Wales and would eventually begin training to be a teacher at Edge Hill College in Lancashire, England.  After appearing in a college production, his tutor applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on his behalf and he was awarded a scholarship.  He changed his professional name to Jonathan Pryce to become a member of Equity (as the name John Price was already taken) and began his professional career on the British stage, working at the Everyman Theatre Liverpool Company (where he would ultimately become Artistic Director), as well as the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Nottingham Playhouse.

In 2019, Fraunces Tavern the oldest standing structure in Manhattan, celebrated its 300th birthday.  Built by the De Lancey family in 1719, 54 Pearl Street has been a private residence, hotel, and one of the most important taverns of the Revolutionary War.  The island of Manhattan was originally inhabited by the Lenape people.  This matrilineal tribe-like society occupied the lower Hudson River Valley and the Delaware Valley.  The Lenape were skilled hunters but maintained an agricultural society, planting mostly beans, squash, and corn.  The first contact with Europeans was in 1524 when Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485-1528), in the service of the King Francis I of France, explored North America.  The canoeing Lenape encountered Verrazzano’s ship, La Dauphine, in Lower New York Bay.  While investigating the Bay, Verrazzano documented what he believed to be a lake, which was actually the entrance to the Hudson River.  In 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson (1560s/70s), was sailing for the Dutch East India Company,  looking for easterly passage to Asia and spent ten days ascending the River that now bears his name.  His voyage was used to establish Dutch claims to the region.  In 1625, New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island became the capital of New Netherland.  The trading Hudson did with the Lenape people would be the start of the prosperous fur trade that existed well into the 1800s.  Fraunces Tavern® Museum | Women of the Revolutionary War  Special Guided Tour (every Saturday and Sunday in March at 1:00pm  Explore the incredible, often overlooked stories of women who played a pivotal role in the Revolution, including patriotic women fighting for independence, loyalist women fighting to suppress the rebellion, and African American and Native American women whose future and security were caught in the cross fire.  https://www.frauncestavernmuseum.org/  The Fraunces Tavern Museum was established in 1907.  Samuel Fraunces was born around 1722.  He is first documented in New York City in 1755 when he registered with the City as a “freeman” and “innholder.” Fraunces Tavern® Museum | 54 Pearl Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10004 | 212-425-1778  Monday-Friday 12:00-5:00pm | Saturday & Sunday 11:00am-5:00pm  https://www.frauncestavernmuseum.org/history

Jason Segel's Dispatches From Elsewhere Is Based On a Secretive Real-World Adventure Game by Gabrielle Bruney   Ten years ago, thousands took to the streets of San Francisco as part of an immersive alternate reality game.  Now, it's the basis for a new AMC series.  But AMC’s new show, Dispatches From Elsewhere, doesn’t sound like one of them.  It tells the story of four very different strangers, played by Sally Field, André Benjamin, newcomer Eve Lindley, and showrunner Jason Segel, who are all thrown together via a secret scavenger hunt-like game.  In this world, the Jejune Institute, a sort of love child of the DHARMA Initiative and the Church of Scientology, promises to expand human potential through its astounding technological advances, like a camera that can take pictures of the past.  Opposing Jejune and its mysterious leader, Octavio Coleman, Esq. (played by Richard E. Grant), is the Elsewhere Society, an Occupy-style outsider movement.  The show’s characters are drawn into the world of these dueling and deeply strange organizations, both of which are on the hunt for long-missing young woman named Eva.  In 2008, flyers very like the ones Peter notices in Dispatches’ premier began popping up around San Francisco.  Whether they advertised a “personal human force field” or a “memory to media center” able to “render moving video images from your active memory,” all directed readers to call the Jejune Institute‘s telephone number or visit its website.  Those who did were given instructions to visit an office building, where they were inducted into the game via a video featuring a man who claimed to be Jejune founder Octavio Coleman.  From there, participants embarked on a treasure-hunt like adventure that brought them deep into the story.  It was all part of an elaborate alternate reality adventure called Games of Nonchalance, which was created by Oakland-based artist Jeff Hull.  In the 2013 documentary about the project, The Instituteco-producer Uriah Finley, described it as, “a game that you play by going out into the city and doing things, and as you do that you become part of the story that is unfolding.”  Hull said that he wanted the project to encourage “spontaneity and play into our civic spaces.”  To pull off the complicated endeavor, its creators recruited actors and also involved regular people and businesses, and hid clues in everyday objects like street signs, bricks, and pay phones.  Before the game ended its three-year run in 2011, more than 7,000 people participated.  https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a31159284/jason-segel-dispatches-from-elsewhere-jejune-institute-true-story-game/  Principal photography for the series commenced in the PhiladelphiaUpper Darby Township, Pennsylvania area in July 2019, with filming also expected to take place in Radnor Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.  Some scenes were shot in the tunnels under Girard College.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatches_from_Elsewhere

Beginning March 12-20, all households will begin receiving official Census Bureau mail with detailed information on how to respond to the 2020 Census.  Every person living in the U.S. is required to complete the census--which can be done by phone, email, traditional mail or in person.  Toledo-Lucas County Public Library

census noun  1610s, in reference to registration and taxation in Roman history, from Latin census "the enrollment of the names and property assessments of all Roman citizens," originally past participle of censere "to assess" (see censor ).  The modern use of census as "official enumeration of the inhabitants of a country or state, with details" begins in the U.S. (1790), and Revolutionary France (1791).  Property for taxation was the primary purpose in Rome, hence Latin census also was used for "one's wealth, one's worth, wealthiness."  https://www.etymonline.com/word/census

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2234  March 3, 2020 

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