Greenbacks were paper currency (printed in green on
the back) issued by the United States during the American Civil War. They were in
two forms: Demand Notes,
issued in 1861–1862, and United States Notes issued in 1862–1865. They were legal tender by law, but
were not backed by gold or silver, only the credibility of
the U.S. government. Before the
Civil War, the only money issued by the United States was gold and silver coins, and only such coins
("specie") were legal tender; that is, payment in that form
had to be accepted. Paper currency in
the form of banknotes was
issued by privately owned banks; the notes being redeemable for specie at the
bank's office. They were not legal
tender. Such notes had value only if the
bank could be counted on to redeem them.
If a bank failed, its notes became worthless.
In 1864
came Lincoln's crowning environmental achievement: the Yosemite Grant Act. That law declared Yosemite Valley and
Mariposa Grove—together totaling about 39,000 acres of gorgeous California wilderness as protected areas owned by the
state. Washington Post February 17, 2020 See also The 10 Greenest Presidents in U.S.
History by Brian Clark Howard at https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/g1925/greenest-presidents-460808/
To pike is
a colloquialism unique to Australia, meaning to 'go quickly'. And a piker is
the type of person who would opt out of an arrangement or challenge or not
do their fair share. Often, at the last
moment. There is a particular stigma associated with pikers, from people who
are stood up at engagements by what can be trivial excuses. In Australia,
pikers are pretty low down on the scale of things. The verb itself has a variety of phrasal verb
variants associated with it such as pike out and pike
on. But the morbid pike it,
meaning to die is perhaps the darkest of these.
The definition origin is unknown but thought to come from an older
meaning of the word pike, 'to run away'. There are two other meanings of the word
piker. One is "someone who gambles,
speculates, etc., in a small, cautious way." And another is "someone who, from diffidence
or lack of courage, does anything in a contemptibly small or cheap
way." Both have a similar tone to
the first, and neither are particularly flattering. https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/blog/article/570/
“Reading has been a big
part of my life since childhood. I’d
walk my brother Eddie home from school and we’d stop at the downtown library,
where the librarians always found fun and interesting things to read. They fostered an appreciation for reading
that gave us a foundation for lifelong learning.” Doris Hedler (1918-2019) scholar, mother,
singer, mentor
HOMES OF SIX WRITERS At Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts,
built circa 1650, it is estimated that 80% of the furnishings were owned by the
Alcotts. There, Louisa May Alcott wrote
"Little Women" at a desk her father, noted abolitionist and
transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott, built for her. "The rooms she's describing in the book
are actually the rooms in Orchard House," says the home's executive
director, Jan Turnquist." A visit to Emily Dickinson's home in
Amherst, Massachusetts includes the Homestead, the poet's home, with a
museum on the ground floor, and the Evergreens, her brother's home next
door. Dickinson was reclusive, so her
home was her world. Dickinson's poetry,
with its much-studied hyphenation and stunning leaps of imagination, has fueled
admiration for centuries, nearly all of it after her 1886 death, when her
sister found her poems in her dresser drawer.
Dickinson had been only lightly published during her lifetime, and that
anonymously. The Homestead opened for
tours in 1965, while the Evergreens opened in the early 2000s. Anyone
who read the nine-volume autobiographical "Little House on the
Prairie" series knows that the Ingalls family moved around
constantly. While places where young
Laura lived can be found in six states, some consist of reproduction cabins or
land where homestead shanties or dugouts once stood. At the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic
Home & Museum, Mansfield, Missouri, you can tour the Rocky
Ridge Farm, where Laura and her husband Almanzo lived and farmed starting in
1896 Pearl S. Buck House, Perkasie,
Pennsylvania A champion for
social justice, Buck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for her novel "The
Good Earth," a portrayal of a Chinese farming family, and six years later
won the Nobel Prize in literature, the first American woman to do so. The child of West Virginian missionaries, Buck
spent much of her life in China, but the stone farmhouse in Pennsylvania,
formerly called Green Hills Farm, was her home from 1934 to 1969. Her moss-green Royal typewriter, used for
writing "The Good Earth," is on display. Mount Lenox in Massachusetts is the
former home of Edith Wharton, whose 40-plus books include classic
novels such as "The Age of Innocence" as well as nonfiction works,
was the first female Pulitzer Prize winner. In 1902 she designed the Mount and its formal
gardens, calling upon her architectural and design expertise. She and her husband lived in the home until
1911, and during that time she wrote "The House of Mirth" and
"Ethan Frome." Eudora Welty
lived in Jackson, Mississippi from 1925 until her death in 2001, and it is
where she wrote most of her fiction and essays. The furnishings are completely authentic, as
Welty decided to bequeath the home to the state of Mississippi in 1986, well
before she died. Nearly every wall is
lined with books, a testament to her love of literature--as a child, she read
two library books a day. Outside,
heirloom gardens established by her mother are still tended. Welty is known as a short-story writer but won
the Pulitzer for her novel "The Optimist's Daughter." Erika Mailman
Find location and visiting hours for the six female writers’ homes at https://www.postguam.com/entertainment/lifestyle/take-a-step-into-history/article_7598a880-4957-11ea-b039-77783419e0f3.html
Blue was most commonly
associated with St. Patrick, and the color became known as 'St. Patrick's
blue'. The first formal use of the
colour blue was used under the reign of King Henry VIII in 1542 as he
split from Catholicism and declared Ireland a separate kingdom. This formal creation of an Irish kingdom
meant that Ireland was granted its own coat of arms--a golden harp placed
against a blue background--one that still stands today. In 1789, green become a symbol of Irish
nationalism at the start of a series of rebellions against the UK, and with a
growing sense of Irish republicanism, it was seen as important way of
distinguishing themselves from the colours of other British lands, particularly
Scotland who donned a slightly darker shade of blue, and still do to this
day. Other reasons for using green are
the fact that the country is often referred to as 'The Emerald Isle'.
https://www.irishpost.com/life-style/irelands-national-colour-originally-blue-not-green-173453 See also Should We Be Wearing Blue on St.
Patrick’s Day at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/should-st-patricks-day-be-blue-180954572/
Jiggs
dinner, also called boiled dinner or cooked dinner, is a traditional meal
commonly prepared and eaten on Sundays in many regions around the Atlantic
provinces of Canada. Corned beef and
cabbage was the favorite meal of Jiggs, the central character
in the popular, long-running comic strip, Bringing Up Father,
by George McManus and Zeke Zekley after whom the dish is
likely named. The name of the dish is
also occasionally rendered as Jigs
dinner or Jigg's
dinner. In the rendering
"Jigg's dinner", the apostrophe is incorrectly placed if in reference
to the McManus character. Sometimes
referred to colloquially as "JD", "Jiggs dinner" is the
most common of all renderings. The meal
most typically consists of salt beef (or salt riblets), boiled
together with potatoes, carrot, cabbage, turnip, and cabbage or turnip greens.
Pease pudding and figgy duff are cooked in pudding bags immersed in the rich
broth that the meat and vegetables create. Condiments are
likely to include mustard pickles, pickled beets, cranberry sauce, butter, and a
thin gravy made
from the drippings of the roasted meat. The leftover
vegetables from a Jiggs dinner are often mixed into a pan and fried to make a
dish known as "cabbage hash" or "corned beef and cabbage
hash", much like bubble and squeak.
Newfoundland Figgy
Duff It has nothing to do with figs;
raisins were once referred to as figs here & are always added to this
traditional steamed pudding. Barry C.
Parsons See recipe at https://www.rockrecipes.com/newfoundland-figgy-duff/
International Women’s Day
is March 8. https://www.internationalwomensday.com/
International Men’s Day is
November 19. https://internationalmensday.com/
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2237
March 9, 2020
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