The western sand cherry, Prunus besseyi, is a native plant.  It is a low shrub and a member of the rose family, Rosaceae.  This plant was first identified and given a Latin name by botanist Charles Edwin Bessey (1845-1915).  The name should ring a bell.  The U.S. Forest Service’s Bessey Ranger District that encompasses the Nebraska National Forest near Halsey and Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest near Valentine bears his name, as does the Bessey Tree Nursery at the forest near Halsey.  Known as the Bessey’s cherry, American cherry or beach plum, Native Americans consumed sand cherries ripe and fresh off the bush, but also dried them for later use.  Early settlers also discovered the flavor of the sand cherries and featured them in many things such as pies, jellies, jams, syrups and wines.  It was said that sand cherry pie was a pioneer favorite!  In fact, the western sand cherry fruit remains prized for consumption today.  Sand cherry fruit is usually dark purple to black in color, indicating high anthocyanin levels, which suggest high antioxidant levels.  Ripe sand cherries are also consumed by many wildlife species, so please don’t take more than you can use.  Greg Wagner  See pictures and find a recipe for Wagner’s Sand Cherry Pie at http://magazine.outdoornebraska.gov/2015/06/nebraskas-hidden-fruit-the-sand-cherry/

Houghton, MI, located on Highway 41 in the Upper Peninsula, was named after Douglass Houghton who was Michigan's first appointed state geologist.  Douglass Houghton discovered the vast copper deposits in the Keweenaw Peninsula in 1840, and the town started to grow and develop.  Houghton is the home of Michigan Technological University and the A. E. Seaman Mineralogical Museum.  The Museum holds an exciting collection of minerals from the area, as well as other parts of the world and is open to the public.  Wild thimbleberries, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries abound throughout the area.  The thimbleberry, a rare, intense showy red berry, is considered quite a delicacy.  http://www.exploringthenorth.com/houghton/index.html

“The first big mining boom happened here, even before the gold rush out west.  Copper Country, they called it.”  Misery Bay, #9 in the Alex McKnight series (set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula) by Steve Hamilton

Vendetta may refer to a feud or a long-running argument or fight.  See uses in film, literature and more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendetta

To be called an iconoclast today is usually kind of cool—they're rugged individualists, bold thinkers who don't give a hoot what tradition calls for.  But back in medieval Greece, the iconoclasts had a more thuggish reputation.  Stemming from the Greek words eikon, meaning "image," and klastes, meaning "breaker," an iconoclast was someone who destroyed religious sculptures and paintings.  https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/iconoclast  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconoclasm

Rustic Jam Shortbread Tart by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift  Cut into buttery little pieces, this cross between a tart and a cookie crumbles and then melts away as you eat it.  This shortbread comes together in a blur.  You sidestep a rolling pin by patting the crust into the pan with your fingers, and the filling is as easy as taking jam straight from the refrigerator.  Shortbread is a gift to all the pastry-shy of this world.  Its generous amount of butter and lack of liquid protects the dough from toughening.  Shortbread is also the first cousin of the dreaded piecrust.  When you bake with almonds, as in this shortbread, remember that the ones sold in the baking aisle are often tasteless.  It's better to use nuts from the snack section.  Don't worry if they are salted or not skinned, they will be fine in this recipe.  Serve the tart warm, but not hot because hot jam can burn.  Keeps 2 days tightly wrapped on the counter.  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/rustic-jam-shortbread-tart  serves 4 to 6

Two locations in the United States have been worked as commercial diamond mines.  The first was a mine near Murfreesboro, Arkansas.  It was worked as a commercial diamond mine by a succession of operators in the early 1900s but closed because the deposit was subeconomic.  Today it is known as the "Crater of Diamonds" and is operated by the State of Arkansas as a tourist "pay-to-dig mine" where anyone can pay a fee, look for diamonds, and keep any that they find.  Up to a few hundred carats of diamonds are found there each year.  The second was the Kelsey Lake Diamond Mine near Fort Collins, Colorado.  It produced small amounts of diamonds between 1996 and 2002, when the mine was closed due to legal problems.  See many graphics at https://geology.com/gemstones/united-states-diamond-production.shtml

Richard de Bury (1287–1345), also known as Richard Aungerville or Aungervyle, was an English priest, teacher, bishop, writer, and bibliophile.  He was a patron of learning and one of the first English collectors of books.  He is chiefly remembered for his Philobiblon, written to inculcate in the clergy the pursuit of learning and the love of books.  The Philobiblon is considered one of the earliest books to discuss librarianship in-depth.  Richard de Bury gives an account of the unwearied efforts made by himself and his agents to collect books.  He records his intention of founding a hall at Oxford, and in connection with it a library in which his books were to form the nucleus.  He even details the dates to be observed for the lending and care of the books, and had already taken the preliminary steps for the foundation.  The bishop died, however, in great poverty on 14 April 1345at Bishop Auckland, and it seems likely that his collection was dispersed immediately after his death.  Of it, the traditional account is that the books were sent to the Durham Benedictines Durham College, Oxford which was shortly thereafter founded by Bishop Hatfield, and that on the dissolution of the foundation by Henry VIII they were divided between Duke Humphrey of Gloucester's library, Balliol College, Oxford, and George Owen.  Only two of the volumes are known to be in existence; one is a copy of John of Salisbury's works in the British Museum, and the other some theological treatises by Anselm and others in the Bodleian.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_de_Bury

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  What if I told you that the word mob is a trimmed form of the word mobile (from Latin mobile vulgus:  fickle crowd)?  That van is a sheared-off part of caravan, bus of omnibus, and wig of periwig?  Linguists call it clipping.  It works both ways: you can clip the front part or the rear.  Taxi is short for taxicab, which is short for taximeter cab, and cab is short for cabriolet, which is French for a goat’s leap, from cabrioler (to leap in the air).  Sometimes clipped forms are respelled, for example, bae (short for baby/babe, a term of endearment).  rad  noun  One who advocates fundamental or far-reaching change or reform.  adjective  Extraordinary; wonderful; fashionable; hip; cool.  From shortening of radical, from Latin radix (root).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root wrad- (branch, root), which also gave us radish, root, rutabaga, eradicate, and ramify.  Earliest documented use:  1820 for noun, 1976 for adjective.

When the “Ancient Mariner” Big Read began streaming on April 18, 2020 inaugurated with some superb croaking from Jeremy Irons, I whooped in celebration.  An online read-through of the “Rime,” in 40 free daily installments, with accompanying visuals, by 40 different readers and artists?  Well done, humans. What a species!  Still vibrating from an astonishing remote show by the Norwegian punk-metallers Kvelertak, live-streamed on April 10 from some Scandinavian hangar, I took this “Rime” at first for a similarly inspired and rapidly pulled-together lockdown response.  Not at all.  Lovingly curated, exquisitely produced, the “Ancient Mariner” Big Read was three years in the making.  It just happens to have dropped with eerie appropriateness right into our thirsty and atomized pandemical condition:  people, people everywhere, nor anyone you can hug.  As I write, on day 21 of this voyage, Neil Tennant (of Pet Shop Boys) has just dropped a few chilly-voiced verses.  “Beneath the lightning and the Moon / The dead men gave a groan.”  The albatross fell from the mariner’s neck three days ago, after he redeemed himself, or healed himself, with a spontaneous upsurge of creaturely adoration, and we are now in the second—and to me, deeply bewildering—part of the poem.  The ship drives on, crewed by dead men.  The sea is alive.  Dreams and terrors await, and then a turn for home.  How can you not listen?  James Parker  https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/05/rime-ancient-mariner-was-made-2020/611602/

  

A THOUGHT FOR MAY 15  As a leader, you have to have the ability to assimilate new information and understand that there might be a different view. - Madeleine Albright, diplomat and author (b. 15 May 1937)

May 15 is the International Day of Families, which is recognized by the United Nations to promote awareness of issues relating to families and to increase knowledge of the demographic, economic, and social processes affecting families.  Wiktionary 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2268  May 15, 2020