Friday, June 5, 2020


Born on February 28, 1970, Daniel Handler is a renowned American novelist, screenwriter and musician.  His main contribution is to children’s literature which he writes under pen name Lemony Snicket.  Handler was born to Lou Handler, an accountant and Sandra Handler Day, an opera singer and retired dean in San Francisco, California.  Handler started writing poetry for which the Academy of American Poets awarded him the 1990 Poets Prize.  However, he directed his attention toward fiction after brief poetry writing.  For a national radio show he produced comedy sketches alongside writing novels.  Later, he took a freelance movie/book critique job in New York City.  Eventually, he published his debut novel in 1999, The Basic Eight.  The novel was rejected repeatedly before its publication for its sarcastic tone and treatment of a dark subject matter.  It features the character of Flannery Culp, imprisoned for murdering school fellow and a teacher.  Daniel Handler also earned great praise for writing screenplays.  The first screenplay he wrote was based on Verdi opera Rigoletto.  Then he effectively adapted Joel Rose’s Kill the Poor in the screenplay.  Handler was requested to work on the screenplay of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.  However, he finally abandoned the task after producing eight different drafts, in favor of Robert Gordon’s screenplay for the adaptation.  A story collection entitled, Adverbs is also Handler’s contribution to fiction writing.  https://www.famousauthors.org/daniel-handler  See also https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/lemony-snicket/ listing the titles from A Series of Unfortunate Events beginning with #1, The Bad Beginning (1999) through #13, The End (2006).   

Quotes by Daniel Handler  “A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.”   “This is love, to sit with someone you've known forever in a place you've been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it's time to go.”  “Stop saying no offense,” I said, “when you say offensive things.  It’s not a free pass.” https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7176.Daniel_Handler

Albion is an alternative name for the island of Great Britain.  It is sometimes used poetically to refer to the island, but has fallen out of common use in English.  The name for Scotland in most of the Celtic languages is related to Albion: Alba in Scottish GaelicAlbain (genitive Alban) in IrishNalbin in Manx and Alban in Welsh and Cornish.  These names were later Latinised as Albania and Anglicised as Albany, which were once alternative names for Scotland.  New Albion and Albionoria ("Albion of the North") were briefly suggested as names of Canada during the period of the Canadian Confederation.  Arthur Phillip, first leader of the colonisation of Australia, originally named Sydney Cove "New Albion", but later the colony acquired the name "Sydney".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion

Here Are The 13 Artworks Stolen The Night Of The Gardner Museum Heist by Lloyd Schwartz   The list includes 'The Concert' by Johannes Vermeer (1663-1666).  The Vermeer is generally considered the rarest and most valuable of the lost treasures—at least partly because so few of his paintings are known to exist. (The current consensus is 37, but some scholars still have doubts about the genuineness of three of them.)  See detailed descriptions and illustrations at https://www.wbur.org/artery/2018/08/20/lastseen-gardner-heist-missing-art 

Despite some promising leads in the past, the Gardner theft of 1990 remains unsolved.  The Museum, the FBI, and the US Attorney's office are still seeking viable leads that could result in safe return of the art. 
The Museum is offering a reward of $10 million for information leading directly to the recovery of all 13 works in good condition.  A separate reward of $100,000 is being offered for the return of the Napoleonic eagle finial.  https://www.gardnermuseum.org/organization/theft#gref

The Hermitage Academic Library is Russia’s largest and one of its oldest museum libraries.  Dedicated to art history, it has been an unalienable part of the Hermitage since its foundation.  It is believed to have been created in 1762, the year when Catherine the Great established the position of a librarian for her book collection.  At present, the Academic Library contains over 800 000 publications on art, history and historical sciences, and architecture in Russian and many European and Oriental languages.  The Academic Library consists of the Central Library and eight branches at the museum’s curatorial departments:  the Department of Western European Fine Art and Department of Western European Applied Art Library, the Department of Classical Antiquities Library, the Oriental Department Library, the Department of Eastern European and Siberian Archaeology Library, the Numismatic Department Library, the Menshikov Palace Library, and the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory Museum Library.  Find contact information at

“There was always a buzz when he entered a room, a buzz that could be described as negative.”  “He described his overstuffed warehouse, where he stored his paintings, as either ‘a junkyard with gems or a gemyard with junk’"  Tissot [Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836–1902), Anglicized as James Tissot, a French painter and illustrator] was the master of a small subject--the rich--and he swathed the women in yards of fabric and painted them midflounce as they disembarked from boats, lounged in parks, or sat on window seats overlooking the sea."  https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/549017010795141008/  “She neared 54th Streer, where the bike path emerged from under the highway trestle and the buildings retreated, giving the feeling that Manhattan was doing its best to have a prairie.”  An Object of Beauty, novel by Steve Martin  See also Steve Martin Finds His Muse In 'An Object Of Beauty', an interview heard on Talk of the Nation at https://www.npr.org/2010/11/29/131671947/steve-martin-muses-on-an-object-of-beauty

There are three typical types of odes:  the Pindaric, Horatian, and Irregular.  The Pindaric is named for the ancient Greek poet Pindar, who is credited with innovating this choral ode form (as opposed to monodies, odes sung by individuals, which were written by Greek lyric poets Alcaeus and Sappho).  Pindaric odes were performed with a chorus and dancers, and often composed to celebrate athletic victories.  The William Wordsworth poem "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" is a very good example of an English language Pindaric ode.  The Horatian ode, named for the Roman poet Horace, is generally more tranquil and contemplative than the Pindaric ode.  Less formal, less ceremonious, and better suited to quiet reading than theatrical production, the Horatian ode typically uses a regular, recurrent stanza pattern.  An example is the Allen Tate poem "Ode to the Confederate Dead" .  The Irregular ode has employed all manner of formal possibilities, while often retaining the tone and thematic elements of the classical ode.  For example, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats was written based on his experiments with the sonnet.  https://poets.org/glossary/ode

June 1, 2020  Almost half a million people logged on to watch stars like Sandi Toksvig, Tori Amos and Stephen Fry at the first online Hay Festival.  The 33rd edition of the literary event was free and broadcast online over the past two weeks after receiving donations of £350,000.  The Hay Festival went digital for this year because coronavirus lockdown rules meant it could not be staged in Powys.  "Hundreds of thousands" enjoyed Hay for the first time, organisers said.  "We've seen writers, actors and scientists respond to the technology with imagination and daring," said director Peter Florence.  Novelist and poet Margaret Atwood, actor Benedict Cumberbatch and actress Helena Bonham Carter joined the likes of comedian and broadcaster Fry, The Great British Bake Off presenter Toksvig and singer Amos at this year's Hay.  The festival boasted 100 award-winning writers and it attracted 490,000 people from 70 countries.  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-52875868?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology&link_location=live-reporting-story

April 24, 2020  COMING TO YOU LIVE FROM THE LIBRARY! by Rica Bouso  Enjoy virtual story times from Chicago’s most familiar faces and beloved librarians—live from the library!

June 3, 2020  Scientists using an aerial remote-sensing method have discovered the largest and oldest-known structure built by the ancient Maya civilization--a colossal rectangular elevated platform built between 1,000 and 800 BC in Mexico’s Tabasco state.  The structure, unlike the soaring Maya pyramids at cities like Tikal in Guatemala and Palenque in Mexico erected some 1,500 years later, was not built of stone but rather of clay and earth, and likely was used for mass rituals, researchers said.  Located at a site called Aguada Fenix near the Guatemalan border, the structure measured nearly a quarter mile (400 meters) wide and nine-tenths of a mile (1,400 meters) long and stood 33 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) high.  In total volume, it exceeded ancient Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza built 1,500 years earlier.  Will Dunham  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-maya/oldest-and-largest-ancient-maya-structure-found-in-mexico-idUSKBN23A2EH

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2280  June 5, 2020

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