Monday, June 8, 2020


June 4, 2020  Plans have been approved for the UK's first Frankenstein museum, celebrating author Mary Shelley's most famous story.  Shelley wrote much of the novel while living in Bath over 200 years ago.  The go-ahead has now been given for a Grade II-listed building in the city's Gay Street to be converted to house the new attraction.  Bath and North East Somerset Council said it would bring a welcome boost to its tourism industry.  Many museums are said to fear for their future due to the effects of the coronavirus lockdown.  Jonathan Willis, one of a trio leading the project, said:  "Frankenstein was effectively the first sci-fi novel.  It's in the top 100 most influential books of all time--but no one in Bath mentions it."  Shelley, then named Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, lived in Bath's Abbey Churchyard from 1816.  It was there it is believed she wrote much of Frankenstein, having been inspired by a ghost-story competition with friends.  The story—much adapted by various films--explored the ethics of science over creation.  Frankenstein was published anonymously in 1818 to avoid the additional controversy of it being written by a woman.  https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-52923492

Home Wine Making Kit cartoon featuring two sticks with fake feet attached:  https://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/h/home_wine_making_kit.asp  Artist:  Naf   Search ID:  amc0419 

“The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach” comes from Andrew Marvell's poem, The Garden, written in 1681.  Curious is used to mean exquisite.  Nectarines (name comes from nectar) are smaller and sweeter than peaches. 

A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959.  The title comes from the poem "Harlem" (also known as "A Dream Deferred") by Langston Hughes.  The story tells of a black family's experiences in south Chicago, as they attempt to improve their financial circumstances with an insurance payout following the death of the father  The New York Drama Critics' Circle named it the best play of 1959, and in recent years publications such as The Independent and Time Out have listed it among the best plays ever written.  See descriptions of spinoffs including film and musical at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Raisin_in_the_Sun

The Nature Conservancy estimates that New York City has 40,000 acres of rooftops, some of which are viable for green roof installments that can absorb rainwater and reduce air pollution and urban heat island effects.  *  In the 2019 film Honeyland, beekeeper Hatidze Muratova takes half the honey raised by her bees, and leaves half for the bees themselves.  Honeyland was nominated for both best documentary and best international film at the 2020 Academy Awards.  *  The Nature Conservancy’s 40,000-acre Virginia Coast Reserve, a string of 14 barrier islands, is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2020.  It’s the site of efforts to restore marine habitats, including oyster reefs and scallop beds--and part of an effort to bring back eelgrass, wiped out by disease and a hurricane in the 1930s. 

Dutch angle (shot)/ Dutch tilt/ canted angle  A shot introduced by German Expressionist directors made with a tilted camera that causes the horizon in the shot to be diagonal to the bottom of the frame.  “Dutch” does not refer to Holland; it is a distortion of “Deutch,” which is German in German.  Unlike Hollywood, which was serving happy-ending storytelling to a salad days America, the German film industry was part of an Expressionist movement in art and literature trying to digest the insanity of world war.  Film is motion.  The Dutch angle—presenting moving pictures diagonally—is filmmaking’s way of visually evoking responses comparable to those evoked by dynamic art.  In the late 1930s, the techniques of German Expressionism went Hollywood.  The Dutch angle was employed by innovative directors such as James Whales in “The Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), Orson Wells in “Citizen Kane” (1939), John Huston in the “Maltese Falcon” (1941), Alfred Hitchcock in “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943), and Carol Reed in “The Third Man” (1949).  Reed employed the Dutch angle so often in the “The Third Man” that his crew gifted him a level at the wrap party.  More recent movies using Dutch angles include “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998), “Batman Begins” (2005), “Slum Dog Millionaire” (2008), “Doubt” (2008), and "Star Trek:  Final Stand" (2010).  http://www.hollywoodlexicon.com/dutchangle.html

"Salad days" is a Shakespearean idiomatic expression meaning a youthful time, accompanied by the inexperience, enthusiasm, idealism, innocence, or indiscretion that one associates with a young person.  A more modern use, especially in the United States, refers to a heyday, a period when somebody was at the peak of their abilities—not necessarily in that person's youth.  The quote "salad days" is from the Shakespearean play Antony and Cleopatra and is spoken in Act 1, Scene 5, by Cleopatra.  The phrase has been used as the title of several books, including the novels Salad Days by Francoise Sagan and by Charles Romalotti, the autobiography The Salad Days by Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and numerous cookbooks.  Salad Days is a British musical with music by Julian Slade and lyrics by Dorothy Reynolds and Julian Slade.  It premiered in the UK at the Theatre Royal, Bristol, in June 1954, and transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in London on 5 August 1954.  One of its songs, "The Time of My Life", includes the lyrics We're young and we're green as the leaf on the tree / For these are our salad days.  Episode 33 of the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus is called "Salad Days", and features a grotesque parody of Slade's musical as interpreted by Sam Peckinpah.  Procol Harum has a song on their eponymous debut album entitled "Salad Days (Are Here Again)".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad_days

ABC initially ordered the Batman series with Adam West for the 1966-67 TV season, but before going on the air Batman was shown to test audiences, a common practice both then and now.  The opening episode received the worst audience test scores in the history of ABC.  According to Adam West, a nervous ABC required the producers to hold two additional test screenings of the show, one with a laugh track added, the other with additional narration.  Neither alteration made any difference to the results.  In the two factors resulted in Batman actually making it to broadcast.  Firstly, ABC had already invested so much money into it, and secondly thanks to a number of cancelled series in the 1965-66 TV season they found themselves in desperate need of programming, so the network decided to add the show as a mid-season replacement in January 1966.  In all the scenes of the villains' hideouts, the camera filmed at an angle or "crooked".  This was employed to give a sense of something being wrong because all the villains were also crooked.   See pictures of villains at http://www.warpedfactor.com/2015/03/25-things-you-might-not-know-about.html  The 120 episodes aired on the ABC network for three seasons from January 12, 1966 to March 14, 1968, twice weekly for the first two and weekly for the third.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_(TV_series)

Language is fluid, turning into a flood in the 21st century as people assign new meanings and change parts of speech with abandon. 

Edwin Parker Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, on April 25, 1928.  His father, Edwin Parker Twombly Sr., was born in Groveland, Massachusetts, and his mother, Mary Velma Richardson, came from Bar Harbor, Maine.  Edwin Twombly Sr. was a professional baseball player who once pitched for the Chicago White Sox in the American League.  He was Athletic Director of the Washington and Lee University in Lexington and he was so admired by the college that a new swimming pool was named the "Twombly Natatorium" in his honor.  The artist inherited his father’s baseball nickname “Cy”, after the baseball player Cyclone Young.  Cy Twombly died July 5, 2011 in Rome.  Read much more and see illustrations at http://www.cytwombly.org/biography

The White House is almost completely surrounded by fencing.  In total, Google Maps analysis suggests, roughly 1.7 miles of fencing now surrounds the executive complex, forming a gigantic metal cocoon.  The Washington Post  June 7, 2020

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2281  June 8, 2020 

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