Wednesday, June 10, 2020


What’s considered to be the first atlas was first available in an Antwerp printshop on May 20, 1570.  It was large, handsome, and expensive, with the grandiose title of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, or in English Theater of the Orb of the World.  Produced by the cartographer Abraham Ortelius, it was one of the most popular books of the era.  Ortelius had invented the world.  Never before had all cartographic knowledge been compiled together; never before could a reader imagine the totality of the Earth so completely.  Simon Garfield writes in On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks that the Theatrum’s “colors were rich and saturated, the lettering (in Latin) elaboratively cursive.  The cartouches . . . burst with vivid additional information.”  Within the folio were some 53 beautifully illustrated and colored maps based on the illustrations of 87 cartographers (who were all duly given credit), including the most up-to-date work of Gerardus Mercator.  The Theatrum depicted lands from California to Cathay, from the Kara Sea to the Cape of Good Hope.  The book was “a huge and instant success,” Garfield writes, “despite the fact it was the most expensive book ever produced.”  Though Mercator wouldn’t appropriate the term until 1595, the Theatrum was the first of a type—an atlas.  posted by Ed Simon  http://nautil.us/blog/the-book-that-invented-the-world

Janet Loxley Lewis (1899–1998) was an American novelist and poet.  Lewis was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she was a member of a literary circle that included Glenway WescottElizabeth Madox Roberts, and her future husband Yvor Winters.  She was an active member of the University of Chicago Poetry Club.  She taught at both Stanford University in California, and the University of California at Berkeley.  She wrote The Wife of Martin Guerre (1941) which is the tale of one man's deception and another’s cowardice.  Her first novel was The Invasion:  A Narrative of Events Concerning the Johnston Family of St. Mary's (1932).  Other prose works include The Trial of Soren Qvist (1947), The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron (1959), and the volume of short fiction, Good-bye, Son, and Other Stories (1946).  Lewis was also a poet, and concentrated on imagery, rhythms, and lyricism to achieve her goal.  Among her works are The Indians in the Woods (1922), and the later collections Poems, 1924–1944 (1950), and Poems Old and New, 1918–1978 (1981).  She also collaborated with Alva Henderson, a composer for whom she wrote three libretti and several song texts.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Lewis  See also Guide to the Margaret K. Furbush collection of Janet Lewis material M2064  Malgorzata Schaefer Department of Special Collections and University Archives Green Library  specialcollections@stanford.edu  http://library.stanford.edu/spc  https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c89w0mtg/entire_text/

Grain Salad with Many Flavors is from the book Open Kitchen  by Susan Spungen.  This salad is made with farro, an ancient and nutritious wheat that has become more and more available over the last ten years.  It’s kind of a barley on steroids and is an easy grain to handle—simply boil it in salted water until tender, drain and use just like pasta.  In this recipe, Susan combines it with lentils, cucumbers, raisins, carrots, capers, olives, and lots of fresh parsley.  In truth, any combination of things you have on hand could be included once you understand the general grain salad strategy.  Dress it simply as Susan does here and be sure to add any nuts just before serving so they don’t sog out.  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/grain-salad-with-many-flavors  TIMING TIPS:  Up to 1 day ahead:  Cook the farro and lentils.  Up to 6 hours ahead:  Prep the rest of the ingredients and assemble the salad. Refrigerate until 1 hour before serving.  serves 6-8

The original sense of “swashbuckler” was “a swaggering bravo or ruffian; a noisy braggadocio,” The Oxford English Dictionary says, tracing the first usage to 1560.  The Unabridged Merriam-Webster  favors the darker definition of “swashbuckler”:  “a boasting violently active soldier, adventurer, or ruffian”; “a blustering daredevil.”  Merrill Perlman  https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/swashbuckling-trump-jackson.php

Anagrams of pandemic:  damn epic, pan medic, nap medic, dine camp, nice damp, dim pecan, denim cap, caned imp, imp dance

Donald Justice (1925–2004)  Donald Justice was born in Miami, Florida.  A graduate of the University of Miami, he attended the universities of North Carolina, Stanford, and Iowa.  His books include New and Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995); A Donald Justice Reader (1991); The Sunset Maker (1987), a collection of poems, stories and a memoir; Selected Poems (1979), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize; Departures (1973); Night Light (1967); and The Summer Anniversaries (1959), which received the Academy's Lamont Poetry Selection.  Justice won the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1991, and received grants in poetry from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  From 1997 to 2003, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.  During his life, he held teaching positions at Syracuse University, the University of California at Irvine, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Iowa.  From 1982 until his retirement in 1992, he taught at the University of Florida, Gainesville.  After retiring, he lived in Iowa City with his wife, Jean Ross, until his death on August 6, 2004.  https://poets.org/poet/donald-justice  See also https://www.poemhunter.com/donald-justice/

June 1, 2020  As a boy coming of age in the 1930s and ’40s, Jules Feiffer had his head buried in the funny pages.  “My earliest ambition, my earliest dreams, and my earliest joy was in looking at, particularly, the Sunday supplements--the color supplements,” says Mr. Feiffer, who in time became a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist.  “It was pure and beautiful and innocent in a time when innocence was allowed.”  Forging his own path in the field of cartooning, Mr. Feiffer often gravitated toward dark, biting satire.  He maintained a weekly comic strip in The Village Voice from 1956 to 1997.  In 1993, Mr. Feiffer decided to try a genre that would ultimately reconnect him with his beloved Sunday supplements:  children’s literature.  HarperCollins has just published “Smart George,” a sequel to one of Mr. Feiffer’s most enduringly popular books, “Bark, George,” from 1999.  The original book, which focused on a canine named George who barks only after much prodding, has sold more than 300,000 copies.  Peter Tonguette  https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2020/0601/Jules-Feiffer-a-stubborn-pooch-and-a-children-s-counting-book

Announcing the Winners of the 2020 Special Edition UI Flash Writing Contest  Thank you to the more than 230 University of Iowa alumni and friends from around the world who submitted short stories during April's contest.  We asked participants to create a story of 1,000 words or less using one of two sets of prompts:  a story incorporating a bus driver and a flower, or a story incorporating a police officer and a kite.  Link to winning stories for grades 3-6, grades 7&8, 9-12, and adult at https://www.foriowa.org/write-now/


Born John Hamilton on March 26, 1916, in Montclair, N.J., the son of a New York newspaper advertising executive, Sterling Hayden went to sea at 20, serving as first mate aboard a schooner on an around-the-world voyage.  Books and the sea, I discovered, had more than a little in common:  both were distilled of silence and solitude,″ Hayden wrote in his 1963 autobiography, ″Wanderer.″  After a voyage to Tahiti, Hayden went to Hollywood in 1939 for a film career he vowed to pursue only for money.  Between films, he took to the seas again for the merchant marine.  The 6-foot-4, blue-eyed actor with a deep, husky voice began his movie career with ″Virginia″ and ″Bahama Passage″ in 1941.  During World War II, he served with the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, in Italy and Yugoslavia, running night missions under sail behind the lines to resistance forces.  He won a Silver Star, then came back to Hollywood and made 51 films through 1979.  He said he joined the Communist Party for about six months in 1946 after returning from Yugoslavia, where he fought with Tito’s partisans, but he quickly realized he was not the normal party member.  ″I was the only person to buy a yacht and join the Communist Party in the same week,″ he said.  Hayden’s first major acting role came as Dix Handley in Huston’s 1950 film- noir classic, ″The Asphalt Jungle.″  The film was a taut tale of crime foiled by its own greed and was Marilyn Monroe’s first major movie.  In 1963 he starred as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Stanley’s Kubrick’s ″Dr. Strangelove,″ singlehandedly starting World War III in order to purify the human race.  In 1971, he played a corrupt police captain in ″The Godfather.″  Other movie roles included ″The Last Command″ (1955); Kubrick’s ″The Killing″ (1956); ″Terror in a Texas Town″ (1958); ″Hard Contract″ (1969); ″Loving″ (1970); ″The Long Goodbye″ (1973); ″The Last Days of Man on Earth″ (1973); ″1900″ (1976); ″King of the Gypsies″ (1979); and ″Winter Kills″ (1979).  In 1982, he played John Brown in the CBS civil-war epic, ″The Blue and the Gray.″  Hayden, an alcoholic who finally quit drinking in 1982, saying ″I realize I can’t drink any liquor,″ was married three times and had six children and one stepson.  In addition to his autobiography, Hayden wrote a romantic and poetic novel, ″Voyager″ in 1977, about an 1896 sea journey around Cape Horn.  https://apnews.com/a7ac7e1fc07c7a07e4f162b9f77cb4af

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2283  June 10, 2020

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