Cornell University’s McGraw Tower is 137 feet tall.  It’s visible for miles, and most days, its 21 chimes ring out morning, afternoon, and evening.  It’s a campus touchstone, one that community members use to meet up with friends, give people directions, and generally anchor themselves.  So on October 8, 1997, as students walked to their Wednesday morning classes, it’s fair to say they were surprised to discover that their beloved landmark had grown an appendage.  “One day, there was this thing at the top of the tower,” remembers Oliver Habicht, at the time a recent graduate working for the university IT department.  It was way up at the top, impaled on the spire.  After two weeks of analysis via “microscopic slides, videotapes and photographs,” a special panel of plant biology professors announced that it was, indeed, a pumpkin.  Other students joined in the fun.  “One group parked a whole bunch of pumpkins at the bottom of the tower, sort of cheering on the one at the top,” says Habicht.  One student wrote a pumpkin version of the Cornell song (sample lyric:  “Who can tell from whence it came there, silent and alone? / See the guardian of the harvest, nobly thus enthroned”).   Cara Giaimo  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cornell-pumpkin-prank-20th-anniversary-mystery  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Chimes and https://chimes.cornell.edu/about 

Banyans are strangler figs.  They grow from seeds that land on other trees.  The roots they send down smother their hosts and grow into stout, branch-supporting pillars that resemble new tree trunks.  Banyans are the world’s biggest trees in terms of the area they cover.  The biggest one alive today is in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.  It covers 1.9 hectares (4.7 acres) and can shelter 20,000 people.  For thousands of years, people have used banyans as sources of medicines.  Today in Nepal, people use banyan leaves, bark and roots to treat more than twenty disorders.  Hindu texts written more than 2500 years ago describe a cosmic ‘world tree’, a banyan growing upside-down with its roots in the heavens.  Its trunk and branches extend to Earth to bring blessings to humanity.  Mike Shanahan  https://underthebanyan.blog/2016/09/04/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-banyan-trees/ 

Since ancient Greece, when Aristophanes debuted The Birds in 414 B.C, the phrase “the milk of the birds” has denoted items of exceptional rarity.  Someone with everything on Earth could only long for bird’s milk, because—as far as anyone knew—it didn’t exist.  Jan Wedel, owner of the E. Wedel candy company in Poland, capitalized on this concept in 1936.  Ptasie Mleczko (“bird milk”) is a chocolate candy that encloses a creamy marshmallow-meets-meringue filling.  There’s nothing highly unusual about the decadent morsel, but the name bestowed the treat with the aura of a rare delicacy.  As it turns out, bird’s milk does exist.  While it’s not technically “milk” in the sense of mammary glands, some birds (male and female) can produce hearty secretions for their young.  Pigeons feed their squabs a highly nutritious secretion called “crop milk,” which contains more protein than cow or human milk.  Both Greater Flamingos and Emperor Penguins can secrete “milk” from their upper digestive tracts to feed chicks, as well.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/birds-milk-chocolate 

The Brownies is a series of publications by Canadian illustrator and author Palmer Cox, based on names and elements from English traditional mythology and Scottish stories told to Cox by his grandmother.  Illustrations with verse aimed at children, The Brownies was published in magazines and books during the late 19th century and early 20th century.  The Brownie characters became famous in their day, and at the peak of their popularity were a pioneering name brand within merchandising.  Brownies are little fairy- or goblin-like creatures who appear at night and make mischief and do helpful tasks.  As published by Palmer Cox, they were based on Scottish folktales.   The first appearances of Brownie characters in a print publication took place in 1879, but not until the February 1881 issue of Wide Awake magazine were the creatures printed in their final form.  The first proper story, The Brownies' Ride, appeared in the February 1883 issue of the children's periodical St. Nicholas Magazine.  Published in 1899, The Brownies Abroad is considered the first Brownie comic strip, though it was mostly a text comic.  It didn't utilise speech balloons until the publication The Brownie Clown of Brownie Town of 1908.  From 1903, The Brownies appeared as a newspaper Sunday strip for several years.  The first compilation, The Brownies, Their Book, was published in 1887, followed by 16 books in the series until the last in 1918.  Palmer Cox died in 1924.  Beyond print publication, The Brownies was at least twice adapted to stage plays.  With the rise in popularity of the Brownie characters, these were used in many venues of merchandising, such as games, blocks, cards, dolls, calendars, advertisements, package labels, mugs, plates, flags, soda pop, a slot machine, a bagatelle game and so forth.  George Eastman applied the brand name in promotion of Kodak's "Brownie Camera", but Palmer Cox reportedly never received any money for the commercial use of his work.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brownies 

Winston Churchill gave his legendary “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946.  That fateful evening, he and President Harry Truman had dinner together, and Bess Truman served Ozark pudding.  This mashup between an apple crisp and a pecan pie isn’t much to look at, but its sticky, buttery-crisp bottom and airy crust overcompensate for its lack of style.  South Carolinians call the same dessert Huguenot torte, all thanks to a chef named Evelyn Anderson Florance.  Florance made desserts at the Huguenot Tavern in Charleston, South Carolina, during the 1940s.  There, she recreated the Ozark pudding she’d first tried at a church dinner a decade earlier.  She renamed the sweet in honor of the restaurant, then had the recipe printed in a Charleston community cookbook in 1950.  Thus, Ozark Pudding became known as Huguenot torte.  The dessert has very little to do with the Huguenots, a group of Protestants who fled violent persecution in France.  After religious freedom was abolished in 1685 (a result of revoking the Edict of Nantes), thousands of French Protestants fled to the United States.  A large portion of them settled in South Carolina.  And yet, while many of their descendants love Huguenot torte, they were not responsible for its creation (despite the misconception bred by Florance’s recipe).  Another hint that Ozark pudding was never French?  It calls for baking powder, a 19th-century British invention.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/ozark-pudding-huguenot-torte  This is the Muser’s favorite Thanksgiving dessert.  

Rockefeller, the Saw-whet owl that stowed away and traveled on the Rockefeller Christmas tree, was released in a conifer forest in upstate New York November 24, 2020.  “Rocky” traveled about 170 miles on the tree and was discovered during transport, the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center said.  Christina Maxouris  https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/25/us/rockefeller-tree-owl-released-trnd/index.html 

130 children in need will receive books in 2020 through the Book Angel Project run by independent bookstore Oblong Books & Music in Rhinebeck, New York.  Begun in 2002 by Piper Woods, co-owner of Montgomery Row—and Oblong Books’ landlord—the program has provided books to over 1,500 children attending kindergarten through twelfth grade.  Woods began the program after seeing a similar one at Vermont bookstore and being “blown away by how many books they were able to supply to children in need.”  She grew up loving books like Steven Kellogg's The Mysterious Tadpole, Tomie DePaola's illustrated Simple Pictures are Best, Daniel Pinkwater's The Big Orange Splot, and wanted other kids to experience the same joy in reading as she had.  “Now that I'm a mother I find that reading is such an important building block for young people,” said Woods in an interview.  “Reading helps with accomplishing school work, it can be an escape or a resource for coping.  Developing and maintaining a love of books in young people is so crucial.”  Woods works with local schools to identify kids who are unlikely to receive a book at the holidays, said Suzanna Hermans, co-owner of Oblong Books & Music, which also has a second location in Millerton, New York (though the Rhinebeck store is the one operating the Book Angel program).  Piper then gives the bookstore a list of the children’s names (changed to protect their privacy), their reading levels and interests, and creates tags to hang on a tree in the store’s children’s section through November 25, 2020.  Customers can choose a tag from the tree and pick out a book for that child, which most opt to do, or get assistance from Oblong’s booksellers in making a selection.  Customers can also donate online to ensure all 130 kids receive a book; most children receive one book, though younger kids may receive two paperbacks.  Rachel Kramer Bussel  https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelkramerbussel/2020/11/04/bookstores-book-angel-program-ensures-kids-in-need-receive-books-for-the-holidays/?sh=589982433de1 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2289  November 25, 2020