Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish, c. 1450–1516)  Bosch’s true name was Joen or Jeroen van Aken.  Both his grandfather Jan van Aken (d. 1454) and his father, Anthonius van Aken (d. c. 1478), were painters, and we may assume that he received his first instruction from his father.  Documents offer only meager information about his career.  Bosch's oeuvre consists of approximately thirty paintings, none of which is dated.  The artist had a workshop of some sort, for it is recorded that in 1503-1504 Bosch's assistants (knechten) were paid for painting coats-of-arms.  There are other references to Bosch's artistic activity in 's-Hertogenbsoch.  Perhaps the most important of these is a commission in 1504 from Philip the Fair, Duke of Burgundy, for a large altarpiece of the Last Judgment.  The painting no longer exists.  It has recently been shown that The Garden of Earthly Delights hung in the Brussels palace of Hendrik III of Nassau by 1517 and was probably commissioned by him.  This provides important evidence that Bosch's paintings were ordered by learned secular patrons as well as by religious institutions.  The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1986: 15.]  Click on Works of Art to see pictures of Bosch paintings at https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.986.html  See also https://www.wikiart.org/en/hieronymus-bosch  and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Bosch 

Hieronymus Bosch (aka Harry Bosch) is a fictional character and half-brother of fictional character Mickey Haller (The Lincoln Lawyer) in books by American novelist Michael Connelly.  

When Mongolians celebrate the Lunar New Year with a days-long holiday called Tsagaan Sar, the centerpiece is usually a fabulous ul boov.  Ul boov means “shoe sole cake”—a humble name for a towering dessert that’s steeped in tradition and plays a role similar to a Christmas tree or family shrine.  In physical terms, ul boov consists of layers of fried cakes—each of which resembles the cross-hatched bottom of a shoe—decorated with chunks of sugar, wrapped candies, and aarul, a sweet hard cheese.  To outsiders, the sturdy cake tower can look like a pile of twinkies.  But there is more to the dessert than meets the eye.  Each aspect of ul boov has social significance.  Families make the sole-like impression in each cake with a wooden stamp that they pass down through generations.  Since each stamp is unique, ul boov designs identify families like a fingerprint.  Tradition dictates the number of layers in the cake, too.  Elders prepare seven layers, young couples stack three layers, and everyone else makes five layers:  Height corresponds to age and status, and odd numbers symbolize happiness.  Stacking the cakes involves the ritualistic precision and care involved in lighting a menorah.  A finished ul boov symbolizes Mount Sumeru, a sacred Buddhist mountain.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/ul-boov-shoe-sole-cake

Sometimes the buzz of reading about others eating comes from the voyeuristic thrill of seeing how the other half lives:  the gold leaf and truffles or--in the case of Trimalchio’s feast in Petronius’ “Satyricon”--the dormice and honey.  It’s like watching lavish dishes circulate to other tables in a restaurant, or nosily looking in someone else’s refrigerator or shopping basket.  At one of Jay Gatsby’s legendary parties, we get a glimpse of glamorous “men and girls” consuming “spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs,” and “cordials so long forgotten that most of [the] female guests were too young to know one from another.”  In “The Accomplisht Cook,” the most significant English cookbook of the seventeenth century, the royalist cook Robert May describes seeing ladies “skip and shriek” at a pie containing live frogs.  But we also enjoy contemplating what others consume when it is close to what we eat and drink ourselves.  Years ago, during a John Grisham phase, I tried to pinpoint exactly why I found Grisham’s often predictable legal thrillers quite so comforting.  The best answer I could come up with was the frequency with which Grisham tells us that his lead characters are sipping coffee.  When it comes to food and drink, predictability can console.  It is no accident that detective stories often end with a meal. When we see someone eating, we are left in suspense no longer.  In the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty”, after a fiendish puzzle that culminates with Holmes serving a recovered stolen document to its rightful owner on a breakfast platter, the story ends with the detective enjoying a meal himself.  “Sherlock Holmes swallowed a cup of coffee, and turned his attention to the ham and eggs.  Then he rose, lit his pipe, and settled himself down into his chair.”  The joy of reading about the meals of others shows that, in many ways, we are simple creatures:  by merely looking upon someone else eating we can feel better fed.  Bee Wilson  https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/pleasures-of-the-literary-meal 

Walter "Walt" Stone Tevis (1928–1984) was an American novelist and short story writer.  His books have been translated into at least 18 languages.  Tevis wrote more than two dozen short stories for a variety of magazines. "The Big Hustle", his pool hall story for Collier's (August 5, 1955), was illustrated by Denver Gillen.  It was followed by short stories in The American Magazine, Bluebook, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Galaxy Science Fiction, Playboy, Redbook and The Saturday Evening Post.  His first novel, The Hustler, was published by Harper & Row in 1959.  Tevis followed it with The Man Who Fell to Earth, published in 1963.  Tevis drew from elements of his childhood in The Man Who Fell to Earth, as noted by James Sallis, writing in the Boston Globe.  On the surface, Man is the tale of an alien who comes to earth to save his own civilization and, through adversity, distraction, and loss of faith ("I want to... But not enough"), fails.  Just beneath the surface, it might be read as a parable of 1950s conventionalism and of the Cold War.  One of the many other things it is, in Tevis's own words, is "a very disguised autobiography," the tale of his removal as a child from San Francisco, "the city of light," to rural Kentucky, and of the childhood illness that long confined him to bed, leaving him, once recovered, weak, fragile, and apart.  It was also--as he realized only after writing it--about his becoming an alcoholic.  During his time teaching at Ohio University, Tevis became aware that the level of literacy among students was falling at an alarming rate.  That observation gave him the idea for Mockingbird (1980), set in a grim and decaying New York City in the 25th century.  The population is declining, no one can read, and robots rule over the drugged, illiterate humans.  With the birth rate dropping, the end of the species seems a possibility.  Tevis was a nominee for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1980 for Mockingbird.  During one of his last televised interviews, he revealed that PBS once planned a production of Mockingbird as a follow-up to their 1979 film of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven.  Tevis also wrote The Steps of the Sun (1983), The Queen's Gambit (1983), and The Color of Money (1984), a sequel to The Hustler.  His short stories were collected in Far from Home in 1981.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Tevis 

Zante currants, Corinth raisins, or simply currants outside of the US, are raisins of the small, sweet, seedless grape cultivar Black Corinth (Vitis vinifera).  The name comes from the Anglo-French phrase "raisins de Corinthe" (grapes of Corinth) and the Ionian island of Zakynthos (Zante), which was once the major producer and exporter.  It is not related to black, red or white currants, which are berries of shrubs in the genus Ribes and not usually prepared in dried form.  The Zante currant is one of the oldest known raisins.  The first written record of the grape was made in 75 AD by Pliny the Elder, who described a tiny, juicy, thick-skinned grape with small bunches.  The next mention is a millennium later, when the raisins became a subject of trade between Venetian merchants and Greek producers from Ionian coasts.  In the 14th century, they were sold in the English market under the label Reysyns de Corauntz, and the name raisins of Corinth was recorded in the 15th century, after the Greek harbor which was the primary source of export.  Gradually, the name got corrupted into currant.  By the 17th century trade shifted towards the Ionian islands, particularly Zakynthos (Zante), resulting in the name Zante currant.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zante_currant 

Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24–79), called Pliny the Elder , was a Roman author, a naturalist and natural philosopher, a naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of emperor Vespasian.  He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias.  He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.  His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus:  For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favour of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading; above measure blessed those on whom both gifts have been conferred.  In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions.  Pliny the Younger refers to Tacitus's reliance upon his uncle's book, the History of the German Wars.  Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting the rescue of a friend and his family by ship from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which had already destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.  The wind caused by the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the volcano's eruption did not allow his ship to leave port, and Pliny died during that event, probably by exposure to volcanic fallout.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Elder 

My name is Marion Tessier and I work at Kingston Libraries.  This year has been really stressful but also very exciting.  I had the opportunity to use skills I developed before but never got to use for concrete projects, as well as learning new skills and discovering new tools and resources.  My biggest challenge in terms of my job was to stay relevant and continue to provide a service online for our customers.  I have seen so many library services just disappear due to lockdown, both in France and England, and I am so proud of what we achieved.  Even if not everything worked out the way we wanted to, whether it was in terms of attendance or technical problems, we always managed to find a solution and to take something from everything we did, either a new skill, a new way to work together or a new tool to develop in future projects.  I think the best side of all that is that we are already thinking about the future and creating hybrid events, both digital and physical, and new ways to interact with our customers in the future.   At Kingston Libraries, we’ve been quick to start on a digital programme, even before we closed the libraries.  We wanted to stay in touch with our users, support local residents and continue to offer a diverse range of activities for everyone.  It all started with our first ever live streamed rhyme time (the first in the country!), and we got an amazing response from the public and library staff.  Eight months later, we have more than 350 original videos, 100 000 views on social media, more than 100 interactive events and countless great interactions with our customers.  Marion Tessier has been a public librarian for the last ten years in France and England.  She specialises in cinema, board games, video games and digital in libraries.  https://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/lockdown-made-our-library-better-1231726 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2310  January 8, 2021