Nearly all standard dictionaries say that “below” functions exclusively as either an adverb (“they bought the apartment below”) or a preposition (“they bought the apartment below ours”).  What’s the difference?  They classify the word as an adverb if it doesn’t have an object, and as a preposition if it does.  One last point:  the word “below” wasn’t either an adverb or a preposition when it first showed up in English in the 14th century.  It was a verb meaning to make low or to humble.  William Langland used the verb in 1377 in Piers Plowman, his Middle English allegorical poem, but the OED says this usage is now obsolete or rare.  In case you’re wondering, the adverb first showed up around 1400 and the preposition around 1565, according to OED citations.  Read much more at https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/12/below.html 

An immensely popular imported African hardwood, Bubinga may be loved as much for its quirky name as it is for its strength and beauty.  Also sometimes called Kevazingo, usually in reference to its decorative rotary-cut veneer.  Bubinga has a close resemblance to rosewood, and is often use in place of more expensive woods.  Yet Bubinga also features a host of stunning grain figures, such as flamed, pommele, and waterfall, which make this wood truly unique.  Bubinga also has an exceptional strength-to-weight ratio.  https://www.wood-database.com/bubinga/

volute  noun  1: a spiral or scroll-shaped form  2: a spiral scroll-shaped ornament forming the chief feature of the Ionic capital  3a: any of various marine gastropod mollusks (family Volutidae) with a thick short-spired shell  b: the shell of a volute

volute or voluted \ və-​ˈlü-​təd  \ adjective circa 1696, in the meaning defined at sense 1  Latin voluta, from feminine of volutus, past participle of volvere to roll—more at VOLUBLE  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/volute 

convoluted  adjective  highly complex or intricate and occasionally devious, rolled longitudinally upon itself.  Convoluted comes from the Latin convolutus for rolled up together.  Its original meaning in English was exactly that, first for eaves coiled up on themselves, then for anything rolled or knotted together.  Over time convoluted took on its metaphorical sense of complicated and intricate, which is how it's generally used today.  https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/convoluted 

LEMON PIGLETS  Four toothpicks make up the pig’s legs, while small slices in the lemon peel create its mouth and ears.  Two cloves are the eyes.  The curly tail is fashioned from crushed up foil, and a glistening penny is inserted into the piggy’s mouth, presumably symbolizing the hoped-for luck.  Even the lemonless joined in on the fun.  Mandarin pigs and lime pigs joined the herd of citrus swine.  Lemon pigs have been around for more than a century.  An 1882 magazine story described a nearly identical lemon pig, and newspapers in the 1890s instructed readers how to make them.  Instead of porcine good-luck charms, they were cheap craft projects for children, alongside “walnut witches” and cornhusk dolls.  While they were most popular in the early 20th century, children’s entertainment books contained lemon pigs until the 1960s—just before their turn as aluminum-garnished party decor.  Anne Ewbank   See pictures at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/lemon-pigs-new-year

 

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) was an American artist, author, and songwriter.  He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages.  Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from New York University in 1935.  He began his artistic career creating scenes of the American South.  Later, he worked to express the humanity he felt was lacking in the world after his experience in the US Army during World War II on the European front.  He returned to Paris in 1950 and studied art history and philosophy at the Sorbonne. 

Bearden's early work focused on unity and cooperation within the African-American community.  After a period during the 1950s when he painted more abstractly, this theme reemerged in his collage works of the 1960s.  The New York Times described Bearden as "the nation's foremost collagist" in his 1988 obituary.  Bearden became a founding member of the Harlem-based art group known as The Spiral, formed to discuss the responsibility of the African-American artist in the civil rights movement.  Bearden was the author or coauthor of several books.  He also was a songwriter, known as co-writer of the jazz classic "Sea Breeze", which was recorded by Billy Eckstine, a former high school classmate at Peabody High School, and Dizzy Gillespie.  He had long supported young, emerging artists, and he and his wife established the Bearden Foundation to continue this work, as well as to support young scholars.  In 1987, Bearden was awarded the National Medal of Arts.  Read much more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romare_Bearden  See also https://beardenfoundation.org/romare-bearden/ 

Barely noticed upon publication in 1941, writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans’s unique chronicle of Alabama sharecroppers, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, would enjoy a remarkable revival during the 1960s.  Remembering it as a “bible of sorts” for civil rights activists like himself, psychiatrist Robert Coles called it “an eloquent testimony that others had cared, had gone forth to look and hear, and had come back to stand up and address their friends and neighbors and those beyond personal knowing.”  The book has remained in print ever since, profoundly affecting subsequent generations of readers.  Michael A. Lofaro  https://utpress.org/title/let-us-now-praise-famous-men-at-75/  Let Us Now praise Famous Men is also a 1923 choral anthem by Ralph Vaughan Williams.  

1925 was the year of heralded novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf, seminal works by Sinclair Lewis, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Agatha Christie, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Aldous Huxley . . .   and a banner year for musicians, too.  Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, the Gershwins, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller, among hundreds of others, made important recordings.  And 1925 marked the release of canonical movies from silent film comedians Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. 

As of January 1, 2021, every single one of those works has entered the public domain.  "That means that copyright has expired," explains Jennifer Jenkins, a law professor at Duke University who directs its Center for the Study of the Public Domain.  "And all of the works are free for anyone to use, reuse, build upon for anyone—without paying a fee."  Neda Ulaby  Read more at https://www.npr.org/2021/01/01/951171599/party-like-its-1925-on-public-domain-day-gatsby-and-dalloway-are-in

month of Sundays  noun  (idiomatic, informal)  A very long time; a period regarded as too long.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/month_of_Sundays#English

In 2021, January is the first of four months which have five Sundays. 

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo. - Max Eastman, journalist and poet (4 Jan 1883-1969) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2308  January 4, 2021