The Last Tycoon is an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  In 1941, it was published posthumously under this title, as prepared by his friend Edmund Wilson, a critic and writer.  According to Publishers Weekly, the novel is "[g]enerally considered a roman a clef," with its lead character, Monroe Stahr, modeled after film producer Irving Thalberg.  The story follows Stahr's rise to power in Hollywood, and his conflicts with rival Pat Brady, a character based on MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer.  It was adapted as a TV play in 1957 and a film in 1976 of the same name, with a screenplay for the motion picture by British dramatist Harold Pinter.  Elia Kazan directed the film adaptation; Robert De Niro and Theresa Russell starred.  In 1993, a new version of the novel was published under the title The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew Bruccoli, a Fitzgerald scholar.  This version was adapted for a stage production that premiered in Los Angeles, California in 1998.  In 2013, HBO announced plans to produce an adaptation. HBO cancelled the project and gave the rights to Sony Pictures, which produced and released the television series on Amazon Studios in 2016.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Tycoon 

"Franz Xavier Zettler graduated from the Munich Art Academy and began working for Joseph Mayer as a glass painter around 1863.  After Franz Aver Zettler married Mayer's daughter, he founded his own company [in 1870] called F. X Zettler and took over Mayer's stained glass production.  The sales remained under the Mayer organization until Zettler formed his own sales force, which resulted in a disagreeable split between the two organizations.  In 1873, Mayer developed their own window-manufacturing group, which competed with Zettler until 1939, when they joined forces again."  Today, Mayer still produces stained glass windows and is headquartered in Munich, Germany with a sales office in Fairfield, New Jersey.  The company is now called Franz Mayer and Company. https://buffaloah.com/a/DCTNRY/stained/munich.html  See also https://mayersche-hofkunst.de/en/history/geschichte-generation-1 

For those who are unfamiliar with Japanese pizza toast, it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like:  a comfort food that consists of toast topped with melted cheese, tomato sauce and toppings of some sort.  But as Eater’s Craig Mod writes in an excellent new piece, when he was an undergrad new to Japan, the dish was “became a bridge between where I had been and where I was to go.  Mod’s piece chronicles his epic walk across Japan in search of the origins of pizza toast.  Along the way, he stopped at countless kissaten, or traditional Japanese cafes from the Showa era (1926–1989) to sample their take on the staple.  “It’s also a sort of netherworld food that the Japanese don’t think about and visitors to Japan have assessed—if at all—with a mere tilt of the head,” he writes.  It is a food that squeezes joy from very little.  Simple ingredients, simple preparation.  A meal that transcends economic circumstance.”  Bonnie Stiernberg   https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/food-and-drink/searching-for-the-origins-of-japanese-pizza-toast 

The Shōwa period in Japanese history is the period (1926–89) corresponding to the reign of the emperor Hirohito.  The two Chinese characters (kanji) in the name Shōwa translate as “Bright Peace” in Japanese.  owever, a more nuanced interpretation is “Enlightened Harmony”—with the added significance that the second character (wa) is commonly used in words that describe Japan or things Japanese.  https://www.britannica.com/event/Showa-period 

Kell may refer to people, places and other things.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kell  See obsolete uses as a noun at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kell 

Grapefruit is an artist's book written by Yoko Ono, originally published in 1964.  It has become famous as an early example of conceptual art, containing a series of "event scores" that replace the physical work of art–the traditional stock-in-trade of artists–with instructions that an individual may, or may not, wish to enact.  Event scores were developed by a number of artists attending John Cage's experimental music composition classes at the New School for Social Research in New York.  Whilst Ono did not attend these informal lessons, her husband at the time, Ichiyanagi Toshi (an experimental musician), did and Toshi and Ono became regulars of Cage's circle of friends by 1959.  Other members of this group included David Tudor, Morton Feldman, Richard Maxfield and Merce Cunningham.  Invention of the event score is usually credited to George Brecht, but La Monte Young and Yoko Ono are also cited as amongst the first to experiment with the form.  Both Cage and Brecht were deeply influenced by "Oriental thinking", and Ono found that her Buddhist-inspired work was, almost accidentally, fêted by the emerging New York counterculture as avant-garde.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit_(book) 

Ukrainian Syrniki Recipe (Cheese Pancakes) by Natasha Kravchuk  https://natashaskitchen.com/ukrainian-syrniki-recipe/ 

January 23, 2021  Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont and the longest-serving member of the current Senate, is a Batman aficionado who's turned his fandom into philanthropy.  He's even used the comics to forward his legislative agenda.  Now President pro tempore of the Senate, Leahy is third in the presidential line of succession.  hough it's unlikely he'll ever have to serve as President, his high-profile position shines a brighter light on his colorful resume--which includes multiple appearances in the "Batman" films.  He first discovered Batman at age 4, when he received his first library card.  He frequented the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, where he spent many an afternoon poring over comics.  While his school friends raved over Superman, Leahy found a "kindred bond" with the Bat.  "Entering Batman's world through my imagination opened an early door into a lifelong love of reading," he wrote.  He'd continue spending hours at the library each day until adulthood, and even after he moved to Washington, he'd make time to pop in.  He's a vocal advocate for literacy and the preservation of libraries so children can have similarly formative experiences with books.  "Some of my fondest memories as a child were at the library, where everyone fit in and possibilities were limitless," he writes on his Senate website.  Scottie Andrew  https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/23/us/senator-patrick-leahy-batman-trnd/index.html 

January 26, 2021  Of all the town halls, stadiums, conference centres and other venues commandeered for the COVID-19 vaccine, Salisbury Cathedral is unique.  Its two organists, David Halls and John Challenger, play soothing hymns for 12 hours a day as residents aged 70 years and older shuffle in and roll up their sleeves.  Salisbury Cathedral boasts the UK’s tallest spire and best preserved original version of the Magna Carta.  After getting a call, letter or text from a GP advising they are eligible for the vaccine, people arrive at the cathedral with a form and are assigned one of 12 booths in the transept.  They hand over the form and an administrative assistant assigned to each booth enters the patient’s details into a central database which also registers whether they will be given the Pfizer vaccine or another developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.  Bevan Shields  See pictures at https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/salisbury-cathedral-turned-into-mass-vaccination-centre-complete-with-beautiful-music-20210125-p56ws5.html  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2318  January 27, 2021