THE CITY THAT NEVER SEEPS Not so far below the streets of Manhattan lie the remnants of a lost river. Once one of the island's major waterways, Minetta Brook—also known as Minetta Creek or Minetta Stream—used to wind through farmland and colonial estates in Lower Manhattan. And though it was paved over during the 19th century, signs of the brook can still be found in New York today. Before it was forced underground, Minetta Brook was fed by two tributaries that merged together in what is now Greenwich Village. One tributary began as a spring in the area around 21st Street and Fifth Avenue, and the other at a marsh near 16th Street and Sixth Avenue. After meeting near the future 11th Street, the brook flowed through present-day Washington Square Park and eventually dumped out into the Hudson River along the city's west side. The history of Minetta Brook is far older than New York City itself. For centuries, the brook was known for its abundance of trout and was a popular fishing spot for Native Americans. In the 17th century, the Dutch settled in the area to farm along with a group of "half free" African-Americans—slaves of the Dutch West India Company who were ostensibly freed and given plots of land under the condition that they pay an annual fee to the company. Maggie Malach https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91740/underground-history-manhattans-lost-minetta-brook
Daniel Mallory (born 1979) is an American editor and author who writes under the name A. J. Finn. His 2018 novel The Woman in the Window debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list and has been adapted into a feature film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Finn
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you plums, make plum jam. If life gives you apples, make apple pie. See also https://shakejump.com/funny-when-life-gives-you-lemons-quotes/
To be in dire straits means to be in desperate trouble or impending danger. Dire means extremely serious. Straits are narrow passages of water which connect two larger bodies of water, navigating them may often become perilous. In the mid-sixteenth century, straits came to mean any difficult situation, one that carries a high degree of trouble. A newspaper column in the Rome News-Tribune in September of 2000 cites United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the first known user of the term dire straits in a 1933 radio address concerning those out of work during The Great Depression. Details about early usage of this phrase is hard to come by, but the phrase dire straits was common enough to be the choice for a British band’s name in 1977. https://grammarist.com/phrase/dire-straits/
Eupheme may refer to: Eupheme (deity), the ancient Greek female spirit of words of good omen; Eupheme (moon), a moon of Jupiter; Mitsubishi Eupheme EV, a 2019–present Chinese subcompact electric SUV; or Mitsubishi Eupheme PHEV, a 2018–present Chinese compact plug-in hybrid SUV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eupheme
A "morpheme" is a short segment of language that meets three basic criteria: (1) is a word or a part of a word that has meaning; (2) cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments without changing its meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder; or (3) has relatively the same stable meaning in different verbal environments. https://www.rit.edu/ntid/sea/processes/wordknowledge/grammatical/whatare
LEGO® came into being around 1930, when a Danish carpenter from Billund in Jutland fell on hard times building houses. He supplemented his trade making wooden toys and was so successful that he was soon only making his wooden building blocks. He called the company LEGO, a mix of the Danish words to play and good. Carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen was a visionary man and he was soon importing technology to produce injection-moulded plastics, revolutionising manufacturing and setting the course of LEGO for the next century. Since 1949, LEGO has been made of plastic and continued developments to these seemingly simple building blocks, have kept LEGO a world-leader in toys. In 1968 the doors opened on LEGOLAND® Billund Resort, the theme park built entirely of LEGO. Located near Billund Airport, LEGOLAND’s favourite attractions include the mini models of famous buildings and sites from around the world. LEGOLAND has itself spread across the world and you can now visit LEGOLANDs in Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. https://www.visitdenmark.com/denmark/highlights/danish-design/lego
Doing nothing is very hard to do . . . you never know when you're finished. The reason they call it 'golf' is that all the other four-letter words were used up. Leslie Nielsen, Canadian actor, comedian and producer (1926–2010) https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000558/bio?ref_=nm_dyk_trv_sm#trivia
The term cancel culture is vague and has become a catch-all for various situations with different degrees of severity and impact. Professor Anne H. Charity Hudley, an expert on African American culture and linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, broke down the idea into two distinct definitions. The first is essentially a boycott. "It is the withdrawal of financial support, political support, social, economic support, often in pop culture in the form of attention of a particular media star, a political figure, a business figure," Hudley told CBS News. "And withdrawing publicly your support in a way that informs other people that should withdraw their support as well." "The second definition, that is silencing something or somebody," she added. "And they overlap, but it's a little bit different because one is more about withdrawing your attention and the other is actively seeking to stop someone else from speaking." Christopher Brito https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancel-culture-internet-joke-anything-but/
Boston Cream Pie recipe from Martha Stewart https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/08/boston-cream-pie-recipe.html
59 QUOTES ABOUT LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANS by Abby Hargreaves The intersection between book lovers and library lovers is a big one. Whether we see libraries as magical places or as just one of the simpler pleasures in life, there is no shortage of nice things to be said about the spaces and those who safeguard those hallowed spaces. “Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.” —Laura Bush Find other library quotes at https://bookriot.com/quotes-about-libraries-and-librarians/
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2346 April 2, 2021
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