“Many of the great novels of our time are based on alienated narrators.”  *  “The largest part of the illegal goods, four kilos of Moroccan hashish, has already been tossed into Lake Geneva, where, I was told, it was joyfully devoured by the resident geese, which later that day were seen to be flying high.”  *  “inferior decorating”  *  “To this day, I love reading dictionaries.  I love the sounds and shapes of words, the way certain consonant blends can evoke related images . . . ”  *  “Love Medicine is the book that made me want to find my own voice.  It influenced my early attempts at writing fiction.”  *  When I was two hundred pages from finishing my second book, a woman in a book club in Columbus, Ohio said:  “Well, I just read Amy Tan’s second book, and believe me, it’s not nearly as good as the first!”  * “The best stories do change us.  They help us live interesting lives.”  The Opposite of Fate, Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan 

The Chinese Siamese Cat by Amy Tan with Gretchen Schields as illustrator  In this charming original folktale from the pair who produced The Moon Lady, a mother cat tells her kittens the true story of their ancestry:  “You are not Siamese cats but Chinese cats.''  She proudly informs them that they are descended from Sagwa of China, who lived during the reign of the Foolish Magistrate.  Sagwa's parents, we learn, had the hapless task of dipping their tails in ink to record the dour dictates of the Foolish Magistrate.  After inadvertently landing in the ink pot one day (hence acquiring the familiar dark markings of the Siamese cat), Sagwa uses her blackened pawprints to delete the word  “not” from the magistrate's latest ruling, whereupon it is promulgated that  “People must sing until the sun goes down.”  Foolish Magistrate is outraged, but when he suddenly realizes his subjects are chanting his praises, he changes his tune, reversing the laws and declaring that henceforth all Chinese felines will have dark faces, ears, paws and tails--in honor of Sagwa.  See titles in the Sagwa series at https://www.goodreads.com/series/272250-sagwa 

Suffix mancy:  from Latin -mantia, ultimately from Ancient Greek μᾰντείᾱ (manteíā, “divination”).  divination or variety of magic, especially that controlling or related to a specific element, substance, or theme.  Link to English words suffixed with –mancy at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-mancy 

Few books have been adapted so many times, and in so many different ways, as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  First published in 1886, the novel about a doctor’s transformative experiments and the dire consequences they provoke, has been turned into musicals, costume drama, slapstick comedy and psychosexual horror; the contours of its narrative have been twisted, mixed-up, and often ignored.  There have been whole films dedicated to Jekyll’s children, one about his son and another about his daughter, and at least five different pornographic adaptations.  Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat, and Tom and Jerry have all starred in their own parody versions.  Some have even been lost to time, or remain as ideas (like David Mamet’s reported 1998 adaptation, set to star Al Pacino, that was never made).  That filmmakers keep returning to Stevenson’s novella is understandable.  “The story is now so embedded in popular culture that it hardly exists as a work of literature,” Claire Harman writes in her 2005 biography of Stevenson.  People know what the words “Jekyll” and “Hyde” suggest, even if they have never read the book.  Craig Hubert   https://lithub.com/the-strange-cinematic-history-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde/ 

May 6, 2021  Enlisting the creativity of Frank Gehry, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has completed a $233m renovation and reorganisation of the lower interior spaces at the heart of its landmarked 1928 Beaux-Arts building.  The latest phase of a master plan for improvements that was approved by the museum’s board in 2004 and involved four years of construction, the so-called Core Project yields nearly 90,000 sq. ft of reimagined public spaces and new galleries.  The reinstallation of more than 800 works in the early American galleries incorporates a more inclusive range of narratives centred on Philadelphia, dating from William Penn’s first meetings with the Lenape people in the late 17th century and including fresh connections with the Caribbean, Central and South America, as well as the role of African Americans in the city’s cultural economy.  Hilarie M. Sheets  https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/gehry-spruces-up-philadelphia  The 72 steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, charged by Sly Stallone in the 1976 movie Rocky, made this stairway famous.   

Deserts are areas that receive very little precipitation.  People often use the adjectives “hot,” “dry,” and “empty” to describe deserts, but these words do not tell the whole story.  Although some deserts are very hot, with daytime temperatures as high as 54°C (130°F), other deserts have cold winters or are cold year-round.  And most deserts, far from being empty and lifeless, are home to a variety of plants, animals, and other organisms.  People have adapted to life in the desert for thousands of years.  One thing all deserts have in common is that they are arid, or dry.  Most experts agree that a desert is an area of land that receives no more than 25 centimeters (10 inches) of precipitation a year.  The amount of evaporation in a desert often greatly exceeds the annual rainfall.  In all deserts, there is little water available for plants and other organisms.  Deserts are found on every continent and cover about one-fifth of Earth’s land area.  They are home to around 1 billion people—one-sixth of the Earth’s population.  Although the word “desert” may bring to mind a sea of shifting sand, dunes cover only about 10 percent of the world’s deserts.  Some deserts are mountainous.  Others are dry expanses of rock, sand, or salt flats.  https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/desert/ 

The tundra is a treeless polar desert found in the high latitudes in the polar regions, primarily in Alaska, Canada, Russia, Greenland, Iceland, and Scandinavia, as well as sub-Antarctic islands.  The region's long, dry winters feature months of total darkness and extremely frigid temperatures.  Structurally, the tundra is a treeless expanse that supports communities of sedges and heaths as well as dwarf shrubs.  Vegetation is generally scattered, although it can be patchy reflecting changes in soil and moisture gradients.  Most precipitation falls in the form of snow during the winter while soils tend to be acidic and saturated with water where not frozen.  Link to information on specific tundras at https://www.worldwildlife.org/biomes/tundra#:~:text=The%20tundra%20is%20a%20treeless,darkness%20and%20extremely%20frigid%20temperatures.

On 28 June 1846 Adolphe Sax patented the saxophone, intended for use in orchestras and military bands.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Sax 

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? - Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosopher and author (28 Jun 1712-1778)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2383  June 28, 2021