From:  Anthony Tesoriero   Subject:  Obviate

In the Star Trek:  The Next Generation episode “Schisms”, Lt. Cmdr. Data uses this word in a poem about his cat, “Ode to Spot”:

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.  (more here)  AWADmailIssue995 

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”  Camille Pissarro 

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies).  His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.  Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.  He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.  In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the "pivotal" figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members.  Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the "dean of the Impressionist painters", not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also "by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality".  Pierre-Auguste Renoir referred to his work as "revolutionary", through his artistic portrayals of the "common man", as Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without "artifice or grandeur".  Pissarro is the only artist to have shown his work at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886.  He "acted as a father figure not only to the Impressionists" but to all four of the major Post-Impressionists, Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, and van Gogh.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Pissarro 

Earthworms are definitely the movers and shakers of the soil world.  Ravenous creatures, even without teeth, earthworms can eat half their body weight every day.  Earthworms also help aerate the soil with their tunneling.  Worms are most active during the spring and fall months, and live in various layers.  Shallow-dwelling earthworms live in the top 12 inches of soil.  They create random pathways as they  feed.  Deeper dwelling earthworms live in lower levels of soil--as deep as 6.5 feet.  Their burrows are semi-permanent.  Shallow dwelling worms are the most beneficial to the top soil.  Not only do their burrows allow the movement of air, but also the movement of water.  In areas of compaction or overuse, such as land developed by urbanization, or heavily-farmed land, the worms’ movement through the soil is especially important.  Earthworms have no skeleton.  Earth worms have no lungs, instead they breathe through their skin.  Danita Cahill  https://organicfarmermag.com/2020/03/earthworms-the-good-the-bad-and-the-hungry/ 

Peoples living in what is Afghanistan today have resisted mightily one haughty conqueror after another who swaggered down the Hindu Kush.  Alexander the Great faced fierce opposition from locals but he ultimately smashed that resistance, founded what became the modern city of Kandahar and pushed on to India—leaving behind the Seleucid Empire, which lasted for 250 years.  Genghis Khan conquered Afghanistan.  So did Timur, better known as Tamerlane, and his descendant Babur.  So did the Turks and the Huns, the Hindus and Islamic Arabs, the Persians and the Parthians.  So did numerous empires, peoples and tyrants you’ve probably never heard of:  the Greco-Bactrians, the Indo-Scythians, the Kushans, the Sassanian Empire, the Maurys Empire, the Gahznavids, the Uzbeks, the Safavids and the Hotak dynasty.  Most of them stayed for decades, even centuries.  The Soviet Union’s misadventure in Afghanistan was more damaging.  The USSR suffered 14,453 fatalities during its brutal, 1979-1988 occupation of the country, and squandered a fortune in materiel and money.  As with many other places that lie between more powerful countries—Poland, for instance—Afghanistan’s strategic value for geopolitics often has been exaggerated by map room geniuses the world over.  In fact, that importance has been very limited since the Spice Road trade routes began to disintegrate in the 15th century.  As the world moved on to sailing ships, air travel and other economic priorities, and the means of getting them, controlling Afghanistan became less vital.  Kevin Baker  https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/28/afghanistan-graveyard-britain-us-russia-506990 

The Taliban (Pashto 'students' or 'seekers'), which refers to itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), is a Deobandi Islamist religious-political movement and military organization in Afghanistan.  It is currently one of two entities claiming to be the legitimate government of Afghanistan, alongside the internationally recognized Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. The Taliban's ideology has been described as combining an "innovative" form of Sharia Islamic law based on Deobandi fundamentalism and militant Islamism, combined with Pashtun social and cultural norms known as Pashtunwali.  From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban held power over roughly three-quarters of Afghanistan, and enforced a strict interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law.  The Taliban emerged in 1994 as one of the prominent factions in the Afghan Civil War and largely consisted of students (talib) from the Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan who had been educated in traditional Islamic schools, and fought during the Soviet–Afghan War.  Under the leadership of Mohammed Omar, the movement spread throughout most of Afghanistan, shifting power away from the Mujahideen warlords.  The word Taliban is Pashto meaning 'students', the plural of ṭālib.   The spelling Taliban has come to be predominant over Taleban in English.  In American English, a "the" prefix is used thereby referring to the group "The Taliban" rather than just "Taliban".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban 

August 30, 2021  Try, if you will, to imagine yourself in 14th-century Venice—with its canals and churches and atmosphere of damp, salty air against sturdy stone—five or six centuries before electric light and internal combustion engines.  No easy task.  But pictures are time capsules.  And sometimes little details can activate time travel.  Paolo Veneziano:  Art and Devotion in 14th-Century Venice through Oct. 3 at the Getty Center, Los Angeles.  getty.edu.  Sebastian Smee  See stunning graphics at https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/paolo-venziano-painter-getty-exhibit/2021/08/27/2f39bd78-04ec-11ec-8c3f-3526f81b233b_story.html 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2414  September 1, 2021