Letter frequency is the number of times letters of the alphabet appear on average in written language.  Letter frequency analysis dates back to the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi (c. 801–873 AD), who formally developed the method to break ciphers.  Letter frequency analysis gained importance in Europe with the development of movable type in 1450 AD, where one must estimate the amount of type required for each letterform.  Linguists use letter frequency analysis as a rudimentary technique for language identification, where it is particularly effective as an indication of whether an unknown writing system is alphabetic, syllabic, or ideographic.  The frequency of the first letters of words or names in English is helpful in pre-assigning space in physical files and indexes.  Given 26 filing cabinet drawers, rather than a 1:1 assignment of one drawer to one letter of the alphabet, it is often useful to use a more equal-frequency-letter code by assigning several low-frequency letters to the same drawer (often one drawer is labeled VWXYZ), and to split up the most-frequent initial letters ('S', 'A', and 'C') into several drawers (often 6 drawers Aa-An, Ao-Az, Ca-Cj, Ck-Cz, Sa-Si, Sj-Sz).  The same system is used in some multi-volume works such as some encyclopedias. Cutter numbers, another mapping of names to a more equal-frequency code, are used in some libraries.  Both the overall letter distribution and the word-initial letter distribution approximately match the Zipf distribution and even more closely match the Yule distribution.   Often the frequency distribution of the first digit in each datum is significantly different from the overall frequency of all the digits in a set of numeric data, see Benford's law for details.  An analysis by Peter Norvig on Google Books data determined, among other things, the frequency of first letters of English words.  A June 2012 analysis using a text document containing all words in the English language exactly once, found 'S' to be the most common starting letter for words in the English language, followed by 'P', 'C', and 'A'.  Find charts at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency  Frequency ratings of letters overall in English start with ‘E’ at 13%, ‘T’ at 9.1%, and ‘A’at  8.2%.  You can remember ETA thinking “estimated time of arrival.” 

—Beyond Van Gogh:  The Immersive Experience is the vision of Mathieu St-Arnaud, creative director of Montreal-based Normal Studio, a projection-mapping outfit that has previously worked with the Montreal symphony and brought the Diary of Anne Frank to life.  Beyond Van Gogh promises “300 of Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic artworks,” brought to life with music and “the artist’s own dreams, thoughts, and words.”  —Imagine Van Gogh:  The Immersive Exhibition claims to employ a signature technique of immersive projection so visceral that they do not show videos on their website, because this would fail to capture the experience.  Conceived by Annabelle Mauger and Julien Baron, associated with the immersive attraction known as the Cathédrale d’Images in France, Imagine Van Gogh is an animated projected collage of some 200 paintings from the final two years of Van Gogh’s life, all accompanied by classical hits by Saint-Saëns, Mozart, Bach, Delibes and Satie.  There is also a “pedagogical room,” conceived with art historian Androulla Michael.  —Immersive Van Gogh is the brainchild of Italian film producer Massimiliano Siccardi.  It promises, via 100 projectors, an hour-long experience completely bathing visitors in Vincent Van Gogh’s greatest hits, accompanied by “experimental electronic music with pure, ethereal and simple-seeming piano” by composer Luca Longobardi.  —Van Gogh Alive comes courtesy Grande Experiences, also the braintrust behind such exhibitions as Monet & Friends and Planet Shark.  Focusing on the period between 1880 and 1890, it promises “more than 3,000 Van Gogh images at enormous scale” via 40 projectors, augmented to show the Dutch artist’s sources of inspiration and set to “a powerful classical score.”  —Finally, Van Gogh:  The Immersive Experience, a partnership between producer Exhibition Hub and “entertainment discovery platform” Fever promises to wrap you in more than 400 Van Gogh works using a trademarked video mapping technology.  On top of the light show, there is a drawing studio, galleries that offer info about Van Gogh’s life and work, and an (optional) 10-minute VR experience called A Day in the Life of the Artist in Arles.  Ads with “Gogh”-themed puns (“Gogh with Mom,” “It’s Safe to Gogh,” “Don’t Wait to Gogh,” etc.) are blanketing nearly 40 different cities across the U.S. and saturating social media feeds.  Find a round-up of U.S. shows based on the best available information at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/immersive-van-gogh-guide-1974038 

Although Amelia Earhart wrote three books about her flights, was the aviation editor for Cosmopolitan, and wrote numerous other pieces of journalism about everything from her experiences flying an autogiro to her musings on clouds, her love of poetry only shows up on rare occasions in her prose.  Harriet Staff  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet-books/2020/02/recollecting-amelia-earharts-lost-verse   As a social worker, Amelia Earhart wrote a poem called “Courage,” about making hard decisions; Eleanor Roosevelt kept a copy of it in her desk drawer: 
Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace
The soul that knows it not, knows no release
From little things:
Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,
Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings… 
Amelia occasionally submitted poetry to magazines under an assumed name, but she wrote often, mainly for herself.  A few hand-written poems survive, most of them drafts and scraps.  http://www.ameliaearhartbook.net/amelia-earhart-media/blog2/amelias-flights-of-poetry/  Despite her lifelong hobby, Earhart only ever published one poem.  “Courage” went to print in June of 1928, after Earhart’s first trans-Atlantic flight on the Friendship, when she flew as a passenger and first gained celebrity status.  She had submitted other poems, including “To M.,” “Palm Tree,” and “From an Airplane,” for magazine publication in 1926, but they were rejected.  In these instances, Earhart used the pen name, Emil Harte, for her work.  https://flightpaths.lib.purdue.edu/blog/2016/04/25/the-poet-and-the-person/  See also https://www.poemhunter.com/amelia-earhart/

July 6, 2021  Downsizing and shrinkflation both refer to the same thing:  companies reducing the size or quantity of their products while charging the same price or even more.  The original name was downsizing, but economist Pippa Malmgren rechristened it "shrinkflation" about a decade ago, and the term stuck.  Greg Rosalsky  https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/07/06/1012409112/beware-of-shrinkflation-inflations-devious-cousin 

heffalump (plural heffalumps)  noun  (chiefly childish, humorous) (A child's name for) an elephant.  quotations ▼ Something that is elusive.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heffalump#English  English author A. A. Milne’s book Winnie-the-Pooh, in which Heffalumps were introduced, was first published on October 26, 1926. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2445  October 26, 2021