Food capitals of the World:  Almond, apricot, artichoke, avocado, broccoli, date, garlic, grape, horseradish, pear, raisin, and strawberry capitals are located in California.  Find a list of “crop capitals of the world” at https://agro.biodiver.se/2006/11/world-crop-capitals/  Find a list of nickname-related list articles on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_nicknames#Agricultural_or_Industrial_Capitals 

Michael Chabon (born May 24, 1963) is an American novelist, screenwriter, columnist and short story writer.  Born in Washington, DC, he spent a year studying at Carnegie Mellon University before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in 1984.  He subsequently received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine.  Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was published when he was 25.  He followed it with Wonder Boys (1995) and two short-story collections.  In 2000, he published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel that John Leonard would later call Chabon's magnum opus.  It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001.  His novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an alternate history mystery novel, was published in 2007 and won the Hugo, Sidewise, Nebula and Ignotus awards; his serialized novel Gentlemen of the Road appeared in book form in the fall of the same year.  In 2012 Chabon published Telegraph Avenue, billed as "a twenty-first century Middlemarch," concerning the tangled lives of two families in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004.  He followed Telegraph Avenue in November 2016 with his latest novel, Moonglow, a fictionalized memoir of his maternal grandfather, based on his deathbed confessions under the influence of powerful painkillers in Chabon's mother's California home in 1989.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chabon 

The most mispronounced words of 2021 list released December 7, 2021 identifies the words that proved most challenging for newsreaders and people on television to pronounce this year.  The list, compiled by the U.S. Captioning Company captions and subtitles real-time events on TV and in courtrooms.  Among the entries are Cheugy (CHOO-gee), Eilish (EYE-lish), and Kelce (KELs).   https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mispronounced-words-2021-include-cheugy-omicron-singer-billie-eilishs-rcna7853 

sound-thief   noun  slang, an expert in ‘bugging’ or the installation and operation of concealed microphones  Oxford English Dictionary, second edition (1989).  © Oxford University Press 1989.  Find many other definitions of sound at  https://www.oed.com/oed2/00231535;jsessionid=3AD66A3972B60E11683853E5BCD50B07 

The Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heritage Trail commemorates the life and times of a world-renown Harlem Renaissance author, anthropologist, storyteller and dramatist, primarily when she lived in Fort Pierce, during the final years of her life.  Three large kiosks, eight trail markers and a recently-added exhibit and visitor information center capture Zora memories in Fort Pierce and chronicle her travels through Florida and the Caribbean.  You can take a "virtual" tour of the Dust Tracks Heritage Trail by following the links at https://www.cityoffortpierce.com/386/Zora-Neale-Hurston-Dust-Tracks-Heritage- 

Widow of a musician, a brave and struggling Civil War nurse, creator of new homes in Kansas for Chicago's destitutes, cleaner of New York City slums, champion of women’s rights, a selfless, energetic and understanding individual--that was Mary Ann Sail Bickerdyks.  She had a rough childhood and little or no formal education during her girlhood on a farm in Ohio.  But she knew a lot about nursing and practical medicine.  The beginning of the Civil War found her a widow with two young sons in Galesburg, Illinois.  Almost immediately she rose to Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher's (the brother of Harriet and Henry Ward Beecher) call to do something about the horrible conditions of the wounded Union soldiers in Cairo in southern Illinois.  From then on her life is the story of struggle with and against the army for more nurses, and among the many failures, of one small success after another until she had done an honorable and exciting piece of work for her country.  Nina Brown Baker  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/nina-brown-baker/cyclone-in-calico-2/ 

The fifth annual gingerbread replica of the Capitol debuted December 20, 2021.  Last year, chef Fred Johnson livestreamed the replica from his basement during the height of the pandemic, complete with masked gingerbread people.  This year, he brought the tradition back to the Hill, with face coverings absent on the candied lawn but still going strong inside the cookie walls.  The sugary structure was installed on the first floor of the Capitol, near the Memorial Door entrance and a bust of Abraham Lincoln.  This year’s design—slightly smaller than years past but still about 5 feet long and 3 feet tall—features a couple of nutcrackers and gingerbread people sledding down the slick hills outside the Capitol decorated with royal icing and dusted with crystallized sugar.  Festive trees and other cheery holiday embellishments round out the scene.  https://www.rollcall.com/2021/12/06/gingerbread-is-back-sweet-replica-returns-to-capitol/ 

Gingerbread House of Congress (Wheel of Fortune TV game show category Before and After) 

No one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell. - Charles de Lint, writer (b. 22 Dec 1951) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2472  December 22, 2021