Frederic Ogden Nash (1902-1971) was an American poet well known for his light verse, of which he wrote over 500 pieces.  With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared by The New York Times the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.  Nash was born in Rye, New York, the son of Mattie (Chenault) and Edmund Strudwick Nash.  His father owned and operated an import–export company, and because of business obligations, the family often relocated. Nash was descended from Abner Nash, an early governor of North Carolina.  The city of Nashville, Tennessee, was named after Abner's brother, Francis, a Revolutionary War general.  Throughout his life, Nash loved to rhyme.  "I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old," he stated in a 1958 news interview.  He had a fondness for crafting his own words whenever rhyming words did not exist but admitted that crafting rhymes was not always the easiest task.  His family lived briefly in Savannah, Georgia, in a carriage house owned by Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA. He wrote a poem about Mrs. Low's House.  Nash was the lyricist for the Broadway musical One Touch of Venus and collaborated with the librettist S. J. Perelman and the composer Kurt Weill.  The show included the notable song "Speak Low."  He also wrote the lyrics for the 1952 revue Two's Company.  Nash and his love of the Baltimore Colts were featured in the December 13, 1968 issue of Life, with several poems about the American football team matched to full-page pictures.  Nash wrote humorous poems for each movement of the Camille Saint-Saëns orchestral suite The Carnival of the Animals, which are sometimes recited when the work is performed.  The original recording of this version was made by Columbia Records in the 1940s, with Noël Coward reciting the poems and Andre Kostelanetz conducting the orchestra.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogden_Nash 

The origins of the word barbecue come from the word barbacoa, found in many Amerindian languages spoken by indigenous people throughout modern-day Barbados, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and eastern Venezuela.  While there isn’t one specific historical definition of barbacoa it's often referred to some aspect of cooking outside, whether it be the act itself or in other cases, the wooden racks used in cooking.  In Mexico today, barbacoa is most notably recognized as a term to describe meat, often whole lamb, mutton or goat, that's cooked over an open fire or, more traditionally, in a fire-pit covered with maguey (agave) leaves.  In this more traditional method, the first thing that goes in the fire pit is a grill placed over a pot filled with a little liquid (like water or pulque, an alcohol distilled from the sap of the maguey plant).  The meat is placed onto the grill and covered with maguey leaves and then the whole pit is covered with a lid and sealed.  While the meat roasts, it's steamed and braised by its own juices and infused with the flavor of the maguey leaves.  As a result, you're left with otherworldly levels of tenderness and fall-off-the bone meat.  Justin Sullivan  https://www.delish.com/cooking/a36820852/mexican-barbacoa-guide/ 

Barbacoa is believed to have originated centuries ago in Barbados, an island country in the West Antilles of the Caribbean.  The word “barbados” is derived from the words “Los Barbadoes” meaning “the bearded ones,” a name created by 16th century Portuguese explorers to describe giant bearded fig trees covering many Caribbean islands.  It is widely believed the West Indies native Taino people, a subgroup of the South American Arawaks, first used green, fire-resistant bearded fig branches for cooking.  They marinated foods in tropical herbs and spices to enhance natural flavors and preserve them after cooking.  The Tainos called their preparations “barabicu,” or “sacred firepit,” that over time became “barbecue.”  These cooking methods were superb at keeping their foods from prematurely spoiling.  The Barbacoa style of cooking was eventually taken to Mexico, where it still refers to meats slow-roasted over an open fire, or more traditionally, in a fire pit covered with succulent leaves of the maguey plant (also known as agave or century plant.)  http://www.aquiestexcoco.com/about-aqui-es-texcoco/history-of-barbacoa/ 

Award-winning children’s book author and illustrator, fine artist, and educator Ashley Bryan, widely known for his passion for poetry and vibrant retellings of folktales and spirituals rooted in the Black oral tradition, died peacefully on February 4, 2022 at the age of 98.  Bryan was born July 13, 1923 in Harlem to parents who had immigrated from the British West Indies (now Antigua) following WWI.  Though times were tough when he was growing up in the Bronx, Bryan noted that his father, a printer and musician, and his mother, a seamstress, had been hugely supportive of his early love of art.  “I can’t remember a time when I have not been drawing and painting,” Bryan wrote in his autobiographical essay for Something About the Author.   His father brought home paper from his job for Bryan to draw on, and his mother had a flair for crafting the flowers she missed from her homeland out of cut paper.  Bryan wrote that there was always “music and color” in their family’s apartment.  From the ages of 10 to 12, during the Depression, Bryan further developed his drawing skills when he and his five siblings were able to take free art, drawing, and piano lessons provided by artists working in the Works Progress Administration.  Bryan took advantage of the G.I. Bill to enroll in Columbia University and pursued a degree in philosophy, which he earned in 1950.  Following his graduation from Columbia, Bryan additionally used the G.I. Bill to study art in Europe including at the Université d’Aix-Marseille in France; he also received a Fulbright grant to study at the University of Freiburg in Germany.  Read Nikki Giovanni’s poem An Angel Like Ashley and see pictures at https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/88490-obituary-ashley-bryan.html 

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy--sun, wind, and tide. . . .  I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy.  What a source of power!  I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. - Thomas Edison, inventor (10 Feb 1847-1931) 

digon  noun  from di- (prefix meaning ‘two’) +‎ -gon (suffix forming the names of plane figures containing a given number of angles).  (plural digons)  (geometry) A polygon having two edges and two vertices. quotations ▼  Synonyms:  biangle, bigon, (less common) diangle  (graph theory)  A pair of parallel undirected edges in a multigraph.  A pair of antiparallel edges in a directed graph. 

February 11 is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, which is recognized by the United Nations to highlight the critical role that women and girls play in science and technology communities. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2494  February 11, 2022