Native Chicagoan Edith Farnsworth (1903-1977) was born into the lumber and paper business.  She studied literature and composition at the University of Chicago and violin at the American Conservatory of Music.  She studied further in Italy for several years during the 1920s with concert violinist and composer Mario Corti.  She became fluent in Italian and French and spoke some German.  She also had interests in the sciences as well as the arts.  She eventually decided to pursue a career in medicine and graduated from Northwestern Medical School earning her MD in 1938.  During World War II, Dr. Farnsworth rose through the traditionally male field to become an associate professor of medicine at Passavant Hospital specializing in Nephrology (the study of the kidney) and divided her time between private practice as a physician and research for the university.  After selling the Farnsworth House to Lord Peter Palumbo in 1971, Dr. Farnsworth spent the end of her life in a small villa in Bagno a Ripoli (near Florence, Italy); while there, she became a published translator of Italian poetry and recorded extensive memoirs.  She died on December 5th, 1977 after a brief illness, and her ashes were returned for burial in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.  Link to VR Tour and Exhibitions at https://edithfarnsworthhouse.org/dr-edith-farnsworth/ 

Lewis Howard Latimer (1848-1928) was an African-American inventor, electrical pioneer, and a son of fugitive slaves.  With no access to formal education, Latimer taught himself mechanical drawing while in the Union Navy, and eventually became a chief draftsman, patent expert, and inventor.  Latimer worked with three of the greatest scientific inventors in American history, Alexander Graham Bell, Hiram S. Maxim, and Thomas Alva Edison.  He played a critical role in the development of the telephone, and invented the carbon filament, a significant improvement in the production of the incandescent light bulb.  Outside his professional career, Latimer developed a passion for visual art, creative writing, and music.  Some products of his artistic endeavors can be viewed at the Lewis Latimer House Museum.  The Lewis H. Latimer House is a modest Queen Anne-style, wood-frame suburban residence constructed between 1887 and 1889 by the Sexton family.  Lewis Howard Latimer lived in the house from 1903 until his death in 1928.  The house remained in the Latimer family until 1963.  Threatened with demolition, the house was moved from Holly Avenue to its present location in 1988.  The Lewis H. Latimer House is owned by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, operated by the Lewis H. Latimer Fund, Inc., and is a member of the Historic House Trust.  https://www.lewislatimerhouse.org/about 

Generation X:  Tales for an Accelerated Culture is the first novel by Douglas Coupland, published by St. Martin's Press in 1991.  The novel, which popularized the term Generation X, is a framed narrative in which a group of youths exchange heartfelt stories about themselves and fantastical stories of their creation.  Coupland released the similarly titled Generation A in September 2009.  Generation X is a framed narrative, like Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron by Boccaccio.  The framing story is that of three friends—Dag, Claire, and the narrator, Andy—are living together in the Coachella Valley in southern California.  The tales are told by the various characters in the novel, which is arranged into three parts.  Each chapter is separately titled rather than numbered, with titles such as "I Am Not a Target Market" and "Adventure Without Risk Is Disneyland".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X:_Tales_for_an_Accelerated_Culture  

Before the American Civil War, the majority of hospital nurses—or “stewards”—were men.  But the war created a medical crisis that demanded more volunteers, and a lot of the people who took up the call were women.  Of the estimated 620,000 military deaths during the Civil War, about two-thirds were due to disease.  If a bullet didn’t kill a soldier, the infection that developed from a wound might; and the infectious diseases that spread in war hospitals ravaged soldiers and medical workers alike.  Amid this desperate need for medical workers, women began to volunteer as nurses for wounded soldiers.  After the war, women continued to work in medicine; and by 1900, they represented 91 percent of U.S. nurses.  When the Civil War began in 1861, medical jobs weren’t yet professionalized as they are today, says Stanley Burns, a surgeon, historian and founder of The Burns Archive.  “Surgery was not part of medical training for many people,” he says.  To become a doctor, “the only requirement was an apprenticeship with a doctor and some courses.”  Many of the people who volunteered as surgeons during the Civil War essentially learned to operate on the job.  Similarly, there was no required training for the nurses who volunteered in war hospitals; so most of their training happened on the job, too.  Although both Union and Confederate military medical departments preferred using men in war hospitals, the need for more nurses became obvious in the first few months of the war.  Many of the men who ended up working as nurses in these hospitals were actually wounded soldiers who had been asked to help care for even more wounded soldiers.  In 1861, the U.S. Army appointed Dorothea Dix as its first superintendent of nurses.  Dix implemented a system for women to volunteer for three-month nursing assignments during the war.  In addition to establishing standards of care for nurses who volunteered with the Army, she also helped shape the image of what a nurse should look like.  To volunteer as a nurse under Dix, women had to be between the ages of 35 and 50, healthy and “plain looking.”  Another influential Civil War nurse was the abolitionist Clara Barton, who became known as “Angel of the Battlefield” and went on to found the American Red Cross.  In 1862, she made a harrowing journey by wagon to deliver medical supplies to the war hospital near Virginia’s Cedar Mountain battlefield.  Today, nursing is the largest healthcare profession in the United States.  Although more men have entered the field in the 21st century, women are still in the majority, making up 91 percent of nurses.  Becky Little  https://www.history.com/news/nursing-women-civil-war 

Carmen Herrera, the Cuban American painter and sculptor whose lifelong interest in vividly colored, hard-edge abstract forms brought her particular fame in the latter years of her life, died on February 12, 2022  in the New York apartment and studio where she lived for 55 years.  She was 106.  A major opportunity came in 2004 when she was 89, after she showed work at Frederico Sève’s Latin Collector Gallery on Hudson Street.  Rave reviews led to the first sales of her paintings to private collectors, followed by institutional acquisitions by MoMA, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, and Tate Modern in London.  In May 2016, she opened Lisson’s New York space with new works, and had a 30-year retrospective at the Whitney Museum that September.  Vivienne Chow  https://news.artnet.com/art-world/carmen-herrera-dies-at-106-2072333   

Peanut Butter Pie (Presidents Pie)  https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/dessert/pie/peanut-butter-pie-presidents-pie.html

Washington Pie http://www.grouprecipes.com/9600/washington-pie.html 

The New Yorker, now best known for publishing “Cat Person,” printed its first issue on February 21, 1925.  See also https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/12/16762062/cat-person-explained-new-yorker-kristen-roupenian-short-story 

Olympic Games Beijing 2022  February 4, 2022–February 20, 2022  Norway won the most gold medals with 16 and the biggest overall total at 37.  See the Olympic Medal Table at https://olympics.com/beijing-2022/olympic-games/en/results/all-sports/medal-standings.htm 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2498  February 21, 2022