When news broke in 2019 that Jody Williams and Rita Sodi’s next project, the Commerce Inn, would be located in the old Grange Hall space where Commerce Street curves into Barrow, it didn’t come as a surprise.  The address falls squarely in the chef couple’s picturesque West Village wheelhouse.  What raised eyebrows was the fact that their new spot would be not only American—a first for the owners of Via Carota, I Sodi, and Buvette—but philosophically Shaker, a cuisine category heretofore unsearchable in the databases of Yelp, Zagat, or Michelin.  Despite a reputation for austerity, the Shakers, a.k.a. the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, really knew how to eat.  They were agricultural whizzes.  They grew tons of herbs that they cooked with and also dried and sold along with seeds they packaged, an innovation at the time.  They were ingredient connoisseurs, die-hard locavores, seasonality freaks, picklers and preservers, and always open to new ideas and techniques.  The front tavern room opened quietly in November 2021 with a limited menu of simple-sounding foods like bone marrow, rarebit, and meat pie.  But simplicity is deceiving:  Sodi and Williams are pickling their own oysters, smoking their own cod, and making their own ham as well as baking bread and curing bacon.  The cooks also began trying out dishes intended for the dining-room menu, like rabbit stew and greens with buttermilk dressing.  The plan is to be open all day—a neighborhood tavern serving the community duck-scrapple breakfasts and salt-beef sandwiches, humble seeming but chef engineered.   https://www.grubstreet.com/2021/12/the-commerce-inn-nyc.html 

On September 5th, 1901, the sitting president of the United States, William McKinley visited the World’s Fair in Buffalo.  He gave an open air speech in front of 50,000 people.  He stayed through to the next day, and the next day for President McKinley, the itinerary that day wasn’t another big speech at a podium in front of a big crowd.  His second day of the World's Fair involved him making an appearance at something called the Temple of Music, which was set up as part of the World’s Fair that year.  And at that public reception, President McKinley was assassinated.  McKinley actually survived the initial aftermath of the shooting, but he was dead by the end of the week.  There is now a monument to President McKinley in Buffalo, New York.  It sits right outside of Buffalo City Hall.  It’s a big obelisk, like a mini Washington Monument.  The United States of America had had three presidents assassinated in 36 years.  Congress soon ordered the Secret Service, primarily combating check forgers and counterfeiters, to secure the president’s safety.  https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/transcript-rachel-maddow-show-5-17-21-n1267741   Zero Fail, the Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig  

In trick-taking card games such as bridge, the beer card is a name informally given to the seven of diamonds (7♦).  Players may agree that if a player wins the last trick of a hand with the 7♦, their partner must buy them a beer.  This is not considered as part of the rules of these games, but is an optional and informal side-bet between players.  This practice likely originates from Danish Tarok or Skat in the middle of the 20th century.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_card 

Bridge has many colorful expressions. Here are a few:  a moose--a huge hand, typically with lots of high cards in all the suits  *  walk the dog--purposely underbid an excellent hand (usually with one very long suit) in the hopes of being doubled when you "take the push" (bid one more) later in the auction  *  swan--hand with 7-4-1-1 distribution  Ely Culbertson, the popularizer of contract bridge, said that swans should declare with the seven-card suit as trump even if you have a 4-4 fit in your second suit  *  tap--when on defense, to lead a suit that declarer is void in so as to reduce declarer's trumps.  If you continually "tap" declarer every time you are on lead you are employing a "forcing defense."  *  flat--a hand with no particular important distributional feature is "flat," typically a hand with 4-3-3-3 or 5-3-3-2 distribution  *  quacks--a hand which has lots of queens and jacks, or "quacks," is really not as good as its point count would indicate.  *  duck-- refuse to play one's only high card in the opponent's long suit for a round or two, with the purpose of cutting communications between the defenders, or in some other situations, improving declarer's own communications.  http://www.mapiano.com/slang.htm  See also http://www.mapiano.com/bridge.htm 

COMPARATIVE SIZE 

AREA                  Russia 17,098,250 km²    U.S.  9,831,510 km²

POPULATION    Russia  144,104,000       U.S.  329,484,000

https://www.worlddata.info/country-comparison.php?country1=RU 

COMPARATIVE SIZE OF NEW YORK to the rest of the continental U.S. according to comedian Trevor Noah on March 14, 2022—See 7:39 at https://www.cc.com/episodes/4xpypj/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-march-14-2022-evan-rachel-wood-season-27-ep-70

Prof. Emeritus Eugene N. Parker, a pioneering astrophysicist whose contributions to solar physics were so enormous that NASA named its Parker Solar Probe mission after him, died March 15, 2022.  He was 94.  Parker was internationally known for proposing the concept of the solar wind—an idea that was first met with skepticism to outright ridicule.  The theory was later proven to be correct, reshaping our picture of space and the solar system.  Parker went on to revolutionize the field of astrophysics, unraveling the complex physics behind magnetic fields in space and the dynamics of plasma.  https://news.uchicago.edu/story/eugene-parker-legendary-figure-solar-science-and-namesake-parker-solar-probe-1927-2022 

The full moon of March will reach its peak Friday (March 18), just two days before the arrival of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.  It is, therefore, no surprise that many of the traditional names associated with the March moon have to do with springtime and the infamous storms of March.  The most famous one is the Worm Moon, but Almanac.com lists a plethora of other possible monikers in the United States, among them the Storm or Hunger Moon.  The moon will reach its peak at 3:18 a.m. EDT (0718 GMT), but if you aren't able to get out so early in the morning, it will still look approximately full from about Wednesday night to Saturday morning, NASA wrote in its own guide.  Elizabeth Howell   https://www.space.com/worm-full-moon-march-2022-rises-tonight 

We take our bearings, daily, from others.  To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. - John Updike, writer (18 Mar 1932-2009) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2509  March 18, 2022