Labyrinth is a 1986 British-American fantasy film, directed by Jim Henson, produced by George Lucas and starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.  The screenplay was collaboratively produced between Henson, George Lucas, poet Dennis Lee, Laura Phillips, Terry Jones and Elaine May, although Jones received the film's sole screen-writing credit.  Labyrinth was mostly filmed at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England, with a few scenes being filmed in New York and West Wycombe Park in England.  In the Labyrinth series, this was preceded by Untitled Archaia Comics Project and followed by Return to Labyrinth.  This was the last feature film directed by Henson before his death in 1990.  https://labyrinth.fandom.com/wiki/Labyrinth_(film) 

The city of Detroit, Michigan, is the only major US city that sits directly on the Canada-USA border.  And it’s the 14th largest metro area in the US too.  And Detroit actually sits north of the city of Windsor, Ontario.  https://www.sidmartinbio.org/is-windsor-north-of-detroit/ 

Gerald Clery Murphy (1888-1964) and Sara Sherman Wiborg (1883-1975) were wealthy, expatriate Americans who moved to the French Riviera in the early 20th century and who, with their generous hospitality and flair for parties, created a vibrant social circle, particularly in the 1920s, that included a great number of artists and writers of the Lost Generation.  Gerald had a brief but significant career as a painter.  Nicole and Dick Diver of Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald are widely recognized as having been based on the Murphys, mainly from the marked physical similarities, although many of their friends, as well as the Murphys themselves, saw as much or more of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald's relationship and personalities in the couple than those of the Murphys.  Ernest Hemingway's couple in The Garden of Eden is not explicitly based on this pair, but given the similarities of the setting (Nice) and of the type of social group portrayed, there is clearly some basis for such an assumption.  Guests of the Murphys often swam at Eden Roc, an event emulated in Hemingway's narrative.  Calvin Tomkins's biography of Gerald and Sara Murphy Living Well Is the Best Revenge was published in The New Yorker in 1962, and Amanda Vaill documented their lives in the 1995 book Everybody Was So Young.  Both accounts are balanced, unlike some of the portrayals in the memoirs and fictitious works by their friends, including Fitzgerald and Hemingway.  In 1982, Honoria Murphy Donnelly, the Murphys' daughter, with Richard N. Billings, wrote Sara & Gerald:  Villa America and After.  On July 12, 2007, a play by Crispin Whittell titled Villa America, based entirely on the relationships between Sara and Gerald Murphy and their friends, had its world premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival with Jennifer Mudge playing Sara Murphy.  Gerald only painted from 1921 until 1929; he is known for his hard-edged still life paintings in a Precisionist, Cubist style.  Pablo Picasso, a friend of Sara, painted her in several of his 1923 works.  The Sara and Gerald Murphy Papers are held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_and_Sara_Murphy 

Good health and a healthy appetite go hand in hand in Jane Austen’s novels.  Her heroines—when flourishing—eat in moderation and without worrying too much about what they are eating and what they are not.  Austen was well aware that a garden was about much more than sensual splendor; it also had to play its part in the household economy.  She writes:  We are likely to have a great crop of Orleans plumbs—but not many greengages—on the standard scarcely any—three or four dozen perhaps against the wall.  In Chawton Cottage’s thriving plum trees was the promise, she saw, of jellies and desserts in the coming months, and bottled fruits through the winter.  Austen’s message in her novels—of having a good appetite spurred on by exercise but all the while disentangling appetite from emotion—is a challenging one, but remains relevant to our human flourishing today.  Excerpted from Jane Austen’s Table:  Recipes Inspired by the Works of Jane Austen by Robert Tuesday Anderson.  Copyright © Octopus Publishing Group, 2021.  Find a recipe that will capture all the freshness of those “Orleans plumbs” but sturdy enough to keep away any fall chill at https://lithub.com/in-moderation-and-without-worry-on-jane-austens-use-of-food-as-character 

A traditional yurt (from the Turkic languages) or ger (Mongolian) is a portable, round tent covered with skins or felt and used as a dwelling by several distinct nomadic groups in the steppes of Central Asia.  The structure consists of an angled assembly or latticework of wood or bamboo for walls, a door frame, ribs (poles, rafters), and a wheel (crown, compression ring) possibly steam-bent.  The roof structure is often self-supporting, but large yurts may have interior posts supporting the crown.  The top of the wall of self-supporting yurts is prevented from spreading by means of a tension band which opposes the force of the roof ribs.  Modern yurts may be permanently built on a wooden platform; they may use modern materials such as steam-bent wooden framing or metal framing, canvas or tarpaulin, plexiglass dome, wire rope, or radiant insulation.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurt 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is, essentially, a love story.  It is the story of a small island community composed of very disparate people who came together during the German occupation of World War II to protect, comfort, and in some cases, save one another.  The novel is told through a series of letters sent between January and September 1946.  In these letters and nine short months, a whole world of tragedy, deprivation, evil, camaraderie, humor, and love is revealed.  In his lust for land acquisition, Hitler sends troops onto the Guernsey Channel Islands in 1940 to hold them for the homeland until the war is over.  It is during this, a five-year occupation, that we learn the story of Elizabeth, who, though missing from the island, is nevertheless central to the story.  It is Elizabeth who saves a group of her friends from serious punishment for a curfew violation by lying to the guards and telling them they are just leaving from a book club discussion.  A true book club is then born, becoming the center of community for the people living in Guernsey and who are suffering the starvation and humiliation of the occupation.  It is this society that keeps sanity and hope alive.  https://www.ala.org/united/friends/bookclubchoices/guernsey 

We shall overcome.  My blood is not shed in vain.  *  Those who live in stone houses shouldn’t throw stones for fear of ricochet.  *  The world looks better when your belly is full, brighter and more hopeful.  *  Fear makes anger.  *  There’s nothing worse than warm beer—except no beer.  *  Malawi’s highlands are speckled with rivers and lakes that were stocked with Scottish trout before the Second World War and whose waters are still rich with the trouts’ descendants.  Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, an African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2522  April 18, 2022