Author Louise Erdrich’s name is pronounced er-drik (means rich earth).  See links at https://www.bookbrowse.com/authors/author_pronunciations/detail/index.cfm/author_number/613/louise-erdrich 

People can eat almonds raw or toasted as a snack or add them to sweet or savory dishes.  They are also available sliced, flaked, slivered, as flour, oil, butter, or almond milk.  People call almonds a nut, but they are seeds, rather than a true nut.  Almond trees may have been one of the earliest trees that people cultivated.  In Jordan, archaeologists have found evidence of domesticated almond trees dating back some 5,000 years.  Yvette Brazier  https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/269468#_noHeaderPrefixedContent  See also https://calisphere.org/item/d8e5e8b608e0ded4950da188e424c77f/

The main definition of the idiom part and parcel is a basic or essential part.  The phrase has been around at least since the 16th century.  Back then, parcel meant an essential component, so part and parcel were roughly synonymous.  The phrase apparently began as legal jargon, where this kind of overemphatic wordiness is common.  Indeed, most early instances of part and parcel are from legal texts, and the phrase didn’t enter broader usage until the 19th century.  https://grammarist.com/usage/part-and-parcel/ 

People will shout anything . . . once you start it up.  The Mirror & the Light, #3 in the trilogy about Thomas Cromwell by Hilary Mantel.  Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies are the first two novels in the trilogy.  See also https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/hilary-mantel-thomas-cromwell-mirror-light/606802/ 

The word risible has Latin and French roots, like so many good words we have taken into English.  The definitions on offer include no sense of derisiveness, simply a situation that provokes laughter.  Even a cursory Google search shows that risible coexists with words such as “comic,” “absurd,” and “ridiculous.”  Why use “funny” when each word has its own nuances?  That variety and flexibility remain glories of English, when well employed.  “Risible” sounds more formal, so when one wishes to elevate the diction of a sentence, it outranks “laughable” and gentles the sentiment of something ridiculous.  It’s almost genteel, even when Ponitus Pilate, in Monty Python’s retelling of the story, uses the word to berate a Roman Centurion about a tragically named friend of Pilate’s.  https://blog.richmond.edu/writing/2021/12/10/word-of-the-week-risible/

While most Americans were eating packaged Wonder Bread, Zabar’s offered twenty-five varieties of freshly baked bread—many of them whole grain or prepared without preservatives—that were made by small bakeries in the Bronx, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.  Zabar’s sold French bread by the foot, flourless soy loaves, black Russian rye bread, German pumpernickel, and Polish rye bread.  And, of course, different varieties of bagels and bialys.  First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy sparked a national interest in sophisticated French cuisine by hiring the French chef René Verdon for the White House kitchen in 1961.  Perhaps the most influential event in the growing fascination with French food was the 1963 debut of Julia Child’s televised cooking show, The French Chef.  My immediate family had never been to France (they’d actually never been anywhere in Europe), and The French Chef was a groundbreaking introduction to a new and exciting cuisine and culture.  Inspired by the series, my mother took a break from chicken baked in mushroom soup and tackled complicated recipes like beef Wellington from Julia Child’s cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which had been published to considerable acclaim in 1961.  By the mid-1960s, Zabar’s had become a fashionable place to shop for both gourmet offerings and traditional Jewish appetizing and delicatessen.  Actors, musicians, and intellectuals who lived and worked nearby, as well as neighborhood residents, congregated at Zabar’s on the weekends to socialize while stocking up for Saturday and Sunday brunch.  Lori Zabar  https://lithub.com/how-zabars-grew-from-a-modest-business-to-a-culinary-icon/  Zabar’s, founded in 1934, is located at 2245 Broadway and 80th Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. 

The horse's mouth as a source of reliable information is from 1921, perhaps originally of racetrack tips, from the fact that a horse's age can be determined accurately by looking at its teeth.  To swap horses while crossing the river (a bad idea) is from the American Civil War and appears to have been originally one of Abe Lincoln's stories.  Horse-and-buggy meaning "old-fashioned" is recorded from 1926 slang, originally in reference to a "young lady out of date, with long hair."  To hold (one's) horses "restrain one's enthusiasm, be patient" is from 1842, American English; the notion is of keeping a tight grip on the reins.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/horse-play 

When people horse around, they're silly and boisterous, fooling around in a physical way.  The phrase doesn't immediately make sense, because you don't usually see horses playing in this way.  Horse around probably comes from horseplay, and it in turn came from the old-fashioned verb horse, which was once used to mean "play crazy jokes on."  Experts aren't sure how it came into use, or what horses have to do with it.  https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/horse%20around 

 A previously unknown self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh has been discovered behind another of the artist’s paintings, the National Galleries of Scotland said.  The self-portrait was found on the back of Van Gogh’s “Head of a Peasant Woman” when experts at the Edinburgh gallery took an X-ray of the canvas ahead of an upcoming exhibition.  The work is believed to have been hidden for over a century, covered by layers of glue and cardboard when it was framed in the early 20th century.  Van Gogh was known for turning canvases around and painting on the other side to save money.  The portrait shows a bearded sitter in a brimmed hat.  Experts said the subject was instantly recognizable as the artist himself, and is thought to be from his early work.  The left ear is clearly visible and Van Gogh famously cut his off in 1888.  The gallery said experts are evaluating how to remove the glue and cardboard without harming “Head of a Peasant Woman.”  Visitors to an upcoming Impressionist exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh can see an X-ray image of the self-portrait through a lightbox.  “A Taste for Impressionism” runs from Jul. 30 to Nov. 13, 2022.  https://apnews.com/article/hidden-van-gogh-self-portrait-b703b4391c4ec0ba5bcf381ae44a6c3b 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2540  July 15, 2022