Vowels are the souls of consonants.  And a consonant without a vowel is a body without a soul.  So says Spinoza in his Hebrew Grammar (Compendium grammatices linguæ hebrææ), as published posthumously in 1677.  At least, that's sort of what he says.  The tricky part is that he's writing about Hebrew, where the traditional orthography normally represents consonants and not vowels.  Filed by Mark Liberman https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=37468 

“Venice is like a canary in a coal mine,” said Sergio Fagherazzi, a coastal geomorphologist at Boston University, who also grew up in the northern Italian city.  “It’s possible to apply the same concept in the U.S., and it’s very relevant now for any low-lying area.”  As climate change causes sea levels in Venice—and across the planet—to steadily inch higher, scientists say catastrophic floods could become more severe and more frequent, with some parts of the city being inundated on a daily basis.  Some flooding is common during the so-called astronomical high tide, when Earth, the moon and the sun are aligned and the gravitational attraction among these celestial bodies generate strong tidal forces.  But rising sea levels are making catastrophic events more regular.  Since the record-setting 1966 flood, sea levels in Venice have risen more than 5 inches.  And according to a recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, sea levels around the world could rise by 1 meter, or more than 3 feet, by the end of the century.  https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/venice-s-devastating-floods-are-canary-coal-mine-coastal-cities-n1084031  See also https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/Cities100-Venice-is-taking-an-ecosystem-service-approach-to-flood-protection?language=en_US   

Flavor of Poland premiered on American Public Television / PBS in January 2020, with episodes and recipes narrated by Aleksandra August on the CREATE channel. https://flavorofpoland.com/   

Edith Nesbit (married name Edith Bland; 1858–1924) was an English writer and poet, who published her books for children as E. Nesbit.  Nesbit's first published works were poems.  She was under 20 in March 1878, when the monthly magazine Good Words printed her poem "Under the Trees".   In all she published about 40 books for children, including novels, storybooks and picture books.  She also published almost as many books jointly with others.  Nesbit's biographer, Julia Briggs, names her "the first modern writer for children", who "helped to reverse the great tradition of children's literature inaugurated by Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald and Kenneth Grahame, in turning away from their secondary worlds to the tough truths to be won from encounters with things-as-they-are, previously the province of adult novels".  Briggs also credits Nesbit with inventing the children's adventure story.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Nesbit   

Raymond Mathewson Hood (1881–1934) was an American architect who worked in the Neo-Gothic and Art Deco styles.  He is best known for his designs of the Tribune Tower, American Radiator Building, and Rockefeller Center.  Through a short yet highly successful career, Hood exerted an outsized influence on twentieth century architecture.  Raymond Mathewson Hood was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on March 29, 1881, to John Parmenter Hood and Vella Mathewson.  John Hood was the owner of J.N. Polsey & Co., a crate and box manufacturing company.  The family lived at 107 Cottage Street in a house designed by John Hood and local architect Albert H. Humes.  In a 1931 profile of Hood in The New Yorker, writer Allene Talmey described the Hood home as "the ugliest place in town."  In 1893, the Hood family visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an experience that may have sparked Hood's interest in architecture.  In 2020, The David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Hood's alma mater, held an online exhibition titled "Raymond Hood and the American Skyscraper."  The exhibition focused on a selection of Hood's built and unbuilt skyscrapers, and included about 70 of his architectural drawings, photographs, models, and books.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Hood   

kuspuk (plural kuspuks) (Alaska)  noun  (originally)  An Alaska Native (traditionally Yup'ik) garment worn on the upper body as an overshirt on top of a parka (“long jacket with a hood”).  A lightweight parka-like garment with a hood and a large front pocket worn by Alaska Native people of all sexes, either as an overshirt or as a shirt.  See pictures at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kuspuk#English  October 18 is Alaska Day, which marks the formal transfer of the Territory of Alaska from the  Russian Empire to the United States in 1867.   

Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker Prize on October 17, 2022 for his second novel "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida," about a dead war photographer on a mission in the afterlife.  Karunatilaka received a trophy from Queen Consort Camilla at the English language literary award's first in-person ceremony since 2019.  He also gets a £50,000 ($56,810) prize.  https://www.cnn.com/style/article/booker-prize-2022-winner-karunatilaka-sri-lanka-hnk/index.html   

come in from the cold (third-person singular simple present comes in from the cold, present participle coming in from the cold, simple past came in from the cold, past participle come in from the cold) (intransitive, idiomatic)  verb  (espionage) Of a spy: to return home after having gone undercover in enemy territory.  quotations ▼  (by extension) To gain widespread acceptance in a group or society, especially where there was not any before.  Long an outsider in Western politics, Portugal came in from the cold after the 1974 Carnation Revolution.   

The British author John le Carré, whose novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold popularized the term, was born on October 19, 1931.  Next year, 2023, is the 60th anniversary of the novel’s first publication.   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2579  October 19, 2022