truffle  (TRUHF-uhl, TROO-fuhl))  verb:  To stuff or to intersperse with something  noun:  1.  Any of various edible fungi that grow underground  2.  A soft, round candy made with chocolate, often coated with cocoa powder   From French truffe, probably from Latin tuber (swelling).  The verb intr. sense alludes to the search for underground truffles, traditionally with the help of pigs or dogs.  The transitive verb is from the stuffing of truffles in something being cooked. Earliest documented use:  noun 1591, verb 1868.  A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

August 4, 2020  The $140 million redevelopment of the old Cook County Hospital, a once-imperiled 1914 Beaux Arts edifice that once housed a hospital often described as “Chicago’s Ellis Island” due to its open-door policy of treating patients of all nationalities from all walks of life, is partially complete.  The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM)-led adaptive reuse project was first announced in 2016 and broke ground two years later.  The 342,000 square foot complex includes two Hyatt-branded hotels with a combined 210 rooms, in addition to a large suite of medical offices, a museum dedicated to the legacy of the building, a daycare center, a 24-hour fitness facility, and what’s perhaps the country’s only food hall named in honor of a long-dead abdominal surgeon.  Although the Paul Gerhardt–designed building, added to the National Register of Historic Place in 2006, sat vacant in an increasingly advanced state of dilapidation for nearly two decades beginning in the early aughts when a new modern facility was built nearby and the teaching hospital was relocated, it remains the district’s cornerstone structure and a fabled part of Chicago history.  It also has some serious popular culture credentials, to boot.  In addition to loosely serving as the inspiration for the television show ER, the building has been featured in numerous films and shows.  And in 1996, Princess Diana visited the hospital’s pioneering AIDS ward while touring Chicago.  Matt Hickman  See graphics at https://www.archpaper.com/2020/08/transformation-of-chicagos-historic-cook-county-hospital-into-mixed-use-hotel-complex-complete/  See also https://www.archpaper.com/author/matt-hickman/   

Created in 1926 by linking a series of roughly east-west pre-existing roads and trails, Route 66 was originally established to provide a direct, year-round connection between the Midwest and the Pacific Coast.  Decommissioned in 1985, Route 66 remains a pop culture icon of titanic proportions.  The lure of the open road draws travelers from around the planet, and road trip adventures have been popularized in film, fiction, television, and song.  And despite a return to its origins as a hodgepodge of secondary highways and local routes, a trip down memory lane is still possible for anyone willing to spend the time mapping out directions. “Although it is no longer an official U.S. highway,” says Webb, “in many of the smaller towns, Route 66 is still the biggest economic generator.”  As such, the National Trust is partnering with Route 66 business owners and enthusiasts, nonprofit organizations, and state and federal agencies to invigorate this long stretch of Americana.  By commemorating Route 66 and capitalizing on its cultural value, once-prosperous towns along the Mother Road may thrive again.  Today, although it’s true that U.S. Route 66 no longer officially exists, that’s just a technicality.  The people won’t let its spirit die.  Travelers, Route 66 devotees known as “roadies,” business owners, historians, and entire towns maintain and shape the Mother Road’s lore.  The places on Route 66 compose a quirky, complicated, brightly hued slice of Americana.  Dennis Hockman  See pictures at https://savingplaces.org/stories/traveling-route-66-reflections-from-one-of-the-worlds-most-fabled-stretches-of-blacktop#.Y1sK53bMKUk   

Today both -archy and -cracy are centrally associated with the idea of ruling.  Michael Quinion, Ologies and Isms: Word Beginnings and Endings (Oxford, 2002) has this to say about the suffixes:  -cracy Also -crat, -cratic, and -cratical. Government, rule, or influence [Greek kratia, power or rule.]  Many forms ending in -cracy have been coined, though only a small number are at all well known; most can mean either a system of influence or rule or a society so ruled, as with democracy, rule through elected representatives; a few can also refer to the rulers as a group, as with aristocracy (Greek aristos, best), rule by members of the highest social class.  -archy  Also -arch.  Government; rule of a particular type; a chief or ruler. [Greek arkhes, ruler; arkhein, to rule.]  Words in -archy are abstract nouns for types of government, leadership, or social influence or organization.  They correspond to nouns in -arch for a person or people who rule or command in that way.  For example, a monarch (Greek monos, alone or single) is a sovereign head of state, in a type of government called monarchy.  https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/215677/is-there-a-general-rule-for-which-types-of-nouns-end-in-archy-vs-cracy   

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris and the Musée Matisse Nice, is presenting the first major exhibition ever dedicated to the pivotal decade of the 1930s in the art of Henri Matisse (1869–1954), one of the giants of twentieth-century art.  Opening first in Philadelphia, the only United States venue, Matisse in the 1930s contains about 140 works from public and private collections in the United States and Europe, ranging from both renowned and rarely seen paintings and sculptures, to drawings and prints, to illustrated books.  It also features documentary photographs and films.  The exhibition, open through Jan. 29, 2023, will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated scholarly catalogue.  Find location and hours at https://press.philamuseum.org/three-major-institutions-collaborate-to-present-first-major-exhibition-devoted-to-matisse-in-the-1930s/   

As ever more digital data is created and stored, the world needs more unit measurements to keep up with the ever-expanding numbers.  To do so, the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures on November 18, 2022 introduced four new prefixes to the International System of Units, or metric system:  ronna (27 zeroes after the first digit) and quetta (30 zeroes), which are now at the top of the measurement range, and ronto (27 zeroes after the decimal point) and quecto (30 zeroes), which are now at the bottom.  "Most people are familiar with prefixes like milli- as in milligram," Richard Brown, head of metrology at the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory who proposed the four new prefixes, told The Associated Press.  "But these [new additions] are prefixes for the biggest and smallest levels ever measured."  Ashley Ahn  https://www.npr.org/2022/11/19/1137985619/metric-system-measurement-prefix   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2594  November 21, 2022