Most historians agree that the first recorded monetary system appeared in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq, around 3000 B.C., where the Babylonians began using silver and barley as universal mediums of exchange and units of value.  It coincided with the development of the Code of Hammurabi, one of oldest surviving pieces of writing and law books.  Fast-forward to the Greek civilisation and Aristotle believed that money was crucial for the emergence of trade between nations, “When the inhabitants of one country became more dependent on those of another and they imported what they needed, and exported what they had too much of, money necessarily came into use.”  This is a view that was shared and resurrected by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.  The Roman Empire’s vast reach was synonymous with its coins being legal tender across huge the entire empire stretched from Europe to the Middle East.  https://arqgroup.com/insights/the-unofficial-history-of-money/   

The silent years, 1910–27  Multiple-reel films had appeared in the United States as early as 1907, when Adolph Zukor distributed Pathé’s three-reel Passion Play, but when Vitagraph produced the five-reel The Life of Moses in 1909, the MPPC forced it to be released in serial fashion at the rate of one reel a week.  The multiple-reel film—which came to be called a “feature,” in the vaudevillian sense of a headline attraction—achieved general acceptance with the smashing success of the three-and-one-half-reel Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth (Queen Elizabeth, 1912), which starred Sarah Bernhardt and was imported by Zukor (who founded the independent Famous Players production company with its profits).  In 1912 Enrico Guazzoni’s nine-reel Italian superspectacle Quo Vadis? (“Whither Are You Going?”) was road-shown in legitimate theatres across the country at a top admission price of one dollar, and the feature craze was on.  https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture/The-silent-years-1910-27   

Motion Picture Patents Company, also called Movie Trust, Edison Trust, or Trust, trust of 10 film producers and distributors who attempted to gain complete control of the motion-picture industry in the United States from 1908 to 1912.  https://www.britannica.com/topic/Motion-Picture-Patents-Company   

Figs-in-a-Blanket With Goat Cheese  55 minutes  Total Time  1 hour, 10 minutes  Spicy, honey-glazed figs are balanced by creamy goat cheese and buttery puff pastry in this fun vegetarian play on pigs-in-a-blanket.  If goat cheese isn't your thing, try these bites with brie, Camembert, Manchego, or Parmesan.  Makes 48  RHODA BOONE  https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/figs-in-a-blanket-with-goat-cheese    

In Maya art, the gods are depicted at all stages of life: as infants, as adults at the peak of their maturity and influence, and as they age.  The gods could die, and some were born anew, serving as models of regeneration and resilience.  In Lives of the Gods:  Divinity in Maya Art, rarely seen masterpieces and recent discoveries trace the life cycle of the gods, from the moment of their creation in a sacred mountain to their dazzling transformations as blossoming flowers or fearsome creatures of the night.  Maya artists, who lived in what is now Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, depicted the gods in imaginative ways from the monumental to the miniature—from exquisitely carved, towering sculptures to jade, shell, and obsidian ornaments that adorned kings and queens, connecting them symbolically to supernatural forces.  Finely painted ceramics reveal the eventful lives of the gods in rich detail.  The exhibit is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Kimbell Art Museum.  Showing through April 2, 2023  See map and location at https://maps.metmuseum.org/?screenmode=base&floor=1#hash=17/40.779448/-73.963517/-61   

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain.  It has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S.  We have never seen such a mass entry into the public domain in the digital age.  The last one—in 1998, when 1922 slipped its copyright bond—predated Google.  “We have shortchanged a generation,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive.  “The 20th century is largely missing from the internet.”  We can blame Mickey Mouse for the long wait.  In 1998, Disney was one of the loudest in a choir of corporate voices advocating for longer copyright protections.  At the time, all works published before January 1, 1978, were entitled to copyright protection for 75 years; all author’s works published on or after that date were under copyright for the lifetime of the creator, plus 50 years.  Glenn Fleishman  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/first-time-20-years-copyrighted-works-enter-public-domain-180971016/   

Still round the corner there may wait, / a new road or a secret gate. - J.R.R. Tolkien, novelist and philologist (3 Jan 1892-1973)   

http://librariansmuse.com.blogspot.com  Issue 2615  January 3, 2023