Alfredo di Lelio, inventor of the fettuccine that bears his name, was born in Rome in 1883 and got his start at the family restaurant in Piazza Rosa, which later vanished to make room for the shopping arcade now known as Galleria Sordi.  He was still a child when he began helping out at the family business run by his mother, Angelina.  One of the first American references to the dish turns up in the 1922 novel Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, which was quite popular in its day.  At one point in the story, the protagonist meets an upper-class American lady who confesses her infatuation with Rome.  But the object of her affection is not the city’s paintings, music or antiquities:  rather, it’s the “little trattoria on the Via della Scrofa where you get the best fettuccine in the world.”  But it was only in 1927 that this Roman speciality got its true consecration, an investiture presided over—and how could it be otherwise, given the theatrical flair that went into the dish—by two Hollywood stars:  Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.  Actually, the pair had already eaten at Alfredo’s in 1920, while on their honeymoon.  Seven years later they came back, bearing an unexpected gift with enormous publicity potential:  a gold fork and spoon engraved with the dedication “To Alfredo the King of the noodles.”  Luca Cesari  https://lithub.com/the-invention-of-fettuccine-alfredo-a-love-story/

Dime Mystery Magazine was an American pulp magazine published from 1932 to 1950 by Popular Publications.  Titled Dime Mystery Book Magazine during its first nine months, it contained ordinary mystery stories, including a full-length novel in each issue, but it was competing with Detective Novels Magazine and Detective Classics, two established magazines from a rival publisher, and failed to sell well. With the October 1933 issue the editorial policy changed, and it began publishing horror stories.  Under the new policy, each story's protagonist had to struggle against something that appeared to be supernatural, but would be revealed to have an everyday explanation.  The new genre became known as "weird menace" fiction; the publisher, Harry Steeger, was inspired to create the new policy by the gory dramatizations he had seen at the Grand Guignol theater in Paris.  Most of the stories in Dime Mystery were low-quality pulp fiction, but some well-known authors appeared in the magazine, including Edgar Wallace, Ray Bradbury, Norvell Page, and Wyatt Blassingame.  The last few issues appeared under the title 15 Mystery Stories.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dime_Mystery_Magazine   

Astronomically, our planet’s seasons change on four particular days each year, two solstices, one in June and one in December, and two equinoxes (one in March and one in September).  The particular dates are targeted by scientists at the boundary between our seasons because of a series of factors based upon the relationship between the Earth and the Sun, the tilt in the Earth’s axis and how those factors play out for all of us living here on the third rock from the Sun.  Earth’s seasons are a direct result of the Earth’s 23° tilt in the Earth’s axis, known as an axial tilt.  Without an axial tilt, we would not have seasons in the way that we do and life on this planet could have developed much differently to account for more constant weather and climate conditions at each latitude of our planet.  This obliquity means that during certain parts of the year, the Southern Hemisphere is slightly more exposed to the Sun’s rays while they Northern Hemisphere is less exposed and vice versa.  This results in a variety of effects for our planet ranging from significant temperature shifts and meteorological differences as well as more or less light and energy coming from the Sun, which we know as seasons.  Occurring in June and December, the solstice marks either the start of winter or the start of summer.  In the Northern Hemisphere, the June Solstice heralds the astronomical beginning of summer and is the day with the most daylight in the year.  In the most northerly regions of the planet days or weeks may pass without the sun actually setting below the horizon while in Antarctica is may remain dark for a comparable amount of time.  The opposite is true for the December Solstice when summer begins in the Southern Hemisphere and winter starts in the North.  The solstice (combining the Latin words sol for “Sun” and sistere for “To Stand Still”) is the point where the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest point in the sky for the year and thus ancient astronomers came to know the day as one where the Sun appeared to stand still.  Equinoxes happen directly between the solstices and mark the beginning of the Spring and Fall seasons.  The term equinox, like solstice, finds its origin in Latin with the roots aequus meaning “Equal” and nox meaning “Night.”  Astronomers define the equinox as the moment the Earth’s Equator on its axis passes the same plane of the Sun’s equator, but its name reveals more of what we experience of these March and September dates here on Earth as most places on the planet on the day of the Equinox will experience roughly as much night time as day time, hence “Equal Night.”  Doug Ray  See graphics at https://www.fi.edu/blog/solstice-equinox   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2635  February 22, 2023