Spring has now unwrapped the flowers, day is fast reviving,

life in all her growing powers towards the light is striving. 

Gone the iron touch of cold, winter time and frost time,
seedlings working through the mold now make up for lost time. 

Flower Carol  The Oxford Book of Carols, # 99

The season of fresh fava/broad beans is short, you can only find them in the early spring.  Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté the onions and garlic over medium heat for about 5 minutes or until the onions become translucent.  Add the shelled fava beans and cook them for about 5 minutes.  Add in the salt, sugar, and water, and continue cooking the beans for about 20 minutes.  Cool and garnish the beans.  Remove the cooked fava beans from the heat and allow them to cool slightly.  Add some freshly chopped dill and stir it in well.  Serve with red pepper flakes, fresh dill, and some refreshing lemon slices.  Zerrin & Yusuf  Find tips and specific measurements at https://www.giverecipe.com/shelled-fresh-fava-beans/ 

Yoshitomo Nara graduated from Aichi University of the Arts with a master’s degree in 1987, completing further studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, from 1988 to 1993, before settling in Cologne in 1994.   This period of time was a pivotal influence on Nara, during which he began synthesizing Japanese and Western popular culture, as seen in Nachtwandern (1994), and when he arrived at his mature style, as seen in Pony Tail (1995) and Haze Days (1998).  See many pictures at https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/yoshitomo-nara/  

Cacciatore means "hunter" in Italian.  In cuisine, alla cacciatora refers to a meal prepared "hunter-style" with onions, herbs, usually tomatoes, often bell peppers, and sometimes wine.  Cacciatore is popularly made with braised chicken (pollo alla cacciatora) or rabbit (coniglio alla cacciatora).  The salamino cacciatore is a small salami that is seasoned with only garlic and pepper.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacciatore  Thank you, Muse reader!  

Philip Guston (1913-1980) was born in Montreal, Quebec, the seventh child of Ukrainian immigrants.  Raised in Los Angeles and largely self-taught, he found inspiration for his early murals in the masters of the Italian Renaissance. Early acclaim as a figurative painter and years spent teaching in the mid-West were followed by a Prix de Rome in 1948-49, after which he moved permanently to New York and turned to abstraction, joining contemporaries Pollock, De Kooning, Kline and Rothko.  In the mid-1960's, Guston withdrew from the New York art scene to Woodstock, where he worked on the late figurative paintings for which he is now best known.  Link to pictures of selected works at https://www.philipguston.org/home  

April 7, 2023 The Mysterious Underground City Found in a Man’s Basement by Frank Jacobs  A renovation project in Turkey led to the discovery of a lifetime—a lost city that once housed 20,000 people.  But in 1963, that barrier was breached for real.  Taking a sledgehammer to a wall in his basement, a man in the Turkish town of Derinkuyu got more home improvement than he bargained for.  Behind the wall, he found a tunnel.  And that led to more tunnels, eventually connecting a multitude of halls and chambers.  It was a huge underground complex, abandoned by its inhabitants and undiscovered until that fateful swing of the hammer.  The anonymous Turk—no report mentions his name—had found a vast subterranean city, up to 18 stories and 280 feet (76 meters) deep and large enough to house 20,000 people.  Read much more and see pictures at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/derinkuyu-turkey-underground-city-strange-maps  Thank you, Muse reader! 

seventh art (uncountable)  (film) Chiefly preceded by the: the art of making motion pictures; filmmaking. [from 1920s] noun Wiktionary  

April 14 is the eve of World Art Day, which was established by the International Association of Art to celebrate the fine arts.  The Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci was born on 15 April 1452.  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2657  April 14, 2023