John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans in 1937.  After receiving a bachelor’s degree from Tulane University, Toole received a master’s in English from Columbia University, and taught at Hunter College and the University of Southwestern Louisiana (University of Louisiana-Lafayette).  In 1961, while pursuing a doctorate and Columbia University, Toole was drafted into the United States Army, where he spent his time teaching English, while stationed in Puerto Rico.  After two years in the army, Toole returned to New Orleans, where he taught at Dominican College.  In 1969, frustrated at his failure to interest a publisher in A Confederacy of Dunces, he committed suicide.  Toole’s book was eventually published, after his mother brought the work to the attention of the author Walker Percy and insisted that he read her son’s manuscript.  Percy became one of the novels many admirers and A Confederacy of Dunces would eventually be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1981, one year after the book’s first printing.  Following the success of A Confederacy of Dunces, The Neon Bible, which Toole had written when he was only sixteen, was first published by Grove Press in 1989.  “When a true genius appears in the world, You may know him by this sign, that the dunces Are all in confederacy against him.”  –Jonathan Swift, “Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting”  “A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.  The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once.”  So enters one of the most memorable characters in American fiction, Ignatius J. Reilly.  John Kennedy Toole’s hero is one, “huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter.  His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans’ lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures’ (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).  https://groveatlantic.com/book/a-confederacy-of-dunces/   

Domingo German authored a perfect game against the Oakland Athletics on June 28, 2023, as the New York Yankees starter allowed no hits and no walks on 99 pitches in an 11-0 victory.  In an up-and-down season that has included a suspension and a sub-.500 record headed into Wednesday's start, German was masterful against the last-place Athletics, mixing his pitches, keeping his defense busy and engaged and posting nine strikeouts along the way.  erman's effort was the fourth perfect game in franchise history, and across MLB, it's the first perfect game since Seattle's Felix Hernandez delivered one on Aug. 15, 2012.   https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/37931584/domingo-german-authors-perfect-game-yankees-top-athletics   

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Dave McIntyre   It was a great pleasure this month to serve as a judge at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition.  It benefits a great cause:  Camp Good Days and Special Times, a camp for young children with cancer.  The competition is international, with several entries from Canada (Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec), and a handful from Australia.  E & J Gallo entered their Alamos wines from Argentina.  The vast majority were from the United States, of course, with New York well represented.  So was Virginia:  Cross Keys Vineyards won Best of Class in Cabernet Franc and Hybrid White, while Wind Vineyards took Best of Class Hybrid Red.  Maryland was represented by Sugar Loaf Mountain Vineyards, Bordeleau and Layton’s Chance (for a watermelon wine!).  Texas took home some awards for Pedernales, Spicewood, and Solaro Estate.  Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota were well represented, as were Missouri, Colorado and Arizona.  There were a lot of hybrid and fruit wines, as well as meads.  Chambourcin seems to do especially well when blended with Cabernet Franc.  My panel did a Best of Class tasting on red blends, which was won by Armstrong Valley Vineyard and Winery in Pennsylvania.  (This winery also won Best of Class for Cabernet Sauvignon).  Arrington Vineyards in Tennessee will have to build a new trophy case to hold all the medals they took in.  And a Quebec meadery, Miel Nature, pretty much owned that category, winning Best of Class and three Platinum medals for some stunning meads I was able to sample afterwards.  https://dmwineline.wordpress.com/page/2/    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2690  June 30, 2023 

Robert Stewart Whipple (1871–1953) was a businessman in the British scientific instrument trade, a collector of science books and scientific instruments, and an author on their history.  He amassed a unique collection of antique scientific instruments that he later donated to found the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge in 1944.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stewart_Whipple   

The Whipple Museum’s holdings are particularly strong in material dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries, especially objects produced by English instrument makers, although the collection contains objects dating from the medieval period to the present day.  Instruments of astronomy, navigation, surveying, drawing and calculating are well represented, as are sundials, mathematical instruments and early electrical apparatus.  The Museum forms part of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge.  The Department includes a working library with a large collection of early scientific books, some of which were given by Robert Whipple.  https://www.whipplemuseum.cam.ac.uk/about-us   

46 Books that Changed the World by April Snellings   If we’re going to name influential books, we might as well begin with the oldest dated printed tome. On May 11, 868 CE—nearly 600 years before Gutenberg ever considered printing a Bible—a man named Wang Jie commissioned the printing of The Diamond Sutra, a Mahāyāna Buddhist “wisdom” text presented as a conversation between Buddha and his disciple, Subhuti, in Chinese.  According to Susan Whitfield, then-director of the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, “Printing was developed in China by the 8th century, and certainly by the 9th century, when this sutra was made, it was a refined art.”  The 6000-word, nearly 16.5-foot-long scroll was found in 1900 in a secret library along the Silk Road in China.  https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/books-that-changed-the-world   

sutra (Sanskrit:  lit. 'string, thread') in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a condensed manual or text.  Sutras are a genre of ancient and medieval Indian texts found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutra   

A mantra (Pali:  manta) or mantram (Devanagari:  मन्त्रम्) is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words in Sanskrit, Pali and other languages believed by practitioners to have religious, magical or spiritual powers.  Some mantras have a syntactic structure and literal meaning, while others do not.  The earliest mantras were composed in Vedic Sanskrit in India.  At its simplest, the word ॐ (Aum, Om) serves as a mantra, it is believed to be the first sound which was originated on earth.  Aum sound when produced creates a reverberation in the body which helps the body and mind to be calm.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantra    

To some fanfare but little surprise, the last portrait ever painted by Gustav Klimt has sold for a record auction price in Europe, fetching £85.3m (with fees) at Sotheby's Modern and contemporary art evening sale in London on June 27, 2023.  Klimt's Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan) (1917), executed the year before the artist's death, was the night's star lot and accounted for close to half of the Modern and contemporary evening auction's £199m total (with fees), which narrowly surpassed the upper end of its £155.5m to £197.5m pre-sale estimate (calculated without fees).  Kabir Jhala  https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/06/27/klimt-portrait-sothebys-most-expensive-work-auction-europe   

South Koreans became a year or two younger on June 28, 2023 as new laws that require using only the international method of counting age took effect, replacing the country's traditional method.  Under the age system most commonly used in South Koreans' everyday life, people are deemed to be a year old at birth and a year is added every Jan. 1.  The country has since the early 1960s used the international norm of calculating from zero at birth and adding a year on every birthday for medical and legal documents.  But many South Koreans continued to use the traditional method for everything else.  In December, 2022 South Korea passed laws to scrap the traditional method and fully adopt the international standard.  https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreans-become-year-or-two-younger-traditional-way-counting-age-scrapped-2023-06-28/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2689  June 28, 2023 

To build the weekend home of their dreams on their property near Dillsboro, Ind., Jerry Kathman and Liz Grubow turned to unlikely collaborator:  a theater and opera-set designer.  The couple wanted their second home to be a dacha, in homage to Grubow’s Ukrainian and Russian roots.  They were inspired by the intricate dachas designed in Russia’s late imperial period, and more specifically, the abandoned dacha made famous in the 1965 film “Dr. Zhivago.”  They asked their friend, Cincinnati-based theater and stage designer Paul Shortt, to do the design.  It took three years to complete construction of the 4,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, four-bathroom house in 2022, at a cost of $2.9 million—with the help of architect Mark Gunther and local artisans.  “We wanted a place where we could bring 50 to 60 people to listen to music,” says Grubow, who is also chair of the board of trustees at the Cincinnati Opera.  Their primary home, an 1830s townhouse in Covington, Ky., is just across the river from Cincinnati’s downtown and is less than an hour’s drive away from the dacha in Indiana.  The Indiana property has been in their family since 1994, when Kathman paid $60,000 for 80 acres and a modest cabin, but it took more than two decades to make the final call to build.  By that time, the couple had acquired 120 more acres.  Their two children had grown up staying in the family cabin, which is now a separate, renovated guesthouse with an additional bedroom.  The modern home uses geothermal heat to create warmth under the poured-concrete flooring.  The couple also kept the interior décor modern, with a series of interior glass panels, understated furniture and dark stone.  Alina Dizik  https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/what-is-a-dacha-doing-in-rural-indiana-66283486    

DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.  The DASH diet is a healthy-eating plan designed to help prevent or treat high blood pressure, also called hypertension.  It also may help lower cholesterol linked to heart disease, called low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.  High blood pressure and high LDL cholesterol levels are two major risk factors for heart disease and stroke.  Foods in the DASH diet are rich in the minerals potassium, calcium and magnesium.  The DASH diet focuses on vegetables, fruits and whole grains.  It includes fat-free or low-fat dairy products, fish, poultry, beans and nuts.  The diet limits foods that are high in salt, also called sodium.  It also limits added sugar and saturated fat, such as in fatty meats and full-fat dairy products.  https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/dash-diet/art-20048456#:~:text=The%20DASH%20diet%20focuses%20on,and%20full%2Dfat%20dairy%20products.   

A hex key (also, hex wrench, Allen key and Allen wrench or Inbus) is a simple driver for bolts or screws that have heads with internal hexagonal recesses (sockets).  Hex keys are formed from a single piece of hard hexagonal steel rod, having blunt ends that fit snugly into similarly-shaped screw sockets.  The rods are bent to 90º, forming two arms of unequal length resembling an "L".  The tool is usually held and twisted by its long arm, creating a relatively large torque at the tip of the short arm; it can also be held by its short arm to access screws in difficult-to-reach locations and to turn screws faster at the expense of torque.  Hex keys are designated with a socket size and are manufactured with tight tolerances.  As such, they are commonly sold in kits that include a variety of sizes.  Key length typically increases with size but not necessarily proportionally so.  Variants on this design have the short end inserted in a transverse handle, which may contain multiple keys of varying sizes that can be folded into the handle when not in use.  While often used in generic terms for "hex key", the "Allen" name is a registered trademark (circa 1910) of the Allen Manufacturing Company (now Apex Tool Group) of Hartford, Connecticut; regardless, "Allen key" and "Allen wrench" are often seen as generic trademarks.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_key    

Margery Williams was born in London on July 22, 1881, and died September 4, 1944, in New York City.   Though she published twenty-seven books, including five translations of works from French and Norwegian, and though she won the John Newbery Honor Medal for her novel Winterbound (1936) in 1937, she is primarily known today as the author of The Velveteen Rabbit.   Lisa Rowe Fraustino  https://lithub.com/more-than-a-childrens-story-the-velveteen-rabbit-at-100/   

Edvard Munch:  Trembling Earth (June 10, 2023–October 15, 2023) is the first exhibition in the United States to consider how the noted Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) employed nature to convey meaning in his art.  Munch is regarded primarily as a figure painter, and his most celebrated images (including The Scream) are connected to themes of love, anxiety, longing, and death.  Yet, landscape plays an essential role in a large portion of Munch’s work.  The exhibition is organized thematically to show how Munch used nature to convey human emotions and relationships, celebrate farming practice and garden cultivation, and explore the mysteries of the forest even as his Norwegian homeland faced industrialization.  Trembling Earth features over seventy-five objects, ranging from brilliantly hued landscapes and three stunning self-portraits, to an extensive selection of his innovative prints and drawings, including a lithograph of Munch's most celebrated work, The Scream.  The exhibition includes more than thirty works from the Munchmuseet’s world-renowned collection, major pieces from other museums in the USA and Europe, and nearly forty paintings and prints from private collections, many of which are rarely exhibited.  Find venues and dates at https://www.clarkart.edu/exhibition/detail/edvard-munch-trembling-earth

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (famously written in a single day) is published in The New Yorker (June 26, 1948) • Sylvia Beach hosts a dinner party so that F. Scott Fitzgerald can meet James Joyce (June 27, 1928) • Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice (in Wonderland), meets Peter Llewelyn Davies, the real-life inspiration for J.M. Barrie’s Peter (Pan), in a London bookshop.  (June 28, 1932) • The Globe Theater burns down during a performance of Henry VIII (June 29, 1613) • Arthur Miller's play All My Sons opens at the Coronet Theatre in New York; it will be his first Broadway success (June 29, 1947) • The first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is published in London (June 30, 1997) • Margaret Mitchell’s classic novel Gone with the Wind is published (June 30, 1936).  Literary Hub  June 25, 2023   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2688  June 26, 2023 

bush league  adjective  "mean, petty, unprofessional," 1906, from baseball slang for the small-town baseball clubs below the minor league where talent was developed (by 1903), from bush (noun) in the adjectival slang sense of "rural, provincial," which originally was simple description, not a value judgment.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/bush%20league#:~:text=bush%20league%20(adj.),description%2C%20not%20a%20value%20judgment. 

A quick response (QR) code is a type of barcode that can be read easily by a digital device and which stores information as a series of pixels in a square-shaped grid.  QR codes are frequently used to track information about products in a supply chain and often used in marketing and advertising campaigns.  QR codes are considered an advancement from older, uni-dimensional barcodes, and were approved as an international standard in 2000 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).  Adam Hayes  https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quick-response-qr-code.asp  

Laurence Sterne (1713–1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who wrote the novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published sermons and memoirs, and indulged in local politics.  He grew up in a military family, travelling mainly in Ireland but briefly in England.  While Vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire, he married Elizabeth Lumley in 1741.  His ecclesiastical satire A Political Romance infuriated the church and was burnt.  With his new talent for writing, he published early volumes of his best-known novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Sterne  

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne   This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org.  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/39270/39270-h/39270-h.htm  

The word ‘torchio’ means press.  It is used to refer to both a pasta press and a wine press.  In the world of pasta, the torchio was first invented in 1600s.  Originally, it was a hand operated press used by both housewives and artisan pasta makers.  Eventually, a hydraulic press was invented and pasta making became industrialized.  Today pasta extrusion machines are also called ‘torchio’ in Italian.  Jacqui Debono  Link to recipes at https://www.the-pasta-project.com/torchio-pasta-maccheroni-al-torchio/  

Author John Lescroart is three-quarters Irish.  His last name is French.  It’s pronounced “less-kwah”.  John’s bestselling books are printed in 16 languages and published in more than 75 countries.  The author:  Music is a big part of my life, so much so that about five years ago I formed a record label, CrowArt Records.  The first project on CrowArt Records was a CD of original piano solos, the melodies written by me and performed by master pianist (regularly working at the Bel Air Hotel) Antonio Castillo de la Gala, entitled Date Night.  There are now several CDs available from CrowArt Records.  https://johnlescroart.com/meet-john/faq/#:~:text=It's%20pronounced%20%E2%80%9Cless%2Dkwah%E2%80%9D,was%20my%20father's%20last%20name.  

Drawings and diagrams that Leonardo da Vinci made in the 1400s and 1500s are now on display at a D.C. public library.  The free exhibit “Imagining the future - Leonardo da Vinci:  In the mind of an Italian genius” went on display at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown D.C. on June 21, 2023.  The exhibit includes 12 original drawings from da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus collection.  This is the first time so many of these pieces have been on display in the United States, library officials said.  An exhibit called “Leonardo's Lab” is geared toward children and has hands-on activities.  The main exhibit will be on display through Aug. 20.  The children’s exhibit will show through Sept. 30.  Derrick Ward, News4 Reporter and Andrea Swalec   https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/da-vinci-drawings-on-display-at-dc-library-on-rare-us-visit/3371087/  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2687  June 23, 2023 

April 3, 2023  Kelly Link is a writer whose work is easy to revere and difficult to explain.  She began her career by publishing stories in sci-fi and fantasy magazines in the mid-nineteen-nineties, just when the boundary between genre fiction and the literary mainstream was beginning to erode, and, in the years since, her work has served to speed that erosion along.  Thirty years into her career, she has received a formidable procession of prizes awarded to genre-fiction writers:  the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and the Bram Stoker Award, to name just a few.  More recently, she has begun to reap the accolades of the literary mainstream:  in 2016, her collection “Get in Trouble” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and in 2018 she received a MacArthur, for “pushing the boundaries of literary fiction in works that combine the surreal and fantastical with the concerns and emotional realism of contemporary life.”  Through it all, the essential qualities of her work have remained unchanged.  To those familiar with her writing, “Linkian” is as distinct an adjective as “Lynchian,” signifying a stylistic blend of ingenuousness and sophistication, bright flashes of humor alongside dark currents of unease, and a deep engagement with genre tropes that comes off as both sincere and subversive.  Kristen Roupenian  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/03/white-cat-black-dog-kelly-link-book-review   

First recorded in print in 1914, blue streak probably has its origin in earlier expressions referring to a blue streak such as ‘quick as a blue streak.’  Among other speculations, it has been suggested that this expression was a version of “quick as a blue-tailed skink” which referred to a very fast moving lizard with a blue tail, which moved so fast all you saw was the blue streak of its tail.  A less fanciful explanation is that the expression refers to lighting, which sometimes appears as a blue streak in the sky.  Originally related expressions such as “like a blue streak” were used to describe anything that was very quick. https://www.idioms.online/talk-a-blue-streak/   

Simple side dishes: 

Combine can of black beans and can of corn. 

Pickle veggie or fruit in a solution of vinegar, water and sugar overnight.   

“Detritus” is borrowed directly from the Latin detritus (rubbing away).  It was originally a term in physical geography describing an action—the “wearing away or down by detrition, disintegration, decomposition,” the OED says.  Its first appearance in writing is from James Hutton’s Theory of the Earth (1795):  “Such materials as might come from the detritus of granite.”  But that usage has since become obsolete.   In the early 19th century, people began using “detritus” to mean the matter produced by the wearing away.  And by mid-century, “detritus” came to mean debris in general, or any kind of waste or disintegrated material.  https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/07/detritus.html   

The Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, in Bishopville, South Carolina, is a three-acre garden with a purpose.  Self-taught and armed with a hedge trimmer, Fryar worked for more than 20 years to create and maintain remarkable and dazzling topiaries from plants that were often salvaged from a local nursery.  Using a gas-powered hedge trimmer and salvaged plants, Pearl Fryar begins his topiary garden on 3 acres at his home.  After 12-hour shifts in his day job at a factory, this self-taught topiary artist would sometimes work through the night creating what would amount to more than 150 topiaries of extraordinary shapes and sizes.  https://www.gardenconservancy.org/preservation/pearl-fryar  Thank you, Muse reader!   

In the Northern Hemisphere, the June solstice (aka summer solstice) occurs when the Sun travels along its northernmost path in the sky.  This marks the astronomical start of summer in the northern half of the globe.  (In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the opposite:  the June solstice marks the astronomical start of winter when the Sun is at its lowest point in the sky.)  The word “solstice” comes from the Latin solstitium—from sol (Sun) and stitium (still or stopped).  Due to Earth’s tilted axis, the Sun doesn’t rise and set at the same locations on the horizon each morning and evening; its rise and set positions move northward or southward in the sky as Earth travels around the Sun through the year.  After the solstice, the Sun appears to reverse course and head back in the opposite direction.  The motion referred to here is the apparent path of the Sun when one views its position in the sky at the same time each day, for example, at local noon.  Over the year, its path forms a sort of flattened figure eight, called an analemma.  Of course, the Sun itself is not moving (unless you consider its orbit around the Milky Way galaxy); instead, this change in position in the sky that we on Earth notice is caused by the tilt of Earth’s axis as it orbits the Sun, as well as Earth’s elliptical, rather than circular, orbit.  The June solstice occurs on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at 10:58 A.M. EDT.  Catherine Boeckmann   https://www.almanac.com/content/first-day-summer-summer-solstice

Word of the day for June 21, 2023

Mummerset noun (humorous)  An imaginary rural county in the West Country of England.  (often theater) An invented English language dialect used by actors that mimics a stereotypical West Country rural accent.  The Glastonbury Festival, a festival of contemporary performing arts including cabaret, circus, comedy, dance, music, and theatre, begins in Pilton in Somerset, England.  June 21, 2023.  Wiktionary    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2686  June 21, 2023 

The Great Black Swamp (also known simply as the Black Swamp) was a glacially fed wetland in northwest Ohio, sections of lower Michigan, and extreme northeast Indiana, that existed from the end of the Wisconsin glaciation until the late 19th century.  The area was about 25 miles (40 km) wide (north to south) and 100 miles (160 km) long, covering an estimated 1,500 square miles (4,000 km).  Gradually drained and settled in the second half of the 19th century, it is now highly productive farmland.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Black_Swamp   

The pica is a typographic unit of measure corresponding to approximately ¹⁄₆ of an inch, or from ¹⁄₆₈ to ¹⁄₇₃ of a foot.  One pica is further divided into 12 points.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_(typography)  Pica is also an eating disorder in which a person eats things not usually considered food.    

The Crooked Forest is a grove of oddly-shaped pine trees located in the village of Nowe Czarnowo near the town of Gryfino, West Pomerania, in north-western Poland.  It is a protected natural monument of Poland.  This grove of 400 pines was planted around 1930.  Each pine tree bends sharply to the north, just above ground level, then curves back upright after a sideways excursion of one to three meters (3–9 feet).  The curved pines are enclosed by a surrounding forest of straight pine trees.  It is generally believed that some form of human tool or technique was used to make the trees grow or bend this way, but the method has never been determined, and remains a mystery to this day.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crooked_Forest   

The term “Drum Horse” has been traditionally used in Britain to refer to heavy riding horses that are members of the Band of Life Guards regiment of the Household Cavalry, carrying large kettle drums and a fully equipped drummer through a large crowd during certain processions, exhibitions, or ceremonies of state.  The type of horses favored for this job has changed over the years, although the basic criteria of large size, strength, and even disposition remain same.  In the US, Drum horses as a breed are now redefined for use in driving and riding disciplines.  These are elegant horses combining the height and size of the Clydesdale and Shire with the color of the Gypsy Vanner.  See many pictures at https://www.horsebreedspictures.com/drum-horse.asp    

The Gypsy Vanner Horse is a beautiful breed envisioned by the Gypsies of Great Britain.  This horse was selectively bred for over half a century from a vision to create the perfect horse to pull the Gypsy caravan.  In 1996 the first Gypsy Vanner Horses came to North America and the Gypsy Vanner Horse Society was established as a registry for the breed.  At that time the breed did not have a name, and the name Gypsy Vanner Horse was chosen, because the breed was a Gypsy’s “vanner horse”, bred to pull the colorful caraVAN.  https://vanners.org/the-breed/ 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

infodemic  (in-fuh/foh-DEM-ik) noun  A glut of mostly unreliable, rapidly spreading information relating to an event, crisis, disease, etc.  A blend of information + epidemic, coined by the author and columnist David J. Rothkopf in a Washington Post column about the SARS epidemic.  Earliest documented use:  2003.   

interrobang or interabang  (in-TER-uh-bang)  noun  A punctuation mark (‽) formed by a question mark (?) superimposed on an exclamation point (!).  Coined in the TYPEtalks Magazine in which the editor Martin K. Speckter (1915-1988), an advertising executive, selected the word interrobang from the suggestions sent by the readers.  From interrogation point (question mark) + bang (slang for exclamation point).  Earliest documented use:  1962. 

hibernal  (hy-BUHR-nuhl)  adjective  Of or relating to winter.  From Latin hibernus (wintry), from Latin hiems (winter).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root ghei- (winter), which is the ancestor of words such as hibernate, hibernaculum, hiemal, chimera, and the Himalayas, from Sanskrit him (snow) + alaya (abode).  Earliest documented use:  before 1626.   

The second head of chambers in the Rumpole stories was Samuel Ballard, known less than affectionally to Rumpole as “Soapy Sam” and/or “Bollard”.  Thank you, Muse reader!   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2685  June 19, 2023