Victor-Marie Hugo (1802–1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician.  During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms.  He is considered to be one of the greatest French writers of all time.  His most famous works are the novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).  In France, Hugo is renowned for his poetry collections, such as Les Contemplations (The Contemplations) and La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Ages).  Hugo was at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play Cromwell and drama Hernani.  Many of his works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including the opera Rigoletto and the musicals Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris.  He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime, and campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.  Though he was a committed royalist when young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed, and he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, serving in politics as both deputy and senator.  His work touched upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time.  Victor Hugo died on 22 May 1885, aged 83.  He was given a state funeral in the Panthéon of Paris, which was attended by over 2 million people, the largest in French history.  Although Hugo's many talents did not include exceptional musical ability, he nevertheless had a great impact on the music world through the inspiration that his works provided for composers of the 19th and 20th centuries.  Hugo himself particularly enjoyed the music of Gluck, Mozart, Weber and Meyerbeer.  In Les Misérables, he calls the huntsman's chorus in Weber's Euryanthe, "perhaps the most beautiful piece of music ever composed".  He also greatly admired Beethoven, and rather unusually for his time, he also appreciated works by composers from earlier centuries such as Palestrina and Monteverdi.  Two famous musicians of the 19th century were friends of Hugo:  Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt.  The latter played Beethoven in Hugo's home, and Hugo joked in a letter to a friend that, thanks to Liszt's piano lessons, he learned how to play a favourite song on the piano–with only one finger.  Hugo also worked with composer Louise Bertin, writing the libretto for her 1836 opera La Esmeralda, which was based on the character in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  Although for various reasons the opera closed soon after its fifth performance and is little known today, it has enjoyed a modern revival, both in a piano/song concert version by Liszt at the Festival international Victor Hugo et Égaux 2007 and in a full orchestral version presented in July 2008 at Le Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo   

QUOTES BY Victor Hugo (1802-1885) 

"To love beauty is to see light."

"The future has several names.  For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal." 

"Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come."

"The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real.  It is by the real that we exist.  It is by the ideal that we love." 

"To learn to read is to light a fire.  Every syllable that is spelled out is a spark."

"Initiative is doing the right thing without being told."

"Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face."

"Not being heard is no reason for silence."   Bill Lamb  https://www.thoughtco.com/victor-hugo-quotes-4783758   

Records show that Syracuse, N.Y. has heavy snowfall, with an all-time high of 192 inches in a single season.  Statistics like these cement Syracuse’s status as the snowiest metropolitan area in the United States.  Find the 16 snowiest cities in the U.S. at https://www.tripsavvy.com/the-worlds-top-snowiest-cities-4582630  

The jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), also known as the jack tree or langka (in Philippine English), is a species of tree in the fig, mulberry, and breadfruit family (Moraceae).  The jackfruit tree is well-suited to tropical lowlands and is widely cultivated throughout tropical regions of the world, including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the rainforests of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Australia.  It bears the largest fruit of all trees, reaching as much as 55 kg (120 pounds) in weight, 90 cm (35 inches) in length, and 50 cm (20 inches) in diameter.  A mature jackfruit tree produces some 200 fruits per year, with older trees bearing up to 500 fruits in a year.  The jackfruit is a multiple fruit composed of hundreds to thousands of individual flowers, and the fleshy petals of the unripe fruit are eaten.  The ripe fruit is sweet (depending on variety) and is commonly used in desserts.  Canned green jackfruit has a mild taste and meat-like texture that lends itself to being called "vegetable meat".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackfruit    

Pleasantville is a village in the town of Mount Pleasant, in Westchester County, New York.  It is located 30 miles north of Manhattan.  The village population was 7,513 at the 2020 census.  Pleasantville is home to the secondary campus of Pace University and to the Jacob Burns Film Center.  The settlement of Pleasantville dates back to the Rechgawawank and Sinsink tribes, belonging to the Munsee dialect of the Lenni Lenape.  This region of the Hudson Valley has been inhabited since just after the last ice age.   Lenape communities practiced ecosystem management, small-scale agriculture, hunting and gathering, democratic politics, and matrilineal governance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasantville,_New_York   

Usonia, a cooperative utopian community near Pleasantville, NY, was founded in the 1940's, based on the Broadacre City proposals of Frank Lloyd Wright.  Here Sol Friedman, a successful retailer in book stores--sometimes also selling toys--asked Wright to design a “happy house”.  Wright came up with two overlapping cylinders, connected with a mushroom-shaped carport, and named the house “Toyhill”.  The two cylinders are connected by the typical Usonian core:  a generous space, centred around the fireplace, for living, dining and working with an extensive view to the landscape.  A cantilevered balcony/play space on the upper floor of the two-storey cylinder is projected over the living space, while the rest of the upper part has a wedge-shaped division.  The house is placed on a rather steep, heavily wooded slope and is mainly built of concrete and local stone.  From the outside the heavy stone masonry and the tilt of the retaining walls give the house a fortress-like appearance, in contrast to the open and fluent interior.  As the overhanging roofs are sloping up as they go out, more light comes in.  http://sebastiaankaal.nl/architecture/roundhouse-friedman/index.php   

http://librariansmuse.blogspotcom  Issue 2702   July 28, 2023