The Large Plane Trees, also called Road Menders at Saint-Rémy is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh.  Painted in 1889 in Saint-Rémy, France, the painting depicts roadwork underneath autumn trees with yellow leaves.  In actuality, "The Large Plane Trees" and the "Road Menders of Saint-Rémy" are two different paintings and are sometimes confused as one.  Van Gogh painted "The Large Plane Trees" first on a red and white checkered table cloth.  He later returned and painted it again on an art canvas.  It is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.  This scene was repeated in The Road Menders, part of the Philips Collection in Washington D.C.  In 2013, the two paintings were displayed together as part of the Van Gogh Repetitions exhibition at the Phillips Collection before The Large Plane Trees was moved to the Cleveland Museum of Art.  Analysis shows that The Large Plane Trees was created first, with The Road Menders being a copy with virtually identical outlines.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Large_Plane_Trees    

A Man Called Ove is a novel by Swedish writer Fredrik Backman published in Swedish by Forum in 2012. The novel was published in English in 2013 and reached the New York Times Best Seller list 18 months after its publication and stayed on the list for 42 weeks.  It has been adapted into two films:  A Man Called Ove, which premiered in Sweden on 25 December 2015, with Rolf Lassgård in the leading role, and A Man Called Otto, released on 30 December 2022, with Tom Hanks in the leading role.  Backman got his inspiration for this book after reading an article about a man named Ove who had a fit while buying tickets at an art museum.  Backman instantly related to this man as he claims to be "not great at talking to people".  He started writing blogposts under the heading, "I am a Man Called Ove", where he wrote about his pet peeves and annoyances.  Eventually, he realized that his writing had potential for the creation of an interesting fictional character.  The novel was adapted into A Man Called Ove, a Swedish film released on 25 December 2015, written and directed by Hannes Holm and starring Rolf Lassgård as Ove.  The film was nominated for six awards, winning two, at the 51st Guldbagge Awards in 2016.  It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Makeup and Hairstyling categories at the 89th Academy Awards.  In January 2015, a stage version of the book, starring Johan Rheborg in the leading role as Ove, premiered in Stockholm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Called_Ove_(novel) 

“In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked.  Yet a child’s need for quietness is the same today as it has always been–it may even be greater–for quietness is an essential part of all awareness.  In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.”  Margaret Wise Brown

Margaret Wise Brown, a poet in her own right—the art of writing for children is a fine and perhaps the noblest of arts—wrote some one hundred books, most of which are out of print today.  All of her books are weird and sad and clear and wise.  Childlike, you could say—and as the highest of compliments.  The legendary book editor Ursula Nordstrom thought of her imprint’s audience members as “brand new people.”  Nordstrom believed that the best writers for children were those who thought like children.  Thinking like a child is very different from thinking for a child.  Brand new people are naturally philosophical and long for attachment.  Goodnight Moon is the perfect gift for a lonely soul at bedtime or anyone who never forgot the feeling of loss that can be embodied by bedtime in childhood.  To go to sleep is to leave the world behind, but being told “goodnight” is also like being left.  It’s complicated, isn’t it?  
Goodnight Moon, written by Brown and memorably illustrated by Clement Hurd—the second in the trilogy the pair completed together, after The Runaway Bunny and before My World—was published on September 3, 1947.  It did not sell well, in large part because Anne Carroll Moore, the influential children’s librarian at the New York Public Library, did not like it, calling it “unbearably sentimental.”  Due to her influence (even though she was actually retired at the time!) the NYPL wouldn’t stock the book for 25 years, even as the book slowly grew in popularity; by the time they deigned to buy it, in 1971, it was selling some 20,000 copies annually, and well on its way to becoming the bedtime juggernaut you know and love today.  Just goes to show!  Literary Hub  September 3, 2023  

The origins of baklava date back to ancient times.  Around the eighth century B.C.E., people in the Assyrian Empire, which spread across parts of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Syria and Turkey, arranged unleavened flatbreads in layers, with chopped nuts in between, to be enjoyed during special events.  Centuries later, the Ancient Greek and Roman “placenta cake” (the Latin placenta coming from the Greek word plakous, or “cheese cake,” not the unsavory afterbirth) was a dish consisting of many layers of dough, filled with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves.  However, the earliest versions of baklava as we know it today came around 500 years ago, during the Ottoman Empire.  “The earliest reference to baklava is in a poem by the mystic Kaygusuz Abdal, who lived in the first half of the 15th century,” writes Mary Isin, an Ottoman food historian, in her book, Sherbet and Spice: The Complete Story of Turkish Sweets and Desserts. Very few other dishes have crossed religions as much as baklava.  Perhaps the oldest example of this, Isin writes in an article titled “Adam and Eve’s Wheat Porridge,” is an ancient, boiled wheat dessert known as ashure, or “Noah’s pudding,” prepared slightly differently by each ethno-religious group.   “Dishes of boiled wheat sweetened variously with sugar, fruit molasses and dried fruits have for centuries been shared by people of different faiths in Turkey,” Isin says.  John Moretti  See pictures at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-sticky-history-of-baklava-180982771/  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2723  September 25, 2023