Life's better when you're reading a great book.  

Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls (1853) is a book by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, a sequel to A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys.  It is a re-writing of well-known Greek myths in a volume for children.  The book includes the myths of:

Theseus and the Minotaur (Chapter: "The Minotaur")

Antaeus and the Pygmies (Chapter: "The Pygmies")

Dragon's Teeth (Chapter: "The Dragon's Teeth")

Circe's Palace (Chapter: "Circe's Palace")

Proserpina, Ceres, Pluto, and the Pomegranate Seed (Chapter: "The Pomegranate Seed")

Jason and the Golden Fleece (Chapter: "The Golden Fleece")

In the introduction, Hawthorne writes about a visit from his young friend Eustace Bright, who requested a sequel to A Wonder-Book, which impelled him to write the Tales.  Hawthorne wrote the first book while renting a small cottage in the Berkshires, a vacation area for industrialists during the Gilded Age.  The owner of the cottage, a railroad baron, renamed the cottage "Tanglewood" in honor of the book written there.  Later, a nearby mansion was renamed Tanglewood, where outdoor classical concerts were held, which became a Berkshire summer tradition. Ironically, Hawthorne hated living in the Berkshires. The Tanglewood neighborhood of Houston was named after the book.  It reportedly inspired the name of the thickly wooded Tanglewood Island in the state of Washington.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanglewood_Tales   

In 1876, more than 10 million people journeyed to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park for the nation’s Centennial Exposition.  Today, the expanse remains a refuge from the bustling city, keeping quiet natural landscapes within close reach of all residents and visitors.  With more than 2,000 acres of rolling hills, gentle trails, relaxing waterfront and shaded woodlands, Fairmount Park keeps a wealth of natural landscapes in East and West sections of the park, divided by the Schuylkill River.  https://www.visitphilly.com/things-to-do/attractions/fairmount-park/    

Stuart Warren Cramer (1868-1940) was an American engineer, inventor, and contractor, who gained prominence after designing and building near 150 cotton mills in the southern United States.  He was the founder of Cramerton and became involved in the nascent air conditioning industry, as well as being a founding partner in Duke Power.  He was born in Thomasville, North Carolina to Mary Jane Thomas Cramer and John Thomas, a furniture manufacturer.  He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1888 after studying naval engineering.  Cramer chose to resign from the Navy to study in the School of Mines at Columbia University in 1888–1889.  He found employment with the U.S. Mint in Charlotte, where he worked for four years.  After that he worked for Daniel A. Tompkins, an engineer and industrialist, for two years, and then went into business for himself designing and equipping cotton mills in the South.  In a May 1906 speech in Asheville, North Carolina, before the American Cotton Manufacturers Association, Cramer coined the term air conditioning.  Cramer's connection to air conditioning originated from his work in the textile industry.  Over the course of his career he acquired more than 60 patents for the humidity control and ventilating equipment he developed for cotton mills across the South.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_W._Cramer   

Trick-or-treating is a traditional Halloween custom for children and adults in some countries.  During the evening of Halloween, on October 31, people in costumes travel from house to house, asking for treats with the phrase "trick or treat".  The "treat" is some form of confectionery, usually candy/sweets, although in some cultures money is given instead.  The "trick" refers to a threat, usually idle, to perform mischief on the resident(s) or their property if no treat is given.  Some people signal that they are willing to hand out treats by putting up Halloween decorations outside their doors; houses may also leave their porch lights on as a universal indicator that they have candy; some simply leave treats available on their porches for the children to take freely, on the honor system.  The history of trick-or-treating traces back to Scotland and Ireland, where the tradition of guising, going house to house at Halloween and putting on a small performance to be rewarded with food or treats, goes back at least as far as the 16th century, as does the tradition of people wearing costumes at Halloween.  There are many accounts from 19th-century Scotland and Ireland of people going house to house in costume at Halloween, reciting verses in exchange for food, and sometimes warning of misfortune if they were not welcomed.  In North America, the earliest known occurrence of guising–children going from house to house for food or money while disguised in costume–is from 1911, when children were recorded as having done this in the province of Ontario, Canada.  The interjection "trick or treat!" was then first recorded in the same Canadian province of Ontario in 1917.  While going house to house in costume has long been popular among the Scots and Irish, it is only in the 2000s that saying "trick or treat" has become common in Scotland and Ireland.  Prior to this, children in Ireland would commonly say "help the Halloween party" at the doors of homeowners.  The activity is prevalent in the Anglospheric countries of the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, and Australia.  It also has extended into Mexico.  In northwestern and central Mexico, the practice is called calaverita (Spanish diminutive for calavera, "skull" in English), and instead of "trick or treat", the children ask, "¿Me da mi calaverita?"  ("[Can you] give me my little skull?"), where a calaverita is a small skull made of sugar or chocolate.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trick-or-treating 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2738  October 30, 2023