Monday, May 20, 2024

The Oxford English Dictionary suggests mayhem is a variation of maim.  The first sense, found since at least the 1400s, is defined as, "The infliction of physical injury on a person, so as to impair or destroy that person's capacity for self-defense; an instance of this."  By the 1800s, it had broadened to cover violence in general, but it's not till the twentieth century that the word morphed to cover a chaotic brouhaha.  The original sense of havoc is military in origin.  As the OED dryly defines it:  "orig. to give to an army the order havoc as the signal for the seizure of spoil, and so of general spoliation or pillage."  This term has been often found in phrases such as "make havoc" and "play havoc."  A famous variation appeared in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:  "Cry hauocke, and let slip the Dogges of Warre."  Originally another name for Bethlehem, bedlam took a turn toward chaos when it was used a nickname for The Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem—a home for the mentally ill.  A ruckus can be any noisy, unruly situation.  Brouhaha has reduplication, doubling ha to create a word for a restaurant-quality hubbub (another reduplicative word).  https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wl/havoc-bedlam-mayhem-the-lingo-of-pandemonium/ 

Easy pie crusts:  Mix melted butter with crushed crackers, cookies, wheat germ, or nuts.   

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.  Mark Twain

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.  Winston Churchill  

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.  Willie Nelson

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.  Jackie Robinson
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/francis_bacon_138973   

Penzance is a town, civil parish and port in the Penwith district of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.  It is the most westerly major town in Cornwall and is about 64 miles (103 km) west-southwest of Plymouth and 255 miles (410 km) west-southwest of London.  Granted various royal charters from 1512 onwards and incorporated on 9 May 1614, it has a population of 21,200 (2011 census).  The Admiral Benbow public house (home to a real life 1800s smuggling gang and allegedly the inspiration for Treasure Island's "Admiral Benbow Inn"), the Union Hotel (including a Georgian theatre which is no longer in use), and Branwell House, where the mother and aunt of the famous Brontë sisters once lived. Regency and Georgian terraces and houses are common in some parts of the town. The nearby sub-tropical Morrab Gardens has a large collection of tender trees and shrubs, many of which cannot be grown outdoors anywhere else in the UK.  Also of interest is the seafront with its promenade and the open-air seawater Jubilee Pool (one of the oldest surviving Art Deco swimming baths in the country).  Penzance is the base of the pirates in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. At the time the libretto was written in 1879, Penzance had become popular as a peaceful resort town, so the idea of it being overrun by pirates was amusing to contemporaries.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penzance#   

Flageolet (pronounced "fla-zho-LAY") is a type of common shell bean grown in France and very popular in classic French cuisine.  A pale shade of green, Flageolet beans are sometimes known as the "caviar of beans" because of their subtle flavor and the high esteem in which they are held by food lovers.  Flageolets originated in France and are primarily associated with that cuisine.  These tiny, tender shell beans are a kidney-shaped common bean, harvested from their pods right before they fully ripen.  They are dried in the shade to maintain their light green color.  In the United States, they are grown in California.  https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-are-flageolet-beans-995673   

As Vermont State University Castleton graduates receive their 2024 degrees, so too will a tabby cat.  The cat, named Max, is getting an honorary degree as a "Doctor in Litter-ature."  Once a feral kitten in the town of Fair Haven, Max has lived with his human mom, Ashley Dow, on Seminary Street in Castleton for the past five years.  And for most of those years, he’s been venturing up to the university campus.  Up there, Dow says Max likes to ride around on students’ backpacks, to pose as a subject for the college photography class, and to generally provide campus emotional support.  "At one point, because he stopped going up to campus, they put up a shrine for him," Dow says, laughing.  "It had candles and everything. And the picture of Max that they had printed out and put in a frame."  See pictures at https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-05-15/max-the-cat-honorary-doctorate-vermont-state-university-castleton 

http//librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2816  May 20, 2024 

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