What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? –  Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosopher and author (28 Jun 1712-1778)  A.Word.A.Day  with Anu Garg   

Essayes: Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. Seene and Allowed (1597) was the first published book by the philosopher, statesman and jurist Francis Bacon.  The Essays are written in a wide range of styles, from the plain and unadorned to the epigrammatic.  They cover topics drawn from both public and private life, and in each case the essays cover their topics systematically from a number of different angles, weighing one argument against another.  While the original edition included 10 essays, a much-enlarged second edition appeared in 1612 with 38.  Another, under the title Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, was published in 1625 with 58 essays. Translations into French and Italian appeared during Bacon's lifetime.  Though Bacon considered the Essays "but as recreation of my other studies", he was given high praise by his contemporaries, even to the point of crediting him with having invented the essay form.  Later researches made clear the extent of Bacon's borrowings from the works of Montaigne, Aristotle and other writers, but the Essays have nevertheless remained in the highest repute.  The contents pages of Thomas Markby's 1853 edition list the essays and their dates of publication at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_(Francis_Bacon)   

A few Francis Bacon quotes:  “Knowledge is power.”  “Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.”  “By far the best proof is experience.”  “We rise to great heights by a winding staircase of small steps.”  “Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.”  “Without friends the world is but a wilderness.”  https://quotefancy.com/francis-bacon-quotes   

Malt is any cereal grain that has been made to germinate by soaking in water and then stopped from germinating further by drying with hot air, a process known as "malting".  Malted grain is used to make beer, whisky, malted milk, malt vinegar, confections such as Maltesers and Whoppers, flavored drinks such as Horlicks, Ovaltine, and Milo, and some baked goods, such as malt loaf, bagels, and Rich Tea biscuits.  Malted grain that has been ground into a coarse meal is known as "sweet meal".  Malt also contains small amounts of other sugars, such as sucrose and fructose, which are not products of starch modification, but which are already in the grain.  Further conversion to fermentable sugars is achieved during the mashing process.  Various cereals are malted, though barley is the most common.  Malted grains have probably been used as an ingredient of beer since ancient times, for example in Egypt (Ancient Egyptian cuisine), Sumer, and China.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malt    

Valerie Worth Bahlke (1933-1994) was an American poet and writer of children's books under her maiden name, Valerie Worth.  Valerie Worth was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, where her father taught biology at Swarthmore College.  In 1947, the family moved to Tampa, Florida for four years, and then spent a year in Bangalore, India.  Worth returned to Swarthmore for college, where in 1955 she received an English Degree with High Honors.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Worth 

Dick Francis. (Richard Stanley Francis 1920-2010) was a British steeplechase jockey and crime writer whose novels centre on horse racing in England.  After wartime service in the RAF, Francis became a full-time jump-jockey, winning over 350 races and becoming champion jockey of the British National Hunt.  He came to further prominence in 1956 as jockey to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, riding her horse Devon Loch which fell when close to winning the Grand National.  Francis retired from the turf and became a journalist and novelist.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Francis   

“Libel is written, slander is spoken.”  “It’s no good expecting fairy-tale  endings, in racing.”  High Stakes, a novel by Dick Francis   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue  2832  June 28, 2024 

The first female mannequins, made of papier-mâché, were made in France in the mid-19th century.  Mannequins were later made of wax to produce a more lifelike appearance.  In the 1920s, wax was supplanted by a more durable composite made with plaster.  Modern day mannequins are made from a variety of materials, the primary ones being fiberglass and plastic.  The fiberglass mannequins are usually more expensive than the plastic ones, tend to be not as durable, but are significantly more realistic.  Plastic mannequins, on the other hand, are a relatively new innovation in the mannequin field and are built to withstand the hustle of customer foot traffic usually witnessed in the store they are placed in.  Mannequins are used primarily by retail stores as in-store displays or window decoration. However, many online sellers also use them to display their products for their product photos (as opposed to using a live model).  Renaissance artist Fra Bartolomeo invented the full-scale articulated mannequin (more properly known as lay figure) as an aid in drawing and painting draped figures.  In 18th-century England, lay-figures are known to have been owned by portrait painters such as Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and Arthur Devis for the arrangement of conversation pieces.  Mannequins were a frequent motif in the works of many early 20th-century artists, notably the metaphysical painters Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Savinio and Carlo Carrà.  Shop windows displaying mannequins were a frequent photographic subject for Eugène Atget.  Mannequins have been used in horror and science fiction.  The Twilight Zone episode "The After Hours" (1960) involves mannequins taking turns living in the real world as people.  In the Doctor Who serial Spearhead from Space (1970), an alien intelligence attempts to take over Earth with killer plastic mannequins called Autons.  Military use of mannequins is recorded amongst the ancient Chinese, such as at the siege of Yongqiu.  The besieged Tang army lowered scarecrows down the walls of their castles to lure the fire of the enemy arrows.  In this way, they renewed their supplies of arrows.  Dummies were also used in the trenches in World War I to lure enemy snipers away from the soldiers.  A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report describes the use of a mannequin ("Jack-in-the-Box") as a countersurveillance measure, intended to make it more difficult for the host country's counterintelligence to track the movement of CIA agents posing as diplomats.  A "Jack-in-the-Box"–a mannequin representing the upper half of a human–would quickly replace a CIA agent after he left the car driven by another agent and walked away, so that any counterintelligence officers monitoring the agent's car would believe that he was still in the car.  The romantic comedy film Mannequin (1987) is a story of a window dresser who falls in love with a mannequin that comes to life.  The romantic thriller film Bommai (2023) is the story of a person who works in a mannequin factory and falls in love with one of the mannequins, imagining it as his childhood crush.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannequin  

A flip tax is a fee paid by a seller or buyer on a housing co-op transaction, typically in New York City.  It is not a tax and is not deductible as a property tax.  It is a transfer fee, payable upon the sale of an apartment to the co-op.  Flip taxes are considered a method to help raise money for a co-op's overhead expenses without raising the maintenance fees or assessing flat charge to all residences.  Charging the fee to those who are leaving the building seems to be the most politically feasible.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_tax   

Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases, is an opaque, impure variety of silica, usually red, yellow, brown or green in color; and rarely blue.  Jasper breaks with a smooth surface and is used for ornamentation or as a gemstone.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper   

Jasper Fforde (born 1961) is an English novelist, whose first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001.  He is known mainly for his Thursday Next novels, but has also published two books in the loosely connected Nursery Crime series, two in the Shades of Grey series and four in the The Last Dragonslayer series.  Fforde's books abound in literary allusions and wordplay, tightly scripted plots and playfulness with the conventional, traditional genres.  They usually contain elements of metafiction, parody, and fantasy.  His published books include a series of novels starring the literary detective Thursday Next:  The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing and The Woman Who Died a Lot.   The Eyre Affair had received 76 publisher rejections before its eventual acceptance for publication.  Fforde won the Wodehouse prize for comic fiction in 2004 for The Well of Lost Plots.  Several streets in the Thames Reach housing development in Swindon have been named after characters in the series.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Fforde   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2831  June 26, 2024

January 20, 1937

U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addresses the nation in his second inaugural address, stating, “I see one-third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished …  the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

March 1937
FDR’s Shelterbelt Project begins. The project calls for large-scale planting of trees across the Great Plains, stretching in a 100-mile wide zone from Canada to northern Texas, to protect the land from erosion.  Native trees, such as red cedar and green ash, are planted along fence rows separating properties, and farmers and workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps are paid to plant and cultivate them. The project is estimated to cost 75 million dollars over a period of 12 years.  When disputes arise over funding sources (the project was considered to be a long-term strategy, and therefore ineligible for emergency relief funds), FDR transfers the program to the WPA, where the project had limited success.

1938
The extensive work re-plowing the land into furrows, planting trees in shelterbelts, and other conservation methods has resulted in a 65 percent reduction in the amount of soil blowing.  However, the drought continues.

1939
In the fall, the rain comes, finally bringing an end to the drought.  During the next few years, with the coming of World War II, the country is pulled out of the Depression and the plains once again become golden with wheat.  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/dust-bowl-surviving-dust-bowl/   

Rowers are not only racing against each other but also against the unyielding force of nature.  The unpredictability of weather conditions adds a layer of difficulty unseen in many other sports.  They must be adept at handling their vessels in crosswinds, which can cause the boat to steer off-course, and headwinds that dramatically increase the resistance they must overcome.  Measurements show that wind speeds can fluctuate dramatically during a single race, sometimes exceeding 10 mph, which requires rowers to adjust their technique and power output instantaneously.  Additionally, water currents can impact boat speed by up to 5%, necessitating rowers to have an intimate understanding of the aquatic environment and how to use or combat these factors to their advantage.  The sheer physicality of rowing is unrivaled. It’s one of the few sports that engages all major muscle groups, with 60% of the power coming from the legs, 30% from the core, and 10% from the arms.  Each rower pulls a load of water resistant equivalent to lifting approximately 200 kilograms each stroke.  https://sportsfoundation.org/why-rowing-is-the-hardest-sport/    

When followed by the letters “N,” “S,” or “T,” the letter “P” at the beginning of a word is usually silent.  More often than not, these letter arrangements are found in words with Greek origins.  For example, the prefix “psych–” derives from the Greek word psukhē, which refers to “the soul, mind, and spirit.”  From here, many words have been created, like psychology and psychiatry, to list a few.  However, not all words with a silent “P,” have Greek influence.  In some words, such as raspberry, the “P” became silent over time due to the difficulty of pronouncing both “P” and “B” together.  https://languagetool.org/insights/post/spelling-silent-p/ 

A child's brain grows the most during the first five years of life, reaching 90% of its final size.  Growth also affects different parts of the body at different rates; the head almost reaches its entire size by age 1.  Throughout childhood, a child's body becomes more proportional.  Growth is complete between the ages of 16 and 18, when the growing ends of bones fuse.  Pediatricians use a range to describe normal growth for a child.  Find some average ranges of weight and height, based on growth charts developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/health/g/normal-growth  

OLD NEWS

1374 – An outbreak of dancing mania, in which crowds of people danced themselves to exhaustion, began in Aachen (in present-day Germany) before spreading to other parts of Europe.  Wikipedia 

The theaters in London close due to an outbreak of bubonic plague; they will remain shuttered for 16 months (June 23, 1592) • Early writing cliché adopter Washington Irving’s iconic stories “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” are first published in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. under the name of Diedrich Knickerbocker (June 23, 1819) • The patent for the first typewriter (made with piano keys!) is issued (June 23, 1868) • The greatest library in the world (that you’ve never heard of) burns down (June 24, 1900) • Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (famously written in a single day) is published in The New Yorker (June 26, 1948) •  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)  Literary Hub   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2830  June 24, 2024

Barnum's American Museum was a dime museum located at the corner of Broadway, Park Row, and Ann Street in what is now the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City, from 1841 to 1865.  The museum was owned by famous showman P. T. Barnum, who purchased Scudder's American Museum in 1841.  The museum offered both strange and educational attractions and performances.  Some were extremely reputable and historically or scientifically valuable, while others were less so.  In 1841, Barnum acquired the building and natural history collection of Scudder's American Museum for less than half of its appraised value with the financial support of Francis Olmsted, by quickly purchasing it the day after the soon to be buyers, the Peale Museum Company, failed to make their payment.  He converted the five-story exterior into an advertisement lit with limelight.  The museum opened on January 1, 1842.  Its attractions made it a combination zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum, theater and freak show, in what was, at the same time, a central site in the development of American popular culture.  Barnum filled the American Museum with dioramas, panoramas, "cosmoramas", scientific instruments, modern appliances, a flea circus, a loom powered by a dog, the trunk of a tree under which Jesus' disciples supposedly sat, an oyster bar, a rifle range, waxworks, glass blowers, taxidermists, phrenologists, pretty baby contests, Ned the learned seal, the Fiji Mermaid (a mummified monkey's torso with a fish's tail), midgets, Chang and Eng the Siamese twins, a menagerie of exotic animals that included beluga whales in an aquarium, giants, Native Americans who performed traditional songs and dances, Grizzly Adams's trained bears and performances ranging from magicians, ventriloquists and blackface minstrels to adaptations of biblical tales and Uncle Tom's Cabin.   At its peak, the museum was open fifteen hours a day and had as many as 15,000 visitors a day.  Some 38 million customers paid the 25 cents admission to visit the museum between 1841 and 1865.  The total population of the United States in 1860 was under 32 million.  In November 1864, the Confederate Army of Manhattan attempted and failed to burn down the museum, but on July 13, 1865, the American Museum burned to the ground in one of the most spectacular fires New York has ever seen.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum%27s_American_Museum   

A rare celestial event is set to be revealed this week at Stonehenge, the most famous megalithic structure in the world.  It will be streamed live on YouTube at 21:30 BST (4:30 p.m. EST) on Friday, Jun. 21.  The English monument’s alignment with sunrise on the summer solstice—which will take place this year on Thursday, Jun. 20—is well known.  However, something else is happening, too: one of its southernmost moonrises during a rare lunistice or “major lunar standstill.”  As well as the sun rising in the northeast behind Stonehenge’s Heel Stone on the summer solstice date, moonrise later that day will also be keenly watched for the effect of the “major lunar standstill,” also called a lunistice.  It occurs every 18.6 years, also known as a lunar cycle.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2024/06/16/stonehenge-to-see-rare-alignment-this-week-a-major-lunar-standstill/    

From Jim Nickelson:  My Adventures in Celestial Mechanics project is based on my quest to capture each full moon of the year, at moonrise or moonset, from somewhere in the Maine landscape.  The project name derives from the delightfully-named textbook (written by my professor, Dr. Szebehely) that captured the beauty and majesty of the equations underlying orbital mechanics. For moonrise of the full moon results from an important phase of the celestial dance between the Earth, Sun, and Moon–when all three bodies are aligned and one can stand on the Earth with the sunset at your back and moon rising right in front of you.  (Moonset results from a similar alignment at sunrise).  The fascinating names of each full moon, each rooted in the history of the land and its peoples, provide further inspiration for my endeavors.  https://www.jimnickelson.com/adventures-in-celestial-mechanics   

5 June 2024  Two brand new characters have just been announced for the Mr Men and Little Miss book series.  They're called Little Miss Surprise and Mr Fib, and they'll both feature in their own adventures planned for September 2024 in the UK.  The series was originally created in 1971 by Roger Hargreaves.  New stories in the series are now written by Roger's son Adam.  The Mr Men and Little Miss book series has been around for over 50 years, selling over 250 million copies worldwide.  Little Miss Surprise and Mr Fib will join a cast of over 90 characters, including Mr Tickle and Little Miss Brave.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/c255vv7re74o   

face the music (third-person singular simple present faces the music, present participle facing the music, simple past and past participle faced the music)

(idiomatic) To accept or confront the unpleasant consequences of one's actions. [from 19th c.]  synonyms ▲quotations ▼  verb

synonyms:  face up to, pay the penalty, pay the price  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/face_the_music#English

The Fête de la Musique (also known as World Music Day), which originated in France in 1982 and is now celebrated around the world, takes place June 21.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2829  June 21, 2024  

 

“Years ago, I had a conversation with an actor who maintained, ‘Once you can fake sincerity, you can achieve anything.’  Even when I had no respect for the people I was dealing with, it was important to behave as if I did.” 
Val McDermid, How The Dead Speak  https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5672.Val_McDermid?page=7   

The Philadelphia Museum was an early museum in Philadelphia started by the painter Charles Willson Peale and continued by his family.  It was opened in 1784 as an art museum and added a natural history collection in 1786.  The exhibits included the first nearly complete skeleton of the mastodon, a relative of the mammoth.  Peale died in 1827 and the collection was sold in 1849 and 1854.  Peale opened the Museum in his home at Third and Lombard Streets in 1784.  The first exhibition was a collection of forty-four portraits of "worthy personages" from the American Revolutionary War.  Two years later, in 1786, he advertised his museum as a repository for natural curiosities.  In addition to portraits the museum's collection eventually included natural history specimens, fossils, archaeological finds, native American and Asian objects and curiosities.  Peale preserved his animal specimens using the methods of Edme-Louis Daubenton, however the results were not satisfactory.  He therefore tried other methods and found that arsenic or mercuric chloride were more effective.  In 1794 Peale accepted the post of librarian at the American Philosophical Society and moved his home and museum to their building at Fifth and Chestnut Streets.  In 1801 Peale visited a farm in New York State to view some recently discovered bones of a mastodon, an extinct relative of the European mammoth which was then known as the Great Incognitum.  He agreed to pay the farmer $200 for the bones already discovered and $100 for permission to find the remaining bones.  The excavation involved draining a 12 foot pit and took six weeks, but eventually the first nearly complete skeleton of the species was recovered.  As the skeleton was incomplete Peale's son Rembrandt carved wooden replicas with the help of the sculptor William Rush and Moses Williams, a formerly enslaved person. This was only the second time that a fossil skeleton had been mounted, the previous example being a megatherium assembled in Madrid.  The skeleton was unveiled in December as a separate exhibit costing 50¢, in addition to 25¢ to visit the museum.  Peale commemorated the excavation with his painting of 1806–1808 The Exhumation of the Mastodon.  The skeleton was purchased by the naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1854 and is now in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt in Germany.  Peale also reconstructed a second skeleton, which was later displayed in the Peale Museum in Baltimore, and eventually acquired by the American Museum of Natural History in New York.  In 1802 the museum moved again to Independence Hall, the former Pennsylvania statehouse.  Peale retired in 1810 and left the running of the museum to his son Rubens.  The museum was incorporated as the Philadelphia Museum Company in 1821.  In 1822 Peale painted The Artist in His Museum, a self portrait with his museum in the Long Room of the Independence Hall in the background.  In 1814 Peale's son Rembrandt opened a second Peale Museum in Baltimore, which was the first purpose built museum building in the United States.  Rubens opened a third museum in New York in 1825.  In the 1840s the Peale museums suffered from declining revenue and competition from the showman P. T. Barnum, who opened his American Museum in New York in 1842.  The New York Peale museum was closed in 1842 and the Baltimore museum in 1845, their contents being sold to Barnum.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peale%27s_Philadelphia_Museum#cite_note-Philadelphia_Encyclopedia-1   

Willie Howard Mays Jr. (1931–June 18, 2024), nicknamed "the Say Hey Kid", was an American professional baseball center fielder who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB).  Regarded as one of the greatest players ever, Mays ranks second behind only Babe Ruth on most all-time lists, including those of The Sporting News and ESPN. Mays played in the National League (NL) between 1951 and 1973 for the New York / San Francisco Giants and New York Mets.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Mays   

Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States.  It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States.  The holiday's name is a portmanteau of the words "June" and "nineteenth", as it was on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.  Although this date commemorates enslaved people learning of their freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation, this only applied to former Confederate states.  There remained legally enslaved people in states that never seceded from the Union.  These people did not gain their freedom until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 6, 1865.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2828  June 19, 2024