On July 23, 1929, less than seven years after seizing power, Mussolini’s fascist government officially banned the use of foreign words in Italy.  This was ostensibly to maintain and promote the purity of the Italian culture—boilerplate censorship wrapped in the banner of nationalism, but made more ridiculous by the fact that, when Mussolini came to power in 1922, only 12% of Italians spoke “pure” Italian—the majority of the citizens spoke a variety of regional languages and dialects, which (despite the real targets being French, English, and other frightening foreign languages) were naturally forbidden, along with Italian words of foreign origin, loanwords, and even some proper names.  The policy effectively banned the five letters that do not exist in the Italian alphabet: J, K, W, X, and Y.  Banned words were replaced by new, invented Italian terms, and a new industry sprang up to dub foreign films into Italian.  As a result, dubbing is still the norm in Italy, and has grown into a major industry—there’s even an “International Grand Prize of Dubbing,” otherwise known as “Italy’s Dubbing Oscars” awarded in Rome every year.  Other artifacts remain too—during Mussolini’s reign, Mickey Mouse was re-named Topolino, while Donald Duck became Paperino (“Lil’ Mouse” and “Lil’ Duck” respectively), and Italians still use those names today.  On the other hand, despite Mussolini’s efforts, Italy is still full of dialects and regional loyalties.  Italian only became the country’s official language in 2007, and even then, the change had its detractors, including Franco Russo, a member of the Italian Communist Party, who argued that Italy’s post-war constitution purposefully omitted any mention of a national language, to thwart Mussolini’s intentions.  Literary Hub  July 21, 2024    

Guy Wilkie Warren (1921–14 June 2024) was an Australian painter who won the Archibald Prize in 1985 with Flugelman with Wingman.  His works have also been exhibited as finalists in the Dobell Prize and he received the Trustees Watercolour Award at the Wynne Prize in 1980.  Warren served in the Australian Army during World War II from 15 May 1941 until 3 April 1946.  Many of Warren's creative influences can be traced to his Army service, especially his service in southeast Queensland.  At the end of World War II, Warren undertook art training at the National Art School.  During this time, he met other veteran artists who had also served in World War II, and who took advantage of the British Commonwealth's post-war training scheme.  On completing this program, he travelled to England to pursue landscape painting where a chance meeting with a young veteran and naturalist, Sir David Attenborough.  Warren's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions.  In 2016, the S. H. Ervin Gallery held Genesis of a painter: Guy Warren at 95, which focused on works from the 1950s and 60s together with works painted late in his life.  The intention of the exhibition was to show his "enduring imagery of the relationship between the figure and background".  At least two exhibitions were held at the time of his hundredth birthday, From the Mountain to the Sky, held by the National Art School, and Hills and Wings: A Celebration of Guy Warren and his Work, at the University of Wollongong, where he was previously the director of the University's art collection.  Warren was a sitter for portraits on several occasions, including for four or five artists painting for Australia's premier portraiture competition, the Archibald Prize.  In the early 2000s he posed for Ann Cape, for her work Figure within the landscape: Guy Warren, that hung in the 2004 prize exhibition.  Then in 2021, the 100th year of the Archibald Prize, painter Peter Wegner won the award for his portrait of Warren–who was, like the prize, in his hundredth year.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Warren_(artist)    

balderdash  (BAWL-duhr-dash)  noun:  nonsense.  Origin unknown.  Earliest documented use:  1596.  A-Word-A-Day with Anu Garg  June 19, 2024   

Kaldi or Khalid was a legendary Arab Ethiopian goatherd who is credited for discovering the coffee plant around 850 CE, according to popular legend, after which such crop entered the Islamic world and then the rest of the world.  The story is probably apocryphal, as it was first related by Antoine Faustus Nairon, a Maronite Roman professor of Oriental languages and author of one of the first printed treatises devoted to coffee, De Saluberrima potione Cahue seu Cafe nuncupata Discurscus (Rome, 1671).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaldi    

Women who have cats have long been associated with the concept of spinsterhood, widowhood or even witchcraft.  In more recent decades, the concept of a cat lady has been associated with "romance-challenged (often career-oriented) women".  A cat lady may also be an animal hoarder who keeps large numbers of cats without having the ability to properly house or care for them.  They may be ignorant about their situation, or generally unaware of their situation.  People who are aware of it are not normally considered cat ladies.  Some writers, celebrities, and artists have challenged the gender-based "Crazy Cat Lady" stereotype, and embraced the term to mean an animal lover or rescuer who cares for one or multiple cats, and who is psychologically healthy.  The documentary Cat Ladies (2009) tells the stories of four women whose lives became dedicated to their cats.  The film was directed by Christie Callan-Jones and produced by Chocolate Box Entertainment, originally for TVOntario.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_lady    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2841 July 24, 2024