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 

Tana French (born 10 May 1973) is an American-Irish writer and theatrical actress. She is a longtime resident of Dublin, Ireland.  Her debut novel In the Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for best first novel.  The Independent has referred to her as "the First Lady of Irish Crime".  Tana Elizabeth French was born in Burlington, Vermont, to Elena Hvostoff-Lombardi and David French.  Her father was an economist who worked on resource management for the developing world, and she lived in numerous countries as a child including Ireland, Italy, the United States and Malawi.  French attended Trinity College Dublin, and trained in acting. She settled in Ireland and has lived in Dublin since 1990.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tana_French 

Martha Jane’s Sauerkraut and Spare Rib Casserole  Yield:  4 servings  Total Time: Roughly 4 hours  Serve with pumpernickel bread and butter.  Source:  Martha Jane and Patrick Lahey, adapted by Maddie Coppel  Find recipe and instructions at https://www.toledoblade.com/a-e/food/2024/05/12/motherly-love-local-chefs-share-dishes-from-their-mom-s-kitchen/stories/20240512004  

The depths of the river Thames in London hold many unexpected stories, gleaned from the recovery of prehistoric tools, Roman pottery, medieval jewelry, and much more besides.  Yet the tale of the lost (and since recovered) Doves typeface is surely one of the most peculiar.  A little over a century ago, the printer T.J. Cobden-Sanderson took it upon himself to surreptitiously dump every piece of this carefully honed metal letterpress type into the river.  It was an act of retribution against his business partner, Emery Walker, whom he believed was attempting to swindle him.  With its extra-wide capital letters, diamond shaped punctuation and unique off-kilter dots on the letter “i,” Doves Type became the press’s hallmark, surpassing fussier typographic attempts by their friend and sometime collaborator, William Morris.  The letterforms only existed as a unique 16pt edition, meaning that when Cobden-Sanderson decided to “bequeath” every single piece of molded lead to the Thames, he effectively destroyed any prospect of the typeface ever being printed again.  That might well have been the case, were it not for several individuals and a particularly tenacious graphic designer.  Robert Green first became fascinated with Doves Type in the mid-2000s, scouring printed editions and online facsimiles, to try and faithfully redraw and digitize every line.  In October 2014, he decided to take to the river to see if he could find any of the original pieces.  Using historical accounts and Cobden-Sanderson’s diaries, he pinpointed the exact spot where the printer had offloaded his wares, from a shadowy spot on Hammersmith bridge. “I’d only been down there 20 minutes and I found three pieces,” he said.  “So, I got in touch with the Port of London Authority and they came down to search in a meticulous spiral.”  The team of scuba divers used the rather low-tech tools of a bucket and a sieve to sift through the riverbed.  Green managed to recover a total of 151 sorts (the name for individual pieces of type) out of a possible 500,000.  “It’s a tiny fraction, but when I was down by the river on my own, for one second it all felt very cosmic,” he said.  “It was like Cobden-Sanderson had dropped the type from the bridge and straight into my hands.  Time just collapsed.”  The finds have enabled him to further develop his digitized version and has also connected him with official mudlarks (people who search riverbanks for lost treasures, with special permits issued) who have uncovered even more of the type.  Jason Sandy, an architect, author and member of the Society of Thames Mudlarks, found 12 pieces, which he has donated to Emery Walker’s House at 7 Hammersmith Terrace.  This private museum was once home to both business partners, and retains its stunning domestic Arts and Crafts interior.  See pictures at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/doves-typeface-2454807   Thank you, Muse reader! 

The scup (Stenotomus chrysops) is a fish that occurs primarily in the Atlantic from Massachusetts to South Carolina.  Along with many other fish of the family Sparidae, it is also commonly known as porgy.  Scup grow as large as 18 in (460 mm) and weigh 3–4 lb (1.4–1.8 kg), but they average 0.5–1.0 lb (0.23–0.45 kg).  Scup can live up to 20 years; females can begin to reproduce at the age of two.  Every year female scups lay approximately 7,000 eggs in sand and weed abundant areas.  In the Middle Atlantic Bight, scup spawn along the inner continental shelf.  Their larvae end up in inshore waters, along the coast and in estuarine areas.  At two to three years of age, they mature.  Scup winter along the mid and outer continental shelf.  When the temperature warms in the spring, they migrate inshore.  They are fished for by both commercial and recreational fishermen.  The scup fishery is one of the oldest in the United States, with records dating back to 1800.  Scup was the most abundant fish in colonial times.  Fishermen began using trawls in 1929, which increased catches dramatically.  The species was termed overfished in 1996, and today there is evidence of a rebound. Today, scup are still caught primarily using an otter trawl.  The flesh is "firm and flaky", with a "sweet almost shrimplike flavor".  Many consumers like their light flavor and they are characterized as panfish.  Popular methods of cooking include frying, broiling, and baking.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scup  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2815  May 17, 2024

Semitic people or Semites is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians.  The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.  First used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen school of history, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem (Hebrew: שֵׁם), one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, together with the parallel terms Hamites and Japhetites.  In archaeology, the term is sometimes used informally as "a kind of shorthand" for ancient Semitic-speaking peoples.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people#:~:text=Semitic%20people%20or%20Semites%20is,%22Semitic%20languages%22%20in%20linguistics.   

The word "Semitic" was coined by German orientalist August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781 to designate the Semitic group of languages - Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew and others - allegedly spoken by the descendants of Biblical figure Sem, son of Noah.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism   

The Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) is an organization that developed and maintains a mechanism through which plant breeders can designate the new crop varieties they have bred as open source.  This mechanism is advanced as an alternative to patent-protected seeds sold by large agriculture companies such as Monsanto or DuPont.  OSSI is a U.S. based not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization focusing on establishing a protected commons of open source varieties and on educational and outreach activities associated with the development of this open source seed commons and on seed rights and issues related to the control of seed.  The OSSI was founded in 2012 by a group of plant breeders, farmers, and seed companies.  OSSI is governed by a board of directors and as of July 2017 includes 36 plant breeders and 46 seed company partners in its work.  Members of the group are unhappy with the patenting of plant varieties, as they say the patenting of seeds restricts plant breeders' freedom and increases the power of large seed companies.  Taking inspiration from open source software, the OSSI seeks to create a "protected commons" of open-source seed varieties as an alternative to patented or otherwise legally restricted seeds.  At first the OSSI tried to draft a legally-defensible license, but they found that the principle of software licenses did not translate easily to plants, as a license on plant seeds would need to continue to each new generations of plants, quickly creating a huge amount of legal work.  The OSSI eventually decided to use an informal Pledge printed on every seed packet or transmitted along with the seed, both for simplicity and because they felt this less restrictive approach was more in line with the goals of the project.  The Open Source Seed Initiative Pledge asks farmers, gardeners, and plant breeders who use the seed to refrain from patenting or licensing the seed or derivatives from it, and to pass on the Pledge to any derivatives made.  The Pledge states: "You have the freedom to use these OSSI-Pledged seeds in any way you choose.  In return, you pledge not to restrict others' use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this Pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives."  The work of University of Wisconsin sociologist Jack Kloppenburg, particularly his book First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000 (2nd ed.) influenced the development of OSSI.  Originally published in 1990, then updated in 2000, this book chronicles the vast changes in seed sovereignty that took place during the 20th century through the rise of modern plant breeding approaches, the expansion of intellectual property rights, and emerging crop biotechnologies.  Kloppenburg's work explored global consequences of legal control over crop seeds during an era of heavy consolidation in the seed industry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Seed_Initiative  Thank you, Muse reader!   

Alice Ann Munro (née Laidlaw 1931–13 May 2024) was a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013.  Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of the short story, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time, and with integrated short fiction cycles, in which she has displayed "inarguable virtuosity".  Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade".  Munro's fiction is most often set in her native Huron County in southwestern Ontario.  Her stories explore human complexities in an uncomplicated prose style.  Her writing has established Munro as "one of our greatest contemporary writers of fiction", or, as Cynthia Ozick put it, "our Chekhov".  Aside from the Nobel Prize, Munro received many awards for her work as "master of the contemporary short story", and the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work.  She was also a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for Fiction, and received the Writers' Trust of Canada's 1996 Marian Engel Award and the 2004 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for Runaway.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munro    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2814  May 15, 2024

Despite its pronunciation, just deserts, with one s, is the proper spelling for the phrase meaning "the punishment that one deserves."  The phrase is even older than dessert, using an older noun version of desert meaning "deserved reward or punishment," which is spelled like the arid land, but pronounced like the sweet treat.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/just-deserts-or-just-desserts 

The big cheese is the person who holds the most power in any situation.  If you overhear someone at work describe you as "the big cheese," it means that he thinks of you as the most important person in the office.  You might also call someone important the head honcho or the top dog.  The idiomatic phrase big cheese comes from a definition of cheese that comes from Urdu, in which chiz means "a thing."  The British colonization of India brought English speakers and Urdu speakers together, and one result was the phrase "the real chiz" to mean "a big thing or event."  This evolved over time into big cheese.  https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/big%20cheese  

The Maison carrée (French for "square house") is an ancient Roman temple in Nîmes, southern France; it is one of the best-preserved Roman temples to survive in the territory of the former Roman Empire.  It is a mid-sized Augustan provincial temple of the Imperial cult, a caesareum.  The Maison carrée inspired the neoclassical Église de la Madeleine in Paris, St. Marcellinus Church in Rogalin, Poland, and in the United States the Virginia State Capitol, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson, who had a stucco model made of the Maison carrée while he was minister to France in 1785.  In September 2023, the Maison carrée of Nîmes was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maison_carr%C3%A9e  

“Nothing to do and we do it all the time.”

 “The Northeast coast blossomed . . . what in 1899 Thorstein Veblen would call conspicuous consumption.”

“The pitch of a roof is measured by comparing the horizontal with the vertical.  If the roof rises six inches each horizontal foot, it is called a six-pitch roof.”

The Big House:  A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home by George Howe Colt

galvanic  (gal-VAN-ik) adjective
1.  Stimulating; energizing; shocking.
2.  Relating to electric current, especially direct current.

After Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), physician and physicist known for his pioneering experiments on the electrical stimulation of animal tissues, which demonstrated the existence of electricity within biological organisms. Earliest documented use: 1797.  A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg 

Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages:  convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand. - Mark Abley, writer and editor (b. 13 May 1955)  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2813  May 13, 2024

Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters.  It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers.  Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.  Substack was founded in 2017 by Chris Best, the co-founder of Kik Messenger; Jairaj Sethi, a head of platform and principal developer at Kik Messenger; and Hamish McKenzie, a former PandoDaily tech reporter.  Best and McKenzie describe Ben Thompson's Stratechery, a subscription-based tech and media newsletter, as a major inspiration for their platform.  Best serves as chief executive as of March 2019.  Substack users include journalists, subject-matter experts, and media platforms.  The New York Times columnist Mike Isaac argued in 2019 that companies like Substack see newsletters as a more stable means to maintain readers through a more direct connection with writers.  In 2020, The New Republic said there was an absence of local news newsletters, especially in contrast to the large number of national-level political newsletters.  As of late 2020, large numbers of journalists and reporters were coming to the platform, driven in part by the long-term decline in traditional media (there were half as many newsroom jobs in 2019 as in 2004).  In 2019, Substack added support for podcasts and discussion threads among newsletter subscribers.  As of November 2021, the platform said it had more than 500,000 paying subscribers, representing over one million subscriptions.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substack   

MEDITERRANEAN-STYLE TAVERNA CHOPPED GREEK SALAD  RECIPE

You can omit the oil and red wine vinegar and just use the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes, but I like to add it in for extra flavor, use as much artichokes as you like, adjust all ingredients to taste, the oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes are what makes this salad so do not omit.  Serves 6-8  recipe submitted by Kittencalrecipezazz  https://www.food.com/recipe/kittencals-mediterranean-style-taverna-chopped-greek-salad-238190   

The National Hurricane Center doesn't decide the names of tropical storms.  That role is the job of the World Meteorological Organization, a special international committee of scientists.  For each of the world's primary storm region there are six lists of 21 names—one for each letter of the alphabet except for letters Q, U, X, Y, or Z due to limited availability—that are used on an annual rotation.  In the U.S., storms that could impact the eastern part of the country follow the Atlantic list; storms that impact the west coast of the Americas use the Eastern North Pacific list; and Hawaii follows the Central North Pacific lists.  Names are removed from the lists if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate.  If that occurs, the committee retires that name and replaces it with another.  Hurricanes Andrew, Sandy, Hugo, and Ida are all examples of retired storm names.

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/how-do-hurricanes-get-their-names-heres-how-it-works/3287859/   

A white elephant is something whose cost of upkeep is not in line with its usefulness or value.  From an investment perspective, the term refers to an asset, property, or business that is so expensive to operate and maintain that it is extremely difficult to actually make a profit from it.  White elephants also tend to be illiquid assets, meaning they cannot be easily or quickly exchanged or sold for cash without the seller experiencing a significant loss.  The term white elephant derives from Asia.  The white elephant is an icon with roots in Siam, now commonly known as Thailand.   These rare animals were regarded as holy in ancient times and automatically gifted to the reigning monarch.  The story goes that the monarch would give the white elephant as a gift of either good or bad fortune.  If he liked the recipient, he would gift land along with the elephant to help pay for the cost of the elephant.  If he did not like you, he would not include land, turning the gift into a money pit.  https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/whiteelephant.asp   

Reader feedback:   As for riff-raff, is it possible that the latter changes in usage was associated with the character Riff-Raff in the cult classic "Rocky Horror Picture Show" in the 1970s?   See:  https://rockyhorror.fandom.com/wiki/Riff_Raff   

As for the Scorpion, there is an earlier Persian version with a tortoise that seems to pre-date the Russian version.  See:  https://wordandsorcery.com/the-scorpion-and-the-tortoise-fable/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2812  May 10, 2024 

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. - Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (18 Apr 1857-1938) 

In medieval French, there was a set expression rifle et rafle.  These words are from the verbs rifler, to spoil or strip, and raffler, to carry off.  The phrase referred to the plundering of the bodies of the dead on the battlefield and the carrying off of the booty.  The French phrase moved into English in the forms rif and raf or riffe and raf, which meant at first every scrap, from which we may guess that medieval plunderers were extremely thorough.  It’s known by at least 1338 (it appears in Mannyng’s Chronicle of English of that date).  Later it shifted sense through a series of stages, first referring to one and all, or everybody, and then later taking on the idea of the common people, those of no special social standing.  The phrase was abbreviated to riff-raff and can be found in Gregory’s Chronicle of London of about 1470.  It seems to have taken some decades longer for it to have gone even further downhill and for it to be associated in particular with the dregs of society.  We’re familiar with descendants of both of the original old French words in English, by the way.  Riffler is the origin of our riffle in the card-shuffling sense, amongst others, and of rifle, for searching hurriedly through possessions for something, or to steal.  It also gave rise to the firearms sense, since a rifle takes its name from the spiral grooves cut in the barrel of such a gun to improve its accuracy; this comes from a different sense of the French word, meaning to graze or scratch.  In the early nineteenth century raffish appeared.  This adjective originally referred to somebody who was disreputable or vulgar.  Only later did it acquire the undertones it now has of a person who is attractively unconventional.  This may have come from the second half of riff-raff, or from raff, which had survived by itself in dialect usage in much the same sense of the lowest class of the population.  https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa-rif1.html  

Pulitzer Prizes were awarded at Columbia University May 6, 2024.  Included were:  Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips, a beautifully rendered novel set in West Virginia's Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in the aftermath of the Civil War where a severely wounded Union veteran, a 12-year-old girl and her mother, long abused by a Confederate soldier, struggle to heal and Primary Trust, by Eboni Booth, a simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person's life and enrich an entire community.  Find other titles at https://www.npr.org/2024/05/06/1248897860/pulitzer-prize-winners-2024   

The Scorpion and the Frog is an animal fable which teaches that vicious people cannot resist hurting others even when it is not in their own interests.  This fable seems to have emerged in Russia in the early 20th century.  A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across.  The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river.  The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both.  The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies:  "I am sorry, but I couldn't resist the urge.  It's my character."  The earliest known appearance of this fable is in the 1933 Russian novel The German Quarter by Lev Nitoburg.  The fable also appears in the 1944 novel The Hunter of the Pamirs, and this is the earliest known appearance of the fable in English.  The Hunter of the Pamirs is an English translation of the 1940 Russian novel Jura by Georgii Tushkan.  In the English-speaking world, the fable was made famous by the 1955 film Mr. Arkadin.  It is recounted in a soliloquy by the movie's villain, played by Orson Welles.  A likely precursor to The Scorpion and the Frog is the Persian fable of The Scorpion and the Turtle, which appears in a number of Persian texts from the late 15th century.   

greenmail  (GREEN-mayl)  noun  The practice of buying a large quantity of a company’s stock as a means of hostile takeover, then selling it back to the company at a higher price.  verb tr.:  To subject a company to this tactic.   Earliest documented use:  1983.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come. - Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (7 May 1861-1941)  A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2811  May 8, 2024