Thomas Moran (1837–1926) from Bolton, England was an American painter and
printmaker of the Hudson River School in
New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. He was a younger brother of the noted marine
artist Edward Moran, with whom he shared a
studio. A talented illustrator and
exquisite colorist, Thomas Moran was hired as an illustrator at Scribner's
Monthly. During the late 1860s, he
was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine, a position that helped
him launch his career as one of the premier painters of the American landscape,
in particular, the American West. Moran
along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill,
and William Keith are
sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of
landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group. Thomas Moran's
vision of the Western landscape was critical to the creation of Yellowstone
National Park. In 1871 Dr.
Ferdinand Hayden, director of the United States Geological Survey,
invited Moran, at the request of American financier Jay Cooke, to join Hayden and his expedition team into the
unknown Yellowstone region. Funded by
Cooke (the director of the Northern Pacific Railroad), and Scribner's
Monthly, a new illustrated magazine,
Moran agreed to join the survey team of the Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 in their exploration of the Yellowstone region. During forty days in the wilderness area,
Moran visually documented over 30 different sites and produced a diary of the
expedition's progress and daily activities.
His sketches, along with photographs produced by survey member William
Henry Jackson, captured the nation's
attention and helped inspire Congress to establish the Yellowstone region as
the first national park in 1872. The Thomas Moran House in East Hampton,
New York is
a National
Historic Landmark. Mount Moran in the Grand Teton
National Park is named for Moran. His
work is held in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt,
National Design Museum, the Amon
Carter Museum of American Art, and the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield,
Massachusetts. See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Moran See also https://www.nps.gov/subjects/arts/index.htm
COLA
acronym cost of living adjustment Find over a dozen COLA acronyms at http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/COLA cola noun The kola plant,
genus Cola,
famous for its nut,
or one of these nuts. A beverage or a drink made with kola nut
flavoring, caramel and carbonated water. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cola Dr
Pepper legally not a cola For much
of Dr Pepper’s history, the drink was a regional delicacy confined to the South
and Southwest. Coca-Cola and Pepsi had used their head starts on Dr Pepper to
build nationwide networks of independent bottlers who had exclusive franchise
contracts to turn their respective syrups into colas. Dr Pepper simply couldn’t
crack into new markets with the deck stacked so squarely against it. That
all changed in 1963. A federal court ruled
that Dr Pepper’s unique flavor kept it from being a “cola product,” which meant
that bottlers were free to distribute Dr Pepper without running afoul of their
exclusive deals with Coca-Cola and Pepsi. By the end of the decade, Dr Pepper was
available from coast to coast. The soda
fizzed its way into the national consciousness at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. As the Dr Pepper Museum notes, the drink
joined the ice cream cone, the hamburger, and the hot dog in making their first
big splashes at the event. http://mentalfloss.com/article/67514/11-things-you-might-not-know-about-dr-pepper
At the start of 2016, the good folks of the American Dialect Society got
together to crown their Word
of the Year. They (see what I’m
doing here) have decided that the word could now be used as a singular pronoun,
flexing the English language so a plural could denote a singular, genderless,
individual. They has long been used in
the singular in English, but not to denote genderlessness. One of the earliest examples comes from
Geoffrey Chaucer in 1395, who wrote in The
Pardoner’s Tale: “And whoso fyndeth
hym out of swich blame, They wol come up…” Shakespeare followed in 1594, in The
Comedy of Errors: “There’s
not a man I meet but doth salute me/As if I were their well-acquainted
friend”. It took a few centuries for
they to pop up in reference to women:
Jane Austen uses they in the singular 75 times in Pride and Prejudice
(1813) and as Rosalind muses in 1848’s Vanity Fair: “A person can’t help their birth.” Lorraine Berry Read much more at http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/may/05/they-the-singular-pronoun-that-could-solve-sexism-in-english
In 1943, Louis Armstrong and his wife, Lucille,
settled in a modest house in Corona, Queens, where they lived for the remainder
of their lives. No one has lived in the house since the Armstrongs, and the house and its furnishings remain very much
as they were during Louis and Lucille’s lifetime. Today, the Louis Armstrong House Museum is
open to the public, offering guided tours of Louis’s longtime home. On the tour, audio clips from Louis’s
homemade recordings are played, and visitors hear Louis practicing his trumpet,
enjoying a meal, or talking with his friends.
Visitors also get to enjoy an exhibit on Louis’s life and legacy, and
the Armstrongs’ beautiful Japanese-inspired garden. The entire ground floor (which includes the
Welcome Center, Museum Store, exhibit area, and restroom) of the Museum is
wheelchair-accessible. The historic
house tour requires the ability to climb two sets of steep stairs and to stand
for 40 minutes. Visitors that are unable
to take the tour receive a virtual tour instead. Find hours, location and directions at http://louisarmstronghouse.org/visiting/overview.htm
Chervil, sometimes called garden chervil to distinguish it from similar plants
also called chervil, or French
parsley, is a delicate annual herb related to parsley. It is commonly used to season mild-flavoured
dishes and is a constituent of the French herb mixture fines herbes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chervil
Chervil should be added at the end
of cooking or sprinkled over food.
May 13,
2016 This week, Nicola Thorp successful
stopped a company insisting that women wear heels to work. Now, she's campaigning against being
forced to wear make-up, too. The 27-year-old actress was employed as a
temporary worker by agency Portico, who outsourced her to City firm PwC to work
on their reception. But after turning up
for her first day wearing black flat shoes, she was told to leave, unpaid.
Thorp's petition for the practice to be make illegal has gained 123,000
signatures. Portico has since pledged to review its uniform policy.
But Thorp isn't done. She's now
calling for the company to change a section in its dress code referring to
make-up. She claims that, during her
time working for them, she was also shown a colour chart of acceptable nail
varnish shades, and told it was compulsory for her to wear make-up during her
time as a temporary receptionist.
Radhika Sanghani
From the Italian for
"bad air," mal'aria has
probably influenced to a great extent human populations and human history. Following
their arrival in the New World, Spanish Jesuit missionaries learned from
indigenous Indian tribes of a medicinal bark used for the treatment of fevers. With this bark, the Countess of Chinchón, the
wife of the Viceroy of Peru, was cured of her fever. The bark from the tree was then called Peruvian bark and the tree was named Cinchona after the
countess.
The symptoms of malaria were described in ancient Chinese
medical writings. In 2700 BC, several
characteristic symptoms of what would later be named malaria were described in
the Nei Ching, The Canon of Medicine). Malaria became widely recognized
in Greece by the 4th century BCE, and it was responsible for the decline of
many of the city-state populations. On August 20th, 1897, Ronald Ross, a British officer
in the Indian Medical Service, was the first to demonstrate that malaria
parasites could be transmitted from infected patients to mosquitoes. In further work with bird malaria, Ross showed
that mosquitoes could transmit malaria parasites from bird to bird. For his discovery, Ross was awarded the Nobel
Prize in 1902. Read much more at http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/index.html#panamacanal
Quote of the Day: The Panama Canal was dug with
a microscope. - Ronald Ross (13 May 1857-1932) [alluding to the research done
to get rid of the mosquito]
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1471
May 13, 2016 On this date in 1907, Daphne du Maurier, English novelist and playwright, was born. On this
date in 1958 – Ben Carlin became the first (and only) person to circumnavigate the world by amphibious vehicle,
having travelled over 17,000 kilometres (11,000 mi) by sea and 62,000
kilometres (39,000 mi) by land during a ten-year journey.
