Rhubarb is technically a vegetable and is in the same family as sorrel.  Where it gets confusing is that in 1947, a New York court declared rhubarb a fruit because it’s most often cooked as one.  When raw rhubarb is thinly sliced or diced, perhaps with a little sugar to mellow out its tart bite, it can add serious crunch to a dish and a bolt of tangy flavor.  Since it’s naturally tart, it can brighten up things like braised pork chops and Southern tomato dumplings.  Rhubarb is a great source of Vitamin K (useful for blood clotting and bone health) and fiber.  Link to recipes at https://www.thekitchn.com/rhubarb-tips-257870



POE’S LITERARY LABORS AND REWARDS by John Ward Ostrom  For the April 1841 Graham’s Magazine Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” ($56) probably his best-known tale today.  For the May 1842 number he wrote “The Masque of the Red Death” ($12), one of his greatest.  He reviewed Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge for February 1842, from which he probably got his idea for “The Raven”.  By 8 March 1845 Poe become one of the editors of the Broadway Journal.  His most famous poem, “The Raven,” published in January, may have paid him $9.  Of “The Raven” and “The Gold-Bug,” Poe wrote: “The bird beat the bug, though, all hollow”.  Poe faced 1846 without a job—in fact he would never again have one.  Besides a series of articles, “The Literati” for Godey ($172), Graham bought “The Philosophy of Composition” ($8); Godey published one of Poe’s most famous tales, “The Cask of Amontillado” ($15).  In May 1849 he composed “Annabel Lee.”  He sold it for $10; it appeared after his death.   Read much more at   https://www.eapoe.org/papers/psbbooks/pb19871e.htm



A potboiler or pot-boiler is a novel, play, opera, film, or other creative work of dubious literary or artistic merit, whose main purpose was to pay for the creator's daily expenses—thus the imagery of "boil the pot", which means "to provide one's livelihood".  Authors who create potboiler novels or screenplays are sometimes called hack writers or hacks.  Novels deemed to be potboilers may also be called pulp fiction, and potboiler films may be called "popcorn movies."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potboiler



Boilerplate text, or simply boilerplate, is any written text (copy) that can be reused in new contexts or applications without significant changes to the original.  The term is used in reference to statements, contracts and computer code, and is used in the media to refer to hackneyed or unoriginal writing.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boilerplate_text



There are four parts of Medicare:  Part A, Part B, Part C, and Part D.  Part A provides inpatient/hospital coverage.  Part B provides outpatient/medical coverage.  Part C offers an alternate way to receive your Medicare benefits (see below for more information).  Part D provides prescription drug coverage.  Find more information at https://www.medicareinteractive.org/get-answers/medicare-basics/medicare-coverage-overview/original-medicare



Doxing (from dox, abbreviation of documents) or doxxing is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting private or identifying information (especially personally identifying information) about an individual or organization.  The methods employed to acquire this information include searching publicly available databases and social media websites (like Facebook), hacking, and social engineering.  It is closely related to Internet vigilantism and hacktivism.  Doxing may be carried out for various reasons, including to aid law enforcement, business analysis, risk analytics, extortion, coercion, inflicting harm, harassment, online shaming, and vigilante justice.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing



A circular economy (often referred to simply as "circularity") is an economic system aimed at minimising waste and making the most of resources.  In a circular system resource input and waste, emission, and energy leakage are minimized by slowing, closing, and narrowing energy and material loops; this can be achieved through long-lasting design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling.  This regenerative approach is in contrast to the traditional linear economy, which has a 'take, make, dispose' model of production.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_economy



Fernando José "Corby" Corbató (July 1, 1926–July 12, 2019) was a prominent American computer scientist, notable as a pioneer in the development of time-sharing operating systems.  Corbató was born on July 1, 1926 in Oakland, California, to Hermenegildo Corbató, a Spanish literature professor from Villarreal, Spain, and Charlotte (née Carella Jensen) Corbató.  In 1930 the Corbató family moved to Los Angeles for Hermenegildo's job at UCLA.  In 1943, Corbató enrolled at UCLA, but due to World War II  he was recruited by the Navy during his first year.  During the war, Corbató "debug[ged] an incredible array of equipment", inspiring his future career.  Corbató left the Navy in 1946, enrolled at the California Institute of Technology, and received a bachelor's degree in physics in 1950.  He then earned a PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956.  He joined MIT's Computation Center immediately upon graduation, became a professor in 1965, and stayed at MIT until he retired.  The first time-sharing system he was associated with was known as the MIT Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), an early version of which was demonstrated in 1961.   Corbató is credited with the first use of passwords to secure access to files on a large computer system, though he now says that this rudimentary security method has proliferated and become unmanageable.  The experience with developing CTSS led to a second project, Multics, which was adopted by General Electric for its high-end computer systems (later acquired by Honeywell).  Multics pioneered many concepts now used in modern operating systems, including a hierarchical file system, ring-oriented security, access control lists, single level store, dynamic linking, and extensive on-line reconfiguration for reliable service.  Multics, while not particularly commercially successful in itself, directly inspired Ken Thompson to develop Unix, the direct descendants of which are still in extremely wide use; Unix also served as a direct model for many other subsequent operating system designs.  Among many awards, Corbató received the Turing Award in 1990, "for his pioneering work in organizing the concepts and leading the development of the general-purpose, large-scale, time-sharing and resource-sharing computer systems".  In 2012, he was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for his pioneering work on timesharing and the Multics operating system".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_J._Corbat%C3%B3


Margaret Hamilton (born 1936) is an American computer scientist, systems engineer and business owner.  She was director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo space program.  In 1986, she founded Hamilton Technologies, Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The company was developed around Universal Systems Language, based on her paradigm of "Development Before the Fact" for systems and software design.  Hamilton has published over 130 papers, proceedings and reports about sixty projects and six major programs.  She is one of the people credited with coining the term "software engineering".  In 2016, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama for her work leading to the development of on-board flight software for NASA's Apollo missions.  



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2126  July 19, 2019 

Odette Williams has written a book called Simple Cake.  The premise is that cake making doesn’t have to be a laborious, complicated and overly fussy thing–in fact, it can be quite simple.  Contributor Melissa Clark met up with Odette Williams in New York to talk cake.  Odette kindly shared her recipes for Versatile Coconut Cake and Madeleines.  https://www.splendidtable.org/episode/let-them-eat-simple-cake



“Let them eat cake” is the most famous quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution.  As the story goes, it was the queen’s response upon being told that her starving peasant subjects had no bread.  Because cake is more expensive than bread, the anecdote has been cited as an example of Marie-Antoinette’s obliviousness to the conditions and daily lives of ordinary people.  But did she ever actually utter those words?  Probably not.  For one thing, the original French phrase that Marie-Antoinette is supposed to have said—“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”—doesn’t exactly translate as “Let them eat cake.”  It translates as, well, “Let them eat brioche.”  Of course, since brioche is a rich bread made with eggs and butter, almost as luxurious as cake, it doesn’t really change the point of the story.  More important, though, there is absolutely no historical evidence that Marie-Antoinette ever said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” or anything like it.  So where did the quote come from, and how did it become associated with Marie-Antoinette?  As it happens, folklore scholars have found similar tales in other parts of the world, although the details differ from one version to another.  In a tale collected in 16th-century Germany, for instance, a noblewoman wonders why the hungry poor don’t simply eat Krosem (a sweet bread).  Essentially, stories of rulers or aristocrats oblivious to their privileges are popular and widespread legends.  The first person to put the specific phrase “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” into print may have been the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  In Book VI of Rousseau’s Confessions (written about 1767), he relates a version of the story, attributing the quote to “a great princess.”  Although Marie-Antoinette was a princess at the time, she was still a child, so it is unlikely that she was the princess Rousseau had in mind.  John M. Cunningham  https://www.britannica.com/story/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake



“Conflate” comes from the Latin conflare, “to blow together, stir up, raise, accomplish; also to melt together, melt down (metals),” The Oxford English Dictionary says.  Its first use, around 1583, referred to a “tumour conflated of a melancholious humour.”  The “melancholy humor” referred to black bile, one of the four humors that early medicine believed were responsible for the health (or illness) of the human body.  Black bile represented the earth; the others were blood, the sanguine humor, representing air; yellow bile, the choleric humor, representing fire; and phlegm, the phlegmatic humor, representing water (of course).  In 1885, the OED says, “conflate” was first used to mean “To combine or fuse two variant readings of a text into a composite reading; to form a composite reading or text by such fusion.”  “Conflate” can be a verb or an adjective, though its use as the latter is rare these days.  https://archives.cjr.org/language_corner/language_corner_020915.php



According to the Google Ngram viewer (which tracks occurrences of words in books that happen to be in the Google Books database) from 1800 to the present, usage of “conflate” in printed books piddled along at nearly zero until it started to rise in the 1960s and then shot up between 1980 and 2000.  http://www.word-detective.com/2015/08/conflate/



Existentialism is a philosophy concerned with finding self and the meaning of life through free will, choice, and personal responsibility.  The belief is that people are searching to find out who and what they are throughout life as they make choices based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook.  And personal choices become unique without the necessity of an objective form of truth.  An existentialist believes that a person should be forced to choose and be responsible without the help of laws, ethnic rules, or traditions.  Existentialistic ideas came out of a time in society when there was a deep sense of despair following the Great Depression and World War II.  There was a spirit of optimism in society that was destroyed by World War I and its mid-century calamities.  This despair has been articulated by existentialist philosophers well into the 1970s and continues on to this day as a popular way of thinking and reasoning (with the freedom to choose one’s preferred moral belief system and lifestyle).  Existentialism is the search and journey for true self and true personal meaning in life.  Most importantly, it is the arbitrary act that existentialism finds most objectionable-that is, when someone or society tries to impose or demand that their beliefs, values, or rules be faithfully accepted and obeyed.  https://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/existentialism.htm



Something that is off the cuff is unplanned or done on the spur of the moment.  The phrase usually relates to impromptu speech, but it can also relate to anything else that is improvised or done on short notice.  The phrase usually functions adverbially, in which case it does not need to be hyphenated.  But when it’s an adjective preceding the noun it modifies (e.g., off-the-cuff remarks), it is hyphenated (according to the conventions for phrasal adjectives).  The phrase might derive to the practice of making notes on one’s cuff in last-minute preparation for a speech, but this origin isn’t definitively established, and there are a few other, less plausible theories.  https://grammarist.com/usage/off-the-cuff/



Easy sauce for noodles  A couple of ladlefuls of water the noodles were cooked in with cheese, herbs and optional ingredients like diced vegetables or finely chopped nuts.



PRONOUNCING THE  Usually the is pronounced thuh.  In front of a vowel or vowel sound (for instance, hour, where the first letter is silent) the is pronounced thee.  You may use the as thuh in front of eel or easy if similar sounds next to each other seem awkward.



"Facetious" comes from a Latin word that means "jest."  A facetious comment is a joking comment—often an inappropriate joking comment.  Think of a jester or joker making a funny face at you, and remember the first part of "facetious" is spelled "face."  "Sarcastic" comes from a Greek word that means "to speak bitterly or to sneer."  A sarcastic response is less funny than a facetious response and more bitter and harsh.  "Sardonic" has an interesting history.  Try to associate it with the Greek island of Sardinia because the Greeks coined the word sardonic from the name of that island, which is now part of Italy.  A plant was said to grow on Sardinia that, if eaten, would force a person’s face muscles into a grimacing smile—not a smile of happiness, but a smile of pain—a sardonic smile. Scientists in Italy recently reported that they believe a Sardinian plant called water celery is the lethal herb the Greeks had in mind.  Sardonic means "cutting, cynical, and disdainful" and is often used to describe a kind of humor.  https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/facetious-sarcastic-or-sardonic



dapper  adjective  mid-15c., "elegant, neat, trim," from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German dapper "bold, strong, sturdy," later "quick, nimble," from Proto-Germanic *dapraz (source also of Old High German tapfar"heavy," German tapfer "brave"), perhaps with ironical shift of meaning, from PIE root *dheb- "dense, firm, compressed."  Later shifting toward "small and active, nimble, brisk, lively" (from c. 1600).  "Formerly appreciative; now more or less depreciative, with associations of littleness or pettyness" [Oxford English Dictionary].  https://www.etymonline.com/word/dapper



A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct.  There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living.  These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark.  They light the way for humankind. - Hannah Senesh, poet, playwright, and paratrooper (17 Jul 1921-1944)


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2125  July 17, 2019

Once upon a time, a long time ago, Pan, the god of shepherds, challenged Apollo to a musical duel. Pan insisted his flute of reeds could produce a more beautiful melody than Apollo's silly harp.  The two agreed on a contest with judges.  One of the judges was King Midas.  After hearing the two melodies, all but one of the judges chose Apollo as the winner.  But one judge, King Midas, preferred Pan's tune.  Furious that anyone could prefer a reedy pipe to his musical lyre, Apollo cooed, "I see the problem.  It's your ears.  They are too small to hear properly.  Let me fix that for you."  King Midas felt his ears quiver.  His ears sprang out, and out, and turned into the large furry ears of an ass.  Find out how the story ends at https://greece.mrdonn.org/greekgods/kingmidas2.html 



From:  Louise Dawson  Legend has it that Midas was hiding his donkey’s ears under a bonnet, and only his barber knew the secret.  However, it became too hard for him not to tell, so one day he went into a deserted marsh and whispered to the reeds:  King Midas has donkey’s ears.  But, whenever it was windy, the rushes were heard murmuring for all to hear:  King Midas has donkey’s ears!  I read this charming story long ago in a childhood encyclopedia.  A rural myth?  Also gives sense to the business called Midas Muffler, doesn’t it.



FROZEN CUCUMBER SLICES 

2 c. sugar

2 c. water

1 c. vinegar

1  tbsp. salt

Mix ingredients.  Boil until clear.  Cool.  Pour syrup over unpeeled sliced cucumbers to cover.  Leave head space.  Freeze.



undertime  verb  (third-person singular simple present undertimes, present participle undertiming, simple past and past participle undertimed)  (transitive)  To measure wrongly, so that it seems to take less time than actually required.  (transitive, photography)  To underexpose.

undertime  noun   (uncountable) (informal)  The time spent at a workplace doing non-work activities.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/undertime 



'Round Robin' is now used to refer to things that operate in a rotational manner, like tournaments where each player plays every other, circular letters etc.  The earliest use was as a disparaging nickname, along the lines of 'sly dog' or 'dark horse'.  This dates back to the 16th century and was cited in a work by Miles Coverdale, in 1546.  A variey of uses:  a reference to Roundheads, that is, the supporters of Parliament during the English Civil War, as in Rump, 1662, which was a collection of scurrilous poems and songs - the name of a high-spirited game; for example, in The Works of Mr. Thomas Brown, 1707 - "The noble and ancient recreation of Robin-Robin, Hey-Jnks, [sic] and Whipping the Snake." - the name of virtually anything that was round in shape, for instance, Angler fish, pancakes.  The currently used ' rotational' meaning is independent of all of the earlier uses.  This began in the 18th century as the name of a form of petition, in which the complainants signed their names in a circle, so as to disguise who had signed first.  This was especially favoured by sailors--not surprisingly, as mutiny was then a hanging offence.  The term is recorded in the January 1730 edition of The Weekly Journal:  "A Round Robin is a Name given by Seamen, to an Instrument on which they sign their Names round a Circle, to prevent the Ring-leader being discover'd by it, if found."  It may be that this derives from the French 'rond rouban', which was a similar form of petition, in which the names were written on a circle of ribbon.  That's an attractive and plausible notion, but I can't find any actual documentary evidence to substantiate it.  Another idea, again attractive at first sight, is that the term 'ringleader' derives from the person who was first to sign the circle of names on a round robin.  That's not likely, as the first use of ringleader is from well before 1730.  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/round-robin.html



Murse may refer to:  Moers, city in Germany, archaically spelled Murse; man's handbag (portmanteau word from "male purse"); Mirza, Persian title, a prince or educated man, variant spelling; or male nurse  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murse



Tsunamis are giant waves caused by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions under the sea.  Out in the depths of the ocean, tsunami waves do not dramatically increase in height.  But as the waves travel inland, they build up to higher and higher heights as the depth of the ocean decreases.  The speed of tsunami waves depends on ocean depth rather than the distance from the source of the wave. Tsunami waves may travel as fast as jet planes over deep waters, only slowing down when reaching shallow waters.  https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/tsunami.html



Ice tsunamis—also known as “ice shoves” and “ivu,” among other names—are rare, but well-documented events.  According to National Geographic’s Michael Greshko, ice tsunamis were being studied as far back as 1822, when an American naturalist commented on “rocks, on level ground, taking up a gradual line of march [along a lakebed] and overcoming every obstacle in . . . escaping the dominion of Neptune.”  Ice tsunamis tend to occur when three conditions are in place.  The event is most common in springtime, when ice that covers large bodies of water starts to thaw, but has not yet melted.  If strong winds then blow through the area, they can push the ice towards the water’s edge—and winds in the Lake Erie region were indeed quite powerful, reaching hurricane-like speeds of up to 74 miles per hour, reports Fox News; Travis Fedschun  The third condition is a gently sloping shoreline; the gentler the slope, the less resistance the ice meets as it piles up and pushes inland.  Brigit Katz  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/furious-winds-lead-ice-tsunamis-along-lake-erie-180971569/



July 31, 2014  Once upon a time, geologists tell us, a massive chunk of Lake Tahoe's western shore collapsed into the water in a tremendous landslide.  The water responded by sloshing high onto the surrounding shores in a series of landslide tsunamis.  A major new study in the journal Geosphere  https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/geosphere/article-lookup/10/4/757 adds much new detail to that story, tracing massive features around and beneath the lake.  Forty years ago the first sonar survey of Lake Tahoe showed evidence that bite-shaped McKinney Bay, in the middle of the lake's western shore, is a scar left by a very large landslide and that huge pieces of that slide, as much as a kilometer long, are strewn across the lake bottom.  The landslide involved a body of rock made unstable by movement on a large-scale fault along the western shore.  The slide, presumably triggered by an earthquake on that fault, sent some 12.5 cubic kilometers of rock and sediment into the lake, where it pushed a corresponding amount of water out of the way as huge tsunamis, perhaps 100 meters high.  Much of this water burst over the lake's outlet at Tahoe City and rushed down the Truckee River, where house-sized boulders litter the riverbed today as far downstream as Verdi at the Nevada border.  Andrew Alden  See graphics at https://www.kqed.org/science/20134/the-tahoe-tsunami-new-study-envisions-early-geologic-event



Word of the Day  kombu  noun  Edible kelp (“a type of brown seaweed”) (from the class Phaeophyceae) used in East Asian cuisine.  Today, the third Monday in July in 2019, is 海の日 (Umi no Hi) or Marine Day in Japan, a public holiday for giving thanks for the ocean’s bounty and for recognizing its importance to Japan as an island nation.  Wiktionary



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2124  July 15, 2019   

Cuisine in Veneto may be divided into three main categories, based on geography:  the coastal areas, the plains, and the mountains.  Each one (especially the plains) can have many local cuisines, each city with its own dishes.  The most common dish is polenta, which is cooked in various ways within the local cuisines of Veneto.  Polenta once was the universal staple food of the poorer classes, who could afford little else.  In Veneto, the corns are ground in much smaller fragments in comparison with the rest of Italy:  so, when cooked, it tastes like a pudding.  Typical of many coastal areas, communities along the coast of the Laguna Veneta serve mainly seafood dishes.  In the plains it is very popular to serve grilled meat (often by a barbecue, and in a mix of pork, beef and chicken meat) together with grilled polenta, potatoes or vegetables.  Other popular dishes include risotto, rice cooked with many different kinds of food, from vegetables, mushrooms, pumpkin or radicchio to seafood, pork meat or chicken livers.  Bigoli (a typical Venetian fresh pasta, similar to Udon), fettuccine (hand-made noodles), ravioli and the similar tortelli (filled with meat, cheese, vegetables or pumpkin) and gnocchi (potatoes-made fresh pasta), are fresh and often hand-made pasta dishes (made of eggs and wheat flour), served together with meat sauce (ragù) often made with duck meat, sometimes together with mushrooms or peas, or simply with melted butter.  Cuisine from the mountain areas is mainly made of pork or game meat, with polenta, as well as mushrooms or cheeses (made by cow milk), and some dishes from Austrian or Tyrolese tradition, such as canederli or strudel.  A typical dish is casunziei, hand-made fresh pasta similar to ravioli.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_cuisine



Treviso is the no-frills gateway to Venice.  The centre of Treviso is a little walled city, with medieval gates, narrow, cobbled streets of arcaded rose-red brick and stone that twist and turn like dried-out water course--which is what some of them originally were.  Tiny canals run past handkerchief-sized gardens, glide beneath houses, appear at street corners.  Treviso is the birthplace of Luciano Benetton, founder of the worldwide empire.  The family lives locally and Benetton’s flagship store dominates a central piazza.  Only in this corner of the northern Veneto is a culinary gem--radicchio rosso di Treviso cultivated--crimson and white bundles of rapier-slender leaves.  Beyond the old city walls lie the radicchio fields.  Delicious as the crunchiest of salad ingredients, it’s even better grilled or roasted, in risotto or pasta.  Pliny commended it as a cure for insomnia.  Its subtle, slightly bitter flavour is addictive.  Treviso’s other claim to culinary fame is the local wine:  prosecco, which in recent years has been granted DOCG status, preventing the name from being used for wines made outside the protected area.  Lee Langley  Read more and see pictures at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/italy/veneto/articles/Treviso-Italy-an-underrated-gateway-to-Venice/  Pasta made with coffee, and tossed with shrimp and almonds is served at Odeon alla Colonna in Treviso.  New York Times  June 10, 2019



antebellum  adjective  From the Latin phrase ante bellum (literally “before the war”), from ante (“before”) + bellum (“war”).  (not comparable)  Of the time period prior to a war.

In the United States of America, of the period prior to the American Civil War, especially in reference to the culture of the southern states.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/antebellum  Lady Antebellum is an American country music group.

catcall  noun  also cat-call 1650s, a type of noisemaker (Johnson describes it as a "squeaking instrument") used to express dissatisfaction in play-houses, from cat + call; presumably because it sounded like an angry cat.  As a verb, attested from 1734.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/catcall

“The White Man’s Burden,” published in 1899 in McClure’s magazine, is one of Rudyard Kipling’s most infamous poems.  It has been lauded and reviled in equal measure and has come to stand as the major articulation of the Occident’s rapacious and all-encompassing imperialist ambitions in the Orient.  The poem was initially composed for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee but Kipling decided to submit “Recessional” instead.  Kipling, observing the events across the Atlantic in the Spanish-American War, sent this to then-governor of New York Theodore Roosevelt as a warning regarding the dangers of obtaining and sustaining an empire.  Roosevelt would then forward the poem to his friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.”  https://www.gradesaver.com/rudyard-kipling-poems/study-guide/summary-the-white-mans-burden



Naulakha, also known as the Rudyard Kipling House, is a historic Shingle Style house on Kipling Road in Dummerston, Vermont, a few miles outside Brattleboro.  The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993 for its association with the author Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), who had it built in 1893 and made it his home until 1896.  It is in this house that Kipling wrote Captains Courageous, The Jungle Book, The Day's Work, and The Seven Seas, and did work on Kim and The Just So Stories.  Kipling named the house after the Naulakha Pavilion, situated inside Lahore Fort in Pakistan.  The house is now owned by the Landmark Trust, and is available for rent.  "Kipling named Naulakha after the book he wrote with Wolcott Balestier, his good friend and Mrs. Kipling's brother, about a precious Indian jewel, and it is filled with a trove of their possessions."  Etymologically Naulakha means nine lakhs or nine hundred thousand being the amount of rupees incurred for the cost of construction of the building.  The Mughal architecture of the monument had inspired him during his earlier stay (between 1882 and 1887) in Lahore.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naulakha_(Rudyard_Kipling_House)  See also Then Again:  Kipling’s brief and stormy stay in Vermont by Mark Bushnell at https://vtdigger.org/2017/12/31/kiplings-brief-stormy-stay-vermont/



Hunker down sounds like the most typically American of phrases, but it seems originally to have been Scots, first recorded in the eighteenth century.  Nobody seems to know exactly what its origin is, though it has been suggested it’s linked to the Old Norse huka, to squat; that would make it a close cousin of old Dutch huiken and modern German hocken, meaning to squat or crouch, which makes sense.  That’s certainly what’s meant by the word in American English, in phrases like hunker down or on your hunkers.  The Oxford English Dictionary has a fine description of how to hunker:  “squat, with the haunches, knees, and ankles acutely bent, so as to bring the hams near the heels, and throw the whole weight upon the fore part of the feet”.  The advantage of this position is that you’re not only crouched close to the ground, so presenting a small target for whatever the universe chooses to throw at you, but you’re also ready to move at a moment’s notice.  Hunker down has also taken on the sense of to hide, hide out, or take shelter, whatever position you choose to do it in.  This was a south-western US dialect form that was popularised by President Johnson in the mid 1960s.  Despite its Scots ancestry, hunker is rare in standard British English.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hun1.htm



Eight of architect Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List on July 7, 2019, elevating them to the same status as Machu Picchu, the Pyramids of Giza and the Statue of Liberty.  The new additions to the list were announced in Baku, Azerbaijan at UNESCO's annual conference, include Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Hollyhock House in Los Angeles, the Jacobs House in Wisconsin, the Robie House in Chicago, Taliesin in Wisconsin, Taliesin West in Arizona and the Unity Temple in Illinois.  "Each of these buildings offers innovative solutions to the needs for housing, worship, work or leisure," wrote members of the World Heritage Committee in a press release announcing the designation.  "Wright's work from this period had a strong impact on the development of modern architecture in Europe."   Josh Axelrod  https://www.npr.org/2019/07/07/739359081/unesco-adds-8-frank-lloyd-wright-buildings-to-its-list-of-world-heritage-sites  See also list of UNESCO World Heritage sites at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/



A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Socratic irony  (suh-KRAT-ik EYE-ruh-nee)  noun  A profession of ignorance in a discussion in order to elicit clarity on a topic and expose misconception held by another.  After Greek philosopher Socrates (470?-399 BCE) who employed this method.  Earliest documented use:  1721.

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From:  Gavin Pringle  Subject:  Socratic irony  In Scotland, we call this playing the silly laddie. 
From:  Jim Clark   Subject:  Socratic irony   Did you know that Socrates was against reading?  He said that it would stunt the mind and make remembering obsolete if all that you needed to do was refer to stuff that had been written.



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2123  July 12, 2019

In the early evening of December 26, 1941, Secret Service agent Harry E. Neal stood alone on the platform at Washington’s Union Station and watched the train disappear into the darkness.  Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish had orchestrated the transfer to Fort Knox of  “the documentary history of freedom in our world.”  In the dry language of a shipping manifest they were described this way:

• Case 1:  Gutenberg Bible (St. Blasius– St. Paul copy), 3 volumes
• Case 2:  Articles of Confederation (original engrossed and signed copy), 1 roll
• Case 3:  Magna Carta (Lincoln Cathedral copy), one parchment leaf in frame; Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (original, autographed copy, 1 volume); Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (first and second autographed drafts, 1 volume)
• Case 4:  Constitution of the United States (original, engrossed and signed copy, five leaves); Declaration of Independence (original, engrossed and signed copy, 1 leaf)  It was the beginning of the largest single relocation of priceless documents, books, and artifacts in American history.  In 1952, following a Congressional act, the original Declaration and Constitution were transferred to the National Archives, where they remain on display today.  Stephen Puleo  https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/world-war-two-protect-national-archives-214257



proleptic (comparative more proleptic, superlative most proleptic)

Of a calendar, extrapolated to dates prior to its first adoption; of those used to adjust to or from the Julian calendar or Gregorian calendar.  Of an event, assigned a date that is too early.  (rhetoric)  Anticipating and answering objections before they have been raised; procataleptic.  See quotations at using proleptic and proleptically at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/proleptic



Thursday Next is a literary detective who goes inside books in her futuristic time-travel world.  See list of titles in the series at https://www.goodreads.com/series/43680-thursday-next   Characters in Thursday's world include Harris Tweed, Lola Vavoom, Akrid Snell, Brik Schitt-Hawse, Landen Parke-Laine, Mycroft Next, Victor Analogy, Diana Thuntress, Tiffany Lampe and Millon de Floss.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_in_the_Thursday_Next_series  Croquet is the national sport, and there is a 30,000 seat stadium to watch the action.  Words from Thursday's world:  litjoy, bookjump, jurisfiction, fiction frenzies, booksploring 



The Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood.  The first American edition was published by Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York.  The story was adapted as a film, The Mill on the Floss, in 1937, and as a BBC series in 1978 starring Christopher Blake, Pippa Guard, Judy Cornwell, Ray Smith and Anton Lesser.  A single-episode television adaptation of the novel first was aired on 1 January 1997.  Maggie Tulliver is portrayed by Emily Watson and Mr Tulliver by Bernard Hill.  In 1994, Helen Edmundson adapted the play for the stage, in a production performed by Shared Experience.  A radio dramatisation in five one-hour parts was broadcast on BBC7 in 2009.  In the Kiran Rao and Aamir Khan film Delhi Belly, one of the main protagonists (Nitin played by Kunal Roy Kapoor) makes a sarcastic reference to "Mill on the floss" when he finds his friends in completely different appearances and surreal whimsical situations.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mill_on_the_Floss 



Lidia Bastianich was born Lidia Giuliana Matticchio on February 21, 1947, in Pula, Istria, when the city was still part of Italy, before it was assigned to Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (which is now Croatia).  She is the daughter of Erminia (née Pavichievaz, the daughter of Rosaria Smilovich) and Vittorio Matticchio (the son of Antonio Motika and Francesca Lovrecich).  Her family lived nine years under Marshal Tito's Communist regime in Yugoslavia, during which time the government changed her family name Matticchio back to Motika.  In 1956 Lidia's father Vittorio sent his wife and their two children to visit relatives in Trieste, Italy, while he remained in Istria to comply with the government's mandate that one member of a family remain in Yugoslavia to ensure that the rest would return.  About two weeks later, Vittorio himself left Yugoslavia at night and crossed the border into Italy.  Their departure was part of the larger Istrian exodus.  The Matticchio family reunited in Trieste, Italy,  joining other families who had claimed political asylum from Communist Yugoslavia starting in 1947, many of whom remained in refugee camps throughout Italy for years.  For the Matticchio family, the Risiera di San Sabba camp was one that had been an abandoned rice factory in Trieste that had been converted to a Nazi concentration camp during World War II and partially destroyed towards the end of the war, the Risiera di San Sabba.  According to Bastianich in a Public Television documentary, although a wealthy Triestine family hired her mother as a cook–housekeeper and her father as a limousine driver, they remained residents of the refugee camp.  Two years later, their displaced persons application was granted to emigrate to the U.S.  In 1958, the Matticchio family reached New York City.  The 12-year-old Lidia and her family moved to North Bergen, New Jersey, and later Queens, New York.  Bastianich gives credit for the family's new roots in America to their sponsor, Catholic Relief Services:  The Catholic Relief Services brought us here to New York; we had no one.  They found a home for us.  They found a job for my father.  And ultimately, we settled.  And I am the perfect example that if you give somebody a chance, especially here in the United States, one can find the way.  Bastianich started working part-time when she was 14 (the legal age for a work permit), during which time she briefly worked at the Astoria bakery owned by Christopher Walken's father.  After graduating from high school, she began to work full-time at a pizzeria on the upper west side of Manhattan.  At her sweet sixteen birthday party, she was introduced to her future husband, Felice "Felix" Bastianich, a fellow Istrian immigrant and restaurant worker from Labin (Albona), on the eastern coast of Istria, Croatia. The couple married in 1966 and Lidia gave birth to their son, Joseph, in 1968.  Their second child, Tanya, was born in 1972.  In 1971, the Bastianiches opened their first restaurant, the tiny Buonavia, meaning "good road", in the Forest Hills section of Queens, with Bastianich as its hostess.  They created their restaurant's menu by copying recipes from the most popular and successful Italian restaurants of the day, and they hired the best Italian-American chef that they could find.  After a brief break to deliver her second child Tanya, in 1972 Bastianich began training as the assistant chef at Buonavia, gradually learning enough to cook popular   Italian dishes on her own, after which the couple began adding traditional Istrian dishes to their menu.  The success of Buonavia led to the opening of the second restaurant in Queens, Villa Secondo.  It was here that Bastianich gained the attention of local food critics and started to give live cooking demonstrations, a prelude to her future career as a television cooking show hostess.  In 1981, Bastianich's father died, and the family sold their two Queens restaurants and purchased a small Manhattan brownstone containing a pre-existing restaurant on the East Side of Manhattan near the 59th Street Bridge to Queens.  They converted it into what would eventually become their flagship restaurant, Felidia (a contraction of "Felice" and "Lidia").  After liquidating nearly every asset they had to cover $750,000 worth of renovations, Felidia finally opened to near-universal acclaim from their loyal following of food critics, including The New York Times, which gave Felidia three stars.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidia_Bastianich  Lidia and Felice Bastianich married in 1966 and divorced in 1997.



How Julia Child Talked Lidia Bastianich Into Hosting Her Own Cooking Show by Michael Burgi   Julia Child and I, we became friends.  She wanted me to teach her how to make risotto.  So she came over to the house, and we developed a friendship through food.  And she asked me to come on her show [in 1993].  We did two [episodes] and, you know, I was very comfortable because by then I had got to know her.  And it was nominated for an Emmy.  The producer came and said, "Lidia, you're pretty good.  How about a show of your own?"  And so Julia encouraged me:  "You do for Italian food what I did for French."  And that's how I began.  https://www.adweek.com/tv-video/how-julia-child-talked-lidia-bastianich-hosting-her-own-cooking-show-174519/  Lidia's mother, Erminia Motika/Mattiocchi was 96 in 2016. 



North Carolina-based architect Phil Freelon died July 9, 2019.   

Freelon, 66, had been diagnosed with ALS in March 2016, just prior to the debut of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, a signature project he helped design in partnership with Adjaye Associates, Davis Brody Bond, SmithGroupJJR, and Perkins + Will.  Freelon was a graduate of North Carolina State University's College of Design, where he earned a Bachelor of Environmental Design in Architecture; He earned his Master of Architecture degree from MIT.  He founded The Freelon Group in 1990, a practice that took on many culturally and architecturally significant projects, including the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Emancipation Park in Houston, and the MoTown Museum in Memphis.  The Freelon Group was acquired by Perkins + Will in 2014, and Freelon was made managing director of the firm's Durham and Charlotte offices.  In 2016, Harvard's GSD announced the establishment of the Philip Freelon Fellowship Fund designed to "provide expanded academic opportunities to African American and other underrepresented architecture and design students at the GSD."  Antonio Pacheco  https://archinect.com/news/article/150145240/architect-phil-freelon-has-passed-away

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  Life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements. - Alice Munro, short-story writer and Nobel Prize winner (b. 10 Jul 1931)



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2122  July 10, 2019