Harriet Monroe (1860–1936) was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, poet, and patron of the arts.  She is best known as the founding publisher and long-time editor of Poetry magazine, first published in 1912.  As a supporter of the poets Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, H. D., T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, Max Michelson and others, Monroe played an important role in the development of modern poetry.  Her correspondence with early twentieth century poets provides a wealth of information on their thoughts and motives.  She became a freelance correspondent to the Chicago Tribune, and was commissioned to write a commemorative ode for the 400th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America.  Though Century magazine published her poem, "With a Copy of Shelley," in 1889, she became disillusioned by the limited earnings available for poets, saying:  "The minor painter or sculptor was honored with large annual awards in our greatest cities, while the minor poet was a joke of the paragraphers, subject to the popular prejudice that his art thrived best on starvation in a garret."  Her financial hardships were alleviated after she sued the New York World for publishing the Colombian ode poem without her consent and she was awarded $5,000 dollars in a settlement.  With help from publisher Hobart Chatfield-Taylor, Monroe convinced one hundred prominent Chicago business leaders to sponsor the magazine Poetry by each committing to fifty dollars for a five-year subscription.  The $5,000, coupled with her own settlement, was enough to launch the magazine on September 23, 1912, while upholding its promise to contributors of adequate payment for all published work.  Monroe was editor for its first two years without salary, while simultaneously working as an art critic for the Chicago Tribune.  By 1914, the magazine work became too much for her to accomplish while working other jobs, so she resigned from the Tribune and accepted a salary of fifty dollars per month from the magazine.  For more than ten years she maintained herself on this stipend, raising it to one hundred dollars per month in 1925.  Monroe was a member of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony in Ogle County, Illinois, and is mentioned in Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City.  In 2011, Monroe was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Monroe

Delicately suspended in the Urban Room of the Salt Lake Public Library floats "Psyche,” a hallucinatory synthesis of literature, nature and technology.  Comprised of nearly 1400 component parts, including several hundred subtly moving elements, the piece employs a sort of three-dimensional Pointillism wherein numerous small sculptures coalesce into a large composite human head.  The small components depict six different book forms, ranging from closed books articulating the front of the face, and progressing to completely open books at the back of the head.  In the more open books, over a dozen species of butterflies emerge from the pages, resulting in scores of actively kinetic, variously colored butterflies-on-books comprising the cranium.  See illustration at https://culturenow.org/entry&permalink=19914&seo=Psyche_Ralph-Helmick-and-Stuart-Schechter

June 15, 2020  Bad Form, the quarterly literary review magazine, is launching a new prize for young black, Asian, Arab and other non-white fiction writers based in the UK, with support from across the publishing industry.  The Bad Form Young Writers’ Prize is intended to help provide practical support to British authors from underrepresented backgrounds, helping them to break into the business.  The winner of the prize will receive one-to-one meetings with agent Catherine Cho of the Madeleine Milburn Agency, publisher Joel Richardson of Michael Joseph, and author Okechukwu Nzelu of The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books).  Katherine Cowdrey 

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/bad-form-young-writers-prize-launches-trade-support-1206743

Copyright, a form of intellectual property law, protects original works of authorship including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works, such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and architecture.  Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.  See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section "What Works Are Protected."  Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases.  In some cases, these things may be protected as trademarks.  Contact the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, TrademarkAssistanceCenter@uspto.gov or see Circular 33, for further information.  However, copyright protection may be available for logo artwork that contains sufficient authorship.  In some circumstances, an artistic logo may also be protected as a trademark.  See more at https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html

The first time I heard about babka was in the 90s while watching Seinfeld.  The episode also features a black and white cookie, so I think that distracted me from learning more about babka at the time.  (Side note:  Here is Joanne’s recipe for black and white cookies.  I’ve made them, and they’re incredible.)  Fast forward to earlier this year when I found chocolate babka at Trader Joe’s.  All of those Seinfeld memories flooded back.  It was delicious, but I was told by several people that it wasn’t “real” babka.  Which my mind translated thusly:  I had no choice but to make it at home.  Bridget Edwards  Find recipe and pictures at https://thepioneerwoman.com/food-and-friends/chocolate-babka/  16 servings

Encyclopedia Brown is a series of books featuring the adventures of boy detective Leroy Brown, nicknamed "Encyclopedia" for his intelligence and range of knowledge.  The series of 29 children's novels was written (one co-written) by Donald J. Sobol, with the first book published in 1963 and the last novel published posthumously in 2012.  The Encyclopedia Brown series has spawned a comic strip, a TV series, and compilation books of puzzles and games.  Sobol's first Encyclopedia Brown book was written in two weeks; subsequent books took about six months to write.  Find formula, style, and list of books at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Brown

“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.”  Theodore Roosevelt 

“Continuous effort--not strength or intelligence--is the key to unlocking our potential.  Winston Churchill  

“All things are difficult before they are easy.”  Thomas Fuller

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply.  Willing is not enough; we must do.”  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe   

 “Thinking well is wise; planning well wiser; doing well wisest and best of all.”  Persian Proverb

http://www.greatexpectations.org/resources/life-principles/effort/quotes-about-effort/

"Since the library closed on March 16, 2020 we've had about seven thousand people register for library cards," says Richard Reyes-Gavilan, Executive Director for the District of Columbia Public Libraries.  "We've had over 300,000 books borrowed since mid-March, which is astounding considering that our collections are limited."  By the library's accounting, that's 37% higher than the same period in 2019, and DC isn't alone in an uptake in digital usage:  Weekly library e-book lending across the country has increased by nearly 50 percent since March 9, according to data from OverDrive, a service used by many libraries to let patrons check out media for e-readers, smartphones and computers.  Audiobook check-outs are also up 14%—not quite as large a shift, likely because fewer people are in their cars commuting to work.  Across the country, while physical lending remains closed, five of Seattle's library buildings have been opened for restroom-only access since late April, in part hoping to slow the spread of COVID-19 by making handwashing easier for the homeless.  In DC, Reyes-Gavilan is excited about being able to physically open the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, which has been closed for renovation since 2017, especially given the current background of race-related protest.  "We'll be offering socially-distant services the likes of which the city has never seen from a public library," he says.  Thomas Wilburn  https://www.npr.org/2020/06/16/877651001/libraries-are-dealing-with-new-demand-for-books-and-services-during-the-pandemic

WORD OF THE DAY FOR JUNE 19  Juneteenth  proper noun  (US) Also more fully as Juneteenth Day:  a holiday celebrated in many states on June 19, commemorating the end of slavery.  On June 19, 1865, Union Army General Gordon Granger read out General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, to enforce President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862 stating that all previously enslaved people in Texas were now free.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Juneteenth#English  Read General Order No. 3 at https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/juneteenth.html#:~:text=Juneteenth,to%20the%20people%20of%20Galveston.

The Juneteenth flag is the brainchild of activist Ben Haith, founder of the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation (NJCF).  Haith created the flag in 1997 with the help of collaborators, and Boston-based illustrator Lisa Jeanne Graf brought their vision to life.  The flag was revised in 2000 into the version we know today, according to the National Juneteenth Observation Foundation.  Seven years later, the date "June 19, 1865" was added, commemorating the day that Union Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and told enslaved African Americans of their emancipation.  Harmeet Kaur  See illustrations of symbols and descriptions of their meanings at https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/us/freedom-day-juneteenth-flag-meaning-trnd/index.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2287  June 19, 2020

Spreading its leafy limbs before the former Mansfield Town Hall is a tree of a non-native species that once covered many of the hills and valleys of Connecticut—a black mulberry.  And almost directly across Storrs Road on Route 195 bordering the Altnaveigh Inn stands a second, a white mulberry.  Two hundred years ago tens of thousands of cultivated mulberry trees dotted the Connecticut landscape.  Few have survived the ravages of time, the harsh Connecticut climate, blight, and the foibles of mankind.  Those that remain are relics of a strange chapter in Connecticut’s history, one that featured a fabled fabric, get-rich-quick dreams spun by promoters, hucksters, and swindlers, and, finally, panic and ruin.  It is the story of a burgeoning but short-lived cottage industry that was unique in the young, 19th-century American nation.  The story begins with the mulberry tree and the silkworm, which is a type of caterpillar.  The silkworm prefers a diet of mulberry leaves.  It produces a cocoon which, when unraveled, can be spun into silk thread.  The process of silk production is called sericulture, and Connecticut, especially Windham and Tolland Counties, was the epicenter of US raw-silk production.  The Chinese discovered the secrets of mulberry leaves, silkworms, and silk production 4,000 years ago and threatened death to anyone who revealed those secrets.  These new threads, which had a greater tensile strength than metal cable, could be spun into a luxurious fabric that was so desired that it opened up trade across half the globe on the famous Silk Road.  Eventually the secrets of sericulture spread throughout Asia and Europe.  Silkworms were first imported to Virginia as early as 1613, but efforts to build businesses around them in American colonies such as Georgia, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania were only marginally successful.  In 1734 the Connecticut Colonial Assembly passed legislation offering financial incentives for silk growers.  Two individuals ended up succeeding in bringing silk production to Connecticut, where others had failed.  One was Nathaniel Aspinwall, a horticulturalist.  In the 1750s Aspinwall planted mulberry trees at a nursery he owned in Long Island and later in Mansfield and New Haven, Connecticut.  Aspinwall also raised and distributed to customers the silkworm eggs needed to produce the caterpillars and cocoons.  Historians do not make clear what caused the collapse in mulberry prices.  The fall came after the general financial panic of 1837, which had actually caused mulberry prices to soar as investors took their cash and used it to buy more trees, which seemed a safer haven.  Much of the blame has fallen on boosters who downplayed the labor involved in silk production while over-inflating the potential profits.  Another factor was that the multicaulis was poorly equipped to weather the harsh winters of the northeastern United States.  Through 1839 prices fell at alarming rates.  Trees that at the beginning of the year could fetch $1 to $1.25 by the end of the year could be had for 2 to 4 cents.  One auction of 30,000 multicaulis trees that would have sold for $20,000 just a few years before now had no takers.  Many nurserymen began burning the trees or using them for compost.  Bob Wyss  Read much more and see graphics at https://connecticuthistory.org/connecticuts-mulberry-craze/

The central nervous system (CNS) consists of the brain and spinal cord.  The brain is an important organ that controls thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger, and every process that regulates our body.  The brain can be divided into the cerebrum, brainstem, and cerebellum: 

Cerebrum.  The cerebrum (front of brain) is composed of the right and left hemispheres, which are joined by the corpus callosum.  Functions of the cerebrum include:  initiation of movement, coordination of movement, temperature, touch, vision, hearing, judgment, reasoning, problem solving, emotions, and learning.

Brainstem.  The brainstem (middle of brain) includes the midbrain, the pons, and the medulla.  Functions of this area include:  movement of the eyes and mouth, relaying sensory messages (such as hot, pain, and loud), respirations, consciousness, cardiac function, involuntary muscle movements, sneezing, coughing, vomiting, and swallowing.

Cerebellum.  The cerebellum (back of brain) is located at the back of the head.  Its function is to coordinate voluntary muscle movements and to maintain posture, balance, and equilibrium.  Find other parts of the brain described at https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/anatomy-of-the-brain

Langar is the communal meal shared by Sikhs and all visitors to the gurdwara.  Since the founding of the Sikh community, langar has come to be an important part of Sikh religious life.  After the service, no Sikh will leave without partaking of langar.  For Sikhs, eating together in this way is expressive of the equality and oneness of all humankind. At the same time, it strengthens the Sikh sense of community. Visitors and guests are readily and warmly included in the great hospitality of the Sikh tradition.  In visiting a gurdwara one will always be offered the sweet prashad which is distributed in the sanctuary as the “grace” of the guru.  And in visiting at the time of a service, one will be offered the entire langar meal.  One of the most obvious signs of caste inequality in traditional Indian society is the taboo against eating with those outside one’s caste group, of a lower caste, or of a different religion.  Rules for the sharing of food and water are many, especially among high caste Hindus.  From the beginning, the Sikh gurus explicitly rejected this inequality by asking that all Sikhs and all visitors to the Sikh gurdwaras partake of common food in the company of one another.  In the langar hall, women and men, rich and poor, high and low sit together.  The langar meal thus assails the inner core of inequality and symbolizes a Sikh’s personal rejection of prejudice.  https://pluralism.org/langar-the-communal-meal

Gurdwara, (Punjabi: “doorway to the Guru”) in Sikhism, is a place of worship in India and overseas.  The gurdwara contains—on a cot under a canopy—a copy of the Adi Granth (“First Volume”), the sacred scripture of Sikhism.  It also serves as a meeting place for conducting business of the congregation and wedding and initiation ceremonies.  The more historically important gurdwaras serve as centres of pilgrimage during festivals.  A communal dining hall (langar), in which meals are prepared and served to the congregation, and frequently a school are attached to the gurdwara.  Every Sikh family endeavours to set aside one room of the house for the reading of the Adi Granth, and that room is also called a gurdwara.  https://www.britannica.com/topic/gurdwara

Every year on “a Wednesday in mid-June,” the Royal Society of Literature celebrates the work and legacy of Virginia Woolf.  In 2020, Dalloway Day falls on Wednesday, June 17th (the day after Bloomsday, if you want to make a week out of it), and Lit Hub is proud to be part of the festivities, which include online panel discussions, a writing workshop, a book club, an aural walking tour and a BBC broadcast.  You can see the full program here, but below are a few highlights, and if you’d like a handy list of all the books you’ll need from the authors involved with the festivities, you can find that here.  https://lithub.com/join-lit-hub-the-royal-society-of-literature-in-celebrating-dalloway-day-on-june-17th/

Marmite, a spread made with yeast extract, is now only being produced in a 250g size jar as a result of brewers’ yeast being more difficult to get hold of, a message sent on the company’s official account said on June 10, 2020.  When asked by a customer why larger 400g squeezy jars were hard to get hold of at the moment, the firm replied:  “Due to brewers yeast being in short supply (one of the main ingredients in Marmite) supplies of Marmite have been affected.  Brewers slowed and stalled production when pubs were forced to shut in an attempt to slow the Covid-19 pandemic.  The twitter thread split lovers and haters of Marmite:  “You hate to see it.  Or love to see it,” wrote one.  “Some good news at last,” wrote another.  Another tweeted that this was “Marmageddon”.  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/11/marmite-supplies-hit-by-covid-19-beer-brewing-slowdown-yeast  “British beer sales fall to 20-year low due to lockdown pub closures.”

Marmite is a food spread made from yeast extract invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig and originally made in the United Kingdom.  It is a by-product of beer brewing and is produced by Dutch-British company Unilever.  Other similar products include the Australian Vegemite (the name of which is derived from that of Marmite), the Swiss Cenovis, the Brazilian Cenovit and the German Vitam-R.  Marmite has been manufactured in New Zealand since 1919 under license, but with a different recipe, see "Marmite (New Zealand)".  That product is the only one sold as Marmite in Australasia and the Pacific, whereas elsewhere in the world the European version predominates.  Marmite is a sticky, dark brown food paste with a distinctive, powerful flavour, that is extremely salty.  This distinctive taste is represented in the marketing slogan:  "Love it or hate it."  Such is its prominence in British popular culture that the product's name is often used as a metaphor for something that is an acquired taste or tends to polarise opinions.  Marmite is a commonly used ingredient in dishes as a flavouring, as it is particularly rich in umami due to its very high levels of glutamate (1960 mg/100g).  The image on the front of the jar shows a marmite, a French term for a large, covered earthenware or metal cooking pot.  Marmite was originally supplied in earthenware pots but since the 1920s has been sold in glass jars.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite

The U.K. is experiencing a shortage of Marmite, the polarizing yeast-extract spread, due to a lack of brewer's yeast, an ingredient now in short supply after pubs closed down amid the coronavirus.  Keep calm and carry on, Marmite lovers.  Listen to a short story with amusing music at

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/879041017/u-k-suffers-marmite-shortage-during-covid-19-pandemic 

A THOUGHT FOR JUNE 17  Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right. - Igor Stravinsky, composer (17 Jun 1882-1971)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2286  June 17, 2020

Slow-Cooker Asparagus-Barley Risotto

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/slow-cooker-asparagus-barley-risotto-3364380  serves 8  Use part apple cider instead of all broth if desired.

Edwin George Morgan (1920–2010) was a Scottish poet and translator associated with the Scottish Renaissance.  He is widely recognised as one of the foremost Scottish poets of the 20th century.  In 1999, Morgan was made the first Glasgow Poet Laureate.  In 2004, he was named as the first Scottish national poet:  The Scots Makar.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Morgan_(poet)

Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking.  Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it usually involves conflict between opponents possessing advanced abilities, futuristic weapons, and other sophisticated technology.  The term has no relation to music, as in a traditional opera, but is instead a play on the terms "soap opera", a melodramatic television series, and "horse opera", which was coined during the 1930s to indicate a clichéd and formulaic Western movie.  Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television, and video games.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera  John Scalzi, author of the space opera The Last Emporex, frequently sets aside books he’s not enjoying.  “Life is short and there are many other books.”  The New York Times Book Review May 17, 2020 

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  From:  Beye Fyfe  This business of nouning verbs and verbing nouns is unsettling.  I just came across another example on my doctor’s website and I don’t know quite what to do with it:  “We have social distanced our waiting room.”  From:  Carole Kenney  I’ve been hearing the noun “office” being used these days as a verb--ugh!  In a radio ad, something like:  we’re here for you, helping you to office at home.  From Saundra D’Amato  Currently there is a TV ad running that exhorts us to “brain better”.  I guess they couldn’t think of an actual verb?  AWADmailissue 934

The great Sam Fuller began life as a crime reporter at the age of 17, before writing pulp novels and doing mostly uncredited work on screenplays through the 1930s (his first credit was on 1936’s “Hats Off“).  He served in World War Two, seeing action in France, Italy and North Africa, as well as being present at (and filming) the liberation of the concentration camp at Sokolov.  By the time he came to direct in 1939—having been inspired by his anger at what Douglas Sirk did to his screenplay “Shockproof”—Fuller would infuse his work with his experience as both a journalist and a soldier.  Indeed, the director once made a parallel between moviemaking and war in a quote that served as something of a mission statement for his career “Film is like a battleground, with love, hate, action, violence, death . . . in one word, emotion.”  Shooting with both a journalistic eye and a heightened style, producing work that was simultaneously crass and subtle, he’s one of the great pulp filmmakers, and a director who proved a huge influence on everyone.  Jean-Luc Godard would go as far paying him open tribute by giving him a cameo in “Pierrot Le Fou.”  Wim Wenders would do the same with Fuller’s small part in “The American Friend.”  Other admirers would include Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino.  Even if career problems meant that he never became the household name he should have been (he didn’t direct between 1972 and 1980, and the misreading of 1982’s “White Dog” saw him become a pariah in Hollywood), Fuller’s lasting stamp on cinema is still felt today.  Read much more at https://www.indiewire.com/2012/08/the-essentials-the-5-best-sam-fuller-films-107309/

Knock, knock, ginger (also known as knock down ginger, ding dong ditch, chap door run and numerous variants) is a prank or game dating back to 19th-century England.  The game is played by children in many cultures.  It involves knocking on the front door (or ringing the doorbell) of a victim, then running away before the door can be answered.  Victims of this prank are not likely to call the police, but if they decide to, the prankster can face charges of trespassing and disturbing the peace. Find name variations for the prank at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock,_Knock,_Ginger

Theodore Huebner Roethke (1908-1963) was born in Saginaw, Michigan, the son of Otto Roethke and Helen Huebner, who, along with an uncle owned a local greenhouse.  As a child, he spent much time in the greenhouse observing nature.  Roethke grew up in Saginaw, attending Aurthur Hill High School, where he gave a speech on the Junior Red Cross that was published in twenty six different languages.  He taught at Lafayette College from 1931 to 1935.  It was here where Roethke began his first book, Open House. At Lafayette he met Stanley Kunitz, who later in life, became a great support and friend.  By the end of 1935 Roethke was teaching at Michigan State College at Lansing.  By the time he was teaching at Michigan State Roethke’s reputation as a poet had been established.  In 1936 he moved his teaching career to Pennsylvania State University, where he taught seven years.  During his time there he was published in such prestigious journals as Poetry, the New Republic, the Saturday Review, and Sewanee Review.  His first volume of verse, Open House, was finally published and released in 1941.  https://allpoetry.com/Theodore-Roethke

Set on a beautiful 45 acre campus with stunning architectural design and landscaping, the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center is a state-of-the-art facility where the Library of Congress acquires, preserves and provides access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of films, television programs, radio broadcasts, and sound recordings.  The campus has globally unprecedented capabilities and capacities for the preservation reformatting of all audiovisual media formats (including obsolete formats dating back 100 years) and their long-term safekeeping in a petabyte-level digital storage archive.  In addition to preserving the collections of the Library, the Packard Campus was also designed to provide similar preservation services for other archives and libraries in both the public and private sector.  The physical description of the campus is impressive enough—415,000 square feet, more than 90 miles of shelving for collections storage, 35 climate controlled vaults for sound recording, safety film, and videotape, 124 individual vaults for more flammable nitrate film—but it is also a "factory" for acquisitions, preservation, access, and partnerships.  For example, the campus features an off-air recording room to enable off-broadcast, off-cable, off-satellite capture of hundreds of channels of audiovisual content.  Although the facility is not open for tours, the Packard Campus hosts a regular series of film and television programming and occasional concerts in its 205 seat theater.  The state-of-the-art projection booth is capable of showing everything from nitrate film to modern digital cinema.  All programs at the campus are free and open to the public.  Link to location and other information at

https://www.loc.gov/programs/audio-visual-conservation/about-this-program/packard-campus/

Dr. Rattan Lal, native of India and a citizen of the United States, will receive the 2020 World Food Prize for developing and mainstreaming a soil-centric approach to increasing food production that restores and conserves natural resources and mitigates climate change.  Over his career spanning more than five decades and four continents, Dr. Lal has promoted innovative soil-saving techniques benefiting the livelihoods of more than 500 million smallholder farmers, improving the food and nutritional security of more than two billion people and saving hundreds of millions of hectares of natural tropical ecosystems.  Read extensive article and see pictures at https://www.worldfoodprize.org/en/laureates/2020_lal/

WORD OF THE DAY FOR JUNE 15  Magna Carta proper noun (law, historical) A charter granted by King John to the barons at Runnymede in 1215, which is one of the bases of English constitutional tradition; a physical copy of this charter, or a later version.  Magna Carta noun  (figuratively) A landmark document that sets out rights or important principles.  King John of England granted the Great Charter on June 15 in 1215.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Magna_Carta#English

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2285  June 15, 2020 

In 1872 Erewhon: or, Over the Range, a satirical utopian novel by the English writer Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was published anonymously in London.  A notable aspect of this satire on aspects of Victorian society, expanded from letters that Butler originally published in the New Zealand newspaper, The Press, was that Erewhonians believed that machines were potentially dangerous and that Erewhonian society had undergone a revolution that destroyed most mechanical inventions.  In the section of Butler's satire called "The Book of the Machines" Butler appears to have imagined the possiblity of machine consciousness, or artificial consciousness, and that machines could replicate themselves.   http://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=3850  See also https://history-computer.com/Dreamers/Butler.html

Samuel Butler (1612-1680)  All the inventions that the world contains, Were not by reason first found out, nor brains; But pass for theirs who had the luck to light Upon them by mistake or oversight. http://www.tbm100.org/Lib/But351.pdf

Declaring, Defining, Dividing Space:  A Conversation with Richard Serra by Jonathan Peyser (brief extract)  Words of Ralph Serra:  I was in Kyoto maybe 35 years ago, at the beginning of the ’70s.  Looking at the temple gardens I found that they reveal themselves only by walking—nothing really happens without movement, which becomes the very basis of perception.  Being in Kyoto was very different from being in Florence and looking at Piero della Francesca.  Renaissance space is constructed by centralizing the focus.  In the temple gardens of Kyoto the field is open, and your participation, observation, and concentration are based on movement, looking is inseparable from walking.  The essential difference is not only the protracted time of looking, but the fact that you, your relationship to the objects perceived, become the subject of perception.  Once I began to understand that this was a different kind of experience defined by an essentially different relation of viewer to object—in that you, the viewer, are the subject relating to an object in time and space—it shifted the focus for me.  It sounds like a small thing, but I think it was primary for my development.  I came back and built a piece for the Pulitzers (Pulitzer Piece, 1971) that extended over three or four acres and was based on walking and looking in relation to a shifting horizon.  That development in my work would not have occurred if I had not been in Kyoto.  https://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag02/oct02/serra/serra.shtml

Vassar Miller was born in Houston in 1924, the daughter of a prominent architect.  She began writing as a child, composing on a typewriter due to the cerebral palsy which affected her speech and movement.  She attended the University of Houston, receiving her B.A. and M.A. in English.  In 1956, Miller published her first volume of poetry, Adam's Footprint.  Her poems, most of which dealt with either her strong religious faith or her experiences as a person with a disability, were widely praised for their rigorous formality, clarity, and emotional impact.  In 1961 Miller was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her collection Wage War on Silence.  Over the course of a literary career which spanned almost forty years, Miller published ten volumes of poetry in all.  An outspoken advocate for the rights and dignity of the handicapped, Miller also edited a collection of poetry and short stories about persons with disabilities titled Despite This Flesh.  Miller received many awards and accolades for her poetry in her home state.  Three of her books won the annual poetry prize of the Texas Institute of Letters.  In 1982 and 1988 Miller was named Poet Laureate of Texas, and in 1997 she was named to the Texas Women's Hall of Fame by the Governor's Commission for Women.  Vassar Miller died in 1998.  Find list of major works and description of the Vassar Miller Papers and access to the papers in Special Collections at the University of Houston at https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uhsc/00022/hsc-00022.html

Friend by Paek Namnyong (Columbia University Press, 2020) was first published in 1988 in North Korea where it became a bestseller and a television series that was eventually cancelled.  Thirty years later, Friend has become the first state-sanctioned North Korean novel to be published in English, translated by Immanuel Kim.  It is, most surprisingly, a novel about love, marriage, and divorce.  Almost all fiction available today from North Korea was written by defectors or dissidents.  Paek Namnyong is neither.  A household name in North Korea, he worked first in a steel factory for ten years before enrolling at Kim Il Sung University to study literature.  Paek Namnyong became part of the elite group of writers known as the April 15th Literary Production Unit.  This group is devoted to writing the mythic biographies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.  Esther Kim  https://lithub.com/the-first-state-approved-north-korean-novel-in-english/

Thomas Shadwell was a 17^th century English poet and playwright.  His efforts as a writer earned him the coveted title of Poet Laureate in 1689 and he was also appointed historiographer royal.  Shadwell’s comic plays included The Sullen Lovers, or the Impertinents, produced in 1688, and this mirrored works by Ben Jonson and Molière.  There were many others--virtually one every year, in fact.  His output totalled some eighteen plays including a pastoral piece called The Royal Shepherdess, produced in 1669.  His poetry, perhaps in contrast to some of the more stinging lines found in some of his plays, was often written in a light, lyrical tone.  One piece was set to music and the song is still sung by children and choirs to this day.  It is called Nymphs and Shepherds.  On becoming poet laureate, Shadwell introduced the concept of New Year and birthday odes.  He did not have long to enjoy this appointment though.  Thomas Shadwell died at Chelsea on the 19^th November 1692, aged 50.  https://mypoeticside.com/poets/thomas-shadwell-poems

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost is one of the most-quoted poems of the 20^th century.  It has 16 lines.  Its hypnotic quality may be caused by its steady drum-like pulse and also the rhyming of lines 1, 2 and 4; 3, 5, 6, and 8; 7, 9, 10, and 12; and 11 through 16.  Read the poem at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening  As of 2019, you are able reproduce the Robert Frost poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening without fear of copyright infringement. 

June 8, 2020  More than 2,500 rare manuscripts and books from the Islamic world covering a period of more than a thousand years are to be made freely available online.  The National Library of Israel (NLI) in Jerusalem is digitising its world-class collection of items in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, dating from the ninth to the 20th centuries, including spectacularly beautiful Qur’ans and literary works decorated with gold leaf and lapis lazuli.  The NLI’s treasures include an exquisite Iranian copy of Gift to the Noble (Tuhfat al-Ahrar), created barely three years after the completion of a 1484 collection of verse on religious and moral themes by the great Persian mystical poet Nur al-Din Jami.  Dalya Alberge  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/08/2500-rare-islamic-texts-go-online-free

A tiny statuette of a bird carved from burnt bone about 13,500 years ago reveals the origins of Chinese art, embodying a style different from prehistoric three-dimensional artwork by people in other parts of the world, researchers said on June 10, 2020.  The figurine, found at a site called Lingjing in Henan Province in central China, depicts a standing bird on a pedestal and was crafted using stone tools employing four sculpting methods--abrasion, gouging, scraping and incision, the researchers said.  It is the oldest-known three-dimensional art from China and all of East Asia by 8,500 years, although there are primitive abstract engravings on bone and stone and personal ornaments made of animal teeth and shells predating it.  Will Dunham  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-statuette/tiny-13500-year-old-bird-statuette-shows-origins-of-chinese-art-idUSKBN23H2ZI

A THOUGHT FOR JUNE 12  How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. - Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (12 Jun 1929-1945)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2284  June 12, 2020

What’s considered to be the first atlas was first available in an Antwerp printshop on May 20, 1570.  It was large, handsome, and expensive, with the grandiose title of Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, or in English Theater of the Orb of the World.  Produced by the cartographer Abraham Ortelius, it was one of the most popular books of the era.  Ortelius had invented the world.  Never before had all cartographic knowledge been compiled together; never before could a reader imagine the totality of the Earth so completely.  Simon Garfield writes in On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks that the Theatrum’s “colors were rich and saturated, the lettering (in Latin) elaboratively cursive.  The cartouches . . . burst with vivid additional information.”  Within the folio were some 53 beautifully illustrated and colored maps based on the illustrations of 87 cartographers (who were all duly given credit), including the most up-to-date work of Gerardus Mercator.  The Theatrum depicted lands from California to Cathay, from the Kara Sea to the Cape of Good Hope.  The book was “a huge and instant success,” Garfield writes, “despite the fact it was the most expensive book ever produced.”  Though Mercator wouldn’t appropriate the term until 1595, the Theatrum was the first of a type—an atlas.  posted by Ed Simon  http://nautil.us/blog/the-book-that-invented-the-world

Janet Loxley Lewis (1899–1998) was an American novelist and poet.  Lewis was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she was a member of a literary circle that included Glenway Wescott, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, and her future husband Yvor Winters.  She was an active member of the University of Chicago Poetry Club.  She taught at both Stanford University in California, and the University of California at Berkeley.  She wrote The Wife of Martin Guerre (1941) which is the tale of one man's deception and another’s cowardice.  Her first novel was The Invasion:  A Narrative of Events Concerning the Johnston Family of St. Mary's (1932).  Other prose works include The Trial of Soren Qvist (1947), The Ghost of Monsieur Scarron (1959), and the volume of short fiction, Good-bye, Son, and Other Stories (1946).  Lewis was also a poet, and concentrated on imagery, rhythms, and lyricism to achieve her goal.  Among her works are The Indians in the Woods (1922), and the later collections Poems, 1924–1944 (1950), and Poems Old and New, 1918–1978 (1981).  She also collaborated with Alva Henderson, a composer for whom she wrote three libretti and several song texts.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Lewis  See also Guide to the Margaret K. Furbush collection of Janet Lewis material M2064  Malgorzata Schaefer Department of Special Collections and University Archives Green Library  specialcollections@stanford.edu  http://library.stanford.edu/spc  https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c89w0mtg/entire_text/

Grain Salad with Many Flavors is from the book Open Kitchen  by Susan Spungen.  This salad is made with farro, an ancient and nutritious wheat that has become more and more available over the last ten years.  It’s kind of a barley on steroids and is an easy grain to handle—simply boil it in salted water until tender, drain and use just like pasta.  In this recipe, Susan combines it with lentils, cucumbers, raisins, carrots, capers, olives, and lots of fresh parsley.  In truth, any combination of things you have on hand could be included once you understand the general grain salad strategy.  Dress it simply as Susan does here and be sure to add any nuts just before serving so they don’t sog out.  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/grain-salad-with-many-flavors  TIMING TIPS:  Up to 1 day ahead:  Cook the farro and lentils.  Up to 6 hours ahead:  Prep the rest of the ingredients and assemble the salad. Refrigerate until 1 hour before serving.  serves 6-8

The original sense of “swashbuckler” was “a swaggering bravo or ruffian; a noisy braggadocio,” The Oxford English Dictionary says, tracing the first usage to 1560.  The Unabridged Merriam-Webster  favors the darker definition of “swashbuckler”:  “a boasting violently active soldier, adventurer, or ruffian”; “a blustering daredevil.”  Merrill Perlman  https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/swashbuckling-trump-jackson.php

Anagrams of pandemic:  damn epic, pan medic, nap medic, dine camp, nice damp, dim pecan, denim cap, caned imp, imp dance

Donald Justice (1925–2004)  Donald Justice was born in Miami, Florida.  A graduate of the University of Miami, he attended the universities of North Carolina, Stanford, and Iowa.  His books include New and Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1995); A Donald Justice Reader (1991); The Sunset Maker (1987), a collection of poems, stories and a memoir; Selected Poems (1979), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize; Departures (1973); Night Light (1967); and The Summer Anniversaries (1959), which received the Academy's Lamont Poetry Selection.  Justice won the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1991, and received grants in poetry from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  From 1997 to 2003, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.  During his life, he held teaching positions at Syracuse University, the University of California at Irvine, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Iowa.  From 1982 until his retirement in 1992, he taught at the University of Florida, Gainesville.  After retiring, he lived in Iowa City with his wife, Jean Ross, until his death on August 6, 2004.  https://poets.org/poet/donald-justice  See also https://www.poemhunter.com/donald-justice/

June 1, 2020  As a boy coming of age in the 1930s and ’40s, Jules Feiffer had his head buried in the funny pages.  “My earliest ambition, my earliest dreams, and my earliest joy was in looking at, particularly, the Sunday supplements--the color supplements,” says Mr. Feiffer, who in time became a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist.  “It was pure and beautiful and innocent in a time when innocence was allowed.”  Forging his own path in the field of cartooning, Mr. Feiffer often gravitated toward dark, biting satire.  He maintained a weekly comic strip in The Village Voice from 1956 to 1997.  In 1993, Mr. Feiffer decided to try a genre that would ultimately reconnect him with his beloved Sunday supplements:  children’s literature.  HarperCollins has just published “Smart George,” a sequel to one of Mr. Feiffer’s most enduringly popular books, “Bark, George,” from 1999.  The original book, which focused on a canine named George who barks only after much prodding, has sold more than 300,000 copies.  Peter Tonguette  https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2020/0601/Jules-Feiffer-a-stubborn-pooch-and-a-children-s-counting-book

Announcing the Winners of the 2020 Special Edition UI Flash Writing Contest  Thank you to the more than 230 University of Iowa alumni and friends from around the world who submitted short stories during April's contest.  We asked participants to create a story of 1,000 words or less using one of two sets of prompts:  a story incorporating a bus driver and a flower, or a story incorporating a police officer and a kite.  Link to winning stories for grades 3-6, grades 7&8, 9-12, and adult at https://www.foriowa.org/write-now/

Volapük/volapuk/ Volapuk/ volapük  An artificial language (constructed language) created in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Volap%C3%BCk

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_language

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language

Born John Hamilton on March 26, 1916, in Montclair, N.J., the son of a New York newspaper advertising executive, Sterling Hayden went to sea at 20, serving as first mate aboard a schooner on an around-the-world voyage.  “Books and the sea, I discovered, had more than a little in common:  both were distilled of silence and solitude,″ Hayden wrote in his 1963 autobiography, ″Wanderer.″  After a voyage to Tahiti, Hayden went to Hollywood in 1939 for a film career he vowed to pursue only for money.  Between films, he took to the seas again for the merchant marine.  The 6-foot-4, blue-eyed actor with a deep, husky voice began his movie career with ″Virginia″ and ″Bahama Passage″ in 1941.  During World War II, he served with the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, in Italy and Yugoslavia, running night missions under sail behind the lines to resistance forces.  He won a Silver Star, then came back to Hollywood and made 51 films through 1979.  He said he joined the Communist Party for about six months in 1946 after returning from Yugoslavia, where he fought with Tito’s partisans, but he quickly realized he was not the normal party member.  ″I was the only person to buy a yacht and join the Communist Party in the same week,″ he said.  Hayden’s first major acting role came as Dix Handley in Huston’s 1950 film- noir classic, ″The Asphalt Jungle.″  The film was a taut tale of crime foiled by its own greed and was Marilyn Monroe’s first major movie.  In 1963 he starred as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Stanley’s Kubrick’s ″Dr. Strangelove,″ singlehandedly starting World War III in order to purify the human race.  In 1971, he played a corrupt police captain in ″The Godfather.″  Other movie roles included ″The Last Command″ (1955); Kubrick’s ″The Killing″ (1956); ″Terror in a Texas Town″ (1958); ″Hard Contract″ (1969); ″Loving″ (1970); ″The Long Goodbye″ (1973); ″The Last Days of Man on Earth″ (1973); ″1900″ (1976); ″King of the Gypsies″ (1979); and ″Winter Kills″ (1979).  In 1982, he played John Brown in the CBS civil-war epic, ″The Blue and the Gray.″  Hayden, an alcoholic who finally quit drinking in 1982, saying ″I realize I can’t drink any liquor,″ was married three times and had six children and one stepson.  In addition to his autobiography, Hayden wrote a romantic and poetic novel, ″Voyager″ in 1977, about an 1896 sea journey around Cape Horn.  https://apnews.com/a7ac7e1fc07c7a07e4f162b9f77cb4af

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2283  June 10, 2020