The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an indicator of how 30 large, U.S.-listed companies have traded during a standard trading session.  A stock market index is a mathematical construct that provides a single number for measurement of the overall stock market (or a selected portion of it).  The index is calculated by tracking prices of selected stocks (e.g. the top 30, as measured by prices of the largest companies, or top 50 oil-sector stocks) and based on pre-defined weighted average criteria (e.g. price-weighted, market-cap weighted, etc.)  When Dow Jones & Co. first introduced the index in the 1890s, it was a simple average of the prices of all constituents.  The second oldest index of the world since 1896, despite all of its known challenges and mathematical dependencies, the Dow still remains the most followed and recognized index of the world.  Shobhit  Seth  https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/082714/what-dow-means-and-why-we-calculate-it-way-we-do.asp

Dow Gardens is located in Midland, Michigan.  https://dowgardens.org/

Dhow, also spelled Dow, one- or two-masted Arab sailing vessel, usually with lateen rigging (slanting, triangular sails), common in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.  On the larger types, called baggalas and booms, the mainsail is considerably bigger than the mizzensail.  Bows are sharp, with a forward and upward thrust, and the sterns of the larger dhows may be windowed and decorated.  https://www.britannica.com/technology/dhow  See also https://hideawaysafrica.com/the-history-of-dhows-an-ancient-art/ and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dow and https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dow

Zanzibar Dhow | National Geographic  A ship made without nails can withstand the force of monsoon winds.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cnj1h_tM1w  2:31

Blest be the tie that binds.  Cream cheese is a wonderful binder.  Many items can be added:  diced fruit, fruit zest, lightly-whisked egg, sugar, salt, pickles, nut/cracker pieces, or spices.  

Owls don’t have eyeballs.  Instead, their eyes are shaped like tubes, held rigidly in place by bones called sclerotic rings.  Because owls can’t roll their eyes around the way we do, they have to move their entire head to get a good look around.  They frequently twist their head and “bob and weave” to expand their field of view.  Owls can turn their necks about 270° in either direction, and 90° up-and-down, without moving their shoulders.  An owl’s eyes can account for up to 3% of its entire body weight.  There is one drawback to their large eyes.  Owls are very farsighted.  They can’t focus on objects that are too close. Instead, sensitive whisker-like bristles around their beaks help owls detect objects at close range.  Like all birds of prey, an owl’s eyes face the front.  This allows them to have a much greater range of binocular vision than animals with eyes situated on the sides of their heads. An owl’s field of view, for instance, is about 110°, and about 64% of that is binocular.  Owls have “eyeshine.”  Eyeshine is a result of an animal’s tapetum lucidum—a layer of tissue behind the retina that reflects visible light.  This reflection dramatically increases the light available to the animal’s photoreceptors, and gives it superior night vision.  Like many animals, owls have three eyelids.  The upper eyelid closes downward when the owl blinks.  The lower eyelid closes up when the owl sleeps.  https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/birds-eye-view-wbt/

As a rule of thumb, the smaller the bird, the more food it needs relative to its weight.  A Cooper’s Hawk, a medium-sized bird that hunts other birds, eats around 12 percent of its weight per day.  For you, if you weigh … say … 150 pounds, that’s 18 pounds of chow—roughly six extra-large pizzas.  That perky little chickadee flitting back and forth for sunflower seeds from your feeder eats the equivalent of 35 percent of its weight.  You, as a 150-pound chickadee, will be munching 600 granola bars a day.  And a tiny hummingbird?  It drinks about 100 percent of its body weight per day.  That means you’ll be sipping 17½ gallons of milk.  Prefer wine or beer?  18 gallons.  Mary McCann  https://www.audubon.org/news/heres-how-much-food-three-different-birds-need-eat-daily

A Denver omelet is one of the first foods I've ever learned to cook professionally, as a line cook in high school.  Make it a complete lunch or dinner with arugula salad and toasted bread.  Chef John  Find recipe and link to other omelet recipes at https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/263567/the-denver-omelet/

The word omelette, also spelled omelet, is quite the scrambled word.  First served up in English in the early 1600s, omelette comes directly from the French omelette.  The French omelette derives from an older form, amelette, whose L and M were flipped (in a process called metathesis) from alemette. Alemette, in turn, is from lemelle, meaning “little blade.”  https://mashedradish.com/2017/04/17/etymology-of-the-day-omelette/

"Dog and pony show" is a colloquial term which has come to mean a highly promoted, often over-staged performance, presentation, or event designed to sway or convince opinion for political, or less often, commercial ends.  Typically, the term is used in a pejorative sense to connote disdain, jocular lack of appreciation, or distrust of the message being presented or the efforts undertaken to present it.  The term was originally used in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to refer to small traveling circuses that toured through small towns and rural areas that were too sparsely populated or remote to attract larger, more elaborate performers or performances.  The name derives from the common use of performing dogs and ponies as the main attractions of the events.  One was called "Prof. Gentry's Famous Dog & Pony Show", started when teenager Henry Gentry and his brothers started touring in 1886 with their act, originally “Gentry’s Equine and Canine Paradox” which started small, but evolved into a full circus show.  Other early dog and pony shows included Morris’ Equine and Canine Paradoxes (1883).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_and_pony_show

History and Etymology for oyez  Middle English, from Anglo-French, hear ye, imperative plural of oir to hear, from Latin audire — more at AUDIBLE  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oyez  See also https://www.oyez.org/

Corrida can refer to:  A word of Spanish origin meaning bullfighting; Corrida (horse) (1932--probably 1944), a French Thoroughbred racehorse; Corrida, a 1983 music album by the German disco group Dschinghis Khan; or Corrida (album), a 2006 album by Czech hard rock band Kabát.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrida

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2327  February 17, 2021

The Wheel of Fortune TV game show has a category “Before and After.”  One of their puzzles was Haunted House of Pancakes.  Others could be Sleepless in Seattle Mariners, Birthday Suit of Cards or Bathing Suit of Cards, Ferris Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Fortune cookies. 

In late 1890, Daniel Burnham, the eminent architect charged with turning a boggy square mile of Chicago into a world-dazzling showpiece, assembled an all-star team of designers and gave them one directive:  “Make no little plans.”  Burnham was laboring in the shadow of a landmark erected the year before in Paris, an elegant wrought iron structure rising a thousand feet into the air.  But nobody in the States had an answer for the Eiffel Tower.  Oh, there were proposals:  a tower garlanded with rails to distant cities, enabling visitors to toboggan home; another tower from whose top guests would be pushed off in cars attached to thick rubber bands, a forerunner of bungee jumping.  Eiffel himself proposed an idea:  a bigger tower.  As plans for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago took shape, there was a void where its exclamation point was meant to stand.  Burnham spoke before a group of engineers employed on the project and chided them for their failure of imagination.  To avoid humiliation, he said, they needed to come up with “something novel, original, daring and unique.”  One of their number, George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., a 33-year-old engineer from Pittsburgh whose company was charged with inspecting the steel used by the fair, was struck by a brainstorm and quickly sketched a huge revolving steel wheel.  After adding specifications, he shared the idea with Burnham, who balked at the slender rods that would carry people to a height taller than the recently opened Statue of Liberty.  Ferris was hardly the first to imagine such a wheel.  In fact, a carpenter named William Somers was building 50-foot wooden wheels at Asbury Park, Atlantic City and Coney Island; a roundabout, he called it, and he’d even patented his design.  But Ferris had not only been challenged to think big; the huge attendance expected at the fair inspired him to bet big.  He spent $25,000 of his own money on safety studies, hired more engineers, recruited investors.  On December 16, 1892, his wheel was chosen to answer Eiffel.  It measured 250 feet in diameter, and carried 36 cars, each capable of holding 60 people.  More than 100,000 parts went into Ferris’ wheel, notably an 89,320-pound axle that had to be hoisted onto two towers 140 feet in the air.  Launched on June 21, 1893, it was a glorious success.  Over the next 19 weeks, more than 1.4 million people paid 50 cents for a 20-minute ride and access to an aerial panorama few had ever beheld.  “It is an indescribable sensation,” wrote a reporter named Robert Graves, “that of revolving through such a vast orbit in a bird cage.”  But when the fair gates closed, Ferris became immersed in a tangle of wheel-related lawsuits about debts he owed suppliers and that the fair owed him.  In 1896, bankrupt and suffering from typhoid fever, he died at age 37.  A wrecking company bought the wheel and sold it to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.  Two years later, it was dynamited into scrap.  Jamie Malanowski  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-ferris-wheel-180955300/ 

Carnaby Street is a pedestrianised shopping street in Soho in the City of Westminster, Central London.  It is home to fashion and lifestyle retailers, including many independent fashion boutiques.  Carnaby Street derives its name from Karnaby House, which was built in 1683 to the east.  The origin of the name is unknown.  The street was probably laid out in 1685 or 1686.  First appearing in the ratebooks in 1687, it was almost completely built up by 1690 with small houses.  A market was developed in the 1820s.  In his novel, Sybil (1845), Benjamin Disraeli refers to "a carcase-butcher famous in Carnaby-market".  This area is notable for a cholera outbreak in 1854 leading to an early application of fundamental epidemiological principles to resolve the crisis.  John Snow, the physician who recognised the cases were concentrated near a pump on Broad Street communicated the finding on a map-based graphic.  It led to the pump being locked and the reduction in cases of cholera was rapid.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnaby_Street 

Nathaniel "Natty" Bumppo is a fictional character and the protagonist of James Fenimore Cooper's pentalogy of novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales.  Song of the Mohicans, written by Paul Block in 1995, is a direct sequel to Last of the Mohicans.  Taking up the story a few days after Uncas' death and burial, it recounts the adventures of Hawkeye and Chingachgook as they travel north to discover the connection between an Oneida brave and the Mohican tribe, and whether a sachem truly holds the key to the ultimate fate of the Mohicans.  Natty Bumppo is featured in the Marvel comic Deadpool Killustrated, as part of a group of time-traveling heroes (Beowulf, Hua Mulan, and Sherlock Holmes and his partner Dr. Watson), intent on stopping Deadpool from killing all literary characters.  Tinker, a major character in Amor Towles' novel, "Rules of Civility", wants to be Natty Bumppo for the day.  There is an intelligent dog named Natty Bumppo in John Brunner's novel "Shockwave Rider".  Natty Bumppo appears as a character in Diana Gabaldon's eighth Outlander series novel, Written in My Own Heart's Blood.  University of Iowa's mascot, the Hawkeye was taken from The Last of the Mohicans novel.  Natty Bumppo was the name of several pop music bands in the 1970s, including bands from Dayton, Ohio, and central Utah.  Natty Bumppo is the name of the author of The Columbus Book Of Euchre and House Of Evil.  University of Iowa's mascot, the Hawkeye was taken from The Last of the Mohicans novel.  Natty Bumppo was the name of several pop music bands in the 1970s, including bands from Dayton, Ohio, and central Utah.  Natty Bumppo is the name of the author of The Columbus Book Of Euchre and House Of Evil.  Find titles, subtitles, publication dates and story dates of The Leatherstocking Tales at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natty_Bumppo 

Presidents' Day is a federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday in February.  Originally established in 1885 in recognition of President George Washington, the holiday became popularly known as Presidents' Day after it was moved as part of 1971’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act, an attempt to create more three-day weekends for the nation’s workers.  While several states still have individual holidays honoring the birthdays of Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other figures, Presidents' Day is now popularly viewed as a day to celebrate all U.S. presidents, past and present.  The shift from Washington’s Birthday to Presidents' Day began in the late 1960s, when Congress proposed a measure known as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.  Championed by Senator Robert McClory of Illinois, this law sought to shift the celebration of several federal holidays from specific dates to a series of predetermined Mondays.  The proposed change was seen by many as a novel way to create more three-day weekends for the nation’s workers, and it was believed that ensuring holidays always fell on the same weekday would reduce employee absenteeism.  While some argued that shifting holidays from their original dates would cheapen their meaning, the bill also had widespread support from both the private sector and labor unions and was seen as a surefire way to bolster retail sales.  The main piece of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed in 1968 and officially took effect in 1971 following an executive order from President Richard M. Nixon. Washington’s Birthday was then shifted from the fixed date of February 22 to the third Monday of February.  While Nixon’s order plainly called the newly placed holiday Washington’s Birthday, it was not long before the shift to Presidents' Day began.  The move away from February 22 led many to believe that the new date was intended to honor both Washington and Lincoln, as it now fell between their two birthdays.   By the mid-1980s, Washington’s Birthday was known to many Americans as Presidents' Day.  This shift had solidified in the early 2000s, by which time as many as half the 50 states had changed the holiday’s name to Presidents' Day on their calendars.  Some states have even chosen to customize the holiday by adding new figures to the celebration. Arkansas, for instance, celebrates Washington as well as civil rights activist Daisy Gatson Bates.  Alabama, meanwhile, uses Presidents' Day to commemorate Washington and Thomas Jefferson (who was born in April).  As a federal holiday, many banks and schools are closed in observance of Presidents' Day.  The New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ are closed for trading on Presidents' Day.  The post office is not open and non-essential federal workers have the day off.  https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/presidents-day 

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. - Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (15 Feb 1564-1642)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2326  February 15, 2021 

Seneca Village was a 19th-century settlement of mostly African American landowners in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, within what would become present-day Central Park.  The settlement was located on about 5 acres (2.0 ha) near the Upper West Side neighborhood, approximately bounded by Central Park West and the paths of 82nd Street, 89th Street and Seventh Avenue, had they been constructed through the park.  Seneca Village was founded in 1825 by free Black Americans, the first such community in the city.  At its peak, the community had 264 residents, three churches, a school, and two cemeteries.  The settlement was later also inhabited by Irish and German immigrants.  Seneca Village existed until 1857, when, through eminent domain, the villagers and other settlers in the area were ordered to leave and their houses were torn down for the construction of Central Park.  The entirety of the village was dispersed except for one congregation that relocated.  Several vestiges of Seneca Village's existence have been found over the years, including two graves and a burial plot.  The settlement was largely forgotten until the publication of Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar's book The Park and the People:  A History of Central Park in 1992.  The Seneca Village Project was formed in 1998 to raise awareness of the village, and several archeological digs have been conducted.  In 2001, a historical plaque was unveiled, commemorating the site where Seneca Village once stood.  Read much more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Village 

Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan.  It is the fifth-largest park in the city by area, covering 843 acres (3.41 km²). It is the most visited urban park in the United States with an estimated 38 million visitors annually, and is the most filmed location in the world.  Following proposals for a large park in Manhattan during the 1840s, it was approved in 1853 to cover 778 acres (3.15 km²).  In 1857, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition for the park with their "Greensward Plan".  The park's first areas were opened to the public in late 1858.  Additional land at the northern end of Central Park was purchased in 1859, and the park was completed in 1876.  After a period of decline in the early 20th century, New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses started a program to clean up Central Park in the 1930s.  The Central Park Conservancy, created in 1980 to combat further deterioration in the late 20th century, refurbished many parts of the park starting in the 1980s.  Main attractions include landscapes such as the Ramble and Lake, Hallett Nature Sanctuary, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, and Sheep Meadow; amusement attractions such as Wollman Rink, Central Park Carousel, and the Central Park Zoo; formal spaces such as the Central Park Mall and Bethesda Terrace; and the Delacorte Theater.  The biologically diverse ecosystem has several hundred species of flora and fauna.  Recreational activities include carriage-horse and bicycle tours, bicycling, sports facilities, and concerts and events such as Shakespeare in the Park.  Central Park is traversed by a system of roads and walkways and is served by public transportation.  Its size and cultural position make it a model for the world's urban parks. Its influence earned Central Park the designations of National Historic Landmark in 1963 and of New York City scenic landmark in 1974.  Central Park is owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation but has been managed by the Central Park Conservancy since 1998, under a contract with the municipal government in a public–private partnership.  The Conservancy, a non-profit organization, contributes 75% of Central Park's $65 million annual budget and is responsible for all basic care of the park.  See extensive history and many pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park  The Muser has walked through Central Park from the Guggenheim https://www.guggenheim.org/ on the east side to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Museum_of_Manhattan on the west side. 

Explore these 11 museums from around the world--all while sitting on your couch by Michelle Ganley at https://www.clickorlando.com/features/2020/03/15/explore-these-11-museums-from-around-the-world-all-while-sitting-on-your-couch/

A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count.  Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression.  Haiku began in thirteenth-century Japan as the opening phrase of renga, an oral poem, generally a hundred stanzas long, which was also composed syllabically.  The much shorter haiku broke away from renga in the sixteenth century and was mastered a century later by Matsuo Basho, who wrote this classic haiku:  An old pond! A frog jumps in— the sound of water.  As the form has evolved, many of its regular traits—including its famous syllabic pattern—have been routinely broken.  However, the philosophy of haiku has been preserved:  the focus on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colorful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment.  This philosophy influenced the American poet Ezra Pound, who noted the power of haiku's brevity and juxtaposed images.  He wrote, "The image itself is speech.  The image is the word beyond formulated language."  The influence of haiku on Pound is most evident in his poem "In a Station of the Metro," which began as a thirty-line poem, but was eventually pared down to two:  The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.  Other examples of haiku include "The light of a candle" by Yosa Buson; "Haiku Ambulance" by Richard Brautigan; and "5 & 7 & 5" by Anselm Hollo.  Also read the essay "The Haiga: Haiku, Calligraphy, and Painting" to learn more about the history of haiku and how it has impacted visual art.  https://poets.org/glossary/haiku 

Hooverette  noun   A simple housedress with robe-style sash and wrap front, worn especially in United States in the 1930s and 1940s, with one section overlapping another; when dirty, the overlap could be reversed so a clean section was on top again, reducing laundry. quotations ▼ Like many things used by impoverished people during the Great Depression (e.g. Hoover hogs, Hoovervilles), the dress was named after Herbert Hoover, US president when the Depression began, +‎ -ette.  (It has also been suggested that the name might not refer to the inexpensiveness but liken the dress's effectiveness as work clothing to Hoover's pre-presidential career as an effective administrator of aid to Europe after the First World War.)  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hooverette

The Hoover surname is an Anglicized form of the German and Dutch name Huber, meaning "a large measure of land" or "a man who owns a hube (a 30-60 acre parcel of land)," from the Middle High German huober and Middle Dutch huve.  Hoover was typically a status name for a prosperous landowner or farmer whose land holdings were appreciably larger than that of the average peasant.  However, it is also possible the name was used by individuals who only worked on a large property in return for a wage.  Alternate surname spellings:  Hover, Huber, Hober, Houver, Houwer, Hubar, Hubauer, Hubber, Hueber, Hufer, Huver, Obar, Ober, Uber, Aubert.  According to WorldNames public profiler, the Hoover surname is found in the greatest numbers in the United States, with the largest population percentage coming from Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kansas, and Ohio.  It is the next most commonly found in Canada.  Very few individuals named Hoover live in countries outside of North America, although there are scattered individuals with that surname found in New Zealand and a number of European countries.  Famous people with the surname Hoover:  Herbert Hoover:  31st president of the United States, Erna Schneider Hoover:  Inventor of the computerized telephone switching system, and J. Edgar Hoover:  First Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States.  Kimberly Powell  https://www.thoughtco.com/hoover-surname-meaning-and-origin-3862069 

On February 12, 1915 in Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was put into place.  On February 12, 1924, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue received its premiere in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music", in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Paul Whiteman and his band, with Gershwin playing the piano.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_12 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2325  February 12, 2021

2021 is the Year of the Ox according to Chinese zodiac.  This is a Year of Metal Ox, starting from Feb. 12, 2021 (Chinese New Year) and lasting to Jan. 31, 2022.  Ox is the second in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac sign.  Years of the Ox include 1913, 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, 2009, 2021, 2033 . . . Oxen used to be capable farming tools in an agricultural society, which attach to the symbol of diligence, persistence, and honesty.  In Chinese culture, Ox is a faithful friend that made great contributions to the development of the society.  Like the ox, people born in the Year of the Ox are industrious, cautious, hold their faith firmly, and always glad to offer help.  It is said that Ox ranks the second among the Chinese zodiacs because it helped the Rat but was later tricked by it.  The myth goes that the Jade Emperor declared the order of zodiac signs would be based on the arrival orders of 12 animals.  Ox could have arrived first but it kindly gave a ride to Rat.  However, when arriving, Rat just jumped to the terminus ahead of Ox, and thus Ox lost the first place.  https://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/social_customs/zodiac/ox.htm 

At the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, American Walter Winans took the podium and waved proudly to the crowd.  He had already won two Olympic medals—a gold for sharpshooting at the 1908 London Games, as well as a silver for the same event in 1912—but the gold he won at Stockholm wasn’t for shooting, or running, or anything particularly athletic at all.  It was instead awarded for a small piece of bronze he had cast earlier that year:  a 20-inch-tall horse pulling a small chariot.  For his work, An American Trotter, Winans won the first ever Olympic gold medal for sculpture.  For the first four decades of competition, the Olympics awarded official medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, alongside those for the athletic competitions.  From 1912 to 1952, juries awarded a total of 151 medals to original works in the fine arts inspired by athletic endeavors.  Joseph Stromberg  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-the-olympics-gave-out-medals-for-art-6878965/ 

The Poodle Dog restaurant opened in 1849; one of San Francisco s first, certainly its most famous French restaurant.  The origin of the name remains obscure.  One legend claims the restaurant gained its name from the owner s longhaired pet poodle because the locals just wouldn't attempt the French name.  Another story suggested the poodle was a stray that hung around the establishment soon to be adopted as the restaurant s mascot.  A third story put forth that a Frenchman who arrived from New Orleans in 1849 managed the restaurant of this tale, Le Poulet d' Or.  At the turn of the century, the owners published a brochure in celebration of the Poodle Dog's fiftieth anniversary.  They stated that a couple of Frenchmen, Messrs. Peguillan and Langsman opened the restaurant.  The dog, a small, white poodle owned by the wife of Francois Peguillan was a rarity, drawing almost as much attention to the restaurant as its cuisine.  That first restaurant, housed in a wooden shanty with sanded floors, rough wooden table covered in oilcloth, a rudimentary bar at one end, offered a menu and price list that belied its fine cuisine; a fine dinner cost just fifteen cents.  The meal began with a rich peasant soup, soon followed by a fish course of local catch, freshest sole, rock cod, flounder or smelt, served with a tasty French sauce.  The meat course, served en bloc allowed each guest to slice their own portion from a large roast or boiled joint, served with a pot of mustard and two large dishes of vegetables.  The chef followed that course with a big bowl of his own mixed salad, served with ceremony.  The final course was "fruit in season," all each guest could eat.  A pint of the owner's new, watered claret accompanied the meal, the wine pressed and fermented from local mission grapes.  The restaurant offered a large beer stein full of coffee for an additional five cents.  By the middle of the 1850s, food prices had dipped dramatically, providing an enviable level of quality.  Californians pressed the finest olive oil, grew luscious fruit just below the city's borders, and raised healthy sheep and cattle on the grassy hills.  They raised fat, healthy pigs and chickens within the city limits.  The gold miners found they could make a better living tapping the state’s other natural resources.  In less than a decade, the state economy hinged more on agriculture and trade than it did on gold.  Jim Smith  Link to Part 2 of the story at http://www.historysmith.com/tales_lost_poodledog_01_part1.html 

The Nobel Prize Museum (formerly the Nobel Museum) is located in the former Stock Exchange Building (Börshuset) on the north side of the square Stortorget in Gamla Stan, the old town in central Stockholm, Sweden.  (The Swedish Academy and the Nobel Library are also in the same building.)  The Nobel Prize Museum showcases information about the Nobel Prize and Nobel prizewinners, as well as information about the founder of the prize, Alfred Nobel (1833–1896).  The museum's permanent display includes many artifacts donated by Nobel Laureates, presented together with personal life stories.  The Nobel Museum opened in the spring of 2001 for the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize.  Its name was changed to Nobel Prize Museum in 2019, in conjunction with Erika Lanner becoming the museum's new director.  According to the manifesto of the museum, the intentions are to be a “reflecting and forward-looking and spirited memory of Nobel laureates and their achievements, as well as of the Nobel Prize and Alfred Nobel.”  To achieve these aims, the museum offers exhibitions, films, theatre plays, and debates related to science; in addition to its bistro and shop.  Museum exhibitions feature prominent Nobel laureates such as Marie Curie, Nelson Mandela, and Winston Churchill.  The museum frequently offers creative exhibitions such as “Sketches of science”, a photo exhibition with 42 Nobel laureates photographed with their own sketch of their Nobel discovery.  This exhibition has also been shown in other parts of the world as well, including Dubai and Singapore.  For visitors who want to bring a piece of the museum home, a souvenir shop is available that contains items about Alfred Nobel and the museum.  One of the most popular items is Alfred Nobel's gold medal made in dark fair trade chocolate.  Another one is the Swedish “dynamite” candy that is flavored with jalapeño pepper.  During 2011, the souvenir shop collaborated with the artist Artan Mansouri who made paintings that symbolized Nobel's life.  Besides that, the shop offers a lot of educational toys for children, books by and about Nobel Prize laureates, and also unique items only found in the Nobel Museum shop.  There is also Bistro Nobel featuring Nobel chocolate, Swedish cakes, and also lunch and dinner.  At the bistro, Nobel ice cream is served as well; this ice cream can only be found in the Nobel Bistro.  The Nobel tea is usually served every year at the Nobel banquet.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_Museum 

'Milk of human kindness' means care and compassion for others.  From Shakespeare's Macbeth, 1605:  "Yet doe I feare thy Nature, It is too full o' th' Milke of humane kindnesse."  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/247200.html 

Scrooge:  The Musical is a 1992 stage musical with book, music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse.  Its score and book are closely adapted from the music and screenplay of the 1970 musical film Scrooge starring Albert Finney and Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol.  Bricusse was nominated for an Academy Award for the song score he wrote for the film, and most of those songs were carried over to the musical.  In Act II of the musical, Scrooge sings The Milk of Human Kindness.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrooge_(musical) 

The Krueger-Scott Mansion in Newark, New Jersey, has a history of immigrant and African-American entrepreneurship.  The 40-room home was built in 1888 for German immigrant Gottfried Krueger, who made his fortune brewing beer.  In 1958, Louise Scott purchased it to run a beauty school on the lower floors, while living in the rooms above.  She is thought to be the first female African-American millionaire in New Jersey.  When Scott died in 1982, the imposing mansion passed to the city and it fell into significant disuse and disrepair.  That is, until in September 2020, when Newark Mayor Ras Baraka led a groundbreaking to transform the property into an innovative economic and housing development designed to give Newark entrepreneurs with limited resources access to affordable housing, office space and business support.  When the mansion re-opens in 2021 it will be known as a Makerhood, a term coined by Avi Telyas, an immigrant entrepreneur and real estate developer.  Telyas worked five years with the city to refine a housing and economic development model he believes can scale to other cities.  Emily Nonko  https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/converted-mansion-offer-affordable-live-work-space-for-newark-makers

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2324   February 10, 2021