One particular aspect of craft The Sopranos excels at is dialogue, and a notable feature is the errors.  The characters are constantly speaking in malapropisms, mangled idioms, and mispronunciations.  They mishear things or misquote each other.  Some Sopranos examples:  Tony:  “I was prostate with grief.”  Little Carmine:  “There’s no stigmata connected with going to a shrink.”  Christopher:  “Create a little dysentery in the ranks.”  Jonny:  “She's an albacore around my neck.”  Lincoln Michel  Read more at https://countercraft.substack.com/p/gabagool-and-malpropisms-dialogue 

Communities around the country are converting writers’ homes into public spaces in order to promote individual legacies, and to educate and inspire.  The historic facades of downtown Red Cloud, Nebraska, appear to have escaped a century and a half of harsh prairie weather.  That’s because the town’s 1,000 residents have borne a massive restoration project that preserves the largest collection of nationally designated historic sites attributed to any American writer.  Her name was Willa Cather, and her novels included O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning One of Ours.  Just north of Palm Beach, on the Atlantic side of Florida, the Treasure Coast is home to the city of Fort Pierce.  Among its cultural heritage sites is the last private home of the African American author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, whose literary legacy—as well as her unmarked grave—was recovered by the writer Alice Walker while researching a 1975 feature for Ms. magazine.  Carson McCullers is memorialized by a pair of houses that bookend her life.  In Columbus, Georgia, the Smith-McCullers House was the writer’s childhood home and is now operated by the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University.  The other property, known as the Carson McCullers House, can be found 1,000 miles northeast, in Nyack, New York.  In 1977, one of America’s most decorated poets, W.S. Merwin, put down roots on a failed pineapple farm that had once been native Hawaiian land in Haiku, on Maui’s North Shore.  By the mid-1980s, Merwin, with the help of friends and neighbors, had constructed an eco-conscious compound: a main house built of local eucalyptus and designed with passive ventilation and off-grid solar, shrouded by lush landscaping.  The 19-acre palm preserve contains 3,000 specimen palms as well as many other trees, all planted by Merwin and his wife, Paula Dunaway Merwin.  Lucille Clifton was an African American poet; a creative writing professor; the wife of philosopher, activist, and artist Fred Clifton; and the mother of six children. A prolific literary activist, she stood out among her peers as one of the first women writers to present the Black female body as both metaphorical and literal subject, carving a new path for feminist literature framed by the Civil Rights era. Since the 1969 publication of her first collection, Good Times, her work has remained a hallmark of 20th-century American verse.  In 2019, her daughter Sidney Clifton purchased her own childhood home in the Windsor Hills neighborhood of Baltimore. Read more and see pictures at https://savingplaces.org/stories/inside-the-homes-and-hometowns-of-5-famous-writers#.YJplLrVKiUk 

Mike Nichols (born Igor Mikhail Peschkowsky; 1931–2014) was an American film and theater director, producer, actor, and comedian.  He was noted for his ability to work across a range of genres and for his aptitude for getting the best out of actors regardless of their experience.  Nichols began his career in the 1950s with the comedy improvisational troupe The Compass Players, predecessor of The Second City, in Chicago.  He then teamed up with his improv partner, Elaine May, to form the comedy duo Nichols and May.  Their live improv act was a hit on Broadway, and the first of their three albums won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.  After Nichols and May disbanded in 1961, he began directing plays, and quickly became known for his innovative productions and ability to elicit polished performances.  His Broadway directing debut was Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park in 1963, with Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley.  He continued to direct plays on Broadway including, Luv (1964), and The Odd Couple (1965) for which he received Tony Awards for each of those plays.  In 2012, he won his sixth Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play with a revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Nichols directed and/or produced more than 25 Broadway plays throughout his prolific career.  In 1966, Warner Brothers invited Nichols to direct his first film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.  The groundbreaking film inspired some critics to declare Nichols the "new Orson Welles".  It won five Academy Awards (out of 13 nominations) and was the top-grossing film of 1966.  His next film, The Graduate (1967), starred then unknown actor Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft.  It was another critical and financial success, became the highest-grossing film of the year, and received seven Academy Award nominations, winning Nichols the Academy Award for Best Director.  Among the other films Nichols directed were Catch-22 (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), Silkwood (1983), Working Girl (1988), Postcards from the Edge (1990) The Birdcage (1996), Primary Colors (1998), Closer (2004) and Charlie Wilson's War (2007).  Nichols also was known for work on television directing HBO's Wit (2001) with Emma Thompson and Angels in America (2003) starring Meryl Streep.  Along with an Academy Award, Nichols won a Grammy Award (the first for a comedian born outside the United States), four Emmy Awards, nine Tony Awards, and three BAFTA Awards. His other honors included the Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2010.  His films received a total of 42 Academy Award nominations, and seven wins.  He is one of the few people to have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards.  His film The Graduate (1967), starred Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft and Katharine Ross for which he was paid $150,000, a deal he had made four years earlier with producer Joseph E. Levine.  It became the highest-grossing film of 1967 and one of the highest-grossing films in history up to that date, with Nichols receiving 16⅔% of the profits, making him a millionaire.  It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, with Nichols winning as Best Director.  In 2007, it was ranked #17 in AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition).  However, getting the film made was difficult for Nichols, who, while noted for being a successful Broadway director, was still an unknown in Hollywood. Producer Lawrence Turman, who wanted only Nichols to direct it, was continually turned down for financing. He then contacted Levine, who said he would finance the film because he had associated with Nichols on The Knack,^[23] and because he heard that Elizabeth Taylor specifically wanted Nichols to direct her and Richard Burton in Virginia Woolf.  With financing assured, Nichols suggested Buck Henry for screenwriter, although Henry's experience had also been mostly in improvised comedy, and had no writing background.  Nichols said to Henry, "I think you could do it; I think you should do it.”  Nichols also took a chance on using Dustin Hoffman, who had no film experience, for the lead, when others had suggested using known star Robert Redford. Hoffman credits Nichols for having taken a great risk in giving him, a relative unknown, the starring role:  "I don't know of another instance of a director at the height of his powers who would take a chance and cast someone like me in that part.  It took tremendous courage."  The quality of the cinematography was also influenced by Nichols, who chose Oscar winner Robert Surtees to do the photography.  Surtees, who had photographed major films since the 1920s, including Ben-Hur, said later, "It took everything I had learned over 30 years to be able to do the job.  I knew that Mike Nichols was a young director who went in for a lot of camera.  We did more things in this picture than I ever did in one film."  Nichols also chose the music by Simon and Garfunkel.  When Paul Simon was taking too long to write new songs for the film, he used existing songs, originally planning to replace them with newly written ones.  In the end only one new song was available, and Nichols used the existing previously released songs.  At one point, when Nichols heard Paul Simon's song, "Mrs. Roosevelt," he suggested to Simon that he change it to "Mrs. Robinson."  The song won a Grammy after the film was released and became America's number 1 pop song.  Nichols selected all the numerous songs for the film and chose which scenes they would be used in.  The placement and selection of songs would affect the way audiences understood the film.  Even actor William Daniels, who played Hoffman's father, remembers that after first hearing the songs, especially "The Sound of Silence," he thought, "Oh, wait a minute.  That changed the whole idea of the picture for me," suddenly realizing the film would not be a typical comedy.  Nichols' next film was a big-budget adaptation of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 (1970), followed by Carnal Knowledge (1971) starring Jack Nicholson, Ann-Margret, Art Garfunkel and Candice Bergen.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Nichols 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2378  June 16, 2021 

Brian Patrick Friel (1929-2015) was an Irish dramatist, short story writer and founder of the Field Day Theatre Company.   He has been likened to an "Irish Chekhov" and described as "the universally accented voice of Ireland".  His plays have been compared favourably to those of contemporaries such as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Harold Pinter and Tennessee Williams.  Recognised for early works such as Philadelphia, Here I Come! and Faith Healer, Friel had 24 plays published in a career of more than a half-century.  He was elected to the honorary position of Saoi of Aosdána.  His plays were commonly produced on Broadway in New York City throughout this time, as well as in Ireland and the UK.  In 1980 Friel co-founded Field Day Theatre Company and his play Translations was the company's first production.  With Field Day, Friel collaborated with Seamus Heaney, 1995 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Heaney and Friel first became friends after Friel sent the young poet a letter following publication of his book Death of a Naturalist.  Friel was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the British Royal Society of Literature and the Irish Academy of Letters.  He was appointed to Seanad Éireann in 1987 and served until 1989.  In later years, Dancing at Lughnasa reinvigorated Friel's oeuvre, bringing him Tony Awards (including Best Play), the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play.  It was also adapted into a film, starring Meryl Streep, directed by Pat O'Connor, script by Frank McGuinness.   His exact birth date and name are ambiguous.  The parish register lists a birth name of Brian Patrick Ó'Friel and a birth date of 9 January.  Elsewhere his birth name is given as Bernard Patrick Friel and his birth date as 10 January.  In life he was known simply as Brian Friel and celebrated his birthday on 9 January. F riel himself remarked in a letter to Richard Pine:  "Perhaps I'm twins."  The Brian Friel papers donated to the state in 2000 are in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript Collection, List No. 73 [MSS 37,041–37,806]  The Brian Friel papers donated to the state in 2011 are in the National Library of Ireland Manuscript Collection, List No. 180 [MSS 42,091 – 42,093 and MSS 49,209 – 49,350]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Friel 

“He was beaming.  I have noticed this about human beings:  secret knowledge makes them smile.  It is the smile of power.”   Restoration, a Novel of Seventeenth-Century England by Rose Tremain 

"When I Consider How My Light is Spent" (Also known as "On His Blindness") is one of the best known of the sonnets of John Milton (1608–1674).  The last three lines are particularly well known; they conclude with "They also serve who only stand and wait", which is much quoted though rarely in context.  Variants of it have been used as mottos in a number of contexts, for example the Dickin Medal for service animals bears the motto "We also serve", and the Navy Wives Clubs of America uses the motto "They Also Serve, Who Stay and Wait".  In U.S. popular culture it is perhaps best known for Hall of Fame baseball broadcaster Vin Scully, who would quote it when showing a player not in the game.  The sonnet was first published in Milton's 1673 Poems in his autograph notebook, known as the "Trinity Manuscript" from its location in the Wren Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.  He gave it the number 19, but in the published book it was numbered 16, so both numbers are used for it.  It is popularly given the title On His Blindness, but there is no evidence that Milton used this title; it was assigned a century later by Thomas Newton in his 1761 edition of Milton's poetry, as was commonly done at the time by editors of posthumous collections.  See text at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_I_Consider_How_My_Light_is_Spent 

The concept of a "medical–industrial complex" was first advanced by Barbara and John Ehrenreich in the November 1969 issue of the Bulletin of the Health Policy Advisory Center in an article entitled "The Medical Industrial Complex" and in a subsequent book (with Health-PAC), The American Health Empire:  Power, Profits, and Politics (Random House, 1970).  The concept was widely discussed throughout the 1970s, including reviews in the New England Journal of Medicine (November 4, 1971, 285:1095).  It was further popularized in 1980, Arnold S. Relman while he served as editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. in a paper titled "The New Medical-Industrial Complex."  Relman commented, "The past decade has seen the rise of another kind of private "industrial complex" with an equally great potential for influence on public policy—this time in health care . . . "  Oddly, Relman added, "In searching for information on this subject, I have found no standard literature and have had to draw on a variety of unconventional sources . . . "  Subsequently, this paper and the concept have been discussed continually.  An updated history and analysis can be found in John Ehrenreich, "Third Wave Capitalism:  How Money, Power, and the Pursuit of Self-Interest have Imperiled the American Dream" (Cornell University Press, May 2016). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical%E2%80%93industrial_complex 

sui generis  definition from Nolo’s Plain-English Law Dictionary  (soo-ee jen-ris)  Latin for of its own kind, and used to describe a form of legal protection that exists outside typical legal protections--that is, something that is unique or different.  In intellectual property law, for example, ship hull designs have achieved a unique category of protection and are "sui generis" within copyright law.  https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/sui_generis 

Tania León, the Cuban-born composer, won the Pulitzer Prize in Music on June 11, 2021 for her orchestral work Stride.  The Pulitzer jury described the 15-minute piece as a "musical journey full of surprise, with powerful brass and rhythmic motifs that incorporate Black music traditions from the U.S. and the Caribbean into a Western orchestral fabric."  The two other finalists were Place, by Ted Hearne and Data Lords by Maria Schneider, both recordings.  Stride received its world premiere by the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center Feb. 13, 2020.  The music was born out of Project 19, an ambitious commissioning program where 19 women composers were chosen to write music to mark the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. León's inspiration was Susan B. Anthony, the women's rights activist and a prominent leader in the suffrage movement.  Tom Huizenga  https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2021/06/11/1005649919/tania-leon-wins-music-pulitzer-for-stride-a-celebration-of-womens-suffrage

Darnella Frazier, who was 17 when she recorded George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis last year, was awarded a special citation by the Pulitzer Board on June 11, 2021.  The video played a major role in igniting a global protest movement against police violence, and was used as evidence in the trial of Floyd's killer.  Joe Hernandez  https://www.npr.org/2021/06/11/1005601724/darnella-frazier-teen-who-filmed-george-floyds-murder-wins-pulitzer-prize-citati 

On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress approved the design of a national flag.  Since 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation establishing a national Flag Day on June 14, Americans have commemorated the adoption of the Stars and Stripes in many ways–displaying the flag in the front of their homes, parades, and other patriotic observances.  Prior to 1916, many localities and a few states had been celebrating the day for years.  Congressional legislation designating that date as the national Flag Day was signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1949; the legislation also called upon the president to issue a flag day proclamation every year.  See pictures at https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-14/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2377  June 14, 2021

Calico (in British usage since 1505) is a plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton.  It may also contain unseparated husk parts. The fabric is far coarser than muslin, but less coarse and thick than canvas or denim.  However, it is still very cheap owing to its unfinished and undyed appearance.  The fabric was originally from the city of Calicut in southwestern India.  It was made by the traditional weavers called cāliyans.  The raw fabric was dyed and printed in bright hues, and calico prints became popular in Europe.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico 

For a cat to be labeled calico, her coat must contain three colors—black, white, and orange.  These three colors appear on the coat in patches, often with white in the highest concentration.  Calico cats are named for their coat color that resembles calico cloth, which was once imported from England to India.  Calico cats are often mistaken for tortoiseshell cats, and the terms can be used interchangeably in some regions. Tortoiseshells differ from calicos in that the colors are mixed or blended, with no white, while calicos have distinct patches with a large amount of white.  Calicos can also have dilute coats, with fawn, cream, chocolate, and gray patches, rather than the traditional bright white, orange, and black.   https://www.thesprucepets.com/are-calico-cats-always-female-3384568 

Just like a calico cat with so many colors, “calico” just refers to the hodge-podge of beans used in the recipe:  pork and beans, kidney beans, and butter beans. The beans are all cooked with bacon and ground beef in a tangy, sweet sauce.  See recipe at https://www.culinaryhill.com/slow-cooker-calico-beans/

No-yeast pizza (uses baking powder instead of yeast)  Find recipe and pictures at  https://houseofyumm.com/no-yeast-pizza-dough/ 

The nightingale, a small brown bird of the UK that fills their nights with mellifluous song during spring, was a favourite of their renaissance poets.  When the founding fathers of Indian ornithology, the British, noticed that the koel sang also by night, they nostalgically referred to the bird as "the Indian Nightingale".  See pictures at https://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090614/spectrum/nature.htm

Bulbul bird is called the Indian Nightingale.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRtpLTZeUL0  3:34 

Sarojini Naidu (née Chattopadhyay; 1879–1949) was an Indian political activist and poet.  A proponent of civil rights, women's emancipation, and anti-imperialistic ideas, she was an important figure in India's struggle for independence from colonial rule.  Naidu's work as a poetess earned her the sobriquet 'the Nightingale of India', or 'Bharat Kokila' by Mahatma Gandhi because of colour, imagery and lyrical quality of her poetry.  Born in a Bengali family in Hyderabad, Naidu was educated in Madras, London and Cambridge.  Following her time in England, where she worked as a suffragist, she was drawn to Indian National Congress' movement for India's independence from British rule.  She became a part of the Indian nationalist movement and became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and his idea of swaraj.  She was appointed the President of the Indian National Congress in 1925 and later became the Governor of the United Provinces in 1947, becoming the first woman to hold the office of Governor in the Dominion of India.  Naidu's poetry includes both children's poems and others written on more serious themes including patriotism, romance, and tragedy.  Published in 1912, "In the Bazaars of Hyderabad" remains one of her most popular poems.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarojini_Naidu

Imagine retreating back in time to enjoy live jazz in an intimate, restored 19th-century Victorian brownstone in the historical district of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.  Brownstone Jazz presents jazz concerts complete with a piano, bass, drum set and other acoustic instruments as well.  A Southern fish-fry buffet and open mic sessions add to the experience.  Find more information at https://www.nycgo.com/nightlife/brownstone-jazz/ 

June 8, 2001  Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that the cicadas are here.  So many cicadas.  After living underground for 17 years, billions of cicadas are ready for their closeup.  They are emerging as we speak in 15 states, including Indiana, which is expected to have one of the largest concentrations of Brood X cicadas this year.  Believe it or not, cicadas are edible.  And who could be a better resource for a fancy cicada dinner menu than chef Greg Hardesty, he of multiple James Beard nominations and restaurants that defy traditional expectations and categorization.  As we wait to see what delicious things Greg comes up with in his forthcoming partnership with BreadWorks at Broad Ripple in the former home of Locally Grown Gardens, we can ponder the possibilities of a night around the table with friends, dining on the insect of the moment.  If cicadas aren’t your thing, don’t worry.  Hardesty has a plan B.  “For a serious dish, a farinette with chopped chicken, mushrooms, and Parmesan is out of this world,” he says.  Suzanne Krowiak  See recipe at https://www.indianapolismonthly.com/food-and-drinks/recipes/bug-appetit-a-buzzy-recipe-from-greg-hardesty 

The farinette or pascade is a thick crepe that was originally eaten with a sprinkling of salt.  Around 25 cm diameter, it is yellow-brown in colour, and its batter consists of eggs, wheat flour, milk and salt.  It is then cooked like a non-runny omelette.  https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/ark-of-taste-slow-food/farinette/ 

June 10, 2021  HIGH POINT, N.C. — It was a moment worth celebrating as seniors graduated from T. Wingate Andrews High School.  They were shocked by what their principal, Dr. Marcus Gause, did on stage that left them cheering for more.  Gause took the stage singing, in a very moving performance (1:16) “I Will Always Love You" - Dolly Parton's classic love ballad made famous by Whitney Houston.  Carrie Hodgin  Thank you, Muse reader!  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2376  June 11, 2021

 

Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy's Progress is Charles Dickens's second novel, and was published as a serial from 1837 to 1839 and released as a three-volume book in 1838, before the serialisation ended.   The story centres on orphan Oliver Twist, born in a workhouse and sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker.  After escaping, Oliver travels to London, where he meets the "Artful Dodger", a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal Fagin.  Oliver Twist contains an unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives, and exposes the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century.  The alternative title, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, as well as the 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress.  In this early example of the social novel, Dickens satirises the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, domestic violence, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children.  The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of working as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s.  It is likely that Dickens's own experiences as a youth contributed as well.  Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous adaptations, including a highly successful musical play, Oliver!, and the multiple Academy Award-winning 1968 motion picture.  Disney also put its spin on the novel with the animated film called Oliver & Company in 1988.  Read much more, see graphics and a list of adaptations at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Twist 

The war in California between Mexico and the United States ended with a treaty signed (in 1847) in a small adobe mission known as Campo de Cahuenga.  The mission was preserved, but it now stood invisible and unnoticed, hidden in plain sight by freeway ramps, parking lots and two strange towers marking the entrance to a subway station.  The Watchman (Elvis Cole, #11; Joe Pike, #1), a novel by Robert Crais  See https://waterandpower.org/museum/Early_Views_of_Cahuenga_Pass.html and https://www.laparks.org/historic/campo-de-cahuenga and http://www.militarymuseum.org/Cahuenga.html

John Milton coined the phrase 'silver lining' in his poem Comus:  A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634.   'Clouds' and 'silver linings' were referred to often in literature from then onward, usually citing Milton and frequently referring to them as Milton's clouds.  It isn't until the days of the uplifting language of Victoria's England that we begin to hear the proverbial form that we are now familiar with--'every cloud has a silver lining'.  The first occurrence that unequivocally expresses that notion comes in The Dublin Magazine, Volume 1, 1840, in a review of the novel Marian; or, a Young Maid's Fortunes, by Mrs S. Hall, which was published in 1840.  The currently used 'every cloud has a silver lining' first appeared, in another literary review, in 1849.  The New Monthly Belle Assemblée, Volume 31, included what purported to be a quotation from Mrs. Hall's book.  In fact the text they printed, "Every cloud has a silver lining", was actually a misprint.  It didn't appear in Marian, which merely reproduced Milton's original text.  Despite being printed in error, the New Monthly Belle Assemblée entry does appear to be the first use of the proverb as we now use it.  The proverb very quickly gained public acceptance.  It appears very frequently in newspapers, on both sides of the Atlantic, from 1853 onward.  This was undoubtedly due to the work of the American writer Sarah Payson Parton.  She had been commissioned by the editor of the Home Journal magazine to write a weekly motivational essay on various topics, under the pen-name of Fanny Fern.  These became very popular and Parton soon became the highest paid writer in the USA.  One of her best-known essays was a piece of purple prose entitled Nil desperandum, which included "Every cloud has a silver lining" in the first line and which was published in 1853.  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining.html  See Nil desperandum by “Fanny Fern” at http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/sentimnt/snesffa8t.html

Fanny Fern (born Sara Payson Willis; 1811–1872), was an American novelist, children's writer, humorist, and newspaper columnist in the 1850s to 1870s.  Fern's popularity has been attributed to her conversational style and sense of what mattered to her mostly middle-class female readers.  By 1855, Fern was the highest-paid columnist in the United States, commanding $100 per week for her New York Ledger column.   A collection of her columns published in 1853 sold 70,000 copies in its first year.  Her best-known work, the fictional autobiography Ruth Hall (1854), has become a popular subject among feminist literary scholars.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Fern 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

canary  (kuh-NAYR-ee)  noun  1.  A small finch, native to the Canary Islands, having greenish to yellow color, and known for its melodious song.  2.  A bright yellow color.  3.  A singer.  4.  An informer.  From French canari (canary), from Spanish canario (canary; of the Canary Islands), from Latin canis (dog).   Ultimately from the Indo-European root kwon- (dog), which also gave us canine, chenille (from French chenille:  caterpillar, literally, little dog), kennel, canary, hound, dachshund, corgi, cynic, cynosure, canaille, canicular, and cynophobia.  Earliest documented use:  1568. 

The New York Ledger was a weekly story paper published in Manhattan.  It was established in 1855 by Robert E. Bonner, by transforming the weekly financial journal called The Merchant's Ledger that he had purchased in 1851.  Bonner turned the paper over to three sons to operate in 1887.  The date of last issue was 1898, when it was changed to The Ledger Monthly, which disappeared by 1903.   Notable contributors included Ethel Lynn Beers, Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. (The Gunmaker of Moscow), Fanny Fern (whose first column appeared in 1855), William H. Peck, and E. D. E. N. Southworth (The Hidden Hand, among many others).  The Ledger's principles were denoted to be "devoted", "choice literature", "romance", "the news", and "commerce".  The Ledger also regularly published some of the most popular mid-century women poets including Sarah M. B. Piatt, Lydia Sigourney, and the Cary sisters, Alice and Phoebe.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Ledger

Dox Thrash (1893–1965) was an African-American artist who was famed as a skilled draftsman, printmaker, and painter of African American life and as the co-inventor of the Carborundum printmaking process.  The artist spent much of his career living and working in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  After having served in the war, Thrash qualified as a war veteran and enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago with the support of federal funding.  After finishing his education, he traveled intermittently from Georgia to Chicago, Boston, New York, and finally Philadelphia, working odd jobs--experiences that provided him with subject matter to later paint.  Settling in Philadelphia by 1925, he took a job working as a janitor.  In his free time, he continued his art career and used his talent to create emblems, like for the North Philadelphia Businessmen's Association, and posters in exhibitions and festivals, including the 2nd Annual National Negro Music Festival and the Tra Club of Philadelphia.  This gained him local recognition and opened doors for new artistic endeavors.  By 1929, Thrash found himself attending nightly classes within these clubs, namely with Earl Horter of the Graphic Sketch Club, now known as the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial.  In 1937 Thrash joined the government-sponsored Works Progress Administration (WPA)'s Federal Art Project.  Through the WPA, Thrash began working at the Fine Print Workshop of Philadelphia.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dox_Thrash  See also https://philamuseum.org/doc_downloads/education/ex_resources/doxThrash.pdf

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2375  June 9, 2021