During the late 1990s, yupo was created by two Japanese firms looking for an alternative surface to the traditional fiber-based papers.  The name “yupo” refers to its creation:  YU is for the Misubishi Petrochemical Company, known as Misubishi Yuko in Japan; P is for paper, and O is for the Oji Paper Company.  The product was not available or manufactured in the United States until the early 2000s.  Basically, yupo is a completely recyclable, waterproof synthetic paper, made from extruded polypropylene pellets.  No part of it is taken from any tree product.  Just like traditional paper, yupo is created in different weights or thicknesses.  Then it is spun onto large spools in long lengths and cut into widths from 16 inches to 66 inches.  Though yupo has many other applications, artists typically use yupo in weights comparable to 62 to 144 pounds.  So why use yupo?  The synthetic paper is extremely smooth with no man-made irregularities.  Every sheet will be identical.  The yupo paper is very durable, waterproof and stain resistant; it will not tear or buckle.  Yupo has a very long shelf life.  Additionally, painting on yupo can give added texture to your work, and if you don’t like what you painted, simply wipe it clean with a moistened cloth.  However, there are some complications with painting on yupo.  Both dirt and oils can hinder the paper’s performance, including the natural oils from your own hands.   The watercolor paint remains on the surface on the yupo paper, without ever absorbing deeper like it does on traditional paper; because of this, the colors on yupo seem brighter.  Margie Samuels  See graphics at https://www.margiesamuelswatercolor.com/blog/2015/3/5/whattheheckisyupo 

Kings and potentates had long held private libraries, but the first open-access version came about under the Ptolemies, the Macedonian rulers of Egypt from 305 to 30 B.C.  The idea was the brainchild of Ptolemy I Soter, who inherited Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great, and the Athenian governor Demetrius Phalereus, who fled there following his ouster in 307 B.C.  United by a shared passion for knowledge, they set out to build a place large enough to store a copy of every book in the world.  The famed Library of Alexandria was the result.  Popular myth holds that the library was accidentally destroyed when Julius Caesar’s army set fire to a nearby fleet of Egyptian boats in 48 B.C.  In fact the library eroded through institutional neglect over many years.  Caesar was himself responsible for introducing the notion of public libraries to Rome.  These repositories became so integral to the Roman way of life that even the public baths had libraries.  Private libraries endured the Dark Ages better than public ones.  The Al-Qarawiyyin Library and University in Fez, Morocco, founded in 859 by the great heiress and scholar Fatima al-Fihri, survives to this day.  By the end of the 18th century, libraries could be found all over Europe and the Americas.  But most weren’t places where the public could browse or borrow for free.  Even Benjamin Franklin’s Library Company of Philadelphia, founded in 1731, required its members to subscribe.  The citizens of Peterborough, New Hampshire, started the first free public library in the U.S. in 1833, voting to tax themselves to pay for it, on the grounds that knowledge was a civic good.  Many philanthropists, including George Peabody and John Jacob Astor, took up the cause of building free libraries.  But the greatest advocate of all was the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.  Determined to help others achieve an education through free libraries—just as he had done as a boy—Carnegie financed the construction of some 2,509 of them, with 1,679 spread across the U.S.  He built the first in his hometown of Dumferline, Scotland in 1883.  Carved over the entrance were the words “Let There Be Light.”  Amanda Foreman  https://www.dramandaforeman.com/historically-speaking-the-beacon-of-the-public-library/ 

"Rumors destroy reputations quicker than truth.”  “Never make a political joke, it will always be considered an insult.”  “People will always tell you what you should have done.”  “Always remember that umbrage can be taken by the lift of an eyebrow.  Remember that if offence can possibly be taken, it will be.”  “ . . . the quickest way to make people want something is to ban it.  People always fight to get what they are told they cannot have.”  10-lb Penalty, a novel by Dick Francis   Dick Francis worked on his books with his wife, Mary, before her death.  Dick considered his wife to be his co-writer--as he is quoted in the book, "The Dick Francis Companion", released in 2003.

Baked Peppers with Rice Stuffing (Bajoques Farcides) is a delicate stuffed peppers recipe that originated in Alcoy, Spain.  Rich flavors from pork and chicken pair with sweet peppers, tomatoes and corn for a filling, yet not overly dense dish that's perfect for warm a weather lunch or a light dinner.  This recipe comes courtesy of M. Teresa Segura's "Spain:  Authentic Regional Recipes" (Fall River Press).  Serves 6  https://www.whitehallledger.com/story/2021/06/09/community/recipe-of-the-week-baked-peppers-with-rice-stuffing/3254.html 

Founded some 500 years ago in what is now India's Punjab region, Sikhism is the world's fifth-largest religion.  But what makes its members habitual do-gooders?  Think of any scene of disaster and you'll find Sikh volunteers rallying to the site, feeding migrants, helping riot victims, and rebuilding homes after earthquakes.  From the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar to the Paris terror attacks, the farmers' marches in India to the protests in America against George Floyd's killing, people from this 30 million-strong community worldwide have made it a tradition to help complete strangers in their darkest moments.  Through the pandemic, they reached new heights.  In Maharashtra in western India, a gurdwara (the Sikh place of worship) fed two million people in ten weeks in 2020.  Other gurdwaras in India melted the gold they had collected over the last 50 years to set up hospitals and medical colleges.  Sikh NGOs set up "oxygen langars"--langars are the community kitchens in the gurdwaras--providing free oxygen to people as India gasped and reeled through its deadly second wave of coronavirus.  Jasreen Mayal Khanna  Read more and see graphics at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57817615 

The American Academy of Ophthalmology says you don’t need blue light glasses and has gone on record as not recommending any kind of special eyewear for computer users.  The organization says blue light from digital devices does not lead to eye disease and doesn’t even cause eyestrain.  The problems people complain about are simply caused by overuse of digital devices, it says.  “The symptoms of digital eye strain are linked to how we use our digital devices, not the blue light coming out of them,” the AAO says.  But some eye professionals believe they have benefits.  Greg Rogers, senior optician at Eyeworks in Decatur, GA, says he’s seen the benefits of blue light glasses among the shop’s customers.  The staff asks a client how much time they spend in front of a screen daily.  If it’s 6 hours or more, some sort of blue light reduction technique is recommended, whether it’s glasses or a special screen for a computer monitor.  We were getting plenty of blue light before modern digital life began.  Most of it comes from the sun.  But gadgets like televisions, smartphones, laptops, and tablets that populate modern life emit the brighter, shorter-wavelength (more bluish) light.  Another argument in favor of blue light glasses is that they help you sleep better at night.  Researchers agree that blue light from LED devices like your smartphone or laptop holds back the body’s production of sleep-inducing melatonin.  A 2017 study done by the University of Houston found that participants wearing the glasses showed about a 58% increase in their nighttime melatonin levels.  “By using blue blocking glasses we … can improve sleep and still continue to use our devices. The American Academy of Ophthalmology takes a different approach.  “You don’t need to spend extra money on blue light glasses to improve sleep--simply decrease evening screen time and set devices to night mode,” the group says.  Ralph Ellis  https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210115/do-blue-light-glasses-work  

A THOUGHT FOR AUGUST 24  It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define.  The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature. - Jorge Luis Borges, writer (24 Aug 1899-1986) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2409  August 24, 2021

Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.  Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism.  The term "Pointillism" was coined by art critics in the late 1880’s to ridicule the works of these artists, but is now used without its earlier pejorative connotation.  The movement Seurat began with this technique is known as Neo-impressionism.  The Divisionists used a similar technique of patterns to form images, though with larger cube-like brushstrokes.  From Wikipedia   https://www.jigidi.com/jigsaw-puzzle/tne5tqpr/get-to-the-point/

Muhmmara is a hearty walnut and roasted red pepper dip or spread that’s all sorts of savory, sweet, slightly smoky, and just enough spicy!  The word muhammara is from the Arabic word ahmar, which literally means red.  This red dip, originally from the Syrian city of Aleppo, this delicious dip made its way from the heart of the Levant to many parts of the world including Europe and the U.S.  See recipe at https://www.themediterraneandish.com/muhammara-recipe-roasted-red-pepper-dip/  Thank you, Muse reader!  

It may seem odd, but in the theater world, saying “good luck” is actually considered bad luck.  There are numerous ideas about the origin of the phrase.  One story says spirits wreak havoc on your wishes and make the opposite happen.  Another comes from ancient Greece, where the audience didn’t clap but instead stomped their feet to show appreciation.  If the audience stomped long enough, they would break a leg.  Some say the term originated during Elizabethan times when, instead of applause, the audience would bang their chairs on the ground—and if they liked it enough, the leg of the chair would break.  The most common theory refers to an actor breaking the “leg line” of the stage.  In the early days of theater, this is where ensemble actors were queued to perform.  If actors were not performing, they had to stay behind the “leg line,” which also meant they wouldn’t get paid.  If you were to tell the actor to “break a leg,” you were wishing them the opportunity to perform and get paid.  The sentiment remains the same today; the term means “good luck, give a good performance.”  https://transcendencetheatre.org/break-a-leg/ 

If someone says "don't pull my leg" they want you to stop playing a joke on them; to stop telling fibs and to tell the truth.  There is a sense of good humour about the whole concept, but it may not have always been so.  The origin is found in a Scottish rhyme in which "draw" is used in the sense of "pull" rather than the word itself.  It goes:  "He preached, and at last drew the auld body's leg, Sae the Kirk got the gatherins o' our Aunty Meg."  The suggestion in the rhyme is that Aunty Meg was hung for a crime and, at the end, the preacher pulled on her legs to ensure that she was dead.  The rather more sombre overtones of this possibility than are apparent in the British use of the phrase are mirrored in the American usage, where there is much more a feeling of trickery and deception when the saying is used.  http://jb.zebrasurf.com/Idioms/lam-limelight.html 

To be 'Sent to Coventry' is to be deliberately ignored or ostracised.  This behaviour often takes the form of pretending that the shunned person, although conspicuously present, can't be seen or heard.  The origins of this phrase aren't known beyond doubt, although it is quite probable that events in Coventry in the English Civil War in the 1640s are the source.  By 1811, the then understood meaning of the term was defined in Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:  To send one to Coventry; a punishment inflicted by officers of the army on such of their brethren as are testy, or have been guilty of improper behaviour, not worthy the cognizance of a court martial.  The person sent to Coventry is considered as absent; no one must speak to or answer any question he asks, except relative to duty, under penalty of being also sent to the same place.  On a proper submission, the penitent is recalled, and welcomed by the mess, as just returned from a journey to Coventry.  A well-known example of someone being sent to Coventry is Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), after his falling out with the Liddell family.  Dodgson had developed a close relationship with the Liddell's daughter Alice.  In 1863, when Alice was 11, something happened to cause the family to ostracise him.  Whatever it was we can't now be sure as, although Dodgson recorded it in his diary at the time, the entry was later cut out by a Dodgson family member.  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sent-to-coventry.html 

Christine Smallwood’s novel The Life of the Mind—a bleak, funny tour of academia’s outer fringe—offers a lament for the state of email.  Dorothy, the book’s grad-student heroine, “used to love email, used to have long, meaningful, occasionally thrilling email correspondences that involved the testing of ideas and the exchange of videos and music links.”  Emails had been the way Dorothy and her friends “crafted personas, narrated events, made sense of their lives,” Smallwood writes.  “That way of life, alas, had ended.”  The contemporary email newsletter is not a novel form; often it amounts to a new delivery system for the same sorts of content—essays, explainers, Q&As, news roundups, advice, and lists—that have long been staples of online media.  Molly Fischer  https://www.thecut.com/2021/07/email-newsletters-new-literary-style.html 

To mark its 175th anniversary, the Smithsonian Institution is staging a massive celebration in the form of a sprawling exhibition featuring works from many museums under the Smithsonian umbrella.  To tie them all together, the organization is also commissioning site-specific art commissions from Beatriz Cortez, Nettrice Gaskins, Soo Sunny Park, Devan Shimoyama, and Tamiko Thiel and /p.  The show, titled “Futures,” will be held at the Smithsonian’s storied Arts and Industries Building, which has been largely closed to the public for two decades.  Dating to 1881, the building, which served as the first home for the U.S. National Museum, has undergone a $55 million renovation and is once again ready to welcome the public with an interdisciplinary, immersive exhibition asking them to consider how art and technology continue to shape our world.  “Futures” will be on view at the Smithsonian Institution, Arts and Industries Building, 900 Jefferson Drive, SW, National Mall, Washington, D.C., November 2021–July 2022.  Sarah Cascone  Read more and see dazzling pictures at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/smithsonian-175th-anniversary-futures-1979184  The Smithsonian’s founding donor, James Smithson, never visited the United States. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2408  August 23, 2021 

Boasting intricate patterns that appear inlaid, encaustic tiles are made up of at least two (and up to six) colors of clay that comprise both the design and the body of the tile.  Unlike glazed patterns, which sit on the surface, encaustic patterns are essential to the makeup of the ceramics and won’t wear off over time.  While encaustic tile has been popular for a while in Europe, the method is now becoming more of a trend in the United States, thanks to advances in technology that have made the tiles easier to produce.  Megan Beauchamp  February 12, 2019  https://www.housebeautiful.com/design-inspiration/a26304753/what-is-encaustic-tile/

“It all starts with shape and color,” says this rising-star French ceramist.  Using a knifelike tool, Alice Gavalet slices earthenware into flat forms that she then hand-assembles into three dimensions, firing the results before painting them with colorful enamels for one last bake, all in her petite workshop just outside Paris.  The wild and whimsical pieces (squiggly striped vases, mirrors outlined in zany shapes) take inspiration from Ettore Sottsass’s playful objects, Jean Dubuffet’s graphic compositions, and her nine-year-old daughter’s spontaneous drawings.  By Gavalet’s admission, her own works—often large and heavy—aren’t exactly practical, but, she says, “I consider them sculptures that can be used.”  It’s an idea she undoubtedly gleaned from the 10 years and counting she has worked as an assistant to the legendary furniture designer Elizabeth Garouste, known for her spirited takes on functional objects.  Hannah Martin  See pictures at https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/meet-the-artist-bringing-colorful-whimsy-to-ceramics107055

You have most likely encountered one-sided objects hundreds of times in your daily life--like the universal symbol for recycling, found printed on the backs of aluminum cans and plastic bottles.   This mathematical object is called a Mobius strip.  It has fascinated environmentalists, artists, engineers, mathematicians and many others ever since its discovery in 1858 by August Möbius, a German mathematician.  The discovery of the Möbius strip in the mid-19th century launched a brand new field of mathematics:  topology.  Möbius discovered the one-sided strip in 1858 while serving as the chair of astronomy and higher mechanics at the University of Leipzig.  (Another mathematician named Listing actually described it a few months earlier, but did not publish his work until 1861.)  Möbius seems to have encountered the Möbius strip while working on the geometric theory of polyhedra, solid figures composed of vertices, edges and flat faces.  A Möbius strip can be created by taking a strip of paper, giving it an odd number of half-twists, then taping the ends back together to form a loop.  If you take a pencil and draw a line along the center of the strip, you’ll see that the line apparently runs along both sides of the loop.  The concept of a one-sided object inspired artists like Dutch graphic designer M.C. Escher, whose woodcut “Möbius Strip II” shows red ants crawling one after another along a Möbius strip.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/mathematical-madness-mobius-strips-and-other-one-sided-objects-180970394/ 

Did you know that plums are probably the first type of fruit cultivated by humans?  Most people incorrectly assume that these moist fruits were first domesticated by cultivars in the wild.  However, in actuality, the cultivation of plums began in East European and Caucasian mountains near the Caspian Sea.  Some groups of people believe that plums were carried to Rome around 200 B.C. and then introduced to Northern Europe.  On the other hand, others like to think that the Duke of Anjou upon his return from Jerusalem brought along plums to Europe around 1198 to 1204 A.D.  Whatever may be the truth, one common consensus remains that wild plums were planted and raised throughout the Old and New Worlds.  See names, appetizing pictures and descriptions at https://www.homestratosphere.com/types-of-plums/ 

Sarah's Knish by Sarah Dipity  Traditional Jewish treat of little golden pastry domes filled with seasoned mashed potatoes and fried onions.  https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/212834/sarahs-knish/ 

Prior to the transcontinental railroad, the cost of travelling from Missouri to California cost about $1,000 and took from four to six months.  However, after the completion of the 1,776-mile road, a trip cost between $65.00 and $136.00, and a week or so from New York to San Francisco.  Ever since the first railroads in the 1830s, men had dreamed of the day one could board a train and roll safely and majestically from coast to coast in the United States.  Prior to the Civil War, about 30,000 miles of track had been laid, mostly in the North and Midwest, most of it east of the Mississippi.  Abraham Lincoln was one of the chief railroad lawyers in Illinois, and his election to the Presidency meant new contracts for rail lines in and out of Chicago moving in every direction, as well as the beginnings of a line that would traverse the nation from shore to shore.  In 1860 a young engineer named Theodore Judah lobbied Congress and the President about the feasibility of building a railroad through the Sierra Nevada Mountains at the Donner Pass.  In 1862 Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act, chartering two companies to build a transcontinental railroad:  the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads.  President Lincoln signed it and the race was on.  The rival teams met at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869.  Leland Stanford made the first swing at a solid gold spike, missing and hitting a rail.  An inebriated Thomas Durant swung next and completely missed.  A railroad worker finally put in the spike.  See picture of the 17.6-karat ceremonial “golden spike”, driven by Leland Stanford to mark the joining of the two rails, on display at the Cantor Arts Museum at Stanford University.  Bill Potter  https://landmarkevents.org/leland-stanford-drives-the-golden-spike-1869/  Consequences included new words:  Boom!  Go  west!  *  Transport of fresh fruit from Southern California  *  helped to double Chicago’s population and make it the nation’s lumberyard and stockyard—also inspired the mail-order catalog  *  Santa Fe began the innovation of chain restaurants  * 

Chuck Close's face made him famous—his face on canvas, that is.  Gigantic, up close and personal, his black and white 1968 Big Self-Portrait leaves nothing to the imagination.  You can see every spike of stubble, every wisp of uncombed hair, every curl of smoke from his cigarette.  It was a bold opening statement from someone who went on to become one of the best-known portraitists of his generation, who died August 19, 2021  at age 81.  Close was born in Washington State in 1940, and as a child struggled with what he later realized was dyslexia—but art was never a struggle.  His parents encouraged him, paying for art supplies and lessons; he told the New York Times Magazine in 1998 that he remembered staying up late, poring over magazine covers with a magnifying glass, ''trying to figure out how paintings got made,'' which might perhaps have been a hint at where his career would ultimately go.  Close didn't just work in paint—he was a photographer, a printmaker, even a weaver.  But he's best known for those big heads, the pixelated portraits of himself and his art-world friends that he made by breaking down photographs into intricate grids and then blowing them up, reproducing them square by painstaking square onto oversized canvases. He even developed a system with a forklift, a platform, a chair and a rope that let him maneuver around the whole painting easily.  Petra Mayer  https://www.npr.org/2021/08/19/1029495330/chuck-close-painter-gigantic-portraits-dead?ft=nprml&f=

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2407  August 20, 2021

 

Located in the southwest corner of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands is a hidden gem that has been wrought from Mother Nature’s innards, yet looks descended directly from outer space:  Timanfaya National Park.  The park is habitat to several rare plant species, which led UNESCO to declare it a World Biosphere Reserve.  Most famously, the park’s Fire Mountains rose to prominence during a peak in the area’s volcanic activity between 1730 and 1736, when over 100 volcanoes covering more than fifty square-kilometers erupted on the island, devastating local villages.  The last recorded eruption occurred in 1824, and only one active volcano remains on the island, from which the park draws its name.  Taken as a whole, the park totals nearly twenty square-miles demonstrating extreme surface temperatures, within the range of 400°C and 600°C just a few meters below the surface.  All of these features made it an ideal proving ground for extra-terrestrial projects.  NASA identified these special qualities early on, and showed pictures of Timanfaya when training astronauts for their Apollo 17 expedition to the moon.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/timanfaya-national-park 

Carmine, also called cochineal (for the insect from which it is extracted), cochineal extract, crimson lake or carmine lake, natural red 4, C.I. 75470, or E120, is a pigment of a bright-red color obtained from the aluminium complex derived from carminic acid.  It is also a general term for a particularly deep-red color.  The English word "carmine" is derived from the French word carmin (12th century), from Medieval Latin carminium, from Persian قرمز qirmiz ("crimson"), which itself derives from Middle Persian carmir ("red, crimson").  The pigment is produced from carminic acid, which is extracted from some scale insects such as the cochineal scale and certain Porphyrophora species (Armenian cochineal and Polish cochineal).  Carmine is a colorant used in the manufacture of artificial flowers, paints, crimson ink, rouge and other cosmetics, and some medications.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine 

Very Different Writers, Uncanny Commonalities:  On Lee Child and Heidi James, article by Heather Martin   It wasn’t just that they were the only two people I’d heard use the phrase “gussied up.”  It wasn’t that they both wrote books that kept you turning the pages right to the end and then wish you hadn’t got there.  It wasn’t their imperious command of the opening sentence, or their acute evocation of time and place.  It ran deeper than that, and resonated more profoundly.  It was something profoundly human.  On the face of it the differences were more obvious than the similarities.  He eschewed the semicolon in his fictional writing, whereas she used it freely; his mantra was to track a single point of view moving strictly forward through time, an aesthetic seamlessly enacted in the relentless forward motion of his billion-dollar brand protagonist, whereas she moved back and forth and round-and-round switching point of view and voice according to need and desire; he was more austere; she was more extravagant, more lush, more figurative—it was a different kind of risk and a different kind of poetry.  Broadly speaking, both Child and James write for the same reason they read books growing up:  escape.  Escape from an external to an internal reality, from restlessness and dissatisfaction, from adults who didn’t want them or wanted them for the wrong reasons, from people and places they both loved and hated, that both defined and constrained them, that not only made them what they were but also what they transformed themselves into.  Heidi’s characters suffer from a sense of “unbelonging”; in creating Reacher, Lee, who as a “lost and lonely boy from Birmingham” felt like a changeling in the Grant family, sought to explore the experience of alienation.  Both had haunted their local libraries; their families were too poor to buy books, and even had they been able to afford them, could not conceivably have catered to that insatiable hunger.  Read extensive article at https://lithub.com/very-different-writers-uncanny-commonalities-on-lee-child-and-heidi-james/

 

A phrase with a rather obscure origin is "gussied up," meaning "extensively dressed-up and made-up, often to excess."  One theory traces this phrase, which first emerged in the U.S. about 1950, to "gusset," a triangular piece of fabric sewn into the seam of a garment to improve its fit.  Because this doodad was often planted in expensive dresses, someone wearing fancy clothing was said to be "gussied up."  Other linguists attribute the phrase to "gussie" (short for "Augustus"), which appeared in early twentieth-century Australia as a slang term for a dandy, a type of man who enjoyed dressing up.  A third theory focuses on the American tennis player Gertrude Augusta Moran, who earned the nickname "Gorgeous Gussy" when she sported frilly lace panties at the 1949 Wimbledon tournament.  The fact that "gussy up" first appeared in print in 1952 seems to shore up the "Gorgeous Gussy" theory.  But some linguists claim the term was common in speech by the early 1940s, so it's not quite name, set, match.  Rob Kyff  https://www.creators.com/read/rob-kyff-word-guy/11/16/gussy-up-for-a-walk-on-the-shoreline 

Is there really a national coin shortage?  First--as the Federal Reserve wants you to know--the problem is not a lack of coins.  The Fed said it's producing enough of them, minting 14.8 billion pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, 50-cent pieces and dollar coins in 2020, a 24% increase from the 11.9 billion coins produced in 2019.  nstead, the Fed says, the problem is that businesses and banks around the country are having a hard time getting that metal currency.  Due to the pandemic the coins are collecting dust when they should be continually circulating through the economy.  In nonpandemic years, transactions at retail stores, vending machines, payment kiosks and banks would be enough to keep coins flowing.  The US Mint said in 2019 retail and other financial transactions accounted for 83% of the flow of coins in circulation; just the remaining 17% came from newly minted coins.  When the country shut down last year, the share of credit card payments for the first time eclipsed cash payments, the Fed said, as we held onto to bills and coins instead of spending them.  The Federal Reserve is concerned enough about the coin supply problem that it's convened a U.S. Coin Task Force to look for ways to get coins moving.  To start, the task force encourages individuals to start spending their coins, pay with exact change, deposit spare coins at a financial institution and redeem coins at a coin kiosk or recycler. https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/your-money/got-any-change-heres-the-scoop-on-the-national-coin-shortage/ 

August 17, 2021  During his 19-year career as a cornerback for the Washington Football Team, Darrell Green could eat pretty much anything he wanted and hardly lose a step.  He dined on burgers and fries, and shakes and pies, and still won all four of the National Football League’s Fastest Man competitions that he ran in.  Drafted by Washington in 1983, Green was 22, just shy of 5-foot-9, and weighed 173 pounds.  When he retired in 2002, at age 42, he weighed 189, having gained only 16 pounds.  But in retirement, he was no longer motivated to do Olympic-level workouts twice a day.  The fat in that fast-food diet that he used to burn off so easily began clinging to his waistline.  “I wasn’t doing anything, and suddenly I’m weighing 193, then 195,” Green said.  Green, now 61, had begun eating more plant-based whole foods three years ago.  He’s now down to 187, with a goal of 181.  “I just like being lighter, able to move easier,” he said.  Green had lasted nearly two decades in a league where the average career is just 3.3 years.  Known by teammates as the “Ageless Wonder,” he’d secured a reputation as one of the best cornerbacks in NFL history.  Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, who won his seventh Super Bowl ring this year at age 43, also eats a mostly vegan, low-carb diet.  Courtland Milloy  https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/darrell-green-football-healthy-eating/2021/08/17/4429d48e-ff60-11eb-ba7e-2cf966e88e93_story.html 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2406  August 18, 2021

Often compared to Scottish literary legend Robert Burns, Robert Tannahill was born around 1774 in Paisley in the county of Renfrewshire.  He grew up in a weaving shop and would later be given the name of the ‘weaver poet’, turning as he did to an apprenticeship with his father at the early age of 12 years.  From childhood, Tannahill was considered to have a delicate constitution and was known for the injury to his right leg that caused him to limp throughout his life.  The Scottish airs that he wrote and for which R.A. Smith composed the music, such as The Braes of Balquhidder, have become classics that are reproduced and sung for special occasions.  The Burns club in Paisley he helped create also meets each winter to this very day in the old cottage where Tannahill used to compose his poems.  https://mypoeticside.com/poets/robert-tannahill-poems  See also http://www.roberttannahillfederation.com/1.html 

Cosplay, a portmanteau of "costume play", is an activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character.  Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term "cosplay" applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage.  Any entity that lends itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject.  Favorite sources include anime, cartoons, comic books, manga, television series, and video games.  Cosplay grew out of the practice of fan costuming at science fiction conventions, beginning with Morojo's "futuristicostumes" created for the 1st World Science Fiction Convention held in New York City in 1939.  The Japanese term "cosplay" (コスプレ, kosupure) was coined in 1984.  A rapid growth in the number of people cosplaying as a hobby since the 1990s has made the phenomenon a significant aspect of popular culture in Japan, as well as in other parts of East Asia and in the Western world.  Cosplay events are common features of fan conventions, and today there are many dedicated conventions and competitions, as well as social networks, websites, and other forms of media centered on cosplay activities.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay 

The word ‘hippopotamus’ means ‘river horse’, and is often shortened to ‘hippo’.  Hippos have numerous collective nouns, and a group of hippos is often referred to as a crash, bloat, herd, pod or dale.  Find facts on this herbivorous mammal at https://jabulanisafari.com/the-hippopotamus/  See also https://www.conservationafrica.net/blog/weird-and-wonderful-collective-nouns/  

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint-Exupéry, simply known as de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), was a French writer, poet, aristocrat, journalist and pioneering aviator.  He became a laureate of several of France's highest literary awards and also won the United States National Book Award.  He is best remembered for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and for his lyrical aviation writings, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Night Flight.  Saint-Exupéry was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, working airmail routes in Europe, Africa, and South America.  He joined the French Air Force at the start of the war, flying reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940.  Saint-Exupéry spent 28 months in America, during which he wrote three of his most important works, then joined the Free French Air Force in North Africa—although he was far past the maximum age for such pilots and in declining health.  He disappeared and is believed to have died while on a reconnaissance mission from Corsica over the Mediterranean on 31 July 1944.  His 1939 philosophical memoir Terre des hommes (titled Wind, Sand and Stars in English) became the name of an international humanitarian group; it was also used as the central theme of Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec.  His birthplace of Lyon also named its main airport after him.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%C3%A9ry 

Ligaments and tendons are both made up of fibrous connective tissue, but that’s about where the similarity ends.  Ligaments appear as crisscross bands that attach bone to bone and help stabilize joints.  Tendons, located at each end of a muscle, attach muscle to bone.  Tendons are found throughout the body, from the head and neck all the way down to the feet.  The Achilles tendon is the largest tendon in the body.  It attaches the calf muscle to the heel bone.  The rotator cuff tendons help your shoulder rotate forward and backward.  https://www.healthline.com/health/ligament-vs-tendon 

The story of matter begins with two competing ideas.  On one side, Aristotle believed that all matter was infinitely divisible—you could cut a chunk of matter in half endlessly, never encountering a piece too small to be further divided.  But some Greek thinkers, like the philosophers Democritus and Leucippus, had another idea.  They believed that matter was, as Stephen Hawking later put it in A Brief History of Time, “inherently grainy.”  Everything could be broken down into smaller and smaller parts, resulting in a universe composed of tiny, individual particles.  The dispute remained unsettled for centuries, until in 1803 chemist and physicist John Dalton pioneered the development of modern atomic theory.  His work laid the foundation for further discoveries and evolution of atomic theory, and in 1911, physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered that atoms do indeed have an internal structure.  When Caltech physicist Murray Gell-Mann predicted the existence of an even smaller set of particles in 1964, he playfully dubbed them quarks.  There’s a rich tradition of whimsical naming in the world of physics, as is the case with “the God particle,” “flavor,” and “charm.”  Luckily, Gell-Mann had a bit of a literary bent:  “In one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word ‘quark.’”  The line was:  Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark  And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.  But quark didn’t sound quite like the kwork that was ringing in Gell-Mann’s head.  The physicist took a little creative license, and reimagined the line as a call for drinks at the bar:  Three quarts for Muster Mark!  With this adjustment, writes Gell-Mann, pronouncing the word like kwork “would not be totally unjustified.”  The reference to the number three was fitting as well, since “the recipe for making a neutron or proton out of quarks is, roughly speaking, ‘Take three quarks.’”  So, should we be saying quark or kwork?  The dispute over the nature of matter that began with Aristotle may be settled, but this is one debate that hasn’t yet been put to bed—in a survey, 76 percent of Science Diction readers who voted said they’re sticking with quark, and 24 percent are with Gell-Mann, and say kwork.  Johanna Mayer  See graphics at https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-origin-of-the-word-quark/ 

“Over 800 Courses & Expert Professors Across Multiple Categories”  Search for courses at https://www.thegreatcourses.com/  Thank you, Muse reader! 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2404  August 16, 2021

In 1908, at a lab in Niagara Falls, New York, a metallurgist named Auguste Rossi invented a brilliant white pigment that would become almost ubiquitous in human-made stuff and is found today in everything from paint to plastic to pills.  The chemical, titanium dioxide, became what color researcher Matthijs de Keijzer calls the “most significant contribution” to an explosion in 20th-century pigment technology, in what some historians refer to as a chromatic revolution, a new look for the world.  But archaeologists say that Rossi didn’t get there first.  In 2018, researchers in the United States discovered titanium white in 400-plus-year-old ceremonial wooden drinking cups made by the Inca and residing today in various museums.  Carved with elaborate geometrical designs, the cups, called qeros, traditionally were not colored.  But around the time of the Spanish conquest of Peru in 1530, the Inca started mixing pigments, including titanium white, into resin and decorating qeros with the bright goo.  Adam Rogers  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/inca-discovered-prized-pigment-180977704/ 

It's long been observed that many plants produce leaves, shoots, or flowers in spiral patterns.  Cauliflower provides a unique example of this phenomenon, because those spirals repeat at several different size scales—a hallmark of fractal geometry.  This self-similarity is particularly notable in the Romanesco variety because of the distinctive conical shape of its florets.  Now, a team of French scientists from the CNRS has identified the underlying mechanism that gives rise to this unusual pattern, according to a new paper published in Science.  Fractal geometry is the mathematical offspring of chaos theory; a fractal is the pattern left behind in the wave of chaotic activity.  That single geometric pattern repeats thousands of times at different magnifications (self-similarity).  Many fractal patterns exist only in mathematical theory, but over the last few decades, scientists have found there are fractal aspects to many irregular yet patterned shapes in nature, such the branchings of rivers and trees—or the strange self-similar repeating buds that make up the Romanesco cauliflower.  Each bud is made up of a series of smaller buds, although the pattern doesn't continue down to infinitely smaller size scales, so it's only an approximate fractal.  The branched tips, called meristems, make up a logarithmic spiral, and the number of spirals on the head of Romanesco cauliflower is a Fibonacci number, which in turn is related to what's known as the "golden ratio."  The person most closely associated with the Fibonacci sequence is the 13th-century mathematician Leonardo Pisano; his nickname was "filius Bonacci" (son of Bonacci), which got shortened to Fibonacci.  In his 1202 treatise, Book of Calculation, Fibonacci described the numerical sequence that now bears his name:  1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 . . . and on into infinity.  DOI:  Science, 2021. 10.1126/science.abg5999  Jennifer Ouellette  https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/what-fractals-fibonacci-and-the-golden-ratio-have-to-do-with-cauliflower/ 

Romesco sauce is an unforgettable sauce.  It’s bold, zippy and full of roasted tomato and pepper flavor.  Romesco originated in a city called Tarragona in Catalonia, the northeastern-most region of Spain that touches France.  Tarragona is a port city, and the fishermen there made romesco sauce to liven up the day’s catches.  Find recipe at https://cookieandkate.com/easy-romesco-sauce-recipe/ 

The Pontalba Buildings form two sides of Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.  They are matching red-brick, one-block-long, four‑story buildings built in the late 1840s by the Baroness Micaela Almonester Pontalba.  The ground floors house shops and restaurants; and the upper floors are apartments which, reputedly, are the oldest continuously-rented such apartments in the United States.  Baroness Pontalba, an accomplished businesswoman, invested in real estate, purchasing the land on the upriver and downriver sides of the Place d’Armes.  She constructed two Parisian-style row house buildings between 1849-51, at a cost of over $300,000.  The buildings include the first recorded instance in the city of the use of cast iron 'galleries', which set a fashion that soon became the most prominent feature of the city's residential architecture.  The cast-iron panels in the first floor balustrade feature her initials, 'AP', intertwined in the design.  The building fronting Rue St. Peter, upriver from Jackson Square, is the upper Pontalba.  The building on the other side, fronting Rue St. Ann, is the lower Pontalba Building.  Baroness Pontalba died in France in 1874, and the Pontalba family retained ownership of the buildings until the 1920s; but they did not take an interest in the townhouses, so they fell into disrepair.  The heirs sold the lower building to local philanthropist William Ratcliffe Irby, who in turn bequeathed the property to the Louisiana State Museum.  Local civic leaders acquired the upper building, which they sold to a foundation in 1930, the Pontalba Building Museum Association.  The foundation turned the upper building over to the City of New Orleans, which has owned it since the 1930s.  According to Christina Vella, historian of modern Europe, the Pontalba Buildings were not the first apartment buildings in the present-day U.S., as is commonly believed.  They were originally built as row houses, not rental apartments.  The row houses were turned into apartments during the 1930s renovations (during the Great Depression).  In the short story "Hidden Gardens," Truman Capote describes them as " . . . the oldest, in some ways most somberly elegant, apartment houses in America, the Pontalba Buildings."  They were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974 for their early and distinctive architecture.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontalba_Buildings  See pictures and read about Micaëla Almonester, Baroness de Pontalba at https://www.hnoc.org/publications/first-draft/woman-behind-new-orleanss-famous-pontalba-buildings 

Julia Child (August 15, 1912–August 13, 2004)  Julia Child is known around the world as an incredible chef.  She made French cuisine accessible to the American public and was the first woman to host her own cooking show on television.  However, during World War II, years before Child began cooking for the country, she worked with the Secret Intelligence Branch of the Office of Strategic Services in Southeast Asia.  Child, who at the time was unmarried and known as Julia McWilliams, began volunteering with the Pasadena, California chapter of the American Red Cross in September of 1941 to help prepare for war.  She created and supervised the Volunteer Stenographic Services.  After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Child assisted in tracking ships along the coast with the Aircraft Warning Service.  But Child wanted to do more and decided to join the military.  She took the civil service exam and applied to the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) and the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC).  However, she was rejected from both organizations because of her height.  At over six feet, she was just too tall.  Still wanting to be more involved, Child moved to Washington, DC in 1942 in hopes of finding other ways to support the war effort.  So, she took a position as a junior research assistant with the Secret Intelligence Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a forerunner to the CIA.  She was one of 4,500 women who worked for the OSS during the war. Child became a Junior Research Assistant under Colonel Donovan the Director of the OSS.  She was “directly reviewing, filing and performing minor research in connection with the reports and documents flowing into Colonel Donovan’s office.”  In 1943, Child worked as part of the Emergency Rescue Equipment Special Projects division of OSS.  She was an executive assistant to Captain Harold J. Coolidge the head of the division.  During an interview with fellow OSS Officer Betty McIntosh, Child spoke of her experience with the division, “I must say we had lots of fun.  We designed rescue kits and other agent paraphernalia.”  Child also helped to develop a repellent that was coated on underwater explosives to prevent sharks from bumping into them and setting them off.  See pictures at https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/recipe-adventure 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2403  August 13, 2021