The buildings and architecture of Bath, a city in Somerset in the south west of England, reveal significant examples of the architecture of England, from the Roman Baths (including their significant Celtic presence), to the present day.  The city became a World Heritage Site in 1987, largely because of its architectural history and the way in which the city landscape draws together public and private buildings and spaces.  The many examples of Palladian architecture are purposefully integrated with the urban spaces to provide "picturesque aestheticism".  In 2021, the city was added to a second World Heritage Site, a group of historic spa towns across Europe known as the "Great Spas of Europe".  Bath is the only entire city in Britain to achieve World Heritage status, and is a popular tourist destination.  Important buildings include the Roman Baths; neoclassical architect Robert Adam's Pulteney Bridge, based on an unused design for the Rialto Bridge in Venice; and Bath Abbey in the city centre, founded in 1499 on the site of an 8th-century church.  Of equal importance are the residential buildings designed and built into boulevards and crescents by the Georgian architects John Wood, the Elder and his son John Wood, the Younger--well-known examples being the Royal Crescent, built around 1770, and The Circus, built around 1760, where each of the three curved segments faces one of the entrances, ensuring that there is always a classical facade facing the entering visitor.  Most of Bath's buildings are made from the local, golden-coloured, Bath Stone.  The dominant architectural style is Georgian, which evolved from the Palladian revival style that became popular in the early 18th century.  The city became a fashionable and popular spa and social centre during the 18th century.  Based initially around its hot springs, this led to a demand for substantial homes and guest houses.  The key architects, John Wood and his son, laid out many of the city's present-day squares and crescents within a green valley and the surrounding hills.  According to UNESCO this provided . . . "an integration of architecture, urban design, and landscape setting, and the deliberate creation of a beautiful city".  Development during modern eras, including the development of the transport infrastructure and rebuilding after bomb damage during World War II, has mostly been in keeping with earlier styles to maintain the integrated   cityscape.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buildings_and_architecture_of_Bath  See also https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/a-british-prime-minister-called-this-1789-townhouse-in-the-heart-of-bath-england-home-01639137584 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1789_in_architecture 

How we breathe is not something most of us ever stop to contemplate.  Breathing mechanics are also not particularly intuitive.  Theoretically, there are two ways air could get into the lungs.  Air could either be pushed in (positive-​​pressure breathing) or pulled in (negative-​​pressure breathing).  In both cases, air flows from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure.  In the former, a high-​​pressure area is created, forcing air to a lower-​​pressure area.  In the latter, a low-​​pressure area is created, pulling air from the higher-​​pressure area.  For instance, frogs are positive-​​pressure breathers.  Frogs actively gulp air into their mouths, squeeze their mouths tight, and push air from their mouths into the lungs.  Forcing air into the lungs is also how mechanical ventilators work.  On the other hand, humans are negative-​​pressure breathers.  Our primary breathing muscle, the diaphragm, sits underneath the lungs.  In its rest position, it forms twin domes, one underneath each lung.  When we inhale, the domes contract and flatten.  The diaphragm pulls the lungs down with it, causing the lungs to expand.  Air rushes into the low-​​pressure cavity created by the expanded lungs.  During exhalation, the diaphragm relaxes upward.  The pressure inside the lungs becomes slightly positive as compared to atmospheric pressure, and air rushes out.  MeiLan K. Han  https://lithub.com/strange-mechanisms-how-exactly-do-we-breathe/

Parentheses, brackets, and braces are sometimes referred to as "round," "square," and "curly" brackets, respectively.  Parentheses are used to group numbers or variables, or both.   Parentheses can also mean multiplication.  Brackets are used after the parentheses to group numbers and variables as well.  Braces are also used to group numbers and variables.  Parentheses inside other parentheses (or brackets and braces) are also referred to as "nested parentheses."   Deb Russell  Find examples of use at https://www.thoughtco.com/parenthesis-braces-and-brackets-2312410  See also https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek/General/JavaSyntax/parentheses.html 

One of the most beautiful bookshops in Paris is located in one of the most beautiful arcades in Paris.  The Galerie Vivienne in the 2nd arrondissement is a treasure trove.  One of its gems is the Jousseaume bookstore.  Jousseaume opened its doors in 1826 and is housed in a stunning listed building.  Its shelves are filled with old books and the shop is filled with old charm   Read also about Shakespeare and Company, The Red Wheelbarrow, Librairie Galignani, San Francisco Book Company, Assouline, and Librairie Delamain.  https://bigseventravel.com/the-7-best-bookshops-in-paris/   Thank you, Muse reader! 

Yes, there really is life on Mars, and residents take full advantage of the fun opportunities their town’s name creates.  A flying saucer is parked in the town square, offering an unusual photo opportunity for visitors.  Alien sightings occur daily in storefront windows.  Letters with a Mars, Pa. postmark are frequently mailed around the world from the local post office.  And, like most small towns, community life frequently revolves around events at the Mars School District, home of the Planets.  The town’s past dates to 1792 when the first settler arrived in the area.  Mars flourished in its early years because it was located on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and on the Butler Short Line, the electric trolley route that linked Pittsburgh and Butler.  Oil and coal brought a boom to the entire area, and the town’s strategic location made it a natural trade center for supplying the needs of the two industries.  https://www.visitbutlercounty.com/attractions/mars 

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. - Edgar Allan Poe, poet and short-story writer (19 Jan 1809-1849) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2484  January 19, 2022

Way back in the 17th century, folks wrapped seeds or nuts in a hard sugar coating, which took days to produce and special skills, since nothing was mechanized and sugar work was done by eye.  The process is called “panning”--and the modern day Jordan almond would be a good example of that.  The resulting sugar-coated treats were round but not perfectly circular, similar to the shape of . . . wait for it . . . a plum.  Due to the cost of the ingredients and the time to make them, sugar plums were only enjoyed by wealthy folks.  Boiling fruit with sugar was also the most popular way to preserve fruit--including plums.  “Full of sugar plums” actually came to mean that someone was rich, and “mouth full of sugar plums” meant someone spoke sweetly but probably meant something else--similar to “bless your heart” in the South.  Find sugar plum recipe at https://gfreefoodie.com/sugar-plums/

 Kernza’s real name is intermediate wheatgrass, but that struck people as kind of clunky, so they renamed it.  It's a distant relative of regular wheat.  It's never been grown as a grain crop because it doesn't produce nearly as much seed as wheat.  But it is a perennial.  For the past 15 years, plant breeder Lee DeHaan has been cross-pollinating individual kernza plants.  He grows them in greenhouses and in open fields and selects the best offspring, paying particular attention to the size of the seeds they make.  Bigger seeds means a bigger harvest to mill into flour.  The Land Institute has recruited farmers to grow kernza in small fields (small for the Midwest, at least) of 40 acres or so.  They're harvesting it with standard farm machinery.  Even more remarkable:  General Mills, the company that makes Cheerios and Wheaties, now says it wants to make cereal out of it.  Dan Charles  https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/04/13/711144729/can-this-breakfast-cereal-help-save-the-planet 

Turnip Pancakes (Latkes)  25 minutes preparation time  serves 10  Suggested condiments:  sour cream, yogurt, applesauce, ketchup   Leah’s Pantry  https://eatfresh.org/recipe/side-dish-snacks-breakfast/turnip-pancakes-latkes 

Martha's Vineyard (Wampanoag:  Noepe; often simply called the Vineyard) is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts in the United States in North America that is known for being a popular summer colony.  Martha's Vineyard includes the smaller adjacent Chappaquiddick Island, which is usually connected to the Vineyard.  The two islands have sometimes been separated by storms and hurricanes, which last occurred from 2007 to 2015.  It is the 58th largest island in the United States, with a land area of about 96 square miles (250 km²), and the third-largest on the East Coast of the United States, after Long Island and Mount Desert Island.  Martha's Vineyard constitutes the bulk of Dukes County, Massachusetts, which also includes the Elizabeth Islands and the island of Nomans Land.

The Vineyard was home to one of the earliest known deaf communities in the United States; consequently, a sign language, the Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, emerged on the island among both deaf and hearing islanders.  The 2010 census reported a year-round population of 16,535 residents, although the summer population can swell to more than 100,000 people.  About 56 percent of the Vineyard's 14,621 homes are seasonally occupied.  There is no definitive source for "Martha's Vineyard" but it is thought to be named for the mother-in-law or daughter, both named Martha, of the English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold, who led the first recorded European expedition to Cape Cod in 1602.  A smaller island to the south was first to be named "Martha's Vineyard" but this later became associated with this island.  It is the eighth-oldest surviving English place name in the United States.  The island was subsequently known as Martin's Vineyard (perhaps after the captain of Gosnold's ship, John Martin); many islanders up to the 18th century called it by this name.  When the United States Board on Geographic Names worked to standardize place name spellings in the late 19th century, apostrophes were dropped.  Thus for a time Martha's Vineyard was officially named Marthas Vineyard, but the Board reversed its decision in the early 20th century, making Martha's Vineyard one of the five place names in the United States that take a possessive apostrophe.  According to historian Henry Franklin Norton, the island was known by Native Americans as Noepe or Capawock.  It is referred to in the 1691 Massachusetts Charter (which transferred the island from Province of New York during the breakup of the Dominion of New England) as Cappawock.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha%27s_Vineyard 

MARTHA’S VINEYARD LINGO   When you hear someone say ‘up-island,’ they are referring to the towns of West Tisbury, Aquinnah, Chilmark and it’s small fishing harbor, Menemsha.  The up-island towns are quiet, quaint and slow with each town center consisting, primarily, of town hall, the library, the post office and a few choice stores, galleries, restaurants and inns.  The houses up-island are spread out and often secluded, and the landscape features forests, rolling hills, farms and beach highlights like the cliffs in Aquinnah.  Down-island refers to Edgartown, Vineyard Haven (Tisbury) and Oak Bluffs.  These three towns are known for their bustling and unique ‘downtowns’ packed with dynamic shopping, art, food, dining and entertainment.  https://www.sandpiperrental.com/blog/marthas-vineyard-lingo-up-island-down-island/   See also https://www.mvy.com/blog/where-to-catch-the-best-sunsets-on-marthas-vineyard 

Confetti Coleslaw  20 minutes preparation time  serves 8  https://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipe/confetti-coleslaw  Optional additions or substitutions:  peanuts, raisins, yogurt, orange juice 

Fatigue is the best pillow. - Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (17 Jan 1706-1790) 

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others? ― Martin Luther King Jr.  Link to other quotes by Dr. King at https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/16364-life-s-most-persistent-and-urgent-question-is-what-are-you           

The Wolf Moon will peak in the sky during the evening of Monday, January 17, 2022.  The moon was named after wolves that were thought to howl more frequently this time of year, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac.  It will peak at 6:51 p.m. ET or 11:51 p.m. GMT.  To catch a glimpse of the moon, look above the horizon in the east-northeastern direction, according to NASA.  There is a cornucopia of names for the January full moon besides the wolf moon, including the Old Moon and Ice Moon.  Megan Marples and Ashley Strickland  https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/17/world/wolf-full-moon-2022-scn/index.html 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2483  January 17, 2022

A bight is a long, gradual bend or recess in the shoreline that forms a large, open bay.  Bights are shallow and may pose hazards to navigation, so their depths, in addition to any submerged features like sand bars and rock formations, are clearly marked on nautical charts.  A number of bights can be found on both the U.S. West and East Coasts.  The Southern California Bight, for example, is the curved coastline between Point Conception and San Diego, and encompasses the Channel Islands.  The New York Bight refers to the coastal area between Long Island and the New Jersey coast.  It is part of a larger geographical area called the Middle Atlantic (or Mid-Atlantic) Bight, which extends from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, north to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  One of the world's largest bights is the Great Australian Bight on the continent's southern coast.  https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/bight.html 

Denis (1261-1325), called the Farmer King (Rei Lavrador) and the Poet King (Rei Poeta), was King of Portugal.  The eldest son of Afonso III of Portugal by his second wife, Beatrice of Castile, and grandson of Alfonso X of Castile (known as the Wise), Denis succeeded his father in 1279.  His marriage to Elizabeth of Aragon, who was later canonised as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, was arranged in 1281 when she was 10 years old.  Denis ruled Portugal for over 46 years.  He worked to reorganise his country's economy and gave an impetus to Portuguese agriculture.  He ordered the planting of a large pine forest (that still exists today) near Leiria to prevent the soil degradation that threatened the region and to serve as a source of raw materials for the construction of the royal ships.  He was also known for his poetry, which constitutes an important contribution to the development of Portuguese as a literary language.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_of_Portugal 

In 1962 at the age of 71, Joseph E. Yoakum (1891–1972) reported having a dream that inspired him to draw.  Thereafter the retired veteran began a daily practice and over the next 10 years produced some 2,000 works.  Yoakum was born into poverty, had very little schooling, and at an early age left home to join a circus.  He wound up working with several circuses, traveling across the United States as well as abroad and becoming intimately familiar with the world’s various landscapes. These experiences would provide the foundational memories that fueled his deeply spiritual vision decades later.  After Yoakum’s first exhibition in 1968, word spread through the local artist community. School of the Art Institute (SAIC) professor Whitney Halsted took a serious interest in his work, an interest that would lead to Halsted writing a foundational text about Yoakum’s drawings, and artists such as Karl Wirsum, Ray Yoshida, Jim Nutt, and Roger Brown—all SAIC graduates—began to collect Yoakum’s work, marveling at his instincts and creativity despite having no formal art training.  His designs, forms, lines, and colors defied landscape traditions, yet they each possessed a power derived from the artist’s uncanny use of his distinctive graphic style.  See graphics at https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9499/joseph-e-yoakum-what-i-saw 

Bacon wrapped appetizers:  Wrap cooked bacon around figs, peppers, olives, pineapple chunks or ingredients of your choosing.  If desired, add cream cheese to keep things together.   

When I bestirred myself to research be-, I became bewitched and bedazzled with the bewildering number of ways this busy little prefix shapes our language and communicates our thoughts.  “Be-” as a prefix goes back to Old English, apparent in such ancient-sounding words as betwixt, betroth, and bereft.  e see it in so many common verbs we use every day:  begin, behave, become, believe, befriend, belong.  And in common prepositions and adjectives:  beneath, beside, below, between, beyond, beloved, bereaved.  The prefix be- can act as an intensifier, indicating something is thoroughly or excessively done, as in bewitch, bewilder, bedazzle.  It can show a verb is affecting or causing something:  bedevil, bedim, befoul.  Steve of Upland  https://sblazak.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/be-ing-the-bemusing-prefix-be/ 

Susan Eloise Hinton (born July 22, 1948) is an American writer best known for her young-adult novels (YA) set in Oklahoma, especially The Outsiders (1967), which she wrote during high school.  Hinton is credited with introducing the YA genre.  Hinton received the inaugural 1988 Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American YA librarians, citing her first four YA novels, which had been published from 1967 to 1979 and adapted as films from 1982 to 1985.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._E._Hinton 

One story above all is returned to again and again by filmmakers across countries and eras, suggesting that it may be the most visually alarming of all English language eerie tales.  That story is Henry James’s 1898 novella, The Turn of the Screw.  The novella follows the haunted and disturbing events at a manor in Bly, Essex.  A group of men are being read a manuscript authored by a governess who was charged with the care of the children of the manor, Miles and Flora.  Miles has been mysteriously expelled from school and returns home.  James’s heady novella is arguably the most successful ghost story ever written, at least in terms of creative responses to it.  A cursory glance over IMDb entries reveals over two dozen screen adaptations, and that’s before including filmed versions of the chamber opera of the story by composer Benjamin Britten.  In particular, the last two decades have seen a slew of television adaptations, 2020 itself boasting no less than six screen versions of various kinds.  Adam Scovell  Read much more at https://lithub.com/on-the-most-adapted-ghost-story-of-all-time/ 

The Food and Drug Administration on January 12, 2022 said it is deregulating French dressing for the first time in seven decades.  The federal agency said it revoked the so-called standard of identity for the dressing in response to a petition from the Association for Dressings and Sauces.  The FDA said that by revoking the standard of identity, it "will allow for greater innovation and more flexibility of products on the market."  Danielle Haynes  https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2022/01/12/FDA-French-dressing/5131642019231/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2482  January 14, 2022

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe.  First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere.  It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness.  The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore.  Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further distress the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore".  The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.  Poe claimed to have written the poem logically and methodically, with the intention to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, "The Philosophy of Composition".  The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge:  A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens.  Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship", and makes use of internal rhyme as well as alliteration throughout.  "The Raven" was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845.  Its publication made Poe popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success.  The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. "The Raven" has influenced many modern works, including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1955, Bernard Malamud's "The Jewbird" in 1963 and Ray Bradbury's "The Parrot Who Knew Papa" in 1976.  The process by which Poe composed "The Raven" influenced a number of French authors and composers, such as Charles Baudelaire and Maurice Ravel, and it has been suggested that Ravel's Boléro may have been deeply influenced by "The Philosophy of Composition".  The poem is additionally referenced throughout popular culture in films, television, music, and video games.  The painter Paul Gauguin painted a nude portrait of his teenage wife in Tahiti in 1897 titled Nevermore, featuring a raven perched within the room.  At the time the couple were mourning the loss of their first child together and Gauguin the loss of his favourite daughter back in Europe.  The name of the Baltimore Ravens, a professional American football team, was inspired by the poem.  Chosen in a fan contest that drew 33,288 voters, the allusion honors Poe, who spent the early part of his career in Baltimore and is buried there.  The mantel of the room in which Poe penned "The Raven" was removed and donated to Columbia University before the demolition of the Brennan Farmhouse.  It currently resides at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, on the 6th floor of Butler Library.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven

Painted in 1972, Still Life with Plums is an early example of Roy Lichtenstein’s overt exploration of the history of painting, specifically the tradition of the vanitas that would unfold in his work through the decade.  While Lichtenstein’s early works of the 1960s centered on pulp subject matter proper to a young American culture, with the present work the artist expands his interests to a time-honored artform of European origins.  Since its blossoming as a genre in 16th century Europe, still life painting has offered a moment of quietude by focusing on a sliver of daily life—usually ephemerally beautiful and appetizing objects, such as fruits and flowers.  It typically contrives such scenes as allegorical lessons on the passage of time and the dangers of vanity and indulgence.  Lichtenstein’s attraction to still life is apposite, given Pop’s fascination with both the everyday and veneer of coveted objects.  Michaëla Mohrmann  See picture and description at https://www.pacegallery.com/journal/curators-choice-roy-lichtenstein-still-life-with-plums/ 

Roy Fox Lichtenstein (1923–1997) was an American pop artist.  During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement.  His work defined the premise of pop art through parody.  Inspired by the comic strip, Lichtenstein produced precise compositions that documented while they parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner.  His work was influenced by popular advertising and the comic book style.  His artwork was considered to be "disruptive".  He described pop art as "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting".  https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/roy-lichtenstein-1508 

Through the years, Carmen Sandiego has been more elusive than even the master of disguise, Waldo of Where's Waldo.  The fictional character was the star of the PBS television show, Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, which premiered in September of 1991.  The series even inspired a computer game of the same name.  Players on both the show and the game used their geography and problem-solving skills to help track down the international thief, Carmen.  The woman behind Carmen Sandiego is Janine LaManna.  Appearing as the evasive and stealthy Carmen on PBS was LaManna's break-out role.  She wasn't upset that she was never credited for playing the character, and remembers her time on the television set fondly.  https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2016/08/120360/carmen-sandiego-character-mystery-solved 

Pomona Britannica; or, a Collection of the Most Esteemed Fruits at Present Cultivated in this Country  See images of illustrated book with 90 hand-colored aquatints at https://collections.mfa.org/objects/270559 

January 10, 2022  What’s the 14th-century Leaning Tower of Pisa to impress with its tilt when there’s a modern-day building that slants even more?  San Francisco’s Millennium Tower, one of glitziest residential buildings in the city, is now tilting more than two feet north and west and continues to tilt at a rate of three inches a year because it’s sinking into the ground.  In fact, it has already sunk between 17 and 18 inches.  If the problem isn’t fixed, the building could eventually tilt 40 inches, the maximum it needs to function and most probably for the elevators and plumbing to work.  Located in San Francisco’s financial district at Fremont and Mission Streets and next to the Salesforce Transit Center and a bus terminal, the Millennium Tower is a 58-story, 645-foot-tall tower, and it is the tallest residential building in the city.  It debuted with fanfare in 2009 and has a fair share of illustrious residents including sports figures Joe Montana and Giants outfielder Hunter Pence.  Shivani Vora  See pictures at https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/millennium-tower-san-francisco-leaning 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2481  January 12, 2022

In English there are three articles:  a, an, and the.  Articles are used before nouns or noun equivalents and are a type of adjective.  The definite article (the) is used before a noun to indicate that the identity of the noun is known to the reader.  The indefinite article (a, an) is used before a noun that is general or when its identity is not known.  There are certain situations in which a noun takes no article. http://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/grammar/articles.html

Articles are found in many Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (only the definite article), and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world's major languages including:  Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, many Turkic languages (incl. Tatar, Bashkir, Tuvan and Chuvash), many Uralic languages (incl. Finnic and Saami languages), Indonesian, Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, the Baltic languages, the majority of Slavic languages, the Bantu languages (incl. Swahili) and Yoruba.  In some languages that do have articles, such as some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional; however, in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases.  Find information on proper, partitive, negative, and zero articles at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar) 

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world.  He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such.  The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs.  Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings.  Humpty Dumpty was popularised in the United States on Broadway by actor George L. Fox in the pantomime musical Humpty Dumpty.  The show ran from 1868 to 1869, for a total of 483 performances, becoming the longest-running Broadway show until it was surpassed in 1881 by Hazel Kirke.  As a character and literary allusion, Humpty Dumpty has appeared or been referred to in many works of literature and popular culture, particularly English author Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking-Glass, in which he was described as an egg.  The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026.  Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics.  The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder".  The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder.  See graphics including musical notation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty  See also https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/humpty-dumpty/

Pepin the Short, also called the Younger (c. 714–768) was King of the Franks from 751 until his death in 768.  He was the first Carolingian to become king.  Pepin was succeeded by his sons Charlemagne and Carloman.  Although unquestionably one of the most powerful and successful rulers of his time, Pepin's reign is largely overshadowed by that of his more famous son, Charlemagne.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepin_the_Short

 

“The French do not go insane unless there is some advantage in it.”  “Pippin IV, an uncomfortable bundle of purple velvet and ermine, with the queen, equally befurred, sitting beside him, acknowledged the cheers of the loyal bystanders and responded with equal courtesy to hisses.”  “The first function of business is to create the demand and the second to fulfill it.”  The Short Reign of Pippin IV, a fabrication by John Steinbeck 

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (1902–1968) was an American author and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception."  He has been called "a giant of American letters."  During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories.  He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937).  The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon.  In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck  

Thomas Myles Steinbeck (1944–2016) was a screenwriter, photographer, and journalist.  He published numerous works of fiction, including short stories and novels.  He was the elder son of American novelist John Steinbeck.  John Ernst Steinbeck IV (1946–1991) was an American journalist and author.  He was the second child of the Nobel Prize-winning author John Ernst Steinbeck.  He worked as a journalist for Armed Forces Radio and TV and as a war correspondent for the United States Department of Defense.  Wikipedia 

JANUARY EVENTS 

Virginia Woolf buys a house in Bloomsbury (January 9, 1924) • Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” is published (January 10, 1776) • Intrepid Belgian boy reporter Tintin makes his first appearance in a serialization of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets in the children’s newspaper supplement Le Petit Vingtième (January 10, 1929) • Federico García Lorca’s play The House of Bernarda Alba, which was completed just before his assassination in 1936 (which he predicted in a poem), is performed for the first time in Spain (January 10, 1964) • Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (January 11, 1978) • Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint is published (January 12, 1969) • Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is published under the name Victoria Lucas (January 14, 1963) • Victor Hugo finishes writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame (January 15, 1831)  Literary Hub  January 9, 2022 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2480  January 10, 2022