November 12, 2015 The
House that Julia Built by Peter Sigal
It may come as a surprise to learn that Julia Child, America’s
quintessential French chef, lived in France for only a short time. But from her first breathless arrival in the
fall of 1948 to her departure less than six years later en route to her
husband’s diplomatic posts in Bonn and Oslo, few Americans had immersed
themselves so deeply in the country’s cuisine.
So the thought of leaving France, where she had found her raison d’être,
filled Julia with more than a touch of nostalgia, a rare feeling for a woman
who was always resolutely looking ahead to the next adventure. She and her husband, Paul, consoled
themselves with the thought that “perhaps someday, we dreamed, we’d buy an
apartment in Paris or a house in Provence, and would spend part of every year
here.” The house they did eventually
build in Provence, La Pitchoune, became her link to France, a place she
returned to again and again in her mind and in her recipes. There, in the countryside just north of
Cannes, Paul would paint, take photos and tinker in his wine cellar, and Julia
would shop in the markets and cook with her collaborator, Simca Beck, on whose
property La Pitchoune—or “The Little Thing”—was built. Now La Peetch, as Julia called it, is for
sale on the open market for the first time.
The next owner won’t have to work hard to imagine the Childs’ life
there, as Julia’s kitchen remains largely intact since the last meal she cooked
there, a typically Provençale boeuf en daube, in 1992. The house is, by design, informal, and it sits
lightly on the landscape, tucked into a hillside with views across a shallow
valley to the hill town of Plascassier.
The story of how it came to be built, and how the Childs used it—and
ultimately, walked away from it—reveals much about why Julia remains a beloved
figure today, 11 years after her death at age 92 in 2004. In 1961, Julia and Paul had just returned to
the United States after 13 years abroad.
She could not have anticipated it, but the runaway success of “Mastering
the Art of French Cooking”—her long-gestating foray into “cookery-bookery”—and
the subsequent television show “The French Chef,” were about to make her
America’s first kitchen celebrity. Two
years later, feeling the pull of a constant work schedule “sucking at our
feet,” they flew to France to visit the farmhouse owned by Ms. Beck and her
husband, Jean Fischbacher, who was an engineer at a perfume company in
Paris. There, lulled by warm November
breezes scented by lavender and mimosa, the four struck a handshake deal: Julia and Paul would lease a potato patch
near the farmhouse, where they would build a “simple, modest and
as-maintenance-free-as-possible house.”
Once they no longer had any use for the house, they would return it to Simca
and Jean. They called it the house built
on friendship,” said Alex Prud’homme, Julia Child’s grandnephew, who
collaborated on a memoir, “My Life in France.” La Pitchoune—three small bedrooms, a kitchen
and an open-plan living/dining area in about 140 square meters, or 1,500 square
feet—was finished by New Year’s 1966, and the couples toasted in style with
oysters, foie gras and champagne.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/greathomesanddestinations/the-house-that-julia-built.html
Farther refers
to a greater distance, literal or metaphorical, from a shared measuring
point. Further refers to a greater progress in a shared direction. The root of the confusion around the words
lies in their etymologies. The older of
the two is further, and it
originally didn’t have anything to do with far. In modern English, a comparative is, of
course, formed by adding -er to the end
of a word. Once upon a time—between the
twelfth and the seventeenth centuries, the O.E.D. estimates—there was a
comparative of far in
English, and it was farrer, which no doubt
went extinct because it’s the sort of word that doesn’t roll easily off one’s
tongue unless one is a pirate. Further seems
to have begun life as the comparative of an altogether different word: fore or forth. In other words, further didn’t originally mean “more distant” but
something like “more ahead,” or, as the contemporary O.E.D. puts it, “more
forward, more onward.” Caleb Crain Read more at http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/further-and-farther-a-theory
Top Five Tornado Myths Debunked 1. Opening windows
during a tornado will relieve pressure and save a house from destruction. 2. Seeking
shelter under a highway overpass will protect you from a tornado. 3. A
green sky is an indicator that a tornado is coming. 4. Tornadoes
do not strike in cities. 5. Taking cover in the southwest corner of your
house will protect you from a tornado.
Read more and see graphics at http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/top-five-tornado-myths-debunke/61918
November 1, 2015
Forty strollers were double- and triple-parked on the main floor of
the Fort Washington Library in Upper Manhattan.
As another one came through the door, Velda Asbury waved toward a spot
beside a book stack. Officially, Ms.
Asbury is a library clerk, checking books in and out. But every Wednesday she doubles as a parking
attendant during one of the New York Public Library’s most popular
programs: story time. “Good morning, little people,” she called
out, as the library’s youngest patrons climbed, or were carried, up an old
wooden staircase to the second floor for a 45-minute romp through books and
music. Among parents of the under-5 set,
spots for story time have become as coveted as seats for a hot Broadway show
like “Hamilton.” Lines stretch down the
block at some branches, with tickets given out on a first-come-first-served
basis because there is not enough room to accommodate all of the children who
show up. Workers at the 67th Street
Library on the Upper East Side of Manhattan turn away at least 10 people from
every reading. They have been so
overwhelmed by the rush at story time—held in the branch’s largest room, on the
third floor—that once the space is full, they close the door and shut down the
elevator. In
New York, demand for story time has surged across the city’s three library systems—the
New York
Public Library, the Brooklyn
Public Library, and the Queens
Library—and has posed logistical
challenges for some branches, particularly those in small or cramped
buildings. Citywide, story time
attendance rose to 510,367 people in fiscal year 2015, up nearly 28 percent
from 399,751 in fiscal 2013. The New York Public Library is adding 45 children’s librarians to
support story time and other programs, some of which are run in partnership
with the city government. It has also
designated 20 of its 88 neighborhood branches, including the Fort Washington
Library, as “enhanced literary sites.”
As such, they will double their story time sessions, to an average of
four a week, and distribute 15,000 “family literacy kits” that include a book
and a schedule of story times. Libraries
around the country have expanded story time and other children’s programs in
recent years, attracting a new generation of patrons in an age when online
offerings sometimes make trips to the book stacks unnecessary. Sari Feldman, president of the American
Library Association, said such early-literacy efforts are part of a larger
transformation libraries are undergoing to become active learning centers for
their communities by offering services like classes in English as a second
language, computer skills and career counseling. Ms. Feldman said the increased demand for
story time was a product, in part, of more than a decade of work by the library
association and others to encourage libraries to play a larger role in
preparing young children for school. In
2004, as part of that effort, the association developed a curriculum, “Every Child Ready to Read,”
that she said is now used by thousands of libraries. Winnie Hu http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/nyregion/long-line-at-the-library-its-story-time-again.html?ref=education
One of the ways to form an adjective
is to add the suffix ~ic or ~ical. There is no clear rule about when to use
which. As a rule of thumb, many of the
older nouns have the ~ical adjective, while most of the newer ones have ~ic
suffix. The suffix ~ic or ~ical means
“connected with” in adjectives and nouns or refers to “that performs the action
mentioned” in adjectives. Especially,
nouns that end with “logy” takes “logical” as the suffix when becoming an
adjective. The suffix is derived from
French ~ique (or Latin ~icus or Greek ~ikos).
https://myooka.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/adjectives-beware-of-suffixes-ical-and-ic/
See also http://blog.metrolingua.com/2009/05/ic-vs-ical-distinctions-can-be-fickle.html
A belvedere or belvidere (from Italian for "fair view") is an
architectural structure sited to take advantage of a fine or scenic view. While a belvedere may be built in the upper
part of a building the actual structure can be of any form, whether a turret, a cupola, or an open gallery. Or it may be a separate pavilion in a garden, or the term may be used
for a paved terrace with a good viewpoint, but no actual building. It may also be used for a whole building, as
in the Belvedere, Vienna, a huge palace, or Belvedere Castle, a folly in
New York. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belvedere_(structure)
Find many uses of the word belvedere including place names and
people at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belvedere
Odd Day--11/13/15-- is the last date with
consecutive odd numbers for 90 years (until Jan. 3, 2105 or 1/3/5). Ron Gordon, a retired school
teacher from Redwood, Calif., created a whole website about it: Oddday.net. He has discovered several
interesting oddities in the calendar, and he has websites for those too. They include Square Root Day (4/4/16)
and Trumpet Day (2/2/22 or "to to to tooo," get it?). And yes, there's a Ladybug Day too. It was 10/11/12, based on a Sesame Street song called The
Ladybugs' Picnic that uses
10/11/12 in the refrain. Kelly
Lecker
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/11/13/odd-day.html
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/11/13/odd-day.html
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1378
November 16, 2015 On this date in
1750, Edward
Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough, English lawyer, judge, and politician, Lord
Chief Justice of England and Wales, was born. On this date in 1895, Paul Hindemith, German violinist, composer,
and conductor, was born.
