Tabula rasa is a Latin phrase often translated as "blank slate" in English and originates from the Roman tabula used for notes, which was blanked by heating the wax and then smoothing it.  This roughly equates to the English term "blank slate" (or, more literally, "erased slate") which refers to the emptiness of a slate prior to it being written on with chalk.  Both may be renewed repeatedly, by melting the wax of the tablet or by erasing the chalk on the slate.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa

There’s no “chalant,” just “nonchalant.”  Only the negative form of the word has found a home in English.  As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, “nonchalant” was borrowed from French sometime before 1734.  It’s defined as meaning “calm and casual; (deliberately) lacking in enthusiasm or interest; indifferent, unconcerned.”  Its roots are the negative prefix non and the verb chaloir (earlier chaler), meaning to interest or to be important.  The third edition of Pat’s grammar and usage book Woe Is I includes a section about words like these.  We’ll quote the passage:  “Some words are sourpusses.  They’re negative through and through, and have no positive counterparts.  I’m thinking of words like unkempt, inept, disgruntled, and uncouth.  We might joke about looking ‘kempt’ or being ‘couth,’ but in fact the negatives have no opposite forms—they’re either obsolete rarities or whimsical inventions.  “Other negatives with nonexistent or obscure opposite numbers include debunk, disappointing, disconcerting, disconsolate, disheveled, dismayed, immaculate, impeccable, inadvertent, incapacitated, inclement, incognito, incommunicado, incorrigible, indefatigable, inevitable, indomitable, insipid, misnomer, mistake, nonchalant, noncommittal, nondescript, nonpareil, nonplussed, unassuming, unbeknownst, ungainly, and unwieldy.  “Some similar words without opposite versions may look like negatives, but they aren’t.  Their negative-looking prefixes (imand in) emphasize or intensify instead. Actually, intensify and instead are among these words, and so are insure, impromptu, inscribe, and inflammable.”  https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/12/nonchalant.html

Recipes for soft rolls

Belfast Baps    https://www.bigoven.com/recipe/belfast-baps/37095

British Baps  https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/10/traditional-british-baps-recipe.html

Scottish Baps  http://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/scottish-baps-soft-morning-bread-rolls-302697

October 5, 2017  Five years after renovations began, LeFrak has wrapped up a $70 million revamp at LeFrak City, the firm’s massive, 4,600-unit master-planned community in Corona, Queens.  The revamp of the 1960s complex, a neighborhood of 20 16-story towers that houses roughly 15,000 residents, was masterminded by Rosen Johnson Architects.  It includes a laundry list of upgrades like renovated lobbies and corridors; new parking decks and lighting; apartment upgrades; various infrastructure improvements like work on facades, roofs, and boilers; and green initiatives like solar panels.  LeFrak’s outdoor spaces have gotten a tune-up, too, by Matthew Neilsen Landscape Architects.  And then there’s a whole new slate of recreational facilities, including a new resident-only pool, a soccer field, tennis court and basketball court, a putting green, ping pong and foosball tables, picnic tables, and playgrounds.  There’s another, more futuristic addition, too, the New York Post reports:  a four-foot-tall robot has recently joined the complex’s security team.  It’s the first robot in the city with such a gig.  (It acts as a roving security camera, but also says hello.)  According to the Post, LeFrak City is 98 percent full owing to standard turnover.  Rents range from $1,900 for a one-bedroom to $2,800 for a three-bedroom with a terrace.  Rachel Sugar  https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/5/16430222/corona-queens-lefrak-city-renovation-pool

Scotland Orange Cake by Kim Nelson   "One summer, my family and I went on vacation to Scotland, where I ate haggis every day and enjoyed truly the best fish-and-chips in the world in the lovely little seaside town of Anstruther.  On the short drive from Anstruther back to St. Andrews, a pasture full of Holstein-Friesian cows caught our eye.  We just had to stop.  Turns out, they were grazing in the pasture of a dairy that had a restaurant.  Stuffed though we may have been, we just couldn’t keep ourselves from buying some fresh cheeses and several desserts.  This one was our favorite.  Thank you for the recipe, St. Andrews Farmhouse Cheese Company!"  Find recipe for the 12-inch cake at https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/scotland-orange-cake?utm_campaign=TST_Weekend_20180317&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_Newsletter&utm_content=   Reprinted from Daisy Cakes Bakes  Copyright © 2018 by Kim Nelson.

hench  adjective  British   informal   (of a man) strong, fit, and having well-developed muscles.  Origin  Early 21st century:  perhaps from henchman.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hench

                                                                                            

The Singing Tree is a children's novel by Kate Seredy, the sequel to The Good Master.  Also illustrated by Seredy, it was a Newbery Honor book in 1940.  Set in rural Hungary four years after The Good Master, it continues the story of Kate and Jancsi, showing the effect of World War I on the people and land.  The Singing Tree was well received when it came out. Horn Book Magazine included it on its Fanfare list of the best books of 1939.  Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review for "books of remarkable merit", saying it "might well be a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Peace.  It has all the charm in text and pictures of its predecessor, The Good Master, and more mature technique.  Story movingly told, skillfully interweaving incident and idea."  Inspired by Kate Seredy's book, artist Laurie Marshall founded the Singing Tree Project in 2000 when 8-year-old Meredith Miller asked her "What if the whole world made a painting together?"  Having no clue how to undertake such an exciting and daunting project, Marshall read Kate Seredy's central story of a single tree left standing in World War I with birds who are not usually together singing a song that had never been heard before.  She saw that the earth is like the Singing Tree of the galaxy, surrounded by no life for billions of miles.  Humans can choose to destroy each other and the planet, or create something beautiful that has never been heard before. The model of a tree on the earth in space became the underlying structure for the collaborative Singing Tree mural process.  Over 17,000 people from 50 countries have created an international Singing Tree Forest of 46 murals so far.  Singing Trees are a visual model of democracy and a vehicle for peace building.  The project adheres to three principals of nature:  It is replicable.  It has a clear goal with local conditions determining the form.  It is based on interdependence.  Each Singing Tree is a different conversation about an issue that is of importance to the community.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singing_Tree

The Singing Tree  Daniel Dancer  A school in Morgantown, West Virginia, completes a beautiful tree of life emerging from the Earth.  First the poles melt, then the fruit falls and then the leaves blow away and finally the tree comes apart . . .  all a depiction of what happens when we don't take care of the Earth.  https://vimeo.com/115445386  10:19

American Patrick Reed has won the 2018 Masters by one stroke after he shot a final-round 71 to finish at -15 overall.  Rickie Fowler finished second at -14 after a final-round 67, while Jordan Spieth shot 64 to finish third at -13.  After shooting 67 on April 7, 2018, the 27-year-old Reed entered the final round with a three-shot lead over Rory McIlroy.  Reed shot even-par on the front nine and one-under on the back, and managed to keep his nose in front of a stacked leaderboard that included some of the game's biggest stars.  After Fowler birdied the 18th, Reed came to the last knowing he needed a par for the title.  His drive finished just short of a fairway bunker and his approach finished about 30 feet above the pin, leaving a very quick putt.  He cozied his birdie effort up to about three feet past the hole then sank the par putt for the victory.  It is Reed's first major championship and sixth PGA Tour win.  Daniel Rapaport  Link to videos at https://www.si.com/golf/2018/04/08/patrick-reed-2018-masters-champion

Phrases Not Allowed at The Masters posted by Todd Robbins  See list of 21 banned phrases at https://98txt.iheart.com/content/2018-04-06-phrases-not-allowed-at-the-masters/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1871  April 9, 2018 

The Eagle by ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.  The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45322/the-eagle-56d224c9a41d1

Costa Rica Marinated Tomatoes

Arrange 4 peeled and sliced tomatoes in a shallow dish.  Combine 1/4 c. oil, 1 tbsp. lime juice, 1/2 tsp. minced garlic, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. oregano leaves.  Pour over tomatoes.  Cover and chill.

"That's the thing about scandal:  It doesn't matter if it's all lies, it still sticks to you."  Murder on the Serpentine by Anne Perry, 32nd novel in the Victorian crime series featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. 

Ferdinand-Sigismond Bach, known as Ferdinand Bac, (1859-1952) was a French cartoonist, artist and writer, son of an illegitimate nephew of the Emperor Napoleon.  As a young man, he mixed in the fashionable world of Paris of the Belle Époque, and was known for his caricatures, which appeared in popular journals.   also traveled widely in Europe and the Mediterranean.  In his fifties, he began a career as a landscape gardener.  The gardens that he created at Les Colombières in Menton on the French Riviera are now designated as a Monument Historique.  He also wrote voluminously about social, historical and political subjects, but his work has been largely forgotten.   Bac was forced into exile in 1940 and saw some of his work go up in smoke in 1944.   Worried by the idea of dying too young, he strove to leave some of his work in numerous museums and libraries, including the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris, Municipal Library in Menton and Bibliothèque Cessole in Nice.  Each paper is annotated with his hand.  Ferdinand Bac died in Compiègne on 18 November 1952, aged 93, surviving his friend Émile Ladan-Bockairy by three days. Ladan-Bockairy's wife lived on for several years.  The tombs of the three friends are contained in a mausoleum in the garden at Les Colombières.  The house and garden were classified as historic monuments on 3 October 1991.  As of 2013 they were privately owned.  The Villa Croisset and its gardens were largely destroyed by 1975.  Some traces of the upper, north-east portion of the garden remains, including an arch and the chapel.  A school in Compiègne bears Bac's name.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Bac  

See also Sotheby's Ferdinand Bac Villa at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EENBl9VEwwQ  3:24

In 2016, comic book artist Phil Hester began a new series called Shipwreck at his home studio in North English, Iowa.  Surrounded by shelves packed with superhero anthologies, caped action figures, and awards spanning a prolific career, he sketched the story of a scientist who survives a mysterious crash and is marooned in a nightmarish new world.  Hester could relate.  For more than 30 years, he had illustrated some of the biggest names in comics—Green Arrow, Batman, and nearly every other masked hero in the DC and Marvel universes.  But now, his shades drawn and lights dimmed, the blue-eyed artist squinted at his drawing board as if through a fog.  Just as Shipwreck’s hero, Dr. Jonathon Shipwright, was trapped in a surreal universe, Hester’s world was increasingly unrecognizable.  A year earlier, Hester had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and made strides to turn his health around.  He stopped working until all hours of the night, made time to exercise, and shed 75 pounds.  Then, another part of his body began to fail him.  A progressive eye disease known as Fuchs’ dystrophy had laid siege to his vision—each day hazier than the last.  It distorted his eyesight and made bright light excruciating.   Fuchs’ dystrophy causes fluid to build up within the cornea, the transparent layer that covers the front of the eye, resulting in the tissue swelling and thickening.  It’s a relatively common condition that affects about 4 percent of people over age 40, and while there’s no cure, it can be treated.  Hester’s case, however, was rapidly advancing, and University of Iowa doctors drew up an aggressive strategy:  a corneal transplant using donor tissue from the Iowa Lions Eye Bank, a nonprofit affiliated with the hospital and the UI Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences.  Once it was clear the initial procedure was a success, UI clinical ophthalmology professor  and medical director of the Iowa Lions Eye Bank Kenneth Goins performed the second transplant that fall.  The results were “magical,” says Hester.  His vision fully restored, he calls drawing the third issue of Shipwreck—and the many comics to follow—a three-person collaboration.  “That includes my two donors,” Hester says.  Read extensive article by Josh O'Leary and see graphics at http://magazine.foriowa.org/story.php?ed=true&storyid=1731

In the opening scene of Kaethe Schwehn’s debut novel The Rending and the Nest, the book’s narrator, Mira, scales a towering scrap heap called the Pile to scavenge for useful items in a bleak, post-apocalyptic world.  With 95 percent of Earth’s population having vanished in an event known as the Rending, Mira is a member of a surrogate family fighting for survival in a ramshackle village.  Schwehn’s dystopian setting wasn’t borne entirely from her imagination.  In her early 20s, before she arrived at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the author spent a year living at a Lutheran village in a remote region of the Cascade Mountains in Washington.  In search of an idyllic retreat, Schwehn instead found a landscape scarred by copper mining, a harsh winter that dumped 354 inches of snowfall, and an isolated community of about 65 people who, like her, were grappling with complicated pasts and uncertain futures.  Like the Pile of her fictional village of Zion, the real-life mountain community sat alongside mounds of mining debris that stretched hundreds of feet high.  Schwehn mined that chapter of her life in a 2014 book titled Tailings:  A Memoir.  It also serves as a reference point for her new book, which similarly explores themes of community, faith, and the importance of telling your own story.  http://magazine.foriowa.org/story.php?ed=true&storyid=1718  The Rending and the Nest was published in February 2018 by Bloomsbury USA.

Anguilla is a British overseas territory in the Caribbean.  It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin.  The territory consists of the main island of Anguilla, approximately 16 miles (26 km) long by 3 miles (4.8 km) wide at its widest point, together with a number of much smaller islands and cays with no permanent population.  The island's capital is The Valley.  The total land area of the territory is 35 square miles (91 km²), with a population of approximately 14,764 (2016 estimate).  The name Anguilla is an anglicised or latinate form of earlier Spanish anguila meaning "eel" in reference to the island's shape.  For similar reasons, it was also known as Snake or Snake Island.   Anguilla was first settled by Indigenous Amerindian peoples who migrated from South America.  The earliest Native American artefacts found on Anguilla have been dated to around 1300 bc; remains of settlements date from ad 600.  Sociohistorical information from Anguilla's archives suggest that Africans and Europeans formed two distinct, but perhaps overlapping speech communities in the early phases of the island's colonisation.  "Anguillian" is believed to have emerged as the language of the masses as time passed, slavery was abolished and locals began to see themselves as "belonging" to Anguillian society.   There are six government primary schools, one government secondary school (Albena Lake Hodge Comprehensive School), and two private schools.  There is a single library, the Edison L. Hughes Education & Library Complex of the Anguilla Public Library.  A branch of the Saint James School of Medicine was established in 2011 in Anguilla.  It is a private, for-profit medical school headquartered in Park Ridge, Illinois.  The island's burgeoning musical community made history with the recording of Sounds of Anguilla (Volume 1), the first album ever composed solely of artists from a single Caribbean island representing multiple musical genres:  pop, reggae, hip-hop, soca music and R&B.  The album, featuring Anguillian musicians such as Bankie Banx, Amalia Watty, True Intentions and Gerswin Lake and The Parables, was released on iTunes in June 2015.   Link to Music of Anguilla article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguilla

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, and sanity.  Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target's belief.  Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.  The term owes its origin to the 1938 Patrick Hamilton play Gas Light,  known as Angel Street in the United States, and its 1940 and 1944 film adaptations.  The term has been used in clinical and research literature, as well as in political commentary.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslig

If we didn't have apostrophes, how could we tell we'll from well and he'll from hell?  from a poem written by Donna Gallagher

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1870  April 6, 2018 

From:  Anu Garg  Subject:  Pangramania  Thank you for your enthusiastic feedback for the new Pangram Finder.  So far A.Word.A.Day readers have found the shortest pangram in any book to be Catch-22 by Joseph Heller:  “Colonel Korn gave Major Danby’s shoulder a friendly squeeze without changing his unfriendly expression.” (88 letters)

From:  Eric Chaikin  Subject:  pangrams  Here’s an article on pangram windows I wrote for Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics a few years back.  It mentions the discovery of what at the time was the shortest known “naturally occurring” window (47 letters) which I found on an online movie review site:  “JoBlo’s mo(vie review of The Yards: Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Charliz)e Theron...”.  This was subsequently beaten by computer searches of both the Twittersphere and the Google corpus, setting the record at 36 letters.  Ben Zimmer’s 2014 article summarizes these.  But last week I discovered a 123-letter window in the lyrics of David Bowie’s “All the Young Dudes”:  . . . Freddy’s got spots from rip(ping off stars from his face Funky little boat race The television man is crazy Saying we’re juvenile delinquent wrecks Man, I need a TV when I’ve got T. Rex)

From:  Dharam Vir  Subject:  Pangram  Saving newborn planets from a fiery demise is just one step in the quest to understand cool earth-sized, earth-like extrasolar planetary systems.  I am from Astronomy and Astrophysics research field.  We are used to seeing appealing long titles for manuscripts so that they are picked, (not necessarily) read and cited.  Credit to above pangram goes to “Wandering Worlds - Saving newborn planets from a fiery demise is just one step in the quest to understand the mysterious planetary systems around other stars” (1663, Los Alamos Science and Technology Magazine, March 2011).  I had to add and delete just the right amount.

A xebec, also spelled zebec, was a Mediterranean sailing ship that was used mostly for trading.  It would have a long overhanging bowsprit and aft-set mizzen mast.  The term can also refer to a small, fast vessel of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, used almost exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xebec

Mary Oliver was born on September 10, 1935, in Maple Heights, Ohio.  As a teenager, she lived briefly in the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, where she helped Millay’s family sort through the papers the poet left behind.  In the mid-1950s, Oliver attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College, though she did not receive a degree.  Her first collection of poems, No Voyage, and Other Poems, was published in 1963.  Since then, she has published numerous books, including Blue Horses (Penguin Press, 2014); A Thousand Mornings (Penguin Press, 2012); Swan: Poems and Prose Poems (Beacon Press, 2010); Red Bird (2008); Thirst (2006); Why I Wake Early(2004); Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays (2003); Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems (Mariner Books, 1999); West Wind (1997); White Pine (1994); New and Selected Poems (1992), which won the National Book Award; House of Light(1990), which won the Christopher Award and the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award; and American Primitive (1983), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.  The first part of her book-length poem The Leaf and the Cloud (Da Capo Press, 2000) was selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 1999 and the second part, “Work," was selected for The Best American Poetry 2000.  Her books of prose include Long Life: Essays and Other Writings (2004); Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse (Mariner Books, 1998); Blue Pastures (1995); and A Poetry Handbook (1994).  Her honors include an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001.  https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/mary-oliver  See also What Mary Oliver’s Critics Don’t Understand by Ruth Franklin at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/what-mary-olivers-critics-dont-understand

General tips for cooking grains such as quinoa, millet, rice, bulgur, sorghum*, barley*, rye berries*

Rinse grains, cook in a covered pot until tender in double the amount of water mixed with a little salt.  Remove from heat and let stand covered 10 minutes.  Fluff with fork.  Use immediately or spread on a rimmed baking sheet to cool.  *Stir occasionally.  Martha Stewart Living magazine  April 2018   Check your package or cook book for times for each grain.

Rudolf Hell was a manufacturer of teleprinter, fax and cipher machines, based in Kiel (Germany).  The company was founded in 1929 by Rudolf Hell, one of Germany's most important and most productive inventors of the previous century.  Rudolf Hell was born in 1901 and invented his first device, the so-called Hellschreiber in 1925.  It was patented in 1929 when he started his own company in Babelsberg, Berlin (Germany).  Rudolf Hell is also the inventor and patent-holder of the modern Fax (1956), a colour scanner (1963) and a CRT-based computer typesetter (Datensichtgerät, 1965).  Computer-based typesetters would be used by the printing industry for the next several decades, and is now commonly known as Desktop Publishing (DTP).  Hell died in 2002 at the age of 100.  http://www.cryptomuseum.com/manuf/hell/index.htm  See also http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/rudolf-hell-9269189.html and https://www.thocp.net/biographies/hell_rudolf.htm

Queen Victoria's Isle of Wight mansion   In 1845, describing her favourite royal estate, Victoria wrote:  'We have quite a charming beach to ourselves.  It is impossible to imagine a prettier spot.'  Victoria and her husband Prince Albert's love of the beach at Osborne Bay was one of their main motives for buying Osborne House from Lady Isabella Blachford in October 1845.  Albert chose to knock down the small Osborne House in place when they took over the estate to make way for his own design, in the style of an Italian Renaissance palazzo.  The work to rebuild the main private residence was carried out by London architect and builder, Thomas Cubitt, whose company built the main facade of Buckingham Palace for the royal couple in 1847.  After Victoria's death in 1901, Edward VII gave Osborne House to the nation as a memorial to his mother and part of Osborne became a convalescent home for officers.  In 1903, a Royal Navy College was set up at Osborne House to train cadets.  In 1989, Osborne was reopened to the public with new exhibitions on show including the recreated royal nursery suite, Queen Victoria's private beach and new presentations at the Swiss Cottage.  Today, it remains under the care of English Heritage and is deemed a tourist attraction, often hosting picnic-style concerts on the lawn or allowing for cottages within the estate to be rented out as holiday homes.  Emma Glanfield  See many pictures at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3270825/Inside-Queen-Victoria-s-Isle-Wight-residence-convalescent-home-military-officers-Robert-Graves-AA-Milne-treated.html

The Isle of Wight is part of the historic county of Hampshire.  It lies off the south coast of England, in the English Channel.  The island is separated from the mainland by a deep strait known as The Solent.  The Isle of Wight is diamond-shaped and extends 22.5 miles (36 km) from east to west and 13.5 miles (22 km) from north to south.  The backbone of the island is formed by a chalkridge that extends across the entire breadth of the island, from Culver Cliff in the east to The Needles in the west.  The ridge is the thickest bed of chalk in the British Isles.  https://www.britannica.com/place/Isle-of-Wight

"Make this tasty homemade chili sauce in a flash with ingredients you will have already in your cabinets.  Definitely less expensive than prepared, and you can adjust to your liking.  Keep covered and refrigerated between uses."  Find recipe by Karen at https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/237906/homemade-chili-sauce/

Most Indigenous languages in Australia likely originated from a remote spot in far north Queensland as recently as 4,000 years ago, before slowly spreading across the country, a new study has claimed.  The paper, published in the journal Nature on March 13, 2018 mapped the origins of the Pama-Nyungan family of languages, which encompasses about 90% of the continent.  It traced the dominant family of languages back to an area near an isolated place known today as Burketown.  Helen Davidson  https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/14/most-australian-indigenous-languages-came-from-just-one-place-research-claims

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1869  April 4, 2018

What's the meaning of the phrase 'Before you could say Jack Robinson'?  In a very short time; suddenly.  It is known that the phrase was in circulation by the end of the 18th century as Mme. Frances D'Arblay (Fanny Burney) used it then in her romantic novel Evelina, or the history of a young lady's entrance into the world in 1778.  The lexicographer Francis Grose had the advantage of working around the time that the phrase appears to have been coined and he believed that the derivation related to an actual person.  Grose's 1811 edition of the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue defines 'Jack Robinson' thus:  "Before one could say Jack Robinson; a saying to express a very short time, originating from a very volatile gentleman of that appellation, who would call on his neighbours, and be gone before his name could be announced."  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/jack-robinson.html

From BookPage April 2018:  Tony Hillerman's daughter, Anne, inherited the Leaphorn-Chee franchise, and has brought female characters to the forefront in the Navaho-influenced mysteries.  *  Honoring the centenary of Mickey Spillane's birth, The Last Stand contains one of Spillane's earliest unpublished novellas, completed by Max Alan Collins, paired with Spillane's last completed novel.  *  For National Poetry Month, we pick a quartet of new poetry collections--Not Here by Hieu Minh Nguyen, Wade in the Water by U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, Blue Rose by California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes, and Night School by Carl Dennis.

Cauliflower Raita (Cauliflower in Yogurt)

Cook cauliflower until tender in salted water.  Drain and chill.  Mix with yogurt, and sprinkle cumin over top.  Thinly sliced cucumbers and onions may be substituted for cauliflower.

April is National Poetry Month

Robert Seymour Bridges was born on October 23, 1844, in Walmer, Kent, England.  He enrolled in Eton College in 1854 and started writing poetry.  In 1863, he enrolled at Corpus Christi College at Oxford University, where he met Gerard Manley Hopkins, who he would remain friends with until Hopkins’s death in 1889.  Bridges would also become Hopkins’s literary executor, collecting and editing his friend’s poems for publication after his death.  In 1869, Bridges registered as a student at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.  After he initially failed his medical exams in 1873, Bridges spent part of his summer studying medicine in Dublin.  That same year, he published his first book of poems, Poems (Pickering, 1873), and he received his MB the following year.  Bridges continued working at St. Bartholomew’s and other hospitals until 1881, when he retired after contracting a case of pneumonia.  He spent the rest of his life in nearly unbroken domestic seclusion, devoting himself to the writing and studying of poetry.  During his prolific period of domestic seclusion, Bridges published several long poems, dramas, and poetry collections, some of which contained his experiments using a meter based on syllables rather than accents.  Many of his most popular verses are collected in The Shorter Poems of Robert Bridges (George Bell & Sons, 1890).  In 1913, Bridges was named poet laureate of England, a position he held until his death.   He also helped found the Society for Pure English, an organization of literary figures and linguistic scholars who sought to preserve the “purity” of the English language.  Bridges remained a bestselling poet throughout the 1920s.  Bridges died in his home in Boars Hill, England, on April 21, 1930.  https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/robert-bridges  Robert Seymour Bridges was Britain's poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.

The whimsical world of Lewis Carroll may be best known through his novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, but his poetry is infused with the same clever word play and imagination for which his novels are regarded.  Lewis Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson in 1832 in the parsonage of Daresbury in Cheshire,  England. The third of eleven children of Charles Dodgson and Frances Jane Lutwidge, young Charles was the oldest boy.  A precocious student, young Charles applied himself especially well to mathematics, eventually winning the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he was able to hold for the following twenty-six years.  As Charles Dodgson, he wrote many books and articles about mathematics.  It was poetry, however, that Charles was drawn to even more than mathematics.  He published his first poem, “Solitude” in 1856 under the pseudonym he would become famous for--“Lewis Carroll.”  His arrival at his pseudonym belied the talent that Lewis Carroll would be known for; Lewis is an English version of the name Ludovicus (Latin for Lutwidge), whereas Carroll is an English version of Carolus, which is Latin for Charles.   Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have become classics.  Although not books of poetry, both books did feature poetry.  Link to poems at https://mypoeticside.com/poets/lewis-carroll-poems

In November 2017, best-selling writer Brian Michael Bendis set tongues to wagging in the comic book world when he announced that he would be joining DC Entertainment as part of a “multifaceted” deal.  Bendis’ first DC story will be with fan-favorite artist Jim Lee in ACTION COMICS #1000 (on sale April 18, 2018), but this is only the beginning when it comes to his relationship with Krypton’s Last Son.  On May 30, Bendis debuts MAN OF STEEL, a six-issue weekly miniseries.  Featuring six interconnected covers by Ivan Reis and Joe Prado, this series will shake up the classic story of Krypton’s final days and Kal-El’s path to becoming an iconic hero, introducing a new villain that knows a terrifying secret behind the destruction of Superman’s homeworld.  https://www.supermanhomepage.com/brian-michael-bendis-taking-over-action-com

Sitting among an eclectic assortment of art while listening to poets reading from their chapbooks is the atmosphere that founder Jonie McIntire desired for Art & Soul.  Founded in July 2017, the once-a-month event has featured accomplished poets from Toledo, Detroit and Columbus.  The unique venue provides an intimate setting where poets are treated as true performers and audience members enjoy a night of enrichment.  Art & Soul became a new addition to Cricket West in Toledo last summer.  A local gallery, full of art available for purchase, McIntire, a local writer, noticed the new neighborhood addition and saw an opportunity.  The owners of Art & Soul loved the idea of hosting events and now the series has grown to attract 20 or more people each month.  A goal of the Art & Soul series is to treat poetry readings like true performances.  “What differentiates this event is that it is not an open-mic.  We want it to be a nice, intimate setting, where poets get 30 minutes each and it feels like you’ve gone to a show,” McIntire said.  McIntire has had a hand in creating other series’, like the Uncloistered Series, which occurs on the second Sunday of every month at Calvino’s restaurant.  “The Uncloistered Series features four or five poets and then transitions to an open-mic night,” she said.  This series regularly attracts 40 or so people and has featured poets from other parts of Ohio, as well as Michigan, Georgia and Texas.  AUDREY BLAUFUSS 

http://toledocitypaper.com/art/art-soul-an-intimate-gathering-of-poets-and-visual-arts/

On a shelf just behind the reference desk at the Harmon branch of the Phoenix Public Library, are small pouches of seeds.  Like the books and DVDs, they’re available to check out.  The library allows visitors to take a few packets of the vegetable and flower seeds home for free just by showing their library card.  “It’s innovative, it’s different, it’s another way for people to interact with the library,” says Lee Franklin, the library’s spokesperson.  “It’s been really well received.”  The Phoenix Public Library first put seeds on the shelves at one of its branches in 2014.  Franklin says they were immediately in high demand.  Now the library distributes an average of 1,000 seed packets per month across nine of its 17 branches.  Franklin says the program has proven to be sustainable with minimal costs—around $300-$500 to bring a seed-sharing program to a new branch of the library.  And, Franklin says, the organizational tasks of offering seeds fit seamlessly with the library’s existing cataloguing system.  The Phoenix Public Library is not alone.  Hundreds of public libraries around the U.S. have adopted similar initiatives to offer free seeds to library-goers.  Seed-sharing programs aim to expand access to crops and educate the public, while also protecting scarce agricultural resources.  Katherine Davis-Young  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/public-seed-library

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1868  April 3, 2018 

From April to September, 2014 Argentinian artist Amalia Ulman  created a character she portrayed on main social media platforms to see what were the things that engaged people and how they interacted with the fake lifestyle she showed.  Ulman called her performance Excellences & Perfections.  Basically, she studied the profiles most people tend to look up more.  With this, she determined that there were basically three main profiles that encompass the ultimate “Instagram girl” that is copied by many and generates more engagement from SM users:  the “cute girl,” the “sugar baby,” and the “living goddess.”  Once she got the elements of her personification and understood the requirements of these profiles, she devoted herself for five months creating a believable narrative to publish on her different platforms and replicate how people, more specifically women, present themselves online and how they’re seen as well.  The Amalia from social media went through extremely relatable events in her life.  She first moved to the city and documented the craziness of adapting to this new and rushed lifestyle.  She broke up with her boyfriend, with whom she had had a very long relationship, so you could find sad quotes and posts about growing from these experiences (accompanied, of course, by really cool pictures of her new life as a single, young, and beautiful woman).  She would go back to depressive states of being in which she did drugs (and openly documented pictures of this stage) and decided to have plastic surgery to make herself feel better.  This and the drugs naturally generated some ranting on social media, but she apologized to her followers, who took her back as soon as her life seemed to be getting better.  All in all by the end of her project she ended up getting around forty thousand followers who would avidly comment or like her many publications.  Maria Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards  Read more and see pictures at https://culturacolectiva.com/photography/amalia-ulman-excellences-and-perfections/  See also Amalia Ulman's Instagram art hoax exposed the flaws in selfie culture by Alicia Eler at https://www.cnn.com/style/article/amalia-ulman-instagram-excellences-perfections/index.html

In His Own Write is a nonsensical book by John Lennon first published on 23 March 1964.  It consists of short stories and poems, and line drawings, often surreal in nature.  The book was the first solo project by one of the members of the Beatles in any creative medium.  It was followed in 1965 by A Spaniard in the Works.  The book was transformed into a play, co-authored with Victor Spinetti, who directed, at the National Theatre, premiering on 18 June 1968, at the Old Vic.  Actor/director Jonathan Glew produced a three-handed adaptation of the book that premiered as a pay-what-you-want show at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_His_Own_Write

The first house completed by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí opened to the public in autumn 2017, following a major restoration.  Featuring colourful tiles and ornate details, Casa Vicens was built by Gaudí between 1883 and 1885, as a summer home for real-estate broker Manel Vicens i Montaner.  Not only was it the first house built by the Catalan modernist, it was also his first completed building in Barcelona, where he went on to create masterpieces including Casa Batlló, Park Güell and the still yet-to-complete Sagrada Família.  Casa Vicens is one of eight projects that the architect built in or near Barcelona that are recognised by UNESCO as world heritage sites, and the last to open to the public.  Amy Frearson  See wonderful pictures at https://www.dezeen.com/2017/05/25/antoni-gaudi-first-house-casa-vicens-restoration-museum-barcelona/

March 12, 2018  from Anu Garg:  This week marks 24 years of Wordsmith.org.  It was on March 14 in 1994 that I started what grew into this organization with members in more than 170 countries.  There’s no word for a 24-year anniversary, but we can coin one:  quadrivicennial, from quadri- (four) + vicenary (relating to 20 years).  Words which follow the pattern verb + noun to describe a person  have been called tosspot words.

scofflaw   (SKOF-law)  noun  One who displays contempt for the law, especially in minor violations, such as failure to pay parking tickets.   A combination of scoff (to mock), from Middle English scof + law, from Old English lagu, from Old Norse (lagu), plural of lag (something laid or fixed).  Earliest documented use:  1924.  It’s not often that a word coined as a result of a competition becomes part of the language, but scofflaw did.  During Prohibition, banker Delcevare King of Quincy, Massachusetts announced a contest to coin a word to describe “a lawless drinker”. 

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day  The tosspot contest brought in more than 400 entries.  A tosspot word has the form:  verb + object, e.g. pickpocket.  Winners, in no particular order, are:

Scoffpunk:  Someone who displays contempt for punctuation and uses all the various forms in ways they shouldn’t be used, such as, quotations for emphasis or apostrophes for plurals.
Sonia Lyris

Shirkirk:  Someone who evades from going to church (as s/he is supposed to); the meaning may even be stretched to mean someone who avoids wedlock (by the church in particular).
Aqua  Para
Swirlpate  A vain man who, in an attempt to deny his true age, tries to hide his natural baldness by growing a long thin fringe of his remaining hair and artfully arranging it in a swirl over his hairless pate, deceiving no one but himself.  Such men have a theme song:  “We Shall Over-Comb!”  Joel Mabus

Delcevare King, a bank­er whose vigorous support of Prohibition led to the coining of the word “scofflaw,” died March 22, 1964 at the age of 89.  In 1923 Mr. King gained the nation's attention by offering $200 in gold for a new word best describing “the lawless drinker.”  “Scofflaw,” the entry of Miss Kate L. Butler of Dor­chester, Mass., was chosen over 25,000 others.  Mr. King, the su­perintendent of the Anti-Saloon League of America and a Bos­ton minister were the judges.  The word “scoff­ law” has lost much of its orig­inal meaning, and is now prin­cipally applied to those who ig­nore parking tickets.  Mr. King was a graduate of Harvard, class of ‘95.  Among his varied crusades was one to get the university color, crim­son, into the colors of the in­dividual classes.  He also fought a lonely battle in support of playing visiting teams’ school songs at Harvard football games.  On another occasion he took exception to the glorifica­tion of drinking in the song "Johnny Harvard."  Among the other causes Mr. King had pursued were a cam­paign to get President Coolidge to cut down his social activi­ties, a drive to introduce Esperanto as a second language in America and a project to draft Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1956.  Encouraged by his successful "scofflaw” contest, Mr. King offered a prize of $10 in 1933 for the best rallying cry for the National Recovery Admin­istration.  The winner, “N.R.A. Saves Us,” did not have the endurance of the previous choice. 

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/22/delcevare-king-banker-89-dead.html

 National Library Week (April 8- 14, 2018) is a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation's libraries and library workers and to promote library use and support.  From free access to books and online resources for families to library business centers that help support entrepreneurship and retraining, libraries offer opportunity to all.  The theme for 2018 National Library Week is "Libraries Lead," and American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer Misty Copeland will serve as 2018 National Library Week Honorary Chair.  National Library Week 2018 will mark the 60th anniversary of the first event, sponsored in 1958.  This national celebration is sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and observed in libraries across the country each April.  All types of libraries--school, public, academic and special--participate every year in National Library Week.  April:  School Library Month  Monday, April 9  The 2017 State of America's Libraries Report is released  Tuesday, April 10:  National Library Workers Day  Wednesday, April 11:  National Bookmobile Day  Thursday, April 12  Take Action for Libraries Day  http://www.ala.org/news/mediapresscenter/presskits/nlw

Before the Works Progress Administration sent packhorse librarians to reach rural Appalachia in the 1930s, there was the bookmobile.  The first of these was created by a Maryland librarian in 1905.  Sharlee Glenn's book Library on Wheels:  Mary Lemist Titcombe and America's First Bookmobile is a look at a forgotten piece of America's past.  BookPage  April 2018

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1867  April 2, 2018