flustrated  adjective  Blend of flustered +‎ frustrated  (comparative more flustrated, superlative most flustrated)  Frustrated to the point of being flustered, or vice versa.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flustrated 

Diane Seuss was born in Michigan City, Indiana in 1956 and raised in Edwardsburg and Niles, Michigan.  She studied at Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University, where she received a master’s degree in social work.  Seuss is the author of five books of poetry, including frank:  sonnets (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry; Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf Press, 2018), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry; Four-Legged Girl (Graywolf Press, 2015), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), recipient of the Juniper Prize for Poetry.  A Guggenheim fellow, Seuss was writer-in-residence at Kalamazoo College for many years, and has been a visiting professor at Colorado College, the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, and Washington University in St. Louis.  In 2021, she received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  https://poets.org/poet/diane-seuss   

People with diabetes can likely eat a serving of 2–3 dates at a time.  However, a person should speak with their doctor to confirm this is safe.  Those with this condition need to limit their carbohydrate intake to keep their blood sugar levels stable.  The fiber in the dates may help the body absorb carbohydrates slowly which may reduce the risk of blood sugar spikes.  Pairing dates with a source of protein and fat, such as almonds, may further slow down digestion and help manage blood sugar levels.  The glycemic index (GI) is another factor to take into account when considering if dates are suitable for those with diabetes.  A food’s GI reflects its effects on blood sugar levels.  Foods that cause faster and greater spikes in blood sugar levels have higher GI values.  In contrast, foods with a lower GI will cause lower blood sugar spikes.  Healthcare providers consider foods with a GI value below 55 to be low-GI foods.  According to research from multiple studies, the average GI of dates is 42.  This classifies them as a low GI food and safe for those with diabetes when eaten in moderation.  However, what does “in moderation” mean when it comes to dates?  We need to consider a food’s glycemic load (GL) to answer this.  The GL considers the serving size of a certain food when calculating its effects on blood sugar.  To determine a food’s GL, multiply its GI by the amount of carbohydrates it contains and divide it by 100.  Therefore, two dried dates (48 g) contain 36 g of carbs, giving them a GL of 17, which constitutes a medium GL.  https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/are-dates-good-for-diabetics#dates-and-diabetes   

In March, 2022, two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Carrie Pirmann stumbled upon a website dedicated to Ivan Mazepa, a 16th century Ukrainian politician and patron of the arts.  A librarian at Bucknell University, Pirmann had joined an international effort of fellow archivists to preserve the digital history of a country under siege, and the contents of Mazepa’s website, though obscure, seemed worth saving.  The site held a number of things:  Lord Byron poems written about Mazepa’s life and a catalogue of centuries-old articles detailing his various conquests.  Pirmann opened her website scraping tool, backing up the site and preserving its content.  Now, the original website is lost, its server space likely gone to cyberattacks, power outages or Russian shelling.  But thanks to her, it still remains intact on server space rented by an international group of librarians and archivists.  “We’re trying to save as much as possible,” Pirmann said.  “Otherwise, we lose that connection to the past.”  https://unitednewspost.com/news/technology/meet-the-1300-librarians-racing-to-back-up-ukraines-digital-archives/   

Francis Mattson Hines (1920-2016) was an American artist known for his large-scale public wrapped works.  Many of his paintings and drawings were found in a Connecticut dumpster in 2017 and will be re-exhibited in 2022.  Hines' artworks were found in a dumpster on an abandoned property in Watertown, Connecticut being cleared out by contractor George Martin.  Since many of the canvases featured illustrations of automobile parts, he contacted Jared Whipple, a car mechanic from Waterbury, Connecticut.  Whipple contacted friends and family of Hines to research the pieces.  He was given permission by Hines' sons to keep and sell the artworks.  Some of the pieces were exhibited at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury in 2021 with a larger gallery show planned for 2022 with Hollis Taggart Galleries.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Hines 

British author Jack Higgins, who wrote “The Eagle Has Landed” and other bestselling thrillers and espionage novels, has died.  He was 92.  Publisher HarperCollins said that Higgins died at his home on the English Channel island of Jersey surrounded by his family.  Higgins served in the military before studying sociology at the London School of Economics.  He became a teacher in the northern city of Leeds and a writer in his spare time, with novels that sold modestly starting in the late 1950s.  That changed with the 1975 publication of “The Eagle Has Landed,” about a fictional World War II plot to kidnap British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.  In a 2010 interview with The Guardian, Higgins recounted a pivotal call from his accountant.  “He asked me what I wanted to get out of my writing,” Higgins said.  “I replied that I wasn’t really sure, before adding as a joke it would be nice to make a million by the time I retired.  He then said:  ‘Well you’re a bloody fool.  Because you’ve just earned that much this week.  So what are you going to do about it?’”  He was advised to leave England because of 1970s taxation rates and settled with his family on Jersey.  https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/jack-higgins-author-of-the-eagle-has-landed-dies-at-age-92 

Jack Higgins (27 July 1929–9 April 2022) was born Henry Patterson in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.  In 1959, Higgins began writing novels.  One of his aliases was James Graham.  The growing success of his early work allowed him to take time off from his teaching, which he quit eventually to become a full-time novelist.  Patterson's early novels, using his own name (as "Harry Patterson") as well as the pseudonyms James Graham, Martin Fallon, and Hugh Marlowe, are thrillers that typically feature hardened, cynical heroes, ruthless villains, and dangerous locales. Patterson published thirty-five such novels (sometimes three or four a year) between 1959 and 1974, learning his craft.  East Of Desolation (1968), A Game For Heroes (1970) and The Savage Day (1972) are notable among his early work for their vividly described settings (Greenland, the Channel Islands, and Belfast, respectively) and offbeat plots.  See bibliography and filmography at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Higgins 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2519  April 11, 2022

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré is one of Africa’s best known and most celebrated 20th-century artists.  Born in 1923 in the Bété village of Zéprégühé, near Daloa, the major city in west-central Côte d’Ivoire, Bouabré is celebrated for his untiring attempts to codify, archive, and share information that connects the human story.  His singular devotion to drawing and his unwavering interest in taxonomy were remarkable, especially among African artists without academic training, but it was his approach to image and language, condensing oral culture into a dizzying multiplicity of visual forms and written annotations, that sets him apart.  In the formative period of his career, Bouabré was concerned with transcribing the history and knowledge of his native Bété ethnic group, and he set out to create the first writing system for the Bété language in the 1950s.  He referred to his pioneering syllabary as a Bété alphabet, and he created an artwork version, Alphabet Bété, in the early 1990s.  In the 1970s Bouabré began making drawings to accompany stories inspired by Bété folktales and proverbs.  Semence de la vie (Seed of Life) (1977) may be his earliest known artwork.  The drawings, which he referred to as tableaux—each measuring around 12 by eight inches and executed with ballpoint pen, pencil, and colored pencil—explore the origin of life, incorporating Bété allegorical tales and other fictional sources.  Frédéric Bruly Bouabré:  World Unbound, organized by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, The Steven and Lisa Tananbaum Curator, with Erica DiBenedetto, Curatorial Assistant, and with support from Damasia Lacroze, Department Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, is on view at the Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, Manhattan, March 13–August 13, 2022.  See illustrations at https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/707 

Cleopatra’s Needle is the name shared by three ancient Egyptian obelisks--one in New York City, one in London, and one in Paris.  The obelisks were named in honor of Cleopatra because of her famed beauty and connections to well-known Romans.  The obelisks in New York and London are made of red granite from the quarries of Aswan, with each stone weighing approximately 224 tons.  These obelisks were constructed in 1450 BC in the city of Heliopolis for the Pharaoh Thutmose III (1481-1425 BC).  They are 68 feet (21m) tall.  The obelisk in Paris is also known as the Luxor Obelisk and it is made of yellow granite.  Constructed about 3,000 years ago, it was originally situated outside the Luxor Temple in Egypt, where its twin still remains.  The Paris obelisk is 75 feet (23m) tall and weighs over 250 tons.  All three obelisks are inscribed with hieroglyphs glorifying Ramses II.  The Cleopatra’s Needle of New York was erected in Central Park on February 22, 1881.  It had been given to the US Consul General stationed in Cairo as a gift to the United States from the Egyptian Khedive as a gesture of gratitude for the US remaining neutral while Great Britain and France vied for control of the Egyptian government.  The obelisk had been moved from its original home in Heliopolis to Alexandria in 12 BC, where it was set up in the temple built by Cleopatra in honor of Marc Antony.  Sometime later, the obelisk toppled into the sand; however, this had the positive effect of preserving the hieroglyphs for modern researchers.  https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/cleopatra-s-needle-story-behind-obelisks-007051 

Ukrainian poetry has been flourishing in English in recent years, but it’s worth revisiting volumes that appeared in the last three decades of the 20th century.  Although most, if not all, are long out of print, they can still be accessed through public and university libraries or purchased at used bookstores.  These titles present vibrant poetic voices, showcasing a wide array of techniques, forms, and themes, and their translators include a number of significant American poets.  Only one collection of poems featured on this list is by a poet who lived in the interwar period.  The rest are by poets who wrote roughly between the late 1950s and early 1990s. Many of the poets were banned from publication in their native Ukraine throughout most of this period.  Some were official, published poets who had to maneuver carefully in order to stay out of trouble.  Two of the poets moved to the United States after World War II and worked in a totally different environment, with access to various traditions and canons that were completely off limits for Ukrainian Soviet poets.  https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/ukrainian-poetry-from-another-era/ 

The Museo della Cucina, opening in May, 2022 will be dedicated to exploring one of Italy’s great passions.  The institution stands on the spot of Rome’s first legendary meal:  Palatine Hill, where Romulus and Remus were breastfed by the she-wolf Lupa more than 2,700 years ago, according to Roman mythology, and subsequently returned to found the city.  Italian food has come a long way since then, and every twist and turn of the last 500 years is documented by the new museum and library, which features a collection of 120 cookbooks; displays of implements, pastry and chocolate molds, and utensils; and an array of artifacts that will offer visitors food for thought and thoughts on food.  Highlights from the book collection include a copy of the oldest mass-printed cookbook, Bartolemeo Platina’s On Honourable Pleasure and Health (1474); The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570), written by the titular private chef of Pope Pius V; and a valuable first edition of Casa Artusi’s 1891 book Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, which attempted to make Italian cuisine more widely accessible.  Though the library’s books are in Italian, Ghirighini promises that the text will be available in English once the digital collection is up and running—which means that soon, a wider audience will be able to enjoy crispy frog livers fit for a pope, or Artusi’s signature eel pie … or at least read about them.  Other titles explore the influence of French cuisine, disseminated into Northern Italy through their shared border region, and deeply influential to the development of some of the country’s signature flavors.  Sarah Rose Sharp  See graphics at https://hyperallergic.com/716664/museo-della-cucina-rome-italy/ 

Anton Chekhov is often held to be the world’s greatest short story writer, and perhaps second only to Shakespeare in terms of the number of times his plays have been adapted or produced.  Sumy, Ukraine, is proud to have played an important role in his life (Chekov spent two summers with his family in a rented bungalow with his family in the village of Luka, not far from Sumy, in 1888 and 1889) and to have continued to honor his legacy since 1960, the centenary of his birth, when the bungalow, converted into a school library by the Bolsheviks, was restored to its original state and became a museum.  It is set back from the road leading to the river, across from the ruined manor house; it has its own garden with irises and a gazebo.  It is small—six rooms—compared to other Chekhov museums located in Moscow, Melikhovo, and Yalta, but the memories the writer took away from those incomparable summers of his youth resonate to this day beyond any borders—in the stories and plays he passed on to innumerable readers and theater-goers. Alison Anderson  See pictures at https://lithub.com/anton-chekhovs-beloved-summer-home-in-ukraine-is-under-threat/ 

Good fiction creates empathy.  A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life. - Barbara Kingsolver, novelist, essayist, and poet (b. 8 Apr 1955) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2518  April 8, 2022 

Amor Towles (born 1964) is an American novelist.  He is best known for his bestselling novels Rules of Civility (2011), A Gentleman in Moscow (2016), and The Lincoln Highway (2021).  When Towles was a younger man, he credited Peter Matthiessen, renowned nature writer, novelist and one of the founders of The Paris Review, as the primary inspiration for writing novels.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_Towles  Amor Towles is pronounced ay·mor tow·uhlz.   

Announcing the Winners of the 2022 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction   The first O. Henry Prize collection, published in 1919, ruled out all non-American writers.  Over the next decades at least one expansion was made to the eligibility rules for the O. Henry Prize.  It is not clear exactly when this happened, but in 1955 a student in Florida mentioned in her master’s thesis on the O. Henry series that “foreign-born authors were eligible if they became U.S. citizens.”  In the 1990s the prize was further opened to Canadian writers.  A further expansion came in 2003 under the ninth series editor, Laura Furman.  The Publishers Weekly review of the 2003 edition noted, “A new, wider-ranging selection process (allowing the consideration of all English-language writers appearing in North American publications regardless of citizenship) makes this one of the strongest O. Henry collections in recent years, with stories by, among others, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”  Nineteen years later, the guest editor for the 2022 volume, Valeria Luiselli, has selected a brand-new story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, along with ten remarkable stories in translation.  This means that fully half of the winning stories this year are artistic collaborations with talented translators who enable readers of English to enjoy fiction originally crafted in Bengali, Greek, Hebrew, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. See winning titles for 2022 at https://lithub.com/announcing-the-winners-of-the-2022-o-henry-prize-for-short-fiction/ 

NATIONAL BEER DAY IS APRIL 7  Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act on March 22, 1933.  It amended the much-hated Volstead Act of 1919, which was the act of Congress that enabled the 18th Amendment and Prohibition.  Back in 1919, some of the politicians who voted for Prohibition assumed that beer and wine sales wouldn’t be banned–just hard liquors–until Prohibitionists used the Volstead Act to broaden the booze ban.  The Cullen-Harrison Act allowed people to buy and drink low-alcohol content beer and wine in public, but it didn’t go into effect until April 7.  On that fateful day, large headlines in newspapers across the nation said the beer was back as the taps opened in 19 states.  In St. Louis, the Budweiser Clydesdales made their first public appearance as they pulled a beer wagon through the city.  In Washington, the owner of the Abner-Drury Brewery ordered a guarded truck to depart at 12:01 a.m. for the White House, with two cases of beer for President Roosevelt.  The shipment arrived along with a local press contingent, only to discover that Roosevelt was asleep.  The Marine who was guarding the beer opened the first symbolic beer bottle and drank it so that the press could get photographs.  Later, the President sent the beer cases to the National Press Club.  In Chicago, an estimated $5 million in beer sales happened on April 7, 1933.  There were few reports of arrests.  In Hollywood, actress Jean Harlow christened a beer delivery truck.  The Cullen-Harrison Act didn’t have a long lifespan.  It was voided when Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment in December 1933.  https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-constitutional-origins-of-national-beer-day/  Be creative by mixing beer with mustard, sweets or sauces.   

Formaldehyde is a simple chemical compound made of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon.  All life forms--bacteria, plants, fish, animals and humans--naturally produce formaldehyde as part of cell metabolism.  Formaldehyde is perhaps best known for its preservative and anti-bacterial properties, but formaldehyde-based chemistry is used to make a wide range of value-added products.  Formaldehyde is one of the most well-studied and well-understood compounds in commerce.  Formaldehyde is an essential building block chemical in the production of hundreds of items that improve everyday life.  Little, if any, formaldehyde remains in the final products that consumers use.  Formaldehyde-based resins are used to manufacture composite and engineered wood products used extensively in cabinetry, countertops, moldings, furniture, shelving, stair systems, flooring, wall sheathing, support beams and trusses and many other household furnishings and structures.  Glues that use formaldehyde as a building block are exceptional bonding agents, delivering high-quality performance that is also economical.  The wood products industry uses formaldehyde-based resins in a wide range of panel and board products, enabling sustainable use of forestry resources and minimizing waste.  For example, composite wood panels are typically made from recovered wood waste that might otherwise be burned or disposed of in a landfill.  Formaldehyde has a long history of safe use in the manufacture of vaccines, anti-infective drugs and hard-gel capsules.  For example, formaldehyde is used to inactivate viruses so they don’t cause disease, such as the influenza virus in making the influenza vaccine.   https://www.chemicalsafetyfacts.org/formaldehyde/ 

Book banning is not new—in the U.S. alone the practice goes back to Puritan times, when Thomas Morton's book New English Caanan and others opposing this way of life were tossed from Massachusetts.  But the American Library Association said April 4, 2022 that this year there have been more challenges to books than they have seen since they started tracking it in 2000.  The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials in 2021.  MIRANDA MAZARIEGOS and MEGHAN COLLINS SULLIVAN  Find the list of the most challenged books of 2021 at https://www.npr.org/2022/04/04/1090067026/efforts-to-ban-books-jumped-an-unprecedented-four-fold-in-2021-ala-report-says   

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. - Maya Angelou, poet (4 Apr 1928-2014)   

Two notebooks owned by British naturalist Charles Darwin, including one containing a sketch of his famous Tree of Life, have been returned to Cambridge University's library, more than 20 years after they were reported missing.  The notebooks were found in good condition on March 9, 2022 in a gift bag that was left on the floor of the library.  The bag also contained a printed message saying:  "Librarian Happy Easter X."  "They may be tiny, just the size of postcards, but the notebooks' impact on the history of science, and their importance to our world-class collections here, cannot be overstated," Jessica Gardner, the librarian of Cambridge University Library, said.  The notebooks are known as the Transmutation Notebooks because Darwin theorised in them for the first time how species might "transmute" from ancestral to later forms, it said.  https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/darwin-notebooks-return-uk-library-two-decades-after-vanishing-2022-04-05/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2517  April 6, 2022

Elena Ferrante is the name used by the Italian author of many novels, including the four-volume work titled the Neapolitan Novels.  The Neapolitan Novels tell the life story of two perceptive and intelligent girls, born in Naples in 1944, who try to create lives for themselves within a violent and stultifying culture.  The series consists of My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015), which was nominated for the Strega Prize, the most prestigious Italian literary award.  Ferrante holds that "books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.”  She has repeatedly argued that anonymity is a precondition for her work and that keeping her true name out of the spotlight is key to her writing process.  Despite being recognized as a novelist on an international scale, Ferrante has kept her identity secret since the 1992 publication of her first novel.  Speculation as to her true identity has been rife, and several theories, based on information Ferrante has given in interviews as well as analysis drawn from the content of her novels, have been put forth.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Ferrante 

The House of the Library in Pompeii, first excavated in 1759 and again during the 1970s, is named after the possible existence of a private library in the building.  See striking illustrations at https://sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/pompeii/regio-vi/reg-vi-ins-17/house-of-the-library 

Irish whiskey was one of the earliest distilled drinks in Europe, arising around the 12th century.  It is believed that Irish monks brought the technique of distilling perfumes back to Ireland from their travels to southern Europe around 1000 AD.  The Irish then modified this technique to obtain a drinkable spirit.  Although termed "whiskey", the spirit produced during this period would have differed from what is currently recognised as whiskey, as it would not have been aged, and was often flavoured with aromatic herbs such as mint, thyme, or anise.  The word 'whiskey' (or whisky) comes from the Irish uisce beatha, meaning water of life.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_whiskey 

30 Ways to Have Whiskey for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner by Nora Landis-Shack  https://www.brit.co/whiskey-food-recipes/ 

Bourbon is a type of American whiskey, a barrel-aged distilled liquor made primarily from corn.  The name derives from the French Bourbon dynasty, although the precise inspiration is uncertain; contenders include Bourbon County in Kentucky and Bourbon Street in New Orleans, both of which are named after the dynasty.  The name "Bourbon" was not applied until the 1850s, and the Kentucky etymology was not advanced until the 1870s.  Bourbon has been distilled since the 18th century.  Bourbon was recognized in 1964 by the United States Congress as a "distinctive product of the United States".  Bourbon sold in the United States must be produced in the U.S. from at least 51% corn and stored in a new container of charred oak.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_whiskey

 

7 Wonderful Bourbon Recipes by Imma  https://www.africanbites.com/wonderful-bourbon-recipes/ 

Prosper Mérimée (1803–1870) was a French writer in the movement of Romanticism, and one of the pioneers of the novella, a short novel or long short story.  He was also a noted archaeologist and historian, and an important figure in the history of architectural preservation.  He is best known for his novella Carmen, which became the basis of Bizet's opera Carmen.  He learned Russian, a language for which he had great affection, and translated the work of several important Russian writers, including Pushkin and Gogol, into French.  From 1830 until 1860 he was the inspector of French historical monuments, and was responsible for the protection of many historic sites, including the medieval citadel of Carcassonne and the restoration of the façade of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.  Along with the writer George Sand, he discovered the series of tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn, and arranged for their preservation.  He was instrumental in the creation of Musée national du Moyen Âge in Paris, where the tapestries now are displayed.  The official database of French monuments, the Base Mérimée, bears his name.  Read much more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper_M%C3%A9rim%C3%A9e 

Colorful Ukrainian Pysanky Eggs created by SomeBleu  https://www.jigidi.com/jigsaw-puzzle/d0sidc9v/colorful-ukrainian-pysanky-eggs/ 

Richard Howard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet celebrated for his exuberant monologues of historical figures and a prolific translator who helped introduce readers to a wide range of French literature, died at age 92 on March 31, 2022.  Over a 50-year period, Howard's poetry, essays and translations totaled well over 200 books and established him as a vital literary creator, commentator and interpreter.  He won the poetry Pulitzer in 1970 for "Untitled Subjects" and was a National Book Award finalist in 2008 for "Without Saying."  His translation of Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" won the National Book Award (then called the American Book Award) in 1983.   https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/directors-say-bruce-williss-declining-health-was-apparent-for-some-time/articleshow/90603950.cms 

Nancy Lee Winston Milford (1938–March 29, 2022) was an American biographer.  Milford is best known for her book Zelda about F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda Fitzgerald.  The book started out as her master's thesis and was published to broad acclaim in 1970.  It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, spent 29 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list, and has since been translated into 17 languages.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Milford

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2516  April 4, 2022

The vitelotte or black vitelotte or China truffle loves growing in light, well drained and deep soil.  It rots in case of excess moisture and needs sun to develop well.  Planting the black vitelotte potato is easy, especially since it doesn’t depend on the climate zone you live in.  https://www.nature-and-garden.com/gardening/vitelotte.html 

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. - Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Supreme Court justice 

Developed in Canada, Yukon Golds are a cross between a North American white potato and a wild South American yellow-fleshed one.  Their golden flesh is richly flavored and fairly firm and moist, with medium starch content.  A perfect compromise between dry, fluffy russet potatoes and moist, waxy varieties, Yukon Golds are incredibly versatile.  They’re superb for mashing and in soups and chowders, and they’re great for roasting and sautéing.  Link to recipes at https://www.finecooking.com/ingredient/yukon-gold-potatoes 

venge  verb  (third-person singular simple present venges, present participle venging, simple past and past participle venged)  (obsolete, transitive)  To avenge; to punish; to revenge. quotations ▼ From Middle English vengen, from Old French venger, from Latin vindicare (“to avenge, vindicate”).  Related terms:  avenge, revenge, vengeance, vengeful, vengesome  Derived term:  venger  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/venge 

One has to practically sing along with Auld Lang Syne as if by law  *  Whisk eggs with grated cheese and herbs—pour them in a heated pan and cover them with a lid  *  In honeymoon bridge you place the shuffled deck on the table.  Your opponent draws the top card.  He can keep the card, look at second card and discard it facedown, or discard the first card and keep the second one.  Go back and forth until the deck is exhausted at which point you each hold thirteen cards having discarded thirteen.  *  When some incident shed a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that’s about as good a gift as chance intends to offer.  *  George Washington wrote Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation as a teenager—the 110 rules are in the appendix and also available in libraries and for sale  *  Rules of Civility by Amor Towles 

Charles Dickens was by far the most commercially successful of the major Victorian writers.  He sold all his novels twice.  First, they were issued in nineteen monthly “parts”—thirty-two-page installments, with advertising, bound in paper and priced at a shilling.  (The final installment was a “double part,” and cost two shillings.)  Then the novels were published as books, in editions priced for different markets.  The exceptions were novels he serialized weekly in magazines he edited and owned a piece of.  Demand was huge.  The parts of Dickens’s last, unfinished novel, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” were selling at a rate of fifty thousand copies a month when he died.  By contrast, the parts of George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” and William Makepeace Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair”—not exactly minor works by not exactly unknown authors, both of them adopting the method of publication Dickens had pioneered—sold an average of five thousand copies a month.  Dickens gave his full energy and attention to everything he did.  People who saw him perform conjuring tricks, or act onstage, or read from his books, were amazed by his preparation and his panache.  He loved the theatre, and many people thought that he could have been a professional actor.  At his public readings to packed houses, audiences wept, they fainted, and they cheered.   https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/07/the-crisis-that-nearly-cost-charles-dickens-his-career-robert-douglas-fairhursts-the-turning-point

Walter de la Mare, born on April 25, 1873 in London, is considered one of modern literature’s chief exemplars of the romantic imagination.  His complete works form a sustained treatment of romantic themes:  dreams, death, rare states of mind and emotion, fantasy worlds of childhood, and the pursuit of the transcendent.  As a youth he attended St. Paul’s Cathedral School, and his formal education did not extend beyond this point.  Upon graduation he went to work for the Anglo-American (Standard) Oil Company, remaining with the firm for 18 years.  De la Mare began writing short stories and poetry while working as a bookkeeper in the company’s London office during the 1890s.  His first published short story, “Kismet,” appeared in the journal Sketch in 1895.  In 1902 he published his first major work, the poetry collection Songs of Childhood, which was recognized as a significant example of children’s literature for its creative imagery and variety of meters.  In 1908, following the publication of his novel Henry Brocken and the poetry collection titled Poems, de la Mare was granted a Civil List pension, enabling him to terminate his corporate employment and focus exclusively on writing.  Conrad Aiken, writing in his Scepticisms: Notes on Contemporary Poetry in 1919 found that de la Mare’s Peacock Pie “contains some of the most delightful work he has done.”  The world of childhood, however, is only a facet of de la Mare’s work.  Closely linked with his poetry in theme and mood are de la Mare’s short stories.  Collections like The Riddle are imbued with the same indefiniteness and aura of fantasy as his poetry.  In a review of The Connoisseur, and Other Stories, a critic for the Times Literary Supplement asserted in 1926 that “de la Mare has the poet’s imagination, and it is a poetic emotion that delights us in his stories.”  Another favorable appraisal of de la Mare’s short fiction came from John H. Wills, who wrote in the North Dakota Quarterly that “de la Mare is the most underrated short story writer in the English language.”  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/walter-de-la-mare 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2515  April 1, 2022