There are more than 100 types of rabbits and hares, both domestic and wild, from swamp rabbits to Flemish giants to snowshoe hares.  Yet these prolific creatures are often overlooked and rarely get the respect they deserve–-due, in part, to their adorable appearance and storybook depictions.  Once a year, rabbits from all over North America and as far as Japan come together to compete in the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA) rabbit show.  More than 3,000 people and 17,000 rabbits come to the show to compete.  Forty-nine breeds, including the French lop, Tan rabbit and English Angora, compete for the coveted prize of “Best in Show.”  https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/remarkable-rabbits-preview-4djehc/21389/  

Gibberish, also called jibber-jabber or gobbledygook, is speech that is (or appears to be) nonsense:  ranging across speech sounds that are not actual words, pseudowords, language games and specialized jargon that seems nonsensical to outsiders.  "Gibberish" is also used as an imprecation to denigrate or tar ideas or opinions the user disagrees with or finds irksome, a rough equivalent of "nonsense", "folderol", or "claptrap".  The implication is that the criticized expression or proposition lacks substance or congruence, as opposed to simply being a differing view.  The related word jibber-jabber refers to rapid talk that is difficult to understand.  The etymology of gibberish is uncertain.  The term was first seen in English in the early 16th century.  It is generally thought to be an onomatopoeia imitative of speech, similar to the words jabber (to talk rapidly) and gibber (to speak inarticulately).   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibberish  

The history of Frisbee dates back to ancient Greece there’s a famous statue of Discobolus throwing a kind of overhand throw with a flying disc the first disc thrower perhaps?  In Utah the remains of a clay disc were found, which scientists believe may have been used for recreational play by Native Indian Americans.  In the late 1870’s a baker named William Russel Frisbie, of Warren, Connecticut, and later of Bridgeport, put the family name on the bottom of the light tin pans in which the homemade pies were sold.  The Bridgeport Frisbie Pie Co. grew and soon sold throughout much of Connecticut, including New Haven where a group of Yale students famously began using them for In California, a UFO enthusiast named Walter Frederick Morrison designed a ‘flying saucer’ to play throw and catch with, which was consequently produced by ‘Wham-O’.  The president of Wham-O then encountered this pie-tin-tossing craze at Yale while on a promotional tour of college campuses and renamed the ‘flying saucer’ to ‘Frisbee’, dropping the letter ‘i’ to avoid any legal issues.  Ultimate was invented by a group of 13 year old boys at Columbia High, Maplewood, New Jersey. The game was then adopted by students in colleges throughout North America.  https://www.catchthespirit.co.uk/about-disc-sports/history-of-frisbee  

evitable  adjective  From Middle French evitable (modern French évitable), from Latin ēvītābilis (“avoidable”), from ēvītō (“to avoid”) + -bilis (“-able”, suffix meaning ‘able or worthy to be’). (uncommon) Possible to avoid; avertible. [from early 16th c.] quotations ▼  Synonyms:  avoidable, avertable, escapable, preventable, resistible Antonyms:  ineluctable, inescapable, inevitable, irresistible, unavoidable, unescapable, unpreventable  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/evitable   

Isaac Asimov, "The Evitable Conflict"  This science fiction short story was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, a popular science fiction magazine.  It was later published as the final story in Asimov's short story collection 'I, Robot'.  The story is set in the year 2052 when the world's economic system is governed by super-intelligent robots referred to as the Machines.  They have created an idyllic society free from evils such as unemployment, over-production, and war.  https://editions.covecollective.org/chronologies/isaac-asimov-evitable-conflict  

The original Coronation chicken was invented by writer Constance Spry and the founder of the famous Le Cordon Bleu cookery school Rosemary Hume, while preparing the food for the banquet of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.  Andrea Soranidis  Find recipe serving six and instructions at  https://www.thepetitecook.com/coronation-chicken/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2667  May 8, 2023

betweenity  noun  The state of lying in the interval separating two conditions, qualities, extremes, etc.  From Old English betweonum (between), from be- (by) + tweon (two each).  Earliest documented use:  1760.  The word was coined by the novelist Horace Walpole who also gave us serendipity.  Both words were coined in letters to friends.  Describing a house, he wrote, “The house is not Gothic, but of that betweenity, that intervened when Gothic declined and Palladian was creeping in.” 

cosplay  noun  The act or practice of dressing up a character from a work of fiction; the act of, or an instance of, pretending to be someone in a deceptive manner.  verb  To dress up as a fictional character; to pretend to be someone in a deceptive manner; to take part in cosplay.  English words costume + play were borrowed into Japanese as kosuchūmupurē in 1983.  Eventually, the term became shortened to kosupure.  Then it was borrowed back into English as cosplay in 1993.  A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg 

Pigmented structural glass, also known generically as structural glass and as vitreous marble, and marketed under the names Carrara glass, Sani Onyx, and Vitrolite, among others, is a high-strength, colored glass.  Developed in the United States in 1900, it was widely used around the world in the first half of the 20th century in Art Deco and Streamline Moderne buildings.  It also found use as a material for signs, tables, and areas requiring a hygienic surface.  Over time, the trademarked name "vitrolite" became a generic term for the glass.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigmented_structural_glass  

Edna Ann Proulx (born 1935) is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist.  She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.  She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel, Postcards.  Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and was adapted as a 2001 film of the same name.  Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted as an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning motion picture released in 2005.  Starting as a journalist, her first published work of fiction is "The Customs Lounge", a science fiction story published in the September 1963 issue of If, under the byline "E.A. Proulx".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Proulx  See also https://lithub.com/a-passion-for-living-in-the-present-a-conversation-with-yuko-tsushima-and-annie-ernaux

Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx release date:  June 1, 1996  Proulx's third novel, and first since the spectacular success of her Pulitzer—winning The Shipping News (1993), is a panoramic mosaic of the immigrant experience in 20th century America that confirms her oft-noted similarity to Steinbeck—and offers the most comprehensive survey of working-class life since Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy.  It begins in 1890 with the passage to "La Merica" of a Sicilian accordion maker and his small son, and their ordeal in New Orleans, where the (nameless) father finds work on the docks and meets a violent fate that will become the pattern engulfing virtually all of the story's successive characters. Proulx then telescopes the lives of those into whose hands the Sicilian's button accordion passes—whether it's given, sold, or stolen—through the next hundred years.  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/e-annie-proulx/accordion-crimes/ 

noun  Jedi mind trick (plural Jedi mind tricks) (idiomatic) A mental feat such as apparently inducing someone to act a certain way or reading someone's mind, achieved as if by magic or telepathy. quotations ▼  Wiktionary  

May the Fourth—oops, the Force—be with you!  May 4 is observed as Star Wars Day by fans of the franchise  interior Mexican  adjective (US, chiefly Austin, Texas)  Especially of cuisine:  of or pertaining to the country Mexico itself, in contrast to Tex-Mex (“a mix of Texan and Mexican”).  quotations ▼synonym, antonyms ▲ Synonym: Mex-Mex  Antonyms:  Tex-Mex, Tex-Mexican   Wiktionary

May 5 is Cinco de Mayo (“Fifth of May”), which commemorates the anniversary of Mexico’s victory over the Second French Empire at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.  

Anhingas, water birds with snakelike necks, have turned up in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and far upstate, a sign of shifting ranges for birds from the South.  One devil bird in Brooklyn is surprising.  22 anhingas hanging out in a canal 180 miles northwest of New York City is stunning.  See picture at https://headtopics.com/us/the-devil-bird-lands-in-new-york-with-more-likely-to-come-38774385 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2666  May 5, 2023  

Toledo-Lucas County Public Library was constructed with the aid of multiple New Deal agencies:  the Public Works Administration (PWA), which supplied a large grant to the city for construction, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which supplied labor.  The building, which bears a 1939 cornerstone, was dedicated on September 4, 1940.  One remarkable aspect of the building is the breathtaking frieze that wraps around above its main lobby.  According to ToledoLibrary.org: “Displaying more than 80 colors of glass, the breathtaking murals in Main Library’s Central Court illustrate the history of arts and sciences in a variety of fields such as architecture, painting, music, philosophy, and industry.  Designed by New York Artist John Benson (with the exception of the “Philosophy” panel, which was designed by Frank Sohn) the murals are six feet tall, and surround the atrium in a continuous frieze.”  “The work was “created by inlaying ‘puzzle pieces’ of hand-cut art glass onto large panels of colored Vitrolite.”  (Living New Deal has no evidence that separately ties this remarkable work directly to a New Deal agency.)  See pictures at https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/main-library-toledo-oh/  

For a history of the term “Gotham,” one doesn’t have to go much further than Edwin Burrows’ and Mike Wallace's Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. It is here that we learn that the term Gotham is tied to the author Washington Irving, famous for his short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and “Rip Van Winkle.”  It’s also here that we learn Irving was being less than flattering when he nicknamed the city in 1807.  The word “Gotham” actually dates back to medieval England.  Carmen Nigro  https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/01/25/so-why-do-we-call-it-gotham-anyway  

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) was an English novelist, irony writer, and dramatist known for earthy humour and satire.  His comic novel Tom Jones is still widely appreciated.  He and Samuel Richardson are seen as founders of the traditional English novel.  He also holds a place in the history of law enforcement, having used his authority as a magistrate to found the Bow Street Runners, London's first intermittently funded, full-time police force.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fielding   

Rain chain by Nafeesah Allen  If you’ve spotted this outdoor feature, you might have mistaken it for a windchime or decorative accent.  Originally called kusari-doi, rain chains started in Japan, where they are still used to keep water runoff away from roofs and foundations of homes.  Beautiful and highly functional, rain chains attach to gutters and guide rainwater down to the ground or to a water-harvesting receptacle.  In Japan, they are used on homes, garden pagodas, temples, and other settings.  If you’re wondering what a rain chain is used for, the answer is simple.  They have two main purposes.  The first is to guide rainwater from the roof’s gutter and drains down to the ground, where it can be absorbed into the lawn, run along the pavement to curbside drains, or be captured in a rain-harvesting bucket.  The second is simply to decorate the home’s exterior.   See also https://www.diyncrafts.com/36895/home/15-simple-diy-rain-chains-that-add-dramatic-flair-to-your-outdoors  

Noun  wordsmith (plural wordsmiths)  One who uses words skilfully. [from late 19th c.] synonym ▲hyponyms ▼  Synonym: (one sense) wordmonger Coordinate terms  jokesmith  songsmith

Verb  wordsmith (third-person singular simple present wordsmiths, present participle wordsmithing, simple past and past participle wordsmithed)  (transitive) To skilfully compose or craft (something written).  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wordsmith#English  

May 3 is World Press Freedom Day, which is recognized by the United Nations to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression. The Windhoek Declaration, a statement of press freedom principles by African newspaper journalists, was adopted on May 3, 1991.  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2665  May 3, 2023  

Edwin Muir (1887–1959) A prominent Scottish poet and critic of the mid-twentieth century, Edwin Muir is also remembered as the translator who first brought the works of Franz Kafka to an English-speaking audience.  After beginning his career as a critic and journalist, Muir started producing poetry in his mid-thirties, and over the next three decades developed an individual, visionary style outside the main current of the Modernist poetry then prevalent.  In his works he often drew on his early experiences on the Orkney Islands off the northern coast of Scotland, and on the disparity between his recollections of this pastoral idyll and the gritty, urban life he later experienced in Glasgow.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edwin-muir 

Save for a rainy day means save it for a time of need.  This expression can be traced back to the mid 16th century in Britain.  Its first known use is in a play, The Bugbears, first performed in or around 1561: 
"Wold he haue me kepe nothing against a raynye day?"
(would he have me keep nothing for a rainy day?)
It appears that The Bugbears was translated from Antonio Francesco Grazzini's La Spirita by a now unknown author, and only one manuscript of the play exists.  But what, you might ask, is a bugbear?  Today a bugbear is a pet peeve--something that a particular individual finds especially annoying.  But in medieval England, a bugbear was a sort of hobgoblin, depicted as a sinister bear that lurked deep in the woods to scare children.  https://www.bookbrowse.com/expressions/detail/index.cfm/expression_number/576/save-for-a-rainy-day  

This homemade gnocchi is made with four ingredients—ripe plantains instead of potatoes, ricotta cheese, Parmesan Reggiano, and all-purpose flour.  https://asassyspoon.com/sweet-plantain-gnocchi/  See also https://www.saveur.com/article/recipes/plantain-gnocchi-with-short-rib-ragu/ 

Markus Dochantschi (born 1968) is a German-born architect based in New York.  He is a registered architect in the United Kingdom and Germany, as well as a member of the American Institute of Architects.   As the founder and principal of studioMDA (Dochantschi Inc.), a New York–based, multidisciplinary design firm, Dochantschi has been recognized as one of the world's preeminent designers of art and cultural spaces.  Dochantschi and his firm have designed more than thirty galleries, and over 200 international art booths and exhibitions, earning Dochantschi the title of "the Art World's New Go-To Architect” in 2017.  The firm has also designed university buildings, auction houses, and private residences.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Dochantschi 

April 28, 2023  This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of Independent Bookstore Day, the one-day book party held all across the country on the last Saturday in April every year to celebrate indie bookstores large and small.  I asked the Lit Hub staff to share a few odes to their own beloved bookstores to mark the occasion.  Housed in a 1842 gristmill and overlooking the Sawmill River in Massachusetts, the used bookstore, the Montague Bookmill, has some one thousand books.  Also included in the indie bookstores list is Unnameable in Brooklyn.  Their stock is half used books and half new, so you can always go and browse and find something you didn’t know you were looking for, but you can also go in looking for something in particular and usually find it.  At least once a year I like to make the pilgrimage to Ocean City, Maryland to meet up with my college friends and try to absorb as much sunshine as is humanly possible.  Last year, while doing my obligatory search for hot indie bookstores in my area, I came across a shop called The Buzzed Word. The Buzzed Word is an indie bookstore, wine store, and wine bar all in one.  There are three Pegasus Books in the Bay Area, California, each in airy, comfortable locations in Berkeley and Oakland, each packed to the gills with both new and used literature.  Kingston’s Rough Draft (beautifully situated at the “oldest four corners in America”) is one of the best all-purpose indie bookstores I’ve ever had the privilege of calling my local.  The owners of Rough Draft have made sure their space is a true community hub, serving the needs of locals alongside the weekend Instagram crowd doing their “must-visit” Hudson Valley tour.  Emily Temple  https://lithub.com/10-of-the-best-indie-bookstores-in-the-world/?  

On April 30, 2023 Steph Curry scored a playoff career-high 50 points in Golden State’s 120-100 Game 7 victory against the Sacramento Kings, securing a 4-3 best-of-seven NBA playoff series win for the Warriors.  He set the record for the most points in a Game 7 in NBA history, surpassing the 48 points scored by his former teammate Kevin Durant for the Brooklyn Nets against the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021.  https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/01/sport/steph-curry-game-7-warriors-kings-spt-intl/index.html  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2664  May 1, 2023  

whiff-whaff/wiff-waff

From Whiff-Waff, coined by Slazenger & Sons in 1900.

Noun  (uncountable)  (archaic) Table tennis. quotations ▼

Noun  Onomatopoeia

Noun  The breathy sound of something rushing quickly; whoosh. quotations ▼

Etymology  South Lancashire dialect for nonsense, unspecified words or deeds.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whiff-whaff   

Deadpan, dry humour, or dry-wit humour is the deliberate display of emotional neutrality or no emotion, commonly as a form of comedic delivery to contrast with the ridiculousness or absurdity of the subject matter.  The delivery is meant to be blunt, ironic, laconic, or apparently unintentional.  The term deadpan first emerged early in the 20th century, as a compound word (sometimes spelled as two words) combining "dead" and "pan" (a slang term for the face).  It appeared in print as early as 1915, in an article about a former baseball player named Gene Woodburn written by his former manager Roger Bresnahan.  Bresnahan described how Woodburn used his skill as a ventriloquist to make his manager and others think they were being heckled from the stands.  Woodburn, wrote Bresnahan, "had a trick of what the actors call 'the dead pan.'  He never cracked a smile and would be the last man you would suspect was working a trick."  George M. Cohan, in a 1908 interview, had alluded to dead pans without using the actual term "deadpan". Cohan, after returning from a trip to London, told an interviewer that "the time is ripe for a manager to take over about a dozen American chorus girls and wake up the musical comedy game.  The English chorus girls are dead–their pans are cold.” The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1928 New York Times article as having the first appearance of the term in print.  That article, a collection of film slang compiled by writer and theatrical agent Frank J. Wilstach, defines "dead pan" as "playing a role with expressionless face, as, for instance, the work of Buster Keaton."  There were several other uses of the term, in theater and in sports, between the 1915 Bresnahan article and the 1928 article in the Times.  The usage of deadpan as a verb ("to speak, act, or utter in a deadpan manner; to maintain a dead pan") is recorded at least as far back as 1942.  The English music hall comedian T. W. Barrett, working in the 1880s and 1890s, is credited with being the first to perform in a deadpan manner, standing completely still and without a smile.  Early in his vaudeville days, Buster Keaton developed his deadpan expression.  Keaton realised that audiences responded better to his stony expression than when he smiled, and he carried this style into his silent film career. The 1928 Vitaphone short film The Beau Brummels, with vaudeville comics Al Shaw and Sam Lee, was performed entirely in deadpan.  The 1980 film Airplane! was performed almost entirely in deadpan; it helped relaunch the career of one of its supporting actors, Leslie Nielsen, who transformed into a prolific deadpan comic after the film.  Actor and comedian Bill Murray is known for his deadpan delivery.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpan   

April 25, 2023  Attempts to ban books in the United States have exploded over the past two years:  2,571 titles were targeted in 2022, compared with 223 in 2020.

These figures come from a recent report by the American Library Association, which has been tracking censorship in libraries for over 20 years.  And most of those titles, the organization found, deal with L.G.B.T.Q. themes or race.  The books that received the most challenges in 2022?  An illustrated memoir about the experience of being nonbinary.  A writer’s account of growing up queer and Black. Toni Morrison’s debut novel, “The Bluest Eye.”

 

The rise of book bans—and their politicization—has been a defining issue over the past several years.  Until fairly recently, most book removals occurred when a parent raised concerns about a title with a teacher or librarian.  Complaints were typically resolved quietly, after a school board or committee evaluated the material and determined whether it was appropriate for students.  But now, challenges to books are increasingly driven by organized efforts led by elected officials or activists groups whose actions can affect a whole district or state.

Separately, a new report from the free speech organization PEN America details this rise of censorship efforts across the United States, exploring how organized efforts or new legislation contributed to book removals.  Thank you, Muse reader! 

Long before Harper Lee and Truman Capote gained literary fame for To Kill a Mockingbird and In Cold Blood, their respective midcentury masterpieces, they were childhood friends, palling around Monroeville, Ala. just like Scout and Dill do in Lee’s fictional Maycomb.  The duo remained friends into adulthood, and their literary relationship is the stuff of legend.  Capote based a tomboy character in his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, on Lee.  When Mockingbird was so well received, some derisively speculated Capote (who already had a strong literary reputation) must have helped—or even ghostwritten it, a rumor that persisted for decades.  Lee certainly helped Capote:  she was his research assistant for In Cold Blood, contributing 150 pages of notes, and was reportedly hurt to be included only in the “Acknowledgments” section of the book; they grew apart after its publication in 1965.  Sarah Begley  https://time.com/4230925/harper-lee-truman-capote-friendship/  Thank you, Muse reader!   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2663  April 28, 2023