Culinary great Jacques Pépin can certainly appreciate the notion of home, having lost his own more than once while growing up in France during World War II.   “We rebuilt it every time, and luckily, no one was home when the bombings happened—it was stressful,” Pépin recently told Mansion Global.  The renowned French chef and television star, whose cooking career spans 75 years, celebrates his 90th birthday in 2025.  Pépin rose to fame as the personal chef of French president Charles de Gaulle and moved to the U.S. in 1959, where he racked up the accolades.  They include 24 James Beard Foundation Awards, a lifetime achievement award from American Public Television and a Lifetime Achievement Emmy.  He continues to work full time and is a culinary arts teacher at Boston University.  But much of Pépin’s time is devoted to the Jacques Pépin Foundation, which he established in 2016 with his daughter, Claudine Pépin, and son-in-law, Rollie Wesen.  “We provide funding and opportunities for underprivileged people, including those who have been released from prison, to have cooking careers,” Pépin said.  “We give grants to community kitchens and host cooking classes where they can learn.”  In honor of his 90th birthday, the foundation launched the 90/90 Campaign, a fundraising initiative in which chefs and restaurants nationwide host 90 events leading up to chef’s big day on Dec. 18, 2025.  According to Pépin, the money raised through 90/90 will support the foundation’s programs.  I’ve never bought a big piece of art.  I do a lot of landscapes, seascapes, forests, abstracts, and objects like flowers and pots.  https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/why-star-chef-jacques-pepin-doesnt-buy-artand-other-thoughts-about-his-home-db0f5a56    

Judith Viorst (née Stahl; born February 2, 1931) is an American writer, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher.  She is known for her humorous observational poetry and for her children's literature.  This includes The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (about the death of a pet) and the Alexander series of short picture books, which includes Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972), which has sold over two million copies.    Viorst is a 1952 graduate of the Newark College of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.  Viorst's book Sad Underwear (published in 1995) is a collection of poems that examines a wide variety of feelings and experiences from a child's point of view.  Her verses are accompanied by black and white illustrations by Richard Hull.  Viorst also penned the musical Love & Shrimp with Shelly Markam.  The Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati hosted a performance of Love & Shrimp, starring Deb Girdler, Pamela Myers and Shelley Bamberger, in the spring of 1999.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Viorst    

A special-edition library card celebrating the New York Liberty, Brooklyn’s hometown team and the 2024 WNBA champions!  The New York Liberty-themed library card, available at all BPL locations beginning in June 2025, features the championship WNBA team and their iconic mascot, Ellie the Elephant.  This summer, the Liberty and BPL are partnering through Brooklyn Basketball to support BPL's Summer at the Library programming.  Brooklyn Public Library's card is free for anyone who lives, works, pays property taxes or goes to school in New York State.  https://www.bklynlibrary.org/liberty-library-card    

Frederick Forsyth, the British author of “The Day of the Jackal” and other bestselling thrillers, died June 9, 2025.  He was 86.  Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent.  He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for “The Day of the Jackal,” his bestselling political thriller about a professional assassin.  Published in 1971, the book propelled him into global fame.  It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.  In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s.  Although Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and “it was hard to say no” to officials seeking information.  “The zeitgeist was different,” he told the BBC. “The Cold War was very much on.”  He wrote more than 25 books including “The Afghan,” “The Kill List,” “The Dogs of War” and “The Fist of God” that have sold over 75 million copies.  https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/10/uk/frederick-forsyth-has-died-after-illness-intl-hnk   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2955  June 13, 2025

The seventh inning stretch is a time-honored baseball custom in which the fans ritualistically stand and stretch before their team comes to bat in the seventh inning.  This is done not only to relieve stiff muscles due to sitting the previous six innings, but perhaps also to bring luck to one’s team (an association with the number 7 and good luck, maybe?).  Unfortunately the exact origin of the custom is lost in the earliest days of the game.  Baseball historian Dan Daniel is quoted by Zander Hollander (Baseball Lingo, 1967):  “It probably originated as an expression of fatigue and tedium, which seems to explain why the stretch comes late in the game instead of at the halfway point.”  The earliest reference that has surfaced appears in an 1869 letter from Harry Wright of the Cincinnati Red Stock­ings to a friend:  “The spectators all arise between halves of the seventh inning, extend their legs and arms and some­times walk about.  In so doing, they enjoy the relief afforded by relaxation from a long posture upon hard benches.”  The most popular story of its origin is also the most col­orful.  It was created in 1910 when President William Howard Taft, on a visit to Pittsburgh, went to a baseball game and stood up to stretch in the seventh inning.  The crowd, thinking the chief executive was about to leave, stood up out of respect for the office.  The term itself can be traced back no further than 1920.  https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2008/html/pb22235/html/kit_004.html

rinky-dink(adj.)  "trivial, old-fashioned, worthless," 1913 (from 1912 as a noun, "antiquated or worthless object"), said to be carnival slang and imitative of the sound of banjo music at parades [Barnhart]; compare ricky-tick "old-fashioned jazz" (1938).  But early records suggest otherwise unless there are two words.  The earliest senses seem to be as a noun, "maltreatment," especially robbery.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/rinky-dink 

 

Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (born 1 July 1931) is a French and American actress and dancer.  She is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards.  Caron began her career as a ballerina.  She made her film debut in the musical An American in Paris (1951), followed by roles in The Man with a Cloak (1951), Glory Alley (1952) and The Story of Three Loves (1953), before her role of an orphan in Lili (also 1953), which earned her the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress and garnered nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Caron 

 

Just read an article on Substack (which does not allow you to forward articles) reporting that the Chicago Sun-Times published a summer reading list.  Ten of the fifteen titles were fake.  It seems that the compiler used AI to generate the list and did not bother to check or verify the results.  Also, your piece on Stone Soup put me in mind of a short novel by French author Hubert Mingarelli entitled “A Meal In Winter.”  It tells of three German soldiers in WWII who evade participating in a mass slaughter of Jews by scheming to be assigned to patrol the woods surrounding their camp to hunt more Jews.  In the dead of winter, they find a young Jewish man hiding in an improvised bunker and take him captive.  They then stop for a break in a derelict farmhouse and discuss how best to combine their resources to make a meal.  They are joined by a virulently anti-semitic Polish partisan.  Tensions rise and reach a boiling point when the Pole objects to sharing the food with a Jew.  He departs and the rest finish the meal.  The Germans then discuss whether they should let the Jew go free or return him to their camp to die in the next mass killing.  I think the story is an interesting variation of the Stone Soup legend.  Thank you, Muse reader. 

Halva (also halvah, halwa, halua, and other spellings; is a type of confectionery that is widely spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Central Asia, and South Asia.  The name is used for a broad variety of recipes, generally a thick paste made from flour, butter, liquid oil, saffron, rosewater, milk, turmeric powder, and sweetened with sugar.  The word halva entered the English language between 1840 and 1850 from Romanian, which came from Ottoman Turkish.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halva  Thank you, reader.   

central casting (sen-truhl KAS-ting) 

   adjective:  Stereotypical.

   noun:  A company or department that provides actors for minor or

   background roles, often based on stereotypical appearances. 

[After Central Casting, a company founded in 1925 to cast actors for

minor roles in film and television.  Earliest documented use:  1941.]

Wordsmith  June 6, 2025   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2952  June 6, 2025 

Malvina Reynolds (née Milder; 1900–1978) was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist, best known for her songwriting, particularly the songs "Little Boxes", "What Have They Done to the Rain" and "Morningtown Ride".    Her mother was born in Russia and her father was born in Hungary.  As a child, she took violin lessons and "fooled around" with pianos, writing music occasionally.   Reynolds earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she remarked that she got "all the degrees possible".   She earned a doctorate there, finishing her dissertation in 1938.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvina_Reynolds    

Never Argue with a Bee (excerpt) by Malvina Reynolds  

Never argue with a bee,
He has got a sting-a-ree.
Be he worker, be he drone,
You had best leave him alone.    

He has got his work to do,
Getting honey from the tree.
If you know what's good for you,
Do not argue with a bee.   

Well, a hornet knows his rights,
And it hurts when he alights.
You will surely get your lumps,
Cause his stinger, it is trumps.  https://www.letras.com/malvina-reynolds/755323/    

There’s a time for work and a time for play.  https://fablesofaesop.com/the-ant-and-the-grasshopper.html 

Birds of a feather flock together.  https://fablesofaesop.com/the-farmer-and-the-stork.html    

What’s farfel?  According to the Jewish food historian Gil Marks, it's essentially an egg noodle often shaped like a tiny barley grain.  But here's where it gets interesting:  farfel refers to any small, oddly-shaped food bit.  So, back in the day in Germany, noodles were the new kid on the culinary block. They made this soup with these basic noodle clumps and called it varvelen.  German Jews caught wind of this noodle madness and dubbed those little doughy pellets "farfel" in Yiddish.    Some folks rolled the dough into logs and grated it through rough holes, while others sliced it into strips and chopped those strips into bits.  Over time the term farfel was also applied to other irregular food bits, including the Ashkenazic version of streusel and especially to crumbled matzah.  To differentiate them Americans sometimes refer to the noodles as barley farfel.  https://aish.com/what-is-farfel/ 

Phantom limb pain is pain that you feel in the part of a limb that was removed after an amputation.  It might seem unusual to feel pain in an area of your body that doesn’t exist anymore, but the pain you feel is real.  https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/12092-phantom-limb-pain  Thank you, reader. 

As a Hoosier cyclist in NYC, I learned about Major Taylor from seeing his club jerseys on other riders.  There are a number of cycling clubs with his name on them.  See:  https://www.majortaylorassociation.org/AssociatedClubs.shtml   Note that the best (cycling) movie ever made also has an Indianapolis connection.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Away   The main character is based upon a guy named David Blase.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Blase  Thank you, reader.  

June 5 is World Environment Day, recognized by the United Nations to promote worldwide awareness of the need and action to protect the environment.  The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, began on this day in 1972.  Wiktionary 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2951  June 5, 2025

Fido  noun  a coin having a minting error    generic name for a pet dog   system for enabling aircraft to land, involving the dispersal of fog by means of petrol burners on the ground   It was developed by the Allies during the Second World War.  https://scrabble-word.com/dictionary/fido 

The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state, tribal and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection.  Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation.  As of 2022, the 42,826 protected areas covered 1,235,486 km2 (477,024 sq mi), or 13 percent of the land area of the United States.  As of 2007, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, the U.S. had a total of 6,770 terrestrial nationally designated (federal) protected areas.  Federal level protected areas are managed by a variety of agencies, most of which are a part of the National Park Service, a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior.  They are often considered the crown jewels of the protected areas.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_areas_of_the_United_States 

The word heyday originates from the 16th century and is derived from the old English phrase ‘heydaeg,’ meaning high day or festive day.  It has been used in various contexts over the years, such as to describe the peak of someone’s career or the golden age of a particular era.  What Does Heyday Mean - AZdictionary.com  Thank you, reader.   

Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription-based content, including newsletters, podcasts, and video.  It allows writers to send digital content directly to subscribers.   Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.  Substack was founded in 2017 by Chris Best, the co-founder of Kik Messenger; Jairaj Sethi, a head of platform and principal developer at Kik Messenger; and Hamish McKenzie, a former PandoDaily tech reporter.  Best and McKenzie describe Ben Thompson's Stratechery, a subscription-based tech and media newsletter, as a major inspiration for their platform.  Best acts as CEO of the company.  In 2019, Substack added support for podcasts and discussion threads among newsletter subscribers.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substack   

For the cover of the June 2, 2025 New Yorker issue, the artist Kadir Nelson features Marshall W. (Major) Taylor leading a parade of bicyclists from eras past and present.  “I wanted to pay tribute to the most celebrated cyclist in the nineteenth century—the first African American superstar of any sport—and to the epic six-day indoor cycling event in 1896 at Madison Square Garden’s Velodrome, where Taylor competed,” Nelson said.  Though Taylor was admired during his era for being the “world’s fastest man,” he also encountered a lot of racism and aggression throughout his career; he was once knocked off his bike and choked to unconsciousness by a white racer.  In December, 2023, a bill to award Taylor the Congressional Gold Medal was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.  June 6, 2025  Thank you, Muse reader.   

The Major Taylor Velodrome is an outdoor, concrete velodrome in Indianapolis, named for 1899 cycling world champion Major Taylor.  The 333.34 m (364.55 yd) track with 28 degree banked turns and 9 degree straights.  The Velodrome is located immediately north of the Marian University campus and is the home track of the 41-time USA Cycling National Champion Marian University Cycling Team.  The velodrome was opened in July 1982 for the U.S. Olympic Festival.  It was built at a cost of $2.5 million.  It was a facility required to host that year's National Sports Festival, with money coming from a partnership between the Indianapolis Parks and Recreation Department and the Lilly Endowment.  The proposal to name the facility for Taylor came initially from Tom Healy, a writer for the Indianapolis News, who contacted Taylor's daughter, Sydney Taylor Brown.  The two advocated among the city's business community and Mayor William H. Hudnut.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Taylor_Velodrome  Thank you, Muse reader. 

List of State Birds | State Symbols USA  Thank you, reader. 

June 3, 2025  The W.E. Upjohn Peony Garden features the largest collection of historic—pre-1950—herbaceous peonies in North America, “and likely the world,” curator David Michener said.  “Once you come here to the Peony Garden, you’ll be mesmerized, and you’ll understand why people love peonies,” he said. “The fragrances, the colors, the forms, it’s just intoxicating.”  The peony watch is a spectator sport with tens of thousands of visitors arriving at The Arb each spring to behold the unique perennials—so many that visitors have to be bused in.  The campus Peony Garden contains more than 300 historic cultivated varieties from the 19th and early 20th centuries, representing American, Canadian and European peonies of the era.  The garden typically features up to 10,000 flowers at peak bloom.  Their colorful blossoms draw admirers from Michigan and beyond, but the peonies’ beauty is not their primary function.  The garden is designed as a support mechanism for academia—to be a research collection for students and faculty to explore genomics and social issues.  Michener and his colleagues at Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum work closely with their sister garden in Minsk, the Central Botanical Garden of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, trying to understand how ornamental peonies are related to each other and the wild, ancestral species.  Michigan’s Peony Garden is free to visit and open from sunrise to sunset.  

https://www.ironmountaindailynews.com/lifestyles/2025/06/annual-peony-pilgrimage-begins-to-u-of-m-arboretum-in-ann-arbor/  Thank you, reader!   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2950  June 4, 2025

Lake Tahoe is a freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada of the Western United States, straddling the border between California and Nevada.  Lying at 6,225 ft (1,897 m) above sea level, Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America, and at 122,160,280 acre⋅ft (150.7 km³) it trails only the five Great Lakes as the largest by volume in the United States.  Its depth is 1,645 ft (501 m), making it the second deepest in the United States after Crater Lake in Oregon (1,949 ft or 594 m).  The lake was formed about two million years ago as part of the Lake Tahoe Basin, and its modern extent was shaped during the ice ages.  It is known for the clarity of its water and the panorama of surrounding mountains on all sides.  The area surrounding the lake is also referred to as Lake Tahoe, or simply Tahoe; its English name is derived from its Washo name, Dáʔaw.  More than 75% of the lake's watershed is national forest land, covered by the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the United States Forest Service.  Lake Tahoe is fed by 63 tributaries.  These drain an area about the same size as the lake and produce half its water; the other half is produced by direct precipitation.  The Truckee River is the lake's only outlet, flowing northeast through Reno, Nevada, into Pyramid Lake which has no outlet.  It accounts for one third of the water that leaves the lake, the rest evaporating from the lake's surface.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tahoe    

The origin of the phrase “in the nick of time” can be traced back to the 1500s, when the term “nick” signified “the critical moment.”  The phrase was initially just “in the nick,” and it referred to performing an action at the precise instant it was due.  During this period, a device known as a nick-stick was often used to track time, points, transactions, and specifically, events in sports.  A nick-stick had small, precise notches or ‘nicks’ that acted as markers.  Thus, if something was done “in the nick,” it meant the action was performed at the exact time or place it was intended to be.  The full phrase “in the nick of time,” as we use it today, has been documented in written records since 1643.  Over time, it has come to symbolize accomplishing something just before it becomes too late or before a deadline expires.  https://grammarist.com/idiom/in-the-nick-of-time/   

KNOCKOUT IN THE NICK OF TIME by Martha Esbin (excerpt)

She's got the knack knows where to look   takes a crack at it finds it in the nick of time.   The reference librarian knocks me out.   What's the question?  Without the correct question she'll wrack her brain wreak havoc with her schedule and wreck her week.  The reference librarian knocks me out. 

MUSIC by Martha Esbin

Sound

vital, vibrant

music consists of

organized sound, organized silence

space with energy

rests count

silence 

Diamante:  a seven-line poem in the shape of a diamond.  The first and last lines have one word, with the middle line being the longest.  Often the first word and the last word are opposites.   

Festa della Repubblica is the Italian National Day and Republic Day, which is celebrated on 2 June each year, with the main celebration taking place in Rome. The Festa della Repubblica is one of the national symbols of Italy.  The day commemorates the 1946 Italian institutional referendum held by universal suffrage, in which the Italian people were called to the polls to decide on the form of government following the Second World War and the fall of Fascism.  The ceremony of the event, organized in Rome, includes the deposition of a laurel wreath as a tribute to the Italian Unknown Soldier at the Altare della Patria by the President of the Italian Republic and a military parade along Via dei Fori Imperiali in Rome.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festa_della_Repubblica   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2949  June 2, 2025