A clap-o-meter, clapometer or applause meter is a measurement instrument that purports to measure and display the volume of clapping or applause made by an audience.  It can be used to indicate the popularity of contestants and decide the result of competitions based on audience popularity.  Specific implementations may or may not be based on an actual sound level meters.  Clap-o-meters were a popular element in talent shows and television game shows in the 1950s and 1960s, most notably Opportunity Knocks, but have been since been supplanted by other, more sophisticated, methods of measuring audience response.  In 1989, Green unsuccessfully attempted to sue the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation for copyright infringement over a similar programme.  The clap-o-meter was one of the distinctive features of the format by which Green sought to define it as copyrightable.  The courts found that a loose format defined by catchphrases and accessories, such as the clap-o-meter, was not copyrightable.  Clap-o-meters continue to be used.  They are often regarded as a novelty or item of amusement rather than an accurate method to measure popularity.  Even so, they are sometimes used to judge winners in fairly serious competitions such as battle of the bands competitions.  In politics, a politician's popularity is sometimes gauged by the applause they achieve when giving speeches.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap-o-meter  

Ann Goldstein (born June 1949) is an American editor and translator from the Italian language.  She is best known for her translations of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet.  She was the panel chair for translated fiction at the US National Book Award in 2022.  She was awarded the PEN Renato Poggioli prize in 1994 and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2008.   Ann Goldstein grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey.  She attended Bennington College, in Vermont, where she read Ancient Greek.  She then studied comparative philology at University College, London.  After her graduation, in 1973, Goldstein began work at Esquire magazine as a proof-reader.  In 1974, she joined the staff of The New Yorker, working in the copy department and becoming its head in the late 1980s. She retired from The New Yorker in 2017.   From 1987, Goldstein edited John Updike's literary reviews contributed to The New Yorker.  During her time at The New Yorker, Goldstein, along with some colleagues, began taking Italian lessons.  Over a period of three years, from 1987, they studied the language and read all of Dante's works.  In 1992, Goldstein received Chekhov in Sondrio, a book by Aldo Buzzi, an Italian writer, and she attempted to translate an essay from it.  This became Goldstein's first translation publication, coming out in the Sept. 14, 1992, edition of the New Yorker.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Goldstein_(translator)  

March 29, 2025  It's a hot and muggy summer day in Sicily's Madonie mountains, a rugged range of ridges about 65km east of Palermo.  In a field of ash trees, the buzzing of cicadas is interrupted by a voice.  "You came at the right time," says Giulio Gelardi, a local farmer pointing towards a white-streaked branch.  "This is the famous manna."  Along the bark of each tree are thick lines of manna, a white mineral-rich resin referenced in the Bible 17 times that has been used as a natural sweetener and medicinal aid for centuries.  Manna harvesting (the practice of cutting the bark of Fraxinus ornus trees to collect their sap), used to be a common practice throughout the Mediterranean.  But in the past 80 years, urbanisation and industrialisation have led to it nearly vanishing.  For the past 30 years, Gelardi has made it his mission to put this Biblical superfood back on our tables, and today, this once-forgotten sap is being used by chefs and pastry makers in innovative ways.  Even if you've never tasted manna, you may have heard of it.  The phrase "manna from heaven" refers to a Biblical story where a food falls from the sky to nourish the Israelites as they crossed the Sinai desert.  In Exodus, manna is described as a "flaky substance as fine as frost blanketed on the ground". While experts disagree what substance, specifically, this passage refers to, a honey-like, flaky and frost-coloured resin named manna has been extracted from the bark of ash trees in the Mediterranean region for more than a millennium.  In the Madonie mountains--home to the 40,000-hectare Madonie Natural Park--manna harvesting dates back to at least the 9th Century when the island was under Arab rule.  During the Renaissance, Sicilian farmers used to collect this sweet sap--which tastes like cane sugar with almond undertones--and sell it to merchants from around the Mediterranean, a highly profitable trade that led the Kingdom of Naples to put taxes on it during the 16th Century.  Until World War Two, manna farming was a way of life for many Sicilian families.  Footage from 1936 shows local farmers harvesting the substance.  https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250328-the-return-of-sicilys-  

Clown doctor noun  A clown who visits hospitals in a costume which is a combination of attire worn by a clown and a doctor to entertain (young) patients. March 30 is National Doctors’ Day in the United States, which recognizes the service rendered by physicians.  On this day in 1842, the American surgeon Crawford Long first used general anaesthesia during a surgery.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clown_doctor#English

 http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2923  March 31, 2025

Christian Carmack Sanderson (1882–1966) was a teacher, fiddler, square dance caller, poet, and noted local historian in southeastern Pennsylvania in the early to mid-20th century.   He corresponded with a wide range of notable people of his time and was a remarkable collector of historical memorabilia (which are the basis of the collections on display in the Christian C. Sanderson Museum).  Sanderson lived the latter part of his life in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and was friends with the Wyeth family there (including artists N.C., Andrew and Jamie). From 1906 to 1922, Sanderson lived in the Benjamin Ring House, which was Washington's Headquarters before and after the Battle of Brandywine and "more than any individual in his time, Christian Sanderson focused attention on the Battle".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_C._Sanderson 

Chris Sanderson was an inveterate radio performer who was well known for his work.  His broadcasting career spanned 43 years and four different area radio stations.  His first broadcast was in March of 1923 on station WFI in Philadelphia, for the Boy Scouts of America; his last was in October of 1966 on station WCOJ in Coatesville, less than a month before he passed away.  His first orchestra, “The Delmarvans,” performed briefly on station WILM in Wilmington in 1930.  His weekly program, “Old Folks at Home,” ran from 1930 to 1940 on WDEL in Wilmington, and was notable because in those 10 years Chris never missed or was even late for a scheduled broadcast.  At the time, this was believed to have been a world’s record for continuous broadcasting.  This, despite the fact that Chris did not own a car; he lived in Pocopson (15 miles away), then in Chadds Ford (10 miles away); and no matter the season, weather, or other circumstances, he depended entirely on walking and hitch-hiking for transportation.  The station figured that over that decade, Chris had commuted 13,780 miles to and from the station with no means of transportation but his thumb and his feet!  Invariably, Chris began every broadcast with a cheery, “Good morning, friends.  Here we are once again,” and he ended every broadcast with his signature invocation: 

“May the gods above bless you,
The devils of temptation miss you,
And the angels kiss you . . . with their wings, In your dreams.”  https://sandersonmuseum.org/christian-sanderson/  

Spring has sprung, the grass iz riz,  I wonder where da boidies iz?  Da boid iz on da wing!  Ain’t that absoid?  I always hoid da wing . . .  wuz on da boid!

My all-time favorite is based on Renaissance painter Botticelli’s “La Primavera” (Spring), a beauty I got to see first-hand in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Ottorino Respighi wasn’t creating a piece about the season as much as honoring the allegory painted by Botticelli some 400 years earlier.  Respighi fills it with breezy Renaissance dances as he imagines Botticelli’s depiction of The Three Graces dancing to bird song.  Alexander Glazunov’s Spring, Op.34, is also one of my top choices to hear Spring in music.  It’s another gentle take on the season, asking you to imagine hearing birds just before a spring dawn.  There are so many wonderful spring pieces to explore.  I hope you’ll look for and listen to Schumann’s Symphony No. 1, “Spring,” and Vivaldi’s “Spring,” from The Four Seasons.  Then I’m hoping you’ll get “spring fever” and “branch out” to pieces like Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps and Verdi’s “Spring” ballet from his opera The Sicilian Vespers, and pieces by Beach, Copland and Grieg.  By Laura Carlo   https://www.classicalwcrb.org/blog/2021-03-30/spring-has-sprung   

There is a British chamber ensemble called The Fibonacci Sequence.  Their recordings include the Schubert Octet and Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.  They are very good.  You can borrow these and other recordings through OhioLink.  Thank you, Muse reader!  

March 25, 2025  CROTON-ON-HUDSON — Road salt and human activities around reservoirs in Putnam and Westchester counties could cause levels of chloride in the reservoirs to exceed New York State standards by 2108, making some of New York City’s water undrinkable.  The revelation comes from a just-released report by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which manages the city’s water supply.  The report states that levels of chloride—one of the two chemicals that make up salt—have tripled in the last 30 years in a major reservoir in Westchester County.  The revelation comes from a just-released report by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which manages the city’s water supply.  The report states that levels of chloride—one of the two chemicals that make up salt—have tripled in the last 30 years in a major reservoir in Westchester County.  https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/news/article/new-work-reservoirs-salt-undrinkable-20234117.php

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2922  March 27, 2025

Note G is a computer algorithm written by Ada Lovelace that was designed to calculate Bernoulli numbers using the hypothetical analytical engine.  Note G is generally agreed to be the first algorithm specifically for a computer, and Lovelace is considered as the first computer programmer as a result.  The algorithm was the last note in a series labelled A to G, which she employed as visual aids to accompany her English translation of Luigi Menabrea's 1842 French transcription of Charles Babbage's lecture on the analytical engine at the University of Turin,  "Notions sur la machine analytique de Charles Babbage" ("Elements of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Machine").  Lovelace's Note G was never tested, as the engine was never built.  Her notes, along with her translation, were published in 1843.  In the modern era, thanks to more readily available computing equipment and programming resources, Lovelace's algorithm has since been tested, after being "translated" into modern programming languages.  These tests have independently concluded that there was a bug in the script, due to a minor typographical error.  In 1840, Charles Babbage was invited to give a seminar in Turin on his analytical engine, the only public explanation he ever gave on the engine.  During Babbage's lecture, mathematician Luigi Menabrea wrote an account of the engine in French. A friend of Babbage's, Charles Wheatstone, suggested that in order to contribute, Lovelace should translate Menabrea's account.  Babbage suggested that she augment the account with appendices, which she compiled at the end of her translation as a series of seven "notes" labelled A-G.  Her translation was published in August 1843, in Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, wherein Lovelace's name was signed "A.A.L".  In these notes, Lovelace described the capabilities of Babbage's analytical engine if it were to be used for computing, laying out a more ambitious plan for the engine than even Babbage himself had.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note_G#   

March 14, 2025  Legendary avant-garde composer Sofia Gubaidulina has died in Germany, where she spent more than 30 years of her life after the break-up of the Soviet Union.  Gubaidulina, who was 93, was one of a group of composers blacklisted in the Soviet Union in 1979.  She was one of three legendary, avant-garde Russian composers to be disgraced, along with Alfred Schnittke and Denisov.  "We were all very different artists," she told the BBC in 2013.  "Edison Denisov was a classicist with very subtle yet strict logic.  Alfred Schnittke was a romantic.  My style could be best described as archaic."  It was only when by chance she shared a taxi in Moscow with violinist Gidon Kremer in the late 1970s that her life changed.  He suggested that she write a violin concerto, and it was this composition, Offertorium, in which she borrowed a theme from Bach, that gave her an international following in the West, after it was premiered by Kremer in Vienna in 1981.  Schnittke praised the work as "perhaps the most important violin concerto of the 20th Century".   https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly8gn8773no   

Hoping to raise a record-breaking amount for charity in March 2025, Jersey Mike’s Subs, known for its authentic fresh sliced/fresh grilled subs, asks customers to eat a sub and help a local cause.  To celebrate the company’s 15^th Annual Month of Giving, Jersey Mike’s locations across the country are joining forces with more than 200 local charities.  During the month of March, customers will have the option to round up their purchase to the nearest dollar or donate $1, $3, or $5 when placing their order.  Charities include hospitals, youth organizations, food banks and more.  The campaign culminates in the nationwide event, Day of Giving, on Wednesday, March 26, when local Jersey Mike’s owners and operators will donate every single dollar that comes in to local charities.  At the first nationwide fundraiser in 2011, all of Jersey Mike’s 454 locations raised $600,000 for 66 charities.  Since then, Jersey Mike’s annual Month of Giving has raised more than $113 million for local hundreds of local charities.  This March, Jersey Mike’s hopes to exceed last year’s record-breaking national fundraising total of $25 million and help local charities striving to fulfill their missions and make a difference.  “I would like to extend a personal invitation to you and your family to visit Jersey Mike’s Subs throughout the month of March, and especially on Day of Giving when 100 percent of sales goes to help a great local cause,” said Peter Cancro, Jersey Mike’s founder and CEO, who this year celebrates 50 years since he bought his first sub shop at age 17.  In each market, Jersey Mike’s owners select charities that support local neighborhoods to build stronger communities.  https://www.jerseymikes.com/mog    

From a reader:  Thank you for covering buckwheat.   I am a huge fan and I eat it every morning for breakfast (mixed with oatmeal.)  One of the reasons I include it in my diet is omitted in your summary but I consider it significant.  AFAIK, NO true cereal grain (including oatmeal) contains a "complete protein."  (Lysine is usually lacking in most cereals.)  Only psuedo-cereals such as buckwheat and quinoa are complete.  (Some sources include amaranth as well.)  Should you become a buckwheat aficionado like myself, I highly recommend Food in Bulk.  https://foodinbulk.com   

The German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955), known for developing the theory of relativity, was born on March 14 in 1879.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Einsteiny#English   

http://librarianmuse.blogspot.com  2920  March 14, 2025

David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, literary critic, travel writer, essayist, and painter.  His modernist works reflect on modernity, social alienation and industrialization, while championing sexuality, vitality and instinct.  Four of his most famous novels–Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)–were the subject of censorship trials for their radical portrayals of romance, sexuality and use of explicit language.  Lawrence's opinions and artistic preferences earned him a controversial reputation; he endured contemporary persecution and public misrepresentation of his creative work throughout his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile that he described as a "savage enough pilgrimage".  At the time of his death, he had been variously scorned as tasteless, avant-garde, and a pornographer who had only garnered success for erotica; however, English novelist and critic E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence    

The Palace of Truth is a three-act blank verse "Fairy Comedy" by W. S. Gilbert first produced at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 19 November 1870, adapted in significant part from Madame de Genlis's fairy story, Le Palais de Vérite.  The play ran for approximately 140 performances and then toured the British provinces and enjoyed various revivals even well into the 20th century. There was also a New York production in 1910.   After more than a century of inquiry, researchers in 2012 concluded that the three genera of Lemurs were named after characters in The Palace of Truth in 1870 by British zoologist John Edward Gray.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_of_Truth    

yelm

The noun is derived from Middle English yelm, from Old English ġielm (“bunch or handful (of plant stems)”), from Proto-West Germanic *galmi (“bundle or handful of plants”), possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰelh₃- (“to flourish; green, yellow”) or *gʰel- (“to cut”).  The verb is derived from the noun.

Noun

yelm (plural yelms)  (UK, dialectal) A bundle of straw laid out straight, chiefly to be used for thatching; a helm. quotations ▼ Translations

bundle of straw laid out straight for thatching — see thatch

Verb

yelm (third-person singular simple present yelms, present participle yelming, simple past and past participle yelmed) (UK, dialectal)

(transitive) To choose and lay out (straw) straight to be used for animal fodder or thatching; to helm. quotations ▼

(intransitive) To choose and lay out straw straight to be used for animal fodder or thatching; to helm.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yelm#English    

March 13, 2025  Hand clapping is ubiquitous behavior for humans across time and cultures, serving many different purposes:  to signify approval with applause, for instance, or to keep time to music.  Acousticians often use a hand clap as a cheap substitute for pricey equipment to make acoustic measurements in architecture. While the basic physical mechanism is simple, the underlying physical mechanisms are less well-understood.  A new paper published in the journal Physical Review Research provides experimental support for the hypothesis that hand clapping essentially acts like a Helmholtz resonator—akin to the hum generated by blowing across the top of a bottle, or the hiss one hears when holding a conch shell to one's ear.  In 2020, engineers Nikolaos Papadakis and Georgios Stavroulakis, both at the Technical University of Crete, recruited 24 students to clap their hands once in different venues, varying their hand configurations in 11 different ways—changing the angle of the hands with respect to one another, for instance, or changing how many fingers of one hand overlapped with the fingers or palms of the other.  https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/how-ones-hand-configuration-affects-the-sound-of-clapping/    

Gustavo Dudamel and the New York Philharmonic will give the first performance of an early work of Maurice Ravel’s on 13th March, 2025 in celebration of the composer’s 150th anniversary.  Prélude et danse de Sémiramis, composed in 1902, is the opening to a partially lost cantata from Ravel’s student days.  The autograph manuscript of the opening prelude has been at the Bibliothèque nationale de France since 2000, but has not received an orchestral performance.  Composed at the age of 27, the same year as Ravel’s celebrated String Quartet in F, Sémiramis was among several choral and orchestral works Ravel wrote in pursuit of the Prix de Rome, which the composer never won despite entering four times.  His elimination in 1905, for allegedly nepotistic reasons, caused a scandal.  This new performing score was prepared by the Ravel Edition, and other documents relating to Ravel will be exhibited at David Geffen Hall from 3rd March to 20th May, 2025 including autograph manuscripts on loan from the Morgan Library & Museum.  Dudamel and the NY Philharmonic will perform Prélude et danse from 13th–16th March, together with Yuja Wang performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.  Dudamel will also conduct Varèse’s Amériques and Gershwin’s An American in Paris.  https://bachtrack.com/news-ravel-world-premiere-new-york-philharmonic-dudamel-february-2025    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2919  March 13. 2025 

Grace Brewster Hopper (née Murray; 1906–1992) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and United States Navy rear admiral.   She was a pioneer of computer programming.  Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the FLOW-MATIC programming language and COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.  She was also one of the first programmers on the Harvard Mark I computer.  She is credited with writing the first computer manual, "A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator."  Before joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in both mathematics and mathematical physics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College.  She left her position at Vassar to join the United States Navy Reserve during World War II.  Hopper began her computing career in 1944 as a member of the Harvard Mark I team, led by Howard H. Aiken.  In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer.  At Eckert–Mauchly she managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper    

flabbergast  The origin of the verb is uncertain; possibly dialectal (Suffolk), from flabby or flap (“to strike”) + aghast.   The word may be related to Scottish flabrigast (“to boast”) or flabrigastit (“worn out with exertion”).   The noun is derived from the verb.   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/flabbergast    

Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) or common buckwheat is a flowering plant in the knotweed family Polygonaceae cultivated for its grain-like seeds and as a cover crop.  Buckwheat originated around the 6th millennium BCE in the region of what is now Yunnan Province in southwestern China.  The name "buckwheat" is used for several other species, such as Fagopyrum tataricum, a domesticated food plant raised in Asia.  Despite its name, buckwheat is not closely related to wheat. Buckwheat is not a cereal, nor is it even a member of the grass family.  It is related to sorrel, knotweed, and rhubarb.  Buckwheat is considered a pseudocereal, because its seeds' high starch content allows them to be used in cooking like a cereal.  Buckwheat hulls are used as filling for a variety of upholstered goods, including pillows.  The hulls are durable and do not insulate or reflect heat as much as synthetic filling.  They are sometimes marketed as an alternative natural filling to feathers for those with allergies.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckwheat    

Buckwheat recipes:

Easy Buckwheat Porridge (Gluten-Free, Vegan, Plant Protein)  https://marinmamacooks.com/easy-buckwheat-porridge/

How to Cook Buckwheat  https://www.olgainthekitchen.com/how-to-cook-buckwheat/

Buckwheat with Mushrooms  https://momsdish.com/recipe/75/buckwheat-mushrooms    

On Mar 14, 1994, 31 years ago, I set a tiny linguistic snowball rolling down a hill.  It grew, gathered words and wordlovers, and morphed into Wordsmith.org, a haven for people in 170+ countries, united by their

love of words.  Anu Garg   

To celebrate, we're holding a contest.  Your poem must use only five-letter words. Your tale can be about yourself, someone you know, or a public figure.  Need inspiration?  This week's A.Word.A.Day emails are all five-letter words.  Though you don't have to use them in your poem. 

Selected entries will win their choice of: 

- A copy of any of my books https://wordsmith.org/awad/books.html

- The word game Word Up! oldscoolcompany.com/products/one-up 

HOW TO ENTER 

- Email your entries to contest@wordsmith.org by Fri, 3/14/25.

- Include your location (city, state).

- Enter as many times as you like. 

https://wordsmith.org/words/eclat.html    

http//librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2918  March 12, 2025