Turning a blind eye is an idiom describing the ignoring of undesirable information.  Although the Oxford English Dictionary records usage of the phrase as early as 1698, the phrase to turn a blind eye is often attributed to an incident in the life of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson.  Nelson was blinded in one eye early in his Royal Navy career.  During the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 the cautious Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, in overall command of the British forces, sent a signal to Nelson's forces ordering them to discontinue the action.  Naval orders were transmitted via a system of signal flags at that time.  When this order was brought to the more aggressive Nelson's attention, he lifted his telescope up to his blind eye, saying, "I have a right to be blind sometimes.  I really do not see the signal," and most of his forces continued to press home the attack.  The frigates supporting the line-of-battle ships did break off, in one case suffering severe losses in the retreat.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_a_blind_eye   

The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a 1971 British comedy horror film directed by Robert Fuest, and written by James Whiton and William Goldstein.  It stars Vincent Price in the title role, Dr. Anton Phibes, who blames the medical team that attended to his wife's surgery four years earlier, for her death and sets out to exact vengeance on each one.  He is inspired in his murder spree by the Ten Plagues of Egypt from the Old Testament.  The film co-stars Joseph Cotten, Hugh Griffith, Terry-Thomas, Virginia North, with an uncredited Caroline Munro appearing as Phibes's wife.  It initially received mixed reviews from critics, but has gone on to garner a cult following, with critics singling out Price's performance, the film's dark humour, and its Art Deco production design.  A 2013 Time Out London poll ranked the film in the Top 100 Horror Films of All Time.  The film was followed by a direct sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, released the following year.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abominable_Dr._Phibes    

noun  mind's ear (plural mind's ears or minds' ears or (less common) minds' ear)  (idiomatic) The mental faculty or inner sense with which one produces or reproduces imagined or recalled sounds solely within the mind; the supposed organ within the mind which experiences such sounds. synonym, coordinate term ▲quotations ▼  Synonym:  inner ear  Coordinate term:  mind's eye   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mind%27s_ear#English    

One of the more unique spins on the best books of the year is NPR’s annual Books We Love roundup.  This interactively, highly sortable list features titles that will be familiar staples on other best of list, alongside dozens of fresh titles and recommendations for readers.  NPR selects their titles by inviting staffers and critics to submit their favorite books and then editors go through the list to delete duplicates and ensure there is a mix of different books that will appeal to a wide range of readers.  The NPR Books team then slots these titles into different categories–ones that are pretty expected, such as book club picks, or age categories, as well as many with creative names–so readers can play around with discovery.  NPR’s guide recommends titles such as Amy Tan’s The Backyard Bird Chronicles and Sandwiches of History: The Cookbook by Barry W. Enderwick.  Itching for a short book?  Try out The Most by Jessica Anthony or Nghi Vo’s The Brides of High Hill.  Want a Geeky read that’s short?  You’ve got yourself a Milk Without Honey by Hanna Harms.  The 2024 Books We Love list includes hundreds of titles.  Dive in here and discover your new favorite read from 2024.  https://bookriot.com/npr-shares-their-big-list-of-favorite-books-for-2024/    

Oxford Word of the Year 2024 is brain rot  noun  Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.  Also:  something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.  https://corp.oup.com/word-of-the-year/   

Marshall Jacob Brickman (1939–November 29, 2024) was an American screenwriter and director, best known for his collaborations with Woody Allen, with whom he shared the 1977 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Annie Hall.  He was previously the head writer for Johnny Carson, writing scripts for recurring characters such as Carnac the Magnificent.  He is also known for playing the banjo with Eric Weissberg in the 1960s, and for a series of comical parodies published in The New Yorker.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Brickman   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2881  December 3, 2024 

The meaning of December stems from the Latin word decem, meaning ten.  The old Roman calendar started in March, making December the tenth month.  When the Roman senate changed the calendar in 153 BCE, the new year started in January, and December became the twelfth month.  The December solstice on December 21 or 22 is also known as the winter solstice.  It is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and marks the beginning of the (astronomical) winter season there.  In the Southern Hemisphere, it is called the summer solstice.  There, it is the longest day of the year and the beginning of the (astronomical) summer season.  https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/months/december.html#:~:text=Why%20Is%20December%20Not%20the,December%20became%20the%20twelfth%20mont

advent  noun   arrival of a notable person, thing, or event    

adventure  noun  Synonyms of adventure 1 a  : an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks  a book recounting his many bold adventures  b : the encountering of risks  the spirit of adventure

2  : an exciting or remarkable experience  3  : an enterprise involving financial risk

adventure  verb   

adventured; adventuring  transitive verb  1 : to expose to danger or loss  2 : to venture upon (see venture entry 1 sense 2) : try   

intransitive verb  1 :  to proceed despite risk   2 : to take the risk  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adventure    

Ice eggs, or ice balls, are a rare phenomenon caused by a process in which small pieces of sea ice in open water are rolled over by wind and currents in freezing conditions and grow into spheroid pieces of ice.  They may collect into heaps of balls or 'eggs' on beaches where they pack together in striking patterns.   The gentle churn of water, blown by a suitably stiff breeze makes concentric layers of ice form on a seed particle that then grows into the floating ball as it rolls through the freezing currents.  Given enough time, the frozen balls can grow to become boulder size.  In 2016, giant snowballs washed up on a beach in Siberia, some measuring a metre (about 3 feet) across.  An ice specialist from the Finnish Meteorological Institute has been quoted as saying ice balls are rare, but not unprecedented, and occur about once a year on the Finnish coastline as conditions allow.  They also appear on the American Great Lakes along with pancake ice, forming in the middle of the lake, where they are called ice balls.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_eggs    

Noun  pawternity leave (usually uncountable, plural pawternity leaves)  (informal) Time off work granted to an employee to take care of a pet, especially a cat or dog  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pawternity_leave#English

December 2 is one of two National Mutt Days in 2024 in the USA established by the American animal welfare advocate Colleen Paige.   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2880  December 2, 2024

The moon-eyed people are a legendary group of short, bearded white-skinned people who are said to have lived in Appalachia until the Cherokee expelled them.  Stories about them, attributed to Cherokee tradition, are mentioned by early European settlers in America.  In a 1797 book, Benjamin Smith Barton explains they are called "moon-eyed" because they saw poorly during the day.  Some stories claim they created the area's pre-Columbian ruins, and they disappeared from the area.  Barton cited as his source a conversation with Colonel Leonard Marbury (c. 1749–1796), an early settler of Georgia.  Marbury, a Revolutionary War officer and a Congressman in the Second Provincial Congress of Georgia (1775), acted as intermediary between Native American Indians in the state of Georgia and the United States government.  Published accounts of an ancient moon-eyed people who lived in the southern Appalachian region of the United States before the Cherokee came into the area have appeared in America since the late 18th century.  Sources disagree as to the accuracy of the stories, whether or not the stories are an authentic part of Cherokee oral tradition; whether the people existed or were mythical; whether they were indigenous peoples or early European explorers; and whether or not they built certain prehistoric structures found in the region.  Different ideas about the people have appeared in letters, newspapers, and books for over two hundred years.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon-eyed_people   See also https://northcarolinaghosts.com/mountains/moon-eyed-people/  and https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/moon-eyed-people-appalachia 

Erik Larson (born January 3, 1954) is an American journalist and author of mostly historical nonfiction books.  His books include Isaac's Storm (1999), The Devil in the White City (2003), In the Garden of Beasts (2011), and Dead Wake (2015).  The Devil in the White City won the 2004 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category, among other awards.  Larson was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York.   He studied Russian history at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated summa cum laude in 1976.  After a year off, he attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, graduating in 1978. He was inspired to go into journalism after seeing the movie All the President's Men.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Larson_(author)    

Life is the combination of magic and pasta, of fantasy and of reality,” noted the magic realist and pasta enthusiast Federico Fellini.  “Films are the magic,” he continued, “and pasta is the reality, or is it the other way around?”    SAVEUR:  The Pasta Issue, Oct/Nov. 2017    

Marcus Jackson was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio.  After earning his BA at the University of Toledo, he continued his poetry studies in NYU's graduate creative writing program and as a Cavem Canem fellow.  His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Harvard Review and The Cincinnati Review, among many other publications.  His chapbook, Rundown, was published by Aureole Press in 2009. His debut full-length collection of poems, entitled Neighborhood Register, was released in 2011.  https://english.osu.edu/people/jackson.2577#:~:text=Marcus%20Jackson%20was%20born%20and,as%20a%20Cavem%20Canem%20fellow.   

Portugal is a seafaring nation with a well-developed fishing industry and this is reflected in the amount of fish and seafood eaten.  The country has Europe's highest fish consumption per capita, and is among the top four in the world for this indicator.  Fish is served grilled, boiled (including poached and simmered), fried or deep-fried, stewed known as caldeirada (often in clay pot cooking), roasted, or even steamed.  Foremost amongst these is bacalhau (cod), which is the type of fish most consumed in Portugal.  It is said that there are more than 365 ways to cook cod, meaning at least one dish for each day of the year.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_cuisine  See also https://www.theintrepideater.com/portuguese-buns-papo-secos/    

Alice Brock, born Alice May Pelkey in New York City, whose Massachusetts-based eatery helped inspire Arlo Guthrie’s deadpan Thanksgiving standard, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” has died at age 83.  Her death, just a week before Thanksgiving 2024, was announced by Guthrie on the Facebook page of his own Rising Son Records.  Guthrie wrote that she died in Provincetown, Massachusetts, her residence for some 40 years, and referred to her being in failing health.  https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/23/us/alice-brock-alices-restaurant-death/index.html    

Barbara Taylor Bradford OBE (1933–24 November 2024) was a British-American best-selling novelist.  Her debut novel, A Woman of Substance, was published in 1979 and sold over 30 million copies worldwide.  She wrote 40 novels, all bestsellers in England and the United States.  In her youth, Barbara Taylor read Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy, and Colette.  At the age of ten she decided to be a writer after sending a story to a magazine.  She was paid 7s 6d for the story, with which she bought handkerchiefs and a green vase for her parents.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Taylor_Bradford    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2879  November 25, 2024

The Fugates, commonly known as the "Blue Fugates" or the "Blue People of Kentucky", are an ancestral family living in the hills of Kentucky starting in the 19th century, where they are known for having a genetic trait that led to the blood disorder methemoglobinemia, causing the skin to appear blue.  Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith, who had married and settled near Hazard, Kentucky, in around 1820, were both carriers of the recessive methemoglobinemia (met-H) gene.  As a result, four of their nine children exhibited blue skin.  Their continued reproduction within the limited local gene pool along with a lack of transportation infrastructure ensured that many descendants of the Fugates were born with met-H. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates   

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a 2019 novel by Kim Michele Richardson.  The story is a fictionalized account of real subjects in the history of eastern Kentucky.  Cussy Mary is a "Book Woman"—one of the Packhorse Librarians who delivered books to remote areas of the Appalachian Mountains during the Great Depression, from 1935 to 1943, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) program.  Cussy Mary is also a "Blue"—the last of a line of blue-skinned people, whose skin appears the unusual shade due to a rare genetic disorder.  As a Book Woman, Cussy Mary is highly regarded, but as a Blue, she is feared and reviled, and experiences racism, discrimination and violence.  In 1936 eastern Kentucky, 19-year-old Cussy Mary Carter works for the New Deal–funded Pack Horse Library Project, delivering reading material to the remote hill people of the Appalachian Mountains.  Cussy Mary, sometimes known as Bluet, lives with her coal-miner and labor-organizing father, and feels her work as a librarian honors her long-dead mother, who loved books.  The Carters are the last of the Blue People of Kentucky, considered to be "colored" by the segregationist white community.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_Woman_of_Troublesome_Creek  Some people call Cussy Mary a ‘circus freak’  *  “food was the most valuable thing you could give someone—the most generous gift a Kaintulk folk could bestow on another.”  *  “Like all Blues I’d grown up to be ‘careful,’ learning when to bow down and when to cower.”    

The 2024 National Book Winners include Percival Everett, James (fiction).  See the list at 2024 National Book Awardsaward winnerswinners  https://lithub.com/here-are-the-winners-of-the-2024-national-book-awards/   

Thomas Eugene Kurtz (1928–November 12, 2024) was an American computer scientist and educator.  A Dartmouth professor of mathematics, he and colleague John G. Kemeny set in motion the then revolutionary concept of making computers as freely available to college students as library books were, by implementing the concept of time-sharing at Dartmouth College.  In his mission to allow non-expert users to interact with the computer, he co-developed the BASIC programming language and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System during 1963 to 1964.  For his role in creating BASIC, the IEEE honored Kurtz in 1991 with the Computer Pioneer Award, and in 1994, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Kurtz   

Noun  deontology (usually uncountable, plural deontologies) (ethics)  Synonym of ethics (“the study of principles relating to right and wrong conduct”) [from c. 1826] synonym ▲quotations ▼ Synonym:  moral philosophy  (specifically) The normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether the action follows certain obligations or rules, rather than on either its inherent goodness or its consequences. [from 1930] quotations ▼   November 21, the third Thursday of November in 2024, was World Philosophy Day, which was first recognized by the United Nations in 2002 to emphasize the enduring value of philosophy for the development  of human thought.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deontology#English    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2878  November 22, 2024