At the Brockton Public Library http://www.brocktonpubliclibrary.org/,
the artwork and some items relating to the city’s storied shoemaking past are
in the process of being uploaded to Digital
Commonwealth, an online, searchable database launched as an initiative
between a Newton-based nonprofit, Digital Commonwealth Inc., and the Boston
Public Library. Anything digitized and
posted at www.digitalcommonwealth.org is also sent to the Digital
Library of America, adding to its collection from institutions across the
country, said Celeste Bruno, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. Most of the artwork is displayed in public
areas of the library, including a grand piece titled “The Buccaneers,” by
renowned marine artist Frederick J. Waugh, in the Teen Zone room. In 2002, the last time the library had its works
appraised, the 1910 piece was valued at $100,000, Lucia Shannon, head of adult
services, said. Another notable piece is
Thomas Dewing’s “Green and White,” a 1910 pastel of a woman in a gown sitting
on a bench. Other artists whose works
are featured include John
Henry Twachtman and Thomas Eakins, whose portrait of the donor of the painting
was valued at $115,000 in 2002. Some
pieces are hung away from the public eye in library offices, including a
17th-century Dutch still life by Jan Davidsz. de Heem valued at $25,000. Older library buildings, like the Woburn Public Library,
have limited space to display all of their treasures. Had it not been for a Civil War encampment
hosted by the library, one of its most rare artifacts—the small piece of
President Lincoln’s coat—would not have been on public display, said Kathleen
O’Doherty, the library’s director.
Lincoln’s wife, Mary, gave the coat to the couple’s favorite White House
doorman, Alphonse Donn, who cut off pieces of it to give away as mementos to
his visitors, according to a narrative from the Ford’s
Theatre museum in Washington,
D.C., where the coat is displayed. The
approximately 1½-inch snippet at the Woburn library was donated in 1892 by one
of Mary’s nephews, according to the library’s archives. Most of the items on exhibit throughout the
building are part of the library’s art collection, which includes pieces by Benjamin
Champney, a 19th-century painter renowned for his White Mountain
works. The 136-year-old building also
boasts a museum on the top floor full of treasures, including two letters from
1776 and 1783 signed by George Washington.
In one he inquires about buying china and wine for his home, and in the
other he is complaining to the Continental Congress. In the museum is also an original copy of the
first published history of New England from 1654, as well as a book of notable
autographs, among them the signatures of Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Katheleen Conti https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/south/2015/10/29/some-public-libraries-home-rare-and-valuable-treasures/8fkcR3FO3fqd2I74XdkCoL/story.html
Cucurbita (Latin for gourd) is
a genus of herbaceous vine in
the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae, also known as cucurbits, native
to the Andes and Mesoamerica.
Five species are grown worldwide for their edible fruit, variously known
as squash, pumpkin, or gourd depending on species, variety, and local parlance, and
for their seeds. First cultivated in the
Americas before being brought to Europe by returning explorers after their
discovery of the New World, plants in the genus Cucurbita are
important sources of human food and oil.
Other kinds of gourd, also called bottle-gourds, are native to Africa
and belong to the genus Lagenaria, which is in the same family and
subfamily as Cucurbita but
in a different tribe.
These other gourds are used as utensils or vessels, and their young
fruits are eaten much like those of Cucurbita species. Most Cucurbita species
are herbaceous vines that grow several meters in length and have tendrils, but non-vining "bush"
cultivars of C. pepo and C. maxima have
also been developed. The yellow or
orange flowers on a Cucurbita plant
are of two types: female and male. The female flowers produce the fruit and
the male flowers produce pollen.
Many North and Central American species are visited by specialist bee pollinators, but other insects with more
general feeding habits such as honey bees also visit. The fruits of the genus Cucurbita are
good sources of several nutrients such as vitamin A, vitamin C, niacin, folic acid, and iron,
and like all plant products are free of cholesterol.
The plants contain the toxins cucurbitin, cucurmosin, and cucurbitacin.
There is some disagreement about how to handle the taxonomy of
the genus; the number of species accepted by different specialists varies from
13 to 30. In addition, the ancestry of
some of the species that have been cultivated for millennia is uncertain. The five domesticated species are Cucurbita
argyrosperma, C. ficifolia, C. maxima, C. moschata,
and C. pepo. All of these can be treated as winter squash because
the full-grown fruits can be stored for months; however, C. pepo includes
some cultivars that are better used only as summer squash.
Cucurbita fruits have played a role in human
culture for at least 2,000 years. They
are often represented in Moche ceramics from Peru. After Christopher Columbus's
arrival in the New World, paintings of squashes started to appear in Europe
early in the sixteenth century. Among
other uses, extracts are used in cosmetics for dry and sensitive skin. The fruits have many culinary uses including pumpkin pie, biscuits, bread, desserts,
puddings, beverages, and soups. Pumpkins
and other Cucurbita fruits
are celebrated in festivals and in flower and vegetable shows in many
countries. Read more and see pictures at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbita
Paraphrase from The Island Walkers, a novel by John Bemrose Putting knowledge into words, it was exciting
and liberating to see years of experience transformed, almost effortlessly,
into the currency of language.
When
Book Lovers Guarded Their Prized Possessions With Tiny Artworks See pictures of beautiful
bookplates at http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/when-book-lovers-guarded-their-prized-possessions-with-tiny-artworks/
A good average walking speed is 3 to 4 miles per hour and depends on your leg
length and how quickly you can move your legs.
A 150-pound man burns 100 calories per mile; a 200-pound man burns 133
calories per mile; and a 250-pound man burns 166 calories per mile. You burn virtually the same number of
calories whether you run or walk a mile.
You burn more calories:
when the temperature is cold compared with hot because your body
works harder to keep you warm; when it's humid and warm than dry and cool in an
attempt to stay cool; when the terrain is hilly than when it's flat because it
requires more energy to climb hills; and when you wear heavy, restrictive
clothing compared with workout gear. http://www.medicinenet.com/walking/page5.htm
Restoring the Long-Lost Sounds of Native American
California by Leah Rose In
November 2015, researchers at UC Berkeley will begin a three-year project to
restore and translate thousands of century-old audio recordings of Native
California Indians. The collection was
created by cultural anthropologists in the first half of the 20th century and
is now considered the largest audio repository of California Indian culture in
the world. Nearly a third of the 2,713
recordings come from Ishi, the storied last member of the Yahi tribe who lived
the last years of his life inside the University of California’s Phoebe A.
Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Read
more and see graphics at
A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA In August
2015, the U.S. government’s National Security Agency (NSA) released a major
policy statement on the need to develop standards for post-quantum cryptography
(PQC). The NSA believes that the time is
right to make a major push to design public-key cryptographic protocols whose
security depends on hard problems that cannot be solved efficiently by a
quantum computer. See 20-page paper at https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1018.pdf
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com
Issue 1376 November 11, 2015 On this date in 1918, Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France. The fighting officially ended at 11:00 a.m., (the
eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) and this is
commemorated annually with a two minute silence. World War I officially ended on the signing
of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919. Veterans Day is an official United States public holiday,
observed annually on November 11, that honors military
veterans--persons who served in the United States Armed Forces. It coincides with other holidays, including Armistice Day and Remembrance
Day. The U.S. previously
observed Armistice Day, and the holiday was renamed Veterans Day in 1954. Word of the Day: Catch-22
noun A difficult situation from
which there is no escape because it involves mutually conflicting or dependent conditions. On this day in 1961, Joseph Heller's book Catch-22 was
published.
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