November 12, 2015  The House that Julia Built by Peter Sigal  It may come as a surprise to learn that Julia Child, America’s quintessential French chef, lived in France for only a short time.  But from her first breathless arrival in the fall of 1948 to her departure less than six years later en route to her husband’s diplomatic posts in Bonn and Oslo, few Americans had immersed themselves so deeply in the country’s cuisine.  So the thought of leaving France, where she had found her raison d’être, filled Julia with more than a touch of nostalgia, a rare feeling for a woman who was always resolutely looking ahead to the next adventure.  She and her husband, Paul, consoled themselves with the thought that “perhaps someday, we dreamed, we’d buy an apartment in Paris or a house in Provence, and would spend part of every year here.”  The house they did eventually build in Provence, La Pitchoune, became her link to France, a place she returned to again and again in her mind and in her recipes.  There, in the countryside just north of Cannes, Paul would paint, take photos and tinker in his wine cellar, and Julia would shop in the markets and cook with her collaborator, Simca Beck, on whose property La Pitchoune—or “The Little Thing”—was built.   Now La Peetch, as Julia called it, is for sale on the open market for the first time.  The next owner won’t have to work hard to imagine the Childs’ life there, as Julia’s kitchen remains largely intact since the last meal she cooked there, a typically Provençale boeuf en daube, in 1992.  The house is, by design, informal, and it sits lightly on the landscape, tucked into a hillside with views across a shallow valley to the hill town of Plascassier.  The story of how it came to be built, and how the Childs used it—and ultimately, walked away from it—reveals much about why Julia remains a beloved figure today, 11 years after her death at age 92 in 2004.  In 1961, Julia and Paul had just returned to the United States after 13 years abroad.  She could not have anticipated it, but the runaway success of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”—her long-gestating foray into “cookery-bookery”—and the subsequent television show “The French Chef,” were about to make her America’s first kitchen celebrity.  Two years later, feeling the pull of a constant work schedule “sucking at our feet,” they flew to France to visit the farmhouse owned by Ms. Beck and her husband, Jean Fischbacher, who was an engineer at a perfume company in Paris.  There, lulled by warm November breezes scented by lavender and mimosa, the four struck a handshake deal:  Julia and Paul would lease a potato patch near the farmhouse, where they would build a “simple, modest and as-maintenance-free-as-possible house.”  Once they no longer had any use for the house, they would return it to Simca and Jean.  They called it the house built on friendship,” said Alex Prud’homme, Julia Child’s grandnephew, who collaborated on a memoir, “My Life in France.”  La Pitchoune—three small bedrooms, a kitchen and an open-plan living/dining area in about 140 square meters, or 1,500 square feet—was finished by New Year’s 1966, and the couples toasted in style with oysters, foie gras and champagne.  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/greathomesanddestinations/the-house-that-julia-built.html

Farther refers to a greater distance, literal or metaphorical, from a shared measuring point.  Further refers to a greater progress in a shared direction.  The root of the confusion around the words lies in their etymologies.  The older of the two is further, and it originally didn’t have anything to do with far.  In modern English, a comparative is, of course, formed by adding -er to the end of a word.  Once upon a time—between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries, the O.E.D. estimates—there was a comparative of far in English, and it was farrer, which no doubt went extinct because it’s the sort of word that doesn’t roll easily off one’s tongue unless one is a pirate.  Further seems to have begun life as the comparative of an altogether different word:  fore or forth.  In other words, further didn’t originally mean “more distant” but something like “more ahead,” or, as the contemporary O.E.D. puts it, “more forward, more onward.”  Caleb Crain  Read more at http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/further-and-farther-a-theory

Top Five Tornado Myths Debunked  1.  Opening windows during a tornado will relieve pressure and save a house from destruction.  2.  Seeking shelter under a highway overpass will protect you from a tornado.  3.  A green sky is an indicator that a tornado is coming.  4.  Tornadoes do not strike in cities.  5.  Taking cover in the southwest corner of your house will protect you from a tornado.  Read more and see graphics at http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/top-five-tornado-myths-debunke/61918

November 1, 2015  Forty strollers were double- and triple-parked on the main floor of the Fort Washington Library in Upper Manhattan.  As another one came through the door, Velda Asbury waved toward a spot beside a book stack.  Officially, Ms. Asbury is a library clerk, checking books in and out.  But every Wednesday she doubles as a parking attendant during one of the New York Public Library’s most popular programs:  story time.  “Good morning, little people,” she called out, as the library’s youngest patrons climbed, or were carried, up an old wooden staircase to the second floor for a 45-minute romp through books and music.  Among parents of the under-5 set, spots for story time have become as coveted as seats for a hot Broadway show like “Hamilton.”  Lines stretch down the block at some branches, with tickets given out on a first-come-first-served basis because there is not enough room to accommodate all of the children who show up.  Workers at the 67th Street Library on the Upper East Side of Manhattan turn away at least 10 people from every reading.  They have been so overwhelmed by the rush at story time—held in the branch’s largest room, on the third floor—that once the space is full, they close the door and shut down the elevator.  In New York, demand for story time has surged across the city’s three library systems—the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Queens Library—and has posed logistical challenges for some branches, particularly those in small or cramped buildings.  Citywide, story time attendance rose to 510,367 people in fiscal year 2015, up nearly 28 percent from 399,751 in fiscal 2013.  The New York Public Library is adding 45 children’s librarians to support story time and other programs, some of which are run in partnership with the city government.  It has also designated 20 of its 88 neighborhood branches, including the Fort Washington Library, as “enhanced literary sites.”  As such, they will double their story time sessions, to an average of four a week, and distribute 15,000 “family literacy kits” that include a book and a schedule of story times.  Libraries around the country have expanded story time and other children’s programs in recent years, attracting a new generation of patrons in an age when online offerings sometimes make trips to the book stacks unnecessary.  Sari Feldman, president of the American Library Association, said such early-literacy efforts are part of a larger transformation libraries are undergoing to become active learning centers for their communities by offering services like classes in English as a second language, computer skills and career counseling.  Ms. Feldman said the increased demand for story time was a product, in part, of more than a decade of work by the library association and others to encourage libraries to play a larger role in preparing young children for school.  In 2004, as part of that effort, the association developed a curriculum, “Every Child Ready to Read,” that she said is now used by thousands of libraries.  Winnie Hu  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/nyregion/long-line-at-the-library-its-story-time-again.html?ref=education

One of the ways to form an adjective is to add the suffix ~ic or ~ical.  There is no clear rule about when to use which.  As a rule of thumb, many of the older nouns have the ~ical adjective, while most of the newer ones have ~ic suffix.  The suffix ~ic or ~ical means “connected with” in adjectives and nouns or refers to “that performs the action mentioned” in adjectives.  Especially, nouns that end with “logy” takes “logical” as the suffix when becoming an adjective.  The suffix is derived from French ~ique (or Latin ~icus or Greek ~ikos).  https://myooka.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/adjectives-beware-of-suffixes-ical-and-ic/  See also http://blog.metrolingua.com/2009/05/ic-vs-ical-distinctions-can-be-fickle.html

A belvedere  or belvidere (from Italian for "fair view") is an architectural structure sited to take advantage of a fine or scenic view.  While a belvedere may be built in the upper part of a building the actual structure can be of any form, whether a turret, a cupola, or an open gallery.  Or it may be a separate pavilion in a garden, or the term may be used for a paved terrace with a good viewpoint, but no actual building.  It may also be used for a whole building, as in the Belvedere, Vienna, a huge palace, or Belvedere Castle, a folly in New York.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belvedere_(structure)  Find many uses of the word belvedere including place names and people at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belvedere

Odd Day--11/13/15-- is the last date with consecutive odd numbers for 90 years (until Jan. 3, 2105 or 1/3/5).   Ron Gordon, a retired school teacher from Redwood, Calif., created a whole website about it:  Oddday.net.  He has discovered several interesting oddities in the calendar, and he has websites for those too.  They include Square Root Day (4/4/16) and Trumpet Day (2/2/22 or "to to to tooo," get it?).   And yes, there's a Ladybug Day too.  It was 10/11/12, based on a Sesame Street song called The Ladybugs' Picnic that uses 10/11/12 in the refrain.  Kelly Lecker 
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/11/13/odd-day.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1378  November 16, 2015  On this date in 1750, Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough, English lawyer, judge, and politician, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, was born.  On this date in 1895,  Paul Hindemith, German violinist, composer, and conductor, was born.