Exhibit of Paintings of U.S. National Parks and
Monuments, January 2-March 5, 1917
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was born in Salem, Mass. into the sixth
generation of his Salem family. His
ancestors included Puritan magnates, judges, and seamen. The Hathornes (Nathaniel added the
"w" to the name) had been involved in religious persecution with
their first American forebear, William, and John Hathorne was one of the three
judges at the 17th-century Salem witchcraft trials. Hawthorne obtained in 1846 the position of surveyor in the Salem Custom
House, from which as a Democrat he was expelled after the Whig victory in the
1848 presidential election. He did not
leave without a fight and considerable bitterness, and he took revenge in the
"Custom-House" introduction to The Scarlet Letter (1850)
and in The
House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which he portrayed his
chief Whig enemy as the harsh and hypocritical Judge Pyncheon. His dismissal, however, turned out to be a
blessing, since it gave him leisure in which to write his greatest and crucial
success, The
Scarlet Letter.
Except for his early Fanshawe (1828),
which he suppressed shortly after publication, The
Scarlet Letter was
his first novel, or, as he preferred to say, "romance"; thus his
literary career divided into two distinct parts, since he now almost wholly
abandoned the shorter tale. The period
1850-1853 was Hawthorne's most prolific.
Doubtless stimulated by the enthusiastic reception accorded The
Scarlet Letter, he
went on with The
House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance, along
with A
Wonder Book (1852)
and Tanglewood
Tales (1853),
exquisitely fanciful stories for children from Greek mythology. During 1850 the Hawthornes lived at the Red
House in Lenox in the Berkshire Hills, and Hawthorne formed a memorable
friendship with novelist Herman Melville, whose Arrowhead Farm was some miles
away on the outskirts of Pittsfield. The
association was more important to Melville than to Hawthorne, since Melville
was 15 years younger and much the more impressionable of the two men. It left
its mark in Melville's celebrated review of Mosses from an Old Manse, in
the dedication of his Moby-Dick, and
in some wonderful letters. In 1852 Franklin Pierce was elected
to the presidency of the United States, and Hawthorne, who was induced to write
his campaign biography, was appointed to the important overseas post of
American consul at Liverpool, in which he served from 1853 to 1857 with
considerable efficiency. These English
years resulted in Our
Old Home (1863),
a volume drawn from the since-published "English Note-Books. In 1857 the Hawthornes left England for
Italy, where they spent their time primarily in Rome and Florence. They returned to England, where Hawthorne
finished his last and longest complete novel, the "Roman romance" The
Marble Faun (1860). They finally returned to the United States,
after an absence of seven years, and took up residence in their first permanent
home, The Wayside, at Concord, which Hawthorne had bought from Bronson Alcott. Hawthorne was to live only
four more years. During these last years
in Concord he struggled with no less than four romances, The
Ancestral Footstep, Dr. Grimshawe's Secret, Septimius Felton, and The
Dolliver Romance, but
completed none of them. http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/american-literature-biographies/nathaniel-hawthorne See also https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hawthorne/nathaniel/ancestral/introduction.html
and http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/nhwrit.html
NEVER SEEN Godot
in the play Waiting for Godot http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/godot/characters.html Maris
Crane, first wife of Niles Frasier in the TV sitcom Frasier, a spin-off of
Cheers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niles_Crane Mrs.
Columbo in the mystery drama Columbo
Vera Peterson in the sitcom
Cheers
A modal window is any type of window that is a
child (secondary window) to a parent window and usurps the parent's
control. It is commonly associated with
an Internet Web site pop-up window that stays in front of the original window. A
user may not press any controls or enter any information on the parent window
(the original window which opened the modal) until the modal has been
closed. A modal window is commonly used
when the author wants to retain the user's focus on the information in the
modal as it is impossible for the user to interact with the other windows of
the same process. Vangie Beal http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/modal_window.html
How to Tweet if You’re in Government and Not Donald
Trump: Write, Review, Edit, Seek Approval, Wait,
Edit, (Maybe) Send by Aruna Viswanatha and
Natalie Andrews In 2010, a top Justice Department
official told the agency’s divisions they could set up Twitter accounts and he convened a “working
group” to provide guidance on what, when and how the agency could tweet. They’re still working on it. The Environmental Protection Agency has four
documents, totaling 29 pages, that outline its procedures for using social media. “There are no waivers from this policy,” the
first document says. By definition,
government tweets herald a clash between a careful, sometimes cumbersome
culture and a phenomenon built on rapid-fire messages packed with spontaneous
humor or zingers. Some Securities and
Exchange Commission regional offices have set up “Twitter committees” with
rotating officials to write tweets. They
must be cleared through the press office at headquarters in Washington. Some go out a day or two later. Read more at http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-tweet-if-youre-in-government-and-not-donald-trump-write-review-edit-seek-approval-wait-edit-maybe-send-1482942440
Northern Michigan's Lake
Superior State University on December 31, 2016 released its 42nd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and
General Uselessness. The
tongue-in-cheek, non-binding list comes from suggestions to the Sault Ste.
Marie school. It includes "you,
sir," ''focus," ''town hall meeting," ''historic," ''echo
chamber," ''on fleek," ''bigly," ''listicle" and "get
your dandruff up," an apparent substitute for "dander," its
hair-and-skin kin. The others were
"Frankenfruit," ''bête noire," ''guesstimate,"
''ghost," ''dadbod," ''selfie drone," ''manicured,"
''post-truth," ''disruption" and "831"—a texting encryption
of "I love you" (eight letters, three words, one meaning). The divisive 2016 election influenced
nominations, and was reflected in the inclusion of "bigly" and
"post-truth." "Bigly"
also made Merriam-Webster's Top 10 for 2016. President-elect Donald Trump was
fond this year of saying "big league" but making it sound like
"bigly," an archaic adverb or adjective dating to around 1400. He said all words that made the final list
garnered 200-300 votes apiece, and the top vote-getter was "echo
chamber," with more than 500 submissions.
Overall, the university received submissions from about 8,000 people and
maintains an archive of more than 850 words.
Another Michigan school takes the opposite approach: Detroit's Wayne State University attempts
through its Word Warriors campaign to exhume worthy words that have fallen out
of favor. This year's list included
"absquatulate," which means to discreetly and abruptly leave a place,
such as a gathering or party, without informing the host. That's an old-school analog to
"ghost" on the banished words list.
Jeff Karoub http://www.readingeagle.com/article/20161231/AP/312319959&template=mobileart
In the late 1930s, when few doors were open to the son of
a poor Chinese immigrant, Tyrus Wong
landed a job at Walt Disney’s studio as a lowly “in-betweener,” whose artwork
filled the gaps between the animator’s key drawings. But he arrived at an opportune moment. Disney’s animators were struggling to bring
“Bambi” to the screen. The wide-eyed
fawn and his feathered and furry friends were literally lost in the forest,
overwhelmed by leaves, twigs, branches and other realistic touches in the
ornately drawn backgrounds. “Too much detail,” Wong thought when he saw
the sketches. On his own time, he made a
series of tiny drawings and watercolors and showed them to his superiors. Dreamy and impressionistic, like a Chinese
landscape, Wong’s approach was to “create the atmosphere, the feeling of the
forest.” It turned out to be just what
“Bambi” needed. Wong, who brought a
poetic quality to “Bambi” that has helped it endure as a classic of
animation, died December 30, 2016 at the age of 106. Called the film’s “most significant stylist”
by animation historian John Canemaker, Wong influenced later generations of
animators, including Andreas Deja, the Disney artist behind Lilo of “Lilo and
Stitch” and Jafar in “Aladdin.” Elaine Woo Read
more at http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-tyrus-wong-obit-20161230-story.html
The Best Foods to Eat in 2017, According to Top
Dietitians by
Amy Gorin Link to pictures and
descriptions of beets, chickpeas, turmeric, maca, sorghum and sauerkraut at http://parade.com/534011/amygorin/the-best-foods-to-eat-in-2017-according-to-top-dietitians/
Janus
proper noun (1) (Roman mythology) The god of doorways, gates and transitions,
and of beginnings and endings, having
two faces looking in opposite directions. (2) (attributively) Used to
indicate things with two faces (such as animals with diprosopus)
or aspects; or made
of two different materials; or
having a two-way action. (3) (chemistry, attributively) Used to
indicate an azo dye with a quaternary ammonium group, frequently
with the diazocomponent being safranine. (4) (figuratively) A two-faced person, a hypocrite. (5) (astronomy) A moon of Saturn. Wiktionary
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1672
January 2, 2017 On this date in
1788, Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the United States
Constitution. On this date in 1918, Beatrice Hicks, American engineer. was born. Thought
for Today A poor idea well
written is more likely to be accepted than a good idea poorly written. - Isaac
Asimov, scientist and writer (2 Jan 1920-1992)
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