Paul Johnston's path to full-time novel writing was circuitous.  He studied Ancient and Modern Greek at Oxford University, where he befriended another future crime writer, Robert Wilson (A Small Death in Lisbon, The Blind Man of Seville).  After graduation, he worked for several shipping companies in London, Belgium and Greece, and then did a journalistic stint at a newspaper in Athens.  Finding that Greece agreed with him, Johnston moved with his wife, Vigdis, and their infant daughter to the small Aegean island of Antiparos in 1989.  There, he taught English in order to pay the bills, and at the same time tried to fulfill his long-held ambition to compose fiction--a dream undoubtedly fed by the fact that his father, Ronald Johnston, was a successful thriller writer (Black Camels of Qashran, Paradise Smith, Flying Dutchman, etc.).  Paul Johnston has since said that living away from the UK helped him to cut through the familiar myths about Scotland and write about his ancestral land with a freer hand.  Read an interview with Paul Johnston by Ali Karim and Simon Kernick at https://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/pjohnston.html

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

gung ho  (GUHNG-HO)  adjective  Extremely eager and enthusiastic.   From Chinese gonghe, an acronym from the Gongye Hezuoshe (Chinese Industrial Cooperative Society).  The term gonghe was interpreted to mean “work together” and was introduced as a training slogan by US Marine Corps officer Evans Carlson (1896-1947).  Earliest documented use:  1942.

Monday morning quarterback  (MUHN-day MOR-ning KWOR-tuhr-bak)  noun  One who criticizes others’ actions and offers alternatives with the benefit of hindsight.  In the US, professional football games are often played on Sundays.  A quarterback in a football game is a player who directs the offensive play of the team.  The term alludes to a person offering an alternative course of action after the fact, perhaps on a Monday morning around the office water cooler.  Earliest documented use:  1930.

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From:  Dan Duke  Subject:  Monday morning quarterback  A frequently used synonym in the game of bridge is “result merchant”.  A player who proclaims he or she knew exactly how to “play the last hand” after the hand is over. 

From: Ilan Cohen  Subject:  Monday morning quarterback  I had never heard of the Monday morning quarterback, but I love it.  It reminds me of one of my favorite images in French:  l’esprit d’escalier or stairway wit.  The witty comeback you think of as you leave the place.
From:  Andrew Pressburger  Subject:  Monday morning quarterback  In Italy, where soccer has been regarded as a religion of sorts, there used to be a Monday program on RAI (Italian television), called Processo di lunedi, i.e. The Trial of Monday.  In it, with the help of replays, the panel of “experts” would sock it to the referees for mistakes they had committed in the matches played the day before.

Identity theft protection following the Equifax data breach by Kristin Dohn  September 9, 2017  Extensive article from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  If you're having trouble with a financial product or service, you can submit a complaint with the CFPB online or by calling (855) 411-CFPB (2372).  https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/identity-theft-protection-following-equifax-data-breach/

NAME CHANGES  American singer Frankie Valli (born Francesco Stephen Castelluccio on May 3, 1934)  https://www.biography.com/people/frankie-valli   American actor Jamie Farr (born Jameel Joseph Farah on July 1, 1934)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Farr  American  comedian, singer, actor, and producer Danny Thomas (born Amos Muzyad Yakhoob Kairouz on January 6, 1912)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Thomas

The production of grana cheese in the Po Valley is generally thought to have begun in 1135 in the abbey of Chiaravalle.  We know that it was produced in many monasteries using special cauldrons.  This is how the first cheese factories were established and the first dairy producers and experts in the production of cheese developed the trade.  The monks called it caseus vetus, old cheese.  But the cheese consumers of the period were unfamiliar with Latin and instead called it by another name inspired by its unusual granular consistency.  This is how it acquired the name formaggio di grana (grana cheese) or simply grana, and was distinguished according to the province of production.  The most commonly cited granas are from the area of Lodi, considered by many to be the oldest, but also from the areas of Milan, Parma, Piacenza and Mantua.  Things changed on the cheese production front in 1951.  In Stresa on 1st June that year, European technicians and dairy-farm workers signed an “Agreement” whereby they established precise rules for naming the cheese and determining its characteristics.  It was on this occasion that “Grana Lodigiano” cheese was created, later to become “Grana Padano” and “Parmigiano-Reggiano”.  http://knowfood.cn/en/grana-padano/the-history/

On September 22/23, 2017, the day and night will be almost equal in most locations.  In the Northern Hemisphere, the September equinox is on or around September 22, while the first equinox of the year, the March Equinox, takes place on or around March 21 every year.  For meteorologists, on the other hand, fall in the Northern Hemisphere begins about 3 weeks before the September equinox on September 1 and ends on November 30.  In the Southern Hemisphere, the September equinoxit is the vernal (spring) equinox.  Equinoxes are not day-long events, even though many choose to celebrate all day.  Instead, they occur at the exact moment the Sun crosses the celestial equator--the imaginary line in the sky above Earth’s Equator.  At this instant, Earth's rotational axis is neither tilted away from nor towards the Sun.  In 2017, the Sun's crosses the celestial equator from north to south on September 22, at 20:02 UTC.  Because of time zone differences, the equinox will take place on September 23, 2017 at locations that are at least 10 hours ahead UTC.  These include cities in eastern Australia, eastern Russia, Guamand New Zealand.  Read more at https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/facts-about-september-equinox.html

GIARDINIERA:  ITALIAN PICKLED VEGETABLES   Giardiniera (pronounced JAR-di-NAIR-ah) means “from the garden” in Italian.  The concept has quite a long history in Italy, where fresh garden produce was pickled and marinated as a way of preserving it for the winter.  It was the early 1920s that giardiniera started to make a name for itself in the communities of Italian immigrants in Chicago.  Although it grew in popularity throughout the city, if you’ve never been to Chicago or tasted a Chicato style Italian beef sandwich, you may not have ever heard of this tangy, crunchy condiment.  In Italy, giardiniera is served as an antipasto, or appetizer.  Fresh, garden cauliflower, celery, carrots, bell peppers, hot peppers are the staples of Italian giardiniera, but sometimes you will see others added.  Since this is considered an appetizer in Italy, the vegetables are cut into one or two bite chunks, making the dish a bulky appetizer or side dish.  Find homemade giardiniera recipe at https://www.curiouscuisiniere.com/giardiniera/

Quick Giardiniera from EatingWell Magazine, March/April 2012  This quickly pickled, spicy Italian salad of mixed sliced vegetables is great for an antipasto platter, served with grilled meat or chopped up and put on a sandwich.  http://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/250434/quick-giardiniera/

September 19, 2017  For the past three years, amateur archaeologists and historians in southern England have been working side-by-side with volunteers to excavate several seemingly related local Roman sites.  Now, just two weeks before the dig's scheduled conclusion, they've made a fantastic discovery: a rare 4th-century CE mosaic that is being hailed as "the most important of its type in Britain in more than half a century," according to The New York Times.  Dating to roughly 380 CE, the mosaic was unearthed near the village of Boxford in Berkshire.  In the project's first two years, the group members discovered a large Roman villa, a bathhouse, and a farmstead.  In 2017, they began excavating the main villa, a site that yielded pottery, jewelry, coins, and other ancient objects.  None of these artifacts, however, were as spectacular as the mosaic, which volunteers unearthed in a moment of serendipity shortly before funding for the dig ended.  Revealed sections of the artwork depict scenes featuring Bellerophon, a mythological Greek hero, along with other fabled figures. Bellerophon is famous in legends for capturing the winged horse Pegasus and for defeating the Chimera, a fire-breathing creature with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.  Kirstin Fawcett  See pictures at http://mentalfloss.com/article/504561/amateur-archaeologists-england-unearth-rare-roman-mosaic

September 20, 2017  For the second time in two weeks, a powerful earthquake struck Mexico, toppling buildings, cracking highways and killing hundreds of people.  The 7.1-magnitude earthquake September 19, 2017 was about 650 kilometers from the epicenter of the 8.1-magnitude earthquake that hit September 8, said Jana Pursley, a geophysicist with the US Geological Survey.  Both earthquakes seem to be a result of the rupture of fault lines within the North American tectonic plate, according to Behzad Fatahi, associate professor of geotechnical and earthquake engineering at the University of Technology Sydney.  "It is not very unusual to get earthquakes and aftershocks occurring in sequence," Fatahi said.  "When fault lines rupture, they can induce further ruptures as a chain effect in other parts of the same fault or nearby fault lines."  "The downtown of Mexico City is notoriously vulnerable to earthquakes because of the very soft and wet ground underneath.  Its soil amplifies shaking like Jell-O on a plate, and is prone to liquefaction, which is the ability to transform dirt into a dense liquid when sufficiently churned," wrote John Vidale, a seismologist and director of the Southern California Earthquake Center.  CNN Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri said this has been the case for hundreds of years.  "Mexico City was built on what is now a dry lakebed," Javaheri said.  The city, one of the most densely populated in the world, is situated directly on top of it.  Both quakes occurred on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a 25,000-mile area shaped like a horse shoe that stretches from the boundary of the Pacific plate and the smaller plates such as the Philippine Sea plate to the Cocos and Nazca plates that line the edge of the Pacific Ocean.  It is one of the most seismically active zones on the planet, and about 80% of all earthquakes strike there, said Hongfeng Yang, a seismologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  Five tectonic plates--Cocos, Pacific, Caribbean, Panama and North American--collide in central and southern Mexico, making the region one of the most unstable, he added.  Faith Karimi and Chandrika Narayan  See graphic of Pacific Ring of Fire at http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/20/americas/mexico-two-earthquakes-in-one-month/index.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1773  September 22, 2017  On this date in 1888, the first issue of National Geographic Magazine was published.  On this date in 1896, Queen Victoria surpassed her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history.  On this date in 1991, the Dead Sea Scrolls were made available to the public for the first time by the Huntington Library.