The Caspian Sea is the Earth's largest inland body of water.  It lies at the junction of Europe and Asia, with the Caucasus Mountains to the west and the steppes of Central Asia to the east.  It is bordered by Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the west, Iran to the south, Turkmenistan to the southeast and Kazakhstan to the northeast.  Ownership of the sea's resources is a contentious issue among its surrounding countries.  The Caspian Sea is rich with oil and natural gas, making access to it a high-stakes proposition.  These complicated socio-cultural and political aspects, as well as the geographic and environmental features, make the Caspian Sea an interesting subject for researchers.  "In some ways, it connects several countries that share no land border and in other ways it serves as buffer between states of different politics and ideologies," said Michael Kukral, author and professor of geography at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Ohio.  The Caspian Sea is endorheic, meaning it has no natural outlets.  More than 130 rivers flow into the Caspian Sea, according to Natural History Magazine, none of which are in the east.  The primary tributary is the Volga River in the north, which provides about 80 percent of the inflowing water.  The Ural River, also in the north, and the Kura River in the west, are also significant tributaries.  There are approximately 50 small, mostly uninhabited islands in the Caspian Sea, according to New World Encyclopedia.  Most are in the north, but the largest island, Ogurja Ada, is in the south.  The Caspian Sea is next to the world's largest lagoon, according to Lakepedia.  The 6,949-square-mile (18,000 square km) Kara-Bogaz Gol lagoon is on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea and is separated from it by sand bars.  A dam was built between the Caspian Sea and Kara-Bogaz Gol in 1980 but it was removed in 1992 because of the changes it caused to water levels.  Seas are usually partially enclosed by land, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but the Caspian Sea is entirely enclosed by land.  While the Caspian Sea is not fresh water, its salty water is diluted by the inflow of fresh water, especially in the north.  The question of whether it is a lake or a sea has political and economic ramifications, wrote Hanna Zimnitskaya in a 2011 Journal of Eurasian Studies article.  If the Caspian Sea is a lake, then the United Nations and international law have no control over its waters, she wrote.  If it is a sea, international organizations can have input on its use.  This is especially important because its energy resources.  "Petroleum resources around and under the Caspian Sea make it an economic natural resource and a political issue of access and ownership," Kukral said.  If the Caspian Sea is a lake, it contains 40 percent of all lake water in the world.  "It is the world's largest lake," Kukral said.  Jessie Szalay  Read more and see graphics at https://www.livescience.com/57999-caspian-sea-facts.html

Many people assume a computer will create perfectly balanced spacing between letters, words and lines.  Such faith in technology is misplaced.  In kerning--the adjusted spacing between letters--each letter has personal space that brackets it.  For a computer, those spaces are defined by the digital postscript settings.  These common settings, though, do not accommodate the space that is formed when particular letters combine, so kerning can become “keming”.  The web is littered with examples at http://11points.com/11-photos-made-raunchy-bad-kerning/ gathered with typographic amusement, by those who recognise what happens when “good type is forced to do bad things”.  Some years ago, my husband casually asked, “Who’s Tom Braider?”.   Initial puzzlement quickly converted to typographic delight, as I saw the Tomb Raider movie poster and understood his question.  If words are bricks, and spaces mortar, one hopes to see a wall, not bricks and mortar.  The issue of word separation is often exacerbated by the misuse of justification, one of the four text-setting options offered by the computer (range left, range right, centred or justify).  The temptation to create a clean-edged text block means that the computer can apply arbitrary and often incorrect spacing.  Leading (pronounced “ledding” and named after the strips or slugs of lead traditionally inserted between lines of metal type for printing) provides breathing space between lines of text.  Knowledgeable use of leading creates not just an ease of reading, but can also influence the mood of a body of text.  It’s commonly assumed that fonts of the same point size will look the same size.  Wrong.  Some fonts of the same height actually consume more space, looking larger and causing text to feel overcrowded.  Choosing a font is not the end of the story; it is only the beginning.  Understanding the space that surrounds the letterforms and how they combine to make words, lines and text is vital in effectively communicating, rather than typing, a message.  If, as Star Trek’s James T. Kirk states, “space is the final frontier”, then space is the invisible frontier that separates type from typography.  Louise McWhinney  http://theconversation.com/kerning-spacing-leading-the-invisible-art-of-typography-19699  

ecclesial  adjective  formal  Relating to or constituting a Church or denomination.  Mid 17th century (rare before the 1960s):  via Old French from Greek ekklēsia ‘assembly, church’  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ecclesial  ecclesiastical  adjective  Relating to the Christian Church or its clergy.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ecclesiastical

Spiced Fruit  Spoon 1 tbsp. mincemeat (or jam) and 1tsbp. butter over fresh peach or pear halves.  Broil and serve hot.

The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned food its distinctive flavor.  Seared steaks, pan-fried dumplings, cookies and other kinds of biscuits, breads, toasted marshmallows, as well as many other foods, undergo this reaction.  It is named after French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard, who first described it in 1912 while attempting to reproduce biological protein synthesis.  The reaction is a form of non-enzymatic browning which typically proceeds rapidly from around 140 to 165 °C (280 to 330 °F).  Many recipes will call for an oven temperature high enough to ensure that a Maillard reaction occurs.   At higher temperatures, caramelization and subsequently pyrolysis become more pronounced.  In the process, hundreds of different flavor compounds are created.  These compounds, in turn, break down to form yet more new flavor compounds, and so on.  Each type of food has a very distinctive set of flavor compounds that are formed during the Maillard reaction.  It is these same compounds that flavor scientists have used over the years to make artificial flavors.  See graphics and a list of foods and products with Maillard reactions at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

"Legends say that hummingbirds float free of time, carrying our hopes for love, joy and celebration.  Hummingbirds open our eyes to the wonder of the world and inspire us to open our hearts to loved ones and friends.  Like a hummingbird, we aspire to hover and to savor each moment as it passes, embrace all that life has to offer and to celebrate the joy of everyday.  The hummingbird’s delicate grace reminds us that life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every personal connection has meaning and that laughter is life’s sweetest creation."  Papyrus greeting card

Teterboro  Airport is a general aviation relief airport located in the boroughs of Teterboro, Moonachie, and Hasbrouck Heights in Bergen County, in New Jersey.   It is owned and managed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and operated by AFCO AvPORTS Management.  The airport is in the New Jersey Meadowlands, 12 miles (19 km) from Midtown Manhattan, which makes it very popular for private and corporate aircraft.  The airport has a weight limit of 100,000 pounds (45,000 kg) on aircraft, which is meant to make it nonviable as a commercial airport.  The airport takes up almost all of Teterboro and consists of 827 acres (3.35 km²): 90 acres (0.36 km²) for aircraft hangar and offices, 408 acres (1.65 km²) for aeronautical use and runways, and 329 acres (1.33 km²) undeveloped.  The airport has more than 1,137 employees, of whom more than 90% are full-time.  Teterboro Airport is the oldest operating airport in the New York City area. Walter C. Teter (1863–1929) acquired the property in 1917.   North American Aviation operated a manufacturing plant on the site during World War I.  After the war, the airport served as a base of operations for Anthony Fokker, the Dutch aircraft designer.  The first flight from the present airport site was made in 1919.  In 1926 Colonial Air Transport at Teterboro was the first private company to deliver mail by air.  During World War II, the United States Army operated the airport.  The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey purchased it on April 1, 1949, from Fred L. Wehran, a private owner, and later leased it to Pan American World Airways (and its successor organization Johnson Controls) for 30 years until December 1, 2000, when the Port Authority assumed full responsibility for the operation of Teterboro.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teterboro_Airport

Teterboro Airport - 1929 - World’s Largest Passenger Plane  "Biggest landplane in U.S., built for night passenger flying, seats 32 and will have berths for sixteen."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9qVMVTwL8M  1:32

The Library of Congress announced on May 30, 2108 that collector and entrepreneur Stephen A. Geppi has donated to the nation’s library more than 3,000 items from his phenomenal and vast personal collection of comic books and popular art, including the original storyboards that document the creation of Mickey Mouse.  This multimillion-dollar gift includes comic books, original art, photos, posters, newspapers, buttons, pins, badges and related materials, and select items will be on display beginning this summer.  The Stephen A. Geppi Collection of Comics and Graphic Arts has been on public display in Baltimore, Maryland, for the past decade and is a remarkable and comprehensive assemblage of popular art.  It includes a wide range of rare comics and represents the best of the Golden (1938-1956), Silver (1956-1970) and Bronze (1970-1985) ages of comic books.  The mint-condition collection is also noted for its racially and socially diverse content as well as the distinctive creative styles of each era.  Six rare storyboards detail the story layout and action for Walt Disney’s 1928 animated film, “Plane Crazy.”  It was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon produced, but the third to be released, after sound was added, in 1929.  “Steamboat Willie” was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to be theatrically released, on Nov. 18, 1928, which marks its 90th anniversary this year.  “The Library of Congress is home to the nation’s largest collection of comic books, cartoon art and related ephemera and we celebrate this generous donation to the American people that greatly enhances our existing holdings,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.  Read more and see pictures at https://www.infodocket.com/2018/05/30/library-of-congress-receives-largest-donation-of-comic-books-in-library-history-includes-the-original-storyboards-for-the-creation-of-mickey-mouse/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1895  May 31, 2018 

The kiwifruit may be New Zealand’s defining agricultural product, generating a handsome $1.05 billion in exports for the country in 2015, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  But how the South Pacific nation came to claim the exotic, fuzzy fruit with soft, green flesh and a unique taste is a story that combines considerable luck and a stroke of marketing genius.  The erstwhile Chinese gooseberry, as its archaic English name suggests, finds its root a hemisphere away in China.  Its original name in Chinese, mihoutao—“macaque fruit”—refers to the monkeys’ love for it, according to the 16th century Chinese medicine encyclopedia, the Compendium of Materia Medica.  The kiwifruit’s status as a transplant might not come as a surprise for many readers.  After all, the story of one of the world’s greatest marketing and botanical hijacks has been vaguely circulating for decades, from a New York Times item about trade in New Zealand over 30 years ago to a TIME column about branding and psychology in 2010.  But the scant documentary evidence of how the fruit made it across the Pacific has given an apocryphal flavor to a tale that is, in fact, all too real.  Historical consensus—as presented on New Zealand’s official history website—suggests that the first seeds arrived on New Zealand at the turn of the 20th century.  It all began in 1904, when Mary Isabel Fraser, the principal of an all-girls school, brought back some Chinese gooseberry seeds from China.  They were then given to a farmer named Alexander Allison who, planted them in his farm near the riverine town of Whanganui.  The trees went on to bear their first fruit in 1910.  New Zealand’s appropriation of the Chinese gooseberry wasn’t inevitable.  Around the same time the first seeds were introduced to New Zealand, the species was in fact also experimented with as a commercial crop both in the U.K. and the U.S., wrote New Zealand plant physiologist Ross Ferguson, one of the world’s top kiwifruit researchers, for Arnoldia, the magazine of Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum.  But, as luck would have it, neither the British nor the American attempt at commercializing the fruit was as fruitful.  For example, the first batch of seeds brought to Britain’s Veitch Nursery all produced male plants, thwarting the growers’ plans to produce edible fruit.  The same fate befell the U.S. government’s attempt.  The gooseberry’s rebranding didn’t happen until almost 50 years after Allison’s trees bore fruit, according to New Zealand’s official history, when agricultural exporter Turners & Growers started calling their U.S.-bound Chinese gooseberries “kiwifruits” on June 15, 1959.  The fruit’s importer told Turners & Growers that the Chinese gooseberry needed a new name to be commercially viable stateside, to avoid negative connotations of “gooseberries,” which weren’t particularly popular.  After passing over another proposed name, melonette, it was finally decided to name the furry, brown fruit after New Zealand’s furry, brown, flightless national bird.  It also helped that Kiwis had become the colloquial term for New Zealanders by the time.  Kevin Lui  http://time.com/4662293/kiwifruit-chinese-gooseberry-new-zealand-history-fruit/

"Conducting research, which had never even occurred to me when I was young might be part of writing, has turned out to be the greatest perk of the job."  "The ability to have a friend, and be a friend, is not  unlike the ability to learn.  Both are rooted in being accepting and open-minded with a talent for hard work."  " Love the short story for what it is:  a handful of glorious pages that take you someplace you never knew you wanted to go."  This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, an autobiography of writer Ann Patchett   See http://www.annpatchett.com/ for her blog, list of titles, and "notes from Ann."

Lucinda Margaret Grealy (1963–2002) was an Irish-American poet and memoirist who wrote Autobiography of a Face in 1994.  This critically acclaimed book describes her childhood and early adolescent experience with cancer of the jaw, which left her with some facial disfigurement.  Grealy was born in Dublin, Ireland, and her family moved to the United States in April 1967, settling in Spring Valley, New York.  She was diagnosed at age 9 with a rare form of cancer called Ewing's sarcoma.  Treatment for this often fatal cancer (Grealy reports an estimated 5% survival rate) led to the removal of her jawbone, and over the following years she had many facial reconstructive surgeries.  In her memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Grealy describes her life from the time of her diagnosis and how she weathered the cruelty of schoolmates and others, suffering taunts and endless stares from strangers.  At 18, Grealy entered Sarah Lawrence College where she made her first real friends and nurtured her love of poetry.  She graduated in 1985 and went on to study at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  In Iowa she lived with fellow writer Ann Patchett.  Their friendship is the subject of Patchett's 2004 memoir Truth and Beauty: A Friendship.  She taught writing at Bennington College.  She also published a collection of essays in 2000, As Seen on TV:  Provocations.  Lucy Grealy won several prizes for her poetry, among them the Sonora Review Prize, the London TLS poetry prize and two Academy of American Poets awards.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Grealy

May 29, 2018  Is there any other nation that loves its libraries as much as Finland?  In 2016, the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture revealed that nearly 2 million of its 5.5 million citizens were book borrowers, making 49 million library visits and borrowing more than 68 million books a year.  At this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, the country has placed the best of its bookish architecture on display in its "Mind-Building" exhibition.  When "Freespace" was chosen as the the theme of this year's Architecture Biennale, commissioner Hanna Harris, director of ArchInfo Finland, saw an opportunity.  She had already been contemplating the role of the library in Finnish culture for several years, slowly developing the idea for an exhibition.  Meanwhile, the library had become a hot topic in Finland after the building of several exciting public libraries.  "Education for all is a principle of Finnish culture and libraries have always played an important part in that thinking.  Learning together and active citizenship are at the core of Finnish life," Harris said in a phone interview.  Anni Vartola, an architecture critic and curator of "Mind-Building," has put together an exhibition that demonstrates a history of progressive library buildings.  The projects begin with the first public library in Finland, the Neo-Renaissance Rikhardinkatu Public Library from 1881.  "Mind-Building" includes examples of recent libraries that have continued to elevate and inspire through architectural design. Vartola points to the 1991 Vallila Library in Helsinki by Juha Leiviskä: "The way in which natural light falls down into the spaces, and how the flow of movement and vision coils so naturally around a focal point, is both graceful and soothing. And yet, we're speaking of a very modernist, small and modest local library in the middle of a working-class neighborhood."  JKMM Architects are behind two library projects chosen to be represented at Mind-Building in Turku and Seinäjoki.  What kind of opportunities do library buildings give architects?  Asmo Jaaksi of JKMM says; "As a design task a library is a good challenge:  you must try to create architecture that attracts all kind of people and inspires a visitor to use the building in a variety of ways.  A library is also a good context in which to create freely designed open spaces, with strong emotional aspects too.  And empathizing the users' role is quite easy because we are all library users here in Finland," he said in an email interview.  "Mind-Building" is on at the Finnish Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia until Nov. 25, 2018.  Laura Houseley  Read more and see remarkable pictures at https://www.cnn.com/style/article/finland-mind-building-libraries-venice-biennale/index.html  Thank you, Muse reader!

Bill Gold, the graphic designer responsible for some of the most indelible and powerful images in Hollywood history, died May 27, 2018  at Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut.  He was 97.  Gold was remembered on Twitter by, among others, Malcolm McDowell, whose image as the knife-wielding droog of A Clockwork Orange was captured in Gold’s unforgettable poster.  From 1942--the year he designed the Casablanca poster that would land the gun-toting Humphrey Bogart on countless college dorm walls for decades--to 2011, when a ranting Leonardo DiCaprio was transformed into an aging J. Edgar Hoover for J. Edgar, Gold’s poster art and designs for scores and scores of movies not only enticed audiences into handing over whatever was the going rate for tickets, but sometimes even bettered the films themselves.  Five of the films for which Gold designed posters were best-picture Oscar-winners: Casablanca, My Fair Lady, The Sting, Ordinary People, Platoon and Unforgiven.  Greg Evans  Read more and see graphics at

 http://deadline.com/2018/05/bill-gold-obituary-poster-designer-casablanca-the-exorcist-j-edgar-1202395921/

Valerie Jarrett, a former senior advisor with the Obama administration, has been thrown into the public spotlight May 29, 2018 after a racist tweet posted by Roseanne Barr went viral.  Barr called the former Barack Obama aide the offspring of the “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.”  Barr has since apologized, but has lost her show and her agent since the tweets went viral.  Jarrett, an American attorney, businesswoman, and civic leader, was one of President Obama’s longest serving advisors and confidantes and known for her lengthy history in politics and her close relationship with the Obamas.  Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran, to American parents, and moved to London when she was 5.  One year later, she and her family moved to Chicago.  One of her maternal great-grandfathers, Robert Robinson Taylor, was an architect who made history as the African American architect, and the first African American student enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Her father ran a hospital in Iran for children in Shiraz in 1956 as part of a program of American physicians that sought to help in the health efforts of developing countries.  Her mother was one of four child advocates who created the Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development in Chicago. Jarrett grew up speaking French and Persian in addition to English.  Jarrett earned a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University in 1978 and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981, as well as an honorary degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine.  https://heavy.com/news/2018/05/valerie-jarrett-roseanne-barr/

May 29, 2018  New York City residents get to witness a special kind of sunset known as "Manhattanhenge" this week.  During the phenomenon, which occurs just a few times a year, the sun aligns perfectly with skyscrapers that sit on Manhattan's street grid, creating beautiful scenes made for picture-taking.  The name Manhattanhenge was dubbed by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who likened the positioning of the sun at Stonehenge during the summer solstice to the sun's alignment across the borough of Manhattan.  The event unfolds over two evenings each time.  "For these two days, as the Sun sets on the grid, half the disk sits above and half below the horizon," Tyson explained.  "But the day after also offers Manhattanhenge moments, but at sunset, you instead will find the entire ball of the Sun on the horizon."  The 2018 Manhattanhenge sightings are on May 29 at 8:13 p.m., May 30, at 8:12 p.m., July 12 at 8:20 p.m., and July 13 at 8:21 p.m.  Tyson recommends to be as far east in Manhattan as possible for the best viewing opportunities.  Clear cross streets include 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd and 57th and several streets adjacent to them.  Christopher Brito  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/manhattanhenge-2018-sunset-new-york-city-today-what-time-best-place/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1894  May 30, 2018

The Story of Louis Braille by Sherrill Kushner   Louis Braille spent his spare time at his school for the blind trying to improve on a night writing system so blind students could learn to read and write.  Louis' classmates at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth tried out his new alphabet system, and were delighted to find how well it worked.  Now they could take notes in class.  Memorizing long class lectures wasn't necessary any more.  They didn't need anyone's help to read or write.  The school director wrote to the French government and asked if Louis' dot alphabet could be made the official system of writing for the blind.  In the meantime, Louis became an assistant teacher at the institute.  His classes were very popular.  He also spent a lot of time copying books into his code.  He even added symbols so that blind musicians could read and write music.  He eventually had a book published describing his new code.  Louis also learned to play the organ.  He played so well, he worked as an organist at a nearby church.  He soon became a full-time teacher at the institute.  In 1834, Louis demonstrated his dot alphabet at the Exhibition of Industry held in Paris.  He worked on writing books and music in his dot system.  He died in Paris in 1852.  Two years later, the French government approved the dot system.  It was called "Braille" after Louis' last name.  In 1878, the World Congress for the Blind voted to make Braille the system of reading and writing for all blind people worldwide.  With the help of the United Nations, Braille has been adapted to almost every known language.  To see the Braille alphabet, go to http://www.nbp.org/ic/nbp/braille/index.html?id=orEf2eop.  Braille Bug http://www.afb.org/braillebug/ by the American Foundation for the Blind, features an assortment of games and activities for learning Braille that are both fun and educational. The website is for both sighted and visually impaired students in grades two through six.  It also includes biographies of Helen Keller and Louis Braille.  http://www.pathstoliteracy.org/story-louis-braille

Apple pie is not an American invention.  In the 14th century, farmers in England began wrapping apples into inedible containers known as “coffins,” a pie prototype.  Only in 1697 did the concept reach the United States—through European immigrants.  Though fans of apple pie with cheese exist everywhere, they seem to be concentrated in the American Midwest, New England, and parts of Canada and Britain. Vermont even has a 1999 law on the books requiring that proprietors of apple pie make a “good faith effort” to serve it with ice cream, cold milk, or “a slice of cheddar cheese weighing a minimum of 1/2 ounce.”  The idea appears to have originated in England, where all sorts of fillings were added to pies.  At some point, the 17th-century trend of adding dairy-based sauces to pies morphed into a tradition of topping them with cheese.  Michael Waters  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cheese-apple-pie

The history of the menu isn’t all that long, and its origins are murky.  Menus were needed once restaurants became gathering places that served a variety of foods, starting in 18th-century Paris.  Later banquets often provided printed menus as souvenirs for attendees, who could take a soup-spattered piece of paper home to dream about delicacies past.  Today, nearly every restaurant has a menu, and some even let you take one home.  Not many libraries have menus collections, but they are still a vital part of the historical record that reveals tastes, trends, and even local environmental conditions.  Menu collections are often passion projects, gathered by enthusiasts over a lifetime.  Perhaps the most famous examples are Frank M. Buttolph, who collected 25,000 menus that eventually ended up at the New York Public Library, or Louis Szathmary, a chef whose collection is split between two universities and ranges from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural ball to a space-age feast.  The Conrad N. Hilton Library in New York is a part of the other CIA, the Culinary Institute of America.  The library houses 30,000 menus from 80 countries dating back to 1855, and features notable examples from famed restaurateurs and chefs.  But it also has a furry menu, which is a bit of a mystery.  It was donated to the library by a Patty O’Neill, and it’s almost certainly a novelty item, offering delicacies such as “Flat Cat,” “Caribou Stew,” and a range of dog dishes, from “German Shepard Pie” to “Collie Hit by a Trolley.”  Anne Ewbank  See graphics and read about menu collections in other libraries at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/menus-unusual-libraries

kith  noun  Old English cȳthth, of Germanic origin; related to couth.  The original senses were ‘knowledge’, ‘one's native land’, and ‘friends and neighbours’.  The phrase kith and kin originally denoted one's country and relatives; later one's friends and relatives.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/kith

food web  noun  A diagram showing the organisms that eat other organisms in a particular ecosystem, predators being higher in the web than their prey.  Wiktionary

A citron is a large ovoid semitropital fruit with a rough, uneven, thin yellowish-green rind, that looks like a huge lumpy lemon.  The edible part of the fruit is small and surrounded with a thick white inner rind grown mainly for it's peel, which is candied.  Before being candied, the peel is processed in brine and pressed to extract citron oil, used to flavor liqueurs and to scent cosmetics.  It is difficult to find in the U.S. and is most commonly available around the holiday season.  It is generally sold in a small dice, often part of a premixed candied fruit mix intended for use in fruit cake.  The fingered citron, which looks like a yellow, multi-tentacled octopus, is used as a flavoring rather than being eaten out-of-hand.  http://www.geniuskitchen.com/about/citron-639

Recipes for desserts using vinegar  Vinegar Pie  https://delishably.com/desserts/What-is-a-Vinegar-Pie  Chess Pie  http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/classic-chess-pie

Little New York may refer to"  Little New York, Alabama, Little York, California, formerly called Little New York, Staten Island  a 2009 film also titled Little New York, and Little New York, Texas.  Some streets and restaurants are named Little New York.  Welch, West Virginia was once known as Little New York and the "nations's coal bin." Wikipedia, Google, CNN

nemesis  word origin and history   1570s, Nemesis, "Greek goddess of vengeance, personification of divine wrath," from Greek nemesis "just indignation, righteous anger," literally "distribution" (of what is due), related to nemein "distribute, allot, apportion one's due".  With a lower-case -n-, in the sense of "retributive justice," attested from 1590s.  General sense of "anything by which it seems one must be defeated" is 20c.  http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/nemesis

May 24, 2018  At the traveling Museum Of Ice Cream pop-up, currently in San Francisco, for a frequently sold-out $38 entrance fee, not only can you partake of the classic frozen treat, you can even dive into a pool full of sprinkles.  After a few years on the pop-up Instagram circuit, the Museum Of Ice Cream is now headed for a more permanent home.  The Washington Post reports that “the museum announced Wednesday that it’s planning to open a new concept, the Pint Shop” and is launching its own brand of ice cream. The ice cream will be available in Target Stores with flavors like “Piñata, ‘vanilla ice cream with iced animal cookies, frosted cupcake bites, fizzy cotton candies and rainbow sprinkles,’ and Sprinkle Pool, which contains the titular ingredient.  There’s also Vanillionaire, Chocolate Crush, Cherrylicious, the cinnamon and churro-filled Churro Churro and Nana Bread, a banana ice cream with salted caramel almond butter swirls.”  Gwen Ihnat  https://thetakeout.com/an-ice-cream-museum-and-bbq-ice-cream-top-today-s-ice-c-1826299120

The Man Booker International Prize is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom.  The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize was announced in June 2004.  Sponsored by the Man Group, from 2005 until 2015 the award was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation.  It rewarded one author's "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage", and was a recognition of the writer's body of work rather than any one title.  Since 2016, the award has been given annually to a single book in English translation, with a £50,000 prize for the winning title, shared equally between author and translator.  The 2018 winner is Olga Tokarczuk (Poland), Jennifer Croft (translator), for Flights (Fitzcarraldo Editions)  Tokarczuk is the first Polish author to win the award.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Booker_International_Prize

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1893  May 28, 2018 

On July 23, 1886, the 49th Congress (1885–1887) set in motion an era of commercial regulation by passing the Oleomargarine Act which defined the very essence of butter and imposed a two-cent per pound tax on oleomargarine, a butter substitute made from animal fat.  The law, which President Grover Cleveland signed 10 days later, came after months of debate over whether the federal government could (or should) regulate private economic activity, as well as the areas of interstate commerce, agriculture, and public health.  The debate pitted dairy interests against virtually everyone else, and featured graphic (and often false) descriptions of the processes used to create margarine, which had been invented in France only 17 years before.  The vivid imagery came courtesy of Chicago meatpackers, who capitalized on the new product since its manufacture at the time harvested excess animal fat that had earlier gone to waste.  Margarine also yielded high-profits but cost very little, making it popular among both industrialists and the millions of consumers who couldn’t afford real butter during a lingering economic recession.  Dairy interests, however, saw margarine as a threat and appealed to Congress to regulate it with a prohibitive tax.  “If I could have the kind of legislation that I want it would not be a source of revenue, as I would make the tax so high that the operation of the law would utterly destroy the manufacture of all counterfeit butter and cheese as I would destroy the manufacture of counterfeit coin or currency,” Representative William Price of Wisconsin said. Future Speaker David Henderson of Iowa compared margarine to the witches’ brew in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  Those in Congress who opposed the tax tried to stop the bill through so-called “killer” amendments.  With tongue in cheek, Representative John Adams of New York offered an amendment to tax chicken incubators “in order that the great American hen may be properly protected.”  Representative George Tillman of South Carolina was among margarine’s few defenders on the House Floor, and got a good laugh when he said that margarine, “when it is honestly made out of good materials,” was actually better than butter.  The Oleomargarine Act, which remained in effect until 1950, foreshadowed later attempts to regulate private economic activity.  http://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/15032395622

However it evolved, butter has been with us for at least 4000 years.  Our word butter comes from the ancient Greek–a combo of bous (cow) and turos(cheese)–still appropriate today, since the bulk of modern American butter comes from cows.  Butter, from its ancient inception, had nothing much in the way of competition until 1869.  In that year French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès--spurred on by a hefty financial prize offered by Emperor Louis Napoleon III--patented a lower priced spread made from beef tallow.  He dubbed it oleomargarine–from the Latin oleum, meaning beef fat, and the Greek margarite, meaning pearl, this last for its presumably pearlescent luster.  The Emperor was hoping that a cheaper butter alternative would benefit the lower classes and the military, neither of which seems to have appreciated it much.  Mège-Mouriès sold his patent to Jurgens, a Dutch butter-making company, which eventually became part of Unilever, still one of the world’s major producers of margarine.  Margarine arrived in the United States in the 1870s, to the approbation of the broke, and to the universal horror of American dairy farmers.  Within the next decade there were 37 companies in the United States enthusiastically manufacturing margarine; and “margarine” and “butter” had become fighting words.  Butter, traditionally, is yellow, a color ideally derived from plant carotene in the milk of grass-fed cows.  Margarine, on the other hand, as made in the industrial vat, is white, the unappetizing shade of grade-school paste.  Margarine manufacturers, to better appeal to the public, wanted to tint their product yellow; butter producers objected, claiming that yellow margarine, fraudulently masquerading as butter, was a deliberate ploy to deceive the public.  (Butter from corn-fed cows is also anemically pale, and is routinely dyed to turn it an attractive butter-yellow; this practice, however, butter makers argued, was simply a cosmetic tweak.)  By 1902, 32 states had imposed color constraints on margarine.  Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota all passed laws demanding that margarine be dyed an off-putting pink; other states proposed it be colored red, brown, or black.  The “pink laws” were overturned by the Supreme Court (on the grounds that it’s illegal to enforce the adulteration of food) but the ban on yellow margarine remained.  (The last hold-out, Wisconsin, only repealed its margarine-color law in 1967.)  In the cash-strapped days of the Depression and during the butter shortages of World War II, however, margarine inexorably began to bypass butter.  This was helped along by improvements in the manufacturing process–margarine was now made from hydrogenated vegetable oils rather than animal fats--and by a clever side-step of the yellow ban in which white margarine was sold with an included capsule of yellow food coloring.  Buyers simply squished the two together to produce a nicely butter-colored non-butter spread.  (Though not in Wisconsin, where using yellow margarine was a crime, punishable by fines or imprisonment.)  By the 1970s, Americans were eating about ten pounds of margarine per person per year.  Margarine may also have received some additional oomph from the famous Wisconsin senatorial taste test of 1955, in which senators, blindfolded, were challenged to tell the difference between butter and margarine.  Good Wisconsinites all, most weren’t fooled--except, famously, the vociferously pro-butter Gordon Roselip, who preferred the margarine, insisting that it was butter.  It turned out later that Roselip’s wife, worried about her husband’s heart, had for years been sneakily substituting (illegal) yellow margarine for butter at the Senator’s dinner table.  In the seemingly unending duel between butter and margarine, butter is winning the latest round:  as of 2014, butter had surpassed margarine as America’s favorite spread.  We’re now each eating on average 5.6 pounds of butter a year, as opposed to a dwindling 3.5 pounds of margarine.  New evidence has shown that the trans fats in margarine may be worse for us health-wise than the saturated fats in butter.  There’s also the upswing in the public’s preference for natural foods in favor of processed products--and a lot of people say that real butter just plain tastes better.  In 2002--over three decades after the last margarine color ban was lifted--Parkay produced a new margarine in a “Fun Squeeze” bottle.  It came in two colors.  One of them was pink.  Rebecca Rupp  http://theplate.nationalgeographic.com/2014/08/13/the-butter-wars-when-margarine-was-pink/

On May 22, 1849, Abraham Lincoln received Patent No. 6469 for a device to lift boats over shoals, an invention which was never manufactured.  However, it eventually made him the only U.S. president to hold a patent.  Lincoln learned river navigation early in life and took a flatboat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as a teenager.  A few years later, Lincoln moved to Illinois and made a second flatboat trip to New Orleans.  Before the flatboat could get to the Illinois River, it became stranded on a milldam at New Salem, a small pioneer settlement along the Sangamon.  As the boat took on water, Lincoln sprang to action.  He had part of the cargo unloaded to right the boat, then secured an auger from the village cooper shop.  After drilling a hole in the bow, he let the water run out.  Then he plugged the hole, helped move the boat over the dam, and proceeded to New Orleans.  In 1832, as a candidate for the Illinois General Assembly from Sangamon County, Lincoln published his first political announcement, in which he stressed, not surprisingly, the improvement of navigation on the Sangamon River.  Read more and see graphics at http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/patent.htm

At the drop of a hat  This saying is said to come from the American West, where the signal for a fight was often just the drop of a hat.  It may have an Irish origin, based on something like "he's ready to fight at the drop of a hat" which in turn may be followed by "roll up your sleeves" or "take off your coat"--items of clothing involved in the start of fights.  Flanders and Swann called their show At the Drop of a Hat.  Perhaps they needed little encouragement to break into song.  Their well-known animal observation piece, 'The Hippopotamus Song', had inspired the Queen, Prince Philip and the Mountbattens, who saw the revue at the Fortune Theatre, to join in the chorus of 'mud, mud, glorious mud' chorus.  https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/26/messages/1217.html  See also http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-att1.htm

5 books worth reading this summer by Bill Gates   May 21, 2018  Leonardo da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson.  A worthy follow-up to Isaacson’s great biographies of Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs.

Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved, by Kate Bowler.  When Bowler, a professor at Duke Divinity School, is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, she sets out to understand why it happened.  Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders.  It blends historical facts from the Civil War with fantastical elements—it’s basically a long conversation among 166 ghosts, including Lincoln’s deceased son.  Origin Story:  A Big History of Everything, by David Christian. David created my favorite course of all time, Big History.  It tells the story of the universe from the big bang to today’s complex societies, weaving together insights and evidence from various disciplines into a single narrative.  If you haven’t taken Big History yet, Origin Story is a great introduction.  Factfulness, by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund.  Hans, the brilliant global-health lecturer who died last year, gives you a breakthrough way of understanding basic truths about the world—how life is getting better, and where the world still needs to improve.  https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-2018

Baked Beans

Add one or a couple of ingredients such as:  dry mustard, molasses, chili sauce, coffee, pineapple, brown sugar, crushed pineapple, bourbon, rum or brandy to baked beans.

"Life is an exchange of ideas, information and emotion."  "I'm suggestible--if I like the suggestion."  Martha Esbin

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1892  May 25, 2018 

The Bad Grade That Changed The U.S. Constitution by Matt Largey    In 1982, a 19-year-old college sophomore named Gregory Watson was taking a government class at UT Austin.  For the class, he had to write a paper about a governmental process.  So he went to the library and started poring over books about the U.S. Constitution—one of his favorite topics.  "I'll never forget this as long as I live," Watson says.  "I pull out a book that has within it a chapter of amendments that Congress has sent to the state legislatures, but which not enough state legislatures approved in order to become part of the Constitution.  And this one just jumped right out at me."  The unratified amendment read as follows:  "No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of representatives shall have intervened."  The amendment had been proposed almost 200 years earlier, in 1789.  It was written by James Madison and was intended to be one of the very first constitutional amendments, right along with the Bill of Rights.  But it didn't get passed by enough states at the time.  To ratify an amendment, three-quarters of state legislatures need to approve it.  And it turned out that the 200-year-old proposed amendment didn't have a deadline.  Watson was intrigued.  He decided to write his paper about the amendment and argue that it was still alive and could be ratified.  He turned it in to the teaching assistant for his class—and got it back with a C.  He needed 38 state legislatures to approve the amendment.  Nine states had already approved it, mostly back in the 1790s, so that meant Watson needed 29 more states to ratify it.  He wrote letters to members of Congress to see whether they knew of anyone in their home states who might be willing to push the amendment in the state legislature.  When he did get a response, it was generally negative.  Some said the amendment was too old; some said they just didn't know anyone who'd be willing to help.  Mostly, he got no response at all.  But then, a senator from Maine named William Cohen did get back to him.  Cohen, who later served as secretary of defense under President Clinton, passed the amendment on to someone back home, who passed it on to someone else, who introduced it in the Maine Legislature.  In 1983, state lawmakers passed it.  "So I'm thinking, 'my first success story; this can actually be done'," Watson says.  Feeling emboldened, he started writing to every state lawmaker he thought might be willing to help.  After a while, it started to work.  Colorado passed the amendment in 1984.  And then it picked up momentum.  Five states in 1985.  Three each in 1986, 1987 and 1988.  Seven states in 1989 alone.  By 1992, 35 states had passed the amendment.  Only three more to go.  After 10 years of letter-writing, sweet-talking and shaming, Watson was within reach of his goal.  On May 5, 1992, both Alabama and Missouri passed the amendment.  And on May 7, as Watson listened on the phone, the Michigan House of Representatives put it over the top.

https://www.npr.org/2017/05/05/526900818/the-bad-grade-that-changed-the-u-s-constitution  The Muser heard about this story watching a comedy skit on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in May 2018.

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

meme  (meem)  noun   1.  An element of culture, idea, behavior, etc., that’s transmitted from person to person.  2.  An image, video clip, etc. often with amusing caption, that’s transmitted virally on the Internet.  From Greek mimeisthai (to imitate, copy); coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene in 1976.

NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED  You can't get anywhere unless you're willing to take a risk.  The saying dates back to Chaucer (c. 1374) and is similar to the late fourteenth century French proverb:  Qui onques rien n'enprist riens n'achieva (He who never undertook anything never achieved anything)  The proverb was included in John Heyword's collection of proverbs in 1546.  First cited in the United States in 'Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden.  It takes varying forms:  Nothing ventured, nothing lost, nothing ventured, nothing won, etc. ."  Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996).  https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/951.html

           

Celebrating the Audience:  Approaches to Participatory Performance  posted by Josh Sobel  July 27, 2014   I spoke with Halena Kays, Artistic Director of The Hypocrites in Chicago.  From promenade stagings of Pirates of Penzance to audience members reading lines during David Cromer’s record-breaking Our Town, The Hypocrites are constantly trying out different ways to engage with their audiences.  In our conversation, she brought up a few of the pitfalls that can trip up this kind of work.  Many artists have the philosophy in creating their work that “the audience has all the power.”  And this isn’t true.  As the performer and artist you always have the power.  It’s your show, it’s your theatre, your rules.  So it’s your job to create a scenario where you are always the one looking foolish, where the audience is always at a higher status, and where they can never make a “mistake”—only you can.  In 2013 Halena helmed Jay Torrence’s Ivywild:  The True Tall Tales of Bathhouse John, a brilliantly oddball telling based on the true story of early 1900s Chicago Alderman John Coughlin and his siphoning of money from Chicago’s vice district in an attempt to build an amusement park in Colorado.  The audience participation that was featured in this piece was not an initially planned element:  It began with “what is the story?” and “what are the goals of the production?”  What experience do you want the audience to have, and why for this story?  For Ivywild, we wanted the audience to feel like they were on a ride, that they were getting an amusement park experience; the experience of being amazed and surprised.  From there, the creative team spent at least ten hours just discussing the goals, the story, the desired effect of the play itself before any choices were tried, before participation was fully considered.  Creating this kind of work is a joy.  I recently dipped my toe in these waters with an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark.  When creating this piece, Sarah Rose Graber, a collaborator on the show and current Fulbright Scholar studying devised and participatory theatre in the United Kingdom, stressed one thing above all:  “When interacting with the audience, it must always be an act of celebration, never one of obligation or imposition.”  Read more at  http://howlround.com/celebrating-the-audience-approaches-to-participatory-performance

Have you attended  “immersive” or “participatory” or “interactive” theatre?  The answer is yes if you have attended plays where audience members can guess the guilty party.  The answer is yes if you've attended Tony and Tina's wedding, Class Reunion (you'll get to sing the school song honoring the cicada), Sleep No More (based primarily on Macbeth), and Finnegan's Wake (you're in the middle of a raucous Irish wake).   Thank you, Muse reader!

In a survey conducted by the American Heart Association in 2011, 61 percent of respondents incorrectly said sea salt is a low-sodium an alternative to table salt.  Here’s the truth:  most salts--including sea salt, table salt, kosher salt, and Himalayan pink salt--contain about 40 percent sodium.  The label might claim to have less sodium than table salt, and here’s why:  it’s about the volume of salt that can fit into your measuring spoon.  If the salt crystals are small, more of them will fit into your measuring spoon than if they are large.  So, while table salt may have about 2300 mg of sodium in a teaspoon, there are about 2000 mg of sodium per teaspoon if you are using sea salt , and pink Himalayan salt has about 1700 mg of sodium per teaspoon . . . all because the volume of the salt crystals in a teaspoon are different!  To get a clearer picture, you can check the food package, Nutrition Facts label to compare how each type of salt compares to table salt.  Check out how much sodium you should eat for more information.  Some companies claim that sea salts and mountain salts like pink Himalayan salt contain special minerals.  The levels of minerals reported are very low (so low, they may not be reported, depending on the brand).  You can eat minerals that are touted in these salts (like iron and magnesium) by eating healthy.  This includes eating vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat dairy, lean meats, poultry, and fish (preferably oily), legumes, unsalted nuts and seeds and non-tropical vegetable oils.  Enjoying a variety of healthful foods should give you the nutrients, minerals, and energy you need to live a healthy life.  https://sodiumbreakup.heart.org/pink_himalayan_salt_is_it_lower_in_sodium

May 21, 2018  VINALHAVEN, Me.   For years before Robert Indiana died, his deepening isolation on this remote island, more than an hour’s ferry ride off the Maine coast, had mystified some longtime friends and business associates.  Mr. Indiana, whose career was made, and nearly consumed, by his creation of the sculpture “LOVE,” had sought refuge here four decades ago, an exile from a New York art world he had come to resent, and settled into a rambling Victorian lodge hall overlooking Penobscot Bay, where he was, more or less, left alone to create his art.  [Read the New York Times obituary of Robert Indiana.]  In a federal lawsuit filed May 18, 2018, a day before Mr. Indiana’s death at 89, a company that says it has long held the rights to several of Mr. Indiana’s best-known works proposed an answer, arguing in court papers that the caretaker and a New York art publisher had tucked the artist away while they churned out unauthorized or adulterated versions of his work.  “They have isolated Indiana from his friends and supporters, forged some of Indiana’s most recognizable works, exhibited the fraudulent works in museums, and sold the fraudulent works to unsuspecting collectors,” said the lawsuit filed last week by Morgan Art Foundation Ltd. in Federal District Court in Manhattan.  Murray Carpenter and Graham Bowley   Read more and see pictures at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/arts/design/robert-indiana-vanished-artist.html  Read NYT obituary at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/obituaries/robert-indiana-love-pop-art-dies.html

May 22, 2018  Philip Roth, the American literary icon whose novel “American Pastoral” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 1998, has died, at the age of eighty-five, according to friends close to him.  His great subjects, as Claudia Roth Pierpont wrote in this magazine, in 2006, included “the Jewish family, sex, American ideals, the betrayal of American ideals, political zealotry, personal identity,” and “the human body (usually male) in its strength, its frailty, and its often ridiculous need.”  Roth published his first story in The New Yorker, “The Kind of Person I Am,” in 1958; the following year, another story in the magazine, “Defender of the Faith,” prompted condemnations from rabbis and the Anti-Defamation League.  “His sin was simple:  he’d had the audacity to write about a Jewish kid as being flawed,” David Remnick wrote in a Profile of Roth, in 2000.  “He had violated the tribal code on Jewish self-exposure.”  In 1979, in its June 25th and July 2nd issues, The New Yorker published—in its entirety—“The Ghost Writer,” the first of Roth’s novels to be narrated by his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman.  Zuckerman would make subsequent appearances in the magazine, in “Smart Money” (from “Zuckerman Unbound,” 1981) and “Communist” (from “I Married a Communist,” 1998).  Over two issues, in 1995, The New Yorker also published excerpts from “Sabbath’s Theater” (“The Ultimatum” and “Drenka’s Men”), for which Roth won his second National Book Award.  (The first was for “Goodbye, Columbus,” published in 1959.)  Roth also leaves behind a corpus of essays, criticism, and other artifacts, some of which Adam Gopnik explored in his essay “Philip Roth, Patriot,” last year.  https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/philip-roth-in-the-new-yorker

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1891  May 23, 2018