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
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
No comments:
Post a Comment