Librarian's Muse

Scholar and novelist Hernan Diaz was born in Argentina, grew up in Sweden, and spent most of his life in the United States. To some degree, he says, he has a foreign accent in every language he speaks. Diaz shares his humble opinion on accent discrimination and “the hospitality at the heart of every language.” Something in my Spanish makes taxi drivers in Buenos Aires ask me where I’m from. In Swedish, my accent is very slight, but I have the vocabulary of a 12-year-old. In my early 20s, I lived in London for a couple of years, which left its mark. But the fact is, I got English almost as a gift, through Swedish. And there is still a Scandinavian lilt in there. Does my accent need correcting? I don’t think so. An accent is the echo of one language or tone in another. I, for one, enjoy these ghostly presences of something strange in a familiar environment. They are a reminder of the fact that language doesn’t belong to anyone, not even to its native speakers. Read full transcript and link to 3:19 video at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/we-stigmatize-accents-but-language-belongs-to-everyone

Beer styles can be named for many things, including the place of origin (pilsner, Dortmunder), the appearance (pale ale, witbier) or strength (barley wine, tripel). How then did the amber lagers—which are known as Vienna, märzen and Oktoberfest—come to be named after a city, a month and a festival, respectively? Each has its own history. The amber lagers share a history that comes full circle in the end. Märzen produced Vienna, Vienna produced Oktoberfest. Over a period of several centuries, brewers discovered that beers could be brewed in spring, stored in alpine caves through the summer and until the weather cooled, emerging for consumption in the fall. Some brews following this procedure became known as märzen or March beers after the month in which most were brewed. Around the beginning of the 19th century, a great friendship developed between two distinguished members of the brewing industry. The Viennese brewer, Anton Dreher, and Gabriel Sedlmayr II of the Spaten brewery in Munich studied and traveled together. They took keen interest in the innovations of the day and applied them to their own brewing practices. Dreher was quite interested in developing a pale malt of his own. He eventually produced one with a unique character, known as Vienna malt. This was the base for his distinctive brews. His malt, together with techniques he learned from the Sedlmayrs, produced the first beer in what could be called the Vienna style, a sparkling-clear, amber lagerbier, in 1841. At the same time that Dreher was developing his Vienna beers, the Sedlmayrs were back at the Spaten brewery in Munich crafting and refining their stylistic contribution to the beer world. We know it today as Munich dunkel. In 1871 Gabriel’s brother, Josef, brewed a pilot batch of amber beer that was unlike anything else that could be sampled in the city. He named it Ur-Märzen (original märzen), following the old method of brewing in March and storing cold for consumption in the fall. When, at the Oktoberfest celebration of 1872, the supply of the regular beer ran out, Sedlmayr came to the rescue with his märzenbier. It again was so popular that it became a regular beer of the Oktoberfest celebration. Eventually, many märzen beers added the designation “Oktoberfest” to the name. There are three different names for these similar beers, but they are really just two distinct styles, with märzen and Oktoberfest being interchangeable or set together, as in märzen/Oktoberfest. Märzen/Oktoberfest beers have a lusty, rich character that is definitely balanced toward the malt. Gentle hop rates allow the Munich-style malts to shine through in the märzen/Oktoberfest. In general, Viennas are slightly weaker, a little drier and have a noticeable hop character that leaves the beer well-balanced with a slightly spicy character. American breweries produce an excellent range of märzen/Oktoberfest beers, with some examples showing a spicy, hopped-up Vienna profile. Some are simply be called “amber” or “amber lager,” and may be more commonly found in the Midwest with its German ancestry. The influence of Austria and Germany can still be found in many Mexican beers. Negra Modelo and Dos Equis are such examples, and they can’t be beat for washing down spicy food. http://allaboutbeer.com/beer_style/amber-lagers/

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as a personified egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs. Its origins are obscure and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings. The character of Humpty Dumpty was popularised in the United States by actor George L. Fox (1825–77). As a character and literary allusion, he has appeared or been referred to in a large number of works of literature and popular culture, particularly Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1872), in which he was described as an egg. The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "humpty dumpty" referred to a drink of brandy boiled with ale in the seventeenth century. The riddle probably exploited, for misdirection, the fact that "humpty dumpty" was also eighteenth-century reduplicative slang for a short and clumsy person. The riddle may depend upon the assumption that a clumsy person falling off a wall might not be irreparably damaged, whereas an egg would be. The rhyme is no longer posed as a riddle, since the answer is now so well known. Similar riddles have been recorded by folklorists in other languages, such as "Boule Boule" in French, "Lille Trille" in Swedish and Norwegian, and "Runtzelken-Puntzelken" or "Humpelken-Pumpelken" in different parts of Germany—although none is as widely known as Humpty Dumpty is in English. Humpty appears in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1872), where he discusses semantics and pragmatics with Alice. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all." Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they're the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That's what I say!" Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty

Eric Carle is acclaimed and beloved as the creator of brilliantly illustrated and innovatively designed picture books for very young children. His best-known work, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, has eaten its way into the hearts of literally millions of children all over the world and has been translated into 62 languages and sold over 46 million copies. Since the Caterpillar was published in 1969, Eric Carle has illustrated more than seventy books, many best sellers, most of which he also wrote, and more than 145 million copies of his books have sold around the world. Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1929, Eric Carle moved with his parents to Germany when he was six years old; he was educated there, and graduated from the prestigious art school, the Akademie der bildenden Künste, in Stuttgart. But his dream was always to return to America, the land of his happiest childhood memories. So, in 1952, with a fine portfolio in hand and forty dollars in his pocket, he arrived in New York. Soon he found a job as a graphic designer in the promotion department of The New York Times. Later, he was the art director of an advertising agency for many years. One day, respected educator and author, Bill Martin Jr, called to ask Carle to illustrate a story he had written. Martin’s eye had been caught by a striking picture of a red lobster that Carle had created for an advertisement. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? was the result of their collaboration. It is still a favorite with children everywhere. This was the beginning of Eric Carle’s true career. Soon Carle was writing his own stories, too. His first wholly original book was 1,2,3 to the Zoo, followed soon afterward by the celebrated classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Somehow, the United States Postal Service (USPS) couldn’t tell the difference between the two, and printed the wrong Lady Liberty on billions of stamps in 2010—the one outside of the New York--New York Hotel and Casino in Sin City, not the one on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. A stamp collector noticed the difference in 2011, and even after it became clear that the USPS did not have permission from the artist who made the statue, the postal service simply shrugged it off and kept printing. USPS “still loves the stamp design and would have selected this photograph anyway,” it stated in a 2011 email. However, the artist who made the Vegas sculpture, Robert S. Davidson, did not love the USPS using an image of his work without obtaining permission and sued for copyright infringement in 2017. On June 29, 2018, Davidson emerged victorious from the suit and will now receive $3.5 million, plus interest, as compensation. https://www.artsy.net/news/artsy-editorial-usps-owes-35-million-artist-las-vegass-statue-liberty-printing-work-10-billion-stamps

A Capitol Fourth 2018 video Music begins at 2:53 with Pentatonix. Jimmy Buffet performs with others in music from Escape to Margaritaville and joins the Beach Boys (along with host John Stamos) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5HNFhzNdnI 1:30:57

WORLD CUP 2018

Quarter-final

Friday 6 July France vs Uruguay - Nizhny Novgorod, 3pm (Match 57)

Brazil vs Belgium - Sochi, 7pm (Match 58)

Saturday 7 July Sweden vs England - Samara, 3pm (Match 59)

Russia vs Croatia - Kazan, 7pm (Match 60)

Tuesday 10 July Winner match 57 vs Winner match 58 - St Petersburg, 7pm (Match 61)

Wednesday 11 July Winner match 59 vs Winner match 60 - Moscow (Luzhniki), 7pm (Match 62)

Third place play-off

Saturday 14 July Loser match 61 vs Loser match 62 - St Petersburg, 3pm

World Cup 2018 final

Sunday 15 July Moscow (Luzhniki), 4pm