By day, she handles books.  By night, she chases leads.  A killer of women had been identified at a press conference in 2017, and the name was repeated later in a podcast by New Hampshire Public Radio:  Terry Peder Rasmussen.  The name held different meanings for two people involved.  Rebekah Heath’s online connection was a woman searching for a long-lost baby, a relative named Sarah McWaters, not seen in more than 40 years.  Sarah’s mother, Marlyse Honeychurch, was also missing, Heath learned, after disappearing from California in 1978.  Further, this online connection said the last person known to have had contact with the mother and daughter, plus two other missing girls, was a man named Terry Rasmussen.  Heath, a librarian from Simsbury, Conn., knew her independent work trying to help police identify four people--a woman and three girls found dead years ago and years apart in Allenstown, near Bear Brook State Park--had paid off.  These four unsolved murders moved in and out of the public consciousness through the decades.  A reporter would revisit now and then, check on progress, see if there had been any developments in a case that had proved frustrating for so many for so long.  Heath scoured missing-children posts.  Monthly subscriptions to Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and lots of newspapers opened doors.  “She got Rasmussen’s name from a podcast at the same time we were doing our investigative and genealogy work,” Associate Attorney General Jeff Strelzin told me during a phone interview.  “It all came together at the same time.”  Strelzin said his office and law enforcement, in general, didn’t mind that a private citizen assisted in their effort to create at least some closure for families.  Ray Duckler  https://www.concordmonitor.com/Amateur-detective-busted-open-Allenstown-murder-case-26115785



Recalling Dayton’s famous sons by Mark Bernstein  In 1911 Wilbur Wright was asked the secret to success.  Simple, he replied:  “Choose good parents, and be born in Ohio.”  When, at the end of the eighteenth century, Americans started spilling over the Appalachians, Ohio was the only adjacent place where slavery had been banned.  It therefore drew to it people and groups who intended to place their stamp on the future.  It was a fertile ground for small colleges and utopian communities.  While the former colonies along the Atlantic still looked back to Europe, Ohio was the first place that looked to the ever-beckoning West.  https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/opinion/perspective-looking-back-the-more-imaginative-wright-brother/IcvvgZVAQ6QDM4cSoQ0YvL/



Famous for being famous is a pejorative term for someone who attains celebrity status for no particularly identifiable reason (as opposed to fame based on achievements, skill, or talent) and appears to generate his or her own fame, or someone who achieves fame through a family or relationship association with an existing celebrity.  Similar terms are famesque and celebutante.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_for_being_famous



Hermann Hagedorn (1882–1964) was an American author, poet and biographer.  He was born in New York City and educated at The Hill School and Harvard University, where he was awarded the George B. Sohier Prize for literature, the University of Berlin, and Columbia University.  From 1909 to 1911, he was an instructor in English at Harvard.  Hagedorn was a friend and biographer of Theodore Roosevelt.  He also served as Secretary and Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association from 1919 to 1957.  Drawing upon his friendship with Roosevelt, Hagedorn was able to elicite the support of Roosevelt's friends and associates' personal recollections in his biography of TR which was first published in 1918 and then updated in 1922 and which is oriented toward children.  The book has a summary questions for young readers at the end of each chapter.  Drawing on the same friends and associates of Roosevelt, Hagedorn also published the first serious study of TR's experience as a rancher in the Badlands after the death of his wife and mother in 1884.  Hagedorn's access to TR's associates in these two books has been utilized by historian, Edmund Morris in his two highly acclaimed biographical books on Roosevelt published in 1979 and 2001.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hagedorn



Pluots, apriums, apriplums, or plumcots, are some of the hybrids between different Prunus species that are also called interspecific plums.  Whereas plumcots and apriplums are first-generation hybrids between a plum parent (P. salicinaor P. cerasifera or their hybrids) and an apricot (P. armeniaca), pluots and apriums are later-generations.  Both names "plumcot" and "apriplum" have been used for trees derived from a plum seed parent, and are therefore equivalent.  See plumcot, pluot and aprium varieties plus pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluot  Cotton-candy grapes and Cosmic Crisp are other designer fruits. 



Words for nether garments all seem to have been commonly plural throughout their history, often prefixed by pair of . . . breeches, shorts, drawers, panties, tights, knickers (short for knickerbockers), and trousers.  Pants is short for pantaloons, also plural, which in their very earliest incarnations were nearer stage tights; their name comes from a Venetian character in Italian commedia dell’arte who was the butt of the clown’s jokes and who always appeared as a foolish old man wearing pantaloons.  Commentators referred to them when they first appeared as being a combination of breeches and stockings.  Later the word was applied to fashionable tight-fitting trousers.  Trousers came into the language in the seventeenth century from the Gaelic trowse, a singular word for a slightly different garment rather more like breeches; a later version of it was trews, taken to be a plural because of the final s.  Breeches has been plural throughout its recorded history, a long one (it dates from at least the year 1200).  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pai1.htm  Other words that seem to be always used as plurals are alms and qualms.



Based on his own experiences as an immigrant and his knowledge of the slums as a police reporter, Jacob Riis advocated for practical solutions to a wide array of social problems.  Through lectures, newspaper and magazine articles, and books like How the Other Half Lives (1890) and The Children of the Poor (1892), Riis worked tirelessly to influence public opinion.  He met with a hostile reception from New York City’s powerful political machine, Tammany Hall, whose leaders saw well-meaning, middle-class reformers as a threat to their influence.  But in 1894, an anti-Tammany reform candidate, William L. Strong, won the mayor’s office and instituted a period of “good government” policies.  Among Strong’s appointments was a young Theodore Roosevelt as police commissioner.  Roosevelt befriended Riis and supported his causes, as Riis advocated for the destruction of the worst of the old tenements, the construction of parks, education for children, and the closing of the dangerous police station lodging houses.  https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jacob-riis/reformer.html  Jacob August Riis, (born 1849 in Ribe, Denmark—died 1914 in Barre, Massachusetts), was an American newspaper reporter, social reformer, and photographer.



PARAPHRASES from A Poisoned Mind, Trish Maguire book 9 by Natasha Cooper  *  On each plate was a plump partridge sitting on its little cushion of cabbage, belly pork and chipolata.  *  I've gone all childish--I need  treats and tributes to keep me happy.  *  Family reasons is a wonderful catch-all excuse for moving from one job into a less prominent one.  *



Natasha J. Cooper (born 1951 in Kensington, London) is an English crime fiction writer.  See list of books including those written under aliases at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Cooper



overstand  From Middle English overstonden, from Old English oferstandan (“to stand over”), equivalent to over- +‎ stand.  Cognate with Dutch overstaan (“to stand over”), German überstehen (“to stand through, survive”).  verb  overstand (third-person singular simple present overstands, present participle overstanding, simple past and past participle overstood)  (rare) to stand or insist too much or too long; overstay quotations ▼  (transitive) to stand too strictly on the demands or conditions of.  (yachting, boat racing): to sail to the mark at a wider angle than is the normal upwind angle, to go beyond the layline  (forestry, of a coppice): To be neglected and left uncut for too long. quotations ▼ noun  overstand (plural overstands)  (lutherie) The measurement between the top plate and the fingerboard where the neck meets the body of the instrument.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/overstand



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2162  September 30, 2019 

A secret pleasure during my college years in Pasadena was getting lost in the nearby Huntington Botanical Gardens.  Not your typical college hangout, but a great study spot, it turned out.  Earlier this year on a college visit with my son, with an hour of free time we raced to the Huntington Library and Gardens.  While my son disappeared into the library to see old manuscripts, I headed to the desert garden.  It is as exotic and alluring as ever.  (If desert plants aren’t your thing, the Huntington’s rose garden, Japanese garden, Shakespeare garden, and other ten gardens are not to miss.)  In the heart of Pasadena, the Huntington Botanical Gardens occupy 207 acres surrounding the majestic Huntington Library (which houses a collection of rare manuscripts, prints, maps, and other materials).  The gardens are divided into 14 areas.  Janet Hall  See many pictures at https://www.gardenista.com/posts/escape-to-a-desert-garden-in-pasadena-huntington-library-garden/ 



The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970 film)  *  Sir Christopher Lee comes the role of Mycroft with considerable experience in the Sherlock Holmes universe.  It's been said that Lee is the only, or at least one of few actors, to portray on-screen both Mycroft Holmes and Sherlock Holmes.  *  At the request of Writer and Director Billy Wilder, composer Miklós Rózsa adapted music from his own 1956 Violin Concerto as the basis for the film score, supplementing this with further original music  *  The BBC News, in an article by BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter Steven McKenzie, reported on April 13, 2016 with the headline:  "Film's lost Nessie monster prop found in Loch Ness".  The article stated a "thirty foot (nine meter) model of the Loch Ness Monster built in 1969 for a Sherlock Holmes movie has been found almost fifty years after it sank in the loch.  It has been seen for the first time in images captured by an underwater robot.  Loch Ness expert Adrian Shine said the shape, measurements and location pointed to the object being the prop."  He continued:  "We have found a monster, but not the one many people might have expected.  The model was built with a neck and two humps and taken alongside a pier for filming of portions of the film in 1969.  The director (Billy Wilder) did not want the humps and asked that they be removed, despite warnings I suspect from the rest of the production that this would affect its buoyancy.  And the inevitable happened.  The model sank.  We can confidently say that this is the model because of where it was found, the shape, there is the neck and no humps, and from the measurements."  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066249/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv



Mystery of the Loch Ness monster as solved by Sherlock Holmes:  It turns out that Sherlock's brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee) is involved in building a pre-World War I submarine for the British Navy.  When taken out for testing, it was disguised as a sea monster.  The dwarfs were recruited as crewmen because they took up less space and needed less air.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Life_of_Sherlock_Holmes  Trivia:  Fictional character Jack Reacher is referred to as "Sherlock Homeless" in Lee Child's novel Personal.



Laurence Goldstein (born 1943) is a poet, editor, and professor in the University of Michigan Department of English Language and Literature.  Born in Los Angeles, California in 1943, he received a B.A. from UCLA in 1965 and a PhD from Brown University in 1970.  Beginning in 1977, Goldstein was the chief editor of Michigan Quarterly Review, an academic journal featuring new writing by prominent critics, essayists, poets, and fiction writers.  Goldstein stepped down as editor of Michigan Quarterly Review after its Spring 2009 issue.  Goldstein has written and/or edited several books of literary criticism (including work on romantic poetry, technology and literature, and film and literature), and published four volumes of poetry:  Altamira, in 1978; The Three Gardens, in 1987; Cold Reading, in 1995; and A Room in California, in 2005.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Goldstein



SNAPPY RHYMES  aces and spaces (a hand with Aces, low cards and few good cards in between); aces and faces (a hand with Aces and many face cards); bricks to clicks (business going from a physical location to online)  The Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may tumble (words from Love is Here to Stay by George and Ira Gershwin)



"The first step towards getting somewhere, is to decide you are not going to stay where you are."  ~ John Pierpont Morgan ~  Wow!  We are definitely somewhere!  Our new library is open and already a vibrant part of our community.  People spend the day working, reading, crafting, playing and just relaxing by the fireplace with a hot beverage.  Kids love the new grocery cart and all the toys that reappeared from storage.  We have issued hundreds of new library cards.  We are definitely not where we were but in a whole new world of exciting possibilities.  We want to thank you for your patience with us the months we were closed, offering up free storage space for all our stuff and the volunteer help with the move.  We are an amazing community!  We are here because YOU made it happen!  A newsletter is in the works with a bit of a new look.  Story Stew will be offered on the first and third Thursday at 10 a.m.   Bring your preschoolers for stories, crafts, song and fun!   Kay Epple offers Preschool Mindfulness and Yoga for little ones at 10 a.m. on 2nd Wednesday of the month.  Our adult reading group, Pageturners meets on the third Thursday of the month at 6:30 p.m.  Threads meets every Monday by the fireplace at 10 a.m.  Bring along your latest knitting, needlepoint, cross stitch project, etc. and work among friends!  Chapter Chicks, our mother daughter book club for 3rd-5th graders, starts up again November 9 at 9:30 a.m.  Munson Healthcare Hospice invites you to join a friendly environment where grief and loss are understood.  The program is co-sponsored by PCL on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday at 2 p.m.  Share your story and learn from others.  So much more is planned for our new gathering center.  The future is ours as a community to write!  On this day in 1806, Lewis and Clark returned to St. Louis from their over two year long journey to the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, today the U.S.Northwest.   The public excitement over their journey was huge.  Our journey down the road was not as far, took a little-- just a little longer--and has also drawn huge public excitement.  We invite you to come home to the new Peninsula Community Library!  You are going to love it here!  Victoria M. Shurly, Director  Peninsula Community Library  2893 Island View Road  Traverse City, MI 49686  231.223.7700  September 23, 2019  vshurly@tadl.org  "It is good to have an end to journey, but it is the journey that matters in the end."  Ursula Le Guin  Thank you, Muse reader!



Charles Bronson (born Charles Dennis Buchinsky; Lithuanian:  Karolis Dionyzas Bučinskis; (1921– 2003) was an American actor.  He was often cast in the role of a police officer, gunfighter, or vigilante in revenge-oriented plot lines, had long-term collaborations with film directors Michael Winner and J. Lee Thompson, and appeared in fifteen films with his second wife Jill Ireland.  Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky, the 11th of 15 children, in a Roman Catholic family of Lithuanian descent in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, in the coal region of the Allegheny Mountains north of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.  His father, Valteris P. Bučinskis, who later adjusted his name to Walter Buchinsky to sound more "American",was from Druskininkai in southern Lithuania. Bronson's mother, Mary (née Valinsky), whose parents were from Lithuania, was born in the coal mining town of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania.  The family had Lipka Tatar roots.  Bronson learned to speak English when he was a teenager; before that, he spoke Lithuanian and Russian.  Bronson was the first member of his family to graduate from high school.  When Bronson was 10 years old, his father died and he went to work in the coal mines, first in the mining office and then in the mine.  He later said he earned one dollar for each ton of coal that he mined.  He worked in the mine until he entered military service during World War II.  His family was so poor that, at one time, he had to wear his sister's dress to school for lack of clothing.  Bronson made a serious name for himself in European films.  He was making Villa Rides when approached by the producers of a French film Adieu l'ami looking for an American co-star for Alain Delon.  Bronson's agent Paul Kohner later recalled the producer pitched the actor "on the fact that in the American film industry all the money, all the publicity, goes to the pretty boy hero types.  In Europe . . .  the public is attracted by character, not face."  The film was a big success in Europe.  Even more popular was Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) where Bronson played harmonica.  The director, Sergio Leone, once called him "the greatest actor I ever worked with", and had wanted to cast Bronson for the lead in 1964's A Fistful of Dollars.  Bronson turned him down and the role launched Clint Eastwood to film stardom.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bronson



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2161  September 27, 2019 

Printing House Square was a London court in the City of London, so called from the former office of the King's Printer which occupied the site.  For many years, the office of The Times stood on the site, until it relocated to Gray's Inn Road and later to Wapping.  The site has been completely redeveloped.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_House_Square  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Row_(Manhattan) and http://whitmans-brooklyn.org/portfolio/printing-house-square-new-york/



Lincoln Joseph Steffens (1866–1936) was an American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century.  He launched a series of articles in McClure's, called Tweed Days in St. Louis, that would later be published together in a book titled The Shame of the Cities.  He married the twenty-six-year-old socialist writer Leonore (Ella) Sophie Winter in 1924 and moved to Italy, where their son Peter was born in San Remo.  Two years later they relocated to the largest art colony on the Pacific Coast, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.  Ella and Lincoln soon became controversial figures in the leftist politics of the region.  When John O’Shea, one of the local artists and a friend of the couple, exhibited his study of "Mr. Steffens’ soul," an image which resembled a grotesque daemon, Lincoln took a certain cynical pride in the drawing and enjoyed the publicity it generated.  In 1934, Steffens and Winters help found the San Francisco Workers' School (later the California Labor School); Steffens also served there as an advisor.  Characters on the American crime drama series City on a Hill make numerous references to Lincoln Steffens.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Steffens



Why is Queens Library now Queens Public Library?  We put “public” at the center of our name to reinforce “who is at the center of our work and to whom the library belongs.  Why is “We speak your language” the new tagline?  We speak your language” means we speak Spanish, Chinese, Bengali, Russian, Greek, and many other tongues.  It also means we speak imagination, tech, history, LGBTQ, HTML, finance, nonfiction, science fiction, storytime, chess, teens, opportunity, and many other interests and pursuits.  The tagline says we see you, we understand you, we are here for you, and we will help you get where you want to go.  What does the new logo stand for?  The new logo, comprised of the Q and the tagline, stands for who we are, whom we serve, and how we approach our customers. The tilted pieces that form the Q celebrate the many diverse perspectives of Queens Public Library, our resources, programs and services, and communities. It uses two- and three-dimensional space to express both the physical and cultural characteristics of Queens Public Library.  In two dimensions, the mark is the letter Q, referencing our name and the borough of Queens.  In three dimensions, the logo houses an open book, an open doorway, and a welcome mat, extending our promise and welcoming everyone.  Why was purple selected as Queens Public Library’s primary color, and what is the significance of the secondary colors?  Purple is associated with some of the qualities Queens Public Library seeks to cultivate, such as wisdom, creativity, dignity, and ambition.  The secondary colors complement the color purple and reflect the diversity and vibrancy of Queens, the people who live and work here, and the library itself.  How will customers experience our renewed promise to the public?  We will continue working to ensure that all of us speak each person’s language every time they walk into one of our locations, interact with us, call us, or visit us online.  All of our locations now have tablets loaded with Google Translate so staff can have conversations in multiple languages with customers.  We also will offer another type of translation device at every site and will soon pilot a language line service at several locations as well.  We also have launched a new website that is clearer, faster, easier to navigate and search, can be converted to over 80 languages, and has a responsive design that will work on desktops and mobile devices with different screen sizes.  Learn more about the features here.  http://tab.queenslibrary.org/slide-show-content/our-renewed-promise-to-the-public



False color (or pseudo color) refers to a group of color rendering methods used to display images in color which were recorded in the visible or non-visible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.  A false-color image is an image that depicts an object in colors that differ from those a photograph (a true-color image) would show.  See many graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_color

Brick by brick, LEGOLAND New York works its way toward its 2020 opening in Goshen.  When it finally cuts the ribbon, it will be the biggest LEGO amusement park to date.  Building, including site preparation and infrastructure, is underway for the 150-acre theme park and 250-room onsite hotel.  LEGOLAND is owned and operated by Merlin Entertainments, which runs more than 111 attractions around the world and 25 attractions and two hotels in North America.  In Goshen, a few of the planned attractions are special to the site and have not been seen before at any of the eight  other LEGOLAND locations.   http://www.hvmag.com/LEGOLAND-2020-Opening-Goshen-Update/



Mystic Seaport Museum, in partnership with Tate, London, will host a major monographic exhibition devoted to the watercolors of one Britain’s greatest painters:  J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851).  Mystic Seaport Museum will be the only North American venue for the exhibition.  A unique collection of about 90 works, the selection will provide a view into the evolution of the artist’s vision and creative process.  The exhibition at the Museum focuses on the critical role played by watercolors in defining Turner’s deeply personal style.  The works have been selected from the vast legacy that comprises more than 30,000 works on paper, 300 oil paintings, and 280 sketchbooks, known as the “Turner Bequest,” donated to Great Britain after the artist’s death in 1851 and mostly conserved at Tate Britain.  The bequest includes the entire body of works housed in the artist’s personal studio and produced over the years for his “own pleasure,” to cite the words used by the critic John Ruskin.  While Turner is perhaps better known for his oil paintings, he was a lifelong watercolorist and fundamentally shaped what was understood to be possible within the medium during his lifetime and after.  An inveterate traveler, Turner rarely left home without a rolled-up, loose-bound sketchbook, pencils, and a small traveling case of watercolors.  https://www.mysticseaport.org/locations/j-m-w-turner-watercolors/  The J.M.W. Turner:  Watercolors from Tate runs from October 5, 2019 to February 23, 2020 in the Thompson Exhibition Building.  MYSTIC SEAPORT MUSEUM  75 Greenmanville Ave.  Mystic, CT  860.572.0711  info@mysticseaport.org  open every day 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.



Twenty-six creators and thinkers drawn from a vast array of fields just got a big financial boost—and an even bigger name to add to their résumés.  The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation unveiled the winners of this year's MacArthur fellowships—often better known as the "genius" grants—recognizing the host of artists and scholars for their creativity and potential.  "From addressing the consequences of climate change to furthering our understanding of human behavior to fusing forms of artistic expression, this year's 26 extraordinary MacArthur Fellows demonstrate the power of individual creativity to reframe old problems, spur reflection, create new knowledge, and better the world for everyone," the foundation's president, John Palfrey, said in a statement released September 25, 2019.  Along with inclusion on an illustrious list of past fellows—more than 1,000 in all, since the program's first class in 1981—each of this year's grantees gets a $625,000 stipend, meted out in quarterly installments over five years with no strings attached.  Colin Dwyer  Find names of winners and see graphics at https://www.npr.org/2019/09/25/763748204/macarthur-genius-grant-winners-attest-to-power-of-individual-creativity



A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  If we listen, the air is heavy with poems, ripe for plucking. - Yahia Lababidi, aphorist (b. 25 Sep 1973)



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2160  September 25, 2019 

September 13, 2019   Researchers uncovered traces of a lost continent that disappeared under what is today Europe about 120 million years ago.  Geologists have seen hints of the continent, dubbed Greater Adria, for years.  But the Mediterranean area is incredibly complicated, so piecing together its history took a decade of academic detective work.  “The Mediterranean region is quite simply a geological mess,” geologist Douwe van Hinsbergen of Utrecht University, first author of the study in Gondwana Research says.  “Everything is curved, broken, and stacked.”  The story that the rocks tell begins on the supercontinent Gondwana, which would eventually split into Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica and India.  Greater Adria broke away from the mother continent about 240 million years ago, beginning a slow drift northward.  Roughly 140 million years ago, it was about the size of Greenland, mostly submerged in a tropical sea, collecting sediment that hardened into rock.  Then, roughly 100 to 120 million years ago, it hit the southern edge of future Europe, spinning counterclockwise and moving at about 3 to 4 centimeters per year.  As Robin George Andrews at National Geographic reports, the destruction of Greater Adria was complex.  It hit several subduction zones, or areas where tectonic plates meet.  In this case, the Greater Adria plate was trumped by the European plate, and most of it dove down into Earth’s mantle.  The overlying plate scraped the top layers of Great Adria off.  That debris eventually formed mountain ranges in Italy, Turkey, Greece, the Balkans and in the Alps.  A few bits of Greater Adria escaped the plunge into the mantle and still exist in Italy and Croatia.  Jason Daley   https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/study-reveals-lost-continent-demolished-europe-180973120/



It’s a simple sheet-pan chicken, joining the many thousands of weeknight recipes that exist in which you cook chicken by roasting it on a sheet pan.  Pour a mixture of olive oil, raw garlic, crushed briny olives and a little bit of water and use a spatula to scrape up all the goods, making a rich, tangy, decidedly schmaltzy sauce to pour over the chicken.  The first time I did this, I wondered if they gave out Pulitzer Prizes for chicken recipes.  Alison Roman  See picture at http://moneyrf.com/do-they-give-out-pulitzers-for-chicken-recipes/
  

Her long German shepherd nose had more than two hundred twenty-five million scent receptors.  This was as many as a beagle, forty-five times more than the man, and was bettered only by a few of her hound cousins.  A full eighth of her brain was devoted to her nose, giving her a sense of smell ten thousand times better than the sleeping man’s, and more sensitive than any scientific device.  *  Air dogs excelled at tracking scents in the air.  Ground dogs like beagles and bloodhounds worked best tracking scents close to or on the ground.  *  Suspect, a novel by Robert Crais



Robert Crais biography  author, born c. 1954, in Louisiana; married Pat (a child therapist); children, one daughter, attended Louisiana State University.  contact:  Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020  e-mail:  robert@robertcrais.com   Although Robert Crais (rhymes with grace) is best known as the author of a series of best-selling mystery novels, he began his career as a writer for television.  While continuing to pen television episodes, as well as the occasional pilot, movie, and miniseries, Crais began writing mystery novels featuring Elvis Cole, a private investigator based in Los Angeles.  By the early 2000s, Crais had branched out into novels such as Demolition Angel and Hostage that featured other characters besides Cole.  His novels have been translated into more than 36 languages.  Christopher Moore of the Press called them "taut, hard-edged, and critically acclaimed thrillers which [have] captured the public's imagination."  Crais was raised as an only child in Baton Rouge where his father worked at an Exxon refinery.  Many members of Crais' extended family worked as police officers and employees of oil refineries.  As a child, he liked to read and draw comic books, and he also made amateur movies with his friends.  When he was 15 years old, Crais' life changed after reading Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister.  Because of this novel, he became interested in being a writer, specifically in crime fiction, and also grew fascinated with Los Angeles.  He told the New Zealand Herald , "I was bowled over by the language, that side of life that Chandler was showing me.  I was from a small town, from a blue-collar working class background, and suddenly I'm reading about LA and the seamy underbelly of life.  And it was a joy to me."  Inspired, Crais soon began writing short fiction.  Over the years, Crais has had multiple offers to turn his Elvis Cole novels into a Hollywood property, such a television series or films.  He was offered total control of the product as well as millions of dollars by various companies.  Crais turned them all down, preferring to keep his most noteworthy creation in the print realm.  He told the Oregonian 's Baker, "I want to encourage reader participation and let people imagine what Elvis looks like.  I've never described his face in any of the books.  Read more and see list of awards  at https://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2007-Co-Lh/Crais-Robert.html

Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher (1770-1831)

                                                                                                                                 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, often known as G. W. F. Hegel or Georg Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher of the early Modern period.  He was a leading figure in the German Idealism movement in the early 19th Century, although his ideas went far beyond earlier Kantianism, and he founded his own school of Hegelianism.  He has been called the "Aristotle of modern times", and he used his system of dialectics to explain the whole of the history of philosophy, science, art, politics and religion.  Despite charges of obscurantism and "pseudo-philosophy", Hegel is often considered the summit of early 19th Century German thought.  Read much more at https://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_hegel.html



Calash, also called calèche, or barouche, (from Czech kolesa: “wheels”), any of various open carriages, with facing passenger seats and an elevated coachman’s seat joined to the front of the shallow body, which somewhat resembled a small boat.  A characteristic falling hood over the rear seat gave the name calash to any folding carriage top.  Most of the vehicles had four wheels, but some had two.  A type used especially in Quebec was two wheeled, with one forward-facing seat, and a driver’s seat on the splashboard.  Other types were almost identical to chaises and victorias.  https://www.britannica.com/technology/calash-carriage



Meow Wolf is an arts and entertainment group established in 2008 as an art collective in Santa Fe.  Meow Wolf is comprised of over 400 employees creating and supporting art across a variety of media, including architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, video production, cross-reality (AR/VR/MR), music, audio engineering, narrative writing, costuming, performance, and more!  Learn more about our jaw-dropping 10-year journey with our documentary.  Meow Wolf has four new immersive experiences coming!  The Kaleidoscape dark ride is now open in Denver plus four whole new Meow Wolf’s are opening in Las Vegas in 2020, Denver in 2021, Washington D.C. in 2022, and Phoenix to follow.  https://meowwolf.com/about/  Thank you, Muse reader!



banco  noun of a coin, note, or unit of value : issued or used by a bank at the time of a depreciated government currency : an announcement by a bettor in certain gambling games (such as baccarat or chemin-de-fer) signifying that the bettor elects to accept alone the entire sum offered by the banker to meet the bets of all bettors—often used interjectionally : a portion of the floodplain or channel of a river cut off and left dry by the shifting of its course  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/banco  See also https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/banco and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2159  September 24, 2019 

The Toledo-Lucas County Public Library (TLCPL) is encouraging kids to read using comic books.  Librarian Franco Vitella noticed a group of students meeting up at the Maumee Branch Library after school.  Those kids had inspired him to apply for a grant from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation.  "I think comics kind of get some short shrift a lot of times and I'm happy to see that people are taking it seriously and that this grant can help move that forward a little bit."  The one-time $2,500 grant will allow TLCPL to launch two comic book clubs:  one at Gateway Middle School and the other at St. Patrick of Heatherdowns School.  Not only will TLCPL provide more than 150 comic books to 25 club members at each school, but students will get to keep them.  "It will be a great way to promote comics, get kids interested in different literacies and have them have a book that they can take home and have forever."  Comic books help promote visual literacy by analyzing symbolism and emotion in different panels.  "Everyone likes to have their books differently, whether that's the traditional book of holding it or audiobooks, those are huge right now," said Kelsey Cogan, TLCPL media relations coordinator.  "But then, visual literacy is another aspect that people like to get their books and just be able to learn, so this is one way that we can help that as well."  They can also help build confidence in timid readers.  "They're important for reluctant readers too, people who might not be eager to sit down with a 200-page novel, even when they're in middle school, and a comic book can be a great way to open those doors for them," Vitella said.  The Comic Book Clubs will let students vote on what books they'll read and each school is responsible for deciding which students will be part of the club. TLCPL is looking to get the them up and running in October, 2019.  Sophia Perricone  https://nbc24.com/news/local/grant-allows-toledo-lucas-county-public-library-to-start-comic-book-clubs-at-local-schools



Quid pro quo is a Latin phrase or saying.  It literally translates as to either “this for that” or “something for something.”  It often means an exchange of services for goods, with the implication that the transfer of one is fully contingent on the transfer of the other.  In the English-speaking world, the term often means an exchange of favors.  English phrases that have very similar or identical meanings include “tit for tat” or “give and take.”  A common saying is ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours.’  In the realm of common law, the term quid pro quo establishes that a service or item was traded between parties in return for something else of value, and often when the equity or the propriety of the transaction itself was questionable.  Contracts invariably have to include consideration, meaning the exact exchange of two things of value.  For instance, when you go to the store to buy a dozen eggs, a specific sum of money has to be given to the cashier before you have actually purchased the item.  So, the store has received something of value, but they’ve also given something that you and they agree is equal to its value.  In the realm of United States law, exchanges that seem to be lopsided might have their quid pro quo questioned.  


Courts might actually decide that if a quid pro quo is not really balanced or valid, then a contract is actually voided.  In cases of business contracts that are considered to be quid pro quo, a negative connotation is often assumed, because there are precedents where a big company would cross lines and ethical boundaries so that they might join other big companies in agreements that are mutually beneficial.  Mia Russell  http://abalawinfo.org/know-quid-pro-quo-means/



Corlears Hook Park, located at the intersection of Jackson and Cherry Streets along the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Drive on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is named after 17th century Dutch landowners, the Van Corlear family, and the geographic bend in the shoreline that had the shape of a hook.  Originally marshland that was used by the Lenape tribe to land their canoes, Dutch settlers of the mid-1600s swiftly took advantage of the area’s gradual coastal incline for loading and unloading of transport vessels.  At the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776, the British landing and advance upon General George Washington’s fleeing Continental Army was impeded by a series of hastily erected earthen barricades on the site.  In 1814 the Corlear neighborhood, as it was briefly called, underwent renovations as part of a relief project for thousands of Irish immigrants.  The site’s hills were leveled for use in landfill along the waterfront, making possible the busy docks that soon encouraged industrial and residential growth in the area.  In the 1880s, with the rising tide of immigration, rapid local industrialization, and overburdened tenements, many pressed for the creation of a nearby park.  Though the land for Corlears Hook Park was purchased by New York City in 1893, the park’s development was not completed until 1905.  By the late 1930s, the park’s broad, tree-lined promenade held a comfort station, playground, and baseball diamond, but, when the city began developing the East River’s shoreline in tandem with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era Works Progress Administration, Corlears Hook Park was reduced in size.  Directly reacting to the construction of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses began to draw up and execute plans to take advantage of the new landfill across this highway.  Over the next few years Moses’ addition of several parks properties along the entire eastern coastline of Manhattan, including East River Park, began to revitalize the Lower East Side.  Though Corlears Hook Park initially lost a large portion of land to the FDR Drive, the addition of the adjoining 57 acre-long East River Park in the 1940s granted the East Side neighborhoods an even larger area in which to walk and play.  Connected by footbridges and winding paths, Corlears Hook Park and the adjoining East River Park offer softball fields, tennis courts, skateboarding areas and a public performance space.  The two parks are part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, a 32 mile route of connected parks along the shoreline of Manhattan.  https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/corlears-hook-park/history



No balm in Gilead:  Boston Lyric Opera presents The Handmaid’s Tale by Kevin Wells   Thanks to an award-winning Hulu series and a troubling political climate, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale now resonates in popular culture as never before.  The Boston Lyric Opera’s May 9, 2019 world premiere of a new edition of Poul Ruders and Paul Bentley’s 2000 adaptation of the novel resonates even further by bringing its story to the place where it unfolds, Harvard Square.  https://bachtrack.com/review-ruders-handmaids-tale-boston-lyric-opera-may-2019



The Handmaid's Tale, one of Margaret Atwood's most famous novels, emerged in a brand new form October 16, 2013 in Winnipeg with the debut of a dance production by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.  Link to 2:53 video at https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/the-handmaid-s-tale-debuts-as-ballet-in-winnipeg-1.2055207



Dystopian fiction of the twentieth century has its beginnings in the utopian fiction of authors such as H.G. Wells and William Morris.  Wells called himself a ‘utopiographer’ and believed that scientific advancements would outlaw war and poverty, as he fictionalised in his novel Men Like Gods (1923).  This utopian ideal was also described in Morris, who wrote about the perfect socialist society in News From Nowhere (1890).  As the twentieth century dawned, authors were less convinced about this brand of scientific and political improvement.  Aldous Huxley, with his novel Brave New World (1932), started to criticise the utopian values of science and the domineering political ideals of novelists such as Wells and Morris.  The Handmaid's Tale is one of the dystopian tales discussed at   https://www.anthonyburgess.org/twentieth-century-dystopian-fiction/



Here’s a birthday toast to Bruce Springsteen, who turns 70 September 23, 2019.  He’s spent his sixties experimenting with crazy ideas he’d never tried before—his one-man Broadway show, his memoir Born to Run, his SoCal cowboy excursion Western Stars, dropped just a few months ago as a total surprise, with a film version set to hit theaters in October.  Rob Sheffield  Read much more and link to videos at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bruce-springsteen-70th-birthday-tribute-rob-sheffield-888036/



Banned Books Week (September 22-28, 2019) celebrates the freedom to read.  Typically held during the last week of September, it spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.  It brings together the entire book community—librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types—in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.  The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted for removal or restriction in libraries and schools.  By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.  Frequently Challenged Books  Top 10 Most Challenged Books  http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/banned  

WORD OF THE DAY  tellurian adjective  (not comparable)

(formal or literary) Of or relating to the earth; (specifically, chiefly science fiction) inhabiting planet Earth as opposed to other planets. [from mid 19th c.] quotations ▼  (mineralogy) Of a mineral: containing tellurium. quotations ▼ From Latin tellūs (“earth, ground; the globe, planet Earth; country, land”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *telh₂- (“to bear, carry; to endure, undergo”)  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tellurian#English



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2158  September 23, 2019