Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1951, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.  She earned her BA from the University of New Mexico and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  Harjo draws on First Nation storytelling and histories, as well as feminist and social justice poetic traditions, and frequently incorporates indigenous myths, symbols, and values into her writing.  Her poetry inhabits landscapes—the Southwest, Southeast, but also Alaska and Hawaii—and centers around the need for remembrance and transcendence.  Her work is often autobiographical, informed by the natural world, and above all preoccupied with survival and the limitations of language.  She was named U.S. poet laureate in June 2019.  In addition to writing poetry, Harjo is a noted teacher, saxophonist, and vocalist.  She performed for many years with her band, Poetic Justice, and currently tours with Arrow Dynamics.  She has released four albums of original music, including Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears (2010), and won a Native American Music Award for Best Female Artist of the Year in 2009.  She has taught creative writing at the University of New Mexico and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana and is currently Professor and Chair of Excellence in Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Harjo is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/joy-harjo



What are writers reading?  See http://whatarewritersreading.blogspot.com/

gist vs. jist  A gist is the main part of something, usually used with a direct object.  It can also be the ground for legal action.  Gist comes from the French word gist.  Often misspelled as jist. 

https://grammarist.com/spelling/gist-vs-jist/



E.V. Odle's 1923 novel The Clockwork Man may be the first cyborg story ever published.  The Clockwork Man, a cyborg, suffers from a glitch that causes a "fall into" the year 1923, from the distant future.  He accidentally lands pretty much directly in the middle of a cricket match, which gives you a sense of the weird satirical tone that Odle employs throughout.  Annalee Newitz  https://io9.gizmodo.com/now-you-can-read-the-very-first-cyborg-novel-ever-1367701899



A cyborg, short for "cybernetic organism", is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts.  The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.  While cyborgs are commonly thought of as mammals, including humans, they might also conceivably be any kind of organism.  D. S. Halacy's Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman in 1965 featured an introduction which spoke of a "new frontier" that was "not merely space, but more profoundly the relationship between 'inner space' to 'outer space'--a bridge . . . between mind and matter."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg



If you have Netflix on your Android phone, watch out:  The streaming service might be watching your every move.  In late July 2019, a security researcher noticed that Netflix’s Android app wanted access to his physical activity data, prompting The Next Web‘s Ivan Mehta to conduct a quick investigation.  Not only did Mehta confirm that Netflix was accessing the activity data on his Pixel 3 XL, but found that the app was doing so without asking for permission first.  But why?  In a statement, Netflix confirmed that it was conducting a test “to see how we can improve video playback quality when a member is on the go,” and claimed that physical activity data was only being tracked for a small number of users.  “Only some accounts are in the test, and we don’t currently have plans to roll it out,” Netflix said.  The common consensus seems to be that Netflix is using a feature introduced in Android Q, the newest Android operating system, to improve streaming and buffering for users while they’re traveling.  Ostensibly, Android Q’s new physical activity recognition hook is designed to track step counts or “classify the user’s physical activity” to figure out if someone is using an app while walking, biking, or riding in a vehicle, but testing it to provide better video for users outside of the home seems to be a legitimate use, too.  Still, tracking a customer’s physical activity without letting them know feels shady, and with good reason.  Just a few weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission published a study that found over 1,000 Android apps, including big names like Shutterfly, were logging geolocation data and other sensitive information without permission.  Google does it, too.  Chris Gates 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/netflix-tracking-android-activity-data/



May 21, 2019  Fashion brands of all sizes and specialties are using technology to understand customers better than ever before.  As those data collection efforts grow more sophisticated, artificial intelligence will reshape brands’ approach to product design and development, with a focus on predicting what customers will want to wear next.  Google has already tested the waters of user-driven AI fashion design with Project Muze, an experiment it deployed in partnership with German fashion platform Zalando.  The project trained a neural network to understand colors, textures, style preferences, and other “aesthetic parameters,” derived from Google’s Fashion Trends Report as well as design and trend data sourced by Zalando.  From there, Project Muze used an algorithm to create designs based on users’ interests and alignment with the style preferences recognized by the network.  Amazon is innovating in this area as well.  One Amazon project, led by Israel-based researchers, would use machine learning to assess whether an item is “stylish” or not.  Read much more and see graphics at https://www.cbinsights.com/research/fashion-tech-future-trends/



ostracize  verb  To exclude (a person) from society or from a community, by not communicating with (them) or by refusing to acknowledge (their) presence; to refuse to talk to or associate with; to shun.  quotations ▼ (historical) To ban a person from the city of Athens for ten years.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ostracize



Would you like your birth certificate to state you were born in Google, Kansas?  What about Dish, Texas?  Joe, Montana?  Or, perhaps:  Oregon, Ohio Buckeyes on the Bay, City of Duck Hunters?.  And like the other two cities (and many more), Oregon, Ohio had a temporary name change--just until 12 January 12. 2015--when the Oregon Ducks (not from Ohio) played the Ohio Buckeyes in the College Football Playoff National Championship.  Urbana, Ohio also adopted a temporary moniker in a nod to Buckeyes’ coach Urban Meyer, the town dropped the a for the game on the 12th.  https://btn.com/2015/01/06/ohio-city-changes-name-to-urban-for-national-title-game/   Google, Kansas (AKA Topeka) adopted its new name for a month, in an attempt to woo the web giant to establish superfast internet connections in random American cities through its Fibre for Communities scheme.  And Clark, Texas renamed itself Dish, Texas in a deal with Dish Network in 2005.  As part of the deal, the company hooked up 55 homes in the town with basic cable for free for a decade; in return, they got a bunch of free advertising.  Hot Springs, New Mexico in 1950 changed its name to Truth or Consequences to win a radio contest and have that popular radio game show broadcast from the tiny community once a year for the next half-century.  Some names have been totally sold off.  Half.com, a site that in 1999 was a successful online store (subsequently acquired by eBay in 2008, it still exists), paid Halfway, Oregon to change its name for a year to Half.com.  And in 1989, actor Kim Basinger bought the town of Braselton, Georgia for $20m and renamed it after herself.  (She eventually had to sell it off for $1m a few years later when she got into unrelated legal trouble.)  Colin Horgan  https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/07/when-cities-change-their-names-to-stupid-things-for-stupid-reasons 



THOUGHT FOR TODAY  Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. - Ezra Pound, poet (30 Oct 1885-1972)



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2175  October 30, 2019

Audibly crispy potatoes use duck fat.  Roasted, not deep-fried.  Recipe by Kamran Siddiqi serves 4 and takes a total time of 1 hour.  http://www.sophisticatedgourmet.com/2016/12/crispy-roast-potatoes-recipe/



“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”  Nelson Mandela  Find Mandela quotes about education at https://borgenproject.org/nelson-mandela-quotes-about-education/



A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically.   Robots can be guided by an external control device or the control may be embedded within.  Robots may be constructed on the lines of human form, but most robots are machines designed to perform a task with no regard to their aesthetics.  The term comes from a Czech word, robota, meaning "forced labor"; the word 'robot' was first used to denote a fictional humanoid in a 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti - Rossum's Universal Robots) by the Czech writer, Karel Čapek but it was Karel's brother Josef Čapek who was the word's true inventor.  Electronics evolved into the driving force of development with the advent of the first electronic autonomous robots created by William Grey Walter in Bristol, England in 1948, as well as Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine tools in the late 1940s by John T. Parsons and Frank L. Stulen.  The first commercial, digital and programmable robot was built by George Devol in 1954 and was named the Unimate.  It was sold to General Motors in 1961 where it was used to lift pieces of hot metal from die casting machines at the Inland Fisher Guide Plant in the West Trenton section of Ewing Township, New Jersey.  In an article in the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1933, Karel Čapek  explained that he had originally wanted to call the creatures laboři ("workers", from Latin labor).  However, he did not like the word, and sought advice from his brother Josef, who suggested "roboti".  The word robotics, used to describe this field of study, was coined by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov.  Asimov created the "Three Laws of Robotics" which are a recurring theme in his books.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot



Find a list of Isaac Asimov's science fiction books reading order suggested by Asimov himself at https://scl.bibliocommons.com/list/share/92757872/97942932

Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures.  It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many applications ranging from logic to statistical physics, from evolutionary biology to computer science, etc.  To fully understand the scope of combinatorics requires a great deal of further amplification, the details of which are not universally agreed upon.   According to H.J. Ryser, a definition of the subject is difficult because it crosses so many mathematical subdivisions.   Insofar as an area can be described by the types of problems it addresses, combinatorics is involved with the enumeration (counting) of specified structures, sometimes referred to as arrangements or configurations in a very general sense, associated with finite systems; the existence of such structures that satisfy certain given criteria; the construction of these structures, perhaps in many ways; and optimization, finding the "best" structure or solution among several possibilities, be it the "largest", "smallest" or satisfying some other optimality criterion.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorics  See also https://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/books_articles/probability_book/Chapter3.pdf and 1:48 video at https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/crowds/crowds-1/v/intro-crowds



Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania was founded in 1818 as Mauch Chunk, a name derived from the term Mawsch Unk (Bear Place) in the language of the native Munsee-Lenape Delaware peoples:  possibly a reference to Bear Mountain, an extension of Mauch Chunk Ridge that resembled a sleeping bear, or perhaps the original profile of the ridge, which has since been changed heavily by 220 years of mining.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Thorpe,_Pennsylvania



Athlete Jim Thorpe (1888-1953) is buried in a mausoleum in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, a town that agreed to change its name in order to win the privilege of housing Thorpe's memorial.  At the 1912 Olympics, Jim Thorpe accomplished the unprecedented feat of winning gold medals in both the pentathlon and the decathlon.  Although he was stripped of his medals due to a violation of his amateur status prior to the Olympics, Thorpe went on to play both professional baseball and football and was an especially gifted football player.  Jim Thorpe and his twin brother Charlie were born in Prague, Oklahoma to Hiram Thorpe and Charlotte Vieux.  Both parents were of mixed Native American and European heritage.  Hiram and Charlotte had a total of 11 children, six of whom died in early childhood.  On his father's side, Jim Thorpe was related to the great warrior Black Hawk, whose people (the Sac and Fox tribe) had originally come from the Lake Michigan region.  They were forced by the United States government to resettle in the Oklahoma Indian Territory in 1869.  The Thorpes lived in a log farmhouse on the Sac and Fox reservation, where they grew crops and raised livestock.  Although most members of their tribe wore traditional native clothing and spoke the Sac and Fox language, the Thorpes adopted many customs of white people.  In 1904, a representative from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania came to the Oklahoma Territory looking for candidates for the trade school.  (Carlisle had been founded by an army officer in 1879 as a vocational boarding school for young Native Americans.) Thorpe's father convinced Jim to enroll at Carlisle, knowing there were few opportunities available for him in Oklahoma.  Thorpe entered the Carlisle School in June 1904 at age 16.  In 1937, Thorpe returned to Oklahoma to promote the rights of Native Americans.  He joined a movement to abolish the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the government entity that oversaw all aspects of life on reservations.  The Wheeler Bill, which would allow native peoples to manage their own affairs, failed to pass in the legislature.  In 1950, Thorpe was voted by Associated Press sportswriters as the greatest football player of the half-century.  His competition for the title included sports legends such as Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, and Jesse Owens.  Later that same year he was inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame.  Three decades after Thorpe's death, the International Olympic Committee reversed its decision and issued duplicate medals to Jim Thorpe's children in 1983.  Patricia Daniels  Read extensive biography at https://www.thoughtco.com/jim-thorpe-1779819



"September 25, 2019   How about "crazy" or even a "Frankenstein's monster" with major health problems?  That's what the creator of the first ever labrador-poodle crossover says.  In a recent interview on an ABC podcast, Wally Conron says the invention is his "life's regret" and he hasn't "got a clue" why people are still breeding them today.  He's become concerned that an influx of copycat cross-breeds has created health problems for many dogs.  I opened a Pandora's box" Wally told ABC, "I released a Frankenstein".  "People are just breeding for the money . . .  unscrupulous breeders are crossing poodles with inappropriate dogs simply so they can say they were the first to do it."   Read reaction of labradoodle owners and see pictures at https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-49826945



Dictionary:  Social media--staring at an electronic device by yourself.  Pearls Before Swine comic strip  October 24, 2019



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2174  October 28, 2019

Pilgrims have been travelling the Pilgrim's Way to Canterbury since before the invention of the printing press.  Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is well-known to be amongst the first books printed in English, by Caxton, in the mid-15th century.  Such pilgrimages were sedate affairs; it wasn't the done thing to get the pilgrimage over quickly by racing to the shrine.  The 'Canterbury pace', otherwise called the 'Canterbury trot', the 'Canterbury gallop' etc. was dignified and stately.  It has left us a legacy--the word 'canter' derives directly from 'Canterbury pace'.  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/canterbury-pace.html



The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400.  In 1386, Chaucer became Controller of Customs and Justice of Peace and, in 1389, Clerk of the King's work.  It was during these years that Chaucer began working on his most famous text, The Canterbury Tales.  The tales (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.  The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canterbury_Tales



A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
If you ever find yourself feeling hopeless, feeling what you do is futile, feeling you are just a cog in the system, pick up a deck of cards and shuffle it.  There!  You produced something that was unique in the history of the universe and chances are it would never be repeated ever.  You arranged those cards in a sequence that happened for the first and last time.  Welcome to the power of combinatorics.  There are so many ways those 52 cards can be arranged (about 80 unvigintillion ways, roughly, the number 80 followed by 66 zeros) that your feat was a once-in-a-lifetime event.  That’s once in the lifetime of the universe (about 14 billion years)!  Chances are no one would ever come up with that sequence in a random shuffling of cards. 

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From:  Barry Brunson  Following your nifty intro about shuffling cards, I can’t resist calling attention to a brief aside on the subject in Isaac Asimov’s essay “Exclamation Point!”*, wherein he recalls a day playing bridge in the Army.  He quotes one friend as saying “We’ve played so many games, the same hands are beginning to show up.”  Asimov proceeded to do the calculations, both for the number of shuffles of the entire deck, and for the number of distinguishable bridge hands (52!/((13!)^4), along with decimal approximations.  After telling his friends, “We could play a trillion games a second for a billion years, without repeating a single game.”  To which the same friend gently replied “But, pal, there are only fifty-two cards, you know”, and proceeded to lead Asimov “to a quiet corner of the barracks and told [him] to sit and rest awhile.”  Of course, Asimov was quite right.  Along similar lines, once during a job interview, I heard mathematician Joe Diestel tell an anecdote about his days in a parochial school.  n response to a question about eternity, the nun had said “Joe, imagine a sparrow, flying around the world, and each time this sparrow crosses Mount Everest, it whacks that mountain with its wing.  Joe, by the time that sparrow has leveled Mount Everest, that is not even one second in eternity.”  Inspired by that story, I developed a brief talk that I gave for several student audiences with a title “How Big is Big?”.  In one part of the talk, I related Joe’s story, then made realistic assumptions about the shape and dimensions (and hence volume) of Mount Everest, the speed of a sparrow, the length of its path around the Earth, and about the size of the particle that said sparrow would dislodge on each pass.  Then I defined “one e-second” as the length of time for leveling Mount Everest.  I would have to dig up my notes (written by hand; this was before routine consumer computer availability), but suffice it to say that, even with a trillion shuffles a second, it would take a vast number of e-years to come close to 52!.  *“Exclamation Point!” appears in the collection Asimov on Numbers (ISBN 0-571-371456), and is available in its entirety at the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/AsimovOnNumbers



A Keith Haring mural that adorned the stairwell at Grace House Youth Center in Manhattan is expected to fetch between $3 million and $5 million at auction next month.  The work, which features Haring’s seminal character, the “radiant baby,” took pride of place in the youth center since the early ’80s.  According to the auction house, Haring painted the work using black industrial house paint and did so without first working out the composition in a sketch or an underpainting.  Gary Mallon, who was the director of the youth center told The New York Times, “When new kids came to that building and they saw all that stuff, they said, ‘Oh my god, this is Keith Haring.  Is this real?’”  Grace House has since closed however the work has been preserved.  According to the NYT, the church next door spent $900,000 to extract the 13 figure work from the 90-year-old building.  Isabelle Hore-Thorburn  https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/keith-haring-auction-mural-bonhamm/  The auction is scheduled for November 13, 2019. 

Luigi Galvani, (1737-1798) Italian physician and physicist who investigated the nature and effects of what he conceived to be electricity in animal tissue.  His discoveries led to the invention of the voltaic pile, a kind of battery that makes possible a constant source of current electricity.  Galvani followed his father’s preference for medicine by attending the University of Bologna, graduating in 1759.  On obtaining the doctor of medicine degree, with a thesis (1762) De ossibus on the formation and development of bones, he was appointed lecturer in anatomy at the University of Bologna and professor of obstetrics at the separate Institute of Arts and Sciences.  Beginning with his doctoral thesis, his early research was in comparative anatomy—such as the structure of renal tubules, nasal mucosa, and the middle ear—with a tendency toward physiology, a direction appropriate to the later work for which he is noted.  Galvani’s developing interest was indicated by his lectures on the anatomy of the frog in 1773 and in electrophysiology in the late 1770s, when, following the acquisition of an electrostatic machine (a large device for making sparks) and a Leyden jar (a device used to store static electricity), he began to experiment with muscular stimulation by electrical means.  Galvani delayed the announcement of his findings until 1791, when he published his essay De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius (Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular Motion).  He concluded that animal tissue contained a heretofore neglected innate, vital force, which he termed “animal electricity,” which activated nerve and muscle when spanned by metal probes.  He believed that this new force was a form of electricity in addition to the “natural” form that is produced by lightning or by the electric eel and torpedo ray and to the “artificial” form that is produced by friction (i.e., static electricity).  He considered the brain to be the most important organ for the secretion of this “electric fluid” and the nerves to be conductors of the fluid to the nerve and muscle, the tissues of which act as did the outer and inner surfaces of the Leyden jar.  The flow of this electric fluid provided a stimulus for the irritable muscle fibres, according to his explanation.  Galvani’s scientific colleagues generally accepted his views, but Alessandro Volta, the outstanding professor of physics at the University of Pavia, was not convinced by the analogy between the muscle and the Leyden jar.  Deciding that the frog’s legs served only as an indicating electroscope, he held that the contact of dissimilar metals was the true source of stimulation; he referred to the electricity so generated as “metallic electricity” and decided that the muscle, by contracting when touched by metal, resembled the action of an electroscope.  In the last years of his life, Galvani refused to swear allegiance to the new Cisalpine Republic established by Napoleon.  Thereupon he was dropped from the faculty rolls, and his salary was terminated.  Soon, however, the politicians recanted, and the professorship was again offered to Galvani without the requirement of an oath.  But the affront had cut short his days:  Galvani died in the house of his birth at age 61, at a time when the world was on the threshold of the great electrical revolution.  Galvani provided the major stimulus for Volta to discover a source of constant current electricity; this was the voltaic pile, or a battery, with its principles of operation combined from chemistry and physics.  This discovery led to the subsequent age of electric power.  Moreover, Galvani opened the way to new research in the physiology of muscle and nerve and to the entire subject of electrophysiology.  Bern Dibner   https://www.britannica.com/biography/Luigi-Galvani/Last-years



Oktoberfest was originally a horse race.  Andreas Michael Dall’Armi, Member of the Bavarian National Guard, had the idea of celebrating a wedding a little differently for a change.  Prince Regent Ludwig of Bavaria, the later King Ludwig I, and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen were to be honored with a huge horse race.  The financier and cavalry major shared his idea with King Max I Joseph of Bavaria who was impressed from the get-go.  The couple were married on 12 October 1810 with the festivities taking place on 17 October on the grounds of Theresienwiese, to be later named after the bride, and featuring the exact horse race suggested.  It marked the birth of Oktoberfest.  In 1824, Munich city awarded Andreas Michael Dall’Armi the first gold citizens medal for ‘inventing’ Oktoberfest. https://www.oktoberfest.de/en/magazine/tradition/the-history-of-oktoberfest  In 2019, its 209th year, the festival ran from September 21-October 6.



Ruth Bader Ginsburg has long championed human rights.  Now, the 86-year-old's decades of service have earned a nonprofit of her choosing $1 million.  The Supreme Court associate justice won the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture for her contributions to social justice and general equality, the prize jury announced October 23, 2019.  Known in some circles as the Notorious RBG, the feminist trailblazer, cancer survivor and octogenarian athlete was selected from a list of more than 500 nominees who've made cultural and ethical advances.  But ultimately, it was Ginsburg's storied career that won her the honor.  "By grit and determination, brains, courage, compassion and a fiery commitment to justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg rose from modest beginnings to become one of the most respected, and most beloved, jurists of our time," prize founder Nicolas Berggruen said in a statement.  Ginsburg is the fourth Berggruen Prize honoree since its inception in 2016, and the third woman to win the award.  Berggruen, a billionaire philanthropist, founded the awards through the Berggruen Institute to honor pioneers making political, social and economic advances that shape the world.  Scottie Andrew  https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/23/politics/ruth-bader-ginsburg-wins-award-trnd/index.html



WORD OF THE DAY croft  noun  An enclosed piece of land, usually small and arable and used for small-scale food production, and often with a dwelling next to it; in particular, such a piece of land rented to a farmer (a crofter), especially in Scotland, together with a right to use separate pastureland shared by other crofters.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/croft#English The action-adventure video game Tomb Raider, which features the fictional archaeologist Lara Croft, was launched October 25, 1996.



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2173  October 25, 2019

sarcast (plural sarcasts)  noun  One who speaks sarcasticly.  quotations ▼

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sarcast



Snarky vs. Sarcastic  Some have questioned whether snarky is a real word.  There can be no doubt that it is; the adjective has been recorded in English since 1906.  Its original meaning, “crotchety, snappish,” has largely been overtaken, however, by the far more frequently-encountered sense “sarcastic, impertinent or irreverent.”  The precise difference between utterances described as sarcastic and snarky will vary somewhat based on the individual using each word.  Some feel that sarcastic usually implies irony, or stating the opposite of what is really intended (for example, “thank you so much for your promptness” spoken to someone who arrives late), whereas snarky implies simple impertinence or irreverence (as when Downton Abbey's Dowager Countess asks Isobel Crawley, “does it ever get cold on the moral high ground?”)

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sarcastic



Nov. 30 is Kåldolmens Dag (cabbage roll day).  This date marks the death of King Karl XII, who spent a great deal of time in the Ottoman Empire in the 1700s and influenced Swedish culture significantly.  According to the Friends of Kåldolmens Association, the day is celebrated as a reminder that Swedish culture has always been shaped in interaction with the outside world.  According to an unconfirmed theory, the Swedes in King Karl’s service used the dish name ("dolma" is Turkish for "filled") from Bender or Adrianopolis, both Turkish towns of the then Ottoman Empire, where the king and the army stayed.  Other imports from the same time are believed to have been coffee, meatballs and the word “kalabalik”—meaning uproar (there was “kalabaliken i Bender” while the king and his troops resided in Bender), a word that exists now only in the Swedish and Turkish languages.  The oldest evidence for dolmar cooked in Sweden is a recipe for just "Dolma" in Cajsa Warg's famous cookbook (1765 edition), cooked Middle Eastern style with vine leaves, minced beef (not pork) and lemon juice.  The recipe is preserved in the Royal Library in Stockholm.  An alternative theory indicates that Turks came directly to Sweden to ensure that the large loans the Swedes had taken were repaid.  Today in Sweden, cooked cabbage rolls are usually prepared with ground beef mixed with boiled rice, salt and pepper.  Leaves from a boiled cabbage head are peeled off, and a dollop of minced mixture is added as a filling in a cabbage leaf, which is rolled up into one package.  Dolmen is browned in a pan and then boiled in a saucepan or fried into cabbage rolls in the oven.  Often syrup is added for color and flavor.  The kåldolmen is eaten with gravy, potatoes and sometimes lingonberries.  http://www.nordstjernan.com/news/traditions/6732/

Words usually used in their negative forms:  trepid, conscionable, ruthful, mutable

Ruthful is indeed a word that derives from an old definition of ruth meaning “the quality of being compassionate.”  But unpaired negatives, like ruthless, unkempt, uncouth, or disgruntled, are common words that lack positive correlatives in common speech.  https://www.waywordradio.org/ruthful/

Don't automatically assume that all change is for the better.  Don't automatically assume the grass is greener on the other side.

                                                                                                           

WAGYU--a Japanese beef cattle breed--derive from native Asian cattle.  'WAGYU' refers to all Japanese beef cattle, where 'Wa' means Japanese and 'gyu' means cow.  Wagyu were originally draft animals used in agriculture, and were selected for their physical endurance.  This selection favored animals with more intra-muscular fat cells--‘marbling’--which provided a readily available energy source.  Wagyu is a horned breed and the cattle are either black or red in color.  There is some evidence of genetic separation into the Wagyu genetic strain as much as 35000 years ago.  Modern Wagyu cattle are the result of crossing of the native cattle in Japan with imported breeds.  Crossing began in 1868 after the Meiji restoration in that year.  In Japan there are four breeds that are considered Wagyu and those are the Japanese Black (the predominant Wagyu exported to the U.S), Japanese Brown (in the U.S. referred to as Red Wagyu), Japanese Polled and Japanese Shorthorn.  There are no Japanese Polled or Shorthorns being bred outside Japan.  Wagyu strains were isolated according to prefecture (state) and breeds imported for crossing were not the same in each prefecture.  The production of Wagyu beef in Japan is highly regulated and progeny testing is mandatory.  Only the very best proven genetics are kept for breeding.  Realizing the value of their unique product, the Japanese Government banned the export of Wagyu and declared them a national living treasure.  Wagyu cattle were first imported in 1975 when two black and two red bulls were imported Morris Whitney.  In 1989 the Japanese began to reduce their tariffs on imported beef and that encouraged U.S. producers to produce a high quality product for Japan.  In the 1990’s there were several importations of quality Wagyu.  Most were black, but a few were red.  These cattle have the greatest influence on the U.S. herd and those in many other countries.  Most US production was exported to Japan until 2003 when BSE was discovered and Japan and other countries stopped the import of beef for the U.S.  However, chefs and others in the U.S. were aware of the superior eating quality of Wagyu and the domestic market then and now utilize much of the U.S. production.

https://wagyu.org/breed-info/what-is-wagyu  Wagyu is generally pronounced WAG-yoo and can be either singular or plural.  It’s sometimes capitalized.  https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/11/wagyu-waygu.html

High fiving is the universal triumphant motion—but who first created the celebratory hand slap?  There are actually a few people who lay claim to the high five.  One of the most popular high five legends is that Los Angeles Dodgers’ Glenn Burke invented the move in 1977.  During the last game of that season, the Dodgers became the first baseball team in history to have four players hit at least 30 home runs each in a season.  Burke, who was waiting for Dusty Baker to finish his home run, raised his hand in celebration and his teammate, not knowing what to do in return, smacked it.  Another origin claim is from the University of Louisville’s basketball team in the 1978-1979 season.  Supposedly, the team’s forward Wiley Brown went to give a low five to teammate Derek Smith, but Smith looked on and said “No, up high!”  Magic Johnson also suggested that he invented the high five playing college hoops at Michigan State.  https://nowthisnews.com/videos/sports/heres-where-the-high-five-actually-comes-from

“Canny” is a very cool word.  It first appeared in Scots and Northern English dialects as an adjective meaning “knowing, judicious, prudent, cautious,” and is simply based on the verb “can” in the sense of “to be able” (as in “I can fly”).  “Canny” was picked up by English writers in the 17th century, who applied it to the Scots themselves in the sense of “cunning,” “wily” or “thrifty,” in line with the English portrayal of Scots as clever and frugal.  The sense of “sharp” and “shrewd” eventually became more generalized, and today we use “canny” to mean “perceptive and wise”  One of the other meanings of “canny” back in Scotland in the 16th century, however, was “trustworthy,” and when “uncanny” first appeared it was in the sense of “malicious or incautious” (i.e., not trustworthy).  By the 18th century, “uncanny” had come to mean specifically “not safe to trust because of connections to the supernatural,” and eventually the word took on its modern meaning of “supernatural,” “weird” and “strange.”  So “uncanny” came to mean something quite different than simply “not smart.”  http://www.word-detective.com/2009/01/cannyuncanny/



A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.  That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand. - Emily Kimbrough, author and broadcaster (23 Oct 1899-1989)



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2172  October 23, 2019

The Sweet Life  Chocolate--the universally beloved food!  We bake it into cookies and brownies, we drink it, and we give it to our sweethearts each February 14^th.  We’ve molded it into bunnies at Easter, and jolly old Saint Nick every Christmas, and it’s all thanks to the Quakers.  English Quaker families like Cadbury, Fry, Rowntree, and Terry monopolized the chocolate confectionery market for over a century.  While chocolate has become a staple of the modern American household, the obsession all began with chocolate drinks (hot cocoa) in 19th century England.  Quakers, concerned about the ill effects of alcohol and its perceived widespread misuse, began marketing this chocolate drink as an alternative.  Not only was it delicious, but it was cheap and widely available, not to mention easy to make.  Who can’t boil water?  Soon the Quakers moved on to producing chocolate bars and they invested in new and advanced machinery to produce them.  This foresight and investment gave them a competitive edge that helped them dominate the market for more than a generation.  Today, these household names such as Fry, Cadbury, and Rowntree that emerged out of the Quaker tradition in England have been taken over by transnational companies such as Kraft and Nestle.  Next time you take a bite into your favorite chocolate bar, you might stop to think about the history of our favorite sweet, and the Quaker traditions and beliefs from as early as the 1700s that led to its widespread popularity.  {Source: “How did the Quakers conquer the British Sweet Shop, by Peter Jackson, BBC News}  https://brinton1704.tumblr.com/

Thomas Hart Benton was eighty-four in 1973 when he came out of retirement to paint a mural for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.  His assignment was to describe the regional sources of the musical style known as “country,” and Benton couldn’t resist the opportunity to paint one last celebration of homegrown American traditions.  Benton himself was a skilled harmonica player who had been raised on the old-time music of the Missouri Ozarks.  It was during his lifetime that the multimillion-dollar country-music industry in Nashville had replaced the community-based music of rural America.  https://picturingamerica.neh.gov/downloads/pdfs/Resource_Guide_Chapters/PictAmer_Resource_Book_Chapter_18A.pdf

Find picture of Benton's Sources of Country Music mural in Nashville Country Music Hall of Fame at http://brianloudenslager.com/2016/03/26/thomas-hart-bentons-last-painting-the-sources-of-country-music/



SOME ACCOUNTS OF TALKING TO THE SUN posted by Jesse McCarthy

Thine age askes ease, and since thy duties bee To warme the world, that’s done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art every where; This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.  John Donne  [c.1601]

The Sun woke me this morning loud and clear, saying “Hey! I’ve been trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes.  Don’t be so rude, you are only the second poet I’ve ever chosen to speak to personally.  Frank O’Hara [1958]

Beyond the village gaped a hole and into that hole, most likely, the sun sank down each time, faithfully and slowly.  And next morning, to flood the world anew, the sun would rise all scarlet.  Vladimir Mayakovsky [1920]   Read three complete poems at https://poetry.princeton.edu/2013/05/07/some-accounts-of-talking-to-the-sun/



"Mille Feuille” means a thousand leaves, which is an appropriate name for this dessert.  Traditionally, the Mille Feuille is made up of three layers of puff pastry and two layers of pastry cream.  But, it’s also sometimes glazed with vanilla and chocolate fondant, which creates a lovely design on the top, but isn’t really necessary.  Just as often, it’s dusted with a layer of confectioner’s sugar or cocoa--a much simpler option.  Rebecca Blackwell  Prep Time: 40 minutes  Cook Time: 45 minutes  Total Time: 1 hour, 25 minutes  This recipe makes two Classic French Napoleons for a total of 12 servings.  It can easily be halved, if 6 servings are preferable.  Find recipe at https://ofbatteranddough.com/napoleon-dessert-mille-feuille/



October 18, 2019  This week, the Bangor, Maine City Council approved a request by the prolific author and his wife, Tabitha King to rezone their Victorian mansion for use as a nonprofit.  The move would allow the Kings to convert their property on 3.27 acres at 39 and 47 West Broadway into an archive and writers' retreat.  The Kings own two homes behind the looming gate and have plans to use both for the preservation of their legacy.  One house will act as a retreat for up to five writers to stay and work, while the mansion where the Kings raised their family will be used for his personal archive maintained by the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation.  Elizabeth Wolfe and Brian Ries  See picture of house at https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/stephen-king-house-writers-retreat-trnd/index.html



The artist Ed Clark, whose radiantly colored abstractions charted exhilarating, inventive, and elegant new paths for painting, died October 18, 2019 at the age of 93 in Detroit.  Over the course of more than 60 years, Clark earned a reputation as a ceaseless innovator—one of the key abstract painters of the postwar period.  In 1957, he showed one of the first shaped canvases.  Just a year earlier, he had begun developing a method of producing luminous, action-packed paintings on his studio floor by pushing paint with a broom, a technique he honed thereafter.  Andrew Russeth  Read much more and see graphics at http://www.artnews.com/2019/10/19/ed-clark-painter-dead-at-93/



Since the first Open House New York Weekend in 2003, buildings and sites throughout the five boroughs have opened their doors to the public in October; Open House New York Weekend (October 18-20 in 2019)  unlocks the doors of New York City’s most important buildings, offering an extraordinary opportunity to experience the city and meet the people who design, build, and preserve it at hundreds of sites.  While the majority of OHNY Weekend sites are Open Access, meaning they can be visited free-of-charge during open hours, some sites and tours require reservations and a $5 fee per person.  One of the new sites is Center for Fiction, the only nonprofit organization in the U.S. dedicated to celebrating fiction.  The Center’s new headquarters, designed by BKSK Architects, is home to 70,000 titles, a bookstore, an auditorium, and workspaces.  Michelle Cohen  Read much more and see graphics at https://www.6sqft.com/the-2019-open-house-new-york-weekend-schedule-is-here/



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2171  October 21, 2019

PARAPHRASES from A Gentleman in Moscow, a novel by Amor Towles  The barbershop was a land of optimism, precision and political neutrality--the Switzerland of the hotel.  *  Dueling, begun as a response to high crimes--by 1900 had tiptoed down the stairs of reason until fought over the tilt of a hat, duration of a glance, or placement of a comma.  *  There's a difference between being resigned to a situation and reconciled to it.  *  The long-strided watchman of the minutes caught up with his bowlegged brother of the hours.  *  One must make ends meet . . . or meet one's end.  *



A Gentleman in Moscow recounts the story of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov from 1922 to 1954 and his life in the Hotel Metropol where he has been under house arrest.  Find brief summary of the novel and quotes at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gentleman_in_Moscow

Who was John Slezer?  At the time he began making his remarkable drawings, John Slezer was an army man.  He held both the office of Chief Engineer for Scotland and that of 'Surveyor of his Majesties Stores and Magazines'.  We don't know exactly when or where John Abraham Slezer was born.  Probably it was some time before 1650, and certainly it was in German-speaking Europe.  Slezer first visited Scotland in 1669.  He met a number of influential noblemen who must have been impressed by his army and surveying experience.  When he decided in 1671 to move to Scotland, these contacts helped him secure his military posts.  Part of Slezer's surveying work was to produce groundplans of the chief fortifications at Edinburgh, Stirling, Dumbarton, Blackness, and the Bass Rock.  During his travels to the garrisons, he decided to repay the kindness he had been shown in his adopted country.  He would produce a book of Scotland's main towns, castles and buildings.  It would be the first time anyone had made a pictorial record of an entire nation.  By 1678, Slezer was progressing with what he was to call the 'Theatrum Scotiae'.  He had been promoted to Lieutenant of the Scots Train of Artillery and married the daughter of a military family.  In 1688, however, his plans to publish his book hit a setback.  By this time, Slezer was Captain of the Scots Train of Artillery, and an important military figure.  He was also a supporter of the Roman Catholic monarch, James II.  Suddenly he found himself on the wrong side of the law.  Refusing to swear allegiance to the new Protestant King and Queen, William and Mary, he was sent to prison.  His release came in June 1689, when he accepted the new monarchy and was reinstated to his former position.  Slezer managed to get a royal licence for the printing of the 'Theatrum Scotiae', and two volumes to follow it, in 1693.  With some financial contributions from Scottish earls, Slezer had the book printed and published in London.  However, it didn't sell well.  Although he proceeded with other drawings, two years later Slezer was struggling to meet the necessary expenses for a follow-up work.  Money promised by Parliament never materialised, and the irregularity of his army pay was worsening his deepening debts.  Slezer spend the last years of his life in the debtor's sanctuary within the bounds of Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh.  There he found refuge from the threat of arrest.  He was free to visit his family in the city on Sundays.  Oddly enough, despite being a debtor he was able to continue as Captain of the Train of Artillery of Scotland (later North Britain).  He held the post until military re-organisation in 1716.  John Slezer--adventurer, military draughtsman, and 'recorder of the State of Scotland'--died in 1717.    https://digital.nls.uk/slezer/biography.html  Find images by John Slezer, including Inverness/Innerness, at https://digital.nls.uk/slezer/find.html



Both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln wrote poetry.  But only one had a way with words.  Link to 4:15 audio at https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/retropod/between-lincoln-and-washington-only-one-was-a-great-poet-1/



Happy Joe's Pizza & Ice Cream Parlor is an American pizza parlor chain based in Bettendorf, Iowa. The restaurant chain was founded in 1972 by Lawrence Joseph "Happy Joe" Whitty, a former Shakey's Pizza manager.  Its 61 restaurants are located in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin.  The idea for Happy Joe's came from a combination of a pizza parlor and ice cream palace.  Happy Joe's claims to be the first pizza restaurant to offer a taco pizza (a pizza with refried bean/tomato sauce, cheese, lettuce, tomato and taco chips).   After a franchisee suggested adding tacos to the menu, Whitty invented the restaurant's best-selling product, the Taco Pizza.  In 2005, Happy Joe's started offering breakfast pizzas at select locations.   In 2013, Happy Joe's started offering flatbread pizzas.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Joe%27s



Vagant is a Norway-based, pan-Scandinavian literary magazine, established in 1988.  Vagant.no publishes web-articles on a weekly basis, while the paper edition is released 4 times a year.  Vagant is a member of the European cultural journal network Eurozine.  Vagant played an important role for the generation of Norwegian writers making their debut in the nineties, such as Ingvild Burkey, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Pål Norheim, and Linn Ullmann.  The journal takes its name from the Norwegian word Vaganterne, which comes from the Latin clerici vagantes which describes a group of wandering students from the middle ages, who performed under the patronage of a wealthy nobleman or woman, and often their poems provoked the strict moral system of the church.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagant



"Vagant" is not a word in modern English.  The English word you are thinking of is "vagrant" with an "r" in the middle of it (a wanderer; a person who roams from place to place).  The word "vagrant" is indeed related to "extravagant."  Both words are derived from the Latin root "vagari" meaning "to wander; to roam."  "Extravagant" literally means:  "wandering outside (or beyond) the limit."  "Extravagant" was first used in English with the meaning of "excessive; exceeding normal limits" in 1590.  Its use with the meaning "lavish; wasteful; spending more money than is reasonable or necessary" is first recorded in 1711.  Mike Mendis  https://www.quora.com/Are-the-words-extravagant-and-vagant-related



Learn about more than three dozen sausages, and see pictures and descriptions from abruzzo sausage to weisswurst at The Cook's Thesaurus.  Some pronunciations and some substitutes are listed.

 http://www.foodsubs.com/MeatcureSausage.html



Caldecott Award-winning children’s author and illustrator Mordicai Gerstein, widely lauded for his mixed-media compositions featuring fluid pen-and-ink lines, died September 24, 2019 in Northampton, Mass. He was 83.  Gerstein was born November 24, 1935 in Los Angeles, Calif.  He grew up in East L.A. and the San Fernando Valley, where, from an early age, he would create illustrations for favorite books he read.  Upon graduating high school, he studied painting in New Mexico, receiving private instruction.  He then returned to California and from 1953–1956 attended the Chouinard Art Institute in downtown L.A.  Gerstein left art school to take a job at United Productions of America, where he worked as both an artist and designer and continued to paint in his free time.  Grace Maccarone, executive editor at Holiday House, edited Gerstein’s April 2019 title I Am Hermes! as well as The Sleeping Gypsy (2016) and a forthcoming work still in progress.  She offered this tribute:  “Mordicai was brilliant and indefatigable.  After he had completed 250 masterful illustrations for I Am Hermes! in his 80th year, he told me it would probably be his last book.  Of course, I understood.   But I also knew he was still sketching and still thinking.  So I asked him to consider creating an I Like to Read book, which could have as few as 10 vignettes.  I was thrilled when he called to tell me he had sketched out a book titled Moose, Goose, and Mouse.  It’s funny and joyful and just right for a first grader to read independently—and much more elaborate than 10 vignettes!  In the beginning of the month, Mordicai called to tell me that he had completed the line work and that he had asked Jeff Mack to complete the color work.  I knew it would be our last conversation.  Shannon Maughan  Read more and see graphics at https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/81290-obituary-mordicai-gerstein.html 



The Better Angels Society, the Library of Congress and the Crimson Lion/Lavine Family Foundation on October 16, 2019  announced that the first Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film has been awarded to “Flannery,” a new film directed by Elizabeth Coffman and Jesuit priest Mark Bosco that documents the life of Georgia writer Flannery O’Connor.  “Flannery” is a feature-length documentary that explores the life and writings of O’Connor, whose provocative, award-winning fiction about Southern prophets, girls with wooden legs and an assemblage of unique and often fantastic characters has inspired artists, musicians and writers around the world.  Watch a trailer for the film here. External  The Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film is a new, annual prize that recognizes a filmmaker whose documentary uses original research and compelling narrative to tell stories that touch on some aspect of American history.  Eighty films were submitted for consideration earlier in 2019.  Link to resources including the Library of Congress blog and Library of Congress magazine at

https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-19-100/library-of-congress-lavineken-burns-prize-for-film-awarded-to-flannery-directed-by-elizabeth-coffman-and-mark-bosco/2019-10-16/



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2170  October 18, 2019