Now You Too Can Bake Like Emily Dickinson This Holiday Season--7 Delicious Recipes from a Great American Poet by Emily Temple  According to the Emily Dickinson Museum website, Dickinson wrote many poems in the kitchen—often on the backs of labels, recipes and other papers, and these reveal that the kitchen “was a space of creative ferment for her, and that the writing of poetry mixed in her life with the making of delicate treats.”   https://lithub.com/now-you-too-can-bake-like-emily-dickinson-this-holiday-season/

Top Ten Nonfiction Reads of 2019 from A Cocoon of Books  https://cocoonofbooks.blogspot.com/

LUCKY FOODS  Long noodles are lucky--they represent a long life.  Rice has a history of being associated with wealth.  Rice dishes are wonderful for the New Year.  Grains and pasta swell which means your prosperity might swell.  Ring-shaped foods represent the year coming full circle, pork is good because pigs "root forward" with their noses (symbolizes progress), leafy greens resemble folded paper money. 

Eat black-eyed peas and leafy greens for good luck on New Year's Day.  Add a slice of cornbread, and you've got "peas for pennies, greens for dollars, and cornbread for gold."  Read about seven lucky foods on New Year's Day and see pictures at http://dish.allrecipes.com/new-years-day-lucky-foods/

Happiness Soup  18 oz. (two large) yellow squash, unpeeled and diced; zest and juice of one lemon; 3 tbsp. olive oil; 1 tsp. turmeric; 4 c. chicken or vegetable stock, 4 oz. (1/2 cup) basmati rice; salt and pepper.  Cook squash, lemon and zest with olive oil gently for about 5 min, stirring occasionally.  Stir in turmeric and rice.  Cook uncovered for 10-20 min.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve warm.  4 servings  adapted from Nigella Lawson, Forever Summer

17 Classic Polish Recipes to Make for Wigilia  Cook Up a Special Christmas Eve Feast by Cathy Jacobs  Wigilia—derived from the Latin term "vigil"—is the traditional Christmas Eve supper in Poland.  Also known as the Star Supper, Wigilia is the main focus of Polish Christmas celebrations.  The meal begins after the first star appears in the sky on the evening of December 24^th.   

https://www.thespruceeats.com/polish-christmas-eve-supper-recipes-1136852

PFEFFERNUSSE (GERMAN PEPPER NUT COOKIES ) by Zookeenee  https://www.food.com/recipe/pfeffernusse-german-pepper-nut-cookies-79103  Christmas cookie recipes—more than 650 to choose from--be the talk of the cookie exchange.   https://www.allrecipes.com/recipes/841/holidays-and-events/christmas/desserts/christmas-cookies/

Right now, parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles across Maine are whipping up Needhams—essentially, shredded coconut, powdered sugar and mashed potatoes (and butter in some recipes), which is shaped into a square or rectangle and dipped into semi-sweet melted chocolate.  Emily Burnham  Read more and see recipe at https://bangordailynews.com/2019/12/08/living/food/this-iconic-maine-candy-is-named-for-a-colorful-19th-century-preacher-who-isnt-from-maine/ Thank you, Muse reader!

The 10 Best Literary TV Adaptations of the Decade and then some by Emily Temple  List includes Justified (based on “Fire in the Hole” by Elmore Leonard) and Mindhunters (based on Mindhunter:  Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker (1995).  https://lithub.com/the-10-best-literary-tv-adaptations-of-the-decade/

December 29, 2019  Britain's Big Ben bell in Parliament's landmark clock tower will ring at midnight on New Year's Eve, marking the start of a year for the first time since its new face was revealed from under scaffolding halfway through restoration work.  The work has seen the 96-metre-tall Elizabeth Tower, one of the most photographed buildings in Britain, enveloped in scaffolding for the last two years as the four clock dials are reglazed, ironwork repainted and intricately carved stonework cleaned and repaired.  In March, part of the scaffolding was removed, showing that the clock's once black numerals and hands have been repainted blue, in line with what scientists say was its original colour.  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/29/big-ben-set-ring-new-year-first-time-since-start-restoration/

With Greta Gerwig’s cinematic adaptation of Little Women releasing at the end of December 2019, Christmas won’t be Christmas this year without books to delight Louisa May Alcott fans.  Since its original publication in 1868, Little Women has enjoyed remarkable staying power in American culture, including six film versions, six television adaptations, a Broadway musical, and an opera.  So what is it about this story that continues to fascinate us?  For generations of fans, the March sisters, each with their own distinct characteristics, have provided a kind of Myers-Briggs-like personality test for readers to project their own identities.  Many notable women, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Ida B. Wells, Ursula Le Guin, Gloria Steinem, and Hillary Clinton, have cited Jo as the inspiration behind their own ambitions.  No matter which sister is most relatable, the story of four young women navigating the challenging terrain that spans between adolescence and adulthood has felt familiar to many, and it resonated with me so much that I set out to write my own novel inspired by Louisa and May, the two sisters who had always most intrigued me.  While writing The Other Alcott, I studied everything I could find that connected to the story of this quirky family.  All of this is to say that I’ve developed a broad list of books that will appeal to readers who value Louisa May Alcott and all that she represents.   Included in the list are:  The Little Women Cookbook: Tempting Recipes from the March Sisters and Their Friends and Family by Wini Moranville, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, and March by Geraldine Brooks.  Elise Hooper  https://lithub.com/the-ubiquity-of-little-women-11-books-inspired-by-the-march-family/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2203  December 30, 2019

Favorite books read by the Muser in 2019

A Wizard of Earthsea, #1 in the Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin (The magic of Earthsea is primal, the lessons are potent, wise and necessary as anyone can dream - Neil Gaiman)  http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Index-Earthsea.html

Big Sister by Gunnar Staalesen  (Book 20 in the Private Investigator Varg Veum series deals with family dynamics and the dark web in this thriller full of twists.)

Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Student Piscine Molitor Patel suffers slurs over his name, and changes Piscine to Pi, writing on the blackboard π=3.14, drawing a large circle--then sliced in two--evoking a basic lesson in geometry.)

One More Thing by B.J. Novak  (64 deadpan, sly, funny stories)

The Riddle of the Labyrinth, The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code by Margalit Fox (linguistic mysteries recounted)  Read online at https://serchisbook.com/the-riddle-of-the-labyrinth-by-margalit-fox.html)

The Library Book by Susan Orlean  (On April 29, 1986, fire raged for seven hours and thirty-eight minutes in the Los Angeles Central Library; more than one million books were burned or damaged.)  

Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino  (twelve short, offbeat science-fiction tales)  See Rushdie On Calvino's Absurd, Charming Masterpiece at https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93376041

The Devil's Tickets:  A Night of Bridge, a Fatal Hand, and a New American Age by Gary M. Pomerantz  (Contract bridge explodes in popularity and is sometimes accompanied by secret signals, self-promotion and violence.)

The Lost City of the Monkey God:  A True Story by Douglas Preston  An expedition team uses lidar (light detection and ranging technology) trying to find a legendary lost city in the uncharted wilderness of Honduras in the world's thickest jungle. 

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, a novel by Melanie Benjamin about the tiny entertainer who toured before, during, and after the Civil War

Hope Never Dies, mystery by Andrew Shaffer  Zany adventures and misadventures of post-White house team of Barack and Joe

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, a love story about two 12-year-old friends, a Chinese boy and a Japanese girl, and the ethnic tensions of the time and Japanese internment during World War II.

Jamie Ford, born James Ford (July 9, 1968), is an American author who gained notoriety with his debut novel, "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet."  He is ethnically half Chinese, and his first two books focused on the Chinese-American experience and the city of Seattle.  Ford grew up in Seattle, Washington.  Although he no longer lives in Seattle, the city has played an important role in both Ford's books.  Ford graduated from the Art Institute of Seattle in 1988 and worked as an art director and as a creative director in advertising.  Ford's great-grandfather immigrated from Kaiping, China in 1865.  His name was Min Chung, but he changed it to William Ford when he was working in Tonopah, Nevada.  His great-grandmother, Loy Lee Ford was the first Chinese woman to own property in Nevada.  Ford's grandfather, George William Ford, changed his name back to George Chung in order to gain more success as an ethnic actor in Hollywood.  https://www.thoughtco.com/jamie-ford-bio-361751

Best reviewed books of 2109  https://bookmarks.reviews/category/best-of-2019/

The Best Reviewed Books of 2019:  Graphic Literature  FEATURING GEORGE TAKEI, SETH, CHRIS WARE, LYNDA BARRY, AND MORE  https://bookmarks.reviews/the-best-reviewed-books-of-2019-graphic-literature/

Winter Salad of Red Leaves, Mackerel and Orange is a song of red cabbage, red chicory, blood oranges, purple carrots, beets, and generous bunches of fresh herbs and sturdy winter greens.  Tossed with a crème fraîche-sherry vinegar dressing and studded with smoky fish, it is one gorgeous and delicious plate.  Serves 4  Catherine Phipps  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/winter-salad-of-red-leaves-mackerel-and-orange

Questions:  If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you choose?  What’s the best present you have ever received?  If you could only eat five foods for the rest of your life, what would they be?  Are you making New Year’s Resolution this year?  If you could eat at only one restaurant your entire life, which one would it be?  The Buzz Book, A Guide to the Very Best in Northwest Ohio  Winter 2019-2020

Best and Favorite Books of 2019  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/01/best-books-2019-picked-by-years-best-writers and https://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/2019 and

https://www.nytimes.com › 2019/11/22 › books › review › best-books and https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/entertainment/books/best-books-of-2019/ and https://www.npr.org/2019/12/03/784376769/maureen-corrigans-favorite-books-of-2019-here-are-10-unputdownable-reads and https://lithub.com/our-50-favorite-books-of-the-year/

December 2019  Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (abbreviated as ThLL or TLL) is a monumental dictionary of Latin founded on historical principles.  It encompasses the Latin language from the time of its origin to the time of Isidore of Seville (died 636).  The project began in 1894 and it was scheduled to be completed around the year 2050.  The last fascicle of the P-volume appeared in 2010, and work is currently under way on both N and R.  The institution that carries out the work of the dictionary is located in Munich, in the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. 

  Library of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesaurus_Linguae_Latinae  See also https://www.thesaurus.badw.de/en/project.html

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. - Isaac Newton, philosopher and mathematician (25 Dec 1642-1727) 

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal.  My strength lies solely in my tenacity. - Louis Pasteur, chemist and bacteriologist (27 Dec 1822-1895)

Word of the Day  golden touch (plural golden touches)  (idiomatic) Synonym of Midas touch (“the ability to achieve financial reward (or, more generally, success) easily and consistently”) quotations ▼

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/golden_touch#English

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2202  December 27, 2019

It’s a writerly dream come true:  a cocktail based on your book, prepared by a dedicated bookseller who has pored over your pages for references to alcohol or even flavors and scents he can interpret to concoct the drink.  Nick Petrulakis of Booksmith in Brookline, Massachussets is the literary bartender in this scenario.  Petrulakis crafts drinks for parties thrown by publishers for upcoming books and sometimes for launch events at his store.  “I make drinks if I love a book,” he said.  One example was the drink Petrulakis made for Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, which he called “almost perfect.”  He crafted a cocktail called “What is Love?” based on a question posed in the book and adapted from the classic French 75.  At Petrulakis’s blog, Drinks with Nick, he posts recipes and discusses his process.  Erika Mailman  See two recipes along with their literary inspirations at https://lithub.com/the-true-tales-of-a-literary-bartender/

The Pyramid of Kukulcan or Kukulkan (also known as El Castillo, a name given by the Spanish Conquistadors) is the centre of Chich’en Itza, it was built over a preexisting temple between 800 and 900 CE.  It is the biggest pyramid in Chich’en Itza; at its base 53.3 meters wide on all four sides.  It towers above the other monuments at 24 meters tall with a 6-meter temple on top of the highest platform.   According to legend, twice a year when the day and night are in balance, this pyramid dedicated to Kukulcan (or Quetzalcoatl), the feathered serpent god, is visited by its namesake.  On the equinox, Kukulcan returns to earth to commune with his worshipers, provide blessing for a full harvest and good health before entering the sacred water, bathing in it, and continuing through it on his way to the underworld.  A handclap near the base of the pyramidal results in an unusual chirping echo, which is said to replicate the call of the sacred quetzal bird.  All legends aside, crafty and mathematically brilliant architecture combined with the natural rotation of the Earth creates an amazing and somewhat eerie image of a giant snake crawling down the temple.  For five hours an illusion of light and shadow creates seven triangles on the side of the staircase starting at the top and inching its way down until it connects the top platform with the giant stone head of the feathered serpent at the bottom.  For 45 minutes this impressive shadow stays in its entirety before slowing descending the pyramid and disappearing along with the crowd that gathered to see it.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pyramid-kukulcan-chichen-itza

Ben Mezrich is the New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires, Bringing Down the House, and Sex on the Moon in addition to thirteen other books.  The film 21, starring Kevin Spacey, was based on Bringing Down the House.  The Social Network, which won an Oscar for best adaptation, was based on The Accidental Billionaires.  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/37069/ben-mezrich

No one has been able to measure the accurate dimensions of the Taj Mahal complex without discrepancies.  Research led by Ebba Koch and Richard André Barraud in 2006 came out with the figures used here.  The overall compound measures an astounding 896 m (2,948 ft) by 301 m (990 ft) or 269,696 sq m (2,919,217 sq ft)--the equivalent of over 50 American football fields.  As for the impressive mausoleum itself, the structure accounts for a square plan that measures around 57 m x 57 m (3,249 sq m or 35,167 sq ft), while it rises to a height of 68 m (224 ft), and is built upon a platform of around 6 m (20 ft)--which brings the total height to about 74 m (or 244 ft).  The Taj Mahal still manages to baffle contemporary architects and builders by virtue of its evolved engineering credentials.  The acoustic system inside the mausoleum expresses the notion of paradise.  Accordingly, the building was designed in such a way so that the interior reverberation time is exactly 28 seconds.  Posted by Dattatreya Mandal  See pictures at https://www.realmofhistory.com/2018/11/07/facts-taj-mahal-mughal-indian/

For most of their lives, the world's super-agers have nourished their bodies with whole, plant-based foods, such as leafy vegetables, tubers, nuts, beans and whole grains.  And they ate meat fewer than five times monthly.  After the holidays, most of us will resolve to eat healthier.  But by January 17, most of us will be back to our old habits--that's according to data from Strava, a social network for athletes, based on more than 108 million usage entries.  That's because diets don't work for the vast majority of people for more than about seven months.  If you want to live a long, healthy life, the key is to do the right things--and avoid the wrong things--for decades, not just a few months.  Because when it comes to longevity, there's no short-term fix.  People in blue zones have been eating the "right" foods because the right foods--beans, grains and garden vegetables--were cheapest and most accessible.  Their kitchens were set up to cook them quickly and they had time-honored recipes to make simple peasant food taste delicious.  Finally, their communities gathered around this food:  They sat down at the table with people who ate the same way.  Dan Buettner, explorer, National Geographic Fellow and author of "The Blue Zones Kitchen:  100 Recipes to Live to 100."  https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/health/blue-zones-diet-food-wellness/index.html

The Earth orbits the sun in an oval shape called an ellipse, with the sun at one of the two focal points (foci).  The Earth's orbit slightly changes its eccentricity over the course of 100,000 years from nearly 0 to 0.07 and back again, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.  When the Earth's orbit has a higher eccentricity, the planet's surface receives 20 to 30 percent more solar radiation when it's at perihelion (the shortest distance between the Earth and sun each orbit) than when it is at aphelion (the largest distance between the Earth and sun each orbit).  When the Earth's orbit has a low eccentricity, there is very little difference in the amount of solar radiation that is received between perihelion and aphelion.  At perihelion, which occurs on or around Jan. 3 each year, Earth's surface receives about 6 percent more solar radiation than at aphelion, which occurs on or around July 4.  The tilt of the Earth's axis relative to the plane of its orbit is the reason that we experience seasons.  Over the course of about 41,000 years, the tilt of the Earth's axis, also known as obliquity, varies between 21.5 and 24.5 degrees.  Rachel Ross  Read more and see graphics at https://www.livescience.com/64813-milankovitch-cycles.html

See also Eight Motions of the Earth at http://earthsci.org/space/space/earth8/earth8.html

Mujadara:  Lentils and Rice with Crispy Onions by Suzy Karadsheh  Mujadara (mujaddara) is a signature Middle Eastern dish of lentils and rice garnished with crispy onions.  This simple dish will surprise your taste buds in the best way possible.  For a vegan dinner, serve it alongside a bright and fresh Mediterranean salad like Fattoush, Balela, or this Lazy 3-Ingredient Mediterranean Salad.  https://www.themediterraneandish.com/mujadara-lentils-and-rice-with-crispy-onions/

John Barton Gruelle (December 24, 1880–January 9, 1938) was an American artist, political cartoonist, children's book and comics authors, illustrator, and storyteller.  He is best known as the creator of Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls and as the author/illustrator of dozens of books.  He also created the Beloved Belindy doll.  Gruelle also contributed cartoons and illustrations to at least ten newspapers, four major new syndicates, and more than a dozen national magazines.  He was the son of Hoosier Group painter Richard Gruelle.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Gruelle

Aida (pronounced [aˈiːda]) is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni.  Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aida

The Story Behind 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas'

https://www.npr.org/2010/11/19/131412133/the-story-behind-have-yourself-a-merry-little-christmas

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2201  December 24, 2019

The Colosseum is the biggest amphitheater ever built in the world and the most visited monument in Italy.  The Colosseum’s arena was completely removed by archaeologists in the 19^th century and has never been totally rebuilt.  Only a very small part of it was reconstructed in order to allow visitors to have a gladiator-like feeling during special tours.  Hypogeum is the Greek word for underground, and therefore is the underground level below the Colosseum’s bleachers and arena.  It was in there that gladiators and animals were kept before the beginning of each battle, and where 36 trap doors for special effects were hidden.  Since there is no longer an arena, part of the hypogeum is beautifully exposed.  The underground level looks like a labyrinth, and you can actually walk through it by booking a special tour.  Archaeologists were not the first ones to remove the Colosseum’s arena.  The wooden floor covered with sand that Romans originally used had already been removed before to have the Colosseum filled with water for mock naval battles.  Botanical studies in the Colosseum date back to 1643, when Domenico Panaroli listed 337 species of plants among the ruins.  In the 1850’s, English botanist Richard Deakin found around 420 species.  Some of them were very common in Italy; others, however, didn’t grow in Europe at all.  Posted by Mariana  https://www.discoverwalks.com/blog/10-reasons-to-visit-the-roman-colosseum/

Autofiction is a term used in literary criticism to refer to a form of fictionalized autobiography. 

Serge Doubrovsky coined the term in 1977 with reference to his novel Fils.  Philippe Vilain distinguishes autofiction from autobiographical novels in that autofiction requires a first-person narrative by a protagonist who has the same name as the author.  Autofiction combines two mutually inconsistent narrative forms, namely autobiography and fiction.  An author may decide to recount his/her life in the third person, to modify significant details or 'characters', using fiction in the service of a search for self.  It has parallels with faction, a genre devised by Truman Capote to describe his novel In Cold Blood.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofiction

October 29, 2019  A year after the unexpected death of its founder, Todd Bol, the Little Free Library nonprofit literacy organization and Bol’s family are at odds, with each side claiming that it is acting to protect Bol’s legacy, and that the other is undermining it.  While Little Free Library sponsors unorthodox literacy initiatives with partners all over the world, it is best known for the first initiative it launched 10 years ago:  weatherproof wooden boxes containing books free for the taking that are placed in people’s front yards and public spaces.  To date, there are 90,000 little library boxes in 90 countries.  Bol, who set up the first book box in front of his mother’s Wisconsin home in 2009, first trademarked the term “Little Free Library” in 2012, about the same time the organization became a 501-c-3 nonprofit.  In June 2019, says Tony Bol, Todd’s brother, the organization filed three separate applications for new trademarks with the U.S. Patent Office regarding the term, “Little Free Library,” used in connection with the words, “wooden boxes with a storage area for books,” and “signs, non-luminous and non-mechanical, of metal,” and “guest books and rubber stamps.”  If approved, these trademarks would allow the organization to, Tony explained, “stake trademark claims over all wooden book boxes, book boxes with signs, and book boxes with guest books, allowing for monopolization of the Little Free Library movement as a marketplace.”  This would mean, he noted, that if any individual or neighborhood organization built and displayed any type of wooden book box, they could be subject to legal action, even if they called the container by another name.  Claire Kirch  https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/81587-little-free-library-founder-s-family-clash-over-org-s-direction.html

Asteroids are rocky objects smaller than planets that are left over from the formation of our solar system.  Comets are also composed of material left over from the formation of our solar system and formed around the same time as asteroids.  However, asteroids formed toward the inner regions of our solar system where temperatures were hotter and thus only rock or metal could remain solid without melting.  A meteor is simply an asteroid that attempts to land on Earth but is vaporized by the Earth’s atmosphere.  Sabrina Stierwalt  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asteroid-meteor-meteorite-and-comet-whats-the-difference/

A meteor is the flash of light that we see in the night sky when a small chunk of interplanetary debris burns up as it passes through our atmosphere, also known as a shooting star.  Most meteoroids that enter the Earth's atmosphere are so small that they vaporise completely and never reach the planet's surface.  These meteors come from meteoroids, there are three main sources of meteoroids.  Many are left over from the dust that formed the Solar System.  Others are fragments of asteroids, broken off in collisions.  Huge meteor showers, caused by many meteoroids entering the atmosphere in one go, are caused by comets.  They occur when the Earth’s atmosphere passes through a stream of small particles left behind in the comet’s tail.  If any part of a meteoroid survives the fall through the atmosphere and lands on Earth, it is called a meteorite.  Although majority of the meteorites are very small, their size can range from about a fraction of a gram (the size of a pebble) to 100 kilograms or more (the size of a huge, life-destroying boulder).  https://astroedu.iau.org/en/activities/1638/meteoroids-meteors-and-meteorites/

“The Maine Mineral and Gem Museum showcases our geological history, displays renowned mineral and rock collections, provides educational opportunities for the novice and expert alike, conducts historical and geological research and is a Maine travel destination for residents and visitors.  MMGM will house the finest collection of Maine minerals and gems.  It will include the famous Perham Collection, viewed by generations in a local mineral store that operated for ninety years.  MMGM will display one of the world’s foremost collections of extraterrestrial rocks—meteorites from Mars, the Moon and the Asteroid Belt that teach us about the origins of our Solar System.”  Find location and hours at https://mainemineralmuseum.org/about/

Goatherd, Storyteller, Master   Little is known about Paulé Bartón.  According to Howard Norman’s introduction to The Woe Shirt: Caribbean Folk Tales, the book in which this and twelve other of his tiny fables originally appeared, Barton was born in Haiti in 1916 and earned a living as a goatherd—though he, like many on the island at the time, aspired to work as a storyteller, peddling tales in the markets of Port-au-Prince.  At some point, he was arrested and later exiled by the violent, repressive Duvalier regime, likely for violating Haiti’s loosely defined, and thus incredibly restrictive, law against “polluting the minds of tourists with information about Haiti not sanctioned by the government.”  He spent the rest of his life skipping across the Caribbean, settling down for a time on one island before packing up with his wife and children and goats and heading to another.  The fifteenth episode of The Paris Review Podcast features the singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart’s reading of “The Woe Shirt.”  What a gift it is to hear a favorite story brought to life.  Banhart delivers the tale as it was meant to be experienced, lifting us out of our office lives and into the strange, capacious imagination of Paulé Bartón.  Brian Ransom  https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/11/22/goatherd-storyteller-master/

Balsam wreaths and visions of sugarplums had barely faded in the first weeks of 1939, but thoughts inside the Chicago headquarters of retail giant Montgomery Ward had already turned to the next Christmas 11 months away.  The retailer had traditionally purchased and distributed coloring books to children as a holiday promotion, but the advertising department decided it would be cheaper and more effective instead to develop its own Christmas-themed book in-house.  The assignment fell to Robert May, a copywriter with a knack for turning a limerick at the company’s holiday party.  As he peered out at the thick fog that had drifted off Lake Michigan, May came up with the idea of a misfit reindeer ostracized because of his luminescent nose who used his physical abnormality to guide Santa’s sleigh and save Christmas.  Seeking an alliterative name, May scribbled possibilities on a scrap of paper—Rollo, Reginald, Rodney and Romeo were among the choices—before circling his favorite, Rudolph.  The 89 rhyming couplets in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” borrow from Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” right from the story’s opening line:  “Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the hills/The reindeer were playing . . . enjoying the spills.”  Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” also inspired the storyline as did May’s own childhood when he endured taunts from schoolmates for being small and shy.  Christopher Klein  https://www.history.com/news/rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer-turns-75

We're happy to share this holiday menu from one of the year’s best books, 365:  A Year of Everyday Cooking and Baking by Meike Peters.  Her first book, Eat in My Kitchen, was awarded the 2017 James Beard General Cookbook of the Year.  In 365, she presents a plan for a year of home cooking, with a recipe for every day of the year.  We asked Meike to build a holiday menu from the book, and she sent along a few of her favorites to please both the meat and non-meat eaters in your life:  Christmassy Braised Beef Shanks with Spices and Red Wine, the amazing Potato and Apple-Stuffed Cabbage Rolls with Walnut Butter and Gruyere and her Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Honey, Apples and Marjoram.  Happy Holidays, everyone!  https://www.splendidtable.org/story/a-three-dish-holiday-menu-from-meike-peters-365

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2200  December 23, 2019

The American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is one of the most prominent museums and scientific research centers in the world.  It encompasses four city blocks and consists of 27 interconnected buildings with 45 permanent exhibit halls.  It also has over 200 working scientists and sponsors over 100 annual field exhibitions.  According to Sci-tech Libraries in Museums and Aquariums, there was no official library at the museum’s initial home in the Arsenal Building.  Albert S. Bickmore donated the museum’s first official volume, Travels in the East Indian Archipelago, which marked the beginning of its library collection and is now in the museum’s Rare Book Section.  Eventually, Bickmore handed over his whole collection and worked towards soliciting more donations (rather than purchasing books).  Over the years, the library accumulated impressive amounts of works, partially due to its merging with the Department of Maps and Charts and the addition of the Photographic Collection.  By 1916, it encompassed five rooms.  In 1961, it moved to its current location, and now has over 550,000 volumes.  On October 29, 1964, Jack Roland Murphy and Allan Dale Kuhn jumped a fence, climbed a fire escape, crawled along a ledge and swung down to the fourth floor with a rope.  Beforehand, to plan such an elaborate entrance, they spent a week visiting the museum to familiarize themselves with its layout.  They then took $410,000 worth of jewels (worth $3 million today), including one of the world’s largest sapphires.  However, the burglars were soon caught.  Three important jewels, the Midnight Star and De Long Star Ruby, and the Star of India were found in Miami.  However, another priceless jewel, the Eagle Diamond, was never found.  Stephanie Geier    https://untappedcities.com/2015/12/09/the-top-12-secrets-of-nycs-museum-of-natural-history/

In modern English we expect the word you to take a numerically ambiguous role, since it is used regardless of whether the speaker is addressing a single person or many.  This was not always the case.  Formerly we used thou as the second person singular pronoun (which simply means that we would use thou to address another single person).  Thee was used in the objective or oblique case (when referring to the object of a verb or preposition), and thou was used in the nominative (when indicating the subject of a verb).  As Old English began to grow up a little, finally getting a job and moving out of its parents’ house, the singular use of thou began to change.  The pronoun that had previously been restricted to addressing more than one person (ye or you) started to see service as a singular pronoun.  Initially you was used to refer to a person of high social standing (such as royalty, who would be addressed as “your majesty”) but soon came to be used as well when speaking with a social equal.  As a result, poor thou was downgraded, and was used primarily when referring to a person of lower social standing, such as a servant.  However, this pronoun did not disappear, as it also functioned as an indicator of familiarity or intimacy, and retained its function as a singular form of address for God in many cases in ecclesiastical writings.  We still see thou in some forms of modern use, such as in discussions of the “I and Thou” concept of Martin Buber’s philosophy, or in colloquial phrases such as “holier-than-thou.”  For the most part, at least in normal linguistic use, thou has been largely supplanted in modern times by you, although it does exist still in certain dialects in Northern England and Scotland, as well as in the community of the Religious Society of Friends (commonly referred to as Quakers).  Read more at https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/why-did-we-stop-using-thou

Robert Thomas Pattinson was born on May 13, 1986, in London, England.  Pattinson's performances drew notice and in 2003, at the age of 17, he jumped from the stage to the screen, nabbing a role in the TV movie Ring of the Nibelungs.  The work required him to move to South Africa for several months, where the movie was being filmed.  An unaccredited role in Vanity Fair (2004) followed.  Around the same time that he was finishing up work on those two projects, Pattinson met with Mike Newell, the eventual director of 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  The meeting and subsequent audition earned Pattinson the role of Cedric Diggory, Harry Potter's friend and a fellow wizard.  What followed was a shot at the film Twilight.  His audition for the role of Edward Cullen, a century-old vampire in love, took place in the bedroom of the movie's director, Catherine Hardwicke.  Pattinson wowed both Hardwicke and his future co-star, Kristen Stewart, with his performance.  "Everybody came in doing something empty and shallow and thoughtless," Stewart told GQ.  "But Rob understood that it wasn't a frivolous role."  And yet, for the legions of Twilight readers, who had waited breathlessly for the movie adaptation, Pattinson's casting as the perfectly gorgeous Cullen struck a nerve:  There were calls for a boycott of the film and 75,000 fans signed a petition asking he be removed from the cast.  To live up to the expectations, Pattinson poured himself into his character.  He showed up in Oregon, one of the locations where the movie was filmed, months in advance of the shooting to work out with a trainer and dissect the script and other work from Twilight's author, Stephenie Meyer.  In the end, the hard work and the original choice to go with Pattinson paid off.  In the movie's first weekend, box office receipts totaled nearly $70 million and its leading man was catapulted to heartthrob status among the film's most adoring fans.  The film also served as a reminder that Pattinson, a guitar and keyboard player who loves Van Morrison, retained his music aspirations, as the Twilight soundtrack includes two songs by the actor.  https://www.biography.com/actor/robert-pattinson

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  From:  Harold MacCaughey   Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. - Dwight D. Eisenhower, US general and 34th president (1890-1969)  From:  Don Fearn  George Carlin once observed that the descriptive term for the emotional damage to those who fight in the wars keeps getting more complex.  First it was called “shell shock”, then “battle fatigue”, and now it’s “PTSD” (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).  From two syllables to four syllables to eight.

During the tender youth of international copyright law, the wildly popular Charles Dickens was constantly trying to get ahead of unscrupulous publishers, on both sides of the Atlantic.  When Lee and Haddock’s London twopenny weekly, Parley’s Illuminated Library, published a pirated version of A Christmas Carol under the byline of Hewitt, Dickens had had enough.  He sued.  When he eventually won in court, he wrote in celebration: “ [T]he pirates are beaten flat.  They are bruised, bloody, battered, smashed, squelched, and utterly undone.”  Not quite.  Parley’s never did publish the next installment of their version, called simply “Christmas Ghost Story,” but the pirate crew got out of any damages by claiming bankruptcy.  The experience ended up costing Dickens’s hundreds of pounds and much aggravation.  His unhappy engagement with the law would inform his novel Bleak House, written a few years later.  Matthew Wills  https://daily.jstor.org/pirating-charles-dickens-a-christmas-carol-in-the-1840s/

Troy: myth and reality at the British Museum is the first major Troy exhibition in the UK.  While it concentrates on pottery, weaponry, and sculpture to tell the story of the Trojan War and its legacy in around 300 objects, the show also features a wealth of literary treasures associated with the well known legends as well as the discoveries made by archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in Turkey in the 1870s.  There are parts of the Odyssey and the Iliad.  On display too is the Townley Homer from 1059 which not only includes the text of the Iliad, but also has many marginal notes and interlinear glosses.  Among other early volumes in the exhibition are John Lydate’s Troy Book from around 1457-60, telling the story of Troy in Middle English thanks to a commission from the Prince of Wales, later Henry V; the first book ever printed in English, Recuyell of the historyes of Troye, published by William Caxton around 1474, possibly an inspiration for Shakespeare’s "Troilus and Cressida"; and Chapman’s Homer c. 1616, which John Keats memorably first looked into.  Also of interest is the English translation by John Dryden of the Aeneid from 1697.  This was a very personal approach in which he made additions and changes, claiming optimistically that these expansions of Virgil’s work were “not stuck into him, but growing out of him.”  The exhibition runs to March 8, 2020.  Visitors should remember to take their reading glasses as the signage is rather small and frequently at ankle height.  https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/blog/literary-treasures-troy

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer.  It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other Homeric epic.  The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature, while the Iliad is the oldest.  Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey

Nearly 25 years ago, when Gary Larson retired from drawing his single-panel cartoon that ran daily in newspapers from 1980 to 1995, he didn't think much about what the budding internet might have to do with his work.  "I never once foresaw any connection between this emergent technology and my cartoons," Larson said in a letter posted to TheFarSide.com, the official website of the cartoon which launched December 16, 2019 with a selection of classic cartoons, never-before-seen sketches from inside Larson's sketchbooks, and a letter from the cartoonist explaining why all these years later, his offbeat characters and comics have a home online.  And to celebrate 2020, the fortieth anniversary of "The Far Side," the site will occasionally premier brand new work from Larson.  Larson said changes in technology eventually convinced him the time had come for his cartoon creations to go digital.  At the time of Larson's retirement from daily syndication in 1995, The Far Side appeared in nearly two thousand newspapers, forty million books and seventy-seven million calendars sold and been translated into more than seventeen languages, according to The Far Side's long-time publisher and host of the website, Andrews McMeel Universal.  Chris Boyette  https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/18/entertainment/gary-larson-far-side-return-trnd/index.html

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  If we would have new knowledge, we must get us a whole world of new questions. - Susanne Langer, philosopher (20 Dec 1895-1985)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2199  December 20, 2019