In October 2019, Book Riot reported on the $41 million newly opened Hunters Point Library in Queens, which has three floors that are only accessible by stairs.  This construction project began in 2010 and was completed and opened on September 12th, 2019.  It is astonishing to think that in the approximately nine years of this project, planners seemingly did not consult with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) experts, advocates for people with disabilities, or even librarians who work with a wide range of patrons each day—any of whom would likely flag the accessibility issues with the design.  When this story originally broke, the Hunters Point Library first claimed their library did meet ADA legal requirements, because their plan was to have librarians retrieve books for patrons who could not access the top three floors of the library by walking.  Alice Wong, the Founder and Director of the Disability Visibility Project says:  “Architects and developers should be humble enough to ask the actual communities that will be using the space what they want from it.  I think public libraries are especially obligated to reach out to marginalized communities for their feedback and expertise.”  Usually in big renovation projects for these public spaces there is an “imagining” phase where a group of decision makers consult with architects and designers both about architectural design and the community needs before a single brick is laid.  For libraries looking for a model, under the direction of the San Francisco Department of Aging and Adult Services, the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability surveyed and developed ideas for the nation’s first city-run center devoted to disability culture.  Alice Wong served on the planning committee for this project as a disability advocate.  She highly recommends the committee’s final report, which provides a blueprint of what people with disabilities and other stakeholders prioritized when it comes to diversity, access, and inclusion.  This report contains both process and methodology, field research, and findings.  Perhaps it can provide guidance and a model for public libraries and architectural firms consulting their communities in a meaningful way before beginning a construction project.  Seeking diverse community input is already a standard practice in the D.C. Public Library system, which is currently on its 23rd library construction or renovation project.  Jaspreet Pahwa, from the Capital Planning & Construction team with the D.C. Public Library, explained that community engagement is the starting point of all their funded library projects.  In fact, “focus groups with library patrons who have faced barriers using our libraries have informed the design for the modernization of Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, as well as the Facilities Master Plan that will inform the future of the library built environment over the next decade.”  Emily Stochl  Read more at https://bookriot.com/2020/01/03/library-renovations-and-accessibility/

Rules are the tools we use as parents to teach our children values as well as develop self-discipline.  There are three basic categories of rules that parents use.  These are (1) rules for how to conduct oneself in specific situations, (2) rules for how to behave toward others, and (3) rules regarding one's responsibilities.  Measure your rules for behavior toward others against your value system.  Also, be sure that these rules reflect your own behavior toward your children and spouse.  (Don't make rules you can't follow yourself.)  Negotiation consists of a two-way conversation between you and your child where each is allowed to state his or her point of view.  If for example you have set an 11 p.m. curfew for your 16-year-old son, and he thinks the curfew is too restrictive, give him a chance to state his case.  Allow him to tell you the reasons why he believes the curfew is too early.  Ask questions as he speaks to help him elaborate and show your interest in his point of view.  If he makes a case of any kind, consider a compromise that takes into consideration his needs and desires and your concerns for his safety.  State your case to him also pointing out why you believe a curfew is necessary and remind him of your concern.  http://www.thesuccessfulparent.com/categories/discipline/item/how-to-make-rules-and-gain-cooperation#.XhIkekdKiUk

Five Books that Invoke Invisibility:  JEROME CHARYN, THE AUTHOR OF CESARE:  A NOVEL OF WAR-TORN BERLIN, SHARES FIVE BOOKS IN HIS LIFE by Jane Ciabattari 

https://bookmarks.reviews/five-books-that-invoke-invisibility/

How to Imitate George Saunders by Benjamin Nugent   “For much of my twenties, what I’d wanted, more than almost anything else, was to get inside Saunders’s mind, learn how it worked, and steal his secrets, so that I could write short stories that were as good as his short stories.”  https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/01/06/how-to-imitate-george-saunders/

Twin Cities-based chef and TV personality Andrew Zimmern has a new food show coming to an unlikely place, the news and politics channel MSNBC.  “What’s Eating America” premieres Feb. 16, 2020 at 8 p.m. CT, and will air Sundays through March 15.  From Zimmern's Minnesota-based production company Intuitive Content, the five-episode series follows Zimmern around the country during the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, as he talks to voters about social and political issues via the subject of food.  Shows will cover immigration, climate change, addiction, voting rights and healthcare, and the impact those issues have on what America eats.  "Food touches everything we do in our lives," Zimmern told the Star Tribune.  "We look through it, as a lens to other cultures."  Instead of titillating viewers with the unusual bites he'd sample on the "Bizarre Foods" series for which he's famous, "What's Eating America" positions him as a "correspondent," he said, "out on the road in search of answers to the questions everyone is asking."  Sharyn Jackson  http://www.startribune.com/andrew-zimmern-announces-new-msnbc-show-on-food-and-politics/567235312/

limn  verb  From Middle English limnen, limyne, lymm, lymn, lymne (“to illuminate (a manuscript)”), a variant of luminen (“to illuminate (a manuscript)”), short form of enluminen (“to shed light on, illuminate; to enlighten; to make bright or clear; to give colour to; to illuminate (a manuscript); to depict, describe; to adorn or embellish with figures of speech or poetry; to make famous, glorious, or illustrious”), from Old French enluminer (“to brighten, light up; to give colour to; to illuminate (a manuscript)”), from Latin illūminō (“to brighten, light up; to adorn; to make conspicuous”), from il- (a variant of in- (prefix meaning ‘in, inside’)) + lūminō (“to brighten, illuminate; to reveal”) (from lūmen (“light; (poetic) brightness”) (from Proto-Indo-European *lewk- (“bright; to shine; to see”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)).  

limn (third-person singular simple present limns, present participle limning, simple past and past participle limned)  (transitive, also figuratively) To draw or paint; to delineate. quotations ▼

Synonym:  depict  (transitive, obsolete)  To illuminate, as a manuscript; to decorate with gold or some other bright colour. quotations ▼ Synonym:  enlimn (to illuminate (a manuscript))

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

Can you live your life with what The Twilight Zone has to teach you?  Yes, and maybe you should.  The proof is in a lighthearted two-person show based on the book of the same title by Mark Dawidziak.  This one-act play performed by Dawidziak and Largely Literary Theater company co-founder Sara Showman is a tribute to Rod Serling's timeless fantasy anthology series, but, on another level, it is a celebration of the life lessons, morality tales, inspirational guidelines and practical guidelines found in those classic episodes.  The book of the same title by Mark Dawidziak (published by Thomas Dunne Books, with a foreword by Anne Serling) features 50 life lessons drawn from classic Twilight Zone episodes.  Mark Dawidziak and Sara Showman are the co-founders of the Largely Literary Theater Company, founded in 2002 to promote literature, literacy and live theater.  Showman, an east Tennessee native, also is a storyteller with a wide repertoire of programs for adults and children.  Dawidziak, who has been the TV critic at Cleveland's The Plain Dealer since 1999, is the author or editor of about 25 books.  https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/2718439

Lamb heart is inexpensive, economical and easy to prepare.  It is also rich in protein and essential vitamins and minerals like vitamin B-12, iron, copper, selenium, zinc and riboflavin.  Use a low-fat method like broiling to prepare lamb heart and consume it only occasionally and in moderation, especially if you have high cholesterol or heart disease, as a 3-ounce serving of cooked lamb heart is high in saturated fat and cholesterol.  A cooked lamb heart yields one serving.  If you're cooking for a group, plan on one lamb heart per person.  Michelle Kerns  Find recipe at https://www.livestrong.com/article/476840-how-to-cook-lamb-heart/

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is.  Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there's more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged. - Norman Mailer, author (31 Jan 1923-2007)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2218  January 31, 2020

'Fair exchange is no robbery' means that an exchange of two things of equal value is a reasonable and honest trade.  The proverbial saying 'fair exchange is no robbery' is first found in a place we might expect to find it, that is, an early and comprehensive collection of English proverbs.  There are a few of such but, in this case, it is John Heywood's 1546 glossary A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the englishe tongue:  Though chaunge be no robbry for the changed case.

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fair-exchange-is-no-robbery.html

A Fair Exchange Is No Robbery  While the carriage driver is asleep, two boys unhitch the horse and replace it with a goat.  1899 comedy  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246613/

Fair Exchange, No Robbery – (artwork by William Sidney Mount) https://wikioo.org/paintings.php?refarticle=8XXBGJ&titlepainting=Fair%20Exchange,%20No%20Robbery&artistname=William%20Sidney%20Mount

Fair Exchange Is Robbery  2003 book by Jeffrey Ashford

 https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/jeffrey-ashford.html

Catherine Steadman (born 8 February 1987) is an English actress and author, best known for playing Mabel Lane Fox in series 5 (2014) of ITV drama Downton Abbey.  Her debut novel, the psychological thriller, Something in the Water was published in June 2018 by Simon & Schuster UK and Penguin Random House USA.  Steadman trained at the Oxford School of Drama and made her screen debut playing Julia Bertram in the ITV adaptation of Mansfield Park opposite Billie Piper, James D'arcy, Rory Kinnear and Michelle Ryan.  Since then she has appeared in television dramas such as the CBC/Showtime co-production The Tudors playing Joan Bulmer, Holby City, Law & Order: UK, Missing, Lewis, Quirke alongside Gabriel Byrne, Fearless opposite Helen McCrory, and Victoria.  She has also appeared in several comedy series such as The Inbetweeners, Fresh Meat, Trying Again and Bucket.  On stage she has appeared in the West End in shows such as Polly Stenham's award winning That Face opposite Matt Smith and Felicity Jones, which was nominated for a special cast Olivier Award, the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Oppenheimer, opposite John Heffernan, for which she was nominated for a 2016 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and she played the titular role in the West-end revival of Witness for the Prosecution, opposite David Yelland, which was nominated for a 2018 Laurence Olivier Award for best revival.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Steadman

PARAPHRASES from The Gift of Years by Joan Chittister   Relationships are the alchemy of life . . . they turn the dross of dailiness into gold.  *  After retirement, you can enrich the life of others, be an “independent philosopher at large”,  pass on insights, get to make new friends.  *  You learn to trust your own insight.  *  You bring a wisdom based on experience. 

In October, 1874, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was urged to write a poem for the fiftieth anniversary of the graduation of his college class to be held the next summer.  At first he said that he could not write the poem.  He not only wrote the poem, but what was a rare act with him, read it before the audience gathered in the church at Brunswick on the occasion of the anniversary.  The final four lines of Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College are:

For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.  https://www.bartleby.com/356/252.html

Mark Bradford is widely considered one of the most important and influential artists in America today.  Bradford's abstract canvases, which often deal with complex social and political issues, hang in major museums around the world, as well as private collections.  Mark Bradford's art may look like paintings, but there's hardly any paint on them.  They're made out of layers and layers of paper, which he tears, glues, power washes and sands in a style all his own.  When he began making art in his 30's, Bradford couldn't afford expensive paint, so he started experimenting with endpapers, that are used for styling hair.  He got the idea while working as a hair stylist in his mom's beauty shop in South Los Angeles.  He was broke, struggling, and didn't sell his first painting until he was nearly 40.  Link to 14:29 video interview at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/artist-mark-bradford-the-60-minutes-interview-2019-12-22/

The mother of a child featured in a decades-old meme called "Success Kid" is demanding that Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) stop using the image in his fundraising appeals on social media.  BuzzFeed News reported January 27, 2020 that attorneys for Laney Griner, whose infant son appeared—clenching his fist in apparent triumph—in the image first posted in 2007, sent a cease-and-desist letter to King demanding that he refund any money raised using the meme.  "I recently learned that Iowa Representative Steve King is using my copyrighted photograph of my minor son Samuel known as 'Success Kid' to raise money in a 'Fund our Memes' online campaign, also implying that he has some kind of ownership in it," Griner tweeted.  John Bowden  https://thehill.com/homenews/house/480210-mother-of-child-in-viral-meme-sends-steve-king-cease-and-desist-for-using

The School of Architecture at Taliesin (SoAT), which maintains campuses in Scottsdale, Arizona and Spring Green Wisconsin, is closing down following an 88-year run as the institution tasked with carrying on the intellectual design legacy of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  An announcement from the school states: "The School of Architecture at Taliesin will cease operations after this semester, after a gut-wrenching decision by its Governing Board on January 25, 2020. The School of Architecture at Taliesin was not able to reach an agreement with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to keep the school open."  The school was previously named the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture until 2017 when it adopted its current name as part of a formal separation from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation that allowed the school to keep its accreditation.  The school was established in 1932 and has graduated over 1,200 students during its 88-year existence.  The two sites used by the school were recently included among six other Wright-designed structures in a UNESCO World Heritage listing.  Antonio Pacheco   https://archinect.com/news/article/150180958/frank-lloyd-wright-s-school-of-architecture-at-taliesin-shutters-its-doors-after-88-years

BIRTHS TO CELEBRATE  1717 – Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, English field marshal and politician, 19th Governor General of Canada (d. 1797)  1737 – Thomas Paine, prominent for publishing Common Sense (1776), which established him as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States (d. 1809)  1754 – Moses Cleaveland, American general, lawyer, and politician, founded Cleveland, Ohio (d. 1806)  1756 – Henry Lee III, American general and politician, 9th Governor of Virginia (d. 1818)  1761 – Albert Gallatin, Swiss-American ethnologist, linguist, and politician, 4th United States Secretary of the Treasury (d. 1849)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_29

WORD OF THE DAY  sufuria (plural sufurias)  (East Africa, cooking)  A deep metal cooking pot with a flat base and no handles. quotations ▼  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sufuria#English

                         

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2217  January 29, 2020

Chef Massimo Bottura:  the Pavarotti of Pasta   In his kitchen at Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy where tenor, Luciano Pavarotti, was born, Bottura oversees a staff of 35 as they build his beautiful, avant-garde masterpieces that he says are inspired by contemporary art.  His creations are like canvasses.  Read more and see graphics at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chef-massimo-bottura-the-pavarotti-of-pasta-60-minutes-interview-2019-12-22/

Ignorance and its related forms come from the Latin verb ignorare, “not to know.”  ignore  Initially the English verb ignore meant “to be ignorant of.”  Like “J’ignore” in modern French, “I ignore” meant simply, “I don’t know.”  In modern English ignore means “to refuse to take notice (of).”  ignorance and ignorant  Both these words relate to the fact or condition of not knowing something.  As everyone is born ignorant, no shame should attach to the mere fact of being ignorant.  However, the words have acquired negative connotations and both are often used to insult, hurt, or condemn.  The word noble goes back to Latin nōscere, “to know.”  The best-known people were members of the ruling classes.  Their families had the wealth to buy the horses, weapons, and armor that enabled them to make a name for themselves.  Being “known” conferred status.  The word for being known became a class marker.  Noble began as a word that referred to a social and economic class, but gradually acquired additional meanings.  Initially, ignoble meant “not noble,” that is, not born to the noble social class.  Because the privileged class saw itself as superior in every way, noble came to mean “characterized by moral superiority,” and ignoble came to mean “morally flawed.”  https://www.dailywritingtips.com/ignorance-ignominy-and-other-ig-words/

Fine words butter no parsnips (or sometimes soft words ... or fair words ...), meaning that words alone are useless, especially flattering phrases or fine promises, and you should judge people by what they do rather than by what they say is a proverb, which is at least 400 years old:  the first example given in the big Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1639:  “Faire words butter noe parsnips”.  The link between butter and flattery is easy to understand.  We have had the verb to butter up, to flatter someone lavishly, in the language at least since the early eighteenth century.  It and the proverb share the image of fine words being liberally applied to smooth their subject and oil the process of persuasion.  Parsnips were featured in the proverb early on because they were common in the English diet and were usually buttered before being put on the table.  (Nothing particularly special about that, however:  foreign visitors often commented in disgust at the English habit of using butter to cook almost everything.)  Nigel Rees, in Oops, Pardon Mrs Arden!, quotes a stanza from Epigrammes of 1651 by a Thames waterman known as the Water Poet, John Taylor:  Words are but wind that do from men proceed; None but Chamelions on bare Air can feed; Great men large hopeful promises may utter; But words did never Fish or Parsnips butter.  This shows that other foodstuffs were involved in the saying at that time—indeed there’s an example in the OED from 1645:  “Fair words butter no fish”—and that it’s the act of buttering that’s the key part of the saying.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-but2.htm 

Herbed Butter Parsnips  RECIPE COURTESY OF TYLER FLORENCE  4-6 servings

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/herbed-butter-parsnips-recipe-1946224

A holy site where any casual viewer of Jeopardy! can appreciate the profound weight of the program’s 36-year history.  A dissertation-level study on how the show’s nightly trivia affected the ambient knowledge of the American mind.  An exacting catalog of the countless number of times that Alex Trebek has shepherded us through categories of potpourri, of arcane word games, of 19th-century novelists whose names begin with the letter E.  Right you are.  On the fan-run J! Archive, a would-be scholar can click on any season, from any year, and bear witness to thousands and thousands of tabulated episodes.  Jeopardy!, now in its 36th season, celebrates the brain’s limitless capacity to carry inessential insight.  The archive is of the same breed.  Those breezy interviews that Trebek conducts with the contestants after the first commercial break?  The site’s moderators transcribe them like they’re court records.  There is an incisive mathematical breakdown of the scoring over the course of a given episode.  There are running tallies of the money totals after every question.  Just as Trekkies can dictate vows in Klingon, and Tolkien adherents can parse Quenya script, a small niche of Jeopardy! obsessives have articulated their exclusive fandom in an extremely on-brand way, ensuring that no Daily Double goes forgotten, and guaranteeing that every Trebekism is accounted for.  Luke Winkie  https://www.polygon.com/tv/2020/1/6/21048003/jeopardy-champions-questions-j-archive

The Creator of The Good Place Introduces The Life You Can Save by Michael Schur   I first came across Peter Singer in 2006, via an article he wrote in the New York Times Magazine.  He was discussing the “Golden Age of Philanthropy.”  Warren Buffett had just pledged $37 billion to the Gates Foundation and other charities, which on an inflation-adjusted basis, Singer noted, was “more than double the lifetime total given away by two of the philanthropic giants of the past, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, put together.”  Singer posed some simple questions:  What should a billionaire give to charity?  What should we (non-billionaires, ostensibly) give?  And how do we calculate these numbers?  What struck me about Singer’s arguments was that the amount in question, for him, wasn’t theoretical. It was calculable.  There is an amount of money one needs to live a decent life—to pay for a reasonable amount of rent, clothes, food, and leisure.  And if you have more than that amount, he posited, you should give it away—because you don’t need it, and someone else does.  Ten years later, I was researching various topics in moral philosophy for a TV show I was developing, called The Good Place.  As I drifted into utilitarianism—a philosophy arguing that the moral worth of an action is based on its consequences—Singer popped up again and again.  With each of his articles or books that I read, I found myself reacting with the same mix of fascination, dismay, excitement, and disbelief.  His writing was clear, unambiguous, uncompromising, and, at times, shocking.  Arguments I at first found to be absurd would wind up seeming eminently reasonable . . . and vice versa.  Read more at https://lithub.com/michael-schur-on-peter-singers-moral-challenge-to-the-rest-of-us/

Arthur Wynne, the English-born New York journalist who invented the crossword puzzle in 1913, would be astonished to see how computers are being used to generate today's cryptic crosswords, and amazed at the latest development, in which addicts are challenged to solve crosswords on the Internet.  His invention has become the world's most popular word game, attracting millions of devotees, and has boosted the sales of newspapers, magazines, dictionaries, notepads, pencils, and erasers for nearly 90 years.  Wynne had the job of creating puzzles for the New York World's eight-page Fun section when the editor asked him to invent a new word game.  He recalled a puzzle from his childhood called Magic Squares, in which a given group of words had to be arranged so their letters would read the same way across and down.  He designed a larger and more complex grid, and provided a clue for each word.  The World published Wynne's first Word-cross puzzle on December 21, 1913 as one of the Fun section's "mental exercises."  It was diamond-shaped, with easy clues.  It was an instant winner, soon adopted by other newspapers.  Wynne experimented with different shapes, including a circle, before settling on the rectangle.  The word-cross became known as a cross-word, and as with many hyphenated words, the hyphen was eventually dropped.  Eric Shackle  http://www.fun-with-words.com/first_crossword.html

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has sparked outrage over a speech in which he urged newer residents of NYC to "go back" where they come from at a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event on January 20, 2020.  "Go back to Iowa, you go back to Ohio.  New York City belongs to the people that were here and made New York City what it is," he said in remarks at the National Action Network's MLK Day celebration, to cheers and claps from the audience and, at times, politicians sitting behind him.   His comments on gentrification and newcomers to the city, though they received cheers at the event and are all-too familiar to readers of Gothamist's comment section, were derided on social media as exclusionary and divisive.  Sydney Pereira  https://gothamist.com/news/brooklyn-borough-president-eric-adams-tells-nyc-newcomers-go-back-ohio

On October 9, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson talked by telephone to each other over a two-mile wire stretched between Cambridge and Boston.  It was the first wire conversation ever held.  Yesterday afternoon (January 25) the same two men talked by telephone to each other over a 3,400-mile wire between New York and San Francisco.  Dr. Bell, the veteran inventor of the telephone, was in New York, and Mr. Watson, his former associate, was on the other side of the continent.  They heard each other much more distinctly than they did in their first talk thirty-eight years ago.  Alexis C. Madrigal  https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/the-first-transcontinental-call-was-made-today-in-1915/70140/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2216  January 27, 2020

Charles Ephraim Burchfield (1893-1967) was an American painter, best known for his watercolor landscapes.  Burchfield was born April 9, 1893, in Ashtabula Harbor, Ohio.  Five years later, his family moved to Salem, Ohio, where he graduated from high school as class valedictorian in 1911.  He attended the Cleveland School of Art from 1912-1916 and studied with Henry G. Keller, Frank N. Wilcox, and William J. Eastman.  In 1921, Burchfield moved to Buffalo, New York, to work as a designer for the prominent wallpaper company, M.H. Birge & Sons Company.  Best known for his romantic, often fantastic depictions of nature, watercolorist Burchfield developed a unique style of watercolor painting that reflected distinctly American subjects and his profound respect for nature.  The Burchfield Penney Art Center at SUNY Buffalo State features the largest public collection of works by Burchfield.  Within the intertwined galleries of the museum, you will find an ever-changing display of his paintings and sketches, a recreation of his studio, the Charles E. Burchfield Rotunda (specifically designed to highlight his seasonal works), and even references to Burchfield in the building's architecture.  According to Burchfield's friend and colleague Edward Hopper, "The work of Charles Burchfield is most decidedly founded, not on art, but on life, and the life that he knows and loves best."  President Lyndon B. Johnson eulogized the artist in a letter dated November 14, 1967.  President Johnson wrote "He [Burchfield] was artist to America."  https://www.burchfieldpenney.org/collection/charles-e-burchfield/

Good cheese shops and some grocery stores will offer a few types of feta, differentiated by origin, milk type, and packaging technique.  Sheep's milk fetas (the classic option) tend to be sharpest, while goat's and cow's milk versions are milder.  At the end of the day, though, the most important thing to look for when buying feta is how it's packaged.  You should always buy feta in brine.  By "feta in brine," we mean the stuff that comes packed in a plastic container full of liquid—in this case, salt water—as opposed to the pre-crumbled or vacuum-sealed varieties.  Not only does the brine intensify flavor, elongate feta's life span, and improve its creamy texture, but it's useful as a secondary ingredient.  You can use that brine to marinate chicken, thin out whipped feta dips, build flavor in broths and braising liquids, and cook grains and beans.  It's a buy-one-thing-get-another-thing-free type of situation, and like feta, it rules.  Alex Delany  https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/primers/article/feta-guide

Roasted feta with grapes and olives  Break the block of feta up into four irregular pieces, then nestle them among the grapes and olives.  Drizzle with olive oil, then bake, 20 to 25 minutes, until the grapes are softened and the feta is browned in spots.  Serve right away with crusty bread. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com › recipes › roasted-feta-grapes-and-olives 

From ‘difficult’ works to Instapoetry, Erica Wagner picks the most important book trends of the past decade.  When people set down their devices, they look for beautiful books:  publishers are recognising they are willing to pay for something special.  Consider Visual Editions, launched in 2010:  I first came across their work when I saw the second book they produced, Tree of Codes by the American author Jonathan Safran Foer.  Tree of Codes is an extraordinary book:  the text is adapted from the Polish writer Bruno Schultz’s Street of Crocodiles:  the pages are die-cut, some of Schultz’s words carefully removed to create Foer’s tale.  Beautifully printed in red and black, it is both art object and literary text:  a wonder to hold and to read.  More traditional publishers have recognised that readers want to feel part of something special:  in 2015, Faber & Faber began to produce special editions for ‘Faber Members’:  their first production a specially bound copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant.  A couple of years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s sumptuous volume The Lost Words, which celebrates the natural world in words and images, became a quiet sensation, with spontaneous crowdfunding campaigns springing up to get the book into regional schools.  http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20191210-how-reading-has-changed-in-the-2010s

The Real ID Act of 2005, Pub.L. 109–13, 119 Stat. 302, enacted May 11, 2005, is an Act of Congress that modifies U.S. federal law pertaining to security, authentication, and issuance procedure standards for driver's licenses and identity documents, as well as various immigration issues pertaining to terrorism.  The law sets forth requirements for state driver's licenses and ID cards to be accepted by the federal government for "official purposes", as defined by the Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security.  The Secretary of Homeland Security has defined "official purposes" as boarding commercially operated airline flights, and entering federal buildings and nuclear power plants, although the law gives the Secretary unlimited authority to require a "federal identification" for any other purposes.  The Real ID Act implements the following:  Title II of the act establishes new federal standards for state-issued driver's licenses and non-driver identification cards.  Changing visa limits for temporary workers, nurses, and Australian citizens.  Funding some reports and pilot projects related to border security.  Introducing rules covering "delivery bonds" (similar to bail, but for aliens who have been released pending hearings).  Updating and tightening laws on application for asylum and deportation of aliens for terrorism.  Waiving laws that interfere with construction of physical barriers at the borders.  Starting October 1, 2020, every air traveler will need a REAL ID-compliant license or another acceptable form of identification (such as a US Passport, U.S. Passport Card, U.S. military card, or DHS trusted traveler card, e.g. NEXUS, SENTRI, etc.) for domestic air travel.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act

The REAL ID Act establishes minimum security standards for license issuance and production and prohibits federal agencies from accepting for certain purposes driver’s licenses and identification cards from states not meeting the Act’s minimum standards.  The purposes covered by the Act are:  accessing federal facilities, entering nuclear power plants, and, boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft.  Link to more information at https://www.dhs.gov/real-id

mien • \MEEN\ • noun. 1 : air or bearing especially as expressive of attitude or personality : demeanor  2 : appearance, aspect.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mien

The Iu Mien language is the language spoken by the Iu Mien people in China (where they are considered a constituent group of the Yao peoples), Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and, more recently, the United States in diaspora.  Like other Hmong-Mien languages, it is tonal and monosyllabic.  Read extensive article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iu_Mien_language

Word of the Day   Q.E.D.  phrase  (mathematics, dated)  Initialism of quod erat demonstrandum (“what had to be proved; what was to be demonstrated”): placed at the end of a mathematical proof to show that the theorem under discussion is proved. (by extension Used to indicate that an argument or proposition is proved by the existence of some fact or scenario. Q.E.D. noun  Some fact or scenario that proves an argument or proposition; a justification.  January 24 is marked by the United Nations as the International Day of Education to recognize the importance of recognize the importance of ensuring equitable and inclusive education at all levels so that people may acquire the knowledge and skills needed to participate fully in society and contribute towards sustainable development.  Wiktionary

January 23, 2020  In the night sky, the constellation Orion is most well-known for his belt, a row of three luminous stars.  For the last few months, though, astronomers around the world have been particularly interested in his right shoulder, the home of a star called Betelgeuse, one of the brightest stars in the sky.  Betelgeuse—which, yes, is pronounced like Beetlejuice—has been dimming more than it ever had before.  Astronomers have long known that Betelgeuse is aging and, like many old stars, is bound to explode sooner or later.  Could this mystery dimming mean that a supernova might be imminent?  The view would be mind-boggling, day or night.  The Orion constellation can be seen from nearly everywhere on Earth, which means nearly everyone could see the exploding star.  It would easily cut through the artificial-light pollution that prevents 80 percent of the world—and a staggering 99 percent of the United States and Europe—from experiencing a clear view of the night sky.  While a Betelgeuse supernova would eventually fade, its mark on the planet would remain, and not just within the ether of the internet.  When stars explode, they release a cascade of newly forged elements into space.  These elements glide across the universe inside particles of dust, settling on whatever they encounter.  Astronomers have detected this stardust all over Earth, inside mud on the ocean floor and snow in Antarctica.  It is these explosions and the cosmic droplets they unleashed that helped give rise, over eons, to other stars, planets, and, in our case, life.  Marina Koren  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/betelgeuse-supernova/605251/

THOUGHT FOR TODAY  There are two ways of spreading light:  to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. - Edith Wharton, novelist (24 Jan 1861-1937)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2215  January 24, 2020