A kangaroo court is
a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice and often carries
little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides. The term kangaroo court is
often erroneously believed to have its origin from the courts of Australia's
penal colonies. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first published instance of the term
as from an American source, A Stray Yankee in Texas by Philip
Paxton, published in the year 1853. There are, however, earlier instances
of the term including an 1841 article in The Daily Picayune in
New Orleans that quotes another publication, the Concordia
Intelligencer reporting several lynchings instituted "on charges
of the Kangaroo court." Some
sources suggest that it may have been popularized during the California Gold Rush of 1849 to which many thousands of Australians
flocked. In consequence of the
Australian diggers' presence, it may have come about as a description of the
hastily carried-out proceedings used to deal with the issue of claim jumping miners.
Ostensibly, the term comes from the notion of justice proceeding
"by leaps", like a kangaroo--in other words,
"jumping over" (intentionally ignoring) evidence that would be in
favour of the defendant. An alternative
theory is that as these courts are often convened quickly to deal with an
immediate issue, they are called kangaroo courts as they have "jumped
up" out of nowhere like a kangaroo.
Another possibility is that the phrase could refer to the pouch of a
kangaroo, meaning the court is in someone's pocket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_court Kangaroo court Find synonyms and link to antonyms at https://www.powerthesaurus.org/kangaroo_court/synonyms
Madison
Square is a public square formed by the intersection
of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in
the New York City borough of Manhattan.
The square was named for James Madison, fourth President of
the United States. The focus
of the square is Madison Square
Park, a 6.2-acre (2.5-hectare) public park, which is bounded on the east
by Madison Avenue (which
starts at the park's southeast corner at 23rd Street); on the south by 23rd
Street; on the north by 26th Street;
and on the west by Fifth Avenue and Broadway as they cross. The park and the square are at the northern
(uptown) end of the Flatiron District neighborhood of
Manhattan. The neighborhood to the north
and west of the park is NoMad ("NOrth of
MADison Square Park") and to the north and east is Rose Hill. Madison Square is probably best known around
the world for providing the name of Madison
Square Garden, a sports arena and its successor which were located
just northeast of the park for 47 years, until 1925. The current Madison Square Garden, the fourth
such building, is not in the area.
Notable buildings around Madison Square include the Flatiron Building, the Toy Center, the New York Life
Building, the New York
Merchandise Mart, the Appellate Division Courthouse, the Met
Life Tower, and One Madison Park, a 50-story condominium
tower. Read much more and see pictures
at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Square_and_Madison_Square_Park See also https://www.msg.com/madison-square-garden
“Toy libraries,” where children
could borrow most any kind of toy from a shiny red fire wagon to a quacking
Donald Duck, brightened the lives of thousands of San Diego children during the
dark days of the Great Depression. A
project of the federal Works Progress Administration, the program operated in
large cities across the country, and sponsored more than twenty toy lending
centers in San Diego in the late 1930s. It
began in San Diego as the “Toy and Furniture Repair Project” in December 1936. In a former industrial building at Main and
Crosby Streets, WPA workers cleaned and repaired 2000 toys collected by the
Veterans of Foreign Wars. Most of the
toys had come from the blackened ruins of Whitney’s Department Store—a downtown
merchandiser that had burned in a spectacular fire on October 21, 1936. The next year San Diego’s first “toy library”
opened from a bungalow on the campus of Alice Birney Elementary School. Other toy centers quickly followed. Every time a toy was returned in good
condition, the child received a star after their name. Twenty-five stars awarded the child a toy they
could keep permanently. Remarkably, many
San Diego children had never had toys.
In the hard times of the 1930s, toys were a luxury that many parents
could not afford. “Yesterday I went home
and washed my doll clothes,” wrote an excited San Ysidro girl to her local
library. “It is nice to get a new toy
every week. We never had any toys in our
lives before.” Like other WPA programs,
the toy loan libraries ended by 1943, shortly after the start of World War
II. http://www.sandiegoyesterday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Toy-Loan-Libraries.pdf
Wooden lace of Russian
architecture Natural building material in Russia has long
served wood and clay. Wood as the main
construction material was used since ancient times. The outer parts of houses were richly
decorated with wood carvings, motifs of which had a magical protective
meaning. See beautiful illustration
at https://allrus.me/wooden-lace-of-russian-architecture/
RULES OF PROCEDURE AND PRACTICE IN THE SENATE
WHEN SITTING ON IMPEACHMENT TRIALS [Revised pursuant to S.
Res. 479, 99-2, Aug. 16, 1986] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SMAN-113/html/SMAN-113-pg223.htm
'OK Boomer' makes it to
the Supreme Court January 15, 2020 U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John
Roberts--who will preside over a Senate trial--was flexing his knowledge of
intergenerational catchphrases. The
Supreme Court justices were hearing a case concerning the standard a federal
employee must meet to show that his employer had engaged in unlawful age
discrimination, when Roberts, 64, uttered the rallying cry of members of Generation
Z. What if a hiring person were to say,
"OK Boomer," Roberts asked. "Is that actionable?" Laughter ensued in the courtroom. The lawyer at the podium, Roman Martinez, who
was born in 1978, didn't skip a beat even though it was likely the first time
the phrase had been uttered in the hallowed chamber. "Well if the speech in the workplace . . . calling
someone 'Boomer' or saying unflattering things about them in age, when
considering them for a position, then yes of course," he said. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/15/politics/ok-boomer-john-roberts/index.html
Sneers and snide coincide. Boomer (for no good reason) joined the ranks
of snarky remarks by 2019. Other
put-downs include: bean counters for accountants, shopkeepers (aimed by
Nazis at the English during World War II), and who knows how many dismissive
terms for lawyers, librarians and teachers.
Bean
counter is a disparaging term for an accountant, or anyone excessively
concerned with statistical records or accounts.
Bean counters, that is, 'counters
where beans were sold', came first. The
US newspaper the Lewiston Evening Journal referred to these
in June 1907: The Clerk, seeing himself
worsted by numbers . . . walked over to
the bean counter where he again busied himself putting up packages for the
evening trade. This was followed by bean counters, that is, 'machines that count
beans', which meaning is cited in the Pennsylvania newspaper The New
Castle News, March 1916: Then,
lastly, we get to bean counters, that is, 'accountants'. The earliest modern reference I can find to
the use of 'bean counter' with this meaning is in the US newspaper The
Fort Wayne News and Sentinel, February 1919, in an article titled The
Bean Counter: The son of Josephus has
been promoted in the quartermaster's department. "I suppose," remarked the Gentleman
at the Adjacent Desk "I suppose that somebody has to count the beans for
Colonel Roosevelt's fighting sons."
However, it is likely that the expression wasn't coined in English but
is a translation from German. The German
word 'Erbsenzähler' (Erbsen = beans and zähler = counter) was used in print by
Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen in Simplicissimus',
1668, with the same 'pedantic accountant' meaning that we now use. It is possible that the English usage came
from a later and separate coinage, but unlikely. The phrase appears in English in Australia
soon after the first use in the USA and again this probably ultimately derived
from Germany. An example is found in The Parliamentary Debates of the
Australian House of Representatives, 1928:
It is not a bean counter's bill.
There is no attempt to make any savings.
This insinuation that 'bean counters' were penny-pinching accountants
who couldn't see the bigger picture chimes in well with the no-nonsense
reputation of Australian politicians.
The phrase flourished down under during the 1930/40s before becoming
commonplace throughout the English-speaking world later in the 20th
century. Copyright Gary Martin https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bean-counter.html
January 14, 2020 Lit Hub
Daily The National Book
Critics Circle Award finalists—in autobiography, biography,
criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—have been announced. |
Publishers Weekly The new National
Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, author Jason Reynolds, plans to “deputize
hundreds of young storytellers” in towns around the country. |
Washington Post Kiley Reid, Paul Yoon,
Jessica Andrews, and more take the Lit Hub Author Questionnaire. https://lithub.com/
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2211
January 16, 2020
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