Thomas Tusser was born in Essex, England, in 1524.  Employed as a “singing boy” from a young age, he was educated at Eton and King’s College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.  It seems likely that he also spent time at court.  Around 1552, Tusser left court life, married, and began farming.  He eventually farmed in Suffolk, Ipswich, Norfolk, and Norwich.  Though debt and instability marked his life as a farmer, he is remembered for his contributions to agricultural writing.  First published in 1557 as A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, Tusser’s long, formally diverse work eventually grew into Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie to as many of Good Huswifery (1573).  An informational poem, a calendar, and a how-to book, Tusser’s work was widely read by laypeople and nobles alike; it is thought to have been one of the most popular books of poetry during the time of Elizabeth I.  Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie was aimed at small farmers and was one of the first defenses of enclosure, a practice that fenced in communal land.  Tusser praised such virtues as individualism and thrift.  Though his poem was enormously popular in his lifetime and continued to be reprinted through the 19th century, Tusser himself gave up farming later in life; an outbreak of the plague forced him back to Cambridge, and he died in London in 1580.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-tusser

A special occasion cake was a “seed cake,” as Thomas Tusser wrote in his wildly popular verse work on farming, husbandry, and housekeeping, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1573), in which he advises the British housewife to prepare a seed cake at the harvest.  “Wife sometime this weeke, if the weather hold clere, an end of wheat sowing, we make for this yere.  Remember you therfore, though I Do it not:  The seede Cake, the Pasties, and Furmenty pot.”  After the agricultural benchmark of sowing wheat is completed, likely in September, the housewife should make a seed cake or a pasty (or hand-held pie) or furmenty (a fortified porridge) to mark the moment.  Tusser advises his ideal housewife to make a seed cake to mark the harvest, and, as the proliferation of seed cake recipes in the manuscript and printed recipe archive attests, prepare seed cakes, to mark the harvest or other occasions.  Seed cake is a rich buttery treat, scented with rosewater and sack (sweet Spanish wine), spiced with caraway and mace, and best served with a cup of warm tea (in my opinion).  The ingredients for this delicious recipe are local--rosewater, caraway, flour, butter, eggs--as well as imported--mace, sugar, and sack.  The caraway in it is potent, but totally delightful.  The other flavors give it a wonderful scent.  It’s sweet, but not too sweet, and wonderfully leavened by the eggs.  Marissa Nicosia  https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2019/03/12/seed-cake-recipe-thomas-tusser/

There's No Better Time to… Read a Cookbook Like a Book-Book:  It's less about the cooking and more about the comfort by Amanda Shapiro   I saw Mark Bittman’s iconic tome, How to Cook Everything—the honeybee-yellow “Completely Revised Twentieth Anniversary Edition” to be precise—and felt an overwhelming urge to open it.  I flipped to a random page and read a sidebar:  “15 Thirty-Second Ways to Jazz Up Plain Rice.”  (“1. Stir in a tablespoon or more butter.”)  Further down the page, I read a section called The Basics of Rice Pilaf. It was boring, but I found myself taking deeper breaths.  On the next page, I read a recipe for Chicken Paella.  (“Sometimes perceived as a major production, paella is nothing more than a combination of rice and something else.”)  I read another sidebar, “17 Grain Dishes That Make Good Leftovers.”  I flipped to one of the recipes:  Stuck-Pot Rice with Potato Crust.  I read the recipe and Bittman’s suggested variation (swap the potato for pita).  I had no desire to make it, but I felt oddly calm.  https://www.bonappetit.com/story/read-a-cookbook-like-a-book-book

Judge Judy was an American arbitration-based reality court show presided over by Judy Sheindlin, a retired Manhattan family court judge.  The show features Sheindlin adjudicating real-life small claim disputes within a simulated courtroom set.  Prior to the proceedings, all parties involved must sign arbitration contracts agreeing to Sheindlin's ruling, handling and production staff management.  The series is in first-run syndication and distributed by CBS Television Distribution.  The program has won three Emmy awards and has had the highest ratings in courtroom programming in the United States.  The program debuted in 1996 and its 24th season premiered in September 2019.  In March 2015, Sheindlin and CBS Television Distribution extended their contract through the program's 25th season (2020–21), at which point, as Sheindlin revealed in a March 2020 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the Judge Judy series will officially conclude its series run for an all new TV series entitled Judy Justice.  At least one case in the series was allegedly contrived by the litigants just to receive monetary payment from the program.  In April 2013, former litigants from a 2010 airing of the show revealed they conspired together in fabricating a lawsuit in which the logical outcome would be to grant payment to the plaintiff.  The operation, devised by musicians Kate Levitt and Jonathan Coward, was successful:  Sheindlin awarded the plaintiff (Levitt) $1,000.  The litigants involved also walked away with an appearance fee of $250 each and an all-expense-paid vacation to Hollywood, California.  In reality, all the litigants in question—plaintiffs and defendants alike—were friends who split the earnings up among each other.  It was also reported that the show's producers were suspicious of the sham all along, but chose to look the other way.  The lawsuit was over the fictitious death of a cat as a result of a television crushing it.  Sheindlin and her program appeared on the November 26, 2017, broadcast of Curb Your Enthusiasm, presiding over a sketch comedy court case with Larry David as the plaintiff who unsuccessfully sued over custody of a sick plant.  The pseudo-Judge Judy case assumed the appearance of an actual case from Sheindlin's program, taking place from the show's courtroom set with trademarked voice-over briefs, theme music and audience response.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Judy  See also Larry takes Mrs. Shapiro to court after break in and plant theft.  Mrs. Shapiro countersues on grounds of plant abuse.  Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 9 Episode 9 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub2Eryok-k8  3:27

April 24, 2020  The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum has unveiled a collection of governor bobbleheads, including ones for DeWine, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers.  The bobbleheads, which will ship in July 2020, are available for preorder through the museum’s online store and cost $25 plus shipping of $8.  The museum will donate $5 from every purchase to the Protect The Heroes’ fund’s 100 Million Mask Challenge.  The Bobblehead Hall of Fame has already raised more than $160,000 thanks to its previously released bobbleheads of Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci.  Troy L. Smith    https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/04/gov-mike-dewine-now-has-his-own-bobblehead-doll.html

Hunger has no boundaries.  It affects millions of children, seniors and households in communities across the country.  That’s why Feeding America has programs to reach children, seniors and families no matter where they live or spend time.  At senior centers or schools, in the city or countryside, Feeding America programs get food to people where they are and when they need it most.  Read about Feeding America’s eight programs and donate if you wish at https://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/hunger-relief-programs 

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  I don't need time.  What I need is a deadline. - Duke Ellington, jazz pianist, composer, and conductor (29 Apr 1899-1974)

Belgian citizens are being urged to eat more potatoes as the country faces a massive oversupply as a result of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  CNBC reported April 28, 2020 that a top official representing the country's potato industry group Belgapom said plans are underway to work with grocery chains to encourage weekly consumption of potato products such as french fries in an attempt to prevent the food from going to waste.  “We’re working with supermarkets to see whether we can launch a campaign asking Belgians to do something for the sector by eating fries—especially frozen fries—twice a week during the coronavirus crisis,” Romain Cools told CNBC.  “What we are trying to do is to avoid food waste, because every lost potato is a loss."  Much of the oversupply is being blamed on Belgium's decision, like that of many other countries, to shutter bars and restaurants as well as other public places to stop the spread of the coronavirus.  The country has confirmed more than 47,000 cases of the disease.  Whether the crisis abates in the coming months, Cools said, is still uncertain and leading to growers seeking other uses for potatoes, including biofuel.  “A lot of people are really optimistic in my country and in the potato sector,” he added.  “But to be very honest, as we say in Dutch, I’m holding my heart for the months to come.”  John Bowden 

https://thehill.com/policy/international/495021-belgian-potato-glut-leads-to-calls-to-eat-fries-twice-a-week

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2261  April 29, 2020

I love mystery stories.  I just finished reading a series that was set in a small town with a Carnegie Library.  The books mentioned that the first Carnegie Library had been built in Dunfermline, Scotland, by Andrew Carnegie, the wealthy Scottish-American industrialist.  Carnegie migrated to the United States with his parents in his teens.  He became wealthy in the railroad and the steel industries.  Later in life, he gave grants to communities so that they could build public libraries.  Nearly 1700 libraries were built in this country with Carnegie’s grants.  From December 1901 through February 1917, Florida received funding to build 10 Carnegie public libraries.  Of the 10, three have been torn down but the other buildings are still in operation though not always used as libraries.  The Jacksonville Public Library’s original building was funded in part by Carnegie and now houses a law firm.  Four academic libraries were also funded in Florida--Florida A&M, Stetson, Rollins, and Fessenden Academy.  Tallahassee was offered the money for a library but turned it down as Carnegie’s rules said the library had to serve everyone.  As a result, the money went to the State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students (now Florida A&M).  Fessenden Academy Library was absorbed into the Marion Public School District and the building is still in use.  Stetson’s library is now Sampson Hall.  Carnegie wanted not only to fund a library project in a community but to keep it growing.  The financial restrictions on the grant were that the communities had to have building sites and raise matching funds.  The communities had to agree to use public funds to support the libraries and spend at least 10 percent of the amount of the grant annually on operations and maintenance.  In his youth, Carnegie felt that he had benefited greatly from access to the personal library of one of his patrons.  He felt that if he were to acquire wealth, he would use it to see that others could have the opportunities he had.  The original library in Dunfermline has an inscription over the door that reads “Let there be light.”  Carnegie felt that libraries provided that light.  I believe they still do.  Evelyn C. McDonald   https://fernandinaobserver.com/uncategorized/let-there-be-light/

What's the meaning of the phrase  'As keen as mustard'?  Very enthusiastic.  There are many similes in English that have the form 'as x as y'.  'As keen as mustard' is typical and, although rather archaic, is worth a closer look.  The Olde England of folk-memory conjures up pictures of ale-quaffing yeomen tucking into sides of roast beef. That may be fanciful, but the long-standing enthusiasm for the Sunday roast was real, and was reflected in the words of Richard Leveridge's 1735 song Roast beef of old England.  Mustard was an essential accompaniment to beef.  It became associated with vigour and enthusiasm because it added zest and flavour.  By the early 20th century, the association was so strong that the word was used like this:  1925 E. Wallace, in King by Night:  "That fellow is mustard."  People and things weren't just like mustard, they were mustard.  The phrase 'hot stuff' comes from the same notion.  Mustard's hot and zesty reputation wasn't limited to food.  It was also considered a cure for colds and fevers.  The phrase is first recorded in William Walker's exhaustively titled Phraseologia Anglo-Latina, or phrases of the English and Latin tongue; together with Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina, 1672:  "As keen as mustard."

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/as-keen-as-mustard.html

A limited liability partnership (LLP) is a flexible legal and tax entity that allows partners to benefit from economies of scale by working together while also reducing their liability for the actions of other partners.  Limited liability partnerships allow for a partnership structure where each partner's liabilities is limited to the amount they put into the business.  Having business partners means spreading the risk, leveraging individual skills and expertise, and establishing a division of labor.  Limited liability means that if the partnership fails, creditors cannot go after a partner's personal assets or income.  LLPs are common in professional business like law firms, accounting firms, and wealth managers.  Andrew Beattie  https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/090214/limited-liability-partnership-llp-basics.asp

In consideration of the health of our visitors, volunteers, staff, and the community at large, the Wood County (Ohio) Museum is closed to the public effective Monday, March 16, 2020, and will remain closed through May 1, 2020.  MUSEUM EXHIBITS NOW ONLINE  UTOPIA:  A Visual Storytelling of Our Home  These images tell the stories of what makes Wood County so special, and remind us of the beauty that surrounds us every day.   A CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH:  Societal Response to Disease  Learn more about the pandemics that came before COVID-19.  Hand-washing and social distancing of the last hundred years.  CHASING THE WHITE RABBIT:  An Historical Look at American Mental Illness  Follow the misconceptions and advancements in mental health.  WOOD COUNTY (non)DRIVING TOUR (audio) Take an audio trip around Wood County with stories about Devil's Hole Road, the Great Black Fire of North Baltimore, the Legacy of Edward Ford, and much more. LISTEN NOW  http://www.woodcountyhistory.org/  Thank you, Muse reader! 

“A little while later I visited the new Bibliothèque Nationale, the big--the unbelievably vertigo-inspiringly enormous--library, out at the other end of the quai in the Thirteenth.  It seems to have been designed by a committee made up of Michel Foucault, Jacques Tati, and the production designer of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  The whole thing is set up, way up, on a wooden platform the size of six or seven football fields, high up off the street.  There is an unbelievably steep stairs, leading up to this plateau . . . Then there are four glass skyscrapers each one set at one of the corners of the platform, and all very handsome, in a kind of early-sixties . . . way.  The vast space has been planked out with teak boards, to make it 'warmer,' but this just makes it more slippery.  They have had to put down cheap-looking runners on a sticky backing, to keep people from breaking legs.  (Apparently there were quite a few victims early on.)”    http://booksasfood.blogspot.com/2018/07/at-bibliotheque.html  From Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik 

Scottsdale Arizona's McDowell Sonoran Preserve offers more than 215 miles of trails in 30,500 acres of Sonoran Desert.  See list of trails with length and elevation gain at https://www.mcdowellsonoran.org/visit-the-preserve/trailheads/  In 1991, the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy incorporated as a non-profit 501(c)3 and joined the Land Trust Alliance, a worldwide land conservation movement.  Contact information:  McDowell Sonoran Conservancy  7729 East Greenway Road, Suite 100  Scottsdale, AZ 85260  Phone:  (480) 998-7971info@mcdowellsonoran.org  https://www.mcdowellsonoran.org/about-us/history/

The largest country in the world is Russia with a total area of 17,098,242 Km² (6,601,665 mi²) and a land area of 16,376,870 Km² (6,323,142 mi²), equivalent to 11% of the total world's landmass of 148,940,000 Km² (57,510,000 square miles).  See list of countries (and dependencies) ranked by area and link to Most Populous Countries at https://www.worldometers.info/geography/largest-countries-in-the-world/

The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, located in Milwaukee, unveiled a bobblehead of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on April 24, 2020.  The museum will donate $5 from every Governor DeWine bobblehead sold to the Protect the Heroes fund in support of the 100 Million Mask Challenge.  The Hall of Fame and Museum has already raised more than $160,000 through sales of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx bobbleheads.  The Gov. DeWine bobbleheads are only available through the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum's online store and are $25 each plus a shipping charge of $8 per order.  They will ship in July 2020.  https://www.toledoblade.com/local/politics/2020/04/24/ohio-governor-mike-dewine-bobblehead-unveiled/stories/20200424178  See also https://www.bobbleheadhall.com/

Writer Nikolai Gogol first referenced bobblehead dolls in 1842 in the Russian short story “The Overcoat.”  He described the main character, Akaky, as having a neck, which was, “like the neck of plaster cats which wag their heads."  https://www.bobbleheadhall.com/history/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2260  April 27, 2020 

A staff writer for the New Yorker since 1986, Adam Gopnik was born in Philadelphia and raised in Montreal.  He received his B.A. in Art History from McGill University, before completing his graduate work at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.  His first essay in The New Yorker, "Quattrocento Baseball" appeared in May of 1986 and he served as the magazine’s art critic from 1987 to 1995.  That year, he left New York to live and write in Paris, where he wrote the magazine’s “Paris Journal” for the next five years.  His expanded collection of his essays from Paris, Paris To the Moon, appeared in 2000, and was called by the New York Times “the finest book on France in recent years.”  While in Paris, he began work on an adventure novel, The King In The Window, which was published in 2005, and which the Journal of Fantasy & Science Fiction called “a spectacularly fine children’s novel . . . children’s literature of the highest order, which means literature of the highest order.”  He still often writes from Paris for the New Yorker, has edited the anthology Americans In Paris for the Library of America, and has written a number of introductions to new editions of works by Maupassant, Balzac, Proust, Victor Hugo and Alain-Fournier.  http://www.adamgopnik.com/bio

Quotes by Thomas Carlyle (1795 1881) British historian, satirical writer, essayist, translator, philosopher, mathematician, and teacher.  “May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.”  https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/48975-may-blessings-be-upon-the-head-of-cadmus-the-phoenicians  “What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us.  The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”  “My books are friends that never fail me."  “A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.”  “The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.”  https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/29951.Thomas_Carlyle

Red tape is an idiom that refers to excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules that is considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making.  It is usually applied to governments, corporations, and other large organizations.  Things often described as "red tape" include filling out paperwork, obtaining licenses, having multiple people or committees approve a decision and various low-level rules that make conducting one's affairs slower, more difficult, or both.  It is generally believed that the term originated with the Spanish administration of Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, in the early 16th century, who started to use red tape in an effort to modernize the administration that was running his vast empire.  The red tape was used to bind the most important administrative dossiers that required immediate discussion by the Council of State, and separate them from issues that were treated in an ordinary administrative way, which were bound with ordinary string.   Although they were not governing such a vast territory as Charles V, this practice of using red tape to separate the important dossiers that had to be discussed was quickly copied by the other modern European monarchs to speed up their administrative machines.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_tape

purple crocodile (Dutch:  Paarse krokodil) originates from a 2005 television advertisement by the Dutch insurance company OHRA promoting their lack of red tape.  The purple crocodile has since become a metaphor for bureaucracy in the Netherlands.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_crocodile

Adam Hochschild (pronunciation Hoch as in spoke; schild as in build) is the author of ten books; Rebel Cinderella:  From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes is his most recent.  Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays appeared in 2018, and  Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, in 2016.  Of his earlier books, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, the Gold Medal of the California Book Awards, and was a finalist for the National Book Award.  King Leopold’s Ghost:  A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and To End All Wars:  A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 were both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award.  https://journalism.berkeley.edu/person/adam_hochschild/  In the March 15, 2020 issue of The New York Times Book Review, historian Adam Hochschild describes his favorite childhood books as the “Freddy the Pig” series by Walter R. Brooks.  “ . . . in his First Animal Republic it was one animal, one vote—a great improvement over our Electoral College.”  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_the_Pig

Oosterwold is a green, agricultural area between Almere and Zeewolde.  Here, the area layout is entirely left to its own initiative.  This means that everyone can choose a lot in every location.  In addition to a clear number of rules, there are no restrictions regarding functions and lot sizes.  That is unique in the Netherlands.  Oosterwolders not only determine how their own home becomes.  They also deal with roads and paths, greenery, water and public space.  In addition, they all have to realize that, alone or with others.  Initiators in Oosterwold search everything themselves and then arrange everything that is needed.  No-one knows what Oosterwold looks like in the future.  That is determined by the own initiative.  See pictures at https://www.amsterdamwoont.nl/en/nieuwbouwlocatie/oosterwold-2/

All tequilas are mezcals, but not all mezcals are tequilas.  Tequila is a type of mezcal, much like how scotch and bourbon are types of whiskey.  According to spirits writer John McEvoy, mezcal is defined as any agave-based liquor.  This includes tequila, which is made in specific regions of Mexico and must be made from only blue agave (agave tequilana).  Mezcal can be made from more than 30 varieties of agave.  According to spirits writer Chris Tunstall, the most common varieties of agave used for mezcal are tobalá, tobaziche, tepeztate, arroqueño and espadín, which is the most common agave and accounts for up to 90% of mezcal.  Max Bonem  https://www.foodandwine.com/cocktails-spirits/differences-between-tequila-mezcal

Betsy Wyeth, longtime wife of acclaimed painter Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009), as well as his model, muse, and manager, died April 21, 2020 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania after a period of declining health at the age of 98.  Born Betsy James, Wyeth met her husband in 1939, when she was 17, and they soon married.  She often modeled for him, but her involvement in his career went much deeper.  She suggested subjects for him and critiqued his work, and she became the manager who was responsible for the business success behind her husband’s artistic genius.  It was Betsy Wyeth who suggested the creation of the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, which showcases Andrew Wyeth’s work as well as art created by his illustrator father, N.C. Wyeth, and the Wyeths’ painter son, Jamie Wyeth.  https://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/betsy-wyeth-1921-2020-model-manager-and-wife-of-painter-andrew-wyeth/

In the mid-1960s, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania—a rural community nestled in the historic Brandywine Valley—faced possible massive industrial development.  The impact would have dramatically changed the character and future of this area.  At the same time, and for decades thereafter, development proposed throughout the region, particularly in floodplain areas, threatened to devastate water supplies for numerous communities in southeastern Pennsylvania and northern Delaware, including the City of Wilmington.  Appreciating the need for rapid action, a group of local residents bought endangered land and founded the Brandywine Conservancy in 1967.  The first conservation easements, protecting more than five and one-half miles along the Brandywine, were granted in 1969.  Today, the Conservancy holds more than 483 conservation easements and has protected more than 64,500 acres from development in Chester and Delaware counties, Pennsylvania, and in New Castle County, Delaware.  The Conservancy is a leading local and national advocate for responsible land use, open space preservation and water protection.  The Conservancy focuses on integrating conservation with economic development through its Land Stewardship and Municipal Assistance programs, and works with individuals; state, county and municipal governments; and private organizations to permanently protect and conserve natural, cultural and scenic resources.  In 1971, the Conservancy opened the Brandywine River Museum of Art in the renovated Hoffman’s Mill, a former gristmill built in 1864 that was part of the Conservancy’s first preservation efforts.  The Museum has an international reputation for its unparalleled collection and its dedication to American art with primary emphasis on the art of the Brandywine region, American illustration, still life and landscape painting, and the work of the Wyeth family.  https://www.brandywine.org/brandywine/about/our-history  See also https://www.brandywine.org/museum

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding:  it is the deepest part of autobiography. - Robert Penn Warren, novelist and poet (24 Apr 1905-1989)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2259  April 24, 2020

How the Hudson River School Became America’s First Art Movement by Jessica Stewart   During the 19th century, a group of American painters dedicated themselves to cultivating a style that would have its roots in the New World, rather than looking back to Europe.  Inspired by the untamed landscape of their surroundings and filled with ideas of exploration, these landscape painters helped create what is now known as the Hudson River School.  In these landscapes, the environment is filled with drama and emotion.  The wide, expansive spaces are dappled with warm color, as depictions of man are eschewed in favor of the terrain.  From 1825 until its popularity began to decline around 1870, the group of artists associated with these heroic landscapes helped shape the way we view early America.  The movement was given its name retrospectively, though there’s a debate on whether it was art critic Clarence Cook or artist Homer Dodge Martin who first used the term.  Initially, it was a disparaging name, meant to trivialize the work of these artists who had fallen out of fashion in favor of the French Barbizon School.  While the name Hudson River School comes from the fact that early paintings depicted the Hudson River Valley and its surroundings, later work includes locations in the American West, New England, and even South America.  Thomas Cole, who is generally known as the father of the movement, spent a significant amount of time in the area after taking a steamboat up the Hudson in 1825.  From there, he hiked the Catskills and the resulting paintings are the first landscapes of the area.  Once Cole died in 1848, the mantel was taken up by a second generation of painters who expanded the locations of the landscapes.  By the time the Centennial was celebrated in 1876, the Hudson River School’s popularity was declining.  Popular taste was turning toward France, where intimate landscapes were taking hold.  Gone were the days where the monumental, larger-than-life paintings of Church and Bierstadt garnered crowds.  After World War I, the style saw a slight revival when the country was undergoing a period of extreme national pride.  Today, the Hudson River School is recognized for its importance in developing a native art culture in America.  The Hudson River Valley prides itself on being the home of this movement, and it’s possible to visit Thomas Cole’s home and hike the areas that inspired his evocative landscapes.  See many illustrations at https://mymodernmet.com/hudson-river-school/

A #1 New York Times bestselling author, Gregg Olsen has written ten nonfiction books, ten novels, and contributed a short story to a collection edited by Lee Child.  The award-winning author has been a guest on dozens of national and local television shows, including educational programs for the History Channel, Learning Channel, and Discovery Channel.  He has also appeared on Good Morning America, The Early Show, The Today Show, FOX News; CNN, Anderson Cooper 360, MSNBC, Entertainment Tonight, CBS 48 Hours, Oxygen’s Snapped, Court TV’s Crier Live, Inside Edition, Extra, Access Hollywood, and A&E’s Biography.  In addition to television and radio appearances, the award-winning author has been featured in Redbook, USA Today, People, Salon magazine, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times and the New York Post.  The Deep Dark was named Idaho Book of the Year by the ILA and Starvation Heights was honored by Washington’s Secretary of State for the book’s contribution to Washington state history and culture.  Find a list of Gregg Olsen’s books at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15035.Gregg_Olsen

All pepitas are pumpkin seeds, but that doesn’t mean that all pumpkin seeds are pepitas.  Pepitas are a type of pumpkin seed from certain varieties of pumpkin, such as Lady Godiva or the Naked Bear.  These pumpkins produce a “naked seed,” which is a hulled seed that is lighter and nuttier than a traditional pumpkin seed.  If you try to hull your jack-o-lantern pumpkins seeds, you will not find a pepita inside.  Pepitas are more versatile in the kitchen than traditional pumpkin seeds since they’re not as tough.  They aren’t just for garnishing butternut squash soup.  Use them to make pesto, as a crust for meat or fish, as a topping on muffins, mixed into granola, baked into focaccia bread or made into brittle.  Pepitas make a great snack all on their own.  They’re full of heart-healthy fats, protein, fiber and iron.  Store in an airtight container for up to 3 months.  If storing for longer, refrigerate or freeze for up to 12 months.  Posted by Jenna Smith  Find recipe for Pepita Crusted Tilapia at https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/simply-nutritious-quick-and-delicious/2019-10-11-mysterious-pumpkin-seed

Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka on 12 September 1943.  He moved to England in 1954, and in 1962 moved to Canada where he has lived ever since.  He was educated at the University of Toronto and Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and began teaching at York University in Toronto in 1971.  He published a volume of memoir, Running in the Family, in 1983.  His collections of poetry include The Collected Works of Billy the Kid:  Left Handed Poems (1981), which won the Canadian Governor General's Award in 1971; The Cinnamon Peeler:  Selected Poems (1989); and Handwriting: Poems (1998).  His first novel, Coming Through Slaughter (1976), is a fictional portrait of jazz musician Buddy Bolden.  The English Patient (1992), set in Italy at the end of the Second World War, was joint winner of the Booker Prize for Fiction and was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1996.  Anil's Ghost (2000), set in Sri Lanka, tells the story of a young female anthropologist investigating war crimes for an international human rights group.  Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto with his wife, Linda Spalding, with whom he edits the literary journal Brick.  His recent novels include Divisadero (2007), The Cat's Table (2011) and Warlight (2018).  See bibliography and list of awards at https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/michael-ondaatje

In addition to writing novels, plays, and poetry collections, Michael Ondaatje has edited several books, including The Faber Book of Contemporary Canadian Short Stories (1990).  His memoir, Running in the Family (1982), complements stories about his family with poems and photographs.  He has also written books of nonfiction, including The Conversations:  Walter Murch and the Art of Film Editing (2002), which was highly praised by reviewers for its insight into the creative process.  Both Ondaatje and Murch, who has worked with Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, talk about the task of revealing hidden themes and patterns in existing creative works.  As Ondaatje noted in an interview with Maclean’s, editing—whether of film or one’s written work, is “the only place where you’re on your own.  Where you can be one person and govern it.  The only time you control making a movie is in the editing stage.”  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-ondaatje

How Did Writers Survive the First Great Depression? by Jason Boog  April 20, 2020  When the stock market crashed in 2008, the offices closed at the legal publication where I worked.  I lost my benefits, my office space, and my security, all in a single meeting.  I holed up in the New York University Bobst Library for a couple of weeks as a freelance writer, scribbling reports and watching my health insurance expire.  I was a single speck in a national catastrophe for writers.  According to the Department of Labor, the printing and traditional publishing sector shed well over 134,000 jobs during the Great Recession.  This was part of a much larger set of losses as digital technology disrupted traditional publishing.   Between 1998 and 2013, the book publishing industry lost 21,000 jobs, periodical publishing cut 56,000 jobs, and the newspaper industry shed a staggering 217,000 jobs.  After my old job folded, I camped out on the seventh floor of the library, tucked away among the American Literature shelves.  I started looking for clues on how writers survived the Great Depression.  In the stacks, I found You Can’t Sleep Here, a novel written in 1932 by a 20-year-old Hungarian immigrant named Edward Newhouse.  His book tells the story of a young newspaper reporter fired during the early days of the Great Depression who sleeps in a tent city along the East River and who showers in a bathroom at the New York Public Library.  The reporter paces up and down the side of Central Park at sunrise, hoping to get the first look at the want ads before thousands of other unemployed people.  “I had to walk till 55th Street before one of the newsstand men would let me look into the want ads.”  We officially emerged from our nationwide recession in 2009, but the situation facing contemporary writers has not changed.  The newspaper and magazine jobs that disappeared were never replaced.  The bookstore chain Borders closed for good in 2011, erasing nearly 10,700 bookselling jobs.  The American Library Association noted that 55 percent of urban libraries, 36 percent of suburban libraries, and 26 percent of rural libraries cut their budgets in 2011.  In the same survey, librarians said that job-search services were most in demand at the library, but that 56 percent of the libraries didn’t have enough resources to meet the demand.  When Franklin Roosevelt took office in March 1933, his inaugural address blamed failed banking leadership, unjust distribution of national resources, and ruthless businessmen for the Great Depression.  He made an urgent plea that still resonates in our own time:  The rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated.  Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.  True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition.  Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence.  They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.  They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.  The line which is remembered from Roosevelt’s speech today is, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but the president also called for new business ethics, job reform, and redistribution of resources.  Newhouse deconstructed the world around him, rewriting his own career as he took part in historic events.  But he was also part of a larger literary movement.  Before the Great Depression, Mike Gold called on writers at The New Masses to produce a new kind of fiction, an idea he labeled “proletarian literature.”  In his essay, he described the range of work he hoped to include:  letters from hoboes, peddlers, small town atheists, unfrocked clergymen and schoolteachers.  Everyone has a great tragicomic story to tell.  Almost everyone in America feels oppressed and wants to speak out somewhere.  Tell us your story.  It is sure to be significant … Let America know the heart and mind of its workers.  His letter to readers spawned an entire literary movement.  In The Radical Novel in the United States, the literary scholar Walter Rideout counted 70 such novels published between 1930 and 1939.  Almost all these novels have been forgotten today, but Rideout’s book counted novels by Henry Roth, Josephine Herbst, James Farrell, and Richard Wright.  For a few years during the Great Depression, Newhouse’s You Can’t Sleep Here became one of the most well-known examples of the genre, though the book has been out of print ever since.  https://lithub.com/how-did-writers-survive-the-first-great-depression/

A couple of fun reading suggestions:  The Cockroaches of Staymore by Donald Harington; Mistress Masham’s Repose by T.H. White; any of the “Lucia” novels by E.F. Benson.  Thank you, Muse reader!

April 22 is Earth Day; Administrative Professionals Day in various countries (2020)  Wikipedia 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2258  April 22, 2020

 “A good book is a good friend . . . A library is a collection of good friends.”  Lyman Abbott (1835–1922) was an American Congregationalist theologian, editor, and author.  https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/571732.Lyman_Abbott

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Flimflam  (FLIM-flam)  noun:  1.  Nonsense.  2.  Deception.  verb tr:  1.  To deceive.  2.  To swindle.  A reduplication, probably of the Old Norse flim (mockery).  Earliest documented use:  1538.

Reader feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Eric F Plumlee  Subject:  Reduplicatives  My grandparents lived on a farm in Walla Walla, Washington, and wherever they would travel and meet people they would tell those they met that the residents liked the city so much that they named it twice.  On a parallel note, children’s books are famous for reduplicatives because, hey, they’re so much fun!  Book titles in particular make use of this kind of rhyming.  There are older book series like Amelia Bedelia and newer ones like Fancy Nancy.  One nice book series making use of reduplicatives written by Joy Cowley and illustrated by Elizabeth Fuller is about an older couple Mr. and Mrs. Wishy-Washy and the goings-on on their farm.  Some of their reduplicatives are wishy-washy, splishy-sploshy, and scrub-a-dub, a lot of fun for the younger kids.  Now because of my family ties to Walla Walla, we have a children’s book called Double Trouble in Walla Walla, written by Andrew Clements and illustrated by Salvatore Murdocca.  This book is a fun romp because the whole book revolves around reduplicatives (I counted 14 on one page), many used in common everyday conversations as well as some probably made-up ones.  I don’t know who enjoys this book the most, the person reading the book or the audience listening to the reader.  For the reader it is an obstacle course for the tongue, and for the listener it is an almost nonstop barrage of funny nonsense. 
From:  Judith Shapiro  Subject:  razzle-dazzle  You will want to watch the clip of Razzle Dazzle Them (5 min.) from the film Chicago. 
From:  Brian Clark Cole  Subject:  Reduplication in Hawaiian  Reduplication is particularly common in the Hawaiian language.  For instance, the state fish is the Humuhumunukunukuapua’a (humu-humu-nuku-nuku-apu-a-a)--three repetitions in a single word.
From:  Richard S. Russell  Subject:  flimflam  40 years old now, but still a good read:  Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions.  Eventually Randi was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant.

Blackberries, mulberries, and raspberries are not berries at all, but bananas, pumpkins, avocados and cucumbers are.  So what makes a berry?  Well, a berry has seeds and pulp (properly called “pericarp”) that develop from the ovary of a flower.  The pericarp of all fruit is actually subdivided into 3 layers.  The exocarp is the skin of the fruit, and in berries it’s often eaten (like in grapes) but not always (like in bananas).  The mesocarp is the part of the fruit we usually eat, like the white yummy part of an apple, or the bulk of a plum, though in citrus fruits the mesocarp is actually the white, sort of inner-peel that we remove.  Last is the endocarp, which is the closest layer that envelopes the seeds.  In stone fruits, it’s the stone.  In many fruits, it’s actually a membrane that we don’t really notice, often because it’s been bred to be thin, like in bananas.  In citrus, the endocarp is actually the membrane that holds the juicy parts of the fruit, that is, the part you don’t want to pierce unless you want to get sticky.  If the fruit has a thick, hard endocarp, it’s probably a drupe, a fancy term for a stone fruit.  This group encompasses apricots, mangoes, cherries, olives, avocados, dates and most nuts.  If your snack has a core, it’s probably a pome. From its name you probably guessed that this bunch includes apples, as well as pears.  A multiple fruit is a fruit that is actually make up of a cluster of fruiting bodies.  Some examples of this are pineapple, figs and mulberries.  These fruits turn out to be part of a greater group called accessory fruits, in which the fruit (or many fruiting bodies) is not derived from the ovary, but some other part of the developing plant.  If you consider your favourite fruit to be a raspberry or blackberry, then you love aggregate fruits.  These are formed by many ovaries merging to become one flower, and most are also accessory fruits.  @AdaMcVean and @CassandraNLee  https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/did-you-know/bananas-are-berries-raspberries-are-not

In physics, horror vacui, or plenism, commonly stated as "nature abhors a vacuum", is a postulate attributed to Aristotle, who articulated a belief  that nature contains no vacuums because the denser surrounding material continuum would immediately fill the rarity of an incipient void.  He also argued against the void in a more abstract sense (as "separable"), for example, that by definition a void, itself, is nothing, and following Plato, nothing cannot rightly be said to exist.  Furthermore, insofar as it would be featureless, it could neither be encountered by the senses, nor could its supposition lend additional explanatory power.  Hero of Alexandria challenged the theory in the first century CE, but his attempts to create an artificial vacuum failed.  The theory was debated in the context of 17th-century fluid mechanics, by Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle, among others, and through the early 18th century by Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz.  Plenism means "fullness", from Latin plēnum, English "plenty", cognate via Proto-Indo-European to "full".  In Ancient Greek, the term for void is κενό (kenó).  The idea was restated as "Natura abhorret vacuum" by François Rabelais in his series of books titled Gargantua and Pantagruel in the 1530s.  The theory was supported and restated by Galileo Galilei in the early 17th century as "Resistenza del vacuo".  Galileo was surprised by the fact that water could not rise above a certain level in an aspiration tube in his suction pump, leading him to conclude that there is a limit to the phenomenon.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)

Live streaming refers to online streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real time.  It is often referred to simply as streaming, but this abbreviated term is ambiguous because "streaming" may refer to any media delivered and played back simultaneously without requiring a completely downloaded file.  Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but not live streamed.  Live stream services encompass a wide variety of topics, from social media to video games to professional sports.  Platforms such as Facebook Live, Periscope, Kuaishou, and 17 include the streaming of scheduled promotions and celebrity events as well as streaming between users, as in videotelephony.  Sites such as Twitch have become popular outlets for watching people play video games, such as in eSports, Let's Play-style gaming, or speedrunning.  Live coverage of sporting events is a common application.  User interaction via chat rooms forms a major component of live streaming.  Platforms often include the ability to talk to the broadcaster or participate in conversations in chat.  An extreme example of viewer interfacing is the social experiment Twitch Plays Pokémon, where viewers collaborate to complete Pokémon games by typing in commands that correspond to controller inputs.  Many chat rooms also consists of emotes which is another way to communicate to the live streamer.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_streaming

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  from John Reid-Rowland  I was interested to see your story about Everest, named after the Surveyor-General of India.  Of course, everyone pronounces the name of the mountain as you say, but it seems that George Everest pronounced his name EVE-rest.  Apparently the name of Winston Churchill’s nanny when he was a child, Mrs Everest, was pronounced the same way.

A Brief History of Word Games by Adrienne Raphel   When I began to research the history of crosswords for my recent book on the subject, I was sort of shocked to discover that they weren’t invented until 1913.   The puzzle seemed so deeply ingrained in our lives that I figured it must have been around for centuries—I envisioned the empress Livia in the famous garden room in her villa, serenely filling in her cruciverborum each morning­­.  But in reality, the crossword is a recent invention, born out of desperation.  Editor Arthur Wynne at the New York World needed something to fill space in the Christmas edition of his paper’s FUN supplement, so he took advantage of new technology that could print blank grids cheaply and created a diamond-shaped set of boxes, with clues to fill in the blanks, smack in the center of FUN.  Nearly overnight, the “Word-Cross Puzzle” went from a space-filling ploy to the most popular feature of the page.  Still, the crossword didn’t arise from nowhere.  Ever since we’ve had language, we’ve played games with words.  Crosswords are the Punnett square of two long-standing strands of word puzzles:  word squares, which demand visual logic to understand the puzzle but aren’t necessarily using deliberate deception; and riddles, which use wordplay to misdirect the solver but don’t necessarily have any kind of graphic component to work through.  The first known word square, the so-called Sator Square, was found in the ruins of Pompeii.  Read about the Windsor Enigma, doublets, and many kinds of riddles at https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/03/23/a-brief-history-of-word-games/

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  Oh, the comfort--the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person--having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. - Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, poet and novelist (20 Apr 1826-1887)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2257  April 20. 2020