Where's Wally? (called Where's
Waldo? in North America) is a British series of
children's puzzle books created by English illustrator Martin
Handford. The books consist
of a series of detailed double-page spread illustrations depicting dozens or
more people doing a variety of amusing things at a given location. Readers are
challenged to find a character named Wally hidden in the group. Wally is identified by his
red-and-white-striped shirt, bobble hat,
and glasses, but many illustrations contain red herrings involving
deceptive use of red-and-white striped objects.
Later entries in the long-running book series added other targets for
readers to find in each illustration. The books have also inspired two
television programmes (Where's Wally? the 1991 animated
series and Where's Wally? the
2019 animated series), a comic strip and a series of video games. On Thursday 2 April 2009, 1,052 students,
alumni, and members of the community at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, America,
captured the Guinness World Record for the largest
gathering of people dressed as Wally.
The event raised money for local public
schools. On Sunday 19 June
2011, the previous record was broken when 3,872 people dressed as Wally
gathered in Merrion Square, Dublin, Ireland. On Saturday 12 September 2009 a re-creation
took place in downtown Chicago. The
re-creation featured all of the characters, Wally, Wenda, Wizard Whitebeard,
Odlaw, and Woof, hiding throughout downtown Chicago and invited others to come
and find them. The Waldo Waldo 5K has tried to break the
record in a 5-kilometre fun run to raise money for the Waldo Canyon
Fire burn area in Colorado Springs, Colorado, US, every year
since the fire in July, 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where%27s_Wally%3F
In visual
art, horror vacui (from Latin "fear of empty space"),
also kenophobia (from Greek "fear of the
empty"), is the filling of the entire surface of a space or an artwork with detail.
Italian art critic and scholar Mario Praz used
this term to describe the excessive use of ornament in design during the Victorian age.
Other examples of horror vacui can be seen in the densely decorated carpet pages of Insular illuminated
manuscripts, where intricate patterns and interwoven symbols may have served
"apotropaic as well as decorative functions." The
interest in meticulously filling empty spaces is also reflected in Arabesque decoration in Islamic art from ancient times to
present. Art historian Ernst Gombrich
theorized that such highly ornamented patterns can function like a picture
frame for sacred images and spaces.
"The richer the elements of the frame," Gombrich wrote,"the
more the centre will gain in dignity.”
Another example comes from ancient Greece during the Geometric Age (1100
- 900 BCE), when horror vacui was considered a stylistic element of all
art. See beautiful illustrations at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui
Years of horse riding has
given us words that now we don’t even realize have connections with
horses. A constable is, literally, a
count of the stable. Someone named
Philip is, literally, a horse lover, from Greek philo- (love) + hippos
(horse). There are idioms, such as
beating a dead horse (to try to revive interest in something that has lost its
relevance) and trojan
horse (something or someone placed in order to subvert from within). Hippocrene
(HIP-uh-kreen, -kree-nee)
noun Poetic or literary
inspiration. In Greek mythology, Hippocrene
was a spring on Mt. Helicon and was created by a stroke of Pegasus’s hoof. From Greek hippos (horse) + krene (fountain,
spring). Ultimately from the
Indo-European root ekwo- (horse), which also gave us equestrian, equitant, hippodrome, and hippology. Earliest documented use: 1598. Anu
Garg wsmith@wordsmith.org
In 1905
the Hippodrome on Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th street was built, only one
block away from the newly named Times Square.
The Hippodrome opened on April 12, 1905 with a production titled "A
Yankee Circus on Mars." For over
two decades the Hippodrome was the largest and most successful theater in New
York; its scale wouldn’t be replicated until the construction of the Roxy Theatre
in 1927. Until the end of World War I,
the Hippodrome housed all sorts of spectacles—complete with circus animals,
diving horses, opulent sets, and 500-member choruses—then switched to musical
extravaganzas produced by Charles Dillingham, including "Better
Times," which ran for more than 400 performances. Competition from the newer and more sumptuous
movie palaces in the Broadway-Times Square area forced Keith-Albee-Orpheum,
which was merged into RKO by May 1928, to sell the theatre. Several attempts to use the Hippodrome for
plays and operas failed, and it remained dark until 1935, when producer Billy
Rose leased it for his spectacular Rodgers & Hart circus musical,
"Jumbo," which received favorable reviews but lasted only five months
due to the Great Depression. After that,
the Hippodrome sputtered through bookings of late-run movies, boxing,
wrestling, and Jai Lai games before closing on August 16, 1939. It was demolished that same year. http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/HippodromeTheatre.html
If you cook for others on
a regular cadence, you’ll discover that not all the meals will be beautifully
planned. Sometimes one thing leads to
another and you forget to shop, or you forget that you need wood or propane or
time to brine the meat. Sometimes you
run out of time. Sometimes you run out
of energy. Sometimes you just want to
cook something simple and eat, toast one another, wash everything up, and take
a long walk with the dog. Pasta with
peas and mint can answer that call, provide a bright summer evening on a
plate. It’s a pantry meal for those who
grow mint and always have dried pasta in a cabinet and a few bags of organic
peas in the freezer. (It’s an easy shop
for those who don’t.) You can use
fettuccine or tagliatelle, though I like how medium shells hold the peas. Could you add some chopped bacon to the
pan? Why, yes, you could, and that would
be fine. Pasta with Peas and Mint is from the new
book See You on Sunday by Sam Sifton. https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/pasta-with-peas-and-mint
Founded
in 1745, the Moravian Book Shop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is said to be the
oldest continuously-running bookstore in America, yet it’s largely under the
radar. It’s not a grande dame to whom homage must be paid; it’s
never been the epicenter for new literary movements; nor was it a champion for
free speech under British rule. Instead,
the Moravian Book Shop, established by the Moravian Church and today managed by
Barnes and Noble, exists in a nexus of past and present, public and private,
communal and corporate. In this way, it
defies definition—a nebulosity that speaks volumes about bookstores
themselves. Andrew Belonsky Read of the store’s struggles at
Another 5.2 million
Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total seeking
aid in a month of coronavirus-related shutdowns to 22 million and showing a
broad shock for the U.S. labor market. Amazon
is retooling its website to do the opposite of what made it one of the world’s
most dominant companies: Sell fewer
items. The Wall Street Journal April 17, 2020
What's the meaning of the
phrase 'Necessity is the mother of invention'?
Difficult situations inspire ingenious solutions. What's the origin of the phrase 'Necessity is
the mother of invention'? The author of
this proverbial saying isn't known. It
is sometimes ascribed to Plato and it does appear in translations of
Plato's Republic. Those
translations weren't made until much later than the phrase was in common use in
English and are more likely to be the work of the translator than being a
literal version of Plato's words. The
proverb was known in England by the 16th century, although at that point it
must have been known to very few as it was then documented in its Latin form
rather than in English. Many well-known
proverbs appeared first in Latin and were transcribed into English by Erasmus
and others, often as training texts for latin scholars. William Horman, the headmaster of Winchester
and Eton, included the Latin form 'Mater artium necessitas' in Vulgaria, a
book of aphorisms for the boys of the schools to learn by heart, which he
published in 1519. Roger Ascham came
close to an English version of the phrase in his manual on how to use a
longbow, which is by the way the first book ever written about archery, Toxophilus, 1545:
"Necessitie, the
inuentour of all goodnesse."
The word corona means
crown. The scientists who in 1968 came
up with the term coronavirus thought that, under a microscope, the virus they
were looking at resembled a solar corona: the bright crown-like ring of gasses
surrounding the sun that is visible during a solar eclipse. (The beer brand Corona, incidentally, based its logo
on the crown atop the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Puerto Vallarta.) Though the disease currently spreading around
the globe—COVID-19—is often called coronavirus, it’s really a disease caused by
one type of coronavirus: SARS-CoV-2. Katy Steinmetz https://time.com/5798684/coronavirus-glossary-definitions/
A novel
coronavirus is a new coronavirus that has not been previously identified. The virus causing coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19), is not the same as the coronaviruses that commonly circulate among humans and cause mild illness, like the common
cold. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html#Coronavirus-Disease-2019-Basics
Because I’m in isolation
like most of you during these trying times, I have tied belts together, raising
and lowering gifts for visitors from my second floor balcony. Necessity made me do it and I’m sticking to
it.
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2256
April 17, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment