Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg 
Lucius Tarquinius, the last king of Rome, was better known as Tarquinius Superbus, due to his arrogant and disdainful personality.  His overthrow in 509 BCE led to the establishment of the Roman Republic.  The abbreviation SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus) is emblematic of the people’s determination to participate in the government practically to the time of Julius Caesar four hundred years later.  *  In Hungarian both apricot and peach are known as peach.  The first is called yellow peach, the second autumn peach.

When ordered in a restaurant, sweet plantains are delicious but swimming in a pool of oil.  This recipe bypasses the frying step, letting the oven create plantains that are slightly caramelized and chewy without all the additional fat.  Mojo is a classic Cuban sauce used as a marinade in this recipe.  No grill?  No problem.  Just cook the pork tenderloin in the oven with the plantains.  Follow directions above as far as wiping marinade off pork tenderloin and seasoning it.  In large sauté pan over high heat, warm 2 teaspoons canola oil over high heat.  Add pork to sauté pan, cooking on each side until golden brown, about 5 minutes total.  Transfer pork tenderloin in sauté pan or onto a baking sheet into the 450°F oven with the plantains.  Cook pork until a meat thermometer registers 145°, about 15 to 20 minutes.  https://recipes.heart.org/en/recipes/grilled-cuban-mojo-marinated-pork-tenderloin-with-fried-plantains  See also https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/aha-cookbooks/cooking-in-color-cookbook

bunk, bunkum or buncombe (chiefly U.S.):  1830s, from “speaking to Buncombe” (or “for Buncombe”).  In 1820, Felix Walker, who represented Buncombe County, NC in U.S. House of Representatives, rose to address question of admitting Missouri as a free or slave state.  This was his first attempt to speak on this subject after nearly a month of solid debate and right before the vote was to be called.  Allegedly, to the exasperation of his colleagues, Walker insisted on delivering a long and wearisome “speech for Buncombe.”  He was shouted down by his colleagues.  His persistent effort made “buncombe” (later respelled “bunkum”) a synonym for meaningless political claptrap and later for any kind of nonsense. The term became a joke and metaphor in Washington, then entered common usage.  Find other terms for drivel including applesauce, blatherskite, hokum, malarkey and tripe at https://www.glossophilia.org/2013/03/49-shades-of-nonsense-a-thesaurus-of-piffle/

June 25, 2019  Once an indispensable part of daily life in Japan, washi paper was used for everything from writing and painting to lampshades, umbrellas and sliding doors, but demand has plunged as lifestyles have become more Westernized.  But, at a small workshop in western Japan, Hiroyoshi Chinzei, a fourth-generation traditional paper maker, creates washi with a unique purpose that may help revive interest—both at home and abroad.  Chinzei’s product, the world’s thinnest paper, has helped save historical documents at major museums and libraries—including the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum in London and Washington’s Library of Congress—from decay.  “Washi paper is more flexible and durable” than what Japanese refer to as “Western paper,” which disintegrates into tiny pieces when it becomes very old, the 50-year-old says.  The traditional handmade paper is manufactured from plants called kōzo, or mulberry, which has fibers that are much longer than materials used for paper in the west such as wood and cotton.  “Old Japanese books from the seventh or eighth century remain in good condition . . . thanks to the fibers of the kōzo plants,” the washi maker says at his small factory in Hidaka, a village located in Kochi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku.  Chinzei’s washi, a type called tengu-jōshi paper, also known as “the wings of a mayfly,” is 0.02 millimeters thick and weighs 1.6 grams per square meter.  This is compared to a standard sheet of photocopy paper, which is about 0.09 millimeters thick and weighs 70 grams per square meter.  Natsuko Fukue  Read more and see pictures at https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2019/06/25/lifestyle/skin-deep-japans-washi-paper-torn-modern-life/#.XrFW-6hKiUk

A novel by Simone de Beauvoir that was deemed too intimate to release in her lifetime will be published for the first time in 2021.  The French writer and feminist’s Les inséparables tells the story of the “passionate and tragic” friendship she had as a young girl with Elisabeth “Zaza” Lacoin, who died of encephalitis at the age of 21.  Written in 1954, in the first person, the novel sees the author of feminist classic The Second Sex, published five years earlier, tell the story of the beginning of the friendship, as Andrée, or Zaza, joins the same class as Sylvie, or Simone.  Beauvoir writes in her memoir Force of Circumstance that when she showed the novel to Jean-Paul Sartre, her partner, “he held his nose”.  “I couldn’t have agreed more:  the story seemed to have no inner necessity and failed to hold the reader’s interest,” she wrote.  Beauvoir would go on to tell the story of the friendship in her non-fiction Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter; Deirdre Bair’s biography of the author tells of how the two were known at school as “the inseparables” by teachers and students alike.  Alison Flood  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/29/simone-de-beauvoir-too-intimate-novel-to-be-published-after-75-year-les-inseparables

levitate verb  to rise by virtue of lightness (intransitive), from Latin levitas "lightness," on the model of gravitate (compare levity).  Transitive sense of "raise (a person) into the air, cause to become buoyant" (1870s) is mainly from spiritualism.  Related:  Levitated; levitating.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/levitate

levity noun  humor or lack of seriousness, especially during a serious occasion  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/levity

Annals of the Former World, Book 5:  Crossing the Craton by John McPhee  “As you cross Iowa and approach Des Moines, nothing on the surface—not a streamcourse, a fault line, an outcrop, a rise—so much as hints at what is now beneath you.  Six hundred feet down is the eastern edge of a great tectonic rift —a rupture of the lithosphere—that reposes there like a sunken boat in the waters of a lake.”  “The oldest rock in the United States is in the Minnesota River Valley—about 3.5 billion years.” 

craton  A craton (from Greek: κράτος kratos "strength") is an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere, which consists of the Earth's two topmost layers, the crust and the uppermost mantle.  Having often survived cycles of merging and rifting of continents, cratons are generally found in the interiors of tectonic plates.  They are characteristically composed of ancient crystalline basement rock, which may be covered by younger sedimentary rock.  They have a thick crust and deep lithospheric roots that extend as much as several hundred kilometres into the Earth's mantle.  The term craton is used to distinguish the stable portion of the continental crust from regions that are more geologically active and unstable.  Cratons can be described as shields, in which the basement rock crops out at the surface, and platforms, in which the basement is overlaid by sediments and sedimentary rock.  The word craton was first proposed by the Austrian geologist Leopold Kober in 1921 as Kratogen, referring to stable continental platforms, and orogen as a term for mountain or orogenic belts.  Later Hans Stille shortened the former term to kraton from which craton derives.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craton

President Trump signed an executive order May 28, 2020 aimed at limiting the broad legal protections enjoyed by social media companies, two days after he tore into Twitter for fact-checking two of his tweets.  "We're here today to defend free speech from one of the gravest dangers it has faced in American history, frankly," Trump said from the Oval Office.  "A small handful of powerful social media monopolies control the vast portion of all private and public communications in the United States."  The president said the tech companies have "unchecked power to censor, restrict, edit, shape, hide, alter" a large sphere of human interaction.  "They have points of view," he said.  The Trump administration hopes the order will eventually set the stage for new regulations on tech platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.  The White House order takes aim at a 1996 law passed by Congress that has often been at the center of political fights over regulating speech on social media platforms:  Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.  The law protects Internet companies from being sued over content that appears on their platforms and allows for content moderation.  The removal of a post is left up to the internal rules of companies such as Twitter and Facebook, provided those decisions are made "in good faith."  Bobby Allyn 

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/28/863932758/stung-by-twitter-trump-signs-executive-order-to-weaken-social-media-companies

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2276   May 29, 2020

Pleasures of the Literary Meal by Bee Wilson   The pleasure of reading about what others eat and drink is somewhere between the satisfaction of feeding and that of being fed.  We salivate to share Proust’s memories of cherries and cream cheese and almond cake, and we can almost taste the sweet almondy crumbs in our own mouths and feel nourished by them.  But we also have an urge to see others receiving satisfaction, especially children.  I was reminded by a splendid new collection edited by Christina Hardyment, “Pleasures of the Table:  A Literary Anthology,” illustrated with vivid historic images from the collection of the British Library.  Hardyment has previously published books on children’s literature, and she has selected especially well from childhood books for this anthology.  She gives us Edmund gorging on Turkish delight in the Narnia books, and Heidi eating toasted cheese with her grandfather.  There’s also the scene in “Swallows and Amazons,” by Arthur Ransome, in which the children picnic on “Wild Cat Island.”  We are told that the four children eat scrambled eggs from a communal frying pan, before having “four big slabs of seed cake” and “apples all round.”  Hardyment includes a section from the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty.”  After a fiendish puzzle that culminates with Holmes serving a recovered stolen document to its rightful owner on a breakfast platter, the story ends with the detective enjoying a meal himself.  “Sherlock Holmes swallowed a cup of coffee, and turned his attention to the ham and eggs.  Then he rose, lit his pipe, and settled himself down into his chair.”  The joy of reading about the meals of others shows that, in many ways, we are simple creatures:  by merely looking upon someone else eating we can feel better fed.  https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/pleasures-of-the-literary-meal  Now the Muser understands why she enjoys reading that Jack Reacher savors coffee.

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy which was founded by Zeno of Citium, in Athens, in the early 3rd century BC.  Stoicism is a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world.  According to its teachings, as social beings, the path to eudaimonia (happiness, or blessedness) for humans is found in accepting the moment as it presents itself, by not allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure or fear of pain, by using one's mind to understand the world and to do one's part in nature's plan, and by working together and treating others fairly and justly.  The Stoics are especially known for teaching that "virtue is the only good" for human beings, and that external things—such as health, wealth, and pleasure—are not good or bad in themselves (adiaphora), but have value as "material for virtue to act upon".  Alongside Aristotelian ethics, the Stoic tradition forms one of the major founding approaches to Western virtue ethics.  The Stoics also held that certain destructive emotions resulted from errors of judgment, and they believed people should aim to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is "in accordance with nature".  Because of this, the Stoics thought the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said, but how a person behaved.  To live a good life, one had to understand the rules of the natural order since they thought everything was rooted in nature.  Many Stoics—such as Seneca and Epictetus—emphasized that because "virtue is sufficient for happiness", a sage would be emotionally resilient to misfortune.  Stoicism flourished throughout the Roman and Greek world until the 3rd century AD, and among its adherents was Emperor Marcus Aurelius.  It experienced a decline after Christianity became the state religion in the 4th century AD.  Since then it has seen revivals, notably in the Renaissance (Neostoicism) and in the contemporary era (modern Stoicism).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism

Labyrinths differ from mazes though the two are often confused.  A labyrinth is a spiral walking course having a single, winding, unobstructed path from the outside to the center.  Unlike a maze that can be confusing, trick the mind and disorienting, a labyrinth calms the mind and relaxes the body.  Labyrinths have been used by many cultures throughout history.  Some believe it is a path that represents “the walk” that we take through life; many twists and turns but no dead ends.  http://www.relax4life.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/What-Is-A-Labyrinth-9-13-.pdf  Download Paper Finger Labyrinths including Cretan, Chartres, Roman and Ely at https://www.relax4life.com/download-paper-finger-labyrinths/

When UC Berkeley geologist Andrew Lawson discovered and named the San Andreas Fault in 1895, he could not know that in the 21st century, his name would be associated with something he didn't even know existed--intermediate depth earthquakes.  But let's tell the story from the beginning.  About 125 years ago, everybody living in California knew that we have earthquakes.  After all, the Hayward quake of 1868 caused deaths and heavy damage on both sides of the Bay.  But only a few people knew about Lawson's discovery and nobody, not even Lawson himself, knew for certain that earthquakes and the San Andreas Fault had anything in common.  That changed abruptly with the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.  A few days after the fires, which consumed large parts of the city, were finally extinguished, Lawson assembled an A-Team of prominent geologists from all over the United States.  They fanned out over Northern California and assessed the damage and the changes in landscape associated with this big temblor.  After they published their findings in what is now famously known as the Lawson-Report, it became clear that the San Andreas is indeed the "Mother of all Earthquake Faults."  https://seismo.berkeley.edu/blog/2016/02/25/deep-earthquakes-and-the-king.html  The mineral Lawsonite is named for Andrew Lawson, as is the Lawson Adit, originally a mining construction research tunnel on UC Berkeley's campus.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lawson

Pome by Elizabeth Spires  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/55837/pome

What is a Poem?  https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/what-is-a-poem/281835/  Pome is a noun.  It means apple, pear, and quince in old French, deriving from Latin roots.  Poem is a noun.  It means literature that is writing in short, rhythmic phrases in groups of 3, 4, or more.  Kathleen W. Curry https://kathleenwcurry.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/easily-confused-words-pome-vs-poem/

From J.K. Rowling on May 26, 2020 

A few weeks ago at dinner, I tentatively mooted the idea of getting The Ickabog down from the attic and publishing it for free, for children in lockdown.  My now teenagers were touchingly enthusiastic, so downstairs came the very dusty box, and for the last few weeks I’ve been immersed in a fictional world I thought I’d never enter again.  As I worked to finish the book, I started reading chapters nightly to the family again.  This was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my writing life, as The Ickabog’s first two readers told me what they remember from when they were tiny, and demanded the reinstatement of bits they’d particularly liked (I obeyed).  I think The Ickabog lends itself well to serialisation because it was written as a read-aloud book (unconsciously shaped, I think, by the way I read it to my own children), but it’s suitable for 7-9 year olds to read to themselves.  I’ll be posting a chapter (or two, or three) every weekday between 26th May and 10th July 2020 on The Ickabog website.  We plan to publish some translations soon and will post further details on that website when they’re available.  In November 2020, The Ickabog will be published in English in print, eBook and audiobook formats, shortly followed by other languages.  he best drawings in each territory will be included in the finished books.  As publishers in each territory will need to decide which pictures work best for their own editions, I won’t be personally judging the entries.  However, if parents and guardians post their children’s drawing on Twitter using the hashtag #TheIckabog, I’ll be able to share and comment!  To find out more about the Illustration Competition, go to The Ickabog website when it launches.  I’m pledging all author royalties from The Ickabog, when published, to help groups who’ve been particularly impacted by the pandemic. Further details will be available later in the year.  https://www.jkrowling.com/j-k-rowling-introduces-the-ickabog/

U.S. writer Joyce Carol Oates, so often a bridesmaid for the Nobel literature prize, won France's richest books prize May 25, 2020.  The Cino del Duca World Prize, which is worth 200,000 euros ($218,000), is often seen as a stepping stone to the Nobel, with Andrei Sakharov, Mario Vargas Llosa and the French novelist Patrick Modiano all winning it before going on to Nobel glory.  Five of Oates' books, including her novel "Blonde", which chronicled the inner life of Marilyn Monroe, have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, without ever winning.  https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/writer-joyce-carol-oates-wins-frances-218000-cino-del-duca-world-prize/articleshow/75990011.cms

THOUGHT FOR MAY 27  Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate. - Hubert Humphrey, U.S. Vice President (27 May 1911-1978)

WORD OF THE DAY FOR MAY 27   libre  adjective  (obsolete, rare) Especially of the will:  free, independent, unconstrained.  (software) With very few limitations on distribution or the right to access the source code to create improved versions, but not necessarily free of charge.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/libre#English

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2275  May 27, 2020 

432 Park Avenue is a residential skyscraper at 57th Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan overlooking Central Park. The 1,396-foot-tall tower was developed by CIM Group and Harry B. Macklowe and designed by Rafael Viñoly.  It features 125 condominiums as well as amenities such as a private restaurant for residents.  432 Park Avenue sits on Billionaires' Row and has some of the most expensive residences in the city, with the median unit selling for tens of millions of dollars.  432 Park Avenue is located on the site of the former Drake Hotel, which was sold to Macklowe in 2006.  The project faced delays for five years because of lack of financing as well as difficulties in acquiring the properties on the site.  Construction plans were approved for 432 Park Avenue in 2011 and excavations began the next year.  Sales within 432 Park Avenue were launched in 2013; the building topped-out in October 2014 and was officially completed in 2015.  The structure includes seven 12-story-tall segments with residential units.  Each segment is separated by a two-story-tall section without any windows or interior space, allowing wind gusts to pass through the building.  At the time of its completion, 432 Park Avenue was the third-tallest building in the United States and the tallest residential building in the world.  As of 2020, it is the thirty-first tallest building in the world, sixth-tallest building in the United States, the fifth-tallest building in New York City, and the third-tallest residential building in the world.  The design of the structure was conceived by architect Rafael Viñoly, who was inspired by a trash can designed in 1905 by Austrian designer Josef Hoffmann.  The metal trash can's grid-like pattern is replicated in the tower's facade.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue

The Everyday Chicken Salad by Sarah Adler  This salad is perfect over mixed greens, spinach, or arugula or served in lettuce cups for a quick easy lunch.  It keeps well for five to seven days in the fridge.  I adore using Homemade Avocado Mayo or Primal Kitchen’s avocado mayo if you’re short on time, in this recipe.  Simply Real Eating by Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Sarah Adler    https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/the-everyday-chicken-salad  serves 4

Yellowstone National Park is in the western United States, with parts in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.  It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872.  Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world.  The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful geyser.  Read much more and see many graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park

Tralfamadore is the name of several fictional planets in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut.  Details of the corresponding indigenous alien race, the Tralfamadorians, vary from novel to novel:  In Slaughterhouse-Five, Tralfamadore is the home to beings who exist in all times simultaneously, and are thus privy to knowledge of future events, including the destruction of the universe at the hands of a Tralfamadorian test pilot.  They kidnap Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of the novel, and place him in a zoo on Tralfamadore with Montana Wildhack, a Hollywood starlet.  In The Sirens of Titan, Tralfamadore is a planet in the Small Magellanic Cloud and the home of a civilization of machines, which dispatches Salo to a distant galaxy with a message for its inhabitants.  After a part in his ship breaks, however, Salo is forced to land on Titan, a moon of Saturn, where he befriends Winston Niles Rumfoord.  Rumfoord exists in much the same way as the Tralfamadorians of Slaughterhouse-Five, while Salo appears to move in a linear fashion.  The translation of Tralfamadore is given by Salo as both all of us and the number 541.  The Tralfamadorians were originally developed by super-beings who built them to allow themselves to search for a meaning to their lives.  Unable to achieve this task, they eventually asked the machines to do it for them, and upon knowing that they could not be said to have any purpose at all, the precursor race decided to eradicate itself, just to realize that they were not even very good at this, so they used the Tralfamadorians instead to complete the annihilation of their race.  In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Tralfamadore is a hypothetical foreign planet, used in a purely rhetorical sense as part of a thought exercise.  In Hocus Pocus, Tralfamadore is the planet nearest to a meeting place of ancient multi-dimensional beings who supposedly control all aspects of human life, including social affairs and politics.  Unlike humans, the Tralfamadorians have too much of a sense of humor to be affected by the beings.  The exploits of the multi-dimensional beings are chronicled in The Protocols of the Elders of Tralfamadore (a title which parodies The Protocols of the Elders of Zion), which is published serially in a pornographic magazine called Black Garterbelt.  Though the author is never specified, the media in which it is published suggests that it may be Kilgore Trout.  In Timequake, Tralfamadore is mentioned offhand as a fantastical meeting place of anthropomorphized chemical elements.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tralfamadore  See also https://vonnegut.fandom.com/wiki/Tralfamadorians

The old pond  A frog leaps in.  Splash!

Jumping over the brook  for water  not needed.

The poem about the old pond is by the Japanese Zen poet Matsuo Basho (Matsuo Munefusa) (1644-94).  Jumping over the brook, a Scandinavian proverb, is broken up and shortened to fill three lines, to compare with.  Many of Basho's haiku poems were actually the hokku (initial verse) of a renga (linked verse).  Basho abandoned for poetry the samurai (warrior) status he had earned, and gradually got a reputation as a skilled poet and able critic.  Read About Fifty Haiku by Basho at http://oaks.nvg.org/basho.html

James Dover Grant CBE (born 29 October 1954), primarily known by his pen name Lee Child, is a British author who writes thriller novels, and is best known for his Jack Reacher novel series.  The books follow the adventures of a former American military policeman, Jack Reacher, who wanders the United States.  His first novel, Killing Floor (1997), won both the Anthony Award, and the Barry Award for Best First Novel.  Grant was born in Coventry.  His father was a civil servant.  He is the second of four sons; his younger brother, Andrew Grant, is also a thriller novelist.  After being made redundant from his job due to corporate restructuring, Grant decided to start writing novels, stating they are "the purest form of entertainment."  In 1997, his first novel, Killing Floor, was published, and he moved to the United States in the summer of 1998.  Grant starts each new instalment of his book series on the anniversary day he began writing the first book in the wake of a job loss.  His pen name "Lee" comes from a family joke about a heard mispronunciation of the name of Renault's Le Car, as "Lee Car".  Calling anything "Lee" became a family gag.  His daughter, Ruth, was "lee child".  "Child" places his books alphabetically on bookstore and library shelves between crime fiction greats Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie.   Grant has said that he chose the name Reacher for the central character in his novels because he himself is tall and when they were grocery shopping his wife Jane remarked:  "'Hey, if this writing thing doesn't pan out, you could always be a reacher in a supermarket.' . . .  'I thought, Reacher—good name.'"  Some books in the Jack Reacher series are written in the first person, while others are written in the third person.  Grant has characterised the books as revenge stories--Somebody does a very bad thing, and Reacher takes revenge"--driven by his anger at the downsizing at Granada.  Although English, he deliberately chose to write American-style thrillers.  In 2007, Grant collaborated with 14 other writers to create the 17-part serial thriller The Chopin Manuscript, narrated by Alfred Molina.  This was broadcast weekly on Audible.com between 25 September 2007 and 13 November 2007.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Child

John McPhee quotes from Annals of the Former World, Book 4, Assembling California  “There are two earthquake-resistant structures—the pyramids and the redwoods.”  “A batholith, as defined in the science, has a surface of at least forty square miles and no known bottom.  For the latter reason, it is also called an abyssolith.”  “Between the grinding lithospheric plates, the rock of this terrain was so pervasively sheared that a roadcut in metabasalt looks like green hamburger.”  “The Coast Ranges were aglow with sulphurous volcanism, its products hardening upon the Franciscan.  The nutritive soils derived from these rocks prepared the geography of wine.”  “Napa and Sonoma are Patwin Indian names:  ‘Napa’ means house; ‘Sonoma’ means nose or the Land of Chief Nose.”  “Visiting California after the 1906 earthquake, Harry Fielding Reid, of Johns Hopkins University, conceived the theory of elastic rebound, which is also known as the Reid mechanism.”  “As Louis Agassiz discovered, if you set stakes in a straight line across a valley glacier and come back a year later, you will see the curving manner in which the stakes have moved.”

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2274  May 26, 2020

“Illness, insanity, and death  . . . kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life,” noted innovative Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1864-1944).  Deeply affected by the untimely death of his mother (when he was 5) and his 15-year-old sister (when he was 14), he devoted his early artistic efforts to painting their predicament and the ravages of tuberculosis.  His own fragile physical and emotional state dominated the way he viewed and executed his art. In his middle years, incapacitated by depression, he spent time in a sanatorium in Denmark, and even though he recovered, his work never regained its initial expressiveness.  Inspired by the work of Henrik Ibsen, Munch studied psychoanalysis and created art that unraveled the mysteries of the psyche.  His canvases are filled with agonizing uncertainty and excruciating loneliness, anticipating Ingmar Bergman’s theater and cinematic work.  His personal neuroses and physical ailments permeate the cultural anxiety expressed in his work.  Even as he painted the existential drama of his own life, Munch did so without graphic depictions of monsters or apparitions.  Rather, he provoked emotional response through unnatural color, internal rhythm, and undulating lines, as in The Scream, one of the most reproduced and universally acclaimed paintings in the history of art.  Munch studied in Oslo and traveled extensively to Italy, Germany, and France, where he took in the influences of his contemporaries (particularly Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh, and Gauguin) who were turning the angst of modern civilization into symbolism and stark expressionism.  Preoccupation with decadence and evil pervaded the artistic and literary climate of the day.  Darkness and horror inspired deeply personal, highly expressive art in a variety of styles, all of which fit under the umbrella of symbolism, as long as they embodied its peculiarly gloomy state of mind.  The movement’s emphasis on inner vision rather than observation of nature captured Munch’s haunted imagination and engaged his moody genius.  Infectious disease medicine has come a long way, yet Munch’s specter of the flu is alarmingly current.  Surveillance of circulating viruses is increasing and flu vaccination has entered the mainstream, but epidemics are still frequent and strains arising from antigenic shift keep the next flu pandemic just around the corner.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2958553/  See also https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edvard_Munch_-_Self-Portrait_with_the_Spanish_Flu_(1919).jpg

All-Purpose Beer Marinade for Grilling (meat or veggies!)  Jackie Dodd Mallory

http://thebeeroness.com/2019/06/21/all-purpose-beer-marinade-for-grilling-meat-or-veggies/

A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants in real life physically portray their characters.  The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by the real world while interacting with each other in character.  The outcome of player actions may be mediated by game rules or determined by consensus among players.  Event arrangers called gamemasters decide the setting and rules to be used and facilitate play.  The first LARPs were run in the late 1970s, inspired by tabletop role-playing games and genre fiction.  The activity spread internationally during the 1980s and has diversified into a wide variety of styles.  Play may be very game-like or may be more concerned with dramatic or artistic expression.  Events can also be designed to achieve educational or political goals.  The fictional genres used vary greatly, from realistic modern or historical settings to fantastic or futuristic eras.  Production values are sometimes minimal, but can involve elaborate venues and costumes.  LARPs range in size from small private events lasting a few hours to large public events with thousands of players lasting for days.  LARP does not have a single point of origin, but was invented independently by groups in North America, Europe, and Australia.  These groups shared an experience with genre fiction or tabletop role-playing games, and a desire to physically experience such settings.  In addition to tabletop role-playing, LARP is rooted in childhood games of make believe, play fighting, costume parties, roleplay simulations, Commedia dell'arte, improvisational theatre, psychodrama, military simulations, and historical reenactment groups such as the Society for Creative Anachronism.  The earliest recorded LARP group is Dagorhir, which was founded in 1977 in the United States and focuses on fantasy battles.  Soon after the release of the movie Logan's Run in 1976, rudimentary live role-playing games based on the movie were run at US science fiction conventions.  In 1981, the International Fantasy Gaming Society (IFGS) started, with rules influenced by Dungeons & Dragons.  IFGS was named after a fictional group in the 1981 novel Dream Park, which described futuristic LARPs.  In 1982, the Society for Interactive Literature, a predecessor of the Live Action Roleplayers Association (LARPA), formed as the first recorded theatre-style LARP group in the US.  Treasure Trap, formed in 1982 at Peckforton Castle, was the first recorded LARP game in the UK and influenced the fantasy LARPs that followed there.  The first recorded LARP in Australia was run in 1983, using the science fiction Traveller setting.  In 1993, White Wolf Publishing released Mind's Eye Theatre, which is still played internationally and is probably the most commercially successful published LARP.  The first German events were in the early 1990s, with fantasy LARP in particular growing quickly there, so that since 2001, two major German events have been run annually that have between 3000 and 7000 players each and attract players from around Europe.  Today, LARP is a widespread activity internationally.  Games with thousands of participants are run by for-profit companies, and a small industry exists to sell costume, armour and foam weapons intended primarily for LARP.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game

Slow-Cooker Hobo Stew  https://foursistersdish.com/2018/10/08/slow-cooker-hobo-stew/

Hobo Stew  https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/106038/hobo-stew/

Hobo Stew—Four Ingredients  https://thesouthernladycooks.com/hobo-stew-4-ingredients/

Texas Cowboy Stew  https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/82160/texas-cowboy-stew/

Ranch Stew AKA Cowboy Stew  https://www.food.com/recipe/ranch-stew-aka-cowboy-stew-310053

Slow-Cooker Cowboy Stew with Beef and Beans  https://www.thespruceeats.com/slow-cooker-cowboy-stew-3054549

David Litvin, an indoor-crop specialist, tends the plants in a temporarily shuttered exhibition, “Countryside, The Future.”  He moved to New York from Tel Aviv in February, along with his wife, Stefanie, and their Dutch shepherd, Ester, with a plan to stay six months harvesting the Guggenheim tomatoes that are growing in a greenhouse outside.  The museum has been closed since March 13, 2020 but Litvin still walks across Central Park every day around noon from his rental on the Upper West Side to tend his flock.  “When you grow tomatoes on Fifth Avenue, you want to have the perfect tomatoes; there’s no room to mess up,” he said.  “If I have ugly plants, I’ll hear it from the neighbors.”  The tomatoes, housed in what looks like a radioactive shipping container on the sidewalk, were on view as part of the exhibition for just three weeks before the city folded in on itself.  But they’re still growing, their vines snipped every Tuesday and donated to City Harvest, at least 100 pounds at a time.  “This tomato-growing module couldn’t just be turned off with the lights,” said Guggenheim curator Troy Conrad Therrien, who organized the exhibition with architect Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal of AMO, the research arm of Koolhaas’ firm.  “We brought the exhibition to the street, and the street is still accessible.”  Litvin works for 80 Acres Farms, a company that grows organic produce, including cucumbers, leafy greens and herbs, at giant indoor farms where controlled environments allow for year-round harvesting.  They’re close to making it work for strawberries, too.  https://artdaily.com/news/123698/The-museum-is-closed--but-its-tomato-man-soldiers-on#.XsUmT2hKiUk

Before founding Feisty Acres, Abra Morawiec & Chris Pinto acquired their farming chops working for a variety of different agricultural operations both domestic and abroad.  Abra was first introduced to agriculture on a large scale while serving as a volunteer for the United States Peace Corps in Mali, West Africa.  Chris spent time at Fort Hill Farm in Connecticut and worked on dairies in Alabama.  It wasn't until 2012, however, that Abra & Chris crossed paths as apprentices at a commercial organic vegetable farm on the North Fork of Long Island.  While they worked together moving irrigation pipe, running tractor mounted transplanters, and harvesting vegetables for market, they shared their farm and business ideals and realized there was a lot in common between them.  As they continued to work and manage other people's farms, they couldn't shake the idea of one day striking out on their own.  And, inevitably as most good stories go, they fell in love.  Since 2015, Farmers Abra & Chris grow and care for pasture raised game birds and specialty poultry.  It first began with quail, but has now expanded to include other species such as:  French Guinea Fowl, Chukar Partridge, Silkie Chicken, heritage breed ducks, heritage breed chickens and various heritage breed turkeys.  All birds live their lives on the North Fork of Long Island.  They are also processed on Long Island and marketed directly by the farmers.  

https://feistyacres.com/about-us-1  In early March 2020 small farms on the North Fork of Long Island (like Feisty Acres) began to boom during the COVID-19 crisis because they have been able to shift their sales directly to consumers.  The New York Times  May 10, 2020

In the end, it will go down as a 1-up win for Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning over Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady The Match:  Champions for Charity on May 24, 2020, which raised $20 million for coronavirus relief.  After a 45-minute weather delay, the fun started.  There was entertaining banter from the players and from Tour-player-turned-broadcaster-for-the-day Justin Thomas and NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley.  Nick Pietruszkiewicz  See descriptions of the play and link to video at https://www.espn.com/golf/story/_/id/29216145/follow-live-tiger-woods-peyton-manning-phil-mickelson-tom-brady

H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert.  It opened at the Opera Comique in London, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical theatre piece up to that time. H.M.S. Pinafore was Gilbert and Sullivan's fourth operatic collaboration and their first international sensation.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.M.S._Pinafore

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2273  May 25, 2020 

The library I grew up using is a Carnegie-funded library:  Blanche A. Nixon/Cobbs Creek Library.  Serving the Cobbs Creek community since 1925, the branch was renamed in 1990 to honor a local activist.  Situated on a triangular lot where Cobbs Creek Parkway, Baltimore Avenue, and 58th Street converge in Philadelphia, the branch has a tree-lined walkway in front.  Cobbs Creek was known as Karakung by the Lenni Lenape Indians and Mill Creek by Swedes in the late 1600's.  It later became known as Cobbs Creek after an English settler.  The neighborhood surrounding the Cobbs Creek Branch was part of land belonging to the Hoffman family since colonial days.  The area became part of Blockley Township in the 1800's.  A village called Angora centered around several mills on Cobbs Creek located at the current intersection of 60th Street and Baltimore Avenue.  The woods surrounding the village were known as Sherwood Forest.  In the 1910's, the mills and woods were torn down to make way for houses.  Baltimore Avenue was used to transport food and supplies from the Schuylkill River wharfs to places west of the city.  Around 1905, the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company started subway surface routes using the electric streetcar on Baltimore Avenue.  Trolleys still travel this route today.  Subway surface routes, as well as the completion of the Market Elevated in 1907, spurred residential construction in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood.  Funded by a grant from Andrew Carnegie, the Cobbs Creek Branch opened on December 30, 1925.  The community contributed $10,000 toward a book fund.  The building was renovated and refurbished in 1957.  In 1990, the branch library was renamed the Blanche A. Nixon/Cobbs Creek Branch in honor of Blanche Nixon, a local resident, community activist and library volunteer.  Mrs. Nixon spearheaded beautification projects at the branch, including its garden and exterior mural.  https://libwww.freelibrary.org/locations/blanche-a-nixoncobbs-creek-library

Milford is a borough in Pike County, Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat.  Its population was 1,021 at the 2010 census.  Located on the upper Delaware River, Milford is part of the New York metropolitan area.  The area along the Delaware River had long been settled by the Lenape, an Algonquian-speaking indigenous tribe that lived in the mid-Atlantic coastal areas, including western Long Island, and along this river at the time of European colonization.  The English also called the people the Delaware, after the river they named after one of their colonial leaders.  Milford was founded in 1796 after the American Revolutionary War as a United States settlement on the Delaware River by Judge John Biddis, one of Pennsylvania's first four circuit judges.  He named the settlement after his ancestral home in Wales.  Milford has a large number of buildings of historical significance, many constructed in the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries.  Some are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, while numerous others are included in the Milford Historic District, also listed on the NRHP.  Of the 655 buildings in the district, 400 of them have been deemed to be historically significant.  The district is characterized by a variety of Late Victorian architecture.  Grey Towers National Historic Site, the ancestral home of Gifford Pinchot, the noted conservationist, two-time Governor of Pennsylvania and first head of the U.S. Forest Service, is located in Milford.  It was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt has been designated a National Historic Site.  According to the United States Census Bureau, the borough has a total area of 0.5 square miles (1.3 km²), all land.  Milford is located on the Upper Delaware River, which divides Pennsylvania's Poconos region from the Catskill Mountains in New York, in what was historically a heavily forested area.  When Judge Biddis bought up the land of what was then known as Wells Ferry and laid out the lots for the new town, he generally followed the urban plan of Philadelphia:  he laid out High Street--the equivalent of what is now Market Street in Philadelphia--running to the Delaware River, while Broad Street runs perpendicular to High, creating a grid.  At the intersection of Broad and High is a public square--just as there is at Broad and Market in Philadelphia-- and most of Milford's official buildings are located there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford,_Pennsylvania  Milford Haven in Wales is an Anglicization of an old Scandinavian name Melrfjordr that was first applied to the waterway--the Old Norse Melr, meaning sandbank, and fjordr, meaning inlet, developing into "Milford"; then later the term "Haven" was added.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Milford_Haven

Fireball Whisky Barbecue Sauce Recipe

https://whatscookingamerica.net/Sauces_Condiments/Fireball-Whiskey-BarbecueSauce.htm

Ananym is a special form of the pseudonym, in which the letters of a name are rearranged.  The ananym is a special form of the anagram and can be formed by (1) arbitrarily rearranging all the letters of a name, thus forming a new name or (2) sorting in exactly the reverse order.  If the ananym is read backwards, it returns the original name.  The term is derived from the Greek words ana, which coincides with according, as well as onyma, which means name.  Examples:  (1) The poet Paul Celan was originally called Paul Ancel.  (2) In Castlevania is one of the protagonists Alucard.  Castlevania is a video game series from Konami, whose first offshoot appeared in 1987.  In the game, the player controls a vampire hunter who approaches the dark forces and usually tries to find a way through Dracula’s castle.  The son of Count Dracula is called Alucard, which is a simple reversal of the name of the legendary vampire.  The Ananym Alucard is not an invention of Konami.  For the first time in the American film Son of Dracula (1943) by Robert Siodmak, the noble blood-sucker Anthony Alucard leads the wordplay as a surname.  In addition, this ananym is found in the Manga/Anime series Hellsing.  Alucard is a vampire who works for the organization Hellsing.  (2) Theodor Seuss Geisel sometimes used the name Theo LeSieg.  For his works, he used various pseudonyms, such as Dr. Seuss, Rosetta Stone and the ananym of his surname LeSieg.  posted by Edward  https://monsterliterature.com/ananym/

John McPhee quotes from Annals of the Former World, Book 3, Rising From the Plains  “There was a saying among homesteaders in Wyoming:  ‘If summer falls on a weekend, let’s have a picnic.’”   “Bentonite is mined in Wyoming and sold to the rest of the world.  Blessed is the land that can sell its mud.  Bentonite is used in adhesives, automobile polish, detergent and paint.”  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonite

The Black Hours, MS M.493 (or the Morgan Black Hours) is an illuminated book of hours completed in Bruges between 1460 and 1475.  It consists of 121 leaves, with Latin text written in Gothic minuscule script.  The words are arranged in rows of fourteen lines, and follow the Roman version of the texts.  The lettering is inscribed in silver and gold, and placed within borders ornamented with flowers, foliage and grotesques, on pages dyed a deep blueish black.  It contains fourteen full-page miniatures and opens with the months of the liturgical calendar (folios 3 verso--14 recto), followed by the Hours of the Virgin, and ends with the Office of the Dead (folio 121v).  MS M.493 is one of seven surviving black books of hours, all originating from Bruges and dated to the mid-to-late 15th century.  They are so named for their unusual dark blueish appearance, a colourisation achieved through the expensive process of dyeing the vellum with iron gall ink.  This dye is very corrosive and the surviving examples are mostly badly decomposed; MS M.493 is in relatively good condition due to its very thick parchment.  The book is a masterpiece of Late Gothic manuscript illumination.  No records survive of its commission, but its uniquely dark tone, expense of production, quality and rarity suggest ownership by privileged and sophisticated members of the Burgundian court.  The book is often attributed, on stylistic grounds, to a follower of Willem Vrelant, a leading and influential Flemish illuminator.  It has been in the collection of the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, since 1912.  See illustrations at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hours,_Morgan_MS_493

How to Make Mason Jar Ice Cream  No machine or special equipment required.  Katherine Sacks  https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/how-to-make-mason-jar-ice-cream-article

Driving Down This Haunted Pennsylvania Road Will Give You Nightmares  If you’ve ever seen M. Night Shymalan’s film “The Village,” then you’re already familiar with the area around Cossart Road.  It is so infused with legend that he chose to film the movie in a nearby field.  Even if you were unaware of the road’s ghostly history, you would suspect an ominous presence due to the trees, which dramatically lean away from the road.  Legend states that the trees lean away from Cossart Road in a desperate attempt to be further away from the evil road, which is colloquially known as Devil's Road.  The source of bad spirits in the area is said to come from the DuPont family, who lived in a large stone mansion off of Devil's Road.  Posted by Cristi  https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/pennsylvania/pa-cossart-road/  The Muser’s father was born in Cossart, Pennsylvania.  The town no longer exists.  The house he was born in is no longer there. 

THOUGHT FOR MAY 22  It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.  Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. - Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and writer (22 May 1859-1930)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2272  May 22, 2020