Researchers at the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague on
April 28, 2020 revealed the results of extensive investigations into its star
painting, Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring,
thought to date from about 1665. The
Netherlands’ researchers were stunned to discover, for the first time, delicate
eyelashes on the girl’s face and evidence of a green curtain behind her
head. Speculating on who the girl was,
with her enigmatic expression, wide eyes, unusual blue turban and huge pearl
earring, remains part of the fun. The
novelist Tracy Chevalier, in her book Girl with a
Pearl Earring, which became a successful film, imagines the character as a maid
in Vermeer’s house who is persuaded to secretly pose for him. The Mauritshuis research has also brought us
closer to Vermeer’s painting techniques, said Vandivere, showing how he began
composing the painting in various shades of brown and black before adding the
colours, working systematically from the background to the foreground. The pearl itself is an illusion in that “it
has no contour and also no hook to hang it from the girl’s ear”, she said. Researchers also discovered changes Vermeer
made, including shifting the position of the ear, the top of the headscarf and
the back of the neck. Researchers have
been able to pinpoint where the raw materials for the colours came from. Vermeer would have bought them in his home
town of Delft, but the lead ore in his white would have come from the Peak
District; the cochineal in his red was made from insects that lived on cacti in
Mexico and South America; and the blue in the headscarf was made from the
semi-precious stone lapis lazuli, from what is now Afghanistan. It is surprising how much he used, said
Vandivere, because in the 17th century it would have been more precious than
gold. The director of the Mauritshuis,
Martine Gosselink, said: “The girl
hasn’t revealed the secret of her identity yet but we got to know her a little
better. This is not the end point of our
research.” Mark Brown
Who's the star of
the Hunger Games prequel?
Read the exclusive first excerpt--Meet your new hero by David Canfield We know
Coriolanus Snow, from Suzanne Collins’ original Hunger Games trilogy
and its film adaptations (where he was portrayed by Donald Sutherland), to be a
villain—a manipulative tyrant, a brutal killer.
Those were Katniss Everdeen’s novels, after all, and Snow’s dictatorial
presidency stood as the main antagonist to her resistance-underdog story. But what if there was more to him than we
knew? What if he could be—crazy as it
may sound—a hero? In June 2019, Scholastic announced that Collins had written a prequel set
64 years before the events of The Hunger Games,
titled The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (out May 19,
2020).
And now EW can offer eager fans a taste of what to expect with this
first excerpt—and reveal Snow as our new protagonist, a teenager born to
privilege but searching for something more, a far cry from the man we know he
will become. Here, he’s friendly. He’s charming. And, for now anyway, he’s a hero. https://ew.com/books/2020/01/21/hunger-games-prequel-exclusive-excerpt/
The Best
Reviewed Books of the Week FEATURING LAWRENCE WRIGHT'S PANDEMIC NOVEL, A
BIOGRAPHY OF HENRY KISSINGER, A TALE OF COWBOYS IN COMPTON, AND MORE May 1, 2020 https://bookmarks.reviews/the-best-reviewed-books-of-the-week-05-01-2020/
May 2020 marks the 30th
anniversary of Neil Gaiman and Terry
Pratchett's devilishly delightful novel Good Omens, which Gaiman
adapted into last year's Amazon miniseries with Michael
Sheen and David Tennant. To celebrate, Gaiman himself wrote a special
quarantine mini-episode published May 1, 2020, with Sheen and Tennant reprising
their roles as the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley. The clip follows Aziraphale and Crowley as
they check in with each other in lockdown. Crowley's losing his mind with only his
houseplants for company, and he can't even bring himself to spread fear and
discontent amongst the masses when the pandemic is already doing such a good
job of that. Meanwhile, Aziraphale is
perfectly thrilled to sit in his closed book store all day, reading and baking
bundt cakes. After all, when you've
successfully shut down the apocalypse, a global pandemic is no sweat. Devan Coggan Link to 3:40 video Good Omens: Lockdown at https://ew.com/tv/good-omens-quarantine-special-episode-david-tennant-michael-sheen/
In a 5-to-4 ruling with unusual alliances, the court said
that annotations cannot be copyrighted if they are the official work
of state lawmakers. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus GEORGIA ET
AL. v. PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT No. 18–1150. Argued December 2, 2019—Decided
April 27, 2020 The Copyright Act grants
monopoly protection for “original works of authorship.” 17 U. S. C. §102(a). Under the government edicts doctrine,
officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of the
works they create in the course of their official duties. The State of Georgia has one official code—the
Official Code of Georgia Annotated (OCGA). That Code includes the text of every Georgia
statute currently in force, as well as a set of non-binding annotations that
appear beneath each statutory provision. The annotations typically include summaries of
judicial opinions construing each provision, summaries of pertinent opinions of
the state attorney general, and a list of related law review articles and other
reference materials. The OCGA is assembled by the Code Revision Commission, a
state entity composed mostly of legislators, funded through legislative branch
appropriations, and staffed by the Office of Legislative Counsel. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-1150_7m58.pdf Thank you, Muse reader!
Madeline Faith Kripke (September
9, 1943–April 25, 2020) was a book collector who held one of the world's
largest collections of dictionaries.
Madeline Kripke was born in New London,
Connecticut to mother Dorothy Karp
Kripke and father Myer S. Kripke,
a rabbi. Kripke's brother was philosopher Saul Kripke, and
her sister was Netta Kripke Stern. She
graduated with a bachelor's in English from Barnard College. In fifth grade, she recalled receiving
a Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary from her parents, which she
said "unlocked the world for me".
Kripke acquired a collection of approximately 20,000 dictionaries in her
two-bedroom apartment. The oldest
dictionary in her collection was a Latin dictionary published in 1502 by Ambrogio Calepino.
She placed a special emphasis on
collecting dictionaries regarding obscure slang. Her collection includes the only known copy
of Larks of London (1840), a dictionary of slang from the
London underworld. Jesse Sheidlower described
her collection as better than that of the Library of Congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Kripke See also https://narratively.com/the-dame-of-dictionaries/
Three grand essentials to
happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to
hope for. - Joseph Addison, writer (1 May 1672-1719)
The Legacy of Jack Randall
aka ‘Dr. Fish’ Lives On by Joann Glorioso
A prolific ichthyologist, Dr. Randall has described 954 new
species of marine fishes (with a high 97.3% valid), and has 885
publications with 359 written with different co-authors. He has won the highest honors in his
profession, including the International Coral Reef
Society’s Darwin Medal. He had been a very active collaborator of
FishBase since 1990. His main
contributions include more than 11,000 fish pictures for 178 families,
generously made available to the public under a Creative Commons license
allowing the use of the images for non-commercial purposes. According
to his obituary at The Washington Post, he was completing a memoir
tentatively titled “Fish & Ships:
The Life and Discoveries of an Ichthyologist,” before he
died. Read touching memories from colleagues at https://www.q-quatics.org/2020/05/01/in-loving-memory-of-jack-randall/ John Ernest
"Jack" Randall died April
26, 2020 at the age of 95.
The 2020
Kentucky Derby was postponed to the first Saturday in September because of the
coronavirus pandemic, but there was still a Run for the Roses on May 2, 2020. It took place through a computer
simulation and it pitted all 13 Triple Crown-winning horses against each
other. The
event wasn't just made for TV:
Proceeds from online
donations before and after the
race will go to COVID-19 relief. Tom Gatto Link to
2:23 video at https://www.sportingnews.com/us/horse-racing/news/virtual-kentucky-derby-results-triple-crown-showdown-run-for-the-roses/1gnpe7uks9dfy10oxaqqiczxsu
Star Wars Day,
May 4,
celebrates George Lucas's Star Wars media franchise. Observance of the commemorative
day spread quickly through media and grassroots celebrations. The date was chosen for the pun on
the catchphrase "May the Force be
with you" as "May the
Fourth be with you". Even though the holiday was not created or
declared by Lucasfilm, many Star
Wars fans across the world have chosen to celebrate the holiday. It has since been embraced by Lucasfilm and
parent company Disney as
an annual celebration of Star Wars.
The first recorded reference was the
phrase being first used on May 4, 1979, the day Margaret
Thatcher took office as Prime
Minister of the United
Kingdom. An online news article from the Danish public
broadcaster says her political party, the Conservatives, placed a congratulatory advertisement in The London Evening News, saying "May
the Fourth Be with You, Maggie. Congratulations."
WORD OF THE DAY for May
4 slanhood noun (fandom slang, dated) The state of
being a science fiction fan. From slan (“fan of science fiction”) + -hood (suffix denoting a condition or state
of being).
Slan is from the title of the science
fiction novel Slan (1940)
by Canadian-born author A. E. van Vogt (1912–2000), about persecuted – yet physically, mentally and morally superior – telepathic mutant humans. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slanhood#English
Skywatchers can expect an exciting month of cosmic phenomena, starting
with a meteor shower to mark a beautiful start to Cinco de Mayo. The Eta Aquarids meteor shower is expected to
peak in the early hours of Tuesday, May 5, 2020. The Eta Aquarids meteor shower peaks each
year during early May as Earth passes through the debris trail from Halley's
Comet (1P/Halley). The
famous Halley's Comet is visible from Earth about every 76 years. It was last seen in 1986 and won't be visible
again until 2061. Each year, when Earth
collides with the comet's orbit, vaporizing debris comes flying into our
atmosphere at a whopping 148,000 miles per hour, according to NASA, making the meteors
well known for their speed. Fast meteors
tend to leave glowing dust "trains" behind them, producing
magnificent "shooting stars." Under
normal conditions, the annual meteor shower typically produces about 30 meteors
per hour. It's named for its radiant, or
direction of origin, which appears to come from the constellation Aquarius. Sophie Lewis https://www.cbsnews.com/news/halleys-comet-cinco-de-mayo-meteor-shower/
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2263
May 4, 2020
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