Cigarettes and Matches in World War II   Soon after the adoption of the K Ration suggestions came that there should be more included then just food.  One of the first things included were cigarettes.  Each unit held a small package of four cigarettes.  This was done in August 1942.  Although Lucky Strike is the most famous brand, one of the most included brand in the K Ration appears to be the Chesterfield.  Many other brands were also used in the K Ration.  Such brands are:  Philip Morris, Camel, Chelsea, Raleigh, Fleetwood and Old Gold.  The short lived Mountain Ration, Jungle Ration and the 5-in-1 Rations all used small packages containing five cigarettes each.  The 10-in-1 Ration included packages with 10 cigarettes each.  After careful concideration it was determined that a matchbook with one row of ten matches was suitable.  http://www.kration.info/cigarettes-and-matches.html  See also MCI--Meal, Combat, Individual … the meal before the MRE at http://www.belvoireagleonline.com/news/mci-meal-combat-individual-the-meal-before-the-mre/article_e7004538-a42e-11e9-8f59-f7ada4ec11a3.html  The Muser, walking in downtown Toledo, Ohio in the 1980s, was offered free cigarette samples. 

In 1920, Ohioan Warren Gamaliel Harding won election as President of the United States.  President Harding’s legacy largely still is tied to the Teapot Dome Scandal.  The scandal received its name from the government-owned oil fields in Teapot Dome, Wyoming.  Oil lands in Elk Hills, Ca. also were included under the Teapot Dome umbrella.  The upshot of the Teapot Dome Scandal was the accusation that Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, had bypassed the open bid process in awarding leases for government oil land to private oil companies.  The practice of leasing government oil land was common because of the passage of the General Leasing Act under President Wilson.  Fall, who had been a well respected senator from New Mexico prior to his two-year stint in Interior, allegedly had routed the leases to two oil companies in return for a $100,000 gift.  At the end of a lengthy Senate investigation and ensuing trial, he was convicted of accepting the bribe, sentenced to a year in jail and fined $100,000; one oilman spent six months in jail for perjury; the other was acquitted of giving Fall the bribe.  https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Teapot_Dome_Scandal

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

gazunder  (guh-ZUHN-duhr)  transitive verb To reduce the amount of an offer after it has been accepted by the seller.  A blend of gazump + under.  Earliest documented use:  1988.  To gazump is to raise the price after accepting an offer from a buyer, but buyers are not always angels.  Sometimes a buyer reduces the offer, just before signing the contract.  These typically happen in the housing market.  A real-estate company even offers a helpful article on How To Gazunder Successfully.  While legal, the practice is clearly unethical.  It’s fitting then, that the word gazunder has another slang meaning, though it’s unrelated to today’s word.  It also refers to a chamber pot, from the condensed spelling of “goes under” referring to where a chamber pot is placed.

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From:  Judith Judson  In one of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries Lord P almost gazumped when at an auction for antique books he raised a bid by saying “guineas” when a hammer almost came down on a bid in pounds . . . in those pre-decimal days a guinea was worth one shilling more than a pound (and was also considered a classier form--some people’s pay and some items would be reckoned in guineas rather than pounds).  Nowadays a guinea is worth one pound five new pence.  But I believe an actual guinea coin is far in the past.

From:  Douglas Sutherland  You say that the use of gazumping in connection with house sales exists in the UK.  This is not strictly correct as it does not exist in Scotland which has a different legal system.  When buying a house a legal binding contract is created as soon as an offer is accepted.  The offer can be very short, as can the acceptance.  Not quite as short as this, but in principle I write to you offering to buy your house at such and such a price, and you write back to accept, there is the legal contract.  This is therefore not dependent on the actual exchange of contracts which will take place later, when the delay allows the practice of gazumping to take place.  So gazumping cannot take place in Scotland without legal action.

From:  Faith Steinberg  There is a homophone for gazunder that has no relation to today’s definition.  The German/Yiddish word “gesunter” which means a healthy person. Gesundheit is a derivative, the expression one uses sometimes after someone sneezes.

From:  Geoff Kennedy  My mother used the word gazunda to refer to an item, sometimes a gift, which was not attractive or useful, and was thus something that gazunda the bed.

From:  Stuart Newstead  Gazunder is also a term in cricket.  When the bowler bowls the ball, it normally bounces after it pitches.  Very occasionally it hits a crack and shoots along the ground.  This is completely unpredictable and always takes the batter by surprise and the ball is a gazunder--because it goes under the bat.  https://wordsmith.org/awad/awadmail933.html

Egg-in-a-Hole  Find recipe and picture courtesy of Ree Drumond at

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/egg-in-a-hole-recipe-1925587  (easy, 1 serving, 5 minutes time needed) 

May 7, 2020  Novelist N.K. Jemisin was a teenager the first time she read Octavia Butler, and nothing had prepared her for it.  It was the 1980s, and the book was called “Dawn,” the story of a black woman who awakens 250 years after a nuclear holocaust.  “I remember just kind of being stunned that a black woman existed in the future, because science fiction had not done that before,” says Jemisin, whose “The City We Became” is currently a bestseller.  “There was just this conspicuous absence where it seemed we all just vanished after a while.”  A revolutionary voice in her lifetime, Butler has only become more popular and influential since her death at age 58.  Her novels, including “Dawn,” “Kindred” and “Parable of the Sower,” sell more than 100,000 copies each year, according to her former literary and the manager of her estate, Merrillee Heifetz.  Toshi Reagon has adapted “Parable of the Sower” into an opera, and Viola Davis and Ava DuVernay are among those working on streaming series based on her work.  Grand Central Publishing is reissuing many of her novels in 2020 and the Library of America welcomes her to the canon in 2021 with a volume of her fiction.  Hillel Italie  https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/books/2020/05/07/octavia-butler-science-fiction-novelist/111672632/  See also https://theportalist.com/parable-of-the-sower-opera with links to ten Octavia Butler quotes. 

In the world of mules, There are no rules . . . Some claim that pianists are human, And quote the case of Mr. Truman.  Read all verses that accompany many performances of Carnival of the Animals at https://derricksblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/saint-saens-the-carnival-of-the-animals-with-verses-by-ogden-nash/

In the early 1930s, Alden B. Dow F.A.I.A. introduced modern design to Midland, Michigan and created over 130 structures during his 50-year career.  His innovative and dynamic structures initiated an architectural heritage that is unprecedented in the United States.  Dow’s creative concepts inspired dozens of other architects, including Jackson Hallett A.I.A, Glenn Beach A.I.A., Robert Schwartz A.I.A, and Francis “Red” Warner A.I.A.  These gifted architects and more, also created beautifully-crafted Mid-Century Modern structures that are an integral part of the over 400 buildings that dominate Midland.   https://midcenturymidland.org/  Flooding in May 2020 prompted a Midland native to recount time spent sitting on Barcelona chairs in the public library.

The Barcelona chair is a chair designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich, for the German Pavilion at the International Exposition of 1929, hosted by Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.  The chair was first used in Villa Tugendhat, a private residence, designed by Mies in Brno (Czech Republic).  The frame was initially designed to be bolted together, but was redesigned in 1950 using stainless steel, which allowed the frame to be formed by a seamless piece of metal, giving it a smoother appearance.  Bovine leather replaced the ivory-colored pigskin which was used for the original pieces.  In his 1981 book about modern architecture, From Bauhaus to Our House, Tom Wolfe called the Barcelona chair as "the Platonic ideal of chair."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_chair

New words used in May 2020:  infodemic (proliferation of COVID-19 information, often unsubstantiated); covedient (respecting stay-at-home orders)  Toledo Blade  May 31, 2020  Blursday means you’re not sure what day it is. 

Powell’s  City of Books, established 1971, has four locations in Portland, Oregon and one in Beaverton, Oregon.  All locations are temporarily closed.  Shop their combined inventory of about 3 million books at https://www.powells.com/

WHO?  https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2020/06/01

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2278  June 2, 2020