The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J. D. Salinger, partially published in serial form in 1945–1946 and as a novel in 1951.  It was originally intended for adults, but is often read by adolescents for its themes of angst and alienation, and as a critique on superficiality in society.  It has been translated widely.  Around one million copies are sold each year, with total sales of more than 65 million books.  The novel's protagonist Holden Caulfield has become an icon for teenage rebellion.  The Catcher in the Rye has been consistently listed as one of the best novels of the twentieth century.  Shortly after its publication, in an article for The New York Times, Nash K. Burger called it "an unusually brilliant novel," while James Stern wrote an admiring review of the book in a voice imitating Holden's.   George H. W. Bush called it a "marvelous book," listing it among the books that have inspired him.  In June 2009, the BBC's Finlo Rohrer wrote that, 58 years since publication, the book is still regarded "as the defining work on what it is like to be a teenager."  Adam Gopnik considers it one of the "three perfect books" in American literature, along with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, and believes that "no book has ever captured a city better than Catcher in the Rye captured New York in the fifties."  In an appraisal of The Catcher in the Rye written after the death of J.D. Salinger, Jeff Pruchnic says the novel has retained its appeal for many generations.  Pruchnic describes Holden as a “teenage protagonist frozen midcentury but destined to be discovered by those of a similar age in every generation to come.”  Bill Gates said that The Catcher in the Rye is one of his favorite books.  However, not all reception has been positive.  The book has had its share of critics, and many contemporary readers "just cannot understand what the fuss is about".  According to Rohrer, who writes, "many of these readers are disappointed that the novel fails to meet the expectations generated by the mystique it is shrouded in.   Rohrer assessed the reasons behind both the popularity and criticism of the book, saying that it "captures existential teenage angst" and has a "complex central character" and "accessible conversational style"; while at the same time some readers may dislike the "use of 1940s New York vernacular" and the excessive "whining" of the "self-obsessed character".  In 1960, a teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma was fired for assigning the novel in class; however, she was later reinstated.  Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States.  The book was banned in the Issaquah, Washington high schools in 1978 as being part of an "overall communist plot".  In 1981, it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States.  According to the American Library Association, The Catcher in the Rye was the 10th most frequently challenged book from 1990 to 1999.  It was one of the ten most challenged books of 2005, and although it had been off the list for three years, it reappeared in the list of most challenged books of 2009. 

In 2009, the year before he died, Salinger successfully sued to stop the U.S. publication of a novel that presents Holden Caulfield as an old man.  The novel's author, Fredrik Colting, commented:  "call me an ignorant Swede, but the last thing I thought possible in the U.S. was that you banned books". The issue is complicated by the nature of Colting's book, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, which has been compared to fan fiction.  Although commonly not authorized by writers, no legal action is usually taken against fan fiction, since it is rarely published commercially and thus involves no profit.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye 

In Des Peres, Missouri, on the ramp that leads from I-270 North to Manchester Road, near a grocery store and a busy shopping mall, there often sits a quiet and mysterious jar of pickles.  When it falls, breaks, or disappears, it is always replaced.  It is the highway’s warty lodestar.  A Facebook group, “Team Pickle”members described sightings, and shared blurry drive-by photos.  They posted pickle jokes and memes, as well as theories about the jar’s provenance.  Attention has its downsides.  Quite soon after the Facebook group began, the first pickle jar disappeared.  It had been pretty gnarly:  half-evaporated, with its label rubbed off, and “just this nude color, no real green to it,” says Steen.  Still, members mourned.  One wrote a poem: “A jar / Viewed from afar / Has left a scar / Upon our hearts / Alas it departs!”  Cara Giaimo  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-pickles-highway-missouri 

35 Home Library Ideas with Beautiful Bookshelf Designs   Don’t let your books languish on the shelf.  Discover home library ideas that will give your hardcovers and paperbacks the attention they deserve by Kate Jerde and Lindsey Mather  We gathered up the most beautiful home libraries from our archives to inspire your own literary retreat.  See how to create home library shelving that puts your favorite books on display for a space that’s well-designed and well-read.  https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/home-libraries-slideshow 

Greengage plums are best for fresh eating and used as a principle ingredient in desserts such as cakes, ice creams and pies.  They also make delicious compotes, jams and reductions while some varieties are specifically used for alcohol spirits and canning purposes.  Complimentary flavors include vanilla, nutmeg, tropical fruits, chocolate, butter and citrus.  Savory pairings include mild fresh cheeses such as chevre and ricotta, herbs such as arugula, chiles, fennel and basil, bacon, lamb and raw sashimi grade seafood such as albacore and scallops.  To store, refrigerate ripe fruit for up to one week. The Greengage plum's given French name is Reine Claude, named after Queen Claude.  There are three different categories of plums:  Japanese, Italian and European.  The Greengage plum is a European plum which was introduced into England by Sir Thomas Gage in the early 16th century. It was first cultivated in France from a green-fruited plum native to Asia Minor, specifically Armenia.  The Greengage plum tree is known to bear fruit biannually.  Pruning the tree to prevent excessive fruit production in one season can prevent scarce harvests in successive years.  https://specialtyproduce.com/produce/Greengage_Plums_6287.php 

A Starting Point is a video-based civic engagement platform created by Chris Evans, Mark Kassen, and technology entrepreneur Joe Kiani.  ASP’s mission is to create a bipartisan channel of communication and connectivity between Americans and their elected officials with the goal of creating a more informed electorate.  https://www.astartingpoint.com/  Includes two-minute answers to common questions by elected officials, a forum for elected officials to make a point in under two minutes, and discussions  between two members from across the aisle.  Also find who represents you and register to vote.  

Liberation Library was founded in 2015 by the American advocacy group Project Nia, with fiscal sponsorship by the Chicago Freedom School.  The organization is operated entirely by volunteers, with a decision-making body called a steering committee that is nonhierarchical and multiracial.  Vogue spoke to three members of Liberation Library—cofounder Bettina Johnson, curriculum and steering committee member Melanie Wagner, and communications and steering committee member Magan Marshall—about how Liberation Library got started, why the organization is rooted in abolitionist ideas, and how to actively support the organization and the fundamental values it was built on, no matter where you are in the country.  Puja Prakash  Read interview at https://www.vogue.com/article/liberation-library-prison-abolition 

1936:  Likely the beginning of popularity for knock-knock jokes.  Knock-knock jokes became a regular part of the Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in Show in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  https://nationaldaycalendar.com/national-knock-knock-joke-day-october-31/ 

Our top 20 knock-knock jokes to tell on International Joke Day
https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/01/funny-knock-knock-jokes-tell-international-joke-day-12926458/ 

The National Bonsai and Penjing Museum contains miniature masterpieces of horticultural art.  The Chinese art of penjing and the Japanese art of bonsai use woody plants in containers as a medium to portray the natural growth habit of trees in the landscape.  The living sculptures of bonsai and penjing are inspired by natural scenes, and they change with the seasons like their wild relatives.  They require continual care and training to maintain their artistic designs.  In addition to water and fertilization, the bonsai are pruned and their branches are shaped using wire to give the impression of ancient trees.  The museum’s collection began in 1976 with a gift of 53 bonsai trees from Japan to commemorate the United States Bicentennial.  The collection has grown steadily with the addition of pieces from North American bonsai masters and a penjing collection from China.  Now, more than 300 specimens rotate through the display tables and pedestals of three pavilions and a special exhibits gallery.  The bonsai intermix with companion art forms of viewing stones, herbaceous companion plants (kusamono), and Japanese flower arrangements (ikebana).  The museum’s gardens are more than a beautiful backdrop to the bonsai; they are designed to prime the viewer for a calming experience surrounded by the finest selections of flowers and foliage.  Visit often to see the bonsai and gardens change through the seasons.  https://www.usna.usda.gov/discover/gardens-collections/national-bonsai-penjing-museum           

Chicken Tetrazzini courtesy of Giada de Laurentis  total time:  1 hour 35 minutes  servings:  6-8  https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/chicken-tetrazzini-recipe-1943960  

Tetrazzini is an American dish made with diced poultry or seafood and mushroom in a butter/cream and cheese sauce flavored with wine or sherry.  It is served hot over linguine, spaghetti, egg noodles, or some other types of pasta, garnished with parsley, and sometimes topped with breadcrumbs, almonds, canned fried onions, or cheese (or a combination).  Tetrazzini can be prepared as a baked noodle casserole, sometimes with steps taken to give it a browned crust.  Shortcut recipes for home cooking sometimes use canned cream of mushroom soup or other cream soups.  The dish is named after the Italian opera star Luisa Tetrazzini.  It is widely believed to have been invented circa 1908–1910 by Ernest Arbogast, the chef at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, California, where Tetrazzini was a long-time resident.  However, other sources attribute the origin to the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City.  Good Housekeeping published the first reference to turkey tetrazzini in October 1908, saying readers could find the dish of cooked turkey in a cream sauce, with spaghetti, grated cheese, sliced mushrooms, and bread crumbs on top, at "the restaurant on Forty-second street."  The chicken tetrazzini was made famous by chef Louis Paquet.  No universal standard for the dish exists, so various parts are missing or substituted in various recipes.  The name is often expanded to describe the specific meat used (e.g., chicken tetrazzini, or tuna tetrazzini).  Link to list of foods named after people at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrazzini 

WORD OF THE DAY FOR AUGUST 31  peewah noun (Trinidad and Tobago)  The peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), a South American palm tree.   The edible fruit of this plant, which has an orange or red skin when ripe, orange pulp which turns floury when cooked, and a single large seed.  August 31 is the Independence Day of Trinidad and Tobago. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2251  August 31, 2020

 PARAPHRASES from Night School, #21 in the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child   Of course it works.  This is Germany  *  If we don’t live to see it, the future means nothing.  *  Eggs are broken.  Omelet is made.  All is forgiven if it turns out tasty.  *  Two-star generals get medals like frequent flyer miles.   

WATCH: Jazz Pianist Marcus Roberts in Episode Two of the Mighty SONG Writers Video Series  This 24:25 episode continues our video series at Lit Hub to benefit the wonderful Mighty Writers, a Philadelphia-based non-profit that teaches reading and writing to thousands of low-income and marginalized students every year and is seeing more need than ever during the pandemic (head here to learn more).  Over the next few months we’ll be asking singer-songwriters about their writing and reading lives—their influences, writing habits, favorite books—and while they’re at, to play us a song or two.   Check out episode one:  Amanda Shires with Jason Isbell.  This installment features jazz pianist Marcus Roberts.  Roberts performs a handful of favorite songs and discusses reading, writing, and his musical idols.  https://lithub.com/watch-jazz-pianist-marcus-roberts-get-the-blues-and-talks-musical-influences/ 

Aconitum also known as aconite, monkshood, wolf's-bane, leopard's bane, mousebane, women's bane, devil's helmet, queen of poisons, or blue rocket, is a genus of over 250 species of flowering plants belonging to the family Ranunculaceae.  These herbaceous perennial plants are chiefly native to the mountainous parts of the Northern Hemisphere, growing in the moisture-retentive but well-draining soils of mountain meadows.  Most species are extremely poisonous and must be dealt with very carefully.  Several Aconitum hybrids, such as the Arendsii form of Aconitum carmichaelii, have won gardening awards—such as the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit.  Some are used by florists.   The name aconitum comes from the Greek ἀκόνιτον, which may derive from the Greek akon for dart or javelin, the tips of which were poisoned with the substance, or from akonae, because of the rocky ground on which the plant was thought to grow.  The Greek name lycoctonum, which translates literally to "wolf's bane", is thought to indicate the use of its juice to poison arrows or baits used to kill wolves.  The English name monkshood refers to the cylindrical helmet, called the galea, distinguishing the flower.  See graphics at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aconitum  See also https://carnegiemnh.org/wolfsbane/ 

Grandma's Sweet and Tangy Bean Salad by Christina AB  https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/222573/grandmas-sweet-and-tangy-bean-salad/ 

Kay Dick is a name all but forgotten today, but in the midtwentieth century she was at the heart of the London literary scene.  A list of the guests regularly entertained by her and her partner, the novelist Kathleen Farrell, at their Hampstead home—they lived together from 1940 to 1962—includes a host of successful and popular writers of the era, including C. P. Snow, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Brigid Brophy, Muriel Spark, Stevie Smith, Olivia Manning, Angus Wilson, and Francis King.  Her first four novels—By the Lake (1949), Young Man (1951), An Affair of Love (1953), and Solitaire (1958)—which tell stories of romantic or familial entanglements against the backdrop of refined European settings, were elegant but not especially memorable.  Her fifth work, Sunday (1962), proved more absorbing, especially in its psychological astuteness.  It’s a loosely autobiographical novel about her childhood (Dick was born in England in 1915, but educated in Geneva, then at the Lycée Française in London, before leaving home at the age of twenty “to mix with a louche set,” as she later put it in an interview) and her relationship with her glamorous single mother.  “She must have had great courage,” wrote Dick in an autobiographical piece that detailed the story of her birth, “because illegitimacy in the First World War was a very unpleasant business to be mixed up with, especially for a woman brought up in a reasonably privileged fashion.”  Dick’s penultimate novel, They: A Sequence of Unease (1977) a disquieting, lean, pared-back dystopian tale, which won the now defunct South-East Arts Literature Prize, is a complete departure from her previous volumes.  Reading it was like reading the work of an entirely different writer.  At less than a hundred pages, They is either a novella consisting of nine chapters, or a collection of nine interlinked short stories.  The Times’s critic Philip Howard opted to describe it as the latter, and I’m inclined to agree, not least because the final episode, “Hallo Love,” was originally published as a stand-alone piece two years earlier, in 1975.  Set amid the countryside and the beaches of coastal Sussex, They depicts a world in which plundering bands of philistines prowl England destroying art, books, sculpture, musical instruments and scores, punishing those artistically and intellectually inclined outliers who refuse to abide by this new mob rule.  One element that makes the book especially disturbing is that “they,” whoever they are, are not a government-sanctioned group like Bradbury’s firemen or Orwell’s all-pervading government surveillance, but rather an unsanctioned multitude, the strength of which appears to lie not in official mandates, but rather in the swell of their ever-increasing numbers.  “Loners,” as “they” refer to the narrator and her kind, are more at risk than couples or families.  We’re possible sources of contagion,” another character explains.  Television, for example, is compulsory.  In a later episode, great bands of “them” march across the downs, “each one holding a pole to match his height.”  Lucy Scholes  https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/08/13/a-lost-dystopian-masterpiece/ 

The International Booker Prize for the year 2020 was announced August 26.  Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld—who uses the pronoun they—won the coveted honour for debut novel, The Discomfort of Evening, translated into English by Michele Hutchison.  The novel had previously won the prestigious ANV Debut Prize.  The 29-year-old works on a dairy farm and is an acclaimed poet.  Their collection, Caulf’s Caul was awarded the C Buddingh’ Prize for best poetry debut in 2015.  https://indianexpress.com/article/books-and-literature/who-is-booker-prize-winner-marieke-lucas-rijneveld-discomfort-of-evening-6571907/ 

WORD OF THE DAY FOR AUGUST 28  emporium  noun  (also figurative) A city or region which is a major trading centre; also, a place within a city for commerce and trading; a marketplace.  (also figurative) A shop that offers a wide variety of goods for sale; a department store; (with a descriptive word) a shop specializing in particular goods.  (historical) A business set up to enable foreign traders to engage in commerce in a country; a factory (now the more common term).  (by extension, obsolete) The brain.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/emporium#English 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue  2250  August 28, 2020

 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  Trees sustain life.  They also sustain language.  We use many of the tree-related terms metaphorically, for example, the verb to cherry-pick. 

corroborate  (kuh-ROB-uh-rayt) verb. tr. To confirm or support a claim, theory, etc.  From Latin corroborare (to strengthen), from com/cor- (together) + roborare (to make strong), from robur (oak, strength).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root reudh- (red), which also gave us red, rouge, ruby, ruddy, rubella, robust, rambunctious, roborant, and russet.  Earliest documented use:  1530.

palmary  (PAL-muh-ree)  adjective  Of supreme importance; outstanding; praiseworthy.  From Latin palmarius (deserving or carrying the palm), from palma (palm).  The branches of the palm tree were carried as symbols of victory in ancient times.  The name of the palm tree derives from the resemblance of the shape of its frond to the palm of a hand.  Earliest documented use:  1646.  Two related words are palmy and palmer.

fig (fig)  noun  1.  A tree or shrub of the genus Ficus or its fruit.  2.  Something of little value.  3.  A gesture of contempt.  verb tr:  To dress up.  noun:  dress or array.  For noun 1-3:  From Old French fige, from Provencal figa, from Latin fica (fig, ficus).  Earliest documented use:  1225.  Also see fig leaf.  For the rest:  Of uncertain origin.  Earliest documented use:  1839.  It’s not clear why the fig has suffered such an undervaluation, historically speaking.  The OED lists the first citation in this sense from “The Court of Love” (1450):  “A Figge for all her chastite!”  The word is also used for the obscene gesture of a fist with the thumb sticking out between two fingers.  Another word given to us by the lowly fig is sycophant.

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day  From:  Tessa van Rooyen  In our small suburban garden in Cape Town we have two Eugenia or Australian cherry trees--the bane of my husband’s life as they are slap bang next to the swimming pool.  Expletives galore as he sweeps the fallen fruit up!  But we love that they have brought many beautiful birds, and anyway, the sweeping up is good exercise.  So they stay as long as we do.  From:  Melissa O’Connor (mel.a.oconnor gmail.com)  Read The Overstory by Richard Powers, an amazing novel.  You’ll never think of cutting down a tree again.  You’ll appreciate trees in a whole different light.  It’s also a very good audio book.  From:  Lynne Browne  We have many crab apple trees on campus.  There were two with “ribbons of doom” around their trunks.  I started asking various upper-level people why were they marked to be chopped down.  I finally received my answer from the person in charge of “tree death”.  He said, oh, I don’t know (they are messy).  He said, I suppose I can just have them trimmed and remove the ribbon of death.  I sent him a card (a photo of the trees) saying, “Thank you for not killing us.”  The trees stand today.  From:  Richard S. Russell  All across America, every year, people will search out an excellent specimen of an evergreen tree--symbol of eternal life--and proceed to murder it and drag its corpse back to their living rooms, where it will sit in a corner and slowly dessicate into a fire hazard.  Then, after it’s become too pathetic to look at any more, they’ll drag its remains out to the curb, to be carted off to hasten the end of the useful life of the local landfill.  Here’s an alternative to this silvacide epidemic.  Mark your calendar now for next spring, when you can head out to a local nursery and get a LIVE evergreen that you can plant in your front yard and have for years to come, enjoying its natural beauty year round while saving money, nurturing the environment, and still enjoying your holiday.  From:  Richard W. Burris  One of the great jazz songs is “Willow Weep for Me”, written in 1932.  Weeping, of course, a pun referring to the drooping or weeping structure of the tree as well as crying.  Virtually all great jazz vocalists recorded it. Here is Billie Holliday and Sarah Vaughan.  From:  Andrew Pressburger  The willow tree is often used as a symbol of sadness or tragedy, probably because of its drooping branches.  Two famous examples are Queen Gertrude’s account of Ophelia’s death in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act 4, Scene 7, starting with Gertrude’s entrance in the second part of the scene:  “There is a willow grows aslant the brook”, etc.) and Desdemona’s song in Verdi’s Otello (Act 4, Scene 3), based on the Shakespeare play.  With its repeated lines of “willow, willow, willow,” Desdemona’s premonition of death at the hands of her husband has to be the most heartrending scene in the entire opera.  Desdemona is sung by Barbara Frittoli in this La Scala production from 2001, Placido Domingo is Otello, and Rossana Rinaldi is Emilia.  Start watching at 1:46:57.  From:  Marek Boym  Why the fig gesture is called obscene escapes me.  In my native Poland it was quite common, when one refused, to make that gesture and say something like “a fig” meaning “Forget it.”  It might not have been considered elegant, but in no way obscene.   

In 1834, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Weber and their nephew, August Hoen, carried pieces of lithographic machinery, lithographic stones, and ink powders from Coblenz, Germany, to America.  Upon arriving in America in 1835, Weber founded the E. Weber and A. Hoen Lithography Company.  So began 146 years of continuous business for the company, which garnered it the title of the oldest lithographic firm in the United States.  After Weber’s death in 1845, August took over and renamed the business A. Hoen & Co., Lithographers and Printers.  Hoen helped create an international name for the company.  He patented his litho-caustic method of printing, which required citric acid and gum Arabic to be laid over the etching in order to allow the lithographer to see the progress of his work.  The company became most readily known for its maps, art reproductions, medical charts, and posters.  Also, when the Civil War broke out in 1861, A. Hoen & Co. printed Confederate money.  Sierra Hallmen  See pictures and find location information at https://explore.baltimoreheritage.org/items/show/398 

Middlemarch is to be published for the first time in almost 150 years under George Eliot’s real name, Mary Ann Evans, alongside 24 other historic works by women whose writing has only ever previously been in print under their male pseudonyms.  Evans adopted the pen name of George Eliot in the mid-19th century, in order to ensure her works were taken seriously.  Middlemarch, originally published in eight parts in 1871-72, has never been released under her real name.  Evans said she was “resolute in preserving my incognito, having observed that a nom de plume secures all the advantages without the disagreeables of reputation”, while her partner George Lewes said “the object of anonymity was to get the book judged on its own merits, and not prejudged as the work of a woman, or of a particular woman”.  Now the work voted the greatest British novel of all time is finally coming out as Evans’s, as part of the Reclaim Her Name campaign from the Women’s prize for fiction and prize sponsor Baileys, to mark the 25th anniversary of the award.  Some of the books, like Middlemarch, are well-known, including A Phantom Lover, a ghost story from Violet Paget, who wrote as Vernon Lee; and Indiana, a romance from Amantine Aurore Dupin, the 19th-century author better known as George Sand, who famously scandalised society by wearing male clothing and smoking cigars in public.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/12/george-eliot-joins-24-female-authors-making-debuts-under-their-real-names 

The Bagdad Cafe doesn’t mean much to most Americans is perhaps exactly why it means so much to the rest of the world.  Every day, international film buffs venture into the middle of the Mojave Desert by the busload to visit this dinky Route 66 roadside cafe.  The set location of German filmmaker Percy Adlon’s 1987 indie cult-classic of the same name, the Bagdad Cafe is the Mojave Desert’s cinematic claim to fame.  It wasn’t always the Bagdad Cafe.  Until the producers selected it for the location of their film, it was known as the Sidewinder Cafe.  The name “Bagdad” was employed in reference to a ghost town 50 miles east on Route 66 called Bagdad, a nod to its situation in the driest corner of the contiguous United States.  The understated comedy-drama—which is titled Out of Rosenheim in Germany—tracks the unlikely friendship that emerges between two women, a German tourist and an African-American cafe owner, and how that bond rejuvenates the crumbling eatery into a vibrant meeting-point for a town of quirky characters.  European audiences in particular fell under its spell, birthing pilgrimages among international fans who, to this day, come to pay homage, even in the heat of July and August (European holiday season).  In 1995, the cafe’s real-life owners leaned into the film’s pull, officially changing the name to the Bagdad Cafe.  Find location and map at https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bagdad-cafe-newberry-springs 

Endymion is a novel published in 1880 by Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, the former Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  He was paid £10,000 for it.  It was the last novel Disraeli published before his death.  He had been writing another, Falconet, when he died; it was published, incomplete, after his death.  Like most of Disraeli's novels, Endymion is a romance, although Disraeli took the unusual step of setting it between 1819 and 1859.  This meant that the hero of the novel–Endymion Ferrars–had to be a Whig, rather than a Tory.  The time period that Disraeli chose was dominated by the Whig party; there would have been little opportunity for a young, rising Tory.  Given that, it seems likely that Disraeli chose the time period in order to move a final time in the world in which he grew up and began his ascent.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endymion_(Disraeli_novel)   See Endymion by Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7926 

A book is the world made small; so that even indoors on a rainy day you can travel around it twice each way and never get wet at all.  Valerie Worth  ©1991 

The key ingredient in this Sazon spice blend seasoning is ground annatto (achiote), the spice that gives yellow rice that yellow color.  Annatto is comes from the seeds of achiote tree.  In India, it’s referred to as sindoor, and in the Philippines, it is called atsuete.  I can find it in hispanic markets, but you can also find it on Amazon.  If you can’t find this, turmeric would be a good substitute.  posted by Steph   https://www.skinnytaste.com/homemade-sazon-seasoning-mix/  prep time—5 minutes  12 servings  

The Pony Express has fascinated Americans since its first riders hit the leather in April 1860.  It traveled 1,966 miles between Missouri and California in 10 days or less.  This innovative mail service lasted only 19 months, but won a permanent place in the history of the American West.  The National Pony Express Association (NPEA) strives to keep the spirit and memory of the Pony Express alive.  NPEA was established in 1978 to honor the memory and endeavors of the Pony Express riders of 1860-1861 and to identify, preserve, and mark the original Pony Express route through the eight states it crossed:  Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California.  In 1992, Congress added the trail to the National Trails System as a Historic Trail, administered by the National Park Service.  With the creation of the Pony Express National Historic Trail the association became the primary non-federal advocate for the preservation of the designated national historic trail.  https://nationalponyexpress.org/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2249  August 26, 2020 

 

Born in Selma, Alabama, Ann Vaughan Weaver drew from the time she was five-years old and received her first sculpting tool at age eight.  Like many young artists, Ann moved to New York to study at the National Academy of Design, the Arts Student League of New York and Cooper Union.  She studied with artists William Zorach, Leon Kroll, and Jose de Creeft.  She apprenticed with John Hovannes and was a studio assistant to Alexander Archipenko.  While in New York, Ann’s work was well received and she participated in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.  She was the recipient of two Carnegie Traveling Fellowships.  During her career she participated in solo and group exhibitions at the Schneider Gallery, Rome; The Musée Rodin, Paris; Bodley Gallery, New York; Max Hutchinson Gallery, New York; Lowe Museum of Art, Miami; The Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach; and the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach.  In 1977 Ann Weaver Norton had the foresight to establish a foundation:  Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, Inc.  Ann sought to preserve and conserve the historically significant art studio, the sculpture gardens, and the architecture that comprise this unique national and local treasure.  Ann lived and worked at 2051 S. Flagler Drive, West Palm Beach for 34 years until the time of her death in 1982.  The Gardens is now operated as a 501 (c)(3) foundation supported by an open membership and an elected Board of Trustees.  Available services include exhibitions, guided tours of the gardens and Ann Norton’s original sculpture studio, guest lecturers, and educational programs.  See pictures at https://www.ansg.org/ann-norton/ 

The numerous forms of the term 'spitting image' - spit and image, spitten image, the dead spit of etc., are likely to be to someone who is so similar to another as to appear to have been spat out of his mouth.  That idea, if not the exact phrase, was in circulation by the end of the 17th century, when George Farquhar used it in his comic play Love and a bottle, 1689:  "Poor child! he's as like his own dadda as if he were spit out of his mouth."  A version is in Andrew Knapp and W. Baldwin's The Newgate Calendar, 1824–26:  "A daughter . . . the very spit of the old captain."  'Spit' or 'dead spit', with the meaning of likeness, appears in print several times in the 19th century.  Here 'dead' means precise or exact, as in dead ringer.  Other languages have their own versions of this phrase; for example, French:  "C'est le portrait craché de son père" ("He's the spitting portrait of his father") and Norwegian:  "som snytt ut av nesen paa" ("as blown out of the nose of").  These are difficult to date and may pre-date the English version or may derive from it.  Toward the end of the 19th century we find 'spit and image'.  In 1895, an author called E. Castle published Lt. of Searthey, containing the line:  "She's like the poor lady that's dead and gone, the spit an' image she is."  Finally, we get to the first known use of 'spitting image' - in A. H. Rice's Mrs. Wiggs, 1901:  "He's jes' like his pa--the very spittin' image of him!"  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/spitting-image.html  Thank you, Muse reader! 

What Is Hardscape?  From Paths to Patios by David Beaulieu  Updated 10/30/19  Hardscape consists of the non-living elements of landscaping, such as a brick patio, a stone wall, or a wood arbor.  It is one of the two major subcategories of landscaping, the other being softscape.  Common examples of hardscape materials include concrete, brick, stone, wood, and metal.  Hardscaping can include almost any type of decorative or practical structure in a landscape, from driveways to fences to benches.  Hardscape is a critical part of landscape design, providing definition and a sense of organization to the natural areas and features.  Hardscape elements can also define the use of a space, such as with a driveway, or it can lead visitors through different zones of softscaping, as with a gravel path that winds through a grassy area and into a secluded garden.  https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-hardscape-2131060 

The Ohio Literary Trail, presented by the Ohioana Library Association, shines a spotlight on Ohio’s role in shaping culture and literature worldwide.  Visitors will discover the state’s rich literary landscape through landmark destinations, historical markers that recognize literary achievements, and book festivals dedicated to readers and writers.  Organized by the state’s five geographic regions for a convenient self-guided driving tour, the Ohio Literary Trail encourages exploration by tourists planning a literary-themed outing, as well as Ohioans who want to discover literary treasures they never knew existed in their own backyard.  Find information and see pictures at http://www.ohioana.org/resources/the-ohio-literary-trail/ 

Books are becoming everything to me.  If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries . . . and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.  Thomas Babington Macaulay  https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/298101-books-are-becoming-everything-to-me-if-i-had-at 

Parnassus on Wheels is a 1917 novel written by Christopher Morley and published by Doubleday, Page & Company.  The title refers to the Mount Parnassus of Greek mythology; it was the home of the Muses.  Parnassus on Wheels is Morley's first novel, about a fictional traveling book-selling business.  The original owner of the business, Roger Mifflin, sells it to 39-year-old Helen McGill, who is tired of taking care of her older brother, Andrew.  Andrew is a former businessman turned farmer, turned author.  As an author, he begins using the farm as his Muse rather than a livelihood.  When Mifflin shows up with his traveling bookstore, Helen buys it—partly to prevent Andrew from buying it—and partly to treat herself to a long-overdue adventure of her own.  The first of two novels to be written from a woman's perspective, as well as the prequel to a later novel (The Haunted Bookshop), Parnassus on Wheels was inspired by the novel The Friendly Road by David Grayson (pseudonym of Ray Stannard Baker), and starts with an open letter to Grayson, taking him to task for not concerning himself (except in passing) with his sister's opinion of and reaction to his adventure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parnassus_on_Wheels 

Take a Virtual Tour of This Belgian Sourdough Library--Sourdough librarian Karl De Smedt has traveled the world to gather more than 120 jars of starters by Theresa Machemer   About 87 miles southeast of Brussels, the residents of a living library are fermenting away.  Some 125 mason jars of bubbling sourdough starters—mixtures of flour, water and microbes—sit in the refrigerated cabinets of the Puratos Sourdough Library in St. Vith, Belgium.  Each jar is numbered, and many are named.  Sourdough librarian Karl De Smedt, a confectioner and baker by training, has traveled the world to build the library’s collection.  He oversaw the venue’s opening in 2013 and has gathered up to a few dozen starters each year since.  Visitors can learn more about De Smedt’s “quest for sourdough” by taking the library’s virtual tour.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/take-virtual-tour-belgian-sourdough-library-180974668/ 

How Books Became Cheap--a timeline of bookmaking technology by Lapham’s Quarterly  About 220, the earliest type of printing involved carving a relief pattern into blocks of wood, which would then be inked and pressed onto cloth, and later paper.  A woodblock could be reinked and stamped many times, saving labor compared to scribal work, despite the initial investment of labor in carving the block.  The earliest extant examples are from China; the technology spread from there to Japan and other parts of the world.  Color woodblock printing began in China in the fourteenth century, initially with only the addition of a single color, usually red.  A technique for five-color printing called nishiki-e became widespread in Japan in the 1760s.  Read about developments in movable type (1040), pocket-size books (about 1500), stereotyping (about 1700), steam press (about 1814), clothbound books (about 1830), paperback books (about 1845), and hot-metal typesetting (about 1884) at https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/how-books-became-cheap 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2248  August 25, 2020

 

A rebus is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words and/or phrases.  For example:  the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+) and the letter "n".  It was a favorite form of heraldic expression used in the Middle Ages to denote surnames.  For example, in its basic form, three salmon (fish) are used to denote the surname "Salmon".  A more sophisticated example was the rebus of Bishop Walter Lyhart (d. 1472) of Norwich, consisting of a stag (or hart) lying down in a conventional representation of water.  Find uses in popular culture, history and game shows and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus 

The Best Seller Who Hated Best Sellers--what Edith Wharton’s library tells us about her reading habits  by Sheila Liming   For all her successes, Edith Wharton made a habit of spurning the conditions of her own fortune.  She became the first female novelist to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1921—for The Age of Innocence—only to wind up mocking the prize less than a decade later.  In her novel Hudson River Bracketed (1928), she describes the thinly veiled “Pulsifer Prize” as a sham, the product of a “half-confessed background of wire-pulling and influencing.”  By the time she was honored again by the Pulitzer committee—this time by proxy, for playwright Zoe Akins’ 1935 adaptation of one of her novellas, The Old Maid—Wharton had distanced herself from the prize and its milieu.  Her relationship with motion pictures was similarly detached, even as she received consistent financial benefit from the industry throughout the final decades of her life.  In a 1926 letter to a friend, she comments, “I have always thought ‘The Age’ would make a splendid film”—which it did many years later, in 1993, in the hands of Martin Scorsese.  But before that, it was made into a silent film by Warner Brothers in the 1920s, along with many of her other novels.  Wharton’s sale of film rights to her 1928 novel The Children fetched her $25,000 (more than $350,000 in today’s dollars).  She used the money to help maintain multiple French residences, even as she declined to enter a movie theater during her lifetime.   Indeed, she remained totally uninterested in films, even those based on stories she had invented.  In 1921 sales of The Age of Innocence placed her just below Grey, whose The Mysterious Rider ranked third overall that year.  When Wharton subsequently learned she had won the Pulitzer for that work, she dedicated the novel to Sinclair Lewis, one of the few best-selling compatriots of hers whose writing she actually deemed worthy.  The Pulitzer Prize was still new at this point, having debuted only four years earlier, in 1917, and Wharton sensed that it had not yet begun to assert “standards” or to market itself as an arbiter of quality, as opposed to popular, taste.  As she put it in a glowing letter to Lewis, “Some sort of standard is emerging from the welter of cant and sentimentality, and if two or three of us are gathered together, I believe we can still save fiction in America.”  As with Lewis, Wharton made other occasional exceptions where best-selling authors were concerned.  Among them was H.G. Wells, and here, too, Wharton and Lewis—who often bemoaned the quality of popular fiction in their letters to each other—were in agreement:  Lewis christened his son Wells in honor of the popular science fiction writer, with whom both he and Wharton were friendly.  Today one can find several of Wells’ novels in Wharton’s library, including his 1905 work Kipps, which, while it sold slowly upon publication, became one of his best-known and most admired works, selling a quarter of a million copies by 1920.  There is also Frank Norris’ best-selling naturalist epic The Pit (1903), his sequel to The Octopus (1900); Wharton’s library retains a first-edition copy of the former, which is especially intriguing given the fact that it lacks the more popular latter.  Many of the authors who, like Wharton, achieved literary stardom between 1900 and 1930 are not well remembered now.  Or else, like Zane Grey, their lingering fame is not based on estimations of literary merit.  https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/best-seller-who-hated-best-sellers 

Something wicked this way comes?   https://www.gocomics.com/joe-heller/2020/07/29
Is this the future?  https://www.gocomics.com/moderately-confused/2020/07/30
How ironic!   https://www.gocomics.com/frank-and-ernest/2020/07/30
Thank you, faithful Muse reader!  

Ann Syrdal, a psychologist and computer science researcher who helped develop synthetic voices that sounded like women, laying the groundwork for such modern digital assistants as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, died on July 24, 2020 at her home in San Jose, Calif.  She was 74.  As a researcher at AT&T, Dr. Syrdal was part of a small community of scientists who began developing synthetic speech systems in the mid-1980s.  It was not an entirely new phenomenon; AT&T had unveiled one of the first synthetic voices, developed at its Bell Labs, at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. But more than 40 years later, despite increasingly powerful computers, speech synthesis was still relatively primitive.  “It just sounded robotic,” said Tom Gruber, who worked on synthetic speech systems in the early ’80s and went on to create the digital assistant that became Siri when Apple acquired it in 2010.  By 1990, companies like AT&T had started to deploy these new systems, allowing the hearing-impaired, for example, to generate synthetic speech for phone calls.  The voices, though, typically sounded male.  That year, at the Bell Labs research center in Naperville, Ill., Dr. Syrdal developed a voice that sounded female—a much harder result to achieve, in part because so much of the previous engineering work had been done for male voices.  A decade later, she was part of a team at another AT&T lab, in Florham Park, N.J., that developed a system called Natural Voices.  It became a standard-bearer for speech synthesis, featuring what Dr. Syrdal and others called “the first truly high quality female synthetic voice.”  http://thetodaynews.com.pk/latest/ann-syrdal-who-helped-give-computers-a-female-voice-dies-at-74/ 

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day  From: Andrew Pressburger  Subject:  Vaccinate 
Three cheers for Dr. Edward Jenner, inventor in 1796 of vaccination against the dread disease of smallpox.  Jenner noticed that milkmaids did not catch smallpox and figured their immunity may have something to do with their exposure to cowpox, a much milder form of the disease.  He withdrew extracts from pustules of people who worked with cows and inoculated others with it on an experimental basis to verify his assumption.  (CDC)  AWADmail Issue 947  

Charles Follen McKim (August 24, 1847-1909) was an American architect.  McKim became best known as an exponent of Beaux-Arts architecture in styles of the American Renaissance, exemplified by the Boston Public Library (1888–95), and several works in New York City, including the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University (1893), the University Club of New York (1899), the Pierpont Morgan Library (1903), New York Penn Station (1904–10), and The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio (1919).  He designed the Howard Mansion (1896) at Hyde Park, New York.  McKim, with the aid of Richard Morris Hunt, was instrumental in the formation of the American School of Architecture in Rome in 1894, which has become the American Academy in Rome, and designed the main campus buildings with his firm McKim, Mead, and White.  See awards and honors at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Follen_McKim 

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”  “I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”  “Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.”  Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo, Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator (August 24, 1899-1986)   https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/500.Jorge_Luis_Borges 

WORD OF THE DAY FOR AUGUST 24  Sargasso noun   A brown alga, of the genus Sargassum, that forms large, floating masses.  (figurative) A confused, tangled mass or situation.  (biology, oceanography) A part of an ocean or sea characterized by floating masses of sargassos, like the Sargasso Sea.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sargasso#English  The Dominican-born author Jean Rhys, who wrote the novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), was born August 24, 1890. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2247  August 24, 2020