TARADIDDLE/TARRADIDDLE  noun  fib, story, tale, a trivial lie, baloney, boloney, bilgewater, bosh, drool, humbug, tommyrot, tosh, twaddle, pretentious or silly talk or writing.  https://www.definitions.net/definition/taradiddle

Lurene Tuttle (1907–1986) was an American character actress and acting coach, who made the transition from vaudeville to radio, and later films and television.  Her most enduring impact was as one of network radio's more versatile actresses.  Often appearing in 15 shows per week, comedies, dramas, thrillers, soap operas, and crime dramas, she became known as the "First Lady of Radio".  On radio's The Adventures of Sam Spade she played just about every female role as well as Spade's secretary Effie Perrine.  She appeared in such shows as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and concurrently appeared on The Great Gildersleeve as the niece Marjorie Forrester.  Tuttle had regular roles in such shows as Brenthouse, Dr. Christian, Duffy's Tavern, One Man's Family, The Red Skelton Show (as Junior's mother and as Daisy June, roles that she shared with Harriet Nelson), Hollywood Hotel, and Those We Love.  Tuttle played the swallow in "The Happy Prince", an adaption of Oscar Wilde's short story with Orson Welles and Bing Crosby (1946).  The story had been adapted for radio by Orson Welles in 1944, featuring a musical score by Bernard Herrmann.  It aired on the Philco Radio Hall of Fame broadcast on December 24, 1944 with Lureen Tuttle playing The Swallow and featuring Bing Crosby alongside Orson Welles, with Herrmann's music conducted by Victor Young.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurene_Tuttle 

"Curiosity killed the cat" is a proverb used to warn of the dangers of unnecessary investigation or experimentation.  The original form of the proverb, now little used, was "Care killed the cat".  In this instance, "care" was defined as "worry" or "sorrow for others."  The earliest form printed reference to the original proverb is attributed to the British playwright Ben Jonson in his 1598 play, Every Man in His Humour, which was performed first by William Shakespeare.  . . . Helter skelter, hang sorrow, care will kill a cat, up-tails all, and a pox on the hangman.  Shakespeare used a similar quote in his circa 1599 play, Much Ado About Nothing:  What, courage man!  What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_killed_the_cat 

OVERUSED  "Bond.  James Bond."  "I'll be back."  "Show me the money!"  "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."  "You talkin' to me?"  “I could tell you but I’d have to kill you.”  Find examples/worse offenders in cinema at https://www.shortlist.com/news/the-20-most-overused-lines-in-cinema 

The Chiffon Pie was the crown jewel of Monroe Strause’s illustrious pastry career and a genre of pie that endures to this day.  Inspired by recipes for French pastry cream, Strause developed a pie filling that incorporated stiffly beaten egg whites into a cornstarch-thickened cream.  The result was a delicate, airy filling that retained its firmness and volume, one that “stood up like a soldier on parade,” as the New York Herald Tribune later described.  The graham cracker crust he invented went on to become a foundation of American pie-making, holding up everything from cheesecake to key lime pie.  The Chiffon Pie was first sold as a novelty in Los Angeles for $0.35 a slice, or a little over $5.00 today.  The exact date of its debut is unclear, though it was most likely in 1926, at the height of the Jazz Age.  The new pie caught on quickly, becoming a pastry sensation and bringing both business and fame to its creator.  Throughout the 1930s, Strause traveled across the country, delivering lectures, consulting for restaurants, teaching classes, and more.  In Chicago, he won a pie contest against over 2,500 other desserts.  Media-savvy and with a flair for showmanship (he once baked a novelty pie 24 feet in diameter for newsboys in Los Angeles), Strause sat for interviews with newspapers across the country, bolstering his brand as a “pie engineer” and presenting himself as the country’s foremost expert on the subject.  His success didn’t just bring him fame, either.  According to one profile in The Globe and Mail, he made “a bank president’s salary out of pie.”  Rossi Anastopoulo  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-pie-history

Interrupted Reading is among the most compelling of French artist Camille Corot’s late figure paintings.  Corot (1796-1875) almost never exhibited these studies of the human form, preferring instead to publicize the idyllic landscapes that were his specialty.  To emphasize the private nature of Interrupted Reading, Corot enclosed his model within the protective environment of the artist’s studio.  The muse-like image of a woman reading a book was a popular one in nineteenth-century art, but Corot chose to show his model pausing, looking up from this activity.  See picture at https://www.artic.edu/artworks/81512/interrupted-reading 

Amanda Gorman is an American poet from Los Angeles, California.  In 2017, aged 19, she was named the first National Youth Poet Laureate.  On January 14, 2021, the Inaugural Committee, which was organizing the inauguration of Joe Biden, announced that Gorman would be giving a poetry reading at the event on January 20.  Gorman said that she began to write the poem in early January by reviewing poems written by past inaugural poets, who have included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.  She also studied famous orators such as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and Winston Churchill.  Gorman also spoke with Richard Blanco and Elizabeth Alexander, two previous inaugural poets.  Joe Biden's wife, Jill Biden, asked Gorman to deliver a poem at the inauguration in December 2020.   She was informed of her selection on December 30, 2020, and asked to write a poem that contributed to the inauguration's overall theme of "America United", but without any other direction.  Gorman wrote several lines a day, and had the poem around half-way completed when the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol occurred on January 6.  Gorman told The New York Times that she had been struggling to complete the poem and worrying about whether it would be adequate.  She said that the storming marked "the day that the poem really came to life" in an interview with CBS News, as she worked the events into her poem.  Gorman finished the poem on the night of January 6.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hill_We_Climb 

"The Hill We Climb"  Amanda Gorman • 2021 US Presidential Inauguration • January 2021  Poet and activist Amanda Gorman recites her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the historic inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  Her words call for hope, unity and resilience in a time of division.  "While democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated," she says.  "In this truth, in this faith, we trust.  For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us."  (This video is a TED "Best of the Web" pick, featuring a remarkable idea freely available on the internet.  Sourced from: C-SPAN - YouTube)  https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_gorman_the_hill_we_climb 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2319  January 29, 2021 

The Last Tycoon is an unfinished novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  In 1941, it was published posthumously under this title, as prepared by his friend Edmund Wilson, a critic and writer.  According to Publishers Weekly, the novel is "[g]enerally considered a roman a clef," with its lead character, Monroe Stahr, modeled after film producer Irving Thalberg.  The story follows Stahr's rise to power in Hollywood, and his conflicts with rival Pat Brady, a character based on MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer.  It was adapted as a TV play in 1957 and a film in 1976 of the same name, with a screenplay for the motion picture by British dramatist Harold Pinter.  Elia Kazan directed the film adaptation; Robert De Niro and Theresa Russell starred.  In 1993, a new version of the novel was published under the title The Love of the Last Tycoon, edited by Matthew Bruccoli, a Fitzgerald scholar.  This version was adapted for a stage production that premiered in Los Angeles, California in 1998.  In 2013, HBO announced plans to produce an adaptation. HBO cancelled the project and gave the rights to Sony Pictures, which produced and released the television series on Amazon Studios in 2016.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Tycoon 

"Franz Xavier Zettler graduated from the Munich Art Academy and began working for Joseph Mayer as a glass painter around 1863.  After Franz Aver Zettler married Mayer's daughter, he founded his own company [in 1870] called F. X Zettler and took over Mayer's stained glass production.  The sales remained under the Mayer organization until Zettler formed his own sales force, which resulted in a disagreeable split between the two organizations.  In 1873, Mayer developed their own window-manufacturing group, which competed with Zettler until 1939, when they joined forces again."  Today, Mayer still produces stained glass windows and is headquartered in Munich, Germany with a sales office in Fairfield, New Jersey.  The company is now called Franz Mayer and Company. https://buffaloah.com/a/DCTNRY/stained/munich.html  See also https://mayersche-hofkunst.de/en/history/geschichte-generation-1 

For those who are unfamiliar with Japanese pizza toast, it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like:  a comfort food that consists of toast topped with melted cheese, tomato sauce and toppings of some sort.  But as Eater’s Craig Mod writes in an excellent new piece, when he was an undergrad new to Japan, the dish was “became a bridge between where I had been and where I was to go.  Mod’s piece chronicles his epic walk across Japan in search of the origins of pizza toast.  Along the way, he stopped at countless kissaten, or traditional Japanese cafes from the Showa era (1926–1989) to sample their take on the staple.  “It’s also a sort of netherworld food that the Japanese don’t think about and visitors to Japan have assessed—if at all—with a mere tilt of the head,” he writes.  It is a food that squeezes joy from very little.  Simple ingredients, simple preparation.  A meal that transcends economic circumstance.”  Bonnie Stiernberg   https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/food-and-drink/searching-for-the-origins-of-japanese-pizza-toast 

The Shōwa period in Japanese history is the period (1926–89) corresponding to the reign of the emperor Hirohito.  The two Chinese characters (kanji) in the name Shōwa translate as “Bright Peace” in Japanese.  owever, a more nuanced interpretation is “Enlightened Harmony”—with the added significance that the second character (wa) is commonly used in words that describe Japan or things Japanese.  https://www.britannica.com/event/Showa-period 

Kell may refer to people, places and other things.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kell  See obsolete uses as a noun at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kell 

Grapefruit is an artist's book written by Yoko Ono, originally published in 1964.  It has become famous as an early example of conceptual art, containing a series of "event scores" that replace the physical work of art–the traditional stock-in-trade of artists–with instructions that an individual may, or may not, wish to enact.  Event scores were developed by a number of artists attending John Cage's experimental music composition classes at the New School for Social Research in New York.  Whilst Ono did not attend these informal lessons, her husband at the time, Ichiyanagi Toshi (an experimental musician), did and Toshi and Ono became regulars of Cage's circle of friends by 1959.  Other members of this group included David Tudor, Morton Feldman, Richard Maxfield and Merce Cunningham.  Invention of the event score is usually credited to George Brecht, but La Monte Young and Yoko Ono are also cited as amongst the first to experiment with the form.  Both Cage and Brecht were deeply influenced by "Oriental thinking", and Ono found that her Buddhist-inspired work was, almost accidentally, fêted by the emerging New York counterculture as avant-garde.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit_(book) 

Ukrainian Syrniki Recipe (Cheese Pancakes) by Natasha Kravchuk  https://natashaskitchen.com/ukrainian-syrniki-recipe/ 

January 23, 2021  Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont and the longest-serving member of the current Senate, is a Batman aficionado who's turned his fandom into philanthropy.  He's even used the comics to forward his legislative agenda.  Now President pro tempore of the Senate, Leahy is third in the presidential line of succession.  hough it's unlikely he'll ever have to serve as President, his high-profile position shines a brighter light on his colorful resume--which includes multiple appearances in the "Batman" films.  He first discovered Batman at age 4, when he received his first library card.  He frequented the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, where he spent many an afternoon poring over comics.  While his school friends raved over Superman, Leahy found a "kindred bond" with the Bat.  "Entering Batman's world through my imagination opened an early door into a lifelong love of reading," he wrote.  He'd continue spending hours at the library each day until adulthood, and even after he moved to Washington, he'd make time to pop in.  He's a vocal advocate for literacy and the preservation of libraries so children can have similarly formative experiences with books.  "Some of my fondest memories as a child were at the library, where everyone fit in and possibilities were limitless," he writes on his Senate website.  Scottie Andrew  https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/23/us/senator-patrick-leahy-batman-trnd/index.html 

January 26, 2021  Of all the town halls, stadiums, conference centres and other venues commandeered for the COVID-19 vaccine, Salisbury Cathedral is unique.  Its two organists, David Halls and John Challenger, play soothing hymns for 12 hours a day as residents aged 70 years and older shuffle in and roll up their sleeves.  Salisbury Cathedral boasts the UK’s tallest spire and best preserved original version of the Magna Carta.  After getting a call, letter or text from a GP advising they are eligible for the vaccine, people arrive at the cathedral with a form and are assigned one of 12 booths in the transept.  They hand over the form and an administrative assistant assigned to each booth enters the patient’s details into a central database which also registers whether they will be given the Pfizer vaccine or another developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca.  Bevan Shields  See pictures at https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/salisbury-cathedral-turned-into-mass-vaccination-centre-complete-with-beautiful-music-20210125-p56ws5.html  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2318  January 27, 2021

Yury Karlovich Olesha (1899-1960), Soviet author of fiction, plays and satires best known for his 1927 novel Envy.  He is considered one of the greatest Russian novelists of the 20th century, one of the few to have succeeded in writing works of lasting artistic value despite the stifling censorship of the era.  His works are delicate balancing-acts that superficially send pro-Communist messages but reveal far greater subtlety and richness upon a deeper reading.  Sometimes, he is grouped with his friends Ilf and Petrov, Isaac Babel, and Sigismund Krzhizhanovsky into the Odessa School of Writers.  Find list of Olesha’s books at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/63475.Yury_Olesha 

Barbara Barrie (born Barbara Ann Berman 1931) is an American actress of film, stage and television.  She is also an author.  Her film breakthrough came in 1964 with her performance as Julie in the landmark film One Potato, Two Potato, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.  She is best known for her role as Evelyn Stoller in Breaking Away, which brought her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 1979 and an Emmy Award nomination in 1981 when she reprised the role in the television series based on the film.  On television she is perhaps best known for her portrayal, between 1975 and 1978, of the wife of the namesake captain in the detective sitcom Barney Miller.  Barrie also is known for her extensive work in the theatre, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical in 1971 for originating the role of Sarah in Stephen Sondheim's Company.  Barrie has written two children's books.  In 1990, she published Lone Star, a biographical book about a girl named Jane who moves from Illinois to Texas and deals with her Orthodox Jewish family assimilating to Texas culture.  Her second book, Adam ZigZag, was published in 1994 and is also biographical, about a young boy named Adam with an actress mother who struggles with dyslexia.  She is also the author of two books about her battle with colorectal cancer, Second Act and Don't Die of Embarrassment, and has said that speaking out about early detection is "more important than acting."  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Barrie  Barbara Barrie created Tomato Lightning, a spicy chutney available in gourmet food stores.  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0057363/bio 

Pandan is a herbaceous tropical plant that grows abundantly in Southeast Asia.  In Chinese, it is known as "fragrant plant" because of its unique, sweet aroma.  The cultivated plant, which is similar to the palm, features upright bright green leaves that are long, slender, and spiky.  The leaves are used for their flavor in many Thai and Southeast-Asian dishes.  Pandan (Pandanus amaryllifolius) is also sold as a paste, extract, and powder, which are used to flavor desserts.  There are different uses for pandan, also known as screw pine, depending on its form, whether leaves, paste, extract, or powder.  Whole pandan leaves are used as a wrapping before steaming or frying foods, similar to banana leaves.  However, pandan is much thinner in width compared to the broad banana leaf, so it is important to note that the juices may seep through.  Darlene Schmidt  Link to recipes at https://www.thespruceeats.com/cooking-with-pandan-3217067 

Pho is a type of Vietnamese soup that usually consists of bone broth, rice noodles, spices, and thinly sliced meat (usually beef).  Though “pho” technically refers to the noodles and not the soup itself, most people consider the dish a singular unit.  It’s often topped with herbs and bean sprouts.  Though the most common way to pronounce pho in Vietnam is “fuh” (like “duh”), some regions pronounce it more like “foe” and others stretch the word out into two syllables, according to Diane Cu, co-creator of the blog White on Rice Couple, via Chowhound.  Corey Williams Link to recipes at https://www.myrecipes.com/how-to/cooking-questions/what-is-pho 

English speakers have had gumption (the word, that is) since the early 1700s.  The term's exact origins aren't known, but its earliest known uses are found in British and especially Scottish dialects (which also include the forms rumblegumption and rumgumption).  In its earliest uses, gumption referred to intelligence or common sense, especially when those qualities were combined with high levels of energy.  By the 1860s, American English speakers were also using gumption to imply ambition or tenacity, but it wasn't until the early 1900s that gumption began to appear in English texts as a direct synonym of courage or get-up-and-go.  American showman P.T. Barnum also claimed that gumption named a particular kind of hard cider, but that sense is far from common today.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gumption 

You can’t walk far through the streets of Manila without seeing what looks like the hide of a dried-out hedgehog on the side of the road.  These are the remnants of a fruit known as the marang, which grows throughout the Philippines and parts of Borneo.  Unlike its more popular counterparts in the Artocarpus genus—namely breadfruit and jackfruit—marang has an odor that will funk up a room the same way that durian does.  The scent is something like gasoline, but don’t let that deter you; the sticky white flesh inside tastes like a fruit cup.  A wide assortment of different fruit flavors come together with every mouthful, including softened pears, berries, banana, jackfruit, and pineapple.  Some fans also consider the aroma of gasoline to be addictive, akin to the pleasure of eating a stinky cheese.  After feasting on one of these large fruits, the meal is not over; the seeds can be roasted or boiled as a snack and taste a little bit like potatoes and chestnuts.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/marang-philippines

The Smurfs (French:  Les Schtroumpfs; Dutch:  De Smurfen) is a Belgian comic franchise centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, human-like creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest.  The Smurfs was first created and introduced as a series of comic characters by the Belgian comics artist Peyo (the pen name of Pierre Culliford) in 1958, wherein they were known as Les Schtroumpfs.  There are more than 100 Smurf characters, and their names are based on adjectives that emphasise their characteristics, such as "Jokey Smurf", who likes to play practical jokes on his fellow smurfs.  The Smurfs wear Phrygian caps, which came to represent freedom during the modern era.  The word “smurf” is the original Dutch translation of the French "schtroumpf", which, according to Peyo, is a word he invented during a meal with fellow cartoonist André Franquin when he could not remember the word salt.  The Smurfs franchise began as a comic and expanded into advertising, films, TV series, ice capades, video games, theme parks, and dolls.  Over the decades, many singles and albums of Smurf music have been released in different countries and languages, sometimes very successfully, with millions of copies sold.  The best known is the single The Smurf Song and its accompanying album, created by Dutch musician Pierre Kartner who sings under the alias Father Abraham, which reached the #1 position in 16 countries.  Worldwide, more than 10 million CDs with Smurf music have been sold between 2005 and 2007 alone.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smurfs 

Vanilla is the second-most-expensive spice in the world—saffron maintains that crown.  The vanilla family is made up of around 110 different species of orchid, found worldwide under the right conditions.  Those conditions are basically hot and wet, so vanilla orchids thrive around the equator, from tropical Latin America to Southeast Asia to West Africa.  They produce a range of fruits, generally sort of elongated, bean- or banana-like in shape, and usually green in color.  Of all the orchid species, which number in the tens of thousands, vanilla is the only one that has a fruit that’s considered edible, or at least that’s regularly eaten.  Vanilla was used by the Totonacs and Aztecs for ceremonial and scent purposes, and in a couple of beverages, most notably chocolate drinks and atole, a drink made from ground corn.  It ended up in Europe thanks to the Spanish, who brought it back from the New World along with chocolate and chili peppers and tomatoes and all kinds of other stuff.  Europeans found many more uses for vanilla, most notably combining it with another colonial product, sugar from the new sugarcane plantations in the West Indies, to make vanilla desserts that became popular among those who could afford them, which was really only the very rich and powerful.  This is around the time when the first recipes for vanilla ice cream, crème brûlée, and other vanilla-tinged dishes were created.  Dan Nosowitz  Read much more and see pictures at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/madagascar-vanilla

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2317  January 25, 2021 

In 1964, artist Yoko Ono (b. February 18, 1933) published Grapefruit a collection of her poems, drawings, and instructions for life, constituting a sort of whimsical activity book for grownups.  Nearly half a century later, on the eve of her seventieth birthday, she released a sequel titled Acorn (public library)—a new set of “action poems” bearing the same sensibility of irreverence and earnestness, subversion and sincerity.  Aswirl between them are Ono’s distinctive dot-drawings—abstract three-dimensional shapes reminiscent of Thomas Wright’s pioneering 18th-century depictions of the universe.  https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/01/20/yoko-ono-acorn/   

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  lead balloon  (led buh-LOON)  noun  A complete failure.  From lead (a heavy metal), from Old English lead + balloon, from Italian dialectal ballone (large ball), augmentative of balla (ball).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root bhel- (to blow or swell), which also gave us ball, boll, bole, bulk, bowl, boulevard, boulder, ballot, folly, and fool.  Earliest documented use:  1924.  If something fails, in British English it goes down like a lead balloon, in American English it goes over like a lead balloon.  Either way, it’s a flop.  “The band’s name was pinched from Keith Moon, The Who’s drummer, who had suggested in 1966 that a potential group involving him and Mr Page, without a quality singer, would go down like a lead balloon.  Mr Page kept a note of “Led Zeppelin”, and thought it was perfect for a new band that would combine music heavy and light.”  Fifty Years on, Led Zeppelin Are Still Idols for Aspiring Rock Stars; The Economist (London); Aug 9, 2018. 

When is a pie not a pie?  When it is a multi-layered mountain of a meal wrapped inside pastry. The kulebyaka of Russia’s pre-revolution kitchens was just that, made from a recipe so complicated, time-consuming, and expensive that most of the populace had only ever read about it in works by Nikolai Gogol and Anton Chekhov (who referred to it as a “temptation to sin” in a short story).  A kulebyaka is usually a bit taller and longer than a typically pirog (Russian pie) and is made up of a number of layers, each separated by an extremely thin crust and containing a different filling.  The intricate pie can be made with a variety of red meats, but it is most commonly filled with fish, such as salmon or sturgeon.  In ascending order from driest to sloppiest ingredients (so as to stop the pie falling apart), the pastry might be stuffed with rice, fish, meat (or creamed mushrooms), onions, eggs, and boiled cabbage.  The finished product is often decorated with various icons, such as fish, leaves, or flowers.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/kulebyaka-russian-meat-pie   

January 11, 2021   Stacey Mei Yan Fong, a Brooklyn-based baker, has invented nearly 50 drastically different pies over the last four years.  Fong, who was born in Singapore and moved to the United States for college, is the creator of 50 Pies / 50 States, a project where she attempts to capture the identity of each American state in a pie.  Fong spends anywhere from two weeks to a month per pie, researching classic flavors from each state while also considering how to express more intangible, nuanced concepts via pastry.  Working her way alphabetically through the states, Fong doesn’t usually limit herself to standard flavors or pie designs.  As a result, her creations are savory as often as they are sweet, and as different from each other as the states themselves.  A friend introduced her to a South Dakota-based historian, and she ended up flying to South Dakota as part of her research.  In turn, the historian introduced her to Sean Sherman, the famed Sioux Chef.  Inspired by the state’s Indigenous culture, Fong created a wild rice pudding pie with berry compote and pumpkin seed crunch.  With six pies left to go, Fong is considering how to compile her years of work.  “I feel like my pipe dream for this project is definitely putting a cookbook together,” she says, with all her recipes and research included.  Samantha Chong   See pictures at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pies-around-america

January 12, 2021  In his backyard in Kerala, India, Vinod Sahadevan Nair, 60, grows bananas and plantains and rears chickens and ducks.  Situated as it is in an agrarian region, abutting the biodiverse Western Ghats, his farm may seem typical.  But a walk through his four acres reveals bananas growing in every conceivable shape, size, and hue:  from deep red to turquoise blue.  An avid farmer since the age of 12, Vinod has conscientiously collected some 430 varieties of banana over the past 30 years.  India produces close to 29 million tonnes of bananas every year, of which it exports a mere 1 percent.  Blessed with abundant rainfall, sunshine, and fertile, loamy soil, the southern pockets of India, as well as its northeastern region, have long been a crucible for banana cultivation.  After Southeast Asia, the country is considered a source of the fruit’s origins and biodiversity.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-many-kinds-bananas-are-there 

Anyone who has served a big pot of gumbo to family and friends knows exactly what Linda Thomas-Greenfield means when she refers to “gumbo diplomacy.”  She captured national attention when she used the term on Nov. 24, when accepting President-elect Joe Biden’s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.  Her point:  that you can’t help but warm toward someone who has labored over the fragrant, dark brown soup and is now ladling it into a bowl for you.  Thomas-Greenfield, a 35-year veteran of the Foreign Service, explained how she would invite her counterparts in countries such as Nigeria into her home to cook and eat together:  “I put a Cajun spin on it . . . It was my way of breaking down barriers, connecting with people and starting to see each other on a human level.  A bit of lagniappe is what we say in Louisiana.”  Ann Maloney   https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2021/01/09/gumbo-recipe-chicken-sausage-shrimp/?outputType=amp   Thank you, Muse reader!  

January 20, 2021  Read every presidential inauguration poem ever performed (there are fewer than you think).  Emily Temple  https://lithub.com/read-every-presidential-inauguration-poem-ever-performed-there-are-fewer-than-you-think/

January 21, 2021  She wore the color purple.  She donned pearls.  And she was escorted to her swearing in by a black police officer who put his life on line to save the life of lawmakers.  Kamala Harris' inauguration as America's first female vice-president, and the first of black and Indian heritage, was rich with symbolism.  Purple is traditionally seen in the US as a symbol of bipartisanship--a combination of the blue of the Democratic Party and red of the Republican party.  It is also the color of women's suffrage and the preferred color of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress and the first black woman to run for President, whose "unbought and unbossed" life and career inspired Kamala Harris.  Chidanand Rajghatta  https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/the-color-purple-in-a-historic-moment-kamala-channels-unity-and-femme-fettle/articleshow/80373399.cms    

Vice President Kamala Harris made history on January 20, 2021when she was sworn in as the first Black and South Asian woman to serve as second-in-command.  However, the groundbreaking moment was marred by a mistake—Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor mispronounced her name, saying "Kuh-MAH-luh" instead of "COMMA-luh."  Talia Lakritz  https://www.insider.com/kamala-pronunciation-sonia-sotomayor-swearing-in-2021-1   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2316  January 22, 2021