In mid-19th-century France, a single marshmallow was a confectionary miracle to be savored.  Made from the sap of the mallow plant, whipped egg whites, water, and sugar syrup, each one was individually formed.  This sticky and time-consuming task was near-impossible to reproduce at home.  So marshmallows were correspondingly expensive, dainty treats.  But in 1895, Joseph Demerath of Rochester, New York, managed to disrupt the time-consuming tradition and bring marshmallows to the masses.  Within 30 years, Americans would be turning them into mayonnaise (!), salads, and the famous sweet potato casserole.  Instead of costly mallow gum, Demerath used gelatin.  With this recipe and the recently invented whirling steam marshmallow machine, he could make mass quantities of white fluff quickly and easily.  The Rochester Marshmallow Works inspired fleets of copycats and, by 1900, the confections were everywhere.  Natasha Frost   https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/marshmallows-sweet-potato-casserole-how-thanksgiving  See also https://www.rochestersubway.com/topics/2015/10/marshmallows-and-rochester/ 

What Countries Are Transcontinental?  Russia spans across the northern portion of Eurasia.  It is considered both a country of Europe, and a country of Asia.  Turkey is also a country of Europe and Asia. Traditionally, Turkey has been viewed as a crossroads between the two continents.  Egypt is considered a country of Africa only, but they do have land that spans into the Middle East (Asia) via the Sinai Peninsula.  France has many overseas regions that are considered integral parts of the country.  Among them are French Guiana, in South America, Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean (North America), and Mayotte and Réunion in the Indian Ocean (Africa).  The majority of Indonesia is in Asia, but the country does have two provinces on the Island of New Guinea, which is part of Oceania.  All 50 U.S. states are in North America, except for one.  Hawaii, which is located way out there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is typically considered part of Oceania.  There is no one, definitive border between Europe and Asia, for example--different sources will draw it at different points.   Find Border Dependent Transcontinental Countries and Countries with Overseas Territories on Different Continents at https://www.sporcle.com/blog/2019/03/what-countries-are-transcontinental/  See also https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_spanning_more_than_one_continent

Inverted punctuation such as upside-down question marks or exclamation points are found in the languages of Spain and Latin American Spanish.  This punctuation marks the beginning of interrogative or exclamatory sentences or clauses and is mirrored at the end with standard punctuation.  While the standard punctuation is printed along the baseline of a sentence, inverted punctuation marks such as the upside down question mark descend below the line.  Inverted punctuation is especially critical in Spanish since the syntax of the language means that both statements and questions or exclamations could have the same wording.  https://blog.rosettastone.com/whats-up-with-the-upside-down-question-mark/  See also https://fsymbols.com/upside-down-question/ and https://www.thoughtco.com/upside-down-punctuation-in-spanish-3080317

Desperation, like necessity, was the mother of invention. * In the 1850s and 1860s, Central Park and then Prospect Park were both designed by Olmsted and Vaux.  Brooklyn was a separate city from New York.  In 1898, Manhattan and a small piece of the Bronx joined forces with Brooklyn, at that time, the third-largest city in America.  * Central Park . . . the magnificent green playground of the island of Manhattan * Death Angel, a novel by Linda Fairstein  

Also known as yaupon, cassina is a close relative of the popular South American holly-based tea, yerba maté.  Both dark brown drinks have an herbaceous, complex flavor and a mild, jitter-less buzz.  And yet, yerba maté has survived, and thrived, while cassina has faded into obscurity.  After seeing Native Americans sipping yaupon throughout the American South, some colonists started drinking the beverage and even exported it to Europe.  Though the holly-based brew disappeared from Americans’ teacups in the years after the Civil War, a small group of farmers currently grow and sell yaupon in the plant’s native habitat, which stretches from Virginia to the Gulf Coast of Texas.  Several cafes in cities such as Austin, Texas, and Asheville, North Carolina, have even started featuring it on their menus.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/yaupon-cassina-tea 

George Catlett Marshall Jr. (1880–1959) was an American soldier and statesman.  He rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff under presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, then served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman.  Winston Churchill lauded Marshall as the "organizer of victory" for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II.  Roosevelt passed over Marshall as allied commander in the invasion of France in favor of Dwight D. Eisenhower.  As Secretary of State, Marshall advocated a significant U.S. economic and political commitment to post-war European recovery, including the Marshall Plan that bore his name. In recognition of this work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Marshall 

Earl Warren (1891–1974) was an American politician and jurist who served as Governor of California from 1943 to 1953 and Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969.  The "Warren Court" presided over a major shift in American constitutional jurisprudence, which has been recognized by many as a "Constitutional Revolution" in the liberal direction, with Warren writing the majority opinions in landmark cases such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Reynolds v. Sims (1964), Miranda v. Arizona (1966) and Loving v. Virginia (1967).  Warren also led the Warren Commission, a presidential commission that investigated the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  He is the last Chief Justice to have served in an elected office before entering the Supreme Court, and is generally considered to be one of the most influential Supreme Court justices and political leaders in the history of the United States.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Warren 

The artist who sculpted “Charging Bull,” the bronze statue in New York which became a symbol of Wall Street, died in Vittoria, Sicily on February 19, 2021 at age 80.  The sculptor lived in New York for more than 40 years.  He arrived in 1973 and opened an art studio in the city’s SoHo neighborhood.  With the help of a truck and crane, Di Modica installed the bronze bull sculpture in New York’s financial district without permission on the night of Dec. 16, 1989.  The artist reportedly spent $350,000 of his money to create the 3.5-ton bronze beast that came to symbolize the resilience of the U.S. economy after a 1987 stock market crash.  He said he conceived of the bull sculpture as “a joke, a provocation.  Instead, it became a cursedly serious thing,” destined to be one of New York’s more visited monuments.  See pictures at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wall-street-charging-bull-sculptor-arturo-di-modica-dies-80-n1258446

February 21 to 28, 2021 is CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Week.  You purchase an advance share in a local farm, and then receive portions of their bounty through the summer.  See an example of a CSA newsletter that includes recipes at http://greenedgegardens.blogspot.com/2013/01/week-4-newsletter-winter-2013.html 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2329  February 22, 2021