The egg of the ostrich (genus Struthio) is the largest of any living bird.  The shell has a long history of use by humans as a container and for decorative artwork.  The female common ostrich lays her fertilized eggs in a single communal nest, a simple pit, 30 to 60 cm (12–24 in) deep and 3 m (9.8 ft) wide, scraped in the ground by the male.  The dominant female lays her eggs first, and when it is time to cover them for incubation she discards extra eggs from the weaker females, leaving about 20 in most cases.  A female common ostrich can distinguish her own eggs from the others in a communal nest.  Ostrich eggs are the largest of all eggs, though they are actually the smallest eggs relative to the size of the adult bird—on average they are 15 cm (5.9 in) long, 13 cm (5.1 in) wide, and weigh 1.4 kilograms (3.1 lb), over 20 times the weight of a chicken's egg and only 1 to 4% the size of the female.  They are glossy cream-colored, with thick shells marked by small pits.  The eggs are incubated by the females by day and by the males by night.  This uses the coloration of the two sexes to escape detection of the nest, as the drab female blends in with the sand, while the black male is nearly undetectable in the night.  The incubation period is 35 to 45 days, which is rather short compared to other ratites.  This is believed to be the case due to the high rate of predation.  Typically, the male defends the hatchlings and teaches them to feed, although males and females cooperate in rearing chicks.  Fewer than 10% of nests survive the 9 week period of laying and incubation, and of the surviving chicks, only 15% of those survive to 1 year of age.  A possible origin for the myth that ostriches bury their heads in sand to avoid danger lies with the fact that ostriches keep their eggs in holes in the sand instead of nests, and must rotate them using their beaks during incubation; digging the hole, placing the eggs, and rotating them might each be mistaken for an attempt to bury their heads in the sand.  In Thebes, Egypt, the tomb of Haremhab, dating to approximately 1420 BC, shows a depiction of a man carrying bowls of ostrich eggs and other large eggs, presumably those of the pelican, as offerings.  Ostrich eggshells were used as containers in North Africa as early as the fourth millennium BC and in the Royal Cemetery at Ur from the third millennium.  From the first millennium in the ancient Punic civilization, there are many examples of ostrich eggs decorated with painted geometric designs for use as cups and bowls.  These have been found in Carthage, Sardinia, Sicily, the Iberian Peninsula and Ibiza.  The tradition of using ostrich eggs as containers (sometimes decorated) continues to the present among the San people.  Today, ostrich eggs are a special luxury food.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich_egg

Lee Godie was born Jamot Emily Godie in Chicago.  She later married and had three children.  Following the death of two of her children and the failure of her marriage, she chose to make her home on the streets of Chicago.  Around 1968 she started to offer her canvases to passersby and art patrons in downtown parks and on the steps of the Chicago Art Institute on North Michigan Avenue.  She proclaimed herself Lee Godie - French Impressionist, and noted how she was "much better than Cezanne."  She claimed her financial success was due to the advice of Renoir to “paint beauty”.  She would only sell her paintings to people she felt would be suitable purchasers.  There was no guarantee she would even talk to you, much less sell you an artwork.  http://www.blacksheepart.com/godie.html 

February 5, 2022  Thomas Beard was sitting at a desk the other day, in a small room in the back of Light Industry, a film and electronic-arts venue, of which he is a founder.  A vase of yellow tulips was before him.  In April 2022, Light Industry will move to new digs, and, in the interim, Beard has decided to use the back room for an unusual project:  selling all his books.  The thought of letting go of his collection, amassed over twenty years and largely kept in storage, came to him during the pandemic.  “The books were locked away like a dowry, and I wanted them to have a life in the world.”  And so:  Monday Night Books.  “I figured I could do it one evening a week,” he said.  “It seemed perfect.”  “The books were locked away like a dowry, and I wanted them to have a life in the world.”  “This isn’t really a business—it’s a slow-motion garage sale,” he went on.  “When the books are gone, I’ll close up shop.”  The only items he has decided to keep are his working library of film books and his cookbooks.  “But only proper cookbooks!” he clarified.  “Like, Elizabeth David’s ‘Harvest of the Cold Months:  A Social History of Ice and Ices’?  That is here.”  Just weeks into the project’s run, the stock had already been reduced by hundreds of volumes, and the space was bustling with masked customers riffling eagerly through the wares, like hypebeasts at a limited-edition sneaker drop.  “Nothing is truly gone,” he said.  “If I want to read, say, the letters of Rosa Luxemburg, I can still go to the library and take them out.  Naomi Fry  February 14 & 21, 2022 The New Yorker issue, with the headline “Book Sale.” 

The brain is an energy-intensive organ, using around 20 percent of the body’s calories, so it needs plenty of good fuel to maintain concentration throughout the day.  The brain also requires certain nutrients to stay healthy.  Omega-3 fatty acids, for example, help build and repair brain cells, and antioxidants reduce cellular stress and inflammation, which are linked to brain aging and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease.  Foods to boost brain function are:  oily fish, dark chocolate, berries, nuts and seeds, whole grains, coffee, avocados, peanuts, eggs, broccoli, kale and soy.  https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324044 

Duke Humfrey's Library is the oldest reading room in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.  Until 2015, it functioned primarily as a reading room for maps, music, and pre-1641 rare books; following the opening of the new Weston Library, it is now an additional reading room for all users of the Bodleian, as the Weston Library operates a reading room for special collections.  It consists of the original medieval section (1487), the Arts End (1612), and the Selden End (1637).  It houses collections of maps, music, Western manuscripts, and theology and arts materials.  The library is on the first floor and forms an H-shape with the later parts as the uprights.  The medieval section is above the Divinity School and Selden End (named after John Selden a benefactor of the library) is above the Convocation House.  Duke Humfrey's Library was used as the Hogwarts Library in the Harry Potter films.  Duke Humfrey's Library is named after Humphrey of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Gloucester, a younger son of Henry IV of England.  He was a connoisseur of literature and commissioned translations of classical works from Greek into Latin.  When he died in 1447, he donated his collection of 281 books to the University of Oxford.  At the time, this was considered an incredibly generous donation as the university only had 20 books.  See many pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Humfrey%27s_Library 

Get a taste of the Big Easy with the best recipes for Mardi Gras.  Whether it's king cake, beignets or muffuletta, these classic Mardi Gras recipes are so good, you'll be making them long after Fat Tuesday is over.  Caroline Stanko  https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/best-mardi-gras-recipes/ 

March dates of interest:  1:  Peace Corps established, 1961; 11:  first confirmed cases of Spanish flu in the U.S., 1918; 13:  Daylight Saving Time begins; 20:  Spring begins; 28:  term “Big Bang” coined, 1949 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2501  February 28, 2022

The largest megalithic site in the world is found in France.  It is known as the Carnac Alignments and its stones are scattered across the coast of Brittany in a more extensive formation than Stonehenge.  There are over 2,800 standing stones lined up as far as the eye can see, spanning four kilometres across and 40 hectares in total.  The tallest standing stone is four metres high.  By way of comparison, Stonehenge has 83 rocks or lumps of stone visible today, many having been damaged over the years.  Jade Cuttle  See many beautiful pictures at https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/frances-stonehenge-the-carnac-stones-and-other-megalithic-sites/ 

The Chimayó (or Chimayo) pepper is named after the town of Chimayó, New Mexico, where roughly 200 hectares (500 acres) of Chimayó peppers are harvested annually.  It is considered one of the two best chiles in the state, the others being those grown in Hatch.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimayo_pepper  Link to recipes at https://madeinnewmexico.com/products/los-poblanos-southwest-salt-gift-set   

New Mexico cuisine, permeated by the two official state vegetables of pinto beans and chile, is a tradition of regional cultivation, seed varieties and recipes passed down for generations.  The fertile village of Chimayo, nestled in the Sangre de Cristo foothills of the Rocky Mountains, is known not only for its miraculous Santuario but also for its unique sought after varietal of red chile.  http://www.ranchodechimayo.com/#mrsj   

Alan Michael Ritchson (born November 28, 1982) is an American actor, filmmaker, and singer.  He made his acting debut as Aquaman/Arthur Curry on The CW superhero series Smallville (2005–2010) where he appeared as a guest star between the fifth and tenth seasons.  Ritchson gained further prominence for portraying Thad Castle on the Spike TV sitcom Blue Mountain State (2010–2011), a role he reprised in the 2016 film sequel.  He also headlined the SyFy action series Blood Drive (2017).  In 2018, he returned to superhero television as Hank Hall / Hawk on the DC Universe / HBO Max series Titans.  After leaving Titans in 2021, Ritchson was cast as the title character on the Amazon Prime Video series Reacher.  Outside of television, Ritchson played Raphael in the 2014 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot and its 2016 sequel, along with appearing in The Hunger Games:  Catching Fire (2013).  He made his directorial debut with the action-comedy Dark Web:  Cicada 3301 (2021), which he also co-starred in.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Ritchson 

In Bad Luck and Trouble, the eleventh book in the Jack Reacher series, Reacher himself tells everyone why he doesn’t even carry a second shirt:  “Slippery slope.  I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I’m carrying spare pants.  Then I’d need a suitcase.  Next thing I know, I’ve got a house and a car and a savings plan and I’m filling out all kinds of forms.”  He fights for justice, sure, but he also waxes poetic about Eudora Welty (“I love short stories, they get straight to the point”), dishes out an encyclopedia’s worth of fun facts and tactical tricks, tells slippery lies to get information wherever he is.  Corbin Smith  https://www.thedailybeast.com/alan-ritchsons-reacher-is-a-gigantic-unstoppable-force 

Dolomite is the name for a mineral composed of calcium magnesium carbonate and for a sedimentary rock that has this mineral as its chief constituent.  The rock was given this name first, but to avoid confusion it is sometimes known as dolostone.  The pure mineral is white, but traces of impurities can give it a range of colors, including pink, yellow, brown, and gray.  Dolomite is used as an ornamental stone and for many practical applications.  For instance, it is a raw material for the manufacture of cement, and a source of magnesium oxide.  It is an important reservoir rock for petroleum, and a host rock for ores of metals such as lead, zinc, and copper.  In horticulture, dolomite may be added to soils and potting mixes to lower their acidity.  The rock dolomite was first described in 1791, by the French naturalist and geologist Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu (1750-1801), when he observed exposures in the Dolomite Alps of northern Italy.  Limestone that is partially replaced by dolomite is referred to as dolomitic limestone.  In old American geologic literature, it is called magnesian limestone.  https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Dolomite 

The Connecticut State Library published an excerpt from a 1980s issue of Connecticut Magazine, in which writer Elizabeth Abbe wrote that traders sold nutmeg to foreign customers who did not know how to use it.  Customers thought nutmeg needed to be cracked like walnut.  "Nutmegs are wood and bounce when struck.  If southern customers did not grate them, they may very well have accused the Yankees of selling useless 'wooden' nutmeg," wrote Abbe.  Adriana Morga  https://www.ctpost.com/living/article/Why-is-Connecticut-called-The-Nutmeg-State-16233291.php  Thank you, Muse reader! 

Holbein:  Capturing Character  February 11 through May 15, 2022 at The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue New York   Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543) was among the most skilled, versatile, and inventive artists of the early 1500s.  He created captivating portraits of courtiers, merchants, scholars, and statesmen in Basel, Switzerland, and later in England, and served as a court painter to Tudor King Henry VIII (1491–1547).  Enriched by inscriptions, insignia, and evocative attributes, his portraits comprise eloquent visual statements of personal identity and illuminate the Renaissance culture of erudition, self-fashioning, luxury, and wit.  Holbein: Capturing Character is the first major exhibition dedicated to the artist in the United States.  Spanning Holbein’s entire career, it starts with his early years in Basel, where Holbein was active in the book trade and created iconic portraits of the great humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536).  Holbein stayed in England in 1526–1528 and moved there permanently in 1532, quickly becoming the most sought-after artist among the nobles, courtiers, and foreign merchants of the Hanseatic League.  In addition to showcasing Holbein’s renowned drawn and painted likenesses of these sitters, the exhibition highlights the artist’s activities as a designer of prints, printed books, personal devices (emblems accompanied by mottos), and jewels.  This varied presentation reveals the artist’s wide-ranging contributions to the practice of personal definition in the Renaissance. Works by Holbein’s famed contemporaries, such as Jan Gossaert (ca. 1478–1532) and Quentin Metsys (1466–1530), and a display of intricate period jewelry and book bindings offer further insights into new cultural interests in the representation of individual identity, and highlight the visual splendor of the art and culture of the time.  Find hours and visitor information at https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/holbein 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2500  February 25, 2022

Although today we’re primarily familiar with nutmeg as a powder that comes in little plastic bottles, it’s actually the pit of the fruit of a tree native to the Banda Islands of Indonesia.  Throughout the 18th century, the Dutch controlled the Banda Islands, keeping nutmeg scarce and prices high in international markets.  In America, where nutmeg was a popular flavor in 18th and early 19th century cooking, the spice was extraordinarily expensive—so expensive, unscrupulous vendors allegedly tried to replicate nutmegs in wood.  At the time, America’s rural communities were connected by a network of itinerant peddlers, or “hucksters,” who sold household goods.  The peddlers were often associated with dishonest dealings (part of the definition of a “huckster” today), and the original “wooden nutmeg” was a euphemism for a general mistrust of such people.  Thomas Hamilton, a British traveler who toured America and documented his findings in Men and Manners of America in 1833, said of peddlers in New England:  “They warrant broken watches to be the best time-keepers in the world; sell pinchbeck trinkets for gold; and have always a large assortment of wooden nutmegs and stagnant barometers.”  In The Clockmaker:  Or, The Sayings and Doings of Samuel Slick, of Slickville, published in 1839, the main character is called “a Yankee pedlar, a cheatin vagabond, a wooden nutmeg” by an incensed rival.  Sarah Lohman  https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94734/why-early-america-was-obsessed-wooden-nutmegs

Since the early 1700s, tea plantations have come and gone throughout the South.  The Lipton tea company can be credited for reigniting an interest in growing tea in the region.  In the 1960s, they began experimenting with growing tea plants in the United States and ran research facilities in many states, including Alabama and South Carolina.  The most widely distributed Southern-grown tea is from Charleston Tea Garden, on Wadmalaw Island in South Carolina.  This sprawling tea estate is descended from an old Lipton research facility, and there are about 5,200 tea plants on each of the estate’s 127 acres.  Visitors can take a trolley tour of the estate and watch tea being processed.  In Fairhope, Alabama, Donnie Barrett took three plants salvaged from a dumpsite when Lipton closed its experiment at the Auburn University Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station and grew them into 61,000 plants to start Fairhope Tea Plantation.  During three trips to China between 1984 and 2007, Barrett skipped the pagoda tours and visited tea plantations instead.  “As we went from city to city, I would go to the tea farms and they explained all their secrets.”  Armed with these insights from Chinese tea growers, he planted out his tea in 50-foot-long rows with 1,000 plants in each.  Each row is 7 feet, 3 inches apart.  His tea leaves are hand-harvested—just new shoots with two leaves and a leaf bud—as he learned from the Chinese, and dried to preserve the sugars and starches in the leaves.  Barrett is credited for inspiring other Southerners to begin growing tea.  “I’ve given away thousands of plants to help people start farms,” he admitted.  “We make batches throughout the year, 30 to 40 pounds at a time.”  But the only way to enjoy his tea is to visit the Fairhope Museum of History (where Barrett is the director), and select your tea from the gift shop there.  Conne Ward-Cameron  https://www.southernkitchen.com/story/drink/2021/09/02/beyond-sweet-tea-southern-farmers-grow-proper-tea-leaves-us/5695964001/  You may either add brewed tea or teabags (removing the bags before serving) to soups or stews.  You may garnish dishes with finely minced tea leaves.  

 "Happiness is a small house, with a big kitchen." - Alfred Hitchcock   "Cooking is one of the strongest ceremonies for life." - Laura Esquivel   "The more you know, the more you can create.  There's no end to imagination in the kitchen." - Julia Child   "Good food and a warm kitchen is what makes a house a home." - Rachael Ray  https://www.kitchensbyemmareed.co.uk/inspirational-kitchen-quotes

Bamboo rice comes from a dying bamboo shoot.  When bamboo shoots die, it flowers a rare seed variety of rice known as bamboo rice.  It’s said that bamboo rice harvesting is a huge source of income for some tribal communities.  Bamboo rice is a variety of short-grain rice that offers powerful aromatic flavors and aromas which is largely because it is infused with pure bamboo juice.  It’s pale green in color and provides an herbaceous flavor and makes the dish pretty for any plate, adding more color than traditional white or brown rice would be able to.  The texture of bamboo rice is sticky.  https://myasiancooking.com/how-to-cook-bamboo-rice/ 

Green Bamboo Rice  Simple recipe serves four as a side dish.  https://www.npr.org/2012/04/17/150728347/green-bamboo-rice 

February 20, 2022  If you've walked through Baltimore, Md. over the last few days, you might have come across a curious sight--around 50 lost gloves popped up on fence posts, waving in the wind, with little notes attached to their sleeves. Bruce Willen and his wife created the "Library of Lost Gloves and Lost Loves" in a Baltimore park.  It's an art installation made of lost winter gloves and mittens.  Copyright © 2022 NPR  All rights reserved  Read interview with Don Gonyea at https://www.npr.org/2022/02/20/1082012483/lost-mittens-become-an-art-installation-on-lost-love-in-baltimore

Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) was an American writer and poet mainly remembered for a short poem titled "Trees" (1913), which was published in the collection Trees and Other Poems in 1914.  Kilmer was also a journalist, literary critic, lecturer, and editor.  He enlisted in the New York National Guard and was deployed to France with the 69th Infantry Regiment (the famous "Fighting 69th") in 1917.  He was killed by a sniper's bullet at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918 at the age of 31.  He was married to Aline Murray, also an accomplished poet and author, with whom he had five children.  While most of his works are largely unknown today, a select few of his poems remain popular and are published frequently in anthologies.  Several critics—including both Kilmer's contemporaries and modern scholars—have dismissed Kilmer's work as being too simple and overly sentimental, and suggested that his style was far too traditional, even archaic.  Many writers, including notably Ogden Nash, have parodied Kilmer's work and style—as attested by the many imitations of "Trees".  Deep in the Nantahala Wilderness, southwest corner of North Carolina is the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, one of the last stands of virgin hardwood forest in eastern United States.  Find list of Kilmer’s works at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Kilmer

Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves. - Robert Neelly Bellah, sociologist and author (23 Feb 1927-2013)

http://librariansmuse.blogpost.com  Issue 2499  February 23, 2022

Native Chicagoan Edith Farnsworth (1903-1977) was born into the lumber and paper business.  She studied literature and composition at the University of Chicago and violin at the American Conservatory of Music.  She studied further in Italy for several years during the 1920s with concert violinist and composer Mario Corti.  She became fluent in Italian and French and spoke some German.  She also had interests in the sciences as well as the arts.  She eventually decided to pursue a career in medicine and graduated from Northwestern Medical School earning her MD in 1938.  During World War II, Dr. Farnsworth rose through the traditionally male field to become an associate professor of medicine at Passavant Hospital specializing in Nephrology (the study of the kidney) and divided her time between private practice as a physician and research for the university.  After selling the Farnsworth House to Lord Peter Palumbo in 1971, Dr. Farnsworth spent the end of her life in a small villa in Bagno a Ripoli (near Florence, Italy); while there, she became a published translator of Italian poetry and recorded extensive memoirs.  She died on December 5th, 1977 after a brief illness, and her ashes were returned for burial in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.  Link to VR Tour and Exhibitions at https://edithfarnsworthhouse.org/dr-edith-farnsworth/ 

Lewis Howard Latimer (1848-1928) was an African-American inventor, electrical pioneer, and a son of fugitive slaves.  With no access to formal education, Latimer taught himself mechanical drawing while in the Union Navy, and eventually became a chief draftsman, patent expert, and inventor.  Latimer worked with three of the greatest scientific inventors in American history, Alexander Graham Bell, Hiram S. Maxim, and Thomas Alva Edison.  He played a critical role in the development of the telephone, and invented the carbon filament, a significant improvement in the production of the incandescent light bulb.  Outside his professional career, Latimer developed a passion for visual art, creative writing, and music.  Some products of his artistic endeavors can be viewed at the Lewis Latimer House Museum.  The Lewis H. Latimer House is a modest Queen Anne-style, wood-frame suburban residence constructed between 1887 and 1889 by the Sexton family.  Lewis Howard Latimer lived in the house from 1903 until his death in 1928.  The house remained in the Latimer family until 1963.  Threatened with demolition, the house was moved from Holly Avenue to its present location in 1988.  The Lewis H. Latimer House is owned by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, operated by the Lewis H. Latimer Fund, Inc., and is a member of the Historic House Trust.  https://www.lewislatimerhouse.org/about 

Generation X:  Tales for an Accelerated Culture is the first novel by Douglas Coupland, published by St. Martin's Press in 1991.  The novel, which popularized the term Generation X, is a framed narrative in which a group of youths exchange heartfelt stories about themselves and fantastical stories of their creation.  Coupland released the similarly titled Generation A in September 2009.  Generation X is a framed narrative, like Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron by Boccaccio.  The framing story is that of three friends—Dag, Claire, and the narrator, Andy—are living together in the Coachella Valley in southern California.  The tales are told by the various characters in the novel, which is arranged into three parts.  Each chapter is separately titled rather than numbered, with titles such as "I Am Not a Target Market" and "Adventure Without Risk Is Disneyland".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X:_Tales_for_an_Accelerated_Culture  

Before the American Civil War, the majority of hospital nurses—or “stewards”—were men.  But the war created a medical crisis that demanded more volunteers, and a lot of the people who took up the call were women.  Of the estimated 620,000 military deaths during the Civil War, about two-thirds were due to disease.  If a bullet didn’t kill a soldier, the infection that developed from a wound might; and the infectious diseases that spread in war hospitals ravaged soldiers and medical workers alike.  Amid this desperate need for medical workers, women began to volunteer as nurses for wounded soldiers.  After the war, women continued to work in medicine; and by 1900, they represented 91 percent of U.S. nurses.  When the Civil War began in 1861, medical jobs weren’t yet professionalized as they are today, says Stanley Burns, a surgeon, historian and founder of The Burns Archive.  “Surgery was not part of medical training for many people,” he says.  To become a doctor, “the only requirement was an apprenticeship with a doctor and some courses.”  Many of the people who volunteered as surgeons during the Civil War essentially learned to operate on the job.  Similarly, there was no required training for the nurses who volunteered in war hospitals; so most of their training happened on the job, too.  Although both Union and Confederate military medical departments preferred using men in war hospitals, the need for more nurses became obvious in the first few months of the war.  Many of the men who ended up working as nurses in these hospitals were actually wounded soldiers who had been asked to help care for even more wounded soldiers.  In 1861, the U.S. Army appointed Dorothea Dix as its first superintendent of nurses.  Dix implemented a system for women to volunteer for three-month nursing assignments during the war.  In addition to establishing standards of care for nurses who volunteered with the Army, she also helped shape the image of what a nurse should look like.  To volunteer as a nurse under Dix, women had to be between the ages of 35 and 50, healthy and “plain looking.”  Another influential Civil War nurse was the abolitionist Clara Barton, who became known as “Angel of the Battlefield” and went on to found the American Red Cross.  In 1862, she made a harrowing journey by wagon to deliver medical supplies to the war hospital near Virginia’s Cedar Mountain battlefield.  Today, nursing is the largest healthcare profession in the United States.  Although more men have entered the field in the 21st century, women are still in the majority, making up 91 percent of nurses.  Becky Little  https://www.history.com/news/nursing-women-civil-war 

Carmen Herrera, the Cuban American painter and sculptor whose lifelong interest in vividly colored, hard-edge abstract forms brought her particular fame in the latter years of her life, died on February 12, 2022  in the New York apartment and studio where she lived for 55 years.  She was 106.  A major opportunity came in 2004 when she was 89, after she showed work at Frederico Sève’s Latin Collector Gallery on Hudson Street.  Rave reviews led to the first sales of her paintings to private collectors, followed by institutional acquisitions by MoMA, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, and Tate Modern in London.  In May 2016, she opened Lisson’s New York space with new works, and had a 30-year retrospective at the Whitney Museum that September.  Vivienne Chow  https://news.artnet.com/art-world/carmen-herrera-dies-at-106-2072333   

Peanut Butter Pie (Presidents Pie)  https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/dessert/pie/peanut-butter-pie-presidents-pie.html

Washington Pie http://www.grouprecipes.com/9600/washington-pie.html 

The New Yorker, now best known for publishing “Cat Person,” printed its first issue on February 21, 1925.  See also https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/12/16762062/cat-person-explained-new-yorker-kristen-roupenian-short-story 

Olympic Games Beijing 2022  February 4, 2022–February 20, 2022  Norway won the most gold medals with 16 and the biggest overall total at 37.  See the Olympic Medal Table at https://olympics.com/beijing-2022/olympic-games/en/results/all-sports/medal-standings.htm 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2498  February 21, 2022