Bamboo is a type of grass plant, and the Latin name is bambusa.  It is the fastest-growing plant in the world.  The Chinese cook the sprouts with meat such as chicken, beef and pork.  They can be added as an additional vegetable in stir-fry dishes.  Bamboo is found in almost all subtropical and tropical regions, in places with a humid climate.  The crispy, slightly sweet flesh of the sprouts is great for use in a variety of soups, salads, or stews.  You can also try stewing them with mushrooms or cabbage.   Experienced chefs advise not to boil bamboo shoots for too long.  This is because prolonged heat treatment will deteriorate their taste and destroy the nutrients.  Link to recipes at https://www.honestfoodtalks.com/bamboo-shoots-guide/ 

A limerick is a humorous poem consisting of five lines.  The first, second, and fifth lines must have seven to ten syllables while rhyming and having the same verbal rhythm.  The third and fourth lines should only have five to seven syllables; they too must rhyme with each other and have the same rhythm.  https://examples.yourdictionary.com/limerick-examples.html 

A wonderful bird is the pelican;
His beak can hold more than his belican.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week,
Though I’m damned if I know how the helican!  Dixon Lanier Merritt  

https://bookstr.com/article/21-hilarious-limericks-for-national-limerick-day/  May 12 is National Limerick Day

Climate fiction (sometimes shortened as cli-fi) is literature that deals with climate change and global warming.  Not necessarily speculative in nature, works may take place in the world as we know it or in the near future.  The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change.   The term "cli-fi" first came into mainstream media use on April 20, 2013 when NPR did a five-minute radio segment on Weekend Edition Saturday to describe novels and movies that deal with human-induced climate change.  Historically, there have been any number of literary works that dealt with climate change in earlier times as well.  See examples of cli-fi at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_fiction 

Onscreen, Edward G. Robinson was a hardened criminal, the quintessential Depression-era gangster who inspired a string of cinematic bad guys.  Offscreen, he was a sensitive lover of the arts with a museum-level collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, some African sculpture, and a handful of canvases by emerging contemporary artists (such as Israeli painter Reuven Rubin and a young 

Frida Kahlo).  Robinson’s illustrious collection began modestly a few years before he played Little Caesar, with a painting of a cow.  The bovine portrait by an anonymous artist cost two dollars at auction, and the actor proudly installed it alongside his reproductions of works by Rembrandt and Henri Matisse.  Years later, when Robinson could afford an actual Matisse (he bought a dinner scene by the artist because it reminded him of his mother’s Friday night dinners), the cow looked out of place but still had sentimental value, so he hung it in a back room.  He started out working primarily on stage, made the jump to the silver screen, and became a regular presence on radio and television—where he narrated documentary series about art, competed against fellow art-collecting actor Vincent Price on an art history-themed run of The $64,000 Question, and had a 1967 cameo appearance on Batman.  With every gig, his earnings snowballed and he earned millions per year in current dollars.  One of the great tragedies of Robinson’s life was being forced to sell his entire collection in the 1950s in order to settle his divorce from Gladys.  He sold it all to shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos for $3.5 million, with the understanding that he could eventually buy some of the paintings back.  In time, with his second wife Jane, he repurchased 14 works from his original collection and started over.  Robinson’s appetite for art might have kept the aging actor in show business, appearing in films until the year of his death at age 79, in 1973.  Karen Chernick  See pictures at https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-hollywood-gangster-one-frida-kahlos-first-collectors 

Edward G. Robinson (born Emanuel Goldenberg; 1893–1973) was a Romanian-born American actor of stage and screen during Hollywood's Golden Age.  He appeared in 30 Broadway plays and more than 100 films during a 50-year career and is best remembered for his tough-guy roles as gangsters in such films as Little Caesar and Key Largo.  During the 1930s and 1940s, he was an outspoken public critic of fascism and Nazism, which were growing in strength in Europe in the years which led up to World War II.  His activism included contributing over $250,000 to more than 850 organizations which were involved in war relief, along with contributions to cultural, educational and religious groups.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_G._Robinson 

Author, journalist and political satirist P.J. O'Rourke died on February 15, 2022 at the age of 74.  O'Rourke wrote more than twenty books about a range of topics, from politics to cars, and he was a longtime panelist on the NPR show Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!  O'Rourke began his career writing for the National Lampoon, and later led the foreign affairs desk at Rolling Stone, where he covered world politics from the Persian Gulf to the Philippines.  Later in life he contributed to more conservative outlets including The Weekly Standard and served as the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute.  O'Rourke was born in Toledo, Ohio into a family, as he put it, "so normal as to be almost a statistical anomaly."  Elizabeth Blair  https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080941812/satirist-p-j-orourke-panelist-on-nprs-wait-wait-dont-tell-me-dies-at-74 

They know enough who know how to learn. - Henry Adams, historian and teacher (16 Feb 1838-1918)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2496  February 16, 2022