While the humble and hearty potato is inextricably linked to Ireland in many people's minds, the tubers were first domesticated in present day Peru and Northern Bolivia nearly 8,000 years ago, according to the BBC.  The Inca and other indigenous people consumed potatoes in many of the same ways we do today.  But they also commonly made something called chuño, which is made by repeatedly freezing potatoes in the cold Andes night air then thawing them the next day.  People would squeeze all of the moisture out of them, which made them light, soft and juicy and added years to their shelf life.  The preservation process made them perfect for long expeditions and provided security against future bad harvests—both qualities that appealed to the Spanish upon their invasion in the region in 1532.  "The invaders took tubers (the underground parts of the plant we call potatoes) across the Atlantic, as they did with other crops such as tomatoes, avocados and corn, in what historians call the Great Columbian Exchange.  For the first time in history, the potato ventured beyond the Americas," the BBC reports.  Since then, the BBC says, the potato has become the world's fourth-most important crop after rice, wheat and maize, and the first among non-grains.  Smithsonian Magazine reports that the word chocolate stems from the Aztec "xocolatl," which referred to the bitter drink brewed from cacao trees that was often mixed with chilis, special herbs, honey and flowers.  The liquid was beaten into a foam, and both inhaled and drunk as part of sacred rituals.  It's well documented that the drink has been around some 2000 years, but anthropologists from the University of Pennsylvania say they've found an even earlier use of cacao—the source of modern day chocolate—somewhere between 1400 and 1100 B.C.E.  Ancient pottery discovered in present day Honduras indicates that cultures there made a fermented, alcoholic beverage from the sweet pulp of the cacao fruit.  Vanessa Romo  https://www.npr.org/2021/09/21/1039153054/if-you-love-potatoes-tomatoes-or-chocolate-thank-indigenous-latin-american-cultu 

Topology is the study of geometric properties that are preserved under deformation.  Sometimes topology is referred to as “rubber sheet geometry”, because it does not distinguish between a circle and a square (a circle made out of a rubber band can be stretched into a square) but does distinguish between a circle and a figure eight.  You cannot stretch a figure eight into a circle without tearing.  Topology deals with the ways that surfaces can be twisted, bent, pulled, or otherwise deformed from one shape to another without tearings.  A topologist is interested in the properties that remain unchanged after all these transformations have taken place.  Topologically speaking there is no difference between a doughnut and a coffee cup since either one can be deformed into the shape of the other.  Many string and wire puzzles, like Torquato puzzle, are based on topological principles.  Gianni A. Sarcone & Marie-Jo Waeber.  Read more and see graphics at https://www.archimedes-lab.org/workshoptorquato.html 

Here’s your first challenge:  go a week without writing very, rather, really, quite, and in fact.  *  If words are flesh, muscle and bone of prose, punctuation is the breath.  *  Dreyer's English:  An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style  Thank you, Muse reader! 

Potions, Pills, and Patents:  How Basic Healthcare Became Big Business in America--Alexander Zaitchik on the Rise of Medical Moneymaking.  The Great War was a short one for the United States.  But in sixteen months of fighting alongside the Entente powers, 116,000 American soldiers were killed.  Contemporaries grasped that a break had occurred, forming two distinct periods in the political and cultural life of the country.  The defining novel of the prewar decade was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a work of social protest and journalism that captured the tone and preoccupations of the Progressive Era. Sinclair’s depiction of the Chicago meatpacking industry will forever be paired with the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, signed by Teddy Roosevelt six months after the novel’s publication.  In the postwar decade, the shrunken public imagination and concerns of the Harding Era were indelibly recorded by the other Sinclair of American literature.  Sinclair Lewis’s 1922 novel Babbitt depicted America’s stultifying embrace of the idea, expressed with pith by Calvin Coolidge in 1925, that the country’s natural concern is not civic duty or social improvement, but “the business of business.”  The celebration of commerce and its values colored the drug patent debate when it resumed shortly after the war.  But the main theater of this debate shifted from the drug companies to the American university, where a collision of science and commerce spurred development of institutions and mores to manage and rationalize the new business of “ethical” academic patenting.  https://lithub.com/potions-pills-and-patents-how-basic-healthcare-became-big-business-in-america/ 

Sitting in the heart of Europe, Ukraine celebrated its 30 years of independence in 2021.  While it may seem like a young state, it has a thousand-year history.  Akvile Petratyte and Ieva Gailiūtė  See 50 beautiful pictures of Ukraine at https://www.boredpanda.com/beautiful-ukraine-pics/ 

On March 30, 2022 ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, named Jack J. Dongarra recipient of the 2021 ACM A.M. Turing Award for pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries that enabled high performance computational software to keep pace with exponential hardware improvements for over four decades.  Dongarra is a University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee.  He also holds appointments with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Manchester.  The ACM A.M. Turing Award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” carries a $1 million prize, with financial support provided by Google, Inc.  It is named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing.  https://www.eagletribune.com/region/acm-a-m-turing-award-honors-pioneer-of-high-performance-computing/article_d712c63f-ca5d-5f15-93d6-fd70b2ebd63d.html 

Christopher Alexander, a towering figure in architecture and urbanism—one of the biggest influences on the New Urbanism movement—died on March 17, 2022.   Alexander was the author or principal author of many books, including A Pattern Language, one of the best-selling architectural books of all time.  He is considered to be the father of the pattern language movement in software, which is the idea behind Wikipedia.  In 2006, he was one of the first two recipients, along with Leon Krier, of CNU's Athena Medal, which honors those who laid the groundwork for The New Urbanism movement.  ROBERT STEUTEVILLE    https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2022/03/18/christopher-alexander-1936-2022 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2514  March 30, 2022

«The founding of libraries is like constructing public granaries»  This is what Roman Emperor Hadrian thought about the importance of books and public libraries for the cultural and social growth of all people.  So, drawing inspiration from these ancient principles aimed at preserving and spreading knowledge, the Brunello and Federica Cucinelli Foundation built the Solomeo Library in 2008.  The Library is located inside the Aurelian Neo-Humanistic Academy, a neoclassical building that is part of the Solomeo Forum of the Arts.  It overlooks the Cucinelli Theater and the Amphitheater’s harmoniously-designed oval space.  As all the other Forum structures, the Library is also accessible to anyone; it is a place for promoting dialogue and culture, in all its forms.  Events and meetings on philosophical, historical, literary and art topics enliven the rooms of the Library, while a variety of classic and contemporary art, literature, history, spirituality and philosophy books are displayed on the shelves.  There is also an ample selection of classic books in foreign languages, including the less common ones such as Mongolian, Hebrew, Japanese and Hindi.  https://www.brunellocucinelli.com/en/the-library.html 

What was the first cookbook that changed your life?   Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. 

What cookbooks do you turn to most often?  Books that are practical and accessible and not overly fussy.  I really love Ruffage by Abra Berens.  I joined a CSA this year—Moon Valley Farm, a woman-owned organic farm in Frederick—and it’s really helpful when you have tons of rutabaga.

What cookbook are you most looking forward to testing out?    The Red Boat Fish Sauce Cookbook.

What are the best cookbooks you encountered last year?   We haven’t been able to keep The Tucci Cookbook in stock

What’s your favorite cookbook to recommend to a new home cook?   Simply Julia by Julia Turshen.

You can invite three food or cookbook writers to dinner, living or dead.  Who’s coming, and what would you make?  That’s really tough!   I’ll say Edna Lewis, Julia Child, and Cheryl Day [Treasury of Southern Baking].  She was such a wonderful guest here, I could just spend days and days listening to her.  We would get 2 Amys pizza and it would be great, as always.   Excerpt of an interview with Clementine Thomas  https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/03/10/the-owner-of-bold-fork-books-is-a-cookbook-obsessive-here-are-her-favorites/

David Burke grasps a rusty ladder fixed to the outside of an abandoned 60-foot concrete grain silo towering above a field in Tehama County, California.  Using round holes in the concrete as footholds, he climbs ten or more feet, straight into a cluster of dense green foliage.  Leaves explode out of gaps in the wall and peek over the lidless roof, rustling in a breeze that threatens to blow Burke off the ladder.  Peering into the silo, Burke notes that the trunk is only about six inches in diameter, but it’s one of the tallest fig trees he’s ever seen—and he has seen a lot of them.  “Figs are survivors,” Burke says.  After plucking a small green fig and returning to earth, he slices it open with a pocketknife and admires the dark red flesh inside.  It looks like a miniature watermelon.  A century ago, figs were a major component of California agriculture, cultivated on tens of thousands of acres, mostly in the Central Valley.  Seeing the immense potential of these orchards, and with the help of more than 80 Ford tractors, the entrepreneur Jesse Clayton Forkner leveled 12,000 acres of dry land near Fresno beginning in 1910.  A layer of dense clay lay just below the surface, so he used 660,000 one-pound charges of dynamite to blast as many holes in the ground and planted a fig tree in nearly every hole.  The entire operation cost $6 million.  By the 1920s, California was producing nearly 60,000 tons of figs every year.  The fruit (which is technically a bundle of hundreds of fleshy flowers turned inside out) was often consumed as a sweet dried snack wrapped in wax paper and packed in rectangular cartons.  Distributors also sold figs preserved in cans—fig pudding joined ketchup and pickles as one of H.J. Heinz & Company’s “57 Varieties” of canned foods and condiments—and people also enjoyed figs in all manner of pastries.  In 1919, capitalizing on the fig craze he’d helped to boost, Forkner published a cookbook for aspiring fig connoisseurs that included recipes for fig ice cream, fig soufflé and fig-and-cheese sandwiches.  Americans even distilled figs into liqueurs and brewed them into specialty coffees.  But fig cultivation in California began a slow overall decline in the late 1930s.  While commercial fig harvests were decreasing in California, though, birds, wild pigs and other animals kept spreading fig seeds.  Like the tree sprouting from the center of that abandoned grain silo, these hardy plants have since rooted themselves in all kinds of bizarre spots:  in drainage ditches, behind strip malls, on the edges of long-abandoned farms.  Read much more and see many pictures at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/california-search-for-ultimate-wild-fig-heats-up-180979538/ 

Jacques Pépin (born December 18, 1935) is a French-born American chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist.  Since the late 1980s, he has appeared on American television and has written for The New York Times, Food & Wine and other publications.  He has authored over 30 cookbooks, some of which have become best sellers.  Pépin was a longtime friend of the American chef Julia Child, and their 1999 PBS series Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home won a Daytime Emmy Award.  He has been honored with 24 James Beard Foundation Awards, five honorary doctoral degrees, the American Public Television’s lifetime achievement award, the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 and the Légion d'honneur, France's highest order of merit in 2004.  Since 1989, Pépin has taught in the Culinary Arts Program at Boston University and served as dean of special programs at the International Culinary Center in New York City.  In 2016, with his daughter, Claudine Pépin and his son-in-law, Rollie Wesen, Pépin created the Jacques Pépin Foundation to support culinary education for adults with barriers to employment.  In 2017, Pépin published a cookbook with his granddaughter Shorey Wesen, entitled A Grandfather's Lessons.  In the same year, Pépin received an honorary doctorate from the Columbia University School of General Studies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_P%C3%A9pin  See signed fine art prints and original artwork by Jacques Pépin at https://jacquespepinart.com/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2513  March 28, 2022

Nearly 80 years after her death, Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) remains among the world’s most beloved and popular children’s book authors, having sold 250 million copies of books such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit.  But a new show dedicated to the artist at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum aims to paint a much fuller picture of her life, highlighting Potter’s work in the natural sciences, her stewardship of the English landscape, and her accomplishments as a sheep farmer, as well as her literary success.  Potter often based her drawings on her real-life pets. During her lifetime, she had 92 of them, including rabbits Peter Piper and Benjamin Bouncer, who became Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny, perhaps her best-known characters.  “Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature” is on view at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London February 12, 2022–January 8, 2023.  Sarah Cascone,  See many illustrations at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/beatrix-potter-drawn-to-nature-2085667   

Andrew Pettegree, co-author of “The Library:  A Fragile History,” discusses the centuries-long development of libraries as a civic necessity.  We think of the public library as a constant through history.  But in fact, it's not.  They tended to be kept in chests with all the other valuables.  One of the major revolutions in the development of the library, the idea of storing books vertically on specially made shelves, was actually very late in coming and only became the general way of doing it in the 17th century.  Supporters promoted libraries as civilizing:  People would go to the library instead of down to the tavern for their recreation, and they’d become good citizens through reading.  Andrew Carnegie is the real hero of this story.  He offered around $10,000 each to communities to build simple local libraries, and in return they had to commit to maintaining the library.  By 1914, he supplied something like 2,000 libraries to Britain, the U.S., and Canada.  It was really only in the 1970s that public libraries came to terms with the paperback and started stocking books like romances, which they previously thought were rather demeaning for the public, because they were so desperate for customers.  Libraries also started presenting themselves as a sort of branch of social services with meeting rooms and spaces for classes, and now--computer access.  The death of the book has been proclaimed for 80 years, but people still like print.  Randy Dotinga  https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Author-Q-As/2022/0224/Q-A-with-Andrew-Pettegree-author-of-The-Library-A-Fragile-History 

The Real Life and Times of the Scientist Who Inspired Dr. Strangelove--Ananyo Bhattacharya on the Brilliance of John von Neumann   Call me Johnny, he urged the Americans invited to the wild parties he threw at his grand house in Princeton.  Though he never shed his thick Hungarian accent, von Neumann felt that János—his real name—sounded altogether too foreign in his new home.  Beneath the bonhomie and the sharp suit was a mind of unimaginable brilliance.  Von Neumann laid the foundations of quantum mechanics, founded modern game theory, helped design the atom bomb, drafted the blueprint for every modern computer from smartphone to laptop, and with Klári Dan, his second wife, wrote the first truly useful, complex programs ever to have been executed.  Von Neumann’s machine at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton would spawn the first generation of modern computers worldwide including the IBM 701, the company’s first commercial model, and his refusal to patent anything helped birth the open source movement.  But not content with computers that merely calculated, he proved during a lecture in 1948 that these information-processing machines could, under certain circumstances, reproduce, grow, and evolve.  Even on his deathbed, he wrote lectures comparing computers and brains that built a bridge between neuroscience and computer science for the first time.  Fearing a catastrophic third world war, von Neumann supported a pre-emptive strike against Stalin’s Soviet Union.  He changed his mind but not before becoming one of a handful of scientists who inspired Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.  The caricature has overshadowed his astonishing achievements, prescience and impact, which have been all but forgotten.  Literary Hub  February 23, 2022 

thingamajig/thingumajig  noun  Etymology  unknown.  Compare thingum, thingamabob, etc.  thingamajig (plural thingamajigs)  (informal) Something that one does not know the name of.  See Thesaurus:  thingy  See also placeholder name on Wikipedia.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thingamajig 

As Anne Franck wrote about her own hopes and dreamed of a better future, she often looked out upon a large horse chestnut tree in the garden behind the Secret Annex.  For her, the tree symbolized freedom as well as nature, which she longed to enjoy once again.  Sadly, the aging chestnut tree behind the Secret Annex collapsed from disease in 2010.  However, in the few years before the tree’s demise, the stewards at the Anne Frank House created saplings that have since been distributed to numerous locations around the world.  Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect has received several of the saplings to donate to worthy educational organizations across the US.  Following a three-year safeguard quarantine, they were cleared for planting in January 2013.  Currently there are a dozen sites that host the saplings.  Find a list of organizations that are the recipients of Anne Frank Tree saplings, and a form to inquire if your site or institution would like to be considered for a future Anne Franck garden or sapling at https://www.annefrank.com/sapling-project  On April 29, 2022, the 13^th Anne Franck tree in the U.S. will be planted at the University of Iowa. 

breadfruit, (Artocarpus altilis), tree of the mulberry family (Moraceae) and its large fruits that are a staple food of the South Pacific and other tropical areas.  Breadfruit contains considerable amounts of starch and is seldom eaten raw.  It may be roasted, baked, boiled, fried, or dried and ground into flour.  In the South Seas, cloth is made from the fibrous inner bark, the wood is used for canoes and furniture, and glue and caulking material are obtained from the milky juice.  African breadfruit (Treculia africana), native to tropical Africa, is a related species that is less important as a food crop.  The breadfruit has been cultivated in the Malay Archipelago (where the species is held to be indigenous) since remote antiquity.  From this region it spread throughout the tropical South Pacific region in prehistoric times.  Its introduction into the New World was connected with the memorable voyage of Capt. William Bligh in HMS Bounty.  See pictures at https://www.britannica.com/plant/breadfruit 

Moscow 2042 is a 1986 satirical novel (translated into English from Russian in 1987) by Vladimir Voinovich.  In this book, the alter ego of the author travels to the future, where he sees how communism has been successfully built in the single city of Moscow.  It soon becomes clear that the political system in the country is not a utopia and that Russia is ruled by the "Communist Party of State Security" which combines the KGB, the Communist Party, and the Russian Orthodox Church.  The party is led by former KGB general Bukashin (name literally meaning "the insect") who met previously with the main character of the novel in Germany.  An extreme slavophile Sim Karnavalov (apparently a parody of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) enters Moscow on a white horse as the savior.  Voinovich wrote this book in 1982.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_2042 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2512  March 25, 2022 

How Much Was WWI About… Bread?  Scott Reynolds Nelson Investigates the Impact of Grain on the Great War.  Stories about the Great War of 1914 to 1918 often begin with an account of German aggression.  But the war’s cause also had roots in the cheap grain cast upon the waters every spring and summer to feed Europe’s working classes.  The Turkish-German alliance threatened European gullet cities: it combined the grain-bottling Bosporus, which could block Russian grain, with Germany’s ship-destroying U-boats, which could block grain from Argentina, Australia, and America. Together Turkey and Germany could starve Europe.  Grain was key to almost every stage of World War I.  Fearing the threat to its grain exports, imperial Russia helped provoke this global conflict.  During the war the British underestimated the threat of Istanbul and overestimated their ability to overcome it.  As the conflict dragged on, Germany, also suffering from a dearth of cheap bread, found a unique path to Russia’s bountiful harvest.  German success in 1917 and most of 1918 would rely on the un-likeliest of allies:  a communist grain merchant with an ax to grind.  World War I has been characterized as a “great powers” conflict with Germany as the aggressor.  A Serbian assassin killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to Austria-Hungary’s throne, leading that empire to declare war on Serbia.  Russia backed Serbia, mobilizing its army near the Austro-Hungarian border. Germany, itching for conflict, supported Austria-Hungary and demanded that Russia demobilize.  When Russia refused, Germany invaded Belgium to attack France—Russia’s ally and financial backer.  In the same month the Germans and Austrians attacked Russia near Tannenberg, wiping out the Russian First and Second Armies.  England joined the side of the Franco-Russian Allies after Germany invaded Belgium.  The Ottomans only joined the Austrian-German Central Powers two months later.  That’s an oft-told story, but for scholars of the pathways of grain around the world, the war’s history begins a little earlier and much farther east.  In 1911, Italy invaded what would become Libya, taking it from Turkey.  The day after the fighting stopped, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro took advantage of the conflict to invade Turkey.  Then, crucially, Turkey closed the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits to commerce, blocking all Russian grain and oil exports.  Russians, fearing that Bulgaria or Greece might capture Istanbul, put both their army and the Black Sea fleet on alert.  Literary Hub  February 23, 2022 

The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, or “Marrakesh Treaty,” provides for the exchange of accessible-format books across international borders by organizations that serve people who are blind, visually impaired, and print disabled.  The Marrakesh Treaty was adopted in 2013 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to address the widespread problem known as a “book famine,” the situation where few books are published in formats that are accessible to those who are blind or visually impaired.  On February 8, 2019, the United States became the 50th member to deposit its instrument of ratification of this treaty with WIPO, and the treaty came into force in the United States on May 8, 2019.  More information about the treaty, contracting parties and provisions can be found here at https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/marrakesh External.  Additional information can be found through the United States Copyright office at https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/2018_marrakesh_faqs.pdf.  NLS is very pleased with this significant step toward making it easier for those with print disabilities in signatory nations to access printed works in accessible formats, such as braille and digital audio files.  On December 20, 2019, the Library of Congress Technical Corrections Act of 2019 amended NLS’ statutory authorization to harmonize NLS’s statute with the Marrakesh Treaty.  The Act amended NLS’s statute to permit the international digital exchange of materials under the Marrakesh Treaty.  The Act also amended NLS’s statute with a new definition of “eligible persons” consistent with the Marrakesh Treaty.  https://www.loc.gov/nls/about/organization/laws-regulations/marrakesh-treaty/ 

ambrosial—food of the gods:  he lived on ambrosial food, and was clad in celestial raiment—Thomas Bullfinch; ambsace (double ace)—the lowest possible throw at dice:  I had rather be in this choice that throw ames-ace ofe my life—William Shakespeare  Endangered Words:  A Collection of Rare Gems for Book Lovers by Simon Hertnon  Thank you, Muse reader!   

Verbatim is a magazine devoted to what is amusing, interesting, and engaging about the English language and languages in general.  We strive to bring fascinating topics out of the dusty obscurity of dry linguistic scholarship and polish them up for the general reader with an intelligent interest in language.  We gently poke fun at the messes people can get into with English and the misunderstandings that arise from our common language.  All this, plus a generous helping of book reviews.  http://www.verbatimmag.com/   

divagate—one meaning with two contexts:  he didn’t divagate from commercial sounding elements—Daniel Franklin; holophrasis—expression of a phrase or ideas by one word: Sir.  Negative, apologies.  Cries heard.  Investigate.—Obsidian Fleet Database; infonesia—forgetting the source of some information:  I read this article about infonesia recently, I don’t remember where—John Alejandro King.   Endangered Words:  A Collection of Rare Gems for Book Lovers by Simon Hertnon  Thank you, Muse reader!

A Literary History of the Nose--In Which Very Few Olfactory Puns Are Committed by Dustin Illingworth  https://lithub.com/a-literary-history-of-the-nose/ 

paraph—a flourish made after a signature or a paragraph:  His unvarying use of this double paraph served to identify him more that the totally illegible signature—Mary A. Benjamin; peccable—prone to sin, susceptible to temptation:  credentials are about as impeccable as you can find in the peccable atmosphere of Hollywood—Vincent Canby; verbigerate—repeating the same word or phrase in meaningless fashion: Teenagers are inveterate verbigerators—Charles Harrington Elster  Endangered Words:  A Collection of Rare Gems for Book Lovers by Simon Hertnon  Thank you, Muse reader! 

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,” her epic novel about racism, resilience and identity named for the influential Black scholar and activist, has received the fiction prize from the National Book Critics Circle.  In the nonfiction category, the award was given to Clint Smith’s “How the Word Is Passed:  A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America.”  Rebecca Donner’s “All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days:  The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler” won for biography, and Jeremy Atherton Lin’s “Gay Bar:  Why We Went Out” was named the best autobiography.  The poetry prize was given to Diane Seuss’ “frank: sonnets,” and the criticism award went to Melissa Febos’ “Girlhood.”  Hillel Italie  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/2022-book-critics-awards_n_623440dde4b0d39357c610a3 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2511  March 23, 2022

A shako is a tall, cylindrical military cap, usually with a visor, and sometimes tapered at the top.  It is usually adorned with some kind of ornamental plate or badge on the front, metallic or otherwise, and often has a feather, plume (see hackle), or pompom attached at the top.  The word shako originated from the Hungarian name csákó for the peak, which Hungarian border soldiers (Grenz-Infanterie) added around 1790 to their previously visorless stovepipe-style hats.  Originally these hats were part of the clothing commonly worn by shepherds, before being added to the uniform of the Hungarian hussar in the early 18th century.  Other spellings include chako, czako, sjako, schako, schakot and tschako.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shako 

In the 1830s, a new form of entertainment emerged:  the penny dreadful.  Also called penny horrible, penny awful, and penny blood, it got its name from its cheap and sensational nature, costing eager consumers—you guessed it—just a single cent.  These easily digestible stories for the masses spawned horror tropes, urban legends, and anti-heroes that we still know and love today.  But to understand the far-reaching influence of penny dreadfuls, first we have to take a look at their dark origins.  As recently as the 18th and 19th centuries, public executions were still a spectacle in Britain.  Among the crowds that gathered to witness the hanging of criminals, pamphlets were sold by enterprising printers.  These broadsides typically featured some reproduction of the crime or the criminal in question, along with a grim warning not to follow in their footsteps.  Not too long after, penny dreadfuls began popping up on newspaper stands—likely inspired by the success of crime and execution broadsides.  Each penny dreadful fell between eight and 16 pages, with an attention-grabbing illustration taking up the first half page.  The serialized stories were published in weekly installments, not unlike the tales penned by the contemporaneous Charles Dickens—but of a much more sordid nature.  Rather than revolving around the lives of the noble poor or haughty aristocrats, penny dreadfuls featured the exploits of criminals, detectives, monsters, and supernatural villains.  Gruesome and violent, they may have been considered lowbrow, but they were a huge hit.  Penny dreadfuls were eventually eclipsed by competing literature, such as the serials published by Alfred Harmsworth.  Priced even cheaper at half a cent, his publications were creatively called the “halfpenny dreadfuller.”  See graphics at https://the-line-up.com/what-is-a-penny-dreadful 

'Chit-chat' is just a reduplication of chat, which is itself a diminutive form of chatter, which has been with us as both a noun and a verb since the 13th century.  The two-way, conversational nature of chit-chat is alluded to in the 'to and fro' sound of the term, as in tick-tock and see-saw.  https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/chit-chat.html 

The smallest library in Maine is on a mission to bring banned books to its community by Abigail Curtis  Located 22 miles out to sea, Maine’s likely smallest library—and one of its newest—is on a mission to fill its shelves with books that other communities are taking off their shelves.  With a population of only about 100 people, tolerance of others and appreciation for differences matter on the island.  That is one reason why the library volunteers are choosing to take this stance.  The books include classics such as “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison.  Islanders also requested “Maus,” by Art Spiegelman, but Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop in Rockland was out of copies so she will have to special order it.  There are newer books, too.  A picture book first published in 2005, “And Tango Makes Three,” tells the true story of two male penguins at Central Park Zoo in New York City who raised a chick together.  It is one of the most banned books in the country, according to the American Library Association.  In 2020, Kristy Rogers McKibben, who grew up on Matinicus and had been one of the teen librarians 40 years ago, applied to the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation for a grant to add a second shed to make a children’s library.  The foundation approved the grant, and after the insulated shed was delivered on the ferry, library volunteers again got to work to make it functional.  https://bangordailynews.com/2022/03/16/news/midcoast/the-smallest-library-in-maine-is-on-a-mission-to-bring-banned-books-to-its-community-joam40zk0w/ 

Spring has sprung, the grass iz riz,
I wonder where da boidies iz?
Da boid iz on da wing!  Ain’t that absoid?
I always hoid da wing . . . wuz on da boid!  https://www.classicalwcrb.org/blog/2021-03-30/spring-has-sprung 

While frequently attributed to Ogden Nash or ee Cummings the author of this amusing nonsense--known as "Spring In The Bronx"--is Anonymous.

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris.  I wonders where the birdies is.  They say the birds is on the wing.  Ain't that absurd?  I always thought the wing was on the bird.  (Pardon the doggerel) 

In Arnold Silcock's Verse and Worse, it is attributed to ANON [New York], and goes thus:  The Budding Bronx   Der spring is sprung  Der grass is riz  I wonder where dem boidies is?  Der little boids is on der wing,  Ain't dat absoid?  Der little wings is on de boid!  https://www.answers.com/Q/Who_wrote_'Spring_has_sprung_The_grass_has_ris_I_wonder_where_the_birdies_is'  The poem has been cited in print since at least 1936. 

The American inventor, scientist, and soldier George Owen Squier, who developed the original technical basis for the Muzak service and also coined its name, was born on March 21, 1865.  Wiktionary 

Composer and organist J.S. Bach was born on March 21, 1685.  Bach traced his ancestry back to his great-great-grandfather Veit Bach, a Lutheran baker (or miller) who late in the 16th century was driven from Hungary to Wechmar in Thuringia, a historic region of Germany, by religious persecution and died in 1619.  There were Bachs in the area before then, and it may be that, when Veit moved to Wechmar, he was returning to his birthplace.  He used to take his cittern to the mill and play it while the mill was grinding.  Johann Sebastian remarked, “A pretty noise they must have made together!   However, he learnt to keep time, and this apparently was the beginning of music in our family.”  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Sebastian-Bach 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2510  March 21, 2022