There is a long history of television and film in New Jersey, which is considered the birthplace of the movie picture industry.  The roots of the industry started in Newark with Hannibal Goodwin's patent of nitrocellulose film in 1887.  Motion picture technology was invented by Thomas Edison, with early work done at his West Orange laboratory.  Edison's Black Maria, where the first motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States, Fred Ott's Sneeze, was shot.  The Centaur Film Company of Bayonne was the first independent movie studio in the USA.  America's first motion picture industry started in 1907 in Fort Lee and the first studio was constructed there in 1909.  The nation's first drive-in theater opened at Airport Circle in 1933.  DuMont Laboratories in Passaic, developed early sets and made the first broadcast to the private home.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_and_film_in_New_Jersey 

Alice Guy-Blaché:  Cinema’s First Woman Director in Newspapers  January 26, 2022 by Amber Paranick  Alice Guy-Blaché is a name you likely have never heard.  She was a pioneer of the French and American film industries during the silent era and the first woman to have a career as a director, yet her work and career have largely been overlooked throughout history.  She was among the very first to use film to tell a narrative story, although for years she was largely uncredited as compared to Georges Méliès and the Lumière brothers.  Only recently, has she been acknowledged for influencing many directors that came after her.  Let’s take a look at articles on her life and career in our historic newspaper collection, Chronicling America.  “HOW A WOMAN MAKES A FORTUNE OUT OF ‘MOVIES’,” New-York Tribune (New York, NY), November 24, 1912.  Alice Ida Antoinette Guy was born in Saint-Mandé, in Paris, France on July 1, 1873, to French parents Marie and Emile Guy.  During her childhood, the Guy family moved between Chile and France.  After the family was struck by multiple tragedies in her adolescent life, Alice sought employment outside the home in order to support her family.  In 1894, she worked as a stenographer (or, secretary) to French inventor, engineer, and industrialist, Léon Gaumont.  Gaumont is considered a premier film producer who established the Gaumont Company, the first and oldest film company in the world.  Guy was inspired by the premiere of the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe motion picture   https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2022/01/alice-guy-blache/ 

Oat Risotto with Peas and Pecorino  Chef Graham Elliot cooks steel-cut oats risotto-style to make a savory porridge.  For a quicker version, Grace Parisi simmers steel-cut oats risotto-style in chicken stock until they're tender, then stirs in nutty pecorino cheese and sweet baby peas.  https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/oat-risotto-with-peas-and-pecorino 

Oat Risotto With Parmesan and Peas  Steel cut oats take the place of Arborio rice in this creamy risotto-inspired dish.  It’s actually less hands on than traditional risotto.  For a different taste, try pecorino or Romano cheese in place of the parmesan.  Link to recipes such as oatmeal chocolate chip edible cookie at dough:  https://oatseveryday.com/recipes/wprm-oat-risotto-with-parmesan-and-peas/ 

Laetiporus sulphureus is a species of bracket fungus (fungi that grow on trees) found in Europe and North America.  Its common names are crab-of-the-woods, sulphur polypore, sulphur shelf, and chicken-of-the-woods.  Its fruit bodies grow as striking golden-yellow shelf-like structures on tree trunks and branches.  Old fruitbodies fade to pale beige or pale grey.  The undersurface of the fruit body is made up of tubelike pores rather than gills.  Laetiporus sulphureus is a saprophyte and occasionally a weak parasite, causing brown cubical rot in the heartwood of trees on which it grows.  Unlike many bracket fungi, it is edible when young, although adverse reactions have been reported.  Laetiporus sulphureus was first described as Boletus sulphureus by French mycologist Pierre Bulliard in 1789.  It has had many synonyms and was finally given its current name in 1920 by American mycologist William Murrill.  Laetiporus means "with bright pores" and sulphureus means "the colour of sulphur".  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laetiporus_sulphureus  

The theropod (meaning "beast-footed") dinosaurs are a diverse group of bipedal saurischian dinosaurs.  They include the largest terrestrial carnivores ever to have made the earth tremble.  What most people think of as theropods (e.g., T. rex, Deinonychus) are extinct today, but recent studies have conclusively shown that birds are actually the descendants of small nonflying theropods.  Thus when people say that dinosaurs are extinct, they are technically not correct.  See pictures at https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/saurischia/theropoda.html 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2614  December 30, 2022

In an essay published in 1942, the writer Jorge Luis Borges captured the absurdity and scope of list-making with his own fictional taxonomy, supposedly found in an ancient Chinese encyclopedia titled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge.   In it, an unknown scribe orders all the animals of the world into fourteen categories.  These include “those that belong to the emperor;” “trained ones;” “suckling pigs;” “mermaids;” “those included in this classification;” and, my personal favorite, “those that tremble as if they were mad.”  The divisions are precise, elegant, and incongruous.  As the French philosopher Michel Foucault noted, the celestial emporium shows that lists require subtle thought; the ability to segment, categorize, and compare.  These characteristics are a little hidden in ancient texts like the Onomasticon of Amenopĕ, but Borges hauls them to their feet and sets them dancing.  As Foucault says:  “there is nothing more tentative, nothing more empirical (superficially, at least) than the process of establishing an order among things; nothing that demands a sharper eye or a surer, better-articulated language.”  https://lithub.com/what-if-listicles-are-actually-an-ancient-form-of-writing-and-narrative/  Excerpted from Beyond Measure:  The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants by James Vincent.  © 2022   

The first retail Christmas tree lot was established in 1851 by Mark Carr who brought trees from the Catskill Mountains to New York City.  The first president to set a Christmas tree in the White House was Franklin Pierce.  Folklore, Fun Facts, & Traditions from The Old Farmer’s 2022 Almanac   

During the 2021-2022 school year, more than 1,600 books were banned from school libraries.  The bans affected 138 school districts in 32 states, according to a report from PEN America, an organization dedicated to protecting free expression in literature.  And the number of bans are only increasing yearly.  Texas and Florida lead the nation in book bans—a revelation that recently spurred Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot to call her city a "book sanctuary."  But what are the most commonly banned books in America, and why are they considered controversial?  Find a list of the 50 most commonly banned books in America from the 2021-2022 school year, with data supplied by PEN America. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-banned-books-in-america/

 

What to Cook Between Christmas and New Year’s by Helen Rosner  December 26, 2018   I’m going to make lemon curd.  Lemon curd is the sort of thing that you can decant into little jars and tie up with a ribbon for a fussy little gift, or bake over a shortbread base to make lemon bars, or just spoon over buttered toast with a sprinkle of salt.  I’m also going to make rainbow cookies, those almond-scented confections that I buy whenever I go into an Italian bakery.  Dips:  The first is the chef Alex Stupak’s miraculous two-ingredient cashew salsa, in which a combo of smoked cashews and canned chipotle peppers  The second is my friend Martha’s smoked-trout dip—it’s a tin of smoked trout flaked with a tablespoon of mayonnaise, a tablespoon of spicy mustard, and a fistful of finely minced pickled red onion.  At the end of the week, if you’ve cooked a bone-in ham, and timed your eating right, you can throw the picked-over remains into a pot for Hoppin’ John, a stew of black-eyed peas and rice that, in the South, is served for luck on New Year’s Day.  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/kitchen-notes/what-to-cook-between-christmas-and-new-years   

“Approach! Commit! Execute!” Daniel Brush told CBS Sunday Morning in 2004 while doing a sort of dance when he was describing his process.  The moment captures Daniel, who died on November 26 at age 75, to perfection. Re-watching the segment brought back a flood of memories for me from the late 1990s and early 2000s when I knew Daniel best.  The self-described hermit was beginning to come out of his shell at the encouragement of Ralph Esmerian, the gem dealer and jewelry collector, who had an enormous number of Daniel’s creations.  Daniel was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1947.  His father was a merchant and his mother was a writer and photographer who took him on expeditions to museums.  When Daniel was 12, they went to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum and he saw his first display of Etruscan goldwork.  It was a defining moment in his life.  “My heart pounded the way it has not since then,” explained Daniel.  “I was insane to learn how it was made.”  After a foray into academia at Georgetown University, Daniel took up goldwork and learned how to do granulation like none other.  Granulation is a high-wire act of technical bravura.  For the dome Daniel arranged 78,000 granules in a geometric pattern over the curved surface.  Brush said working up the courage to do the final stage—heating the gold granules and gold background, coaxing both to a uniform temperature and then firing the object with a swift sweep of the torch took almost as long as preparing the piece.  If anything goes wrong—say, the granules fall off—months of work are gone in a flash.  Describing the odds of failure, Daniel said, “At 30 seconds it succeeds, at 29 it fails and at 31 it melts.”    Brush’s restless imagination led him to other arcane areas of craftsmanship during the 1990s.  He was a master of the art of turning.  A pursuit of royalty during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, Brush scoured the world to assemble a large collection of antique lathes to conduct the turning in a traditional way.  In order to work them he read historic “How To” guides.  Marion Fasel  See beautiful pictures at https://theadventurine.com/jewelry/profiles/in-memoriam-daniel-brush/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2613  December 29, 2022 

The great books are great because they speak to us, generation after generation.  They are things of beauty, joys forever—most of the time.  Of course, some old books will make you angry at the prejudices they take for granted and occasionally endorse.  No matter.  Read them anyway.  Recognizing bigotry and racism doesn’t mean you condone them.  What matters is acquiring knowledge, broadening mental horizons, viewing the world through eyes other than your own.  Michael Dirda, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World and the author of the memoir “An Open Book” and of four collections of essays:  “Readings,” “Bound to Please,” “Book by Book” and “Classics for Pleasure.”   https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/michael-dirda/   

HAPPY NEAR YOU (Happy New Year)   

Favorite books read by the Muser in 2022

·        Open Secrets by Alice Munroe (book of short stories set in Ontario, Canada in which women are the central characters)

·        Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver  (Human life boils down to three basic essentials—birth, death, and sex.)  Kingsolver interweaves three stories of relationships and land set in the fictional Zebulon County near the border of North Carolina and Tennessee.) 

·        Tomorrow Will Be Better by Betty Smith  (A novel of love, marriage, poverty, and hope set in 1920s Brooklyn)  sequel to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  At the end of my edition is an essay “Things I Want to Say About My Mother” by Nancy Pfeiffer and “Betty Smith’s Library at the Time of Her Death”—a selection of titles. 

·        Twenty Thirty:  The Real Story of What Happens to America by Albert Brooks  (Cancer, Alzheimer’s and muscular dystrophy are cured--leading to the powerful “olds” being supported by struggling young people.)

·        Zero Fail:  the Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig (The Secret Service, born in 1865 with the assignation of Abraham Lincoln, began in earnest with the shooting of John F. Kennedy.)

·        The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy (The Elysian Society allows paying clients to reconnect with their lost loved ones.  The workers, known as bodies, wear the discarded belongings of the dead and swallow pills to summon spirits.)   

Favorite books re-read by the Muser in 2022

• 1984 by George Orwell  Published in 1949, the book is set in 1984 in Oceania, one of three perpetually warring totalitarian states--the other two are Eurasia and Eastasia.  Oceania is governed by the all-controlling Party, which has brainwashed the population into unthinking obedience to its leader, Big Brother.  The Party has created a language known as Newspeak, which is designed to limit free thought and promote the Party’s doctrines.  The Party maintains control through the Thought Police and continual surveillance. 
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley  Published in 1932, dystopian social science fiction novel, largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning.  Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982) Magda Bogin (Translator) Three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies.  The novel was rejected by several Spanish-language publishers before being published in Buenos Aires.  It became an instant best-seller, was critically acclaimed, and catapulted Allende to literary stardom.  The novel was named Best Novel of the Year in Chile in 1982, and Allende received the country's Panorama Literario award.  The House of the Spirits has been translated into over 20 languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Spirits    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2612  December 28, 2022

Vladimir Nabokov said that “a good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”  November 29, 2022 

The Year in Rereading  The books we returned to this year for insight, comfort, and delight by The New Yorker  The list includes: 

·        P. G. Wodehouse’s “Joy in the Morning”

·        Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”

·        “Diaries” of Alan Clark

·        “Glyph” by Percival Everett 

·        “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis  Sinclair Lewis’s satirical novel about an American demagogue turned dictator, was a best-seller when it was first published, in 1935.   

Ekphrasis  “Description” in Greek.  An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.  Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.  A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ekphrasis   

Look Then Read:  Big Sheets, an exhibition of enlarged versions of visual poems and collages by Joel Lipman, 2022 University of Toledo Department of Art Axon Fellow, is on exhibit in the UT Center for Visual Arts Gallery through January 6, 2023.   Lipman has been a cornerstone of Toledo’s poetry community for decades.  Along with Nick Muska, a fellow poet and driving force behind the Toledo Poetry Museum, Lipman has hosted poetry readings and workshops and has built a community for poets and creative writers.  His affiliation with the University of Toledo’s Department of English allowed him to bring in visiting artists and writers to enrich the local offerings.  His classes revolved around the visceral, the tangible, the essential experiences of expression.  Now a professor emeritus of English at UT, in 2008 Lipman was the first appointed poet laureate of Lucas County.  Lipman’s interests lie at the intersection of writing and art. He has taught about ekphrasis (writing about art or inspired by art) and about artist’s books (Toledo Museum of Art has a great selection in its archives).  The tradition of artists and writers using existing books as a jumping-off point for their own creative expression, like a written collage, is a popular medium.  An example is blackout poetry, where a page from a book is blacked out except for a smattering of words on the page; the words remaining then communicate a sentiment or statement.  Lipman works in this tradition – “treating” pre-existing texts with rubber stamps and graphic elements like printing blocks.  These works require a different sort of interpretation:  look at something to see what it is, identify its components and their origins.  Then, after determining those factors, read to see what it says.  The Axon Fellowship at the University of Toledo’s Department of Art created the opportunity for Lipman to print and display large versions of his collages, with the help of professor Eric Zeigler and the Art Print Center.  Altering the scale of Lipman’s work offers a grander look at his creative process.  Through January 6, 2023. The Center for Visual Arts, adjacent to the Toledo Museum of Art, 620 Art Museum Drive. utoledo.edu/al/art  https://toledocitypaper.com/art-to-heart/look-then-read-joel-lipman/   

Toledo Poetry Museum https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064772523967   

The Lit Hub Staff Picks the Best Books of the Year for 2022 by Emily Temple  https://lithub.com/our-38-favorite-books-of-2022/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2611  December 27, 2022 

Countdown to Christmas  https://www.jigidi.com/jigsaw-puzzle/tgwv24x2/countdown-to-christmas/   

Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions.  Op art works are abstract, with many better known pieces created in black and white.  Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibrating patterns, or of swelling or warping.  The antecedents of Op art, in terms of graphic and color effects, can be traced back to Neo-impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Dada.  Time Magazine coined the term op art in 1964, in response to Julian Stanczak's show Optical Paintings at the Martha Jackson Gallery, to mean a form of abstract art (specifically non-objective art) that uses optical illusions.  Works now described as "op art" had been produced for several years before Time's 1964 article.  For instance, Victor Vasarely's painting Zebras (1938) is made up entirely of curvilinear black and white stripes not contained by contour lines.  Consequently, the stripes appear to both meld into and burst forth from the surrounding background.  Also, the early black and white "dazzle" panels that John McHale installed at the This Is Tomorrow exhibit in 1956 and his Pandora series at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1962 demonstrate proto-op art tendencies.  Martin Gardner featured Op Art and its relation to mathematics in his July 1965 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.  In Italy, Franco Grignani, who originally trained as an architect, became a leading force of graphic design where Op Art or Kenetic Art was central.  His Woolmark Logo (launched in Britain in 1964) is probably the most famous of all his designs.  https://www.wikiart.org/en/artists-by-art-movement/op-art   

The Night of the Radishes (Spanish:  Noche de Rábanos) is an annual event held on December 23 in Oaxaca, Mexico, dedicated to the carving of oversized radishes (Raphanus sativus) to create scenes that compete for prizes in various categories.  The event has its origins in the colonial period when radishes were introduced by the Spanish.  Oaxaca has a long wood carving tradition and farmers began carving radishes into figures as a way to attract customers' attention at the Christmas market, which was held in the main square on December 23.  In 1897, the city instituted the formal competition.  As the city has grown, the government has had to dedicate land to the growing of the radishes used for the event, supervising their growth and distribution to competitors.  The event has become very popular, attracting over 100 contestants and thousands of visitors.  Since the radishes wilt soon after cutting, the works can only be displayed for a number of hours, which has led to very long lines for those wishing to see them.  The event also has displays and competitions for works made with corn husks and dried flowers, which are created with the same themes as those with radishes.  Native to China, radishes were introduced to Mexico by the Spanish, particularly by the friars. ver time, the crop became used as a side dish or snack, or carved into decorations for special dishes.  In the colonial period, the radishes began to be carved with religious themes in relation to the annual Christmas market held in the city of Oaxaca on December 23, with the encouragement of priests.  The carvings were a marketing gimmick, with farmers using them to attract the attention of shoppers in the market in the city plaza.  Eventually people began buying the radishes not only to eat, but to create centerpieces for Christmas dinners.  The legend as to how the event began says that one year in the mid-18th century, the radish crop was so abundant that a section lay unharvested for months.  In December, two friars pulled up some of these forgotten radishes.  The sizes and shapes were amusing, and they brought them as curiosities to the Christmas market held on December 23.  The misshapen vegetables attracted attention and soon they began to be carved to give them a wider variety of shapes and figures.  In 1897, the mayor of the city, Francisco Vasconcelos, decided to create a formal radish-carving competition, which has been held each year since.  Over the years various types of radishes have been used both in Oaxacan cuisine and for carving.  A large completely white type called criollo was used earlier, as it did not rot as readily and adopted more capricious forms.  While this variety has since disappeared, an image of them can be seen in a work by Diego Rivera called "Las tentaciones de San Antonio".   See beautiful pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Radishes   

Sir David Willcocks would probably not have expected that his most widely recognized contribution to church music would be a half-diminished seventh chord, but his arrangement of Adeste fideles achieved almost universal popularity as soon as it was published, selling innumerable copies of Carol for Choirs for the Oxford University Press.  Willcocks’s arrangement also includes an instantly memorable descant for the hymn’s third verse:  the trebles give voice to the angelic host (“Sing, choirs of angels”) with an ecstatic chain of Glorias (“Glory to God in the highest”) that soar high above the familiar melody.  For those in the know, the tune of the descant can be recognized as a quotation from another well-known carol, “Ding dong, merrily on high,” a clever way of uniting two different portrayals of angelic singing.  The resulting arrangement fits so well that it’s hard to imagine the carol without it; no young singer who has sung “O come” in Willcocks’s arrangement is likely to want it sung any other way.  Willcocks himself was characteristically self-deprecating about his work, explaining that he couldn’t find another descant for the hymn and “thought it would be nice” to have a new version for his choir’s Christmas carol service. That event, of course, was the famous service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Cambridge, where Willcocks was the newly appointed Director of Music in 1958.  https://thelampmagazine.com/2020/12/21/david-willcocks-an-appreciation/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2610  December 23, 2022 

Sept. 30, 2022  Hidden rooms have been built into homes for centuries, whether for hiding valuables or avoiding persecution.  But they have seen a resurgence in recent years, as examples on the internet rekindle widespread nostalgia for the amenity, said California-based architect Todd Mather, who has designed several secret doors for clients.  Sarah Paynter  Read extensive article with pictures of secret rooms at https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/its-no-secret-hidden-rooms-make-homeowners-feel-like-kids-again-01664465555   

Kubbeh is a small pocket of dough that is stuffed with ground beef.  Kubbeh for soup is usually boiled, whereas Kubbeh served on a platter is fried.   Ready in:  45 mins   Serves:  8  submitted by Abba Gimel  https://www.food.com/recipe/red-kubbeh-soup-412070   

Books by M L Longworth and Complete Book Reviews--includes Mystery of the Lost Cézanne: A Verlaque and Bonnet Mystery, Death in the Vines, and Disaster at the Vendôme Theatre (published in October 2022).  https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/m-l-longworth.html  Longworth’s Provençal mystery novels have been adapted for TV.   

GAZPACHO  Creative ingenuity, simplicity, nutritious, powerful . . . these are the great powers of this popular and historical “cold soup” with peasant roots.  Eaten from a bowl with a spoon or drunk from a glass, it is one of the most immediate and indisputable references of Andalusian and Sevillian gastronomy.  The principle is impeccable and easy to make:  just good red tomatoes, garlic, soaked bread crumbs, olive oil and quality vinegar, salt and water.  Everything goes in raw, crushed or mashed and later strained to avoid lumps and to facilitate emulsion. Find recipe at https://www.visitasevilla.es/en/tapas/gazpacho   

Gazpacho, a popular soup from the Andalusian area, (an autonomous community of Spain), mostly known now for being served cold, has many different influences from Greece and Rome, but also from the Moor's and Arab culture.  The original soup was blended stale bread, olive oil and garlic, with some liquid like water or vinegar that was pounded together in a mortar.  Different vegetables and almonds that were available were also added.  The soup evolved into different varieties, the most popular around the world is a tomato based variety, served cold.  It is often served heated in certain regions in Spain.  Now Gazpacho has become a generic term for a cold soup that has a vegetable or fruit base or both, that has similar spices to the traditional.  The tomato, cucumber variety of Gazpacho is probably the most nutritious, being that it is mostly fresh vegetables.  It is sometimes called a Liquid Salad.  A Spanish refrain says, De gazpacho no hay empacho.  (You can never get too much of a good thing or too much gazpacho).  It is great for any meal or snack and the left over can be used as a sauce for pasta.  See graphics and link to recipes at https://kitchenproject.com/history/Gazpacho/index.htm   

what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander  If something is acceptable for one person, it is acceptable for another (often of the opposite sex). quotations ▼ One who treats others in a certain way should not complain about receiving the same treatment.  1670s, figuratively using goose/gander for women and men, and literally meaning that the same sauce applies equally well to cooked goose, regardless of sex. Early forms include “as deep drinketh the goose as the gander” (1562) and similar “As well for the coowe calfe as for the bull” (1549).  The expression appears in Dickens when a spy attempting to evade culpability insists, “For you cannot sarse the goose and not the gander.”  Derived terms:  what's good for the goose is good for the gander--sauce for the goose      https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/what%27s_sauce_for_the_goose_is_sauce_for_the_gander#:~:text=Etymology,the%20bull%E2%80%9D%20(1549).   

The first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere is marked by the winter solstice, which occurs on Wednesday, December 21, 2022, at 4:48 P.M. EST.  The winter solstice marks the official beginning of astronomical winter (as opposed to meteorological winter, which starts about three weeks prior to the solstice).  The winter solstice occurs once a year in each hemisphere:  once in the Northern Hemisphere (in December) and once in the Southern Hemisphere (in June).  This is all thanks to Earth’s tilted axis, which makes it so that one half of Earth is pointed away from the Sun and the other half is pointed towards it at the time of the solstice.  We often think of the winter solstice as an event that spans an entire calendar day, but the solstice actually lasts only a moment.  Specifically, it’s the exact moment when a hemisphere is tilted as far away from the Sun as it can be.  https://www.almanac.com/content/first-day-winter-winter-solstice   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2609  December 21, 2022