Rabbit, Run, a novel by John Updike was published in 1960.  The novel’s hero is Harry (“Rabbit”) Angstrom, a 26-year-old former high-school athletic star who is disillusioned with his present life and flees from his wife and child in a futile search for grace and order.  Three sequels—Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990)—continue the story of Rabbit in the succeeding decades of his life.  https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rabbit-Run   

The John Updike Childhood Home is a museum owned by The John Updike Society, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit corporation organized for educational purposes with members in 18 countries and 37 states.  The house is located at 117 Philadelphia Avenue in Shillington, Pa., where author John Updike lived from “age zero” to 13, after which John and his parents moved to a farmhouse in Plowville that had been in his mother’s family.  Updike treasured the house on Philadelphia Avenue because it was where his “artistic eggs were hatched.”  He visited Shillington often during his writing career, and went through the house as an adult at least twice.  The house museum features 10 areas of exhibits that tell the story of Updike and his time in Berks County.  Learn more about The John Updike Society.  Membership is open to anyone with an interest in Updike, and benefits include free admission to the museum and any issues of The John Updike Review that are published during the calendar year.  Like other author houses in heavily residential areas, The John Updike Childhood Home has limited hours of operation.  The museum is open on Saturdays from 12-2 p.m., except for major holidays.  Admission is $10/person for age 16 and older.  Group rate is $7/person (10 or more)  Group tours need to be arranged in advance and are dependent upon docent availablility.  Click here for more information on group visits and special rates for schools.  https://johnupdikechildhoodhome.com/about/    

Recto is the "right" or "front" side and verso is the "left" or "back" side when text is written or printed on a leaf of paper (folium) in a bound item such as a codex, book, broadsheet, or pamphlet.  In double-sided printing, each leaf has two pages--front and back.  In modern books, the physical sheets of paper are stacked and folded in half, producing two leaves and four pages for each sheet.  For example, the outer sheet in a 16-page book will have one leaf with pages 1 (recto) and 2 (verso), and another leaf with pages 15 (recto) and 16 (verso).  Pages 1 and 16, for example, are printed on the same side of the physical sheet of paper, combining recto and verso sides of different leaves.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recto_and_verso   

September 28, 2023  Amsterdam’s Van Gogh museum is working together with the makers of popular adventure card game Pokémon as part of the celebrations of the museum’s 50th anniversary.  The alliance includes a special Pokémon hunt through the gallery in both Dutch and English, lessons in how to draw Pikachu, Van Gogh-inspired Pokémon paintings, and a promo card that fans can add to their collection.  Vincent’s work and Pokémon are both closely linked with Japanese art and culture, the museum said, and Japanese prints were a great influence on his work and view of the world.  https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/09/van-gogh-celebrates-50th-year-with-pokemon-gotta-catch-em-all/ 

27 September 2023  People come across as being more trustworthy and competent on Zoom calls if they have plants or books in the background.  “With videoconferencing, most of what everyone else sees–the majority of your screen–is taken up with your background,” says Paddy Ross at Durham University in the UK.  “So you no longer have to just worry about how you look and how you’re presenting yourself to other people, but also what you have all around you.”  Ross and his colleagues collected 72 photos of 36 white adults, made up of 18 men and 18 women who were either smiling or had a neutral expression, taken from a human faces photo database for researchers.  Next, the researchers asked 167 people to rank how trustworthy and competent they thought the people in the 72 images were, on a scale of 1 to 7.  The most favourable first impressions were given to the people in front of the bookcase or plants.  But regardless of whether the caller was a man or a woman, smiling evoked more competence and trustworthiness than having a neutral expression.  This is probably because smiling suggests self-confidence, says Ross.  Christa Lesté-Lasserre  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2394538-having-books-in-your-zoom-background-makes-you-seem-more-trustworthy/   

kinesics (uncountable) (linguistics)  noun

The study of non-verbal communication by means of gestures and/or other body movements.  [from 1952] quotations ▼

Such non-verbal communication.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kinesics#English  The American anthropologist Ray L. Birdwhistell, who coined kinesics, was born on September 29, 1918. 

 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2725  September 29, 2023   

John Angus McPhee (born March 8, 1931) is an American writer.  He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction.  He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World (a collection of five books, including two of his previous Pulitzer finalists).  In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career".  Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McPhee  

John McPhee has said that the lead of an article serves as a searchlight that shines down into the body of a piece—which is a good enough description for a work of nonfiction, where story is already formed, has already happened, and needs only to be reported—but the first sentence of a piece of fiction serves as much more than searchlight or hook or even lure to the reluctant reader.  The first sentence in a work of fiction places the first limitation on the utterly limitless world of the author’s imagination.  Before that first sentence is composed, anything is possible.  The novelist Gloria Naylor called the first sentence of a piece of fiction the story’s DNA, for out of it, she said, arises the second sentence and the third, the fourth—all the way, I would add, to the very last.  For if the writer’s any good, the first sentence will strike a chord, a tone, a mood, a music that will reverberate throughout the story or the novel, resounding in all kinds of ways through every sentence, all the way to the end.  Excerpted from What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction by Alice McDermott  Copyright © 2021 by Alice McDermott   https://lithub.com/what-makes-a-great-first-sentence/  

Possum v. opossum  One of these was discovered before the other—and on completely different continents.  In the 17th century, Captain John Smith who was one of the colonists in the Jamestown colony in Virginia named the opossum based on an Algonquian word meaning “white beast.” And thus, the opossum we know today got its name.  Over one hundred years later in the late 1700s, different explorers traveled to Australia and New Guinea.  There, one of the explorers—a naturalist by the name of Sir Joseph Banks— saw a creature he determined to be part of the “Opossum tribe” described in America.  The name that this creature was given?  Possum.  As you can tell from the history of each animals’ origin, the opossum and possum are in fact very different animals altogether (even if they are related).  Though “opossum” is sometimes shortened to “possum” in North America, with the two words often being used synonymously, this is technically a misnomer.  The proper name for the scaly-tailed creature with a pointed head (that may be baring its teeth) is opossum.  Opossums are the only native marsupials found in North America.  This means that like other marsupials, they possess pouches with which to carry their young.  Opossums are roughly the size of raccoons, so about two to three feet long, and usually have grayish fur.  They are also recognizable from their long, pointed snouts and sharp teeth.  The young can use their tail to hang upside, although adults are too heavy to continue this behavior.  Opossums are omnivores, feeding on many things including fruits, plants, insects, snakes, and small mammals such as mice and rats.  The brushtail possum is also a marsupial, like the opossums found in North America.  But unlike opossums, possums have furry tails—which is how they got the name brushtail possums—and are found throughout Australia.  Brushtail possums look fairly different from the opossum, with shorter and less pointed snouts.  Possums typically give birth to one young at a time compared to the many young that opossums give birth to at once; and, newborn possums are called joeys while opossum young are not.  https://www.terminix.com/blog/home-garden/possum-vs-opossum-differences/    

2023 is the 400^th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio—the first collected edition of his works, and the first publication ever of plays including Macbeth and The Tempest.  Jane Smiley’s novel A Thousand Acres is an adaption of King Lear.  

Jane Smiley (born 1949) is an American novelist.  She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991).  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2724  September 27, 2023

 The Large Plane Trees, also called Road Menders at Saint-Rémy is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh.  Painted in 1889 in Saint-Rémy, France, the painting depicts roadwork underneath autumn trees with yellow leaves.  In actuality, "The Large Plane Trees" and the "Road Menders of Saint-Rémy" are two different paintings and are sometimes confused as one.  Van Gogh painted "The Large Plane Trees" first on a red and white checkered table cloth.  He later returned and painted it again on an art canvas.  It is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.  This scene was repeated in The Road Menders, part of the Philips Collection in Washington D.C.  In 2013, the two paintings were displayed together as part of the Van Gogh Repetitions exhibition at the Phillips Collection before The Large Plane Trees was moved to the Cleveland Museum of Art.  Analysis shows that The Large Plane Trees was created first, with The Road Menders being a copy with virtually identical outlines.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Large_Plane_Trees    

A Man Called Ove is a novel by Swedish writer Fredrik Backman published in Swedish by Forum in 2012. The novel was published in English in 2013 and reached the New York Times Best Seller list 18 months after its publication and stayed on the list for 42 weeks.  It has been adapted into two films:  A Man Called Ove, which premiered in Sweden on 25 December 2015, with Rolf Lassgård in the leading role, and A Man Called Otto, released on 30 December 2022, with Tom Hanks in the leading role.  Backman got his inspiration for this book after reading an article about a man named Ove who had a fit while buying tickets at an art museum.  Backman instantly related to this man as he claims to be "not great at talking to people".  He started writing blogposts under the heading, "I am a Man Called Ove", where he wrote about his pet peeves and annoyances.  Eventually, he realized that his writing had potential for the creation of an interesting fictional character.  The novel was adapted into A Man Called Ove, a Swedish film released on 25 December 2015, written and directed by Hannes Holm and starring Rolf Lassgård as Ove.  The film was nominated for six awards, winning two, at the 51st Guldbagge Awards in 2016.  It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Makeup and Hairstyling categories at the 89th Academy Awards.  In January 2015, a stage version of the book, starring Johan Rheborg in the leading role as Ove, premiered in Stockholm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Called_Ove_(novel) 

“In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked.  Yet a child’s need for quietness is the same today as it has always been–it may even be greater–for quietness is an essential part of all awareness.  In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.”  Margaret Wise Brown

Margaret Wise Brown, a poet in her own right—the art of writing for children is a fine and perhaps the noblest of arts—wrote some one hundred books, most of which are out of print today.  All of her books are weird and sad and clear and wise.  Childlike, you could say—and as the highest of compliments.  The legendary book editor Ursula Nordstrom thought of her imprint’s audience members as “brand new people.”  Nordstrom believed that the best writers for children were those who thought like children.  Thinking like a child is very different from thinking for a child.  Brand new people are naturally philosophical and long for attachment.  Goodnight Moon is the perfect gift for a lonely soul at bedtime or anyone who never forgot the feeling of loss that can be embodied by bedtime in childhood.  To go to sleep is to leave the world behind, but being told “goodnight” is also like being left.  It’s complicated, isn’t it?  
Goodnight Moon, written by Brown and memorably illustrated by Clement Hurd—the second in the trilogy the pair completed together, after The Runaway Bunny and before My World—was published on September 3, 1947.  It did not sell well, in large part because Anne Carroll Moore, the influential children’s librarian at the New York Public Library, did not like it, calling it “unbearably sentimental.”  Due to her influence (even though she was actually retired at the time!) the NYPL wouldn’t stock the book for 25 years, even as the book slowly grew in popularity; by the time they deigned to buy it, in 1971, it was selling some 20,000 copies annually, and well on its way to becoming the bedtime juggernaut you know and love today.  Just goes to show!  Literary Hub  September 3, 2023  

The origins of baklava date back to ancient times.  Around the eighth century B.C.E., people in the Assyrian Empire, which spread across parts of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Syria and Turkey, arranged unleavened flatbreads in layers, with chopped nuts in between, to be enjoyed during special events.  Centuries later, the Ancient Greek and Roman “placenta cake” (the Latin placenta coming from the Greek word plakous, or “cheese cake,” not the unsavory afterbirth) was a dish consisting of many layers of dough, filled with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves.  However, the earliest versions of baklava as we know it today came around 500 years ago, during the Ottoman Empire.  “The earliest reference to baklava is in a poem by the mystic Kaygusuz Abdal, who lived in the first half of the 15th century,” writes Mary Isin, an Ottoman food historian, in her book, Sherbet and Spice: The Complete Story of Turkish Sweets and Desserts. Very few other dishes have crossed religions as much as baklava.  Perhaps the oldest example of this, Isin writes in an article titled “Adam and Eve’s Wheat Porridge,” is an ancient, boiled wheat dessert known as ashure, or “Noah’s pudding,” prepared slightly differently by each ethno-religious group.   “Dishes of boiled wheat sweetened variously with sugar, fruit molasses and dried fruits have for centuries been shared by people of different faiths in Turkey,” Isin says.  John Moretti  See pictures at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-sticky-history-of-baklava-180982771/  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2723  September 25, 2023 

 

“Very little has been published about Richard Potter for whom the village of Potter Place, N. H., was named”.  Ventriloquism and magic shows weren’t always the amusing distractions they are today.  As religion scholar Leigh Eric Schmidt explains, until the eighteenth century, they were “deeply embedded in Christian discourses about demon possession, necromancy, and pagan idolatry,” but much of this discussion was largely confined to America.  In Europe, and specifically in London where Richard Potter wandered alone, magic was a part of daily life for some.  The city was full of “displaced persons of many kinds,” historian Paul E. Johnson writes, some of whom turned to magic performances on the streets and fairs to earn money.  Others used those same techniques to pick pockets and cheat at cards.  Some of the more industrious performers did both and “performed in the streets by day and robbed travelers by night.”  Potter would have found a home with one of these groups, as he claims that he first learned magic while working at a circus.  Richard Potter was a performer—the first American-born ventriloquist and stage magician.  His act was thrilling.  He passed coins through glasses and plates, did card tricks, and “broke eggs into a gentleman’s hat and turned them into hot pancakes.”  His ventriloquism saw him throwing his voice so that it appeared that he was speaking from “trunks, a lady’s coin purse, and a gentleman’s pocket,” Johnson writes.  https://daily.jstor.org/americas-first-ventriloquist/   

First published in 1981, Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic was the first children’s book to reach the New York Times bestseller list, where it appeared a total of 182 weeks.   https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/8214-new-edition-and-content-for-light-in-the-attic.html   

The Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest (WikiCU) is The Philolexian Society of Columbia University’s  flagship annual event, drawing crowds in the hundreds.  At evening's end, attendees join in reciting Joyce Kilmer's famous poem "Trees."  http://www.columbia.edu/cu/philo/kilmer/    

American poet and painter who first attracted attention for his eccentric punctuation, but the commonly held belief that E.E. Cummings had his name legally changed to lowercase letters is erroneous–he preferred to capitalize the initials of his name on book covers and in other material.  Despite typographical eccentricity and devotion to the avant-garde, Cummings's themes are in many respects quite traditional.  He often dealt with the antagonism between an individual and the masses, but his style brought into his poems lightness and satirical tones.  As an artist Cummings painted still-life pictures and landscapes at a professional level.  Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  His father, Edward, was a Harvard teacher and later a Unitarian minister.  Rebecca Haswell Clarke, his mother, enjoyed reading poetry to her children, and encouraged him to write poetry every day.  Edward Cummings died in an 1926 accident, when his car was hit by a steam locomotive.  His first poem Cummings wrote when he was only three.  He was educated at Cambridge High and Latin School, and from 1911 to 1916 he attended Harvard, where he met John Dos Passos.  Cummings became an aesthete, he began dress unconventionally, and dedicated himself to painting and literature.  He graduated in 1915 with a major in classics.  http://authorscalendar.info/cummings.htm   

According to Grammarist, “face the music” could have been a phrase told to actors before they went onstage to face the orchestra pit, thus literally “facing the music” and overcoming any stage fright.  Alternately, it could also stem from soldiers marching into battle during the 19th century since many armies once had musicians going into battle with them—the soldiers would be literally facing their enemy’s music.  Today, the idiom has shifted from its literal meaning to a more figurative one, often used more in situations of consequence.  Still, even with its uncertain origins, the idiom has cemented its place in American pop culture.  The 1993 film “Face the Music,” starring Molly Ringwald and Patrick Dempsey, incorporated the phrase into its title.  The idiom is also part of the song “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” which was introduced by Fred Astaire and written by Irving Berlin for the classic 1936 film “Follow the Fleet.”   https://dailycal.org/2019/12/04/face-the-music-a-look-into-the-idiom   

TRIVIA  “He’s honest, he’s strong and he’s steady, a chip off the block that gave us Teddy …”  Row, Row, Row With Roosevelt (On the Good Ship U.S.A.), 1932 campaign song  *  Picasso’s 1937 Guernica painting was hung in New York’s City’s Museum of Modern Art, then moved to Spain in 1981. *  Released March 13, 1956, Elvis Presley’s first album, became the first album in history to sell one million copies.   The Century by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2722  September 22, 2023 

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms.  He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy".  Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as Carolus a Linné.  He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands.  He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala.  In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals.  In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, while publishing several volumes.  He was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe at the time of his death.  Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message:  "Tell him I know no greater man on Earth."  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote:  "With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly."  Swedish author August Strindberg wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist."  Linnaeus has been called Princeps botanicorum (Prince of Botanists) and "The Pliny of the North".  He is also considered one of the founders of modern ecology.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus   

October 7, 2021  Exclusive rights to the late Sue Grafton’s popular alphabet book series featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone—A is for Alibi and so on—have sold to A+E Studios.  Now, the studio can develop the entirety of the series for television.  Steve Humphrey, Grafton’s husband, will serve as executive producer.  Interestingly, when Grafton was alive, she was resolute that her alphabet book series never receive a screen adaptation; she had worked in Hollywood for a decade and a half adapting books into TV movies, and saw how an author’s original vision could be distorted.  Said Grafton in a 1997 interview in January Magazine:  “I will never sell [Kinsey] to Hollywood.  And, I have made my children promise not to sell her.  We’ve taken a blood oath, and if they do so I will come back from the grave:  which they know I can do.  They’re going to have to pass the word to my grandchildren:  we do not sell out our grandma.  I just will not let them touch [Kinsey].  I’ve trashed other writers, I’m not gonna let them have a crack at me.”  Walker Caplan   https://lithub.com/sue-graftons-alphabet-series-will-be-a-tv-show-despite-her-familys-blood-oath-not-to-adapt-it/ 

"Going to hell in a handbasket", "going to hell in a handcart", "going to hell in a handbag", "go to hell in a bucket", "sending something to hell in a handbasket" and "something being like hell in a handbasket" are variations on an allegorical locution of unclear origin, which describes a situation headed for disaster inescapably or precipitately.  Various versions of the phrase have appeared in the title of several published works and other media:

To Hell in a Handbag is the title of a 2016 comic play by Helen Norton and Jonathan White.  To Hell in a Handbasket is the name of humorist H. Allen Smith's 1962 autobiography.  Hell in a Handbasket was the title of a 1988 Star Trek comic book.  Hell in a Handbasket is the title of a 2006 book (ISBN 1585424587) by American cartoonist Tom Tomorrow, who authors the cartoon strip This Modern World.  "Hell in a Bucket" is a song off of the Grateful Dead's 1987 album In the Dark.  Hell in a Handbasket is a song from Voltaire's Ooky Spooky album.  Hell in a Handbasket is the title of a 2011 Meat Loaf album.  The phrase appears as part of the lyrics to country singer Doug Seegers' 2014 song Going Down to the River.  To Hell in a Handcart (2001) is a dystopian novel by English journalist Richard Littlejohn.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_hell_in_a_handbasket   

Ötzi the Iceman is a glacier mummy from the Copper Age, who, thanks to extraordinary circumstances, has been preserved down to the present day.  Little by little, he has imparted genuine stores of knowledge.  He was discovered accidentally by hikers in 1991, together with his clothing and equipment, on the Schnalstal/Val Senales Valley glacier and has been the subject of intensive research ever since.  Over 5300 years ago, Ötzi was crossing Tisenjoch/Giogo di Tisa in the Schnalstal/Val Senales Valley, South Tyrol, where he was murdered and preserved naturally in the ice.  He is therefore older than the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge and the result of a series of highly improbable coincidences.  Ötzi lived during the Copper Age, a period of the late Neolithic.  He was still using stone tools but owned an innovative and very valuable copper axe.  The skill of extracting and processing metal had recently arrived in Europe from Asia Minor. The advent of copper marked the beginning of the Bronze Age.  Ötzi and his artefacts have been exhibited at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy since 1998.  The mummy is stored in a specially devised cold cell and can be viewed through a small window. Ötzi’s numerous pieces of equipment and clothing have been painstakingly restored.  Visitors have been amazed by the skills of Stone Age people.  The mummy was dubbed Ötzi by the Austrian journalist Karl Wendl, who was looking for a catchy name.  The name refers to the discovery site in the Ötztal Valley Alps.  https://www.iceman.it/en/the-iceman/ 

September 19, 2023  A woman was strolling through the Savers store in Manchester, N.H., about six years ago.  A painting caught her eye:  two women, one a stern elder and the other a maiden.  She decided to buy it—either for $4 or $4.99, depending on the source.  Some things about the painting apparently raised her curiosity, and she posted it on Facebook.  Someone who knew a lot more about art than our bargain hunter saw the post.  And one thing led to another.  On September 19, 2023, that painting of the two women sold for $191,000 at auction by Bonhams Skinner.  It has been identified as Ramona, a long-lost frontispiece illustration that was part of a four-work set by N.C. Wyeth, a premier 20th-century illustrator and father of the artist Andrew Wyeth.  Rita Giordano  See graphic at https://www.inquirer.com/arts/nc-wyeth-artist-ramona-brandywine-thrift-store-20230919.html  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2721  September 20, 2023 

ruckus (n.)  "uproar, disturbance, commotion," 1890, American English, possibly a blend of ruction and rumpus.  "disturbance, disorderly dispute," 1825, a dialectal or colloquial word of unknown origin.  Perhaps from eruption or an altered shortening of insurrection.  rumpus (n.)  "uproar, disturbance, riot," 1764 (Foote), a word of unknown origin, "prob. a fanciful formation" [OED], possibly an alteration of robustious "boisterous, noisy" (1540s; see robust).  Rumpus room "play room for children in a family home" is from 1938.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/ruckus  See also https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ruckus and https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ruckus   

The galah (Eolophus roseicapilla), less commonly known as the pink and grey cockatoo or rose-breasted cockatoo, is an Australian species of cockatoo and the only member of the genus Eolophus.  The galah is adapted to a wide variety of modified and unmodified habitats and is one of Australia's most abundant and widespread bird species.  The species is endemic to mainland Australia.  It was introduced to Tasmania, where it is now widespread, in the mid-19th century and much more recently to New Zealand.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galah

From:  Andrew Pressburger  Subject:  diaeresis   The use of diacritical marks in Hungarian almost doubles the number of letters that comprise the English alphabet (44 as opposed to 26).  The umlaut characteristic of German orthography exists in Hungarian on top of o (ö) and u (ü).  In addition, Hungarian uses other devices that alter the meaning of a word.  For instance fül means ear, but fű (with the elongated diaeresis) means grass or lawn.  

From:  Robert Nisonger  Subject:  diaeresis
Here in Hawai‘i we use an okina to separate vowels.   

Renowned Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero, whose depictions of people and objects in plump, exaggerated forms became emblems of Colombian art around the world, died September 15, 2023 at the age of 91.  Botero donated 180 paintings to Colombia’s Central Bank which were used to create the Botero Museum in Bogota.  His sculpture of a white, chubby pigeon, standing proudly on a pedestal became an emblem of Colombia’s efforts to make peace with rebel groups and is currently placed in a prominent gallery inside the nation’s presidential palace.  Manuel Rueda  https://apnews.com/article/fernando-botero-colombia-dead-sculpture-701ff1a26225875fb86f25072a19e3eb    

September 12, 2023  The Pulitzer Prize Board has decided to expand eligibility for the Books, Drama and Music awards beyond the current U.S. citizenship requirement to include permanent residents of the United States and those who have made the United States their longtime primary home.  The amended criteria will go into effect beginning with the 2025 awards cycle, which opens in the spring of 2024.  When newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer established The Pulitzer Prizes in 1917, he endowed them with a distinctly American character.  In his will, the Hungarian immigrant outlined his plan for annual awards for an “American novel,” an “original American play,” “the best history of the United States,” and “the best American biography.”  Over the decades, the number of awards has grown to eight categories in Books, Drama and Music, and 15 categories in Journalism.  Until now, eligibility to enter the Books, Drama and Music categories was limited to U.S. citizens.  One exception to that requirement was in the History category, which has allowed books on United States history by authors of any nationality.  For the sake of consistency, however, History entries now also must conform to the new rules and must be written by U.S. authors.  https://www.pulitzer.org/news/pulitzer-prize-board-amending-citizenship-requirement-books-drama-and-music#:~:text=New%20York%2C%20NY%20(September%2012,States%20their%20longtime%20primary%20home.    

July 18–October 22, 2023  Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, Fragrance Garden, Lily Pool Terrace  French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel presents a new series of six large sculptures at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  His passion for gardens inspired him to create new works—in gold leaf and stainless steel—for three iconic outdoor spaces.  It is the artist’s largest show in the United States since his retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2012.  The artist selected the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden as the setting for the Gold Lotus series, works that link the spiritual to the sensory.  The lotus flower symbolizes spirituality, rebirth, enlightenment, and the sacred.  On Lily Pool Terrace, two gigantic mirror bead sculptures spring from the pools; the works respond to each other, enveloping the visitor in a play of multiple reflections.  In the intimate Fragrance Garden, designed to stimulate the sense of smell and touch, the artist pays homage to the rose, the queen of flowers. The perfect shape of this flower has been a recurrent motif in his work, including paintings he created for the Louvre in 2019.  https://www.bbg.org/visit/event/jean_michel_othoniel_the_flowers_of_hypnosis   Thank you, Muse reader!   

[Film and theater critic John] Simon has simply discovered the trick used with great effectiveness by certain comedians, talk show hosts and punk rock musicians:  people of modest talent can attract attention, at least for a while, by being unrelentingly offensive. - Steven Pinker, author and psychology professor (b. 18 Sep 1954)   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2720  September 18, 2023