The moon-eyed people are a legendary group of short, bearded white-skinned people who are said to have lived in Appalachia until the Cherokee expelled them.  Stories about them, attributed to Cherokee tradition, are mentioned by early European settlers in America.  In a 1797 book, Benjamin Smith Barton explains they are called "moon-eyed" because they saw poorly during the day.  Some stories claim they created the area's pre-Columbian ruins, and they disappeared from the area.  Barton cited as his source a conversation with Colonel Leonard Marbury (c. 1749–1796), an early settler of Georgia.  Marbury, a Revolutionary War officer and a Congressman in the Second Provincial Congress of Georgia (1775), acted as intermediary between Native American Indians in the state of Georgia and the United States government.  Published accounts of an ancient moon-eyed people who lived in the southern Appalachian region of the United States before the Cherokee came into the area have appeared in America since the late 18th century.  Sources disagree as to the accuracy of the stories, whether or not the stories are an authentic part of Cherokee oral tradition; whether the people existed or were mythical; whether they were indigenous peoples or early European explorers; and whether or not they built certain prehistoric structures found in the region.  Different ideas about the people have appeared in letters, newspapers, and books for over two hundred years.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon-eyed_people   See also https://northcarolinaghosts.com/mountains/moon-eyed-people/  and https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/moon-eyed-people-appalachia 

Erik Larson (born January 3, 1954) is an American journalist and author of mostly historical nonfiction books.  His books include Isaac's Storm (1999), The Devil in the White City (2003), In the Garden of Beasts (2011), and Dead Wake (2015).  The Devil in the White City won the 2004 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category, among other awards.  Larson was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York.   He studied Russian history at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated summa cum laude in 1976.  After a year off, he attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, graduating in 1978. He was inspired to go into journalism after seeing the movie All the President's Men.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_Larson_(author)    

Life is the combination of magic and pasta, of fantasy and of reality,” noted the magic realist and pasta enthusiast Federico Fellini.  “Films are the magic,” he continued, “and pasta is the reality, or is it the other way around?”    SAVEUR:  The Pasta Issue, Oct/Nov. 2017    

Marcus Jackson was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio.  After earning his BA at the University of Toledo, he continued his poetry studies in NYU's graduate creative writing program and as a Cavem Canem fellow.  His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Harvard Review and The Cincinnati Review, among many other publications.  His chapbook, Rundown, was published by Aureole Press in 2009. His debut full-length collection of poems, entitled Neighborhood Register, was released in 2011.  https://english.osu.edu/people/jackson.2577#:~:text=Marcus%20Jackson%20was%20born%20and,as%20a%20Cavem%20Canem%20fellow.   

Portugal is a seafaring nation with a well-developed fishing industry and this is reflected in the amount of fish and seafood eaten.  The country has Europe's highest fish consumption per capita, and is among the top four in the world for this indicator.  Fish is served grilled, boiled (including poached and simmered), fried or deep-fried, stewed known as caldeirada (often in clay pot cooking), roasted, or even steamed.  Foremost amongst these is bacalhau (cod), which is the type of fish most consumed in Portugal.  It is said that there are more than 365 ways to cook cod, meaning at least one dish for each day of the year.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_cuisine  See also https://www.theintrepideater.com/portuguese-buns-papo-secos/    

Alice Brock, born Alice May Pelkey in New York City, whose Massachusetts-based eatery helped inspire Arlo Guthrie’s deadpan Thanksgiving standard, “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” has died at age 83.  Her death, just a week before Thanksgiving 2024, was announced by Guthrie on the Facebook page of his own Rising Son Records.  Guthrie wrote that she died in Provincetown, Massachusetts, her residence for some 40 years, and referred to her being in failing health.  https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/23/us/alice-brock-alices-restaurant-death/index.html    

Barbara Taylor Bradford OBE (1933–24 November 2024) was a British-American best-selling novelist.  Her debut novel, A Woman of Substance, was published in 1979 and sold over 30 million copies worldwide.  She wrote 40 novels, all bestsellers in England and the United States.  In her youth, Barbara Taylor read Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy, and Colette.  At the age of ten she decided to be a writer after sending a story to a magazine.  She was paid 7s 6d for the story, with which she bought handkerchiefs and a green vase for her parents.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Taylor_Bradford    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2879  November 25, 2024

The Fugates, commonly known as the "Blue Fugates" or the "Blue People of Kentucky", are an ancestral family living in the hills of Kentucky starting in the 19th century, where they are known for having a genetic trait that led to the blood disorder methemoglobinemia, causing the skin to appear blue.  Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith, who had married and settled near Hazard, Kentucky, in around 1820, were both carriers of the recessive methemoglobinemia (met-H) gene.  As a result, four of their nine children exhibited blue skin.  Their continued reproduction within the limited local gene pool along with a lack of transportation infrastructure ensured that many descendants of the Fugates were born with met-H. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates   

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a 2019 novel by Kim Michele Richardson.  The story is a fictionalized account of real subjects in the history of eastern Kentucky.  Cussy Mary is a "Book Woman"—one of the Packhorse Librarians who delivered books to remote areas of the Appalachian Mountains during the Great Depression, from 1935 to 1943, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) program.  Cussy Mary is also a "Blue"—the last of a line of blue-skinned people, whose skin appears the unusual shade due to a rare genetic disorder.  As a Book Woman, Cussy Mary is highly regarded, but as a Blue, she is feared and reviled, and experiences racism, discrimination and violence.  In 1936 eastern Kentucky, 19-year-old Cussy Mary Carter works for the New Deal–funded Pack Horse Library Project, delivering reading material to the remote hill people of the Appalachian Mountains.  Cussy Mary, sometimes known as Bluet, lives with her coal-miner and labor-organizing father, and feels her work as a librarian honors her long-dead mother, who loved books.  The Carters are the last of the Blue People of Kentucky, considered to be "colored" by the segregationist white community.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_Woman_of_Troublesome_Creek  Some people call Cussy Mary a ‘circus freak’  *  “food was the most valuable thing you could give someone—the most generous gift a Kaintulk folk could bestow on another.”  *  “Like all Blues I’d grown up to be ‘careful,’ learning when to bow down and when to cower.”    

The 2024 National Book Winners include Percival Everett, James (fiction).  See the list at 2024 National Book Awardsaward winnerswinners  https://lithub.com/here-are-the-winners-of-the-2024-national-book-awards/   

Thomas Eugene Kurtz (1928–November 12, 2024) was an American computer scientist and educator.  A Dartmouth professor of mathematics, he and colleague John G. Kemeny set in motion the then revolutionary concept of making computers as freely available to college students as library books were, by implementing the concept of time-sharing at Dartmouth College.  In his mission to allow non-expert users to interact with the computer, he co-developed the BASIC programming language and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System during 1963 to 1964.  For his role in creating BASIC, the IEEE honored Kurtz in 1991 with the Computer Pioneer Award, and in 1994, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Kurtz   

Noun  deontology (usually uncountable, plural deontologies) (ethics)  Synonym of ethics (“the study of principles relating to right and wrong conduct”) [from c. 1826] synonym ▲quotations ▼ Synonym:  moral philosophy  (specifically) The normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether the action follows certain obligations or rules, rather than on either its inherent goodness or its consequences. [from 1930] quotations ▼   November 21, the third Thursday of November in 2024, was World Philosophy Day, which was first recognized by the United Nations in 2002 to emphasize the enduring value of philosophy for the development  of human thought.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deontology#English    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2878  November 22, 2024

A Face in the Crowd is a 1957 American satirical drama film directed by Elia Kazan and starring Andy Griffith (in his film debut), Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau.  The screenplay by Budd Schulberg is based on his short story "Your Arkansas Traveler" from the 1953 collection Some Faces in the Crowd.  The story centers on Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, a drifter who is discovered by the producer (Neal) of a small-market radio program in rural northeast Arkansas, and who rises to great fame and influence on national television.  The character was inspired by Schulberg's acquaintance with Will Rogers Jr.  The successes of Arthur Godfrey and Tennessee Ernie Ford were also acknowledged in the screenplay.  The film launched Griffith into stardom, but it received mixed reviews on its release.  Subsequent reappraisals have been kinder to the film.  In 2008, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Face_in_the_Crowd_(film)   

Graham flour is a type of coarse-ground flour of whole wheat named after Sylvester Graham.  It is similar to conventional whole-wheat flour in that both are made from the whole grain, but graham flour is ground more coarsely.  It is not sifted ("bolted") with a flour dresser after milling.  A report from 1913 claimed that bread made from graham flour had a protein content of 12.1%--only slightly less than white wheat flour and essentially the same as whole wheat flour.  Graham flour is named after Sylvester Graham (1794–1851), an early advocate for dietary reform.  Graham despised the discarding of nutrients such as germ and bran when making flour for white bread.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_flour    

A painting by Rene Magritte shattered an auction record for the surrealist artist, selling for more than $121 million at Christie's in New York.  The seminal 1954 painting had been valued at $95 million, and the previous record for a work by Magritte (1898-1967) was $79 million, set in 2022. 

After a nearly 10-minute bidding war on November 19, 2024.  "Empire of Light" ("L'Empire des lumieres") was sold for $121,160,000, "achieving a world-record price for the artist and for a surrealist work of art at auction", according to auction house Christie's.  The painting--depicting a house at night, illuminated by a lamp post, while under a bright, blue sky--is one of a series by the Belgian artist showing the interplay of shadow and light.  https://www.barrons.com/news/magritte-painting-nets-auction-record-of-121-million-33dc3787    

Jersey Mike’s, the quickly expanding sandwich chain, is being acquired by asset management giant Blackstone.  Blackstone and Jersey Mike’s did not immediately disclose financial terms in their November 19, 2024 announcement.  But a source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Associated Press that the transaction would value Jersey Mike’s at around $8 billion, a figure previously reported by The Wall Street Journal.  https://apnews.com/article/jersey-mikes-acquired-blackstone-transaction-d45eb865f912eb39bbd7ac8ad8a86fcd   

Delta is teaming up with Shake Shack to serve burgers at 30,000 feet.  Delta’s first-of-its-kind partnership with Shake Shack will begin on flights out of Boston on Dec. 1, 2024 with plans for expansion to other U.S. markets throughout 2025.  Customers sitting in First Class on routes over 900 miles will be able to pre-select a Shake Shack Cheeseburger as their meal option.  https://news.delta.com/now-boarding-delta-serve-shake-shack-burgers-flights    

arctophile (plural arctophiles)  noun   Someone who has a fondness for teddy bears, usually a collector of them. [from 1960s]   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arctophile#English   

November 20 is World Children’s Day, which is recognized by the United Nations to promote international togetherness and the importance of improving children’s welfare.  It commemorates the Declaration of the Rights of the Child which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 20, 1959.   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2877  November 20, 2024

If we can "overact" or "overreact", why can't we "underact" or "underreact"?  Well, we can.  The latter two aren't that common, but the words are bona fide members of the English language.  Similarly, if one can "oversee", why not "undersee"?  Both have been in the dictionary for hundreds of years, but since we rarely "underdo" these things, they’re not as familiar.  Understand?   

earwitness (EER-wit-nis) noun   One who testifies or can testify to something heard.  [From ear, from Old English eara + witness, from Old English witness.  Earliest documented use:  1539.]  https://wordsmith.org/words/earwitness.html    

diachronic (dy-uh-KRON-ik) adjective  Relating to changes occurring over time.  [From Greek dia- (across) + khronos (time).  Earliest documented use: 1857.]  https://wordsmith.org/words/diachronic.html   

consanguinity (kon-sang-GWIN-i-tee) noun  1. A relationship by blood or by a common ancestor.  2. A close connection or kinship.  [From Latin consanguineus, from con- (with) + sanguis (blood).  Earliest documented use:  1380.]  See usage examples in Vocabulary.com's dictionary: https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/consanguinity 

NOTES:  The counterpart of consanguinity is affinity, which refers to a relationship formed through marriage rather than by blood.  https://wordsmith.org/words/consanguinity.html    

The Volstead Act  By the turn of the 20th century, temperance societies were prevalent in the United States.  Concerned citizens had begun warning others about the effects of alcohol nearly 100 years earlier.  In 1826 the American Temperance Society was founded to convince people to abstain from drinking.  Not long after, the Women's Christian Temperance Union pledged not only to ban alcohol and drugs, but to improve public morals.  The anti-Saloon League was formed in 1893 and eventually became a powerful political force in passing a national ban on alcoholic beverages.  Women were strongly behind the temperance movement, for alcohol was seen as the destroyer of families and marriages.  Men would often spend their money on alcohol, leaving women with no money to provide for their children.  Factory owners also supported temperance as well because of the new work habits that were required of industrial workers--early mornings and long nights.  The amendment worked at first:  liquor consumption dropped, arrests for drunkenness fell, and the price for illegal alcohol rose higher than the average worker could afford.  Alcohol consumption dropped by 30 percent and the United States Brewers' Association admitted that the consumption of hard liquor was off 50 percent during Prohibition.  These statistics however, do not reflect the growing disobedience toward the law and law enforcement.  The intensity of the temperance advocates was matched only by the inventiveness of those who wanted to keep drinking.  Enforcing Prohibition proved to be extremely difficult.  The illegal production and distribution of liquor, or bootlegging, became rampant, and the national government did not have the means or desire to try to enforce every border, lake, river, and speakeasy in America.  In fact, by 1925 in New York City alone there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs.  The demand for alcohol was outweighing (and out-winning) the demand for sobriety.  People found clever ways to evade Prohibition agents.  They carried hip flasks, hollowed canes, false books, and the like.  Neither federal nor local authorities would commit the resources necessary to enforce the Volstead Act.  For example, the state of Maryland refused to pass any enforcement issue.  Prohibition made life in America more violent, with open rebellion against the law and organized crime.  https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/volstead-act 

November 12, 2024  Samantha Harvey has won the 2024 Booker Prize for her science fiction novel Orbital.  The novel follows six astronauts as they orbit the Earth for one day of their nine-month space mission.  Harvey's astronauts–who hail from the U.S., Russia, Italy, Britain and Japan–see 16 sunrises and sunsets in the 24-hour time span of the novel.  Orbital also won the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction.  https://www.npr.org/2024/11/12/nx-s1-5184530/orbital-by-samantha-harvey-wins-2024-booker-prize   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue  2876  November 18, 2024

sycophantic (sik/sy-uh-FAN-tik) adjective  Excessively flattering or fawning, especially in an attempt to win favor or gain advantage.  

[From Latin sycophanta (informer, slanderer), from Greek sykophantes (informer, slanderer), from sykon (fig) + phainein (to show).   Earliest documented use: 1698.]  

NOTES:  How did the meaning of sycophant shift from "fig-shower" to "informer" and then to "flatterer"?  There are two main theories, though neither is confirmed.  One theory suggests that the word originally referred to someone who informed against the theft or illegal export of figs in ancient Athens.  The other theory suggests it referred to someone who made the fig sign, an ancient hand gesture considered rude or accusatory in some cultures, but a good luck or fertility symbol in others.  If the former is correct, when the word entered the English language its meaning shifted from "informer" to "flatterer".  Both denote insincerity, as an informer curries favor with someone while secretly betraying them.  A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  October 24, 2024  

diachronic (dy-uh-KRON-ik) adjective  Relating to changes occurring over time.  [From Greek dia- (across) + khronos (time).  Earliest documented use:  1857.]  https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/diachronic 

NOTES:  Diachronic analysis considers how something, such as a language or culture, evolves over time.  This contrasts with a synchronic approach, which examines a phenomenon at a specific point in time. https://wordsmith.org/words/diachronic.html  

dictionary attack (plural dictionary attacks)  noun  (computing, cryptography)  An attempt to illegally access a computer network, website, etc., that uses a list of words (from a dictionary) to try to guess decryption keys or passwords. [from 1980s]   https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dictionary_attack#English  

Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau published their formal proposal for the World Wide Web on November 12, 1990.  

November 8, 2024  An AI robot’s painting of British computer scientist and codebreaker Alan Turing has sold for $1.08 million, becoming the most valuable artwork by a humanoid robot ever to change hands at auction and raising new questions about the role of artificial intelligence in art.  The sale price far exceeded the pre-auction estimate of $120,000-$180,000, with the work attracting 27 bids before going to an undisclosed buyer, according to Sotheby’s, which handled the sale in New York.  The painting, titled “AI God:  Portrait of Alan Turing,” was created by Ai-Da, a humanoid robot artist with a black bob and robotic arms, which communicates using large language models and was invented by British gallerist Aidan Meller.  https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/08/style/ai-da-portrait-alan-turing-record-sale-intl-scli/index.html 

Frank Auerbach, a towering figure of British art history who plotted new paths for painting with his thick, smeary portraits, died on November 11, 2024 in London at 93.  Auerbach’s paintings of a select group of models redefined portraiture, a genre that has traditionally lent itself to psychological clarity and close attention to detail.  But starting in the 1950s, Auerbach began making portraits of people close to him that were so dense with paint that they bordered on abstraction.  Facial features faded into way into swirls of grey, and roiled backgrounds threatened to consume the sitters posed before them.  https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/frank-auerbach-british-painter-dead-1234723626/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2875  November 13, 2024

According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, there are 35,000 small museums in the U.S.  In perspective, that’s 10,000 more than all Starbucks and McDonald’s in the USA combined.  Look at the list and you’ll only see 28 because three museums are grouped together since they relate to the same subject.  https://www.neverstoptraveling.com/small-museums    

Fluffernutters—two slices of white bread slathered with peanut-butter and marshmallow goop—were a lunchbox staple for some.  For the elementary school set, it’s a pretty optimal snack, one that fully dispenses with the vague pretense of fruit in a PB&J in favor of a maximum sugar rush.  We know it’s not good per se, but it holds a place of perverse regional pride that only comes from nostalgia.  In 2006, when Massachusetts Senator Jarret Barrios proposed legislation that would forbid schools from serving fluffernutters more than once a week, it caused such a public uproar that Democratic Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein declared, “I’m going to fight to the death for Fluff.”  It’s not a coincidence that Campbell’s condensed soups started cropping up in recipes for everything from cakes to casseroles in the mid-20th century.  The company distributed recipes claiming that harried housewives could make their lives easier by swapping a canned product for a homemade béchamel sauce.  Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup debuted in 1934 and quickly became the default base for tuna noodle casserole, turkey tetrazzini, and even Mormon-style funeral potatoes.  Minnesota’s tater tot-loaded hot dish also incorporated cream of mushroom base, which earned the soup a nickname:  “the Lutheran binder.”  But the one that really takes the cake is green bean casserole, composed of only six ingredients, three of which are canned Campbell’s products.  In 1955, Dorcas Reilly invented the recipe for a “Green Bean Bake” in the company’s test kitchen and the rest is history.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/american-food-traditions-that-started-as-marketing-ploys.  Thank you, reader.             

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed are two terms that developed independently of each other.  Bright-eyed supposedly comes from the late 1500s, while bushy-tailed is said to have hailed from 1865-1870, though no direct source is clear for either of them.  They were seen together for the first time in talking about a squirrel, which did, in fact, have bright eyes and bushy tail.  In St. Clair County, Michigan, Its History and Its People, published in 1912 by William Lee Jenks, we can read about the impossible attempt to capture the following in a painting, . . . o see the wild pigeon, chewink, fox sparrow, bobolink, scarlet tanager, the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed squirrel, the graceful motions of water birds . . .  https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed    

Quincy Jones–who, according to his publicist, “passed away peacefully” November 3, 2024 at age 91–was practically everything, everywhere, all at once, and therefore nearly impossible to pin down.  He was a producer, composer, arranger, instrumentalist, impresario, author, mentor, magazine founder, the celebrity father of celebrity children.  Jones released 16 albums under his own name, 10 of which topped the Billboard jazz charts.  As performer/composer/producer, his “Soul Bossa Nova,” from 1962, with its perky flutes and farting brass, was his best-known song:  Jet Age insouciance distilled.  It would go on to become a key track in the lounge-music revival of the 1990s, inextricably associated with the Austin Powers film franchise, which adopted it as a theme song.  Jones was the arranger on the 1964 recording of Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” which, five years later, the Apollo 10 astronaut Eugene Cernan played on a cassette while orbiting the Moon.  https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/music-impresario-quincy-jones-91-is-dead  

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more . . .    

See the rest of the poem at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44484/to-autumn

http//librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2873  November 4, 2024