Orion is a prominent set of stars visible during winter in the northern celestial hemisphere.  It is one of the 88 modern constellations; it was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy.  It is named after a hunter in Greek mythology.  Orion is most prominent during winter evenings in the Northern Hemisphere.  Orion's two brightest stars, Rigel and Betelgeuse, are both among the brightest stars in the night sky; both are supergiants and slightly variable.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)  

From New York reader:  Realtors discovered that trendy acronyms like TriBeCa, SoHo and DUMBO helped raise prices, so they invented a slew of new acronym neighborhoods--I was sandwiched between NoFlaWeMu (North of Flatiron, West of Murray Hill) and GraPUS (Gramercy Park/Union Square.)  It was very funny as some of the names were pretty absurd--and most did not stand the test of time.   I am reminded of Joe Salvo's trauma from being put in charge of officially naming NYC neighborhoods by the Dept of City Planning.  Neighborhood definitions tend to be VERY squishy!  (Raffetto's is my FAVORITE pasta shop in NY.  Just remember to bring cash as they don't take credit cards!)  https://nypost.com/2010/08/08/new-york-neighborhood-border-wars/  Thank you, Muse reader!   

“Think before you speak.  Read before you think.  This will give you something to think about that you didn’t make up yourself–a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.”  Fran Lebowitz   https://quotefancy.com/quote/1290175/Fran-Lebowitz   

Richard Bernard Skelton (1913–1997) was an American entertainer best known for his national radio and television shows between 1937 and 1971, especially as host of the television program The Red Skelton Show.  He has stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in radio and television, and also appeared in burlesque, vaudeville, films, nightclubs, and casinos, all while he pursued an entirely separate career as an artist.  Skelton began developing his comedic and pantomime skills from the age of 10, when he became part of a traveling medicine show.  He then spent time on a showboat, worked the burlesque circuit, and then entered into vaudeville in 1934.  Skelton was a prolific writer of both short stories and music.  After sleeping only four or five hours a night, he would wake up at 5 am and begin writing stories, composing music, and painting pictures.  He wrote at least one short story a week and had composed over 8,000 songs and symphonies by the time of his death.  Skelton received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 1987, and in 1988, he was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Television Hall of Fame. He was one of the International Clown Hall of Fame's first inductees in 1989. Skelton and Katharine Hepburn were honored with lifetime achievement awards by the American Comedy Awards in the same year.  He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1994.  Skelton also has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his radio and television work.  The Red Skelton Performing Arts Center was dedicated in February 2006 on the campus of Vincennes University, one block from the home in Vincennes where Skelton was born.  The building includes an 850-seat theater, classrooms, rehearsal rooms, and dressing rooms.  Its grand foyer is a gallery for Skelton's paintings, statues, and film posters.  The theater hosts theatrical and musical productions by Vincennes University, as well as special events, convocations, and conventions.  The adjacent Red Skelton Museum of American Comedy opened on July 18, 2013, on what would have been Skelton's 100th birthday.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Skelton   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2936  April 30, 2025   

“Cousins, friends, books, songs, poems, trees . . . anything that brings meaning into our lives counts.”  “A poem is a swallow in flight.  You can watch it soar through the infinite sky, you can even feel the wind passing over its wings, but you can never catch it, let alone keep it in a cage.  Poems belong to no one.” There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

 

Elif Shafak (née Bilgin; born 25 October 1971) is a Turkish-British novelist, essayist, public speaker, political scientist and activist.  Shafak writes in Turkish and English, and has published 21 books.  She is best known for her novels, which include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, Three Daughters of Eve and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.  Her works have been translated into 57 languages and have been nominated for several literary awards.  She has been described by the Financial Times as "Turkey's leading female novelist", with several of her works having been bestsellers in Turkey and internationally.  Her works have prominently featured the city of Istanbul, and dealt with themes of Eastern and Western culture, roles of women in society, and human rights issues.  Certain politically challenging topics addressed in her novels, such as child abuse and the Armenian genocide, have led to legal action from authorities in Turkey that prompted her to emigrate to the United Kingdom.  Shafak has a PhD in political science.  An essayist and contributor to several media outlets, Shafak has advocated for women's rights, minority rights, and freedom of speech.   Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France, to Nuri Bilgin, a philosopher, and Şafak Atayman, who later became a diplomat.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elif_Shafak 

 

John Harvard is an 1884 sculpture in bronze by Daniel Chester French at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It honors clergyman John Harvard (1607–1638), whose substantial deathbed bequest to the "schoale or Colledge" recently undertaken by the Massachu­setts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that the Colony resolved "that the Colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shalbee called Harvard Colledge."  There being nothing to indicate what John Harvard had looked like, French took inspiration from a Harvard student collaterally descended from an early Harvard president.  The statue's inscription‍—‌JOHN HARVARD  •   FOUNDER  • 1638‍—‌is the subject of an arch polemic traditionally recited for visitors, questioning whether John Harvard justly merits the honorific founder.  According to a Harvard official, the founding of the college was not the act of one but the work of many, and John Harvard is therefore considered not the founder, but rather a founder, of the school, though the timeliness and generosity of his contribution have made him the most honored of these.  Tourists often rub the toe of John Harvard's left shoe for luck in the mistaken belief that doing so is a Harvard student tradition.  John Harvard's gift to the school was £780 and‍—‌perhaps more importantly—‌his 400-volume scholar's library.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_John_Harvard  

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.  Saint Francis de Sales  https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/saint_francis_de_sales_193305   

Charles Dickens:  “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”  https://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-health/a-loving-heart-is-the-truest-wisdom/   

If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.  Charlotte Bronte  https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/charlotte_bronte_121434   

Old English literature refers to poetry (alliterative verse) and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England.  The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.  Poetry written in the mid 12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English.  Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_literature#:~:text=The%207th%2Dcentury%20work%20C%C3%A6dmon's,History%20of%20the%20English%20People.  

bumper sticker category:  Bark less and Wag more  Thank you, Muse reader!    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2935 

Gilgamesh was a hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late 2nd millennium BC.  He was possibly a historical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, who was posthumously deified.  His rule probably would have taken place sometime in the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period, c. 2900–2350 BC, though he became a major figure in Sumerian legend during the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c. 2004 BC).  Tales of Gilgamesh's legendary exploits are narrated in five surviving Sumerian poems.  The earliest of these is likely "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld", in which Gilgamesh comes to the aid of the goddess Inanna and drives away the creatures infesting her huluppu tree.  She gives him two unknown objects, a mikku and a pikku, which he loses.  After Enkidu's death, his shade tells Gilgamesh about the bleak conditions in the Underworld.  The poem Gilgamesh and Aga describes Gilgamesh's revolt against his overlord Aga of Kish.  Other Sumerian poems relate Gilgamesh's defeat of the giant Huwawa and the Bull of Heaven, while a fifth, poorly preserved poem relates the account of his death and funeral.  In later Babylonian times, these stories were woven into a connected narrative.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh   

Nearly every major city was built near the convergence of many rivers.  As cities grew with the Industrial Revolution, these rivers became conduits for disease and pollution.  The 19th-century solution was to bury them underground and merge them with the sewer systems.  These rivers still run through today's metropolises, but they do so out of sight.  https://icarusfilms.com/if-lr    

Keep believing in yourself; your life will be remarkable.  Found in fortune cookie.  

“In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can.”  Linda Ellerbee, journalist   https://www.passiton.com/inspirational-quotes/8051-in-this-world-a-good-time-to-laugh-is-any-time    

We can't take any credit for our talents.  It's how we use them that counts.  Madeleine L'Engle, author  https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/madeleine_lengle_392392   

Pistacia terebinthus also called the terebinth and the turpentine tree, is a deciduous shrub species of the genus Pistacia, native to the Mediterranean region from the western regions of Morocco and Portugal to Greece and western and southeastern Turkey.  At one time terebinths growing on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea (in Syria, Lebanon and Israel) were regarded as a separate species, Pistacia palaestina, but these are now considered to be a synonym of P. terebinthus.  The terebinth is a deciduous flowering plant belonging to the cashew family, Anacardiaceae; a small tree or large shrub, it grows to 10 m (33 ft) tall.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistacia_terebinthus#

A deciduous, dioecious tree with unisexual flowers, the terebinth, which is a type of pistacia, has compound feathery leaves composed of four or five pairs of leaflets, usually ending with a single leaf.  Its pods are small and spherical, flattened, weakly kidney-shaped (smaller than al-sarris); the red ones are sterile, while the purple ones have a fully formed seed inside.  In spring, terebinth trees blanket the hills in red, for most of the tree’s parts are red in colour. Even in autumn, its leaves have a reddish hue.  Terebinth is widespread in the mountains of Upper and Lower Galilee, Carmel, Jerusalem, Nablus, Hebron, and the coastal Galilee areas.  Alongside oaks, terebinths form a forest cluster.  Further, this type of terebinth is one of five wild varieties that grow in Palestine.  Al-sarris and the Atlantic terebinth are two others.  Some botanists consider terebinth a subspecies classified as P. terebinthus.  Terebinths live for hundreds of years.  They are usually found as small shrubs due to grazing, but they can reach a great height when protected, as can be seen near some Muslim shrines in Palestine.  Terebinth has many uses. Palestinians use it to make their famous doqqa (a Palestinian thyme mixture).  Palestinian farmers used its wood to make farming tools.  The wood was also used to produce incense and make implements for grinding coffee.  The resinous sap is extracted by tapping the bark.  The resin contains turpentine (a name derived from terebinth) which has many uses, including as a paint thinner.  

The berries were used to treat stomach-ache and toothache.  They can also be eaten raw, roasted, or even be used to make a specific type of thin crackers called dakadik or garagish al-butm.  https://palmuseum.org/en/support/tree-sponsorship/terebinth   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2934  April 25, 2025 

 

All peoples throughout all of human history have faced the uncertainties brought on by unemployment, illness, disability, death and old age.  In the realm of economics, these inevitable facets of life are said to be threats to one's economic security.  For the ancient Greeks economic security took the form of amphorae of olive oil.  Olive oil was very nutritious and could be stored for relatively long periods.  To provide for themselves in times of need the Greeks stockpiled olive oil and this was their form of economic security.  In medieval Europe, the feudal system was the basis of economic security, with the feudal lord responsible for the economic survival of the serfs working on the estate.  The feudal lord had economic security as long as there was a steady supply of serfs to work the estate, and the serfs had economic security only so long as they were fit enough to provide their labor.  During the Middle Ages the idea of charity as a formal economic arrangement also appeared for the first time.  As societies grew in economic and social complexity, and as isolated farms gave way to cities and villages, Europe witnessed the development of formal organizations of various types that sought to protect the economic security of their members.  Probably the earliest of these organizations were guilds formed during the Middle Ages by merchants or craftsmen.  Individuals who had a common trade or business banded together into mutual aid societies, or guilds.  These guilds regulated production and employment and they also provided a range of benefits to their members including financial help in times of poverty or illness and contributions to help defray the expenses when a member died.  Out of the tradition of the guilds emerged the friendly societies.  These organizations began appearing in England in the 16th century.  Again organized around a common trade or business, the friendly societies would evolve into what we now call fraternal organizations and were the forerunners of modern trade unions.  When the English-speaking colonists arrived in the New World they brought with them the ideas and customs they knew in England, including the "Poor Laws."  The first colonial poor laws were fashioned after those of the Poor Law of 1601.  They featured local taxation to support the destitute; they discriminated between the "worthy" and the "unworthy" poor; and all relief was a local responsibility.  No public institutions for the poor or standardized eligibility criteria would exist for nearly a century.  It was up to local town elders to decide who was worthy of support and how that support would be provided.  As colonial America grew more complex, diverse and mobile, the localized systems of poor relief were strained.  The result was some limited movement to state financing and the creation of almshouses and poorhouses to "contain" the problem.  For much of the 18th and 19th centuries most poverty relief was provided in the almshouses and poorhouses.  Relief was made as unpleasant as possible in order to "discourage" dependency. T ose receiving relief could lose their personal property, the right to vote, the right to move, and in some cases were required to wear a large "P" on their clothing to announce their status.  Although Social Security did not really arrive in America until 1935, there was one important precursor, that offered something we could recognize as a social security program, to one special segment of the American population.  Following the Civil War, there were hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans, and hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans.  In fact, immediately following the Civil War a much higher proportion of the population was disabled or survivors of deceased breadwinners than at any time in America's history.  This led to the development of a generous pension program, with interesting similarities to later developments in Social Security.  (The first national pension program for soldiers was actually passed in early 1776, prior even to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Throughout America's ante-bellum period pensions of limited types were paid to veterans of America's various wars.  But it was with the creation of Civil War pensions that a full-fledged pension system developed in America for the first time.)  The Civil War Pension program began shortly after the start of the War, with the first legislation in 1862 providing for benefits linked to disabilities "incurred as a direct consequence of . . . military duty."  Widows and orphans could receive pensions equal in amount to that which would have been payable to their deceased solider if he had been disabled.  In 1890 the link with service-connected disability was broken, and any disabled Civil War veteran qualified for benefits.  The Great Depression of the 1930s was not the only one in America's history.  In fact, it was the third depression of the modern era, following previous economic collapses in the 1840s and again in the 1890s. During the depression of the 1890s unemployment was widespread and many Americans came to the realization that in an industrialized society the threat to economic security represented by unemployment could strike anyone--even those able and willing to work.  Protest movements arose--the most quixotic and notable being that of "Coxey's Army."  Jacob Coxey was an unsuccessful Ohio politician and industrialist who, in 1894, called on the unemployed from all over the country to join him in an "army" marching on Washington.  Ten of thousands of unemployed workers started marches, but by the time Coxey and his group finally made it to Washington only about 500 hard-core believers remained.  Coxey himself was promptly arrested for walking on the grass of the Capitol Building and the protest fizzled out.  https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html

The history of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) dates back to the Civil War era.  The SCRA is a federal law protecting active-duty personnel from the distraction and inconvenience of collections actions back home.  After the Civil War, a moratorium was passed to suspend certain actions against Union soldiers and sailors.  This included contract enforcement, bankruptcy, foreclosure and divorce proceedings.  These prohibitions were formally codified in the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act of 1918.  That act expired after World War I, but it came back as the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act of 1940.  In this version of the act, which had no expiration date, Congress again maintained its strong support for protections to personnel on active military duty.  Congress revisited the act repeatedly to enact 11 amendments to keep up with the changing dynamics of American life and the lives and financial affairs of military personnel.   https://www.servicememberscivilreliefact.com/blog/what-is-history-of-servicemembers-civil-relief-act/    

“Friendship with oneself is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”   Eleanor Roosevelt  https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21421-friendship-with-oneself-is-all-important-because-without-it-one   

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.  Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.   Carl Jung   https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/carl_jung_146686    

Adsorption and absorption mean quite different things.  Absorption is where a liquid is soaked up into something like a sponge, cloth or filter paper.  The liquid is completely absorbed into the absorbent material.  Adsorption refers to individual molecules, atoms or ions gathering on surfaces.  https://chembam.com/definitions/adsorption-vs-absorption/#:~:text=Adsorption%20and%20absorption%20mean%20quite,or%20ions%20gathering%20on%20surfaces.    

The suffix -ment changes a verb into a noun.  For example, enjoyment is the result of enjoying something, placement is the result of placing something in a specific position, and development is the result of developing.  

Adjectives ending in -ant   Nouns ending in -ant   Adjectives ending in -ent  Nouns ending in -ent   https://www.spellzone.com/word_lists/list-395.htm    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  April 24, 2025

Nolita, sometimes written as NoLIta and deriving from "Northern Little Italy",  is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.  Nolita is situated in Lower Manhattan, bounded on the north by Houston Street, on the east by the Bowery, on the south roughly by Broome Street, and on the west by Lafayette Street.  It lies east of SoHo, south of NoHo, west of the Lower East Side, and north of Little Italy and Chinatown.  The neighborhood was long regarded as part of Little Italy, but has lost its recognizable Italian character in recent decades because of rapidly rising rents.  The Feast of San Gennaro, dedicated to Saint Januarius ("Pope of Naples"), is held in the neighborhood every year following Labor Day, on Mulberry Street between Houston and Grand Streets.  The feast, as recreated on Elizabeth Street between Prince and Houston Streets, was featured in the film The Godfather Part II.  In the second half of the 1990s, the neighborhood saw an influx of yuppies and an explosion of expensive retail boutiques and restaurants and bars.  After unsuccessful tries to pitch it as part of SoHo, real estate promoters and others came up with several different names for consideration for this newly upscale neighborhood.  The name that stuck, as documented in an article on May 5, 1996, in the New York Times city section debating various monikers for the newly trendy area, was Nolita, an abbreviation for North of Little Italy.  This name follows the pattern started by SoHo (South of Houston Street) and TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal Street).   The neighborhood includes St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, at the intersection of Mulberry, Mott, and Prince Streets, which opened in 1815 and was rebuilt in 1868 after a fire.  The cornerstone was laid on June 8, 1809.  This building served as New York City's Roman Catholic cathedral until the new St. Patrick's Cathedral was opened on Fifth Avenue in Midtown in 1879.  St. Patrick's Old Cathedral is now a parish church.  In 2010, St. Patrick's Old Cathedral was honored and became The Basilica at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral.  The Puck Building, a nine-story-high ornate structure built in 1885 on the corner of Houston and Lafayette Streets, originally housed the headquarters of the now-defunct Puck Magazine.  Since 2010, a Little Australia has emerged in Nolita on Mulberry Street and Mott Street.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolita 

Mum's the word is a popular English idiom.  It is related to an expression used by William Shakespeare, in Henry VI, Part 2.  The word "mum" is an alteration of momme, which was used between 1350 and 1400 in Middle English with very close to the same meaning, "be silent; do not reveal".  "Mum's the word" means to keep silent or quiet.  Mum is a Middle English word meaning 'silent', and may be derived from the mummer who acts without speaking.  Note the similar English word "mime" (Old English "mīma", Latin "mimus") meaning silent actor or imitator.  The origins of the phrase can be traced back to the fourteenth century and William Langland's narrative poem, Piers Plowman.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mum%27s_the_word#:~:text=%22Mum's%20the%20word%22%20means%20to,meaning%20silent%20actor%20or%20imitator.   

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC–AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus.  He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature.  The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus exiled him to Tomis, the capital of the newly-organised province of Moesia, on the Black Sea, where he remained for the last nine or ten years of his life.  Ovid himself attributed his banishment to a "poem and a mistake", but his reluctance to disclose specifics has resulted in much speculation among scholars.  Ovid is most famous for the Metamorphoses, a continuous mythological narrative in fifteen books written in dactylic hexameters.  He is also known for works in elegiac couplets such as Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") and Fasti.  His poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature.   The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology today.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid  

“If you would be loved, be lovable”  ― Ovid    “Nothing is stronger than habit.”  ― Ovid

“In our play we reveal what kind of people we are”  ― Ovid   “A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.”  ― Ovid

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/28100-dripping-water-hollows-out-stone-not-through-force-but-through    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2932  April 23, 2025