The Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937 brought an end to the age of the rigid airship.  The disaster killed 35 persons on the airship, and one member of the ground crew, but miraculously 62 of the 97 passengers and crew survived.  After more than 30 years of passenger travel on commercial zeppelins—in which tens of thousands of passengers flew over a million miles, on more than 2,000 flights, without a single injury—the era of the passenger airship came to an end in a few fiery minutes.  Hindenburg was the last passenger aircraft of the world’s first airline—her chief steward was the first flight attendant in history—and she was the fastest way to cross the Atlantic in her day.  Hindenburg’s passengers could travel from Europe to North and South America in half the time of the fastest ocean liner, and they traveled in luxurious interiors that would never again be matched in the air; they enjoyed meals in an elegant dining room, listened to an aluminum piano in a modern lounge, slept in comfortable cabins, and could even have a cigarette or cigar in the ship’s smoking room.  All that came to an end in 32 seconds because above the elegant passenger quarters were 7 million cubic feet of hydrogen gas.  https://www.airships.net/hindenburg/disaster/    

Apple Island may refer to several places: 

Apple Island (Massachusetts), a former island now incorporated into Logan International Airport complex in Boston 

Apple Island (Michigan), a small island in Orchard Lake in Oakland County, Michigan 

Apple Island (Missouri), an island in the Mississippi River

Æbelø, a Danish island

Tasmania, a state of Australia that is often referred to as "Apple Island" or the "Apple Isle"

Hanikatsi laid, an islet in Estonia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Island  

For about 100 years, Tasmania heavily marketed itself to the world as the "Apple Isle"—an idyllic English farming Utopia—to grow its apple exports and attract new residents.  But the export industry collapsed almost overnight in the 1970s when Tasmania was squeezed out of the European market.  The Apple Isle title sticks 50 years on, despite the state exporting only 8 per cent of Australia's apples last season and making up only 16 per cent of the domestic market.  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-07/apple-isle-tasmania-food-trail-tour-cider-australian-exports/101030058   

According to the official opal apple webpage, the Opal Apples are a cross between Golden Delicious and Topaz.  They were discovered in 1999, tested in 63 orchards throughout Europe and the Mediterranean for 12 years, and introduced to the US market in 2010.  Today, Opal apples are grown exclusively at Broetje Orchards in Prescott, WA. Peak season is December to March for conventional Opals, and November to January for the organic variety.  https://www.seriouseats.com/opal-apple-trader-joes-fruit-hybrid    

John William Cheever (May 27, 1912–June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist.  He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs".   His fiction is mostly set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy, Massachusetts, where he was born; and Italy, especially Rome.  His short stories included "The Enormous Radio", "Goodbye, My Brother", "The Five-Forty-Eight", "The Country Husband", and "The Swimmer", and he also wrote five novels:  The Wapshot Chronicle (National Book Award, 1958), The Wapshot Scandal (William Dean Howells Medal, 1965), Bullet Park (1969), Falconer (1977) and a novella, Oh What a Paradise It Seems (1982).  His main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character's decorous social persona and inner corruption, and sometimes as a conflict between two characters (often brothers) who embody the salient aspects of both—light and dark, flesh and spirit.   Many of his works also express a nostalgia for a vanishing way of life (as evoked by the mythical St. Botolphs in the Wapshot novels), characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community, as opposed to the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia.  A compilation of his short stories, The Stories of John Cheever, won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a National Book Critics Circle Award, and its first paperback edition won a 1981 National Book Award.   On April 27, 1982, six weeks before his death, Cheever was awarded the National Medal for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  His work has been included in the Library of America.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cheever    

200^th anniversary  The opening of the Erie Canal had enormous impacts, felt almost immediately. The journey from Buffalo to New York City was cut from one month to one week, while shipping prices were slashed to one-tenth what they had previously been, leading to an explosion in trade between the Eastern seaboard and the Midwest.  New York City quickly established itself as America’s preeminent port.  New cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica arose on its banks as critical transportation and industrial centers.  The opening of the canal had enormous impacts, felt almost immediately.  The journey from Buffalo to New York City was cut from one month to one week, while shipping prices were slashed to one-tenth what they had previously been, leading to an explosion in trade between the Eastern seaboard and the Midwest.  New York City quickly established itself as America’s preeminent port.  New cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica arose on its banks as critical transportation and industrial centers.  The Erie Canal is scheduled to open for the 2025 navigation season on Friday, May 16, and in honor of the bicentennial, the season will run several weeks longer than usual, ending on Monday, November 3.  https://nystateparks.blog/2025/03/11/celebrating-200-years-along-the-erie-canal/    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2946  May 27, 2025