The Gambia, officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa.  Geographically, The Gambia is the smallest country in continental Africa; it is surrounded by Senegal on all sides except for the western part, which is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean.   Its territory is on both sides of the lower reaches of the Gambia River, which flows through the centre of the country and empties into the Atlantic.  The national namesake river demarcates the elongated shape of the country, which has an area of 11,300 square kilometres (4,400 sq mi) and a population of 2,769,075 people in 2024 which is a 47% population increase from 2013.  The capital city is Banjul, which has the most extensive metropolitan area in the country.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gambia    

Sonora Louise Smart Dodd (1882–1978) was the daughter of American Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, and was responsible for the founding of Father's Day.  Sonora Louise Smart was born in Jenny Lind, Sebastian County, Arkansas to William Jackson Smart (1842–1919) and his wife Ellen Victoria Cheek Smart (1851–1898) on February 18, 1882.  In 1889, when Sonora was seven years old, the Smart family moved from Marion, Arkansas, to a farm west of Spokane, Washington between Creston and Wilbur.  When Sonora was 16, her mother died in childbirth with her sixth child.  Sonora was the only daughter and shared with her father William in the raising of her younger brothers, including her new infant brother Marshall.  Sonora Smart married John Bruce Dodd (1870–1945), one of the original founders of Ball & Dodd Funeral Home, and had a son, John Bruce "Jack" Dodd, born in 1909.  Though a Father's Day service was held on July 5, 1908 in West Virginia to honor the fathers killed in the Monongah Mine Disaster, it is Sonora Smart Dodd who is credited as the founder of the official American national holiday, Father’s Day.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonora_Smart_Dodd    

June 10, 2025  Seth MacFarlane has built an empire with his voice. Most people know him as the creator and star of long-running animated comedies like Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show, as well as the writer-director behind Ted, A Million Ways to Die in the West, and The Orville.  He has won multiple Emmys for voicing a multitude of characters on the programs he’s developed, and he’s known as a gifted actor.  What’s less widely known—even among his most dedicated fans—is that MacFarlane is also one of today’s most talented traditional pop vocalists.  His musical career, which leans heavily on the Great American Songbook, has earned him five Grammy nominations, including several in the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album category.  His latest release, Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements, may be the most exciting of his nine full-lengths due to the story behind its creation.   “When I got the offer from Tina Sinatra to acquire the library of charts,” MacFarlane explained during a recent interview, “we found a lot of orchestrations and in some cases, whole songs that [Sinatra] never recorded for one reason or another.”  One standout is “Flying Down to Rio,” which was initially arranged for the crooner’s Come Fly With Me album before being shelved.  “That’s kind of something that somebody ought to record at some point,” he adds, “because it was written by Billy May, one of the greatest arrangers of popular song ever.”  That’s exactly what MacFarlane has done.  Working with top-tier musicians and staying faithful to the original arrangements, Lush Life brings these forgotten songs to life for the first time.  These new recordings are performed in MacFarlane’s signature smooth, deep voice, which lends itself perfectly to this space–but even in Sinatra’s shadow, the TV star manages to make these decades-old tunes his own.  “You really do have to put your own stamp on it, because there is no recording that exists,” he says. “But at the same time, you have the fun and the privilege of playing in that Nelson Riddle/Billy May playground.”  https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2025/06/10/seth-macfarlane-talks-bringing-long-lost-frank-sinatra-tunes-to-life/    

Flag Day is a holiday celebrated on June 14 in the United States.  It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress.  The Flag Resolution stated "That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."    Flag Day was first proposed in 1861 to rally support for the Union side of the American Civil War. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation that designated June 14 as Flag Day.  On August 3, 1949, National Flag Day was officially established by an Act of Congress.  On June 14, 1937, Pennsylvania became the first state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday, beginning in the town of Rennerdale.  New York Consolidated Laws designate the second Sunday in June as Flag Day, a state holiday.   Flag Day is not an official federal holiday.  Federal law leaves it to the discretion of the president to officially proclaim the observance.  Title 36 of the United States Code, Subtitle I, Part A, Chapter 1, Section 110 is the official statute on Flag Day.  The United States Army also celebrates its birthday on this date.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_Day_(United_States)    

June 16 is Bloomsday, which celebrates the life of the Irish writer James Joyce.  It is named after Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses, the events of which take place on June 16 in 1904.  The American physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who coined the word quark for the subatomic particle, noted that the word had appeared in Ulysses.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quark#English 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  June 17, 2025      

Culinary great Jacques Pépin can certainly appreciate the notion of home, having lost his own more than once while growing up in France during World War II.   “We rebuilt it every time, and luckily, no one was home when the bombings happened—it was stressful,” Pépin recently told Mansion Global.  The renowned French chef and television star, whose cooking career spans 75 years, celebrates his 90th birthday in 2025.  Pépin rose to fame as the personal chef of French president Charles de Gaulle and moved to the U.S. in 1959, where he racked up the accolades.  They include 24 James Beard Foundation Awards, a lifetime achievement award from American Public Television and a Lifetime Achievement Emmy.  He continues to work full time and is a culinary arts teacher at Boston University.  But much of Pépin’s time is devoted to the Jacques Pépin Foundation, which he established in 2016 with his daughter, Claudine Pépin, and son-in-law, Rollie Wesen.  “We provide funding and opportunities for underprivileged people, including those who have been released from prison, to have cooking careers,” Pépin said.  “We give grants to community kitchens and host cooking classes where they can learn.”  In honor of his 90th birthday, the foundation launched the 90/90 Campaign, a fundraising initiative in which chefs and restaurants nationwide host 90 events leading up to chef’s big day on Dec. 18, 2025.  According to Pépin, the money raised through 90/90 will support the foundation’s programs.  I’ve never bought a big piece of art.  I do a lot of landscapes, seascapes, forests, abstracts, and objects like flowers and pots.  https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/why-star-chef-jacques-pepin-doesnt-buy-artand-other-thoughts-about-his-home-db0f5a56    

Judith Viorst (née Stahl; born February 2, 1931) is an American writer, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher.  She is known for her humorous observational poetry and for her children's literature.  This includes The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (about the death of a pet) and the Alexander series of short picture books, which includes Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972), which has sold over two million copies.    Viorst is a 1952 graduate of the Newark College of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.  Viorst's book Sad Underwear (published in 1995) is a collection of poems that examines a wide variety of feelings and experiences from a child's point of view.  Her verses are accompanied by black and white illustrations by Richard Hull.  Viorst also penned the musical Love & Shrimp with Shelly Markam.  The Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati hosted a performance of Love & Shrimp, starring Deb Girdler, Pamela Myers and Shelley Bamberger, in the spring of 1999.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Viorst    

A special-edition library card celebrating the New York Liberty, Brooklyn’s hometown team and the 2024 WNBA champions!  The New York Liberty-themed library card, available at all BPL locations beginning in June 2025, features the championship WNBA team and their iconic mascot, Ellie the Elephant.  This summer, the Liberty and BPL are partnering through Brooklyn Basketball to support BPL's Summer at the Library programming.  Brooklyn Public Library's card is free for anyone who lives, works, pays property taxes or goes to school in New York State.  https://www.bklynlibrary.org/liberty-library-card    

Frederick Forsyth, the British author of “The Day of the Jackal” and other bestselling thrillers, died June 9, 2025.  He was 86.  Born in Kent, in southern England, in 1938, Forsyth served as a Royal Air Force pilot before becoming a foreign correspondent.  He covered the attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962, which provided inspiration for “The Day of the Jackal,” his bestselling political thriller about a professional assassin.  Published in 1971, the book propelled him into global fame.  It was made into a film in 1973 starring Edward Fox as the Jackal and more recently a television series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch.  In 2015, Forsyth told the BBC that he had also worked for the British intelligence agency MI6 for many years, starting from when he covered a civil war in Nigeria in the 1960s.  Although Forsyth said he did other jobs for the agency, he said he was not paid for his services and “it was hard to say no” to officials seeking information.  “The zeitgeist was different,” he told the BBC. “The Cold War was very much on.”  He wrote more than 25 books including “The Afghan,” “The Kill List,” “The Dogs of War” and “The Fist of God” that have sold over 75 million copies.  https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/10/uk/frederick-forsyth-has-died-after-illness-intl-hnk   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2955  June 13, 2025

The seventh inning stretch is a time-honored baseball custom in which the fans ritualistically stand and stretch before their team comes to bat in the seventh inning.  This is done not only to relieve stiff muscles due to sitting the previous six innings, but perhaps also to bring luck to one’s team (an association with the number 7 and good luck, maybe?).  Unfortunately the exact origin of the custom is lost in the earliest days of the game.  Baseball historian Dan Daniel is quoted by Zander Hollander (Baseball Lingo, 1967):  “It probably originated as an expression of fatigue and tedium, which seems to explain why the stretch comes late in the game instead of at the halfway point.”  The earliest reference that has surfaced appears in an 1869 letter from Harry Wright of the Cincinnati Red Stock­ings to a friend:  “The spectators all arise between halves of the seventh inning, extend their legs and arms and some­times walk about.  In so doing, they enjoy the relief afforded by relaxation from a long posture upon hard benches.”  The most popular story of its origin is also the most col­orful.  It was created in 1910 when President William Howard Taft, on a visit to Pittsburgh, went to a baseball game and stood up to stretch in the seventh inning.  The crowd, thinking the chief executive was about to leave, stood up out of respect for the office.  The term itself can be traced back no further than 1920.  https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2008/html/pb22235/html/kit_004.html

rinky-dink(adj.)  "trivial, old-fashioned, worthless," 1913 (from 1912 as a noun, "antiquated or worthless object"), said to be carnival slang and imitative of the sound of banjo music at parades [Barnhart]; compare ricky-tick "old-fashioned jazz" (1938).  But early records suggest otherwise unless there are two words.  The earliest senses seem to be as a noun, "maltreatment," especially robbery.  https://www.etymonline.com/word/rinky-dink 

 

Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (born 1 July 1931) is a French and American actress and dancer.  She is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards.  Caron began her career as a ballerina.  She made her film debut in the musical An American in Paris (1951), followed by roles in The Man with a Cloak (1951), Glory Alley (1952) and The Story of Three Loves (1953), before her role of an orphan in Lili (also 1953), which earned her the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress and garnered nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

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

 

Just read an article on Substack (which does not allow you to forward articles) reporting that the Chicago Sun-Times published a summer reading list.  Ten of the fifteen titles were fake.  It seems that the compiler used AI to generate the list and did not bother to check or verify the results.  Also, your piece on Stone Soup put me in mind of a short novel by French author Hubert Mingarelli entitled “A Meal In Winter.”  It tells of three German soldiers in WWII who evade participating in a mass slaughter of Jews by scheming to be assigned to patrol the woods surrounding their camp to hunt more Jews.  In the dead of winter, they find a young Jewish man hiding in an improvised bunker and take him captive.  They then stop for a break in a derelict farmhouse and discuss how best to combine their resources to make a meal.  They are joined by a virulently anti-semitic Polish partisan.  Tensions rise and reach a boiling point when the Pole objects to sharing the food with a Jew.  He departs and the rest finish the meal.  The Germans then discuss whether they should let the Jew go free or return him to their camp to die in the next mass killing.  I think the story is an interesting variation of the Stone Soup legend.  Thank you, Muse reader. 

Halva (also halvah, halwa, halua, and other spellings; is a type of confectionery that is widely spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Central Asia, and South Asia.  The name is used for a broad variety of recipes, generally a thick paste made from flour, butter, liquid oil, saffron, rosewater, milk, turmeric powder, and sweetened with sugar.  The word halva entered the English language between 1840 and 1850 from Romanian, which came from Ottoman Turkish.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halva  Thank you, reader.   

central casting (sen-truhl KAS-ting) 

   adjective:  Stereotypical.

   noun:  A company or department that provides actors for minor or

   background roles, often based on stereotypical appearances. 

[After Central Casting, a company founded in 1925 to cast actors for

minor roles in film and television.  Earliest documented use:  1941.]

Wordsmith  June 6, 2025   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2952  June 6, 2025 

Malvina Reynolds (née Milder; 1900–1978) was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist, best known for her songwriting, particularly the songs "Little Boxes", "What Have They Done to the Rain" and "Morningtown Ride".    Her mother was born in Russia and her father was born in Hungary.  As a child, she took violin lessons and "fooled around" with pianos, writing music occasionally.   Reynolds earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley, where she remarked that she got "all the degrees possible".   She earned a doctorate there, finishing her dissertation in 1938.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvina_Reynolds    

Never Argue with a Bee (excerpt) by Malvina Reynolds  

Never argue with a bee,
He has got a sting-a-ree.
Be he worker, be he drone,
You had best leave him alone.    

He has got his work to do,
Getting honey from the tree.
If you know what's good for you,
Do not argue with a bee.   

Well, a hornet knows his rights,
And it hurts when he alights.
You will surely get your lumps,
Cause his stinger, it is trumps.  https://www.letras.com/malvina-reynolds/755323/    

There’s a time for work and a time for play.  https://fablesofaesop.com/the-ant-and-the-grasshopper.html 

Birds of a feather flock together.  https://fablesofaesop.com/the-farmer-and-the-stork.html    

What’s farfel?  According to the Jewish food historian Gil Marks, it's essentially an egg noodle often shaped like a tiny barley grain.  But here's where it gets interesting:  farfel refers to any small, oddly-shaped food bit.  So, back in the day in Germany, noodles were the new kid on the culinary block. They made this soup with these basic noodle clumps and called it varvelen.  German Jews caught wind of this noodle madness and dubbed those little doughy pellets "farfel" in Yiddish.    Some folks rolled the dough into logs and grated it through rough holes, while others sliced it into strips and chopped those strips into bits.  Over time the term farfel was also applied to other irregular food bits, including the Ashkenazic version of streusel and especially to crumbled matzah.  To differentiate them Americans sometimes refer to the noodles as barley farfel.  https://aish.com/what-is-farfel/ 

Phantom limb pain is pain that you feel in the part of a limb that was removed after an amputation.  It might seem unusual to feel pain in an area of your body that doesn’t exist anymore, but the pain you feel is real.  https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/12092-phantom-limb-pain  Thank you, reader. 

As a Hoosier cyclist in NYC, I learned about Major Taylor from seeing his club jerseys on other riders.  There are a number of cycling clubs with his name on them.  See:  https://www.majortaylorassociation.org/AssociatedClubs.shtml   Note that the best (cycling) movie ever made also has an Indianapolis connection.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Away   The main character is based upon a guy named David Blase.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Blase  Thank you, reader.  

June 5 is World Environment Day, recognized by the United Nations to promote worldwide awareness of the need and action to protect the environment.  The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, began on this day in 1972.  Wiktionary 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2951  June 5, 2025

Fido  noun  a coin having a minting error    generic name for a pet dog   system for enabling aircraft to land, involving the dispersal of fog by means of petrol burners on the ground   It was developed by the Allies during the Second World War.  https://scrabble-word.com/dictionary/fido 

The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state, tribal and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection.  Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation.  As of 2022, the 42,826 protected areas covered 1,235,486 km2 (477,024 sq mi), or 13 percent of the land area of the United States.  As of 2007, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, the U.S. had a total of 6,770 terrestrial nationally designated (federal) protected areas.  Federal level protected areas are managed by a variety of agencies, most of which are a part of the National Park Service, a bureau of the United States Department of the Interior.  They are often considered the crown jewels of the protected areas.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_areas_of_the_United_States 

The word heyday originates from the 16th century and is derived from the old English phrase ‘heydaeg,’ meaning high day or festive day.  It has been used in various contexts over the years, such as to describe the peak of someone’s career or the golden age of a particular era.  What Does Heyday Mean - AZdictionary.com  Thank you, reader.   

Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription-based content, including newsletters, podcasts, and video.  It allows writers to send digital content directly to subscribers.   Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.  Substack was founded in 2017 by Chris Best, the co-founder of Kik Messenger; Jairaj Sethi, a head of platform and principal developer at Kik Messenger; and Hamish McKenzie, a former PandoDaily tech reporter.  Best and McKenzie describe Ben Thompson's Stratechery, a subscription-based tech and media newsletter, as a major inspiration for their platform.  Best acts as CEO of the company.  In 2019, Substack added support for podcasts and discussion threads among newsletter subscribers.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substack   

For the cover of the June 2, 2025 New Yorker issue, the artist Kadir Nelson features Marshall W. (Major) Taylor leading a parade of bicyclists from eras past and present.  “I wanted to pay tribute to the most celebrated cyclist in the nineteenth century—the first African American superstar of any sport—and to the epic six-day indoor cycling event in 1896 at Madison Square Garden’s Velodrome, where Taylor competed,” Nelson said.  Though Taylor was admired during his era for being the “world’s fastest man,” he also encountered a lot of racism and aggression throughout his career; he was once knocked off his bike and choked to unconsciousness by a white racer.  In December, 2023, a bill to award Taylor the Congressional Gold Medal was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.  June 6, 2025  Thank you, Muse reader.   

The Major Taylor Velodrome is an outdoor, concrete velodrome in Indianapolis, named for 1899 cycling world champion Major Taylor.  The 333.34 m (364.55 yd) track with 28 degree banked turns and 9 degree straights.  The Velodrome is located immediately north of the Marian University campus and is the home track of the 41-time USA Cycling National Champion Marian University Cycling Team.  The velodrome was opened in July 1982 for the U.S. Olympic Festival.  It was built at a cost of $2.5 million.  It was a facility required to host that year's National Sports Festival, with money coming from a partnership between the Indianapolis Parks and Recreation Department and the Lilly Endowment.  The proposal to name the facility for Taylor came initially from Tom Healy, a writer for the Indianapolis News, who contacted Taylor's daughter, Sydney Taylor Brown.  The two advocated among the city's business community and Mayor William H. Hudnut.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Taylor_Velodrome  Thank you, Muse reader. 

List of State Birds | State Symbols USA  Thank you, reader. 

June 3, 2025  The W.E. Upjohn Peony Garden features the largest collection of historic—pre-1950—herbaceous peonies in North America, “and likely the world,” curator David Michener said.  “Once you come here to the Peony Garden, you’ll be mesmerized, and you’ll understand why people love peonies,” he said. “The fragrances, the colors, the forms, it’s just intoxicating.”  The peony watch is a spectator sport with tens of thousands of visitors arriving at The Arb each spring to behold the unique perennials—so many that visitors have to be bused in.  The campus Peony Garden contains more than 300 historic cultivated varieties from the 19th and early 20th centuries, representing American, Canadian and European peonies of the era.  The garden typically features up to 10,000 flowers at peak bloom.  Their colorful blossoms draw admirers from Michigan and beyond, but the peonies’ beauty is not their primary function.  The garden is designed as a support mechanism for academia—to be a research collection for students and faculty to explore genomics and social issues.  Michener and his colleagues at Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum work closely with their sister garden in Minsk, the Central Botanical Garden of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, trying to understand how ornamental peonies are related to each other and the wild, ancestral species.  Michigan’s Peony Garden is free to visit and open from sunrise to sunset.  

https://www.ironmountaindailynews.com/lifestyles/2025/06/annual-peony-pilgrimage-begins-to-u-of-m-arboretum-in-ann-arbor/  Thank you, reader!   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2950  June 4, 2025