A bight is a long, gradual bend or recess in the shoreline that forms a large, open bay.  Bights are shallow and may pose hazards to navigation, so their depths, in addition to any submerged features like sand bars and rock formations, are clearly marked on nautical charts.  A number of bights can be found on both the U.S. West and East Coasts.  The Southern California Bight, for example, is the curved coastline between Point Conception and San Diego, and encompasses the Channel Islands.  The New York Bight refers to the coastal area between Long Island and the New Jersey coast.  It is part of a larger geographical area called the Middle Atlantic (or Mid-Atlantic) Bight, which extends from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, north to Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  One of the world's largest bights is the Great Australian Bight on the continent's southern coast.  https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/bight.html 

Denis (1261-1325), called the Farmer King (Rei Lavrador) and the Poet King (Rei Poeta), was King of Portugal.  The eldest son of Afonso III of Portugal by his second wife, Beatrice of Castile, and grandson of Alfonso X of Castile (known as the Wise), Denis succeeded his father in 1279.  His marriage to Elizabeth of Aragon, who was later canonised as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, was arranged in 1281 when she was 10 years old.  Denis ruled Portugal for over 46 years.  He worked to reorganise his country's economy and gave an impetus to Portuguese agriculture.  He ordered the planting of a large pine forest (that still exists today) near Leiria to prevent the soil degradation that threatened the region and to serve as a source of raw materials for the construction of the royal ships.  He was also known for his poetry, which constitutes an important contribution to the development of Portuguese as a literary language.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_of_Portugal 

In 1962 at the age of 71, Joseph E. Yoakum (1891–1972) reported having a dream that inspired him to draw.  Thereafter the retired veteran began a daily practice and over the next 10 years produced some 2,000 works.  Yoakum was born into poverty, had very little schooling, and at an early age left home to join a circus.  He wound up working with several circuses, traveling across the United States as well as abroad and becoming intimately familiar with the world’s various landscapes. These experiences would provide the foundational memories that fueled his deeply spiritual vision decades later.  After Yoakum’s first exhibition in 1968, word spread through the local artist community. School of the Art Institute (SAIC) professor Whitney Halsted took a serious interest in his work, an interest that would lead to Halsted writing a foundational text about Yoakum’s drawings, and artists such as Karl Wirsum, Ray Yoshida, Jim Nutt, and Roger Brown—all SAIC graduates—began to collect Yoakum’s work, marveling at his instincts and creativity despite having no formal art training.  His designs, forms, lines, and colors defied landscape traditions, yet they each possessed a power derived from the artist’s uncanny use of his distinctive graphic style.  See graphics at https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9499/joseph-e-yoakum-what-i-saw 

Bacon wrapped appetizers:  Wrap cooked bacon around figs, peppers, olives, pineapple chunks or ingredients of your choosing.  If desired, add cream cheese to keep things together.   

When I bestirred myself to research be-, I became bewitched and bedazzled with the bewildering number of ways this busy little prefix shapes our language and communicates our thoughts.  “Be-” as a prefix goes back to Old English, apparent in such ancient-sounding words as betwixt, betroth, and bereft.  e see it in so many common verbs we use every day:  begin, behave, become, believe, befriend, belong.  And in common prepositions and adjectives:  beneath, beside, below, between, beyond, beloved, bereaved.  The prefix be- can act as an intensifier, indicating something is thoroughly or excessively done, as in bewitch, bewilder, bedazzle.  It can show a verb is affecting or causing something:  bedevil, bedim, befoul.  Steve of Upland  https://sblazak.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/be-ing-the-bemusing-prefix-be/ 

Susan Eloise Hinton (born July 22, 1948) is an American writer best known for her young-adult novels (YA) set in Oklahoma, especially The Outsiders (1967), which she wrote during high school.  Hinton is credited with introducing the YA genre.  Hinton received the inaugural 1988 Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American YA librarians, citing her first four YA novels, which had been published from 1967 to 1979 and adapted as films from 1982 to 1985.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._E._Hinton 

One story above all is returned to again and again by filmmakers across countries and eras, suggesting that it may be the most visually alarming of all English language eerie tales.  That story is Henry James’s 1898 novella, The Turn of the Screw.  The novella follows the haunted and disturbing events at a manor in Bly, Essex.  A group of men are being read a manuscript authored by a governess who was charged with the care of the children of the manor, Miles and Flora.  Miles has been mysteriously expelled from school and returns home.  James’s heady novella is arguably the most successful ghost story ever written, at least in terms of creative responses to it.  A cursory glance over IMDb entries reveals over two dozen screen adaptations, and that’s before including filmed versions of the chamber opera of the story by composer Benjamin Britten.  In particular, the last two decades have seen a slew of television adaptations, 2020 itself boasting no less than six screen versions of various kinds.  Adam Scovell  Read much more at https://lithub.com/on-the-most-adapted-ghost-story-of-all-time/ 

The Food and Drug Administration on January 12, 2022 said it is deregulating French dressing for the first time in seven decades.  The federal agency said it revoked the so-called standard of identity for the dressing in response to a petition from the Association for Dressings and Sauces.  The FDA said that by revoking the standard of identity, it "will allow for greater innovation and more flexibility of products on the market."  Danielle Haynes  https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2022/01/12/FDA-French-dressing/5131642019231/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2482  January 14, 2022

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe.  First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere.  It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness.  The lover, often identified as a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore.  Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further distress the protagonist with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore".  The poem makes use of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references.  Poe claimed to have written the poem logically and methodically, with the intention to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explained in his 1846 follow-up essay, "The Philosophy of Composition".  The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge:  A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens.  Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship", and makes use of internal rhyme as well as alliteration throughout.  "The Raven" was first attributed to Poe in print in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845.  Its publication made Poe popular in his lifetime, although it did not bring him much financial success.  The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. "The Raven" has influenced many modern works, including Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1955, Bernard Malamud's "The Jewbird" in 1963 and Ray Bradbury's "The Parrot Who Knew Papa" in 1976.  The process by which Poe composed "The Raven" influenced a number of French authors and composers, such as Charles Baudelaire and Maurice Ravel, and it has been suggested that Ravel's Boléro may have been deeply influenced by "The Philosophy of Composition".  The poem is additionally referenced throughout popular culture in films, television, music, and video games.  The painter Paul Gauguin painted a nude portrait of his teenage wife in Tahiti in 1897 titled Nevermore, featuring a raven perched within the room.  At the time the couple were mourning the loss of their first child together and Gauguin the loss of his favourite daughter back in Europe.  The name of the Baltimore Ravens, a professional American football team, was inspired by the poem.  Chosen in a fan contest that drew 33,288 voters, the allusion honors Poe, who spent the early part of his career in Baltimore and is buried there.  The mantel of the room in which Poe penned "The Raven" was removed and donated to Columbia University before the demolition of the Brennan Farmhouse.  It currently resides at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, on the 6th floor of Butler Library.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven

Painted in 1972, Still Life with Plums is an early example of Roy Lichtenstein’s overt exploration of the history of painting, specifically the tradition of the vanitas that would unfold in his work through the decade.  While Lichtenstein’s early works of the 1960s centered on pulp subject matter proper to a young American culture, with the present work the artist expands his interests to a time-honored artform of European origins.  Since its blossoming as a genre in 16th century Europe, still life painting has offered a moment of quietude by focusing on a sliver of daily life—usually ephemerally beautiful and appetizing objects, such as fruits and flowers.  It typically contrives such scenes as allegorical lessons on the passage of time and the dangers of vanity and indulgence.  Lichtenstein’s attraction to still life is apposite, given Pop’s fascination with both the everyday and veneer of coveted objects.  Michaëla Mohrmann  See picture and description at https://www.pacegallery.com/journal/curators-choice-roy-lichtenstein-still-life-with-plums/ 

Roy Fox Lichtenstein (1923–1997) was an American pop artist.  During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement.  His work defined the premise of pop art through parody.  Inspired by the comic strip, Lichtenstein produced precise compositions that documented while they parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner.  His work was influenced by popular advertising and the comic book style.  His artwork was considered to be "disruptive".  He described pop art as "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting".  https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/roy-lichtenstein-1508 

Through the years, Carmen Sandiego has been more elusive than even the master of disguise, Waldo of Where's Waldo.  The fictional character was the star of the PBS television show, Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, which premiered in September of 1991.  The series even inspired a computer game of the same name.  Players on both the show and the game used their geography and problem-solving skills to help track down the international thief, Carmen.  The woman behind Carmen Sandiego is Janine LaManna.  Appearing as the evasive and stealthy Carmen on PBS was LaManna's break-out role.  She wasn't upset that she was never credited for playing the character, and remembers her time on the television set fondly.  https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2016/08/120360/carmen-sandiego-character-mystery-solved 

Pomona Britannica; or, a Collection of the Most Esteemed Fruits at Present Cultivated in this Country  See images of illustrated book with 90 hand-colored aquatints at https://collections.mfa.org/objects/270559 

January 10, 2022  What’s the 14th-century Leaning Tower of Pisa to impress with its tilt when there’s a modern-day building that slants even more?  San Francisco’s Millennium Tower, one of glitziest residential buildings in the city, is now tilting more than two feet north and west and continues to tilt at a rate of three inches a year because it’s sinking into the ground.  In fact, it has already sunk between 17 and 18 inches.  If the problem isn’t fixed, the building could eventually tilt 40 inches, the maximum it needs to function and most probably for the elevators and plumbing to work.  Located in San Francisco’s financial district at Fremont and Mission Streets and next to the Salesforce Transit Center and a bus terminal, the Millennium Tower is a 58-story, 645-foot-tall tower, and it is the tallest residential building in the city.  It debuted with fanfare in 2009 and has a fair share of illustrious residents including sports figures Joe Montana and Giants outfielder Hunter Pence.  Shivani Vora  See pictures at https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/millennium-tower-san-francisco-leaning 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2481  January 12, 2022

In English there are three articles:  a, an, and the.  Articles are used before nouns or noun equivalents and are a type of adjective.  The definite article (the) is used before a noun to indicate that the identity of the noun is known to the reader.  The indefinite article (a, an) is used before a noun that is general or when its identity is not known.  There are certain situations in which a noun takes no article. http://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/grammar/articles.html

Articles are found in many Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (only the definite article), and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world's major languages including:  Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, many Turkic languages (incl. Tatar, Bashkir, Tuvan and Chuvash), many Uralic languages (incl. Finnic and Saami languages), Indonesian, Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, the Baltic languages, the majority of Slavic languages, the Bantu languages (incl. Swahili) and Yoruba.  In some languages that do have articles, such as some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional; however, in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases.  Find information on proper, partitive, negative, and zero articles at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar) 

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world.  He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such.  The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs.  Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings.  Humpty Dumpty was popularised in the United States on Broadway by actor George L. Fox in the pantomime musical Humpty Dumpty.  The show ran from 1868 to 1869, for a total of 483 performances, becoming the longest-running Broadway show until it was surpassed in 1881 by Hazel Kirke.  As a character and literary allusion, Humpty Dumpty has appeared or been referred to in many works of literature and popular culture, particularly English author Lewis Carroll's 1871 book Through the Looking-Glass, in which he was described as an egg.  The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026.  Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics.  The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder".  The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder.  See graphics including musical notation at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty  See also https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/humpty-dumpty/

Pepin the Short, also called the Younger (c. 714–768) was King of the Franks from 751 until his death in 768.  He was the first Carolingian to become king.  Pepin was succeeded by his sons Charlemagne and Carloman.  Although unquestionably one of the most powerful and successful rulers of his time, Pepin's reign is largely overshadowed by that of his more famous son, Charlemagne.  Read more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepin_the_Short

 

“The French do not go insane unless there is some advantage in it.”  “Pippin IV, an uncomfortable bundle of purple velvet and ermine, with the queen, equally befurred, sitting beside him, acknowledged the cheers of the loyal bystanders and responded with equal courtesy to hisses.”  “The first function of business is to create the demand and the second to fulfill it.”  The Short Reign of Pippin IV, a fabrication by John Steinbeck 

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (1902–1968) was an American author and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception."  He has been called "a giant of American letters."  During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories.  He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat (1935) and Cannery Row (1945), the multi-generation epic East of Eden (1952), and the novellas The Red Pony (1933) and Of Mice and Men (1937).  The Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon.  In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck  

Thomas Myles Steinbeck (1944–2016) was a screenwriter, photographer, and journalist.  He published numerous works of fiction, including short stories and novels.  He was the elder son of American novelist John Steinbeck.  John Ernst Steinbeck IV (1946–1991) was an American journalist and author.  He was the second child of the Nobel Prize-winning author John Ernst Steinbeck.  He worked as a journalist for Armed Forces Radio and TV and as a war correspondent for the United States Department of Defense.  Wikipedia 

JANUARY EVENTS 

Virginia Woolf buys a house in Bloomsbury (January 9, 1924) • Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” is published (January 10, 1776) • Intrepid Belgian boy reporter Tintin makes his first appearance in a serialization of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets in the children’s newspaper supplement Le Petit Vingtième (January 10, 1929) • Federico García Lorca’s play The House of Bernarda Alba, which was completed just before his assassination in 1936 (which he predicted in a poem), is performed for the first time in Spain (January 10, 1964) • Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon wins the National Book Critics Circle Award (January 11, 1978) • Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint is published (January 12, 1969) • Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is published under the name Victoria Lucas (January 14, 1963) • Victor Hugo finishes writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame (January 15, 1831)  Literary Hub  January 9, 2022 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2480  January 10, 2022

In law, "sotto voce" on a transcript indicates a conversation heard below the hearing of the court reporter.  In drama, literature, and rhetoric, sotto voce is used to denote emphasis attained by lowering one's voice rather than raising it, similar to the effect provided by an aside.  In music, sotto voce is a dramatic lowering of the vocal or instrumental volume.  The Chœur d'Enfants Sotto Voce is a children's choir that resides at the Châtelet Theatre in Paris.  They're known for their interpretations of all types of songs, ranging from Broadway to French classics to Jazz.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotto_voce 

Za’atar Spice is a blend of savory dried herbs like oregano, marjoram or thyme, and toasted earthy spices like cumin and coriander, with sesame seeds, salt and the most important ingredient of all . . . sumac!  Use this as a rub for chicken, beef, lamb or fish, sprinkle it over hummus, Labneh or baba ganoush!  Or mix with olive oil for a flavorful marinade.  There are many variations of this spice mix.  posted by Sylvia    Find recipe at https://www.feastingathome.com/zaatar-spice-recipe/ 

to the nth degree means to the utmost, as in They'd decked out the house to the nth degree.  This expression comes from mathematics, where to the nth means “to any required power” (n standing for any number).  It was first recorded in 1852.   https://www.dictionary.com/browse/to-the-nth-degree 

Read Across America Day was launched in 1998 by the National Education Association (NEA).  It is a day to encourage children and teenagers to read and falls annually on March 2, which is also Dr. Seuss' birthday.  When the day was first established, it was synonymous with the children's author.  Dr. Seuss was born Theodor Seuss Geisel on March 2, 1904.  Despite never having children himself, Dr. Seuss is one of America's most famous youth authors.  He wrote more than 60 books, with some of his most famous works including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.  https://www.newsweek.com/why-read-across-america-day-falls-dr-seuss-birthday-1573109

BG stands for Before Google.  Link to other definitions of BG at https://www.acronymfinder.com/Before-Google-(BG).html

HAPPINESS QUOTES

Happiness is hard-boiled eggs and warm toast.

Happiness is an egg salad sandwich with salt, pepper and mayo in exactly the right proportion.

Happiness is free.

Cause happiness wherever you are.

Happiness is a harvest

Imagine your own happiness.

Happiness is having your own library card.  (Sally Brown in Peanuts comic strip) 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

xylophilous   (zy-LOF-uh-luhs)  adjective:  Growing on or living in wood.  From Greek xylo- (wood) + -philous (liking).  Earliest documented use:  1862.

sour grapes (SOU-uhr graypz)  noun   Finding fault with or expressing disdain for something one cannot have.  From the Aesop’s fable The Fox and the Grapes, in which a hungry fox tries to reach grapes hanging on a high vine and when unsuccessful, declares that the grapes are probably sour.  Earliest documented use:  1760. 

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Marion Wolf  Subject:  xylophilous  No one can top Ogden Nash on this topic.  He wrote a poem called “The Termite”:  Some primal termite knocked on wood  And tasted it, and found it good!  And that is why your Cousin May  Fell through the parlor floor today. 

A reflection on the rich inner life of a beloved public figure, Bonhams announces the sale of pioneering Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s personal library.  Slated for January 19-27, 2022, the online-only sale will feature more than 1,000 personal books belonging to the late trailblazing justice dating from her years at Harvard and Columbia Law Schools, through her early career as a lawyer and law professor, to her appointment as a Federal judge and, finally, to the U.S. Supreme Court.  This sale features approximately 100 lots of books, photographs, and ephemera from the Ginsburg’s private library, including textbooks from her days as a student, legal publications from her long career as a litigator and law professor, and literature read by both Ruth and Marty Ginsburg during their marriage (most with Ginsburg ownership bookplates to the front pastedowns).  Notably included are Catcher in the Rye, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and titles by Ginsburg’s former Literature professor, Vladimir Nabokov, alongside volumes by Tolstoy and De Tocqueville.  Also included in the sale are copies of feminist literary classics like Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics and works by Susan Sontag and Erica Jong.  Additionally, the library contains a large selection of presentation copies on various subjects inscribed by the authors to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Of greatest interest are works by her fellow Supreme Court justices, including Sandra Day O’Connor, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Neil Gorsuch--and of course, several examples from Ginsburg’s dear friend and fellow opera lover, Antonin Scalia.  https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/news/ruth-bader-ginsburg-personal-library-offered-bonhams 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2479  January 7, 2022

 JANUARY EVENTS

4:   Utah becomes 45^th state, 1896

5:   Waiting for Godot premieres in Paris, 1953

11:  U.S. Surgeon General declares smoking a health hazard, 1964

14:  Treaty of Paris ratified by U.S. Congress, 1784

17:  Martin Luther King Jr. Day

20:  High School Musical film released, 2006

27:  National Geographic Society, founded, 1888 

Champagne Taittinger is the first big Champagne House to establish a vineyard in the UK to make premium sparkling wine in England.  The Domaine Evremond vineyard is a joint venture between Champagne Taittinger--the only Grande Marque Champagne House to be run by its eponymous family--its UK agency Hatch Mansfield Ltd, and friends. These partners anticipate a first full vintage at Domaine Evremond in October 2019--from the vines planted two years ago in May 2017--with a potential release date of 2024.  The Taittinger family has over 80 years of winemaking expertise in Champagne and plans to use this, alongside its British team, to help create a premium sparkling wine of excellence in England.  https://www.domaineevremond.com/2019/06/the-domaine-evremond-journey-continues-a-further-8-5-hectares-planted/ 

The Jerusalem artichoke is not an artichoke at all, as we know the more sophisticated globe artichoke. The Jerusalem version is actually related to the sunflower.  The sunflower is called girasole in Italian--it means gyrating or turning to the sun.  And, at least according to folk etymology, girasole through some slip of nomenclature turned into Jerusalem.  That is even more historically fascinating, considering that the vegetable in question is native to America.  It was indigenous to the central United States and Canada and was first taken to France by Samuel de Champlain in 1616, from which moment it began to flourish.  After its introduction to France, the easily proliferating root vegetable was first referred to as poires de terre (earth pears) or artichauts de Canada (Canadian artichokes).  In today's French kitchens it is known as a topinambour, again for an unusual reason.  At approximately the same time that they were introduced into that country, there was an exhibition of one sort or another being staged in France.  And one of the features of that exhibition was a tribe from Brazil known as topinambours.  The vegetable was thus christened and the name stayed.  https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/09/garden/jerusalem-artichoke-a-colorful-history-and-variety-of-use.html 

Slices of pie arranged in neat rows, glossy candy apples, cherry-topped ice cream sundaes at the brink of melting these are among the most recognizable motifs painted by Wayne Thiebaud, who died on December 25, 2021 at the age of 101.  Born in 1920 in Mesa, Arizona and raised in Sacramento, California, Thiebaud is arguably best known for his tantalizing depictions of bakery counters, but his renderings of gumball machines, beach scenes, and the sloping streets of San Francisco are comparably irresistible. Unlike some painters of his generation, Thiebaud began his career as a commercial artist, attending a trade school in Los Angeles and working as a cartoonist, sign painter, and illustrator until the late 1940s.  Nearing the age of 30, he made a permanent shift to fine art, earning a BA from San Jose State College and an MA from Sacramento State College.  Thiebaud taught art for almost three decades, first at the Sacramento Junior College and then at the University of California, Davis.  An eclectic confluence of 20th-century painterly expressions, Thiebaud’s works belonged to no single movement, encompassing instead a unique visual language that sought out the charm in the everyday.  He mastered the textures of frosting, meringue, and donut glaze in thick, rich brushstrokes that reveal the influence of Abstract Expressionism, but his works exude the alluring mystery of an Edward Hopper bar scene.  Thiebaud lent his paintings their distinctive glow through a technique he called “halation,” juxtaposing warm and cool colors to make objects pop.  In a 2018 interview at the Morgan Library and Museum, he described discovering the process while painting a slice of pumpkin pie.  “I mixed a big gob of what I thought was the color and put it on the triangle, and I was horrified,” Thiebaud recalled.  “I made a light yellow drawing and then a blue drawing so I could tell the two different positions, and when I put the pumpkin mist on this color the edges showed up, and I thought, ‘well, that makes it look a little bit better, I’ll leave that in.’”  Valentina Di Liscia  See picture of "Cold Case" (2010/2011/2013), oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches.  (© Wayne Thiebaud / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY / courtesy of Acquavella Gallery) at https://hyperallergic.com/702320/wayne-thiebaud-whose-paintings-were-almost-good-enough-to-eat-dies-at-101/ 

The term book-wrapt comes from a NY Times article published on December 24th, 2021.  The article says that in the book, The Private Library:  The History of the Architecture and Furnishing of the Domestic Bookroom, the author, Reid Byers, goes to the heart of why physical books continue to beguile us.  Individually, they are frequently useful or delightful, but it is when books are displayed en masse that they really work wonders.  Covering the walls of a room, piled up to the ceiling and exuding the breath of generations, they nourish the senses, slay boredom and relieve distress.  Andrea Rosenhaft  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/both-sides-the-couch/202112/i-am-book-wrapt 

Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee, now showing through January 9, 2022 at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, PA presents the first major critical assessment of works by the artist Doris Lee (1904– 1983).  Lee was one of the most recognized artists in the country during the 1930s and 40s and a leading figure in the Woodstock Artist’s Colony.  In response to the rise of Abstract Expressionism in the decades after World War II, Lee deftly absorbed these innovations into a continuation of her own visual style.  Co-curated by Barbara L. Jones and Melissa Wolfe, Curator of American Art, Saint Louis Art Museum, Simple Pleasures will include over 70 works by the artist spanning from the 1930s through the 1960s from both public and private collections and be comprised of paintings, drawings, prints, and commissioned commercial designs in fabric and pottery.  There will also be a small group of ephemera, such as advertisements by companies that commissioned images from Lee.  The exhibition will travel to three additional venues:  Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA (February 5–May 8, 2022), Vero Beach Museum of Art, FL (June 5–September 18, 2022), and Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, TN (October 30, 2022– January 15, 2023).   https://thewestmoreland.org/exhibitions/simple-pleasures-the-art-of-doris-lee/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2478  January 5, 2022 

The founder of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert B. Thomas, was born in Grafton, Massachusetts, nine years before the start of the American Revolution.  Thomas was brought up on a farm in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.  He was fascinated by science and at age 16 read Ferguson’s Astronomy, which he came across in his father’s library.  He later wrote that “it was from the pleasing study of this work I first imbibed the idea of calculating an almanack.”  With this dream in mind, he became a bookseller, taught school, built a store and bindery near the family farm, and studied astronomy in his spare time.  In early 1792, he went to Boston to study mathematics under the tutelage of another almanac maker, Osgood Carlton, and that fall delivered the copy for the first edition of what he called The Farmer’s Almanac to printers Joseph Belknap and Thomas Hall.   https://www.almanac.com/fact/robert-b-thomas-birthday-founder-of-the-holiday 

TIDBITS from The Old Farmer’s Almanac 2022:  In 2000 B.C., the Babylonians celebrated the New Year during a 12-day festival called Akitu (starting with the vernal equinox.)  *  The Easter Bunny who visits children on Easter morning was the invention of German Protestants.  Bunny brought eggs and sweets to good children in the same way Santa Claus brought gifts to well-behaved children.  *  Only two men signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776—John Hancock, president of the Congress, and Charles Thompson, secretary of the Congress.  *  When Europeans first encountered the wild turkey in Mexico, they incorrectly classified the bird as a turkey fowl.  

In 2022, there are new changes in the pop culture landscape.  The updates to the United States public domain often gets new intellectual properties due to the specifics of the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.  The current rules will allow for works from 1926 to enter the public domain after a 96-year extension in 2022— and that will include some significant names.   Among them is A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh short story collection, and all of the characters within them (except for Tigger, who wasn't introduced until 1928 and will be under copyright until 2024).  Once Winnie the Pooh enters the public domain, it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed, or sampled without permission or additional cost.  This only applies to the original works, and not to the subsequent adaptations and merchandise, which allows for Disney's incarnation of Winnie the Pooh to still be held under trademark by Disney.  The 2022 crop of public domains additions will also include Felix Saten's Bambi, a Life in the Woods, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Dorothy Parker's Enough Rope, Langston Hughes' The Weary Blues, T. E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Kahlil Gibran's Sand and Foam, Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Aykroyd, Edna Ferber's Showboat, William Faulker's Soldier's Play, Willa Cather's My Mortal Enemy, D. H. Lawrence's The Plumed Serpent and H. L. Mencken's Notes on Democracy.  Jenna Anderson  https://comicbook.com/movies/news/winnie-the-pooh-enter-public-domain-2022/ 

Each January 1st is Public Domain Day, where a new crop of works have their copyrights expire and become free to enjoy, share, and reuse for any purpose.  Due to differing copyright laws around the world, there is no one single public domain, but there are three definitions which cover most cases.  For these three systems, newly entering the public domain January 2, 2022 are:  works by people who died in 1951, for countries with a copyright term of “life plus 70 years” (e.g. UK, Russia, most of EU and South America); works by people who died in 1971, for countries with a term of “life plus 50 years” (e.g. Canada, New Zealand, and most of Africa and Asia); works published in 1926 (and all pre-1923 sound recordings), for the United States.  This year’s Public Domain Day is of particular note due to the many hundreds of thousands of pre-1923 sound recordings becoming copyright-free in the United States.  More information on this mammoth release, and links to where to explore and download the huge haul in our dedicated blogpost.  https://publicdomainreview.org/blog/2022/01/public-domain-day-2022 

From:  Don Fearn  To everyone reading this:  HAPPY NEAR YOU!  That’s how my nephew said “happy new year” when he was small and it really seemed to fit ‘cause I AM happy to be near the people close to me.  AWADmailIssue 1018 

Home Remedies to Ease Your Sore Throat  While salt water may not provide you with immediate relief, it is still an effective remedy for killing bacteria while loosening mucus and easing pain.  Simply mix half a teaspoon of salt into 8 ounces of warm water and gargle away.  *  “Honey is one of the best remedies for a sore throat due to its natural antibacterial properties that allows it to act as a wound healer, immediately offering relief for pain while working to reduce inflammation.  *   Similar to salt water and honey, lemons are great for sore throats because they can help break up mucus and provide pain relief.  What’s more, lemons are packed with Vitamin C which can help to boost the immune system and give it more power to fight off your infection.  Mix one teaspoon of lemon juice into a glass of warm water and drink for quick relief.  *  It may sound strange to use hot sauce to relieve a fiery throat, but this condiment has actually been proven to provide relief for sore throats.  Hot sauce is made from peppers that are high in capsaicin, which can be used to fight inflammation and provide pain relief.  So, while it may burn at first, dropping a few drops of hot sauce into a warm glass of water to gargle may just be the right remedy to cure your sore throat.  Charlotte Smith  https://www.pennmedicine.org/updates/blogs/health-and-wellness/2018/february/sore-throat 

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  neoist  (NEE-uh-ist) noun  One who favors or employs new ideas, styles, techniques, etc.  adjective:  Favoring new ideas, styles, techniques, etc.  From Greek neo- (new).  Earliest documented use:  1916. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2477  January 3, 2022