Holiday Closures Coming and Yum?

All six locations of the Des Moines Public Library will be closed Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Thanksgiving fact du jour:  One of the foods feasted upon at the first Thanksgiving was...eel.  I should not disparage this time-honored dish as I have never eaten eel, but it is difficult to eat something you can't bring yourself to look at. Or think about too much.  But don't let me stop you!

Here is a festive eel recipe from Executive Chef Brad Farmerie of The Monday Room in New York City.

Glazed eel with pickled bean sprouts
First rustle up some eel and pickled bean sprouts. 
Slice the fresh-water eel,  fun! and coat the pieces with a mix of soy sauce, palm sugar, star anise, cinnamon and sancho pepper. Brown them under a salamander.  Gotta be a cooking term but wasn't the eel enough?  Let the eel cool and mix it with the pickled sprouts, chopped chives, cilantro and 'chiffonade of Thai basil'.  That last bit sounds yummy.  If chiffonade means what I think it does, light and fluffy. Toss with a dressing of lime juice, lime zest and chile. Put the whole shebang into a spoon and top with half a soft-boiled quail egg. Finish with a sprinkle of Maldon salt.  I imagine you could make some ingredient substitutes, but one of the cool things about Des Moines is it's so diverse you can probably find all this stuff.

Source:  Instructor, Nov/Dec2000, p78, 2/3p
Nation's Restaurant News, 5/5/2008, p52-52
as accessed through EbscoHost

Railroads Spiked

I'm not surprised that items like railroad lanterns are collectible; they are attractive and come in many styles and colors.  Just like scarves!  But the spikes are collectible too.  There may not be a wide variety of colors, but there are different 'styles'.  Railroad nails were marked with the last two numbers of the year they were hammered in.  The numbers 08, for 1908, could appear indented or raised on the head on the nail.  When old spikes were replaced the new ones had the new year stamped on them. (Old spikes. Hard not to think of deodorant.) The heads are different shaped depending on the railroad - square, round or pentagonal or round.  The shank, or non-head part of the spike, varies in lengths and may be round or square.  See how many kinds of railroad nails you could collect!  And you could even tell them apart!  If you try really hard.

Source:  Des Moines Register 12/29/1970 p. 9

Back it up, Casey Jones

I did not realize that in the heydey of passenger trains some of the trains backed into the station.  I know they are on rails and really have nowhere else to go but the thought of it makes me nervous.  Not Peg Hansen. In 1981 she said that as a child she used to board the Santa Fe - a two car train at that point - in Atchison and when arriving in Topeka, said train would back its little self right  into the station. Across a bridge.  Not making me feel safer.  At one time Des Moines was a site for backward-train-running. Today Amtrak does this in some cities.  Everything old is new again.
Source: Des Moines Tribune 1/27/1981 p. 3
Photo courtesy Gerry Rowland

Lou Grant Hated It

Spunk.  Frankly it sounds like something that smells bad.  How did it come to mean courage, spirit, guts?  OK, guts wouldn't smell like roses either.  Anyway, the origin of Mary's Richardson's finest, if least appreciated, quality:  spunk started out meaning tinder or kindling.  Then 'spunking up a fire' meant stirring it up, making it hotter.  From here came the concept of getting fired up with courage. In 1885 a cowboy wrote that he 'finally spunked up' when he needed to draw his gun.  We now apply spunky as kind of a diminutive of brave for kids, and in the 1970's, women.  You don't hear people call Dr. Maya Angelou spunky.  That woman is brave.

I hear America talking  p 182-183

You're Kidding - it's Really a Gun?

How many nicknames do you know for firearms?  Beyond 'Saturday Night Special' I got nothing.  Here's a story for you.  It all started with Christian Sharp, who patented a .50 caliber hunting rifle in 1848.  (Nope, his name has nothing to do with the phrase 'sharp-shooter').  Enter Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, (1813-1877) an abolitionist and not your Ghandhi type of activist.  He stated outright that, in fighting slavery, Kansans wielding rifles would be more effective than those wielding arguments from the Bible. He was not fooling around. The Reverend used the money he raised to buy Bibles ... to send rifles to Kansas. Hence the term "Beecher's Bibles", occasionally used to refer to Sharps' rifles. You've been desperate to know, right?  Glad I could clear that up for you.

I Hear America Talking p. 92

America Says Ain't Ain't a Word

But 'tis.  According to I Hear America Talking, ain't used to be an't, a contraction for "am not".  They do not address the eternal question, was there a contraction for am too!?  Ain't earned it's bad bad reputation when people started misusing it.  It just means "am not".  It does not mean "is not" as in 'he ain't quite tracking today'.  It does not mean "are not" as in 'those sisters ain't making mud pies'.  It does not mean "have not" or "has not".  It's predilection for green ham and eggs is unknown.  But you get the picture.  If the poor word hadn't been abused we would not scorn ain't now.  Not that it stops us from using it.  Ain't it the truth.

I hear America. Say what?

I was pondering the phrase 'long in the tooth' yesterday, wondering how it came to mean 'old'.  Then I remembered that curse of middle age, receding gums. Duh.  This leads me to the fabulous reference book I Hear America Talking.  What say we explore American language this week?   First up:  "cow catcher".  In the beginning trains ran over cows, which was good for neither party.  In 1832 Isaac Drips invented a guard for the front of the train.  The first versions were too sharp and too high and the cows wound up, ahem, attached to the train if you get my meaning.  The guards were re-designed to be blunter and push the cow aside.  The public also called these protectors of the rails 'horse catchers' but we know what they were for.  Cows.  They just don't get out of the way.

I Hear America Talking

Who is She Really?

We have the following in our libraries' collections:

38 titles by Jean Plaidy

25 titles by Victoria Holt

13 titles by Phillipa Carr

That's 76 titles. Just the titles we own mind you, and guess what!  They were all written by the same person! For comparison, we have 68 titles by Stephen King including the Bachman books. Not only did Eleanor Burford Hibbert - proud owner of all three pseudonyms - write more than 150 books, she put some heavy lifting into them.  The Jean Plaidy novels were historical fiction with the emphasis on history as Hibbert did beaucoup research for them.  These babies were not dashed off in a fortnight.  She's British so I have an excuse to use 'fortnight'.  Finally!  And her reward for all this work?  Well, not actually a reward but you'll never believe it.  She died on a cruise ship!  In the Mediterranean! Glad she was having herself some fun at the end. She certainly earned it.

Born: 1906 in London, United Kingdom
Died: January 18, 1993 on a cruise ship

Nationality: British

Sources:

Contemporary Authors Online, 2003

Contemporary Popular Writers, 1997

as accessed through Ebscohost

Open Today and Academically Speaking

Did you know... that you can find dissertations on the Internet? First of all, let me say that I have nothing but admiration for those who have produced a dissertation and gotten it approved. I understand the process is grueling. With that disclaimer, let us turn to titles. So much fun. "Remote sensing of vegetation using multi-baseline polarimetric SAR interferometry". For all I know this has immense practical application. But I'd have to understand the words to know that. "Anticaries efficacy of a new low-fluoride liquid acidic dentifrice." Or "does this liquid tooth-cleaner work"? "Hydration effect on human nail permeability." I knew if I looked hard enough I could find a fingernail study. Students do have to use the scientific terminology, it's not like they're allowed to say "what happens when your fingernails aren't dry?". But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy the jargon. Does it?


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