News from the Mudd

August has been called the most boring month. The weather can be counted on to be hot. It's the only month with no official holidays or observances or even invented holidays. It's going to be a struggle to try to come up with entertaining items during August. We might have to make stuff up. Meanwhile enjoy the last day of July, the birthday of relatives of famous people:
George Liberace (1911) ; Geraldine Chaplin (1944) ; Gary Lewis (1945) ; Barry Van Dyke (1951) ; Dirk Blocker (1957)

It goes without saying that we here at the Mudd love all things brown. Saturday July 28 was not only Cow Appreciation Day, but also National Cowboy Day and National Milk Chocolate Day. Here's to the brown cows who give us that milk to make milk chocolate; the milk chocolate itself; the cowboys, brown from the sun, and of course, mud. Go get some Cow Pies!®.

It has come to our attention that a man in Pennsylvania was evicted from his home because had too many books. If the Mudd's landlord is reading this, we have only, like, 50 books in the collection, and they're all in the Archives. As you know, everything anyone needs to know is available electronically. There are "book" shelves in people's offices, but they're used for plants and uh, personal photos. Yes, that's it. Personal photos.

It's Garlic Day!! What doesn't go better with garlic? The National Garlic Festival begins today in Gilroy, Ca. Coincidentally, it's also Walk on Stilts Day AND Systems Administrator Appreciation Day. Here's what we're thinking: some nice linguini with clam sauce.

Drain 2 cans of minced clams and save the liquid
Mince a small onion
Mince 2 or 3 garlic cloves, the more the merrier
Chop up a couple of plum tomatoes
Measure out a shot glass of dry vermouth

Boil up some linguini (8-12 oz.)

Sauté the onions in olive oil until they're translucent. Toss in the garlic and sauté until you can smell the garlic. Throw in the vermouth and cook for a couple of minutes until the alcohol evaporates. Add the clam juice and cook down until thick-ish. Add the minced clams and tomatoes and cook until warmed through. Salt and pepper taste. Toss in the cooked (al dente) linguini.

Serve to your Systems Administrator. Don't know what to do about the stilts.

It's tough being the son of a famous musician. Expectations run quite high. Look at Julian and Sean Lennon, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Dweezil Zappa, some of the Bachs. Today is the birthday of another famous father's son, Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart. He was born in 1791, the year of W.A. Mozart's death. He studied with Salieri, which probably would have killed his father had he not already passed away. Salieri predicted a career for him "not inferior to that of his celebrated father." He did a lot of touring, performing and composing, but the title of a 1998 article in Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum (Vol. 46 (No. 3-4) p29-48) quotes one of his contemporaries and translates to: "It was precisely your father's name that destroyed the seed of your energy." That's pretty harsh.
Here's an interview with soprano Barbara Bonney, a champion of his songs. Let's spend the day pondering what happened to that "i" in "Xaver."

We may be smack in the middle of the dog days of summer, but Christmas is a mere five months away. This reminds us of the great movie by writer/director Preston Sturges, Christmas in July. Pick it up and watch it. And remember, if you can't sleep at night it isn't the coffee, it's the bunk.
The Mudd has just one Sturges video, Sullivan's Travels. We can also recommend The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, The Palm Beach Story, The Lady Eve, and a lesser-known but wonderful movie, The Good Fairy. Read about his life and his movies on IMDB.

Oh boy, we wait for this one every year. It's "Tell an Old Joke Day." While "Talk Like a Pirate Day" is our favorite, today also has many possibilities. We'll get you started.

How do you know there's a viola section at your front door? No one has the key and they don't know when to come in.

A duck walks into a drugstore for some lip balm. The clerk gives it to him and the duck says, "Just put it on my bill."

Two cannibals are eating a clown and one says to the other, "Does this taste funny to you?"

A dog falls into a lake and he can't swim. A rabbi happens to be walking by and he not only pulls the dog to safety but also administers mouth to mouth resuscitation. The dog's grateful owner says, "Thank you so much. Are you a vet?" and the rabbi says, "Vet? I'm soaking."

Why don't lobsters share? They're shellfish.

Of course the Mudd has books of jokes.

All libraries have book trucks, or as they are sometimes called, book carts. That's a fact, Jack. Most libraries consider these merely methods of transportation or bookshelves or places to keep lunches. They squeak, they're usually metal and ugly, and sometimes they tip over on worker's toes.
The enterprising people at unshelved.com sponsored a (you should pardon the expression) "Pimp My Bookcart" contest. The creators of the winners had way too much time on their hands. You'll notice that are all extremely weird (the carts, that is,) yet surprisingly still functional.
Ask the creative and enterprising staff at your local library to get with it and make lovely swans out of those ugly ducklings.

It's now National Rabbit Week, day 5. We've all heard of Bugs Bunny and Peter Rabbit, but how about Melvin Rabbit? This lop-eared lagomorph is apparently quite the celebrity among Canadian magicians. According to the bio on his website, he's the only rabbit to be accepted as a member of the Canadian Association of Magicians. He's also "Founder and President of the International Rabbit Union. It is the world's biggest and fastest-growing union." Ouch. Also according to his website, in 2005 he'd been in show business for 35 years. Don't how long rabbits generally live, but Melvin may have already gone to that big carrot patch in the sky.
Mr. Rabbit's manager, or Svengali or Colonel Tom Parker, if you will, Sir Nemo Turner, offers quite the range of Melvin-related products and services, depending on whether or not Melvin is still with us.

On July 18, 1959, the New York Times announced the death of Billie Holiday. On the same day 8 years later the paper would print John Coltrane's obituary.
The Mudd has lots of recordings of performances and compositions by Billie Holiday and John Coltrane.

On a happier note, on this day in 1953 Elvis Presley recorded two songs ("My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin") for $4 at Sun Records in Memphis. You can hear the beginning of "My Happiness" on the Sun Studio audio tour

We've put together a jazz combo consisting of people whose birthdays are today. We could succumb to the current fashion and say "We have four musicians and a _____," (you fill in the blank) but we won't.
Here they are in alphabetical order:
Vince Guaraldi, piano - the late, great composer did the "Charlie Brown" music for TV, but also played piano with Woody Herman, among others, and won a Grammy Award for "Cast Your Fate to the Wind."
Wilfred Middlebrooks, double bass - played with Buddy Collette and Eric Dolphy, and toured internationally with Ella Fitzgerald. He later worked for the U.S. Postal Service.
Dane Maxim Richeson, drums - LU's own master percussionist. He not only teaches up a storm here, but tours extensively, records, and studies varies drumming styles abroad.
Peter Schickele, composer - the indescribable creator of P.D.Q. Bach, he's also a legit composer, performer, and music educator (Public Radio International's Schickele Mix.)
Dawn Upshaw, vocals - American soprano, she's known primarily for opera, but is also at home with solo recitals and popular music.

As you know, we are one day into Rabbit Week. Probably in honor of Rabbit Week, today the Corinium Museum in the Cotswold district in England will be showing the film Miss Potter, based on the life of Beatrix Potter, the creator of Peter Rabbit.
Also, today is the birthday of English pianist Johanna MacGregor, a rabbitty name if ever there was one. And, spookily, one of the stars of Miss Potter is Ewan McGregor.
Eat some carrots, hop around and try to avoid getting eaten by a hawk. And read about Beatrix Potter in books in the Mudd. We even have Miss Potter.

We're happy to announce a new resource in the Mudd: Smithsonian Global Sound, an audio streaming database of world music. You can not only listening to sound files, but also read liner notes, create your own playlists and view album art. You can search for terms or browse by country, genre, cultural group, language, instrument, artist, ensemble, album or label. It includes American genres such as American folk, blues, bluegrass, old time country and music of Native Americans.
If you're on campus, you can access SGS here, or search "title begins with..." smithsonian global sound in LUCIA to get to the link.

Today is the day everyone dreads. Some people are even afraid to go out in public, and well they should be.
It's "Embrace Your Geekness" day, the day to brandish those multiple flash drives on your key ring or bite the heads off chickens. Our friends at Merriam-Webster offer this bland definition of a geek: "an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity." Release your inner geek today by performing the simpliest task using the maximum amount of electronic gadgets. Or if your computer blows up, don't call Tech Support. Grab a tool and take a whack at it yourself.
To read more about that chicken head biting thing, try the novel Geek Love in the Mudd.

We hate to admit it, but we didn't invent Lee Tomboulian. He had quite a musical life before he ever heard of LU. Here he is on piano with some University of North Texas jazz ensembles. We also threw in a few UNT jazz CDs without Lee just for fun.

The library has switched over to the newly launched, completely redesigned version of LexisNexis Academic. Among the highlights of this new release is a simplified news search which lets you search across all newspapers. Other highlights of the new release include:

* Shepard's Citations expanded to cover all federal and state courts
* Company Dossier will be included in all U.S. subscriptions
* Search across broad content such as all news or all federal and state cases
* Ability to create ad hoc combined sources
* Export citations to RefWorks

Tutorials and other helpful tips are available in the right sidebar on the new site.

The latest edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, available this fall, includes around 100 new words. "Ginormous," "Bollywood," and "Smackdown" are among our favorites, but "crunk," another added word, is new to us. It's "a style of Southern rap music." Unfortunately, the Mudd has no crunk that we're aware of. But, believe it or not, we do have a surprising number of recordings of other popular music genres. Here's a list. Just pick your favorite term and search Music Recordings using "Subject begins with..." in LUCIA.

On this day in 1804, Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton right in Weehawken. We think it was because Hamilton traveled forward in a time machine and was reading The Family Shakspeare [sic] to him.
If you are skeptical of this theory, read all about the duel in books and electronic resources in the Mudd.

July 11 is Bowdler's Day, the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Bowdler. He was a physician, but in the late 18th century he gave up medicine and obtained an introduction to Elizabeth Montagu, 'Queen of the Blues' (and you thought it was Bessie Smith) through whom he became part of a literary and philanthropic circle. This literary interest led him, in 1818, to produce the work for which he is most widely known: The Family Shakspeare [sic]. The subtitle of the book explains its purpose: to omit those words and expressions "which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family." He also cleaned up Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although how a decline and fall can be told with bunnies and kitties is beyond us. And that, children, is how we got the word bowdlerize.

Yes, there's still more. This time it's jazza-ramma-blamma-zamma. We've got another award-winning LU Jazz Ensemble CD plus more Bad Plus, Yellowjackets, and some Michael Brecker.

Here we are already into the second week of July. It just doesn't seem possible that it's been over a month since we announced the acquisition of CDs featuring Lee Tomboulian. We've got a brand new pile today, and you'll find him on two of them. We've also got some Bach, a Georgian composer, Mario Lanza, LU performances and a mystery CD hiding in the carpeting.

It has been brought to our attention that the warm story of the rescued ducks may have had a more sinister angle. This photo taken by Donncha O Caoimh and posted on the inphotos.org website reveals the dark side of ducks. Snopes.com also has an entry on this Wild Kingdom gone bad incident.
We don't want to encourage people to turn the other way when they see ducklings in trouble, but just keep an eye on the mom.

We didn't want to report this incident until we were certain how it all turned out. Yesterday in Appleton's Old Third Ward near downtown, 10 baby ducks were heard peeping from underneath the sidewalk. They had fallen through a sewer grate. The distraught mom was crossing a busy street, back and forth, with neighbors stopping traffic. APD was called and a Community Police van appeared along with other neighbors carrying a large net and a crowbar. After much coaxing the mom settled into a safe grassy area and after a while the babies were freed. The family was last seen disappearing between two houses heading for the Fox River.
Thanks to APD and the concerned people of the Old Third Ward for a happy outcome.

Pounding nails into gigantic animals. This comes under the category of, nope, wouldn't want to do that for a living. But plenty of people do, even though their shops aren't on street corners anymore. They're farriers (or ferriers) and they not only make and install horseshoes, they also care for the hooves. If you remember your science, ferrum is Latin for iron, number 26 in your periodic table of elements.
It's National Farriers Week, so when you admire a well-shod horse with healthy hooves, thank a farrier.
The Mudd has many 18th and 19th century books and pamphlets in electronic format on farriery. Yes, that's a word.

We missed this important anniversary, but it bears relating. On July 6, 1957, a 16-year-old John Lennon and his skiffle band The Quarry Men were playing for a church function in Woolton just outside Liverpool. A mutual friend introduced Lennon to Paul McCartney, then 15 and a pretty good guitar player and singer. A few days later McCartney was invited to join the band. Then they wrote and recorded some stuff.

Just a heads up: Friday, July 6, is "Take Your Webmaster to Lunch Day." Make it someplace good if you value your workplace's public face.
If you can't think of anything to talk about, just toss around the phrases "cell padding," "java script," and maybe "layer side bar."

On July 5, 1954, Elvis Presley made his first commercial recording, "That's All Right," at Sun Studio in Memphis. He'd recorded "My Happiness" a year earlier in the same studio, but didn't much impress Sam Phillips, Sun's founder.
Many believe this recording ushered in the rock 'n' roll era, but black artists had been recording rock 'n' roll at Sun since 1950 and Bill Haley and his Comets were listed on Billboard charts with their song "Crazy Man Crazy" in 1953. This, however, was something new: a startling combination of country, gospel, rhythm and blues, and straight-ahead blues that was quite marketable in both the north and the south.
You can hear a little "That's All Right" on the Sun Studio home page. And while you're there, take the audio/video tour.

Let's listen to some Beverly Sills today.
The Art of Beverly Sills, includes Marietta's Lied ("Glück, das mir verblieb") from Die tote Stadt. Spectacular.
The Ballad of Baby Doe, a 30-year-old Beverly in a reissue of the 1959 recording.
The Barber of Seville, a videocassette of a 1976 broadcast from the New York State Theater.
Handel's Julius Caesar with the New York City Opera Chorus and Orchestra from 1967.
Manon, videocassette, "Live from Lincoln Center," 1977.
another Manon, this one from 1970. Compare and contrast.
Roberto Devereux, bel canto, her specialty.

Today, July 2, is I "Forgot Day." To celebrate, we must pay tribute to Steve Martin. He is, after all, the one who explained how to be a millionaire and not pay any taxes. First, you get a million dollars. Second, you don't pay any taxes. Then when the IRS comes after you for not paying any taxes, you simply say, "I forgot."
Try to use this handy phrase often today, and view possibly the finest Steve Martin performance in a feature film, The Spanish Prisoner. Check it out from the Mudd, but don't forget to return it.