In the risque Guys & Dolls number “Take Back Your Mink”, Adelaide tells her generous beau to “Hollanderize” the mink he gave her and give it to someone else. If you do a Google search on “Hollanderize” the result is, not surprisingly, a page of links to Guys & Dolls lyrics. But if you search on “Hollander Furs” you get a page of information from Virtual Newark N.J. on A. Hollander & Son, dyers and dressers of furs. This firm was one of the “oldest established permanent (not floating)” businesses in Newark. And unless I get further proof, I’m going to believe they are the origins of the coined verb that may have been in prominent use amongst the society gals of New York back in the days of Runyonland.

Recognizing similar styles of art is easy and once you know the various categories you can identify some pieces, sometimes even naming the artists of popular works. But when you see a similar style in different contexts, especially out of the art world context, sometimes you don’t know to make a connection. I stumbled upon David Lance Goines’ website today and my brain finally clicked together the wine labels, Chez Panisse cookbook covers, other book covers, and posters that I had encountered in the past and never thought to connect as the work of one mind.

Staying Cool
For almost endless variations on a theme, browse through the photos at the Antique Fan Collectors Association website. You’ll find vintage fans with 2 blades, 6 blades, metal blades, rubber blades, engines for oscillation or other mechanical tricks to create back and forth motion, and even different engine types. If you prefer your fans unplugged, take a peek at the International Fan Collector’s Guild where human-powered fans are the focus. Here, paper, feathers, fabric, wood, ivory, and early plastics combine to create a self-directed breeze.

Words New to Me

Chronolith – a coinage (time + stone) you may be familiar with if you’ve read the book by Robert Charles Wilson. A clever and unusual clock created by Marcel Bétrisey also bears the Chronolith title. The pendulum of the clock is powered by light, using the principle you may have observed in a Crooke’s radiometer. Two sensors help keep the clock accurate by checking the swing of the pendulum using the lights that power it. Ingenius. (thx j.r.)

Tellurians and Orreries – when a globe just isn’t enough. A tellurian (or tellurium) is designed to show phenomenon such as seasons and eclipses which are best illustrated by showing the relationship between the earth, sun, moon and maybe a planet too. You can operate the gears to watch the earth go around the sun and the moon around the earth. An orrery shows all the planets and their positions, sometimes not to scale, around the sun. It may even include the moons of the other planets as well. Again, mechanical gears allow you to see the various orbits.

Blu-tack, which kept the posters from falling off my walls in college, is not just a handy tool, it’s an art medium. With works such as “Bunny”, “Cerulean Primate”, “Brontosaurus” and “Fishy” can international recognition from the art community be far off?

Prosody is “the rhythmic and intonational aspect of language” and it can be a useful feature in language recognition and absolutely critical when the language is tonal like Chinese. Researchers are developing prosody detection methods with the intent of deciphering emotions. Determining the models of various speech characteristics is a first step, and sometimes a daunting task as the various characteristics of volume, pitch, and pauses must be identified across words and sentences. Once the patterns are established, the recognizer can make the matches and guess that a speaker is angry because they are speaking louder and with exaggerated emphasis. Of course if yelling at a voicemail system gets you quickly transferred to a live person, won’t everyone do it? Perhaps the next step will be judging the sincerity of the angry tone.

The second article in the NY Times’ series “Notes from Music Camp” concentrates on Toby Perlman. The idea of the camp, though she may not have known it at the time, formed early on in her musical training as she experienced the competitiveness of Interlochen where students audition each week in front of the entire camp for placement. I know people who have thrived there, and perhaps those are the ones who can successfully navigate a difficult career in music, but many do lose the joy and purpose, as Mrs. Perlman envisioned it, of music camp. She also had a father who prioritized her music over everything else. She found she could actually enjoy studying violin under Dorothy DeLay’s tutelage and met Itzhak Perlman at Meadowmount in 1963. Four of their five children are musicians. Perlman Music Program is a dream Mrs. Perlman didn’t know she had, as the idea of it sprang almost fully grown from her head, nurtured by years of personal experiences.

Even more fruity, colored sodas are on the way. Joining Pepsi Blue, Dr Pepper is introducing another primary color, Red Fusion. It has the Dr Pepper flavors as a base with berries thrown into the mix. Meanwhile, Sobe nabbed the other primary color and introduced its first carbonated drink, Mr. Green. Named after their lizard mascot, it is “a cola with a cherry overtone, a peppery kick, a pinch of ginseng.” Not to be left in the dust with their merely brown Vanilla Coke, Coca-Cola is reviving the Fanta brand with strawberry, pineapple, grape and orange flavors. All this color may make you yearn for the spectacular flop Crystal Pepsi. I just want some tart homemade lemonade. Or water.

Busy busy. Back tomorrow.

I enjoy reading old cookbooks. Actually, I enjoy reading all cookbooks, new, old and somewhere in between. But I enjoy the old ones the same way I enjoy old girls’ series books. They bring you back to a time when a woman’s place was in the home, and yet there were opportunities for her to make her mark if she was creative. I enjoy reading through the Cookery section of an early edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, written by Fannie Farmer, because it explains how a cooking range works and how to build a fire in it using wood and coals. In 1918, an “electric range is desirable where electricity is inexpensive or cost need not be considered.” We’ve made a lot of progress since the times of recipes that never begin “preheat oven to 350 degrees.”