RenoVous

  The oldest restaurant in the world, Casa Botin, in Madrid. It was founded in 1725, but the building itself can be traced back to 1590. French cook Jean Botín first established a bakery.  When he died, his nephew Cándido Remis, opened a small inn and renovated the first floor.  Today there are four floors, and efforts have been made to preserve the inn-like atmosphere. As an inn, they were restricted from selling meat or wine, and could only cook what a guest brought in.  Later, it became known as a "house of meals."   The business is now run by the Gonzalez family, acquired in the 1930's. During the Civil War, the floor was converted into a dining room for militiamen.  After the post-war period, the Gonzalez sons took over and started making the place what it is today. Cheers to 300 years!!

  The Pushkar Camel Fair takes place annually this time of year in Rajasthan. There are camel races as well as beauty contests, with traditional Rajasthani music and dance performances. There is reference to a Kalbelia folk dance, which is snake charming.  The Ghoomar dance is performed by women, and means "to twirl."  Also performed by women, the Chari dance. The event initially served as a gathering place for local communities to trade livestock and celebrate their heritage.  Food stalls sell local specialties such as dal baati churma and malpua. The fair coincides with the Hindu month of Kartik, when believers go to Pushkar Lake for a holy dip. Camels are part of the cultural identity of the desert, not to mention economically important to the people who live there.  To protect declining populations, Rajasthan declared the camel the official state animal back in 2014.  But apparently legislation in 2015, meant to prohibit slaughter and export, has made i...

  First, a few from the LACMA Gala. Angela Bassett Cynthia Erivo Demi Moore Elle Fanning Paloma Elsesser Becky G Teyana Taylor Serena Williams Heidi Klum Halloween!

 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has quite a collection of creepy creatures and strange science. There's even some Scary Stories as told by scientists, of times when they were conducting research. Six Shorts Mummies have long been a subject of Halloween costume and decor, even a horror movie or two.  What could be worse than a long-dead body shambling towards you? One that's turning to black ooze. The Chinchorro mummies are the oldest intentionally mummified human remains, and they're from the Atacama Desert in Chile. With climate change, the humidity is rising, and opportunistic microbes are taking advantage, which deteriorates the mummies' skin. About 100 mummies are housed at the Universidad de Tarapaca Museum, but others are still preserved in their original Arica region burial sites, and they cannot be protected with humidifiers and climate control.

  I was able to finish The Pit and the Pendulum  and I've started The Fall of the House of Usher . I'm no longer entirely sure I have actually read this, I believe I was just vaguely familiar with the tale. I added a fourth to read, but I'm not sure I'll make it. Ligeia  is one I've never even heard of. *** In other Halloween spirit, we did our pumpkins last night.  I have to show off the face my nephew drew. Boo!

  It all started in 1958, when President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency. UCLA Professor of Computer Science, Leonard Kleinrock, was working on developing an information transfer technology called "packet switching," which broke information into smaller bundles.  This made the info easier to transmit and could be reassembled on the receiving end. ARPANET was launched in September of 1969, when the networking hardware was installed. And on this day, the first electronic message was successfully sent from UCLA to Stanford.  The message was supposed to be "LOGIN" but the system crashed after the first two letters, so it was simply "LO." The next nodes added were at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah, followed by Harvard and the University College of London.

  Prague, the capital of Czechia, which is celebrating an independence day today. Czechoslovakia was established in 1918 following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It had been the Kingdom of Bohemia since 1198, becoming crown land in 1867. The Czech Republic and Slovakia split in 1993. *** It was 1787, the night before the premiere of Don Giovanni  in Prague, and Mozart was still working on the overture.  With no time to rehearse, the orchestra had to sight-read in the concert hall.