The 2009 Newbery Medal winner is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean, and published by HarperCollins Children's Books. See description and list of 2009 honor books at: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/newberymedal/newberymedal.cfm

Scrip is a currency adopted by towns in western Massachusetts to support locally owned businesses over national chains. There are about 844,000 BerkShares in circulation, worth $759,600 at the fixed exchange rate of 1 BerkShare to 90 U.S. cents, according to program organizers. The paper scrip is available in denominations of one, five, 10, 20 and 50. The BerkShares program is one of about a dozen such efforts in the nation. Local groups in California, Kansas, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin run similar ones . One of the oldest is Ithaca Hours, which went into circulation in 1991 in Ithaca, New York. Berkshire Hills Bancorp Inc., a western Massachusetts bank that exchanges BerkShares for dollars, is considering BerkShares-denominated checks and debit cards. http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0530157720070619?feedType=RSS&rpc=22

Budapest is known for its Celtic settlements from the 3rd century BC. In the first decades B.C. Transdanubia was conquered by the Romans who incorporated it into the Roman empire under the name of Pannonia. Aquincum, the now Óbuda district, developed to Pannonia's capital. After Roman withdrawal, it was first controlled by Huns then by Eastern Goths, Longobards and Avars. From the 8th century it was inhabited by Slavs, vassals of the Franks.
The Hungarians appeared in the late 9th century. They established their first settlements on the island of Csepel and in Aquincum. After the Mongol invasion in 1241-42 the Buda castle was fortified. Aquincum was given the name Óbuda (i.e. old Buda), in contrast to reconstructed (=new) Buda. In 1873 the formerly separate but interdependent towns Buda, Pest and Óbuda were integrated into one administrative unit: Budapest. http://cityguide.budapestrooms.com/history.htm

The classic Ponzi scheme is elegantly simple. Named after Carlo Ponzi, an Italian who immigrated to Boston in the early 20th century, it’s a variation on the classic pyramid scheme, which works by promising—and for a time delivering—spectacular returns on investments. The scheme’s operator, sitting atop the pyramid, starts by bringing in a small number of investors and paying them “dividends,” using the money that comes in from the next round of investors—and continuing the pattern with later investors. Historians say versions of the scam first appeared in the 17th century. In one of the earliest schemes in the U.S., in 1899 a New York City grifter named Charles Miller promised stock market investors annual returns of 520 percent. He pocketed nearly $20 million in today’s dollars before he was exposed. Since then, Ponzi schemes have flourished from Romania to the Philippines. In the 1990s, two-thirds of the population of Albania poured $1.2 billion into Ponzi schemes, some of which were endorsed by government officials. When the schemes collapsed in 1997, the country was torn by rioting, the government was toppled, and the U.N. had to send 7,000 troops to restore order. In 1995, John Bennett, a Philadelphia businessman who loudly proclaimed his Christian faith, recruited investors from Christian organizations by promising to double their money in six months. As with Ponzi, because Bennett’s investors saw him as one of their own, they trusted him. Some lost their entire life savings. Religious groups, in fact, are a favorite hunting ground for financial predators. “I’ve seen more money stolen in the name of God than any other way,” says securities regulator Deborah Bortner. http://www.theweek.com/article/index/92485/3/Madoff_New_victims_old_scam

Here's a literary parable for the 21st century.
Lisa Genova, 38, was a health-care-industry consultant in Belmont, Mass., who wanted to be a novelist, but she couldn't get her book published for love or money. She had a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard, but she couldn't get an agent. "I did what you're supposed to do," she says. "I queried literary agents. I went to writers' conferences and tried to network. I e-mailed editors. Nobody wanted it." So Genova paid $450 to a company called iUniverse and published her book, Still Alice, herself. That was in 2007. By 2008 people were reading Still Alice. Not a lot of people, but a few, and those few were liking it. Genova wound up getting an agent after all--and an offer from Simon & Schuster of just over half a million dollars. Borders and Target chose it for their book clubs. Barnes & Noble made it a Discover pick. On Jan. 25, Still Alice makes its debut on the New York Times best-seller list at No. 5. "So this is extreme to extreme, right?" Genova says. "This time last year, I was selling the book out of the trunk of my car." (See the top 10 non-fiction books of 2008.)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1873122-1,00.html

MONEY LAW The Coinage Act of 1792 (1 Stat. 246) establishes a mint and regulates coins in the United States.
http://www.constitution.org/uslaw/coinage1792.txt or http://nesara.org/articles/coinage_act_of_1792.htm
The first mint building was located in Philadelphia, then the U.S. capital. It was the first building of the Republic raised under the Constitution. The Mint was made an independent agency in 1799, and under the Coinage Act of 1873 (17 Stat. 424), became part of the Department of the Treasury. It was placed under the auspices of the Treasurer of the United States in 1981. The largest and main facility is located in Philadelphia, one of four active coin-producing mints. The current facility, designed by Vincent G. Kling and Associates in 1969, is the fourth Philadelphia Mint.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/2564490354/

Records of the U.S. Mint, 1792-1994
http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/104.html

On January 29, 1845 Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" was first published in the New York Evening Mirror. It begins:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more."
"The Raven" became the target of many parodies. Abraham Lincoln, a country lawyer at the time, read a parody before he read the real thing. Lincoln eventually committed all of "The Raven" to memory. The Writer’s Almanac