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FTC Provides Tips for Saving Money at the Gas Pump and Cooling Your Home
News release: "With summer on the way, hotter days and vacation road trips are coming up fast. Because the costs of cooling your home and filling up your car can add up, the Federal Trade Commission is offering tips to save you money. Saving Starts @ Home: The Insider Story on Conserving Energy, offers energy conservation tips to help consumers save money in every room of the house. For example, for the attic, the FTC explains the ABCs of insulation. Among other tips for the kitchen, consumers find advice on using the newly redesigned Energy Guide labels available for all appliances. At Saving Money at the Gas Pump: A Bumper-to-Bumper Guide, consumers can find tips for improving fuel efficiency from bumper to bumper on a car."

Featured Polish author and artist: Bruno Schulz (1892-1942)
Schulz seems to have become a writer by chance, as he was discouraged by influential colleagues from publishing his first short stories. His aspirations were refreshed, however, when several letters that he wrote to a friend, in which he gave highly original accounts of his solitary life and the details of the lives of his fellow citizens, were brought to the attention of the novelist Zofia Nałkowska. She encouraged Schulz to have them published as short fiction, and The Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy Cynamonowe) was published in 1934; in English-speaking countries, it is most often referred to as The Street of Crocodiles, a title derived from one of the chapters. This novel-memoir was followed three years later by Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą). The original publications were fully illustrated by Schulz himself; in later editions of his works, however, these illustrations are often left out or are poorly reproduced. He also helped his fiancée translate Franz Kafka's The Trial into Polish, in 1936. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz

Links to drawings, articles and writings of Bruno Schulz: http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/web/arts_culture/literature/fiction/schulz/link.shtml

We are all capable of "hearing" shapes and sizes and perhaps even "tasting" sounds, according to researchers. This blending of sensory experiences, or synaesthesia, they say, influences our perception and helps us make sense of a jumble of simultaneous sensations. Oxford University scientists found that people associate lower-pitched sounds with larger and more rounded shapes. One of the team is now working with chef Heston Blumenthal to incorporate words into a new dining experience. Find story and pictures at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8070210.stm

Coming to Shumaker charity sale in Toledo
Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy hardbound 656 pages
Cold Fire by Dean Koontz hardbound 382 pages
Dead Girls Are Easy by Terri Garey softbound 372 pages
witty and entertaining novel by sister of Tampa reader Pam Santamaria
Finding Moon by Tony Hillerman hardbound 319 pages
http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Finding_Moon

Daffodils by William Wordsworth public domain
I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

On June 8, 1867 Mark Twain (books by this author) set off on a tour of Europe and the Middle East. He traveled on a steamship with a large group of American tourists who wanted to go on a Holy Land pilgrimage. He said, "It was to be a picnic on a gigantic scale." Twain was just beginning to make a name for himself as a writer, and when he got back from the cruise, his publisher gave him six months to write a 600-page book. And he did: He published The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrim's Progress (1869), which sold the most copies of any of his books during his lifetime.
June 8 is the birthday of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, born in Richland Center, Wisconsin (1867). He designed houses and buildings that complemented the place they were built in. He said, "The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." The Writer’s Almanac