Humanity’s musical treasures—Beethoven piano sonatas, Schubert songs, Mozart symphonies and the like—come to life in performance. But they truly survive as black marks on a page, otherwise known as scores. Now a Web site founded five years ago by a conservatory student, then 19 years old, has made a vast expanse of this repertory available, free. The site, the International Music Score Library Project, has trod in the footsteps of Google Books and Project Gutenberg and grown to be one of the largest sources of scores anywhere. It claims to have 85,000 scores, or parts for nearly 35,000 works, with several thousand being added every month. That is a worrisome pace for traditional music publishers, whose bread and butter comes from renting and selling scores in expensive editions backed by the latest scholarship. More than a business threat, the site has raised messy copyright issues and drawn the ire of established publishers. The site (imslp.org) is an open-source repository that uses the Wikipedia template and philosophy, “a visual analogue of a normal library,” in the words of its founder, Edward W. Guo, the former conservatory student. Volunteers scan in scores or import them from other sources, like Beethoven House, the museum and research institute in Bonn, Germany. Other users oversee copyright issues and perform maintenance. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/arts/music/22music-imslp.html?scp=1&sq=%22free%20music%20scores%22&st=cse

A deaf dachshund is getting some expert help learning more sign language after finding a new home at the Missouri School for the Deaf. The 1-year-old dog named Sparky arrived at the school this winter after receiving training through a program that pairs rescue dogs with prison inmates. When the eight weeks of training were over, the inmates at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking decided they wanted Sparky to live with deaf students. The superintendent of the Fulton school, Barbara Garrison, jumped at the chance. The students continue adding to the sign language Sparky learned from the inmates. He already knows the signs for “no,” “sit,” “lay down,” “stay,” “stop” and “heel.” http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/feb/07/school-adopts-deaf-dachshund/

The Oz books form a book series that begins with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), and that relates the "history" of the Land of Oz. Oz was originally created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen Oz books. Although most of the Oz books are strictly adventures, Baum—as well as many later Oz authors—styled themselves as "Royal Historians" of Oz to emphasize the concept that Oz is a genuine place. Later authors wrote 26 other "official" books after Baum's death. Many other authors have put their own twists on Oz, notably Gregory Maguire's revisionist Wicked (1995). For more such books, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_published_Oz_Apocrypha

lacuna (luh-KYOO-nuh) plural lacunae (luh-KYOO-nee) or lacunas noun
An empty space, gap, missing part, an opening.
From Latin lacuna (hole, gap), from lacus (lake). Earliest documented use: 1663.
diktat (dik-TAT) noun
1. An order or decree imposed without popular consent.
2. A harsh settlement imposed upon a defeated party.
From German Diktat (command, order, dictation), from Latin dictatum (something dictated), from dictare (to dictate), frequentative of dicere (to say). Ultimately from the Indo-European root deik- (to show, to pronounce solemnly), which is also the source of words such as judge, verdict, vendetta, revenge, indicate, dictate, paradigm, interdict, and fatidic. Earliest documented use: 1922, in reference to the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, by Germany. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

A TANK AWAY FROM TOLEDO, COLUMBUS, CHICAGO OR ANN ARBOR

On March 4, we drove to the "Summit City" (Fort Wayne, Indiana) and ate at a Chuck and Bird's, a small restaurant featuring local foods and groceries. You may order food online and have it delivered. We came home with local foods, including honey, maple sugar and bee pollen. http://www.chuckandbirds.com/

At the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, http://www.fwmoa.org/ , we enjoyed seeing Paul Manship's four bronze sculptures, The Moods of Time, and a case of "brilliant cut glass", three pieces created by Libbey Glass of Toledo. http://corporate.libbey.com/History We saw Robert Indiana's picture of Numbers, with the zero titled to one side as the letter O is tilted in his famous LOVE sculpture. Also, we saw a small picture by Claes Oldenburg: Washington Monument, D.C. resembling scissors with the handles drawn underground, and the blades above ground as the obelisk. Quotations on the walls were: Art points us in new directions that make us think and question (Warren Criswell), All children are artists… the problem is how to remain an artist as one grows up. (Pablo Picasso), and I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn' t say any other way - things I had no words for (Georgia O'Keefe). The featured exhibit, on display through April 10, is the work of winners in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. About 1,000 students in grades 7-12 submitted more than 3,000 entries in the annual Scholastic Art and Writing Awards regional competition organized by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Student art entries came from 13 northeast Indiana counties and 13 northwest Ohio counties. Student writing entries came from an area encompassing 52 counties in Indiana and Ohio.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110210/ENT/102100310
The competition was founded in 1923.

We went to the movies at CinemaCenter, just a few blocks from the Art Museum. Fort Wayne Cinema Center, Inc. is a not-for-profit film society founded in 1976. It has just one screen, and there were no commercial ads, and no previews. http://www.cinemacenter.org/ We saw the movie Casino Jack and wanted to find more information on its subject, lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Found this Pulitzer prize winner on Investigative Reporting in 2006: http://www.pulitzer.org/archives/7035 Abramoff was convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy, and was released December 3, 2010. http://www.enotes.com/topic/Jack_Abramoff

Quotes
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. American jurist (1841-1935)
If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams--the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. Robert Southey, poet laureate of England (1774-1843) See Southey's poems, books, quotes and biography at: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/robert_southey