What trees are to Paris, fountains are to Rome. Read an essay by Robert Hughes on The Forever City at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653383557101562.html

Richard George Adams (born 1920) is an English novelist who is best known as the author of Watership Down. He studied modern history at university before serving in the British Army during World War II. He completed his studies after the war and joined the English Civil Service. In 1974, two years after Watership Down was published, Adams became a full-time author. Adams had originally begun telling the story of Watership Down to his two daughters, and they insisted that he publish it as a book. It took two years to write . In 1972, after seven other publishers had turned down the manuscript for Watership Down, Rex Collings agreed to publish the work. The book gained international acclaim almost immediately, and established Adams as one of the foremost contemporary English writers. Over the next few years Watership Down sold over a million copies worldwide. It has become a modern classic, and in 1972 was awarded both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Award for Children's Fiction. To date, Adams' best-known work has sold over 50 million copies worldwide. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1975.
Just before his 90th birthday, he wrote a new story for a charity book Gentle Footprints to raise funds for The Born Free Foundation. See a list of his books at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Adams I have just finished reading Traveller, a novel by Richard Adams. In the story, Traveller, companion and devoted horse of Robert E. Lee, narrates his views, including his perceptions and misperceptions, of the Civil War.

Traveller (1857–1871) was Confederate General Robert E. Lee's most famous horse during the American Civil War. Traveller, originally named Jeff Davis, was born near the Blue Sulphur Springs, in Greenbrier County, Virginia (now West Virginia), raised by Andrew Johnston. An American Saddlebred, he was of the Gray Eagle stock, and, as a colt, took the first prize at the Lewisburg, Virginia, fairs in 1859 and 1860. As an adult gelding, he was a sturdy horse, 16 hands high and 1,100 pounds (500 kg), iron gray in color with black points, a long mane and flowing tail. In the spring of 1861, a year before achieving fame as a Confederate general, Robert E. Lee was commanding a small force in western Virginia. The quartermaster of the 3rd Virginia Infantry, Captain Joseph M. Broun, was directed to "purchase a good serviceable horse of the best Greenbrier stock for our use during the war." Broun purchased the horse for $175 (approximately $4,000 in 2008) from Andrew Johnston's son, Captain James W. Johnston, and named him Greenbrier. See a picture of Traveller and Robert E. Lee at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(horse)
Quotes by Richard Adams http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7717.Richard_Adams
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/richard_adams.html

The School of Information at the University of Michigan is heading a cooperative effort by four major universities to create better methods for data-sharing among scientists and researchers in the new and growing field of sustainability. The National Science Foundation awarded a two-year, $2 million grant to the School of Information, with $8 million anticipated over the course of the project. This grant will enable the School of Information and its partners at Indiana University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to develop a system whereby sustainability scientists can manage and share their data. http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/people-achievements-in-the-greater-ann-arbor-area-including-arbor-hospice-and-thomson-shore/

Innovators of the Year 2011 from WSJ Magazine November 2011
Art: Ai Weiwei by Kelly Crow http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653413127075114.html
Architecture: Bjarke Ingels by Richard B. Woodward http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653421385657578.html
Design: Joris Laarman by Tom Vanderbilt http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653500690674230.html
Gretchen Craft Rubin (born Kansas City, Missouri) is an American author and attorney. She is author of Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, along with Forty Ways to Look at JFK. Her first book, Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide, parodied self-help books by analyzing and exposing the techniques used to exploit those who strive for those worldly ambitions. Her newest book is The Happiness Project. Rubin received her undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University and was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. She clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and served as a chief adviser to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt. She has also been a lecturer at the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Rubin

The Happiness Project blog http://www.happiness-project.com/

View the 36-page 112th Congress Gold Mouse Awards: Best Practices in Online Communications on Capitol Hill at:
http://congressfoundation.org/storage/documents/CMF_Pubs/cmf-112-gold-mouse-awards.pdf
The nonprofit Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) graded 618 congressional websites and found the most common grade moved from an F in the 111th Congress to a B in the 112th Congress.
View the Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze winners at: http://congressfoundation.org/projects/gold-mouse-project/112th-congress-gold-mouse-award-winners

Granita (grah-NEE-tah) are ices made of water, sugar and a flavoring. They are grainy in texture and are frozen in a pan in the freezer. Choose a large, shallow pan (8 x 12 x 2-inches) that allows the mixture to spread out. While you are assembling the recipe, place the empty pan and your stirring fork in the freezer to chill. Also chill the glasses you will be using to serve the granita in later. Pour the mixture into the pan and place in the freezer. Every 30 minutes, using a fork, stir the granita, scraping it off the bottom and sides of the pan. Break up the frozen parts near the edges into smaller chunks and rake them toward the center. Continue to freeze and break up ice crystals until completely
frozen, about 3 hours. If at any time the granita freezes too hard, simply leave it out at room temperature for a few minutes until it softens enough to be stirred again with a fork. Then return it to the freezer. Find granita recipes using espresso, lemon, raspberry, peach, chocolate and other flavors at: http://www.mangiabenepasta.com/granita.html

An overzealous cleaner in Germany has ruined a piece of modern art worth £690,000 after mistaking it for an eyesore that needed a good scrub. The sculpture by the German artist Martin Kippenberger, widely regarded as one of the most talented artists of his generation until his death in 1997, had been on loan to the Ostwall Museum in Dortmund when it fell prey to the cleaner's scouring pad. The work, called When It Starts Dripping From the Ceiling (Wenn's anfängt durch die Decke zu tropfen), comprised a rubber trough placed underneath a rickety wooden tower made from slats. Inside the trough, Kippenberger had spread a layer of paint representing dried rainwater. He thought it was art: the cleaner saw it as a challenge, and set about making the bucket look like new. A spokeswoman for the museum told German media that the female cleaner "removed the patina from the four walls of the trough". "It is now impossible to return it to its original state," she said, adding that it had been on loan to the museum from a private collector and was valued by insurers at €800,000 (£690,000). She said that cleaning crews had been told to keep 20cm (8in) away from artworks, but it was unclear if the woman – who worked for a company to which cleaning had been outsourced – had received the memo. If Kippenberger is now turning in his grave, he may find solace in the fact that he is not the only artist to have his works ruined by cleaners. In 1986, a "grease stain" by Joseph Beuys valued at about €400,000 was mopped away at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf. In 2004, a cleaner at Tate Britain in London threw away part of a work by another German artist, Gustav Metzger, after mistaking it for rubbish. The cleaner failed to realise that a plastic bag containing discarded paper and cardboard was an integral part of Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art, and not just some litter. The bag was later recovered, but it was too damaged to display, so Metzger replaced it with another bag. Germans are not the only victims. In 2001, Damien Hirst lost a pile of beer bottles, ashtrays and coffee cups, meant to represent the life of an artist, when a caretaker at the Eyestorm Gallery in London cleared it away. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/oct/19/arts.highereducation1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/nov/03/overzealous-cleaner-ruins-artwork