The Library of Congress has acquired the personal papers of American astronomer, astrobiologist and science communicator Carl Sagan (1934-1996).  A celebrated scientist, educator, television personality and prolific author, Sagan was a consummate communicator who bridged the gap between academe and popular culture.  The Sagan collection has come to the Library through the generosity of writer, producer and director Seth MacFarlane, and is officially designated The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive.  The collection comprises approximately 800 boxes of materials that document Sagan’s life and work and includes his extensive correspondence with scientific colleagues and other important figures of the 20th century.  It also includes book drafts, publications files, "idea files" on various subjects, records of various symposia, NASA files and academic files covering the years he taught at Cornell University.  Among the personal files are his birth announcement, handwritten notebooks of his earliest thoughts and grammar-school report cards.  In addition to manuscript materials, the collection includes photographs, audiotapes and videocassettes.  Researchers and scholars will be able to use the collection once it has been fully processed by the Library’s archivists.  http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2012/12-104.html

George Dawes Green (born 1954) is an American novelist and the founder of the storytelling organization The Moth.  Green published his first novel, The Caveman's Valentine, in 1994, and it was adapted into a film starring Samuel L. Jackson.  He quickly followed that success with The Juror, also adapted into a film, starring Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin.  Green did not publish another novel until 2009, when Ravens was released.  Set in Green's native Georgia, Ravens was critically acclaimed and hailed by the LA Times as "a triumphant return."  In 1997, Green founded The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization based in New York City.  The idea for The Moth came from evenings Green spent staying up late with friends, exchanging stories, while moths flitted around the lights.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dawes_Green  

When Caren Berg told colleagues at a recent staff meeting, "There's new people you should meet," her boss Don Silver broke in, says Ms. Berg, a senior vice president at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., marketing and crisis-communications company.  "I cringe every time I hear" people misuse "is" for "are," Mr. Silver says.  The company's  chief operations officer, Mr. Silver also hammers interns to stop peppering sentences with "like." For years, he imposed a 25-cent fine on new hires for each offense. "I am losing the battle," he says.  Managers are fighting an epidemic of grammar gaffes in the workplace.  Many of them attribute slipping skills to the informality of email, texting and Twitter where slang and shortcuts are common.  Such looseness with language can create bad impressions with clients, ruin marketing materials and cause communications errors, many managers say.  "I'm shocked at the rampant illiteracy" on Twitter, says Bryan A. Garner, author of "Garner's Modern American Usage" and president of LawProse, a Dallas training and consulting firm.  He has compiled a list of 30 examples of "uneducated English," such as saying "I could care less," instead of "I couldn't care less," or, "He expected Helen and I to help him," instead of "Helen and me."  Patricia T. O'Conner, author of a humorous guidebook for people who struggle with grammar, fields workplace disputes on a blog she cowrites, Grammarphobia.  "These disagreements can get pretty contentious," Ms. O'Conner says.  One employee complained that his boss ordered him to make a memo read, "for John and I," rather than the correct usage, "for John and me," Ms. O'Conner says.  In workplace-training programs run by Jack Appleman, a Monroe, N.Y., corporate writing instructor, "people are banging the table," yelling or high-fiving each other during grammar contests he stages, he says.  "People get passionate about grammar," says Mr. Appleman, author of a book on business writing.   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303410404577466662919275448.html

Words with root "form" (shape):  inform, reform, conform, transform, perform 

Read about word families at: 
http://furnitureman.hubpages.com/hub/The-Word-Families-of-the-English-Language

 NASA's orbiting Kepler telescope has discovered an unlikely pair of planets orbiting a distant star.  One is small and rocky, the other is large and gaseous.  What makes them unusual is that both are orbiting close to their parent star and they routinely come very close to each other, within only 1.2 million miles.  "Here we have a pair of planets in nearby orbits but with very different densities," said astronomer Steve Kawaler of Iowa State University, one of the co-authors of the report appearing in the journal Science. "How they both got there and survived is a mystery."  Kepler is designed to detect planets circling other stars by observing variations in the stars' brightness as their planets pass between the star and Earth.  Astronomers using it have so far identified 72 confirmed planets and have several hundred more possibilities. The new planetary pair was identified circling a star called Kepler-36, which is about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.  The star was already known to have one planet circling it.  Thomas H. Mauch II  http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-twin-planets-20120621,0,1345332.story?track=rss 

New York artist Frank Stella's new sculptures come with their own soundtrack.  Now Mr. Stella has found inspiration in 18th-century harpsichord sonatas.  His new group of metal sculptures, on view at New York's FreedmanArt gallery, are colorful, coiled bundles of resin tubes that appear to sprout from the walls like exploding electronic devices or sound waves.  Each work is named after a sonata by Domenico Scarlatti, an Italian composer whose lively dance pieces were all the rage in Europe during the Rococo heyday of Versailles.  In college, Mr. Stella devoured the writings of Richard Kirkpatrick, a musicologist who gained fame in 1953 for producing the first complete catalog of Scarlatti's sonatas, all 555 of them.  Talks with Mr. Kirkpatrick helped fuel this ongoing series, called "Scarlatti Kirkpatrick."  Scarlatti, who lived from 1685 to 1757, was in his 60s when he began composing his sonatas.  That "comforted" Mr. Stella, who said he was 70 years old when he started the sculpture series six years ago.  Kelly Crow   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303561504577493141381505010.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5

July 2 events

1679 – Europeans first visit Minnesota and see headwaters of Mississippi in an expedition led by Daniel Greysolon de Du Luth.

1698 – Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.

1776 – The Continental Congress adopts a resolution severing ties with the Kingdom of Great Britain although the wording of the formal Declaration of Independence is not approved until July 4.

1777 – Vermont becomes the first American territory to abolish slavery.
1890 – The U.S. Congress passes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
1964 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 meant to prohibit segregation in public places.