The Toledo-Lucas County Public Library has 20 branches, a lending collection of 2.4 million books, compact discs, DVDs and more.  There are 325,011 library card holders.  In 2012, nearly 3 million people visited the library, 488,124 questions were asked and  6,931,417 items circulated.   In 1838, the Toledo Young Men's Association organized with the objective of establishing a public meeting place and public library.  The Toledo Library Association was formed in 1864, and the two groups merged in 1867.  In 1873, a free public library was organized.  In 1917, the first Carnegie-funded branches were Kent, Locke, South, Mott and Birmingham.  In 2001, the main library expanded to 271,000 square feet.  In 2009, the Reynolds Corner branch became the first public library in Ohio to win LEED certification.  In 2011, reduction in sate funds forced the library to make a 27 percent reduction in hours, staffing and materials.  In 2013, an operating levy passed with a 67 percent vote.  Hours, staffing, materials and services were restored.  The Toledo Blade  Sept. 1, 2013

The original library at Michigan and Ontario opened in 1890.  The current main library at Michigan and Madison was built in 1940.  Go to images in Google and type Toledo-Lucas County Public Library to see pictures. 

Books as holy objects and libraries as sacred places

Author Lilian Jackson Braun:  “A library card is the start of a lifelong adventure.”
Actor John Goodman:  “When I was young, we couldn't afford much.  But, my library card was my key to the world.”
Educator and Writer Mary Ellen Chase:  "There is no substitute for books in the life of a child."
Author Maurice Sendak:  "As a child, I felt that books were holy objects, to be caressed, rapturously sniffed, and devotedly provided for. I gave my life to them.  I still do.  I continue to do what I did as a child; dream of books, make books and collect books."
Poet and Author Margaret Walker:  "When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book."
Orator, Lecturer and Preacher Henry Ward Beecher:  "A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life."
Author Alice Hoffman:  "Books may well be the only true magic."
Actress Katharine Hepburn:  "What in the world would we do without our libraries?"
http://www.ala.org/alsc/issuesadv/kidscampaign/kidsquotes

Time for fresh figs

Find recipes for fig and almond cake, fig vinaigrette and baked figs and goat cheese at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/dining/the-fig-now-yields-its-charms.html?_r=0

Time for eggplant

Find recipes for grilled ratatouille salad at:  http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/grilled-ratatouille-salad  and http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/grilled-ratatouille-salad-recipe/index.html and http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Grilled-Ratatouille-Salad-with-Feta-Cheese-103770 

Since June 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his home as a gift to the American people, Hyde Park has stood as the first presidential library and museum.  Now, this most senior of our presidential libraries is also the freshest.  After a three-year renovation, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum has unveiled a redesigned permanent exhibition, an expansion to 12,000 from 8,000 square feet that reinvigorates Roosevelt's legacy for visitors.  The meticulously mapped redesign has a sound chronological sequence of exhibits, employing dynamic colors and original photos that are enlarged and turned into panels of disparate sizes and shapes.  All of the presidential memorabilia and historical documents remain on display.  Roosevelt's birthplace, an estate that commands beautiful views of the Hudson and of Dutchess County's pastoral countryside, is a constant reminder of his privileged upbringing.  But upon entering the revamped library, class distinctions are left behind in favor of a united America.  A first luminous wall of letters to President Roosevelt, bordering a photo of a smiling, sanguine commander in chief, gives voice to Americans of the era.  "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little," reads an excerpt from Roosevelt's January 1937 inaugural address.  Roosevelt as the activist president who changed the way government operates is front-and-center.  The library inventively captures New Deal programs as a kind of construction site of financial reforms rebuilding the country, brick by brick.  Creative technologies enhance the presentations.  The first in a trail of interactive features is a digital family scrapbook linking FDR's family lineage to that of our earlier president Theodore Roosevelt.  Visitors can sit in reconstructed 1940s dining rooms and tap to listen to radio broadcasts of Fireside Chats.  There are also stations where museum-goers can look up names associated with the Roosevelt years.  Multimedia presentations "confront" debates of the age, such as the effectiveness of New Deal reforms, with digitally accessible primary source documents—as well as possible moral breaches, such as Roosevelt's internment of Japanese-Americans and his delayed response to the Holocaust and to Jews seeking political refuge.  One of the most important assets of the library is added context.  Few modern-day visitors have experienced the mass unemployment and sheer panic of the Great Depression.  The introductory video montage dramatically imagines viewers on a bread line in that most dire of times.  Alexander Heffner  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323665504579031211068320066.html?mod=djemITP_h 

trouper  noun

1.  an actor, especially a member of a touring company.  2.  a veteran actor.   3.  a loyal, dependable worker or participant in an undertaking:  He's a real trouper, even when the going is rough.

Origin:  1885–90, Americanism   http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/trouper 

September 16 is the 259th day of the year (260th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar.  There are 106 days remaining until the end of the year.  Events:

1620 – The Mayflower starts her voyage to North America

1880 – The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York.  The Sun is the nation's oldest, continuously-independent college daily.

1908 – The General Motors Corporation is founded.

1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City.

1963 – Malaysia is formed from the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak.  However, Singapore soon leaves this new country.

1966 – The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera, Antony and Cleopatra.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_16