NEVADA BARR is an award-winning novelist and New York Times best-selling author.  She has a growing number of Anna Pigeon mysteries to her credit as well as numerous other books, short stories, and articles.  She currently resides in New Orleans with her husband, four magical cats, and two adorable dogs.  Nevada was born in the small western town of Yerington, Nevada and raised on a mountain airport in the Sierras.  Both her parents were pilots and mechanics and her sister, Molly, continued the tradition by becoming a pilot for USAir.  Pushed out of the nest, Nevada fell into the theatre, receiving her BA in speech and drama and her MFA in Acting before making the pilgrimage to New York City, then Minneapolis, MN.  For eighteen years she worked on stage, in commercials, industrial training films and did voice-overs for radio.  During this time she became interested in the environmental movement and began working in the National Parks during the summers -- Isle Royale in Michigan, Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, Mesa Verde in Colorado, and then on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi.  Woven throughout these seemingly disparate careers was the written word.  Nevada wrote and presented campfire stories, taught storytelling and was a travel writer and restaurant critic.  Her first novel, Bittersweet was published in 1983.  http://www.nevadabarr.com/biography.htm 

National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon goes beyond the call of duty in this Agatha and Anthony Award-winning mystery series.  She travels to National Parks around the country, solving mysteries in the wilderness and historic locales.  Author Nevada Barr draws on her own experience as a former park ranger to craft these award-winning novels.   See list of titles at http://www.goodreads.com/series/40958-anna-pigeon 

FILM MISCONCEPTIONS  White Wilderness contains a scene that supposedly depicts a mass lemming migration, and ends with the lemmings leaping into the Arctic Ocean.  There have been some reports that the Disney film describes this as an actual suicidal action by the lemmings, but the narrator in the film states that the lemmings are likely not attempting suicide, but rather are migrating and upon encountering water, attempt to cross it.  If the water they attempt to cross is too wide, they suffer exhaustion and drown.  In 1982, the CBC Television news magazine program The Fifth Estate broadcast a documentary about animal cruelty in Hollywood, focusing on White Wilderness as well as the television program Wild Kingdom. Bob McKeown, the host of the CBC program, found that the lemming scene was filmed at the Bow River near downtown Calgary and not at the Arctic Ocean as implied by the film.  He found out that the lemmings did not voluntarily jump into the river but were pushed in by a rotating platform installed by the film crew.  He also interviewed a lemming expert who claimed that the particular species of lemming shown in the film is not known to migrate, much less commit mass suicide.  He also discovered that footage of a polar bear cub falling down an Arctic ice slope was really filmed in a Calgary film studio.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Wilderness_(film)  Hollywood misconceptions "unlearned" while traveling:  Plantation houses are not necessarily big and grand--they may just be houses located on plantations.  Christians were not forced to fight lions in the Colliseum, and Christians did not hide in catacombs (underground cemeteries). 

ENDLESS LIBRARIES

The mirrors, labyrinths, dreams and endless libraries of Jorge Luis Borges now occupy an immensely important position in world literature.  http://splendidlabyrinths.blogspot.com/2013/01/best-stories-by-jorge-luis-borges.html

Stéphane Mallarmé proposed that every reader's duty was to ... theirs.  In endless libraries, like thieves in the night, readers pilfer names vast.

I dare not think that when I die My cherished books will perish too ; That, underneath the golden sky ... my way: Since unto me the thought was given Of endless libraries in Heaven, And never-ending reading days. — Robert Johnson.  Credo (extract)

The biographical description on the book jacket of The Ocean at the End of the Lane" says that author Neil Gaiman "dreams of endless libraries."  http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/648168777

See also Endless Libraries blog at http://endlesslibraries.tumblr.com/ 

Misinformation is mistaken or incorrect information.  Disinformation is false information. 

Misquote leads to misinformation:  Al Gore did not say he invented the Internet.  Al Gore and the Internet (extract) by Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf  Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.  No one person or even small group of persons exclusively “invented” the Internet.  It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community.  But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President.  No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.  Last year (March 9, 1999 interview) the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role.  He said:  “During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”  We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he “invented” the Internet.  Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet.  The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening.  Read more and see excerpt of the 1999 interview on CNN at http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/mjodonnell/cojo258/chapter01/gore.html  Misinformation leads to disinformation as people who know better repeat the misquote.

Disinformation leads to misinformation when people purposely create urban legends and hoaxes, and then--those who believe them--spread them as fact. 

paregmenon  (puh-REG-muh-non)  The juxtaposition of words that have the same roots 

examples:  gracious grace, spacious space 

The first toy library appeared in Los Angeles in 1935, but it was not until the 1960s and 70s that the concept of the toy library reemerged.  This renewed interest was the result of funding of Head Start programs and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, availability of federal funds for day care centers, and the American Library Association establishing the Toys, Games, and Realia Evaluation Committee.  In the 1980s, the Lekotek movement arrived from Sweden; it is a program that provides services to children with special needs and their families in resource and play centers.  The USA Toy Library Association (USA/TLA) was formed in 1984.  http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED390414  See also http://www.magazine.pamplin.vt.edu/spring11/toylibraries.html

Learn about the International World Toy Library Association and link to information on World Play Day at  http://www.itla-toylibraries.org/pages/home/ 

restaurant  noun  1821, from French restaurant "a restaurant," originally "food that restores," noun use of present participle of restaurer "to restore or refresh," from Old French restorer.  In 1765 a man by the name of Boulanger, also known as "Champ d'Oiseaux" or "Chantoiseau," opened a shop near the Louvre (on either the rue des Poulies or the rue Bailleul, depending on which authority one chooses to believe).  There he sold what he called restaurants or bouillons restaurants--that is, meat-based consommés intended to "restore" a person's strength.  Ever since the Middle Ages the word restaurant had been used to describe any of a variety of rich bouillons made with chicken, beef, roots of one sort or another, onions, herbs, and, according to some recipes, spices, crystallized sugar, toasted bread, barley, butter, and even exotic ingredients such as dried rose petals, Damascus grapes, and amber.  In order to entice customers into his shop, Boulanger had inscribed on his window a line from the Gospels:  "Venite ad me omnes qui stomacho laboratis et ego vos restaurabo."  He was not content simply to serve bouillon, however.  He also served leg of lamb in white sauce, thereby infringing the monopoly of the caterers' guild.  The guild filed suit, which to everyone's astonishment ended in a judgment in favor of Boulanger. [Jean-Robert Pitte, "The Rise of the Restaurant," in "Food:  A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present," English editor Albert Sonnenfeld, transl.  Clarissa Botsford, 1999, Columbia University Press]  Italian spelling ristorante attested in English by 1925.   http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=restaurant