Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats is a collection of whimsical poems by T. S. Eliot about feline psychology and sociology, published by Faber and Faber.  The poems were written during the 1930s and included by Eliot, under his assumed name "Old Possum," in letters to his godchildren.  They were collected and published in 1939 with cover illustrations by the author, and quickly re-published in 1940, illustrated in full by Nicolas Bentley.  It has also been published in reillustrated versions by Edward Gorey (1982) and Axel Scheffler (2009).  In 1954 the English composer Alan Rawsthorne set six of the poems in a work for speaker and orchestra entitled Practical Cats, which was recorded soon after, with the actor Robert Donat as the speaker.  At about the same time period another English composer, Humphrey Searle, composed another narrator piece based on the poems, using the flute, piccolo, cello and guitar.  This work, Two Practical Cats, consisted of settings of the poems of Macavity and Growltiger.  The best-known musical adaptation of the poems is the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats.  This musical premiered in London's West End in 1981 and on Broadway in 1982, and went on to become the longest-running Broadway show in history, until it was beaten by another Andrew Lloyd Webber show, The Phantom of the Opera.  As well as the poems in this volume, the musical introduces several additional characters from Eliot's unpublished drafts—most notably Grizabella.  In the film Logan's Run Logan and Jessica meet an old man in the ruins of the United States Senate Chamber during their search for Sanctuary.  The Old Man has many cats and refers to The Naming of Cats, explaining that each cat has three names:  one common, one fancy, and one that only the cat knows.  Later, the Old Man refers to one cat in particular.  This cat is called "Gus," short for Asparagus.  He then goes on to recite parts of "Macavity:  the Mystery Cat".  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Possum's_Book_of_Practical_Cats

Paraphrase of a corporation's golden rule from the novel Critical Judgment by Michael Palmer (1942-2013)  We have the gold--we make the rules.

Although historians disagree on the causes of the French Revolution, the following reasons are commonly cited:  (1)  the increasingly prosperous elite of wealthy commoners—merchants, manufacturers, and professionals, often called the bourgeoisie—produced by the 18th century’s economic growth resented its exclusion from political power and positions of honour; (2)  the peasants were acutely aware of their situation and were less and less willing to support the anachronistic and burdensome feudal system; (3)  the philosophes, who advocated social and political reform, had been read more widely in France than anywhere else; (4)  French participation in the American Revolution had driven the government to the brink of bankruptcy; and (5)  crop failures in much of the country in 1788, coming on top of a long period of economic difficulties, made the population particularly restless.  The Revolution took shape in France when the controller general of finances, Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, arranged the summoning of an assembly of “notables” (prelates, great noblemen, and a few representatives of the bourgeoisie) in February 1787 to propose reforms designed to eliminate the budget deficit by increasing the taxation of the privileged classes.  The assembly refused to take responsibility for the reforms and suggested the calling of the Estates-General, which represented the clergy, the nobility, and the Third Estate (the commoners) and which had not met since 1614.  The efforts made by Calonne’s successors to enforce fiscal reforms in spite of resistance by the privileged classes led to the so-called revolt of the “aristocratic bodies,” notably that of the parlements (the most important courts of justice), whose powers were curtailed by the edict of May 1788.  During the spring and summer of 1788, there was unrest among the populace in Paris, Grenoble, Dijon, Toulouse, Pau, and Rennes. The king, Louis XVI, had to yield; reappointing reform-minded Jacques Necker as the finance minister, he promised to convene the Estates-General on May 5, 1789.  He also, in practice, granted freedom of the press, and France was flooded with pamphlets addressing the reconstruction of the state.  The elections to the Estates-General, held between January and April 1789, coincided with further disturbances, as the harvest of 1788 had been a bad one.  There were practically no exclusions from the voting; and the electors drew up cahiers de doléances, which listed their grievances and hopes.  They elected 600 deputies for the Third Estate, 300 for the nobility, and 300 for the clergy.  The Estates-General met at Versailles on May 5, 1789.  They were immediately divided over a fundamental issue:  should they vote by head, giving the advantage to the Third Estate, or by estate, in which case the two privileged orders of the realm might outvote the third?  On June 17 the bitter struggle over this legal issue finally drove the deputies of the Third Estate to declare themselves the National Assembly; they threatened to proceed, if necessary, without the other two orders.  They were supported by many of the parish priests, who outnumbered the aristocratic upper clergy among the church’s deputies.  When royal officials locked the deputies out of their regular meeting hall on June 20, they occupied the king’s indoor tennis court (jeu de paume) and swore an oath not to disperse until they had given France a new constitution.  The king grudgingly gave in and urged the nobles and the remaining clergy to join the assembly, which took the official title of National Constituent Assembly on July 9; at the same time, however, he began gathering troops to dissolve it.  http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/219315/French-Revolution

See also http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/frenchrevolution.htm and http://history-world.org/french_revolution.htm

The National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic.  The upper house is the Senate ("Sénat"). The National Assembly's members are known as députés.  The assembly is presided over by a president, normally from the largest party represented, assisted by vice-presidents from across the represented political spectrum.  The term of the National Assembly is five years; however, the President of the Republic may dissolve the Assembly (thereby calling for new elections) unless he has dissolved it in the preceding twelve months.  This measure is becoming rarer since the 2000 referendum reduced the President's term from seven to five years: a President usually has a majority elected in the Assembly two months after him, and it would be useless for him to dissolve it for those reasons.  Following a tradition started by the first National Assembly during the French Revolution, the "left-wing" parties sit to the left as seen from the president's seat, and the "right-wing" parties sit to the right, and the seating arrangement thus directly indicates the political spectrum as represented in the Assembly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assembly_(France) 

Knapsack is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.  The noun knapsack means a bag made of sturdy material and furnished with shoulder straps, designed for carrying articles on the back.  Origin of knapsack:  Probably Low German Knappsack :  knappen, to bite (probably of imitative origin) + Sack, bag (from Middle Low German sak, from Old High German sac, from Late Latin saccus. 

Major John Jermain (1758–1819) served in the Westchester Militia during the American Revolution.  A library in Sag Harbor, New York was built and named in his honor in 1910.  Margaret Sage organized the effort to fund and build the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor in honor of her grandfather.  The library was designed by Augustus N. Allen and presented as a gift to the people of Sag Harbor in 1910.  The property was bought at a cost of $10,000, and was directly across from Mrs. Sage's then summer home on Main Street.  At that time, it was the highest price ever paid for a piece of real estate in Sag Harbor.  In 1912, a deed of trust was executed by Mrs. Sage in which the library, its grounds and equipment were deeded to a body of trustees under the laws of New York State.  The John Jermain Memorial Library was permanently endowed by Mrs. Sage that it might forever be secured to the people of Sag Harbor and vicinity.  She became known as Sag Harbor's greatest benefactor, also providing the village with Pierson High School and Mashashimuet Park.  In total, she gave Sag Harbor a total of between $300,000 and $400,000, just a small portion of the $23 million she gave to philanthropy in her lifetime.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jermain  See also the John Jermain Memorial Library home page at http://johnjermain.org/

A social-network furor has erupted over news that Facebook Inc. in 2012, conducted a massive psychological experiment on nearly 700,000 unwitting users.  To determine whether it could alter the emotional state of its users and prompt them to post either more positive or negative content, the site's data scientists enabled an algorithm, for one week, to automatically omit content that contained words associated with either positive or negative emotions from the central news feeds of 689,003 users.  Facebook has long run social experiments.  Its Data Science Team is tasked with turning the reams of information created by the more than 800 million people who log on every day into usable scientific research.  Reed Albergotti  http://online.wsj.com/articles/furor-erupts-over-facebook-experiment-on-users-1404085840

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1169  July 2, 2014  On this date in 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.  On this date in 1900, the first Zeppelin flight took place on Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany.