It all started because busy road
warrior Natalie Monaco
didn’t have time to make her bed. “I’m a really neat person, and it
would bother me,” said the Dublin, Ohio woman who worked in sales. “I thought, there’s got to be a product that
would keep the covers in place so I could sleep better at night, so I would
wake up in the morning and didn’t have to completely remake the bed.” Out of those frustrations came the
Covermade Comforter System, Monaco’s patented bedding line that is sold by home
retailer Brookstone as well as on the Covermade website. Very simply put, the Covermade
product is a comforter with an elastic band near the bottom. The band loops under the mattress, keeping
the comforter in place. Monaco’s story
has become more common in the bedding industry over the past decade, said Ryan
Trainer, president of the International Sleep Products Association. “We’re very dynamic industry and
we’re always looking for new product innovations that will appeal to
consumers,” Trainer said. “Bed
accessories are really proliferating quickly.
Even though Monaco’s path from initial frustrations to sleekly packaged
product is becoming commonplace, her road was filled with its own irritations
and obstacles — and it took from 2009 to today to complete. I kept buying all sorts of elastic
and then would pin them to my comforter.”
The pins would rip the comforter, however. Rather than letting the matter drop, Monaco
simply decided that her invention needed sturdier construction. “I really didn’t know how to go from
A to Z,” she said. “I didn’t even know
who to talk to. So I started calling
anyone who could help me make a sample, and I would go in and out of dry
cleaners and tailor shops and ask if they had a seamstress. A lot of them would say I was crazy or say
they didn’t do that kind of thing. “Then
I went to Whetstone library and found books on product development and
patenting, and I got somewhat obsessed with it.
I learned how to locate manufacturers.” Finally, she found a seamstress who
worked on wedding dresses and was accustomed to dealing with different
materials in one garment. Armed with a
sleek, professionally made prototype, Monaco began making phone calls to find a
manufacturer, finally finding one in 2010.
For the next two years, Monaco and her manufacturer worked together,
tweaking the product. Tim Feran
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2015/02/06/dislike-for-unmade-bed-behind-dublin-womans-business.html
Pore over vs. pour over The phrase meaning to study carefully is pore over.
It comes from a
little-used sense of the verb pore—namely, to
meditate deeply. In
modern writing, this sense of pore rarely appears
outside this phrase. Pour
over is of
course a meaningful phrase in its own right, but it has nothing to do with
studying. It’s what you do, for example,
with milk to a bowl of cereal. http://grammarist.com/spelling/pore-over-pour-over/
The Order of Knights of Pythias is an international, non-sectarian
fraternal order, established in 1864 in Washington, DC, by Justus H. Rathbone
and was the first fraternal order to be chartered by an Act of Congress. Domains of the Order exist in most states and
provinces, and subordinate lodges are located in many cities and towns across
the United States and Canada. http://www.pythias.org/
The
Pythian Castle in Toledo, Ohio has a Romanesque sandstone exterior, and
interior features that include several balconies, sweeping staircases, a large
auditorium, a grand ballroom, and more than 30,000 square feet of floor space. The Pythian sits as a monument to a series of
unfortunate events, an architectural treasure in a city rife for redevelopment,
landlocked and with a large tax liability.
The building’s been vacant since the 1970s. Former owner Ed Emery, a Sylvania man who
has made several unsuccessful bids for public office, got the Pythian
recognized as a landmark by the National Register of Historic Places in 1972,
when he owned it. Mr. Emery was the last
owner who kept it at least partially occupied on a regular basis. He operated a 1970s-era youth center from it,
with activities ranging from a rock opera to discussions about art, politics,
and business. There were classes in
philosophy, meditation, and French cooking.
A music store, an art studio, and an antiques shop were among the
offerings. http://www.toledoblade.com/Real-Estate/2013/02/25/Pythian-Castle-a-monument-to-hard-times.html
Alcove is an architectural term for a recess in a room,
usually screened off by pillars, balustrades or drapery.
In geography and geology, alcove is
used for a wind-eroded depression in the side of a cliff of
a homogenous rock type, famous from sandstones of the Colorado Plateau like
the Navajo Sandstone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcove
A cove is
a small type of bay or coastal inlet. Coves usually have narrow, restricted
entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creeks,
or recesses in a coast are often considered coves. Colloquially, the term can be used to
describe a sheltered bay. An
example of a cove is Lulworth Cove on
the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, England. West of it a second cove, Stair Hole, is forming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cove
The Presidential Libraries Act and the Establishment
of Presidential Libraries by Wendy R. Ginsberg, Erika K. Lunder, and Daniel J.
Richardson February 6, 2015 Congressional Research Service 7-5700
www.crs.gov R41513 The Presidential
Libraries Act (P.L. 84-373; 69 Stat. 695), as originally enacted in 1955,
sought to create a system of government “preservation and administration … of
papers and other historical materials of any President or former President of
the United States.” Pursuant to the law,
the General Services Administration’s (GSA’s) Administrator could, among other
actions, accept … the papers and other historical materials of any President or
former President of the United States, or of any other official or former
official of the Government, and other papers relating to and contemporary with
any President or former President of the United States. (P.L. 84-373). Amid concerns about growing costs of the
libraries, the act was substantially amended in 1986 (P.L. 99-323; 100 Stat.
495) to “shift the burden of on-going building operations costs of future
libraries from the taxpayer to endowment funds.” Through the National Archives and Records
Administration (NARA), the federal government currently operates and maintains
13 presidential libraries, and is currently engaging with representatives
seeking to construct a presidential library for President Barack Obama. Find the 33-page report at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/R41513.pdf
Who Can Save the Grand Canyon? by David Roberts
Smithsonian Magazine March 2015 When Teddy
Roosevelt declared the Grand Canyon a national monument, in 1908, he famously
said: “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can
only mar it.” The Escalade commercial
development, covering hundreds of acres on Navajo Reservation land, is arguably
the most intrusive development ever proposed for the Grand Canyon—a $500
million to $1.1 billion recreation and transport facility featuring a 1.4-mile
tramway equipped with eight-passenger gondolas that would carry as many as
10,000 people a day down to the river confluence, with new roads, hotels, gift
shops, restaurants and other attractions.
The developer—Confluence Partners LLC, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based
investment group whose members’ ventures include real estate, resorts and theme
parks—says construction of the Escalade could begin as early as this year. Little known to the public at large,
this massive commercial undertaking has become so controversial that the debate
about building the Escalade is itself a confluence, a turbulent coming-together
of powerful forces that promise to shape America’s most iconic natural wonder
for generations. On one side are
investors, local business people and some Native Americans, who are interested
in the profits and jobs from building the facilities and running them, and then
there is a handful of what might be called libertarian-minded supporters, who
like the idea of enabling a large number of people to enjoy the great canyon’s
very heart, a stunningly beautiful and remote site long inaccessible to the
masses. On the other side are national
park officials, environmental advocates, park visitors and Native Americans, who
would prefer that the site remain as is.
That the Escalade’s legality is still in doubt—most likely a matter for
the courts—only adds to the turmoil. The
project has divided the Navajo Nation, and also ignited opposition from members
of other tribes. Wilson and Yellowhorse
are principals in a grass-roots movement called Save the Confluence, but they
are keenly aware that other Navajos are all in favor of the proposed
development. For their part, Confluence
Partners says it has “uncovered no evidence of any sacred sites within the
project boundaries or that would be negatively impacted by the project.” And the confluence, it turns out, is not the
only point of contention. Twenty-five
air miles to the southwest, another group of entrepreneurs is planning a
mammoth expansion of the tiny gateway community of Tusayan, just outside the
limits of Grand Canyon National Park.
The Phoenix-based Stilo Development Group USA—a branch of an Italian
investment company that has bought up thousands of acres in the area—proposes
building 2,200 new homes (including affordable housing), as well as hotels,
restaurants, a shopping center, an “entertainment pavilion” based on Native
American themes, a spa, a water slide and a dude ranch. Construction could begin within two to three
years, says Tusayan mayor Greg Bryan, depending on when access might be granted
by the U.S. Forest Service.
Environmentalists, including the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust,
oppose the Tusayan project, in the works for more than two decades. “Conservation groups deplore the ‘Disneyfication’
of the Grand Canyon,” says David Nimkin, Southwest regional director of the
National Parks Conservation Association.
The greatest threat the Tusayan development poses to the vast wilderness
of the Grand Canyon, some critics say, could be the diminishing of the South
Rim aquifer, which would cause springs and oases far below the rim to dry up
significantly. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/who-can-save-the-grand-canyon-180954329/?all&no-ist
Denmark's largest digital photo album with nearly two million images is available to the
general public as of Feb. 20, 2015. Danes
will have access to the online database at Arkive.dk, which includes 1,841,254
documents such as photos, diaries, letters, and sound and video
recordings. Since the late 1980s, all
items from the country's more than 550 archives have been recorded
electronically. The Association of Local
Archives estimates that Danish archives contain some 50 million images and more
than 100 kilometres of shelves with original documents. Every month, 25,000 new photos will be added
to the database. Lucie Rychla
The 12th Knight News Challenge, on libraries: “How might we leverage libraries as a platform
to build more knowledgeable communities?” Link to names of the 22 winner (with recipients
awarded a share of $3 million for their ideas) and brief descriptions of their
projects at http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2015/1/30/22-projects-win-knight-news-challenge-libraries/ See also http://www.knightfoundation.org/
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1261
February 25, 2015
On this date in
1919, Oregon placed a one cent per U.S. gallon tax on
gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax.
On this date in 1951, the first Pan American Games were held in Buenos
Aires, Argentina.
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