Dysphania ambrosioides, formerly Chenopodium ambrosioides, known as wormseed, Jesuit's tea, Mexican-tea, paico, epazote, or herba sancti Mariæ, is an herb native to Central America, South America, and southern Mexico.  Epazote is used as a leaf vegetable, a herb and a herbal tea for its pungent flavor.  Raw, it has a resinous, medicinal pungency, similar to anise, fennel, or even tarragon, but stronger.  Although it is traditionally used with black beans for flavor and its carminative properties (less gas), it is also sometimes used to flavor other traditional Mexican dishes as well:  it can be used to season quesadillas and sopes (especially those containing huitlacoche), soups, mole de olla, tamales with cheese and chili peppers, chilaquiles, eggs, potatoes, and enchiladas.  It is often used as an herb for white fried rice and an important ingredient for making the green salsa for chilaquiles.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphania_ambrosioides  

Find recipes for lentil soup, mixed bean salad and Maya black bean soup at http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/herb-epazote.aspx

Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York.  Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."  On March 11, 2013 it was designated a National Historic Landmark.  It offers residencies to artists working in choreography, film, literature, musical composition, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video.  Collectively, artists who have worked at Yaddo have won 66 Pulitzer Prizes, 27 MacArthur Fellowships, 61 National Book Awards, 24 National Book Critics Circle Awards, 108 Rome Prizes, 49 Whiting Writers' Awards, a Nobel Prize (Saul Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976), and countless other honors.  The estate was purchased in 1881 by the financier Spencer Trask and his wife, the writer Katrina Trask.  The first mansion on the property burned down in 1893, and the Trasks then built the current house.  Yaddo is a neologism invented by one of the Trask children and was meant to rhyme with "shadow".  In 1900, after the premature deaths of the Trasks' four children, Spencer Trask decided to turn the estate into an artist's retreat as a gift to his wife.  He did this with the financial assistance of philanthropist George Foster Peabody.  The first artists moved in 1926.  The success of Yaddo encouraged Spencer and Katrina later to donate land for a working women's retreat center as well, known as Wiawaka Holiday House, at the request of Mary Wiltsie Fuller.  Yaddo has hosted more than 6,000 artists, including Hannah Arendt, Newton Arvin, Milton Avery, Dawn Powell James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, John Cheever, Aaron Copland, Sari Dienes, Mary Beth Edelson, Kenneth Fearing, Jonathan Franzen, Daniel Fuchs, Steve Giovinco, Philip Guston, Daron Hagen, Ruth Heller,Patricia Highsmith, Langston Hughes, Ted Hughes, Alfred Kazin, Ulysses Kay, Stanley Kunitz, Jacob Lawrence, Alan Lelchuk, Michael Lenson, Robert Lowell, Flannery O'Connor, Stephen Peles, Sylvia Plath, Katherine Anne Porter, Mario Puzo, Ned Rorem, Henry Roth, Philip Roth, Clyfford Still, Virgil Thomson, Colm Tóibín, Lionel Trilling, Anne Truitt, Byron Vazakas, Joe Draper, and David Foster Wallace.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaddo

Realizing that there was no equivalent for the Pulitzer Prize in radio, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to establish a prestigious award for excellence in broadcasting.  The manager of WSB Radio in Atlanta Lambdin Kay asked John Drewry, the dean of Grady School of Journalism, to sponsor the award.  They named the award for George Foster Peabody, a highly successful investment banker and recently deceased benefactor to the University of Georgia.  Since 1940 the Peabody award has steadily grown from being the “Pulitzer Prize for Radio” to recognizing excellence in a wide range of electronic media.  In 1948 the Peabody Awards began recognizing television programs, and eventually cable TV was included beginning in 1981.  By 2003, the first website had been included in the list of winners and 2012 saw the first Peabody Award given to a blog.  http://www.peabodyawards.com/about

In 1991, Suzanne Collins began her professional career writing for children’s television.  She worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows, including the Emmy-nominated hit Clarissa Explains it All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo.  For preschool viewers, she penned multiple stories for the Emmy-nominated Little Bear and Oswald.  She also co-wrote the Rankin/​Bass Christmas special, Santa, Baby! with her friend, Peter Bakalian, which was nominated for a WGA Award in Animation.  Most recently she was the Head Writer for Scholastic Entertainment’s Clifford’s Puppy Days,and a freelancer on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!  While working on a Kids WB show called Generation O! she met children’s author and illustrator James Proimos, who talked her into giving children’s books a try.  Thinking one day about Alice in Wonderland, she was struck by how pastoral the setting must seem to kids who, like her own, lived in urban surroundings. In New York City, you’re much more likely to fall down a manhole than a rabbit hole and, if you do, you’re not going to find a tea party.  What you might find...?  Well, that’s the story of Gregor the Overlander, the first book in her five-part fantasy/​war series, The Underland Chronicles, which became a New York Times bestseller.  Her next series, The Hunger Games Trilogy, is an international bestseller.  The Hunger Games has spent over six years to date on The New York Times bestseller list since publication in September 2008, and has also appeared consistently on USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists.  It has been sold into 56 territories in 51 languages.  In 2010 Collins was named to the TIME 100 list as well as the Entertainment Weekly Entertainers of the Year list.  In September 2013, Suzanne released a critically acclaimed autobiographical picture book, Year of the Jungle, illustrated by James Proimos.  It deals with the year she was six and her father was deployed to Viet Nam.  It has been sold into 12 territories in 11 languages.  Her first picture book, When Charlie McButton Lost Power, about a boy obsessed with computer games, was illustrated by Mike Lester and came out in 2005.  Her books have sold over 87 million copies worldwide.  http://www.suzannecollinsbooks.com/bio.htm  

See also Katniss the Cattail:  Name Meanings in The Hunger Games at http://www.academia.edu/9379745/Katniss_the_Cattail_Name_Meanings_in_The_Hunger_Games

The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation (popularly known as the Constitution Annotated) contains legal analysis and interpretation of the United States Constitution, based primarily on Supreme Court case law.  This regularly updated resource is especially useful when researching the constitutional implications of a specific issue or topic.  The Featured Topics and Cases page highlights recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that demonstrate pivotal interpretations of the Constitution's provisions.  https://www.congress.gov/constitution-annotated#

Defining a cult book is not easy.  To begin, a cult book should have a passionate following.  Buckets of books fall into this category, including classics like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and On the Road by Jack Kerouac.  But even mega sellers Harry Potter and 50 Shades of Grey can be considered cult lit by that definition.  A cult book should have the ability to alter a reader’s life or influence great change, and for the purpose of this list, it should also be a bit odd and a tad obscure.  Many of the titles we've selected have barely seen the light of day beyond their incredibly dedicated and perhaps obsessive following.  Only five copies of Leon Genonceaux’s 1891 novel The Tutu existed until the 1990s because Genonceaux was already in trouble with French police for immoral publishing when he wrote it and feared a life in prison if he distributed the book to the public.  Similarly, The Red Book by Carl Jung was reserved for Jung’s heirs for decades before it was made available to a wider audience.  Some of the books on our list are more widely known (though not necessarily widely understood).  Robert M. Pirsig introduced the Metaphysics of Quality, his own theory of reality, in his philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  The book was rejected by over 100 publishers before it was finally published by William Morro.  Jessica Doyle  See a selection of titles from AbeBooks at http://www.abebooks.com/books/features/cult-books.shtml  Thank you, Muse reader! 

50 Best Cult Books by Telegraph reporters   Cult books are somehow, intangibly, different from simple bestsellers – though many of them are that.  And people have passionate feelings on both sides.  Our critics present a selection of the most notable cult writing from the past two centuries.  Find the list with brief descriptions of each title at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/10432344/50-best-cult-books.html 

How to opt out of everything from credit card offers to group texts

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/25/8287793/how-to-opt-out

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1277  March 30, 2015  On this date in 1822,the Florida Territory was created in the United States.  On this date in 1909, the Queensboro Bridge in New York City opened, linking Manhattan and Queens.

At the dawn of the 19th century, land companies painted glorious pictures of fertile land that awaited settlers in what would soon be called Ohio.  Early settlers, mostly from New England, traveled to the west and began to build lives.  Lack of access to markets quickly became an issue.  The Ohio & Erie Canal was part of the solution.  Construction began in 1825 on a canal that would stretch 308 miles between Cleveland and Portsmouth, connecting Lake Erie with the Ohio River.  Fed by lakes and rivers, the canal allowed the transportation of goods throughout the state and nation.  The canal held four feet of water that supported canal boats carrying 60 to 80 tons of cargo.  Everything from agricultural products to stone and lumber floated on the canal at a speed of four miles per hour.  Horses and mules walking along the towpath pulled the boats up and down the canal.  Canal boats were lifted and lowered using locks.  The locks allowed the boats to negotiate elevation changes without the interference of water currents.  Forty-four locks between Cleveland and Akron carried boats through an elevation of 395 feet.  An especially steep section of the canal in Akron had 21 locks within two miles of the city.  The time it took to navigate these locks guaranteed the city of Akron would flourish, as people waiting for the canal boats to lock through needed grocery stores, inns, blacksmith shops, taverns, and much more.  The path of the canal system determined where cities would grow up throughout the state of Ohio.  And the commerce made possible by the canal helped Ohio become the third richest state in the union.  As time passed, new transportation technology evolved.  By 1913, railroads carried many of the goods and people that the canal once transported.  Early automobiles sped along the towpath as ad hoc roads.  The canal, still used by pleasure boaters and the occasional canal boat, was a quieter place.  The Flood of 1913 would bring an end to the Ohio & Erie Canal.  Over four days, the torrential downpour that swept across the state dropped the equivalent of two-to-three months’ worth of rain.  Every river in the state flooded.  Akron, sitting 395 feet above Cleveland, wasn’t supposed to flood.  It did.  The flood brought devastation to the towns along the canal, but they rebuilt.  The Ohio & Erie Canal was another story.  The state decided not to invest in the extensive repairs needed to revitalize the canal.  Pam Machuga  http://www.ohioanderiecanalway.com/Main/Pages/107.aspx

The P5+1 is a group of six world powers which in 2006 joined the diplomatic efforts with Iran with regard to its nuclear program.  The term refers to the P5 or five permanent members of the UN Security Council, namely United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France, plus Germany.  P5+1 is often referred to as the E3+3 (or E3/EU+3) by European countries.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P5%2B1

Humorist, writer, columnist, journalist Erma Bombeck (1927-1996) was born Emma Louise Fiste (1927-1996) in Dayton, Ohio.  Erma Bombeck found the humor in the everyday experiences of being a wife and mother and shared it with her readers.  In junior high school, Erma Bombeck showed early signs of her future work, writing a humor column for her school's paper.  She worked for the Dayton Herald (which later became the Journal-Herald) as a copygirl as a teenager and got her first article published while she was still in high school.  After graduating in 1944, she joined the publication's writing staff and saved money for college.  Bombeck graduated from the University of Dayton in 1949 and returned to the Journal-Herald.  In addition to her column, Bombeck wrote for magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Reader's Digest, Redbook and McCall's.  She also authored several popular books, including such best sellers as The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (1976) and If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (1978).  The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank was later turned into a television movie starring Carol Burnett and Charles Grodin.  Beginning in the mid-1970s, Bombeck also became a television personality, appearing on Good Morning America for more than a decade.  She also tried her hand at creating a television series.  She lived in Los Angeles for a time while working the sitcom Maggie.  The show's family was based on her own, and she wrote several of the episodes.  Bombeck was also an executive producer on the series.  Despite Bombeck's popularity, the show failed to catch on with television audiences and was canceled after eight weeks on the air.  Bombeck was a vocal advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment for women and served on the President's National Advisory Committee for Women in the late 1970s.  In the 1980s, Bombeck tackled a very difficult subject; childhood cancer, with her book I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise (1989).  She visited a camp for children with cancer and spent a lot of time with families with children fighting cancer as part of writing the book.  Like her other work, it found the humor in a challenging situation while making some poignant observations.  http://www.biography.com/people/erma-bombeck-259338  See also http://ermamuseum.org/netscape4.asp

Mar. 9, 2015  Most art collectors own pieces they can hang on their walls to admire and show off.  But for those who are also in it for the money, there’s another option:  owning a share of an art fund.  Funds that pool investors’ money to buy fine art are a tiny sliver of the investment market, with an estimated $1.26 billion in assets under management in 2014, according to Deloitte LLP.  But high-net-worth investors are expressing more interest in them, says Evan Beard, who leads Deloitte’s U.S. art and finance practice.  By investing in a fund, instead of buying art directly, investors gain access to pieces they can’t afford on their own.  And the art market is hot right now, Mr. Beard says, with global sales having tripled between 2003 and 2013 by one estimate.  Investors apparently have taken notice, with some 38% of wealth managers surveyed by Deloitte and research firm ArtTactic reporting demand for art-related services in 2014, up from 11% in 2011.  Jane Hodges  http://www.wsj.com/articles/art-you-can-own-but-not-have-1425870182?tesla=y

"Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."  This simple sentence comprised Section 1 of the EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT (ERA), which was first proposed in Congress by the National Women's Party in 1923.  Amending the Constitution is a two-step process.  First, the Congress must propose the amendment by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate.  After proposal, it must be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.  The House approved the measure in 1970, and the Senate did likewise in 1972.  The fight was then taken to the states.  ERA supporters had the early momentum.  Public opinion polls showed strong favorable support.  Thirty of the necessary thirty-eight states ratified the amendment by 1973.  But then the tide turned.  The leader of the STOP-ERA CAMPAIGN was a career woman named Phyllis Schlafly.  Despite her law degree, Schlafly glorified the traditional roles of American women.  She heckled feminists by opening her speaking engagements with quips like "I'd like to thank my husband for letting me be here tonight."  Schlafly argued that the ERA would bring many undesirable changes to American women.  By 1982, the year of expiration, only 35 states had voted in favor of the ERA — three states shy of the necessary total.  http://www.ushistory.org/us/57c.asp

7 ways writing by hand can save your brain by Yohana Desta  http://mashable.com/2015/01/19/handwriting-brain-benefits/

How Handwriting Trains the Brain:  Forming Letters Is Key to Learning, Memory, Ideas by Gwendolyn Bounds  http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704631504575531932754922518

What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades by Maria Konnikova  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1276  March 27, 2015  

On this date in 1710, Joseph Abaco, Belgian cellist and composer, was born.  

On this date in 1724, Jane Colden, American botanist, was born.

The Mickey Mouse Club is an American variety television show that aired intermittently from 1955 to 1996.  Created by Walt Disney and produced by Walt Disney Productions, the program was first televised from 1955 to 1960 by ABC, featuring a regular but ever-changing cast of child performers.  Reruns were broadcast by ABC on weekday afternoons during the 1960s, right after American Bandstand.  The show was revived after its initial 1955–1959 run on ABC, first from 1977 to 1979 for first-run syndication, and airing again exclusively on Disney Channel from 1989 to 1996.  Previous to the TV series, there was a theater-based Mickey Mouse Club.  The first one started on January 4, 1930 at 12 noon at the Fox Dome Theater in Ocean Park, California with sixty theaters hosting clubs by March 31.  The Club released its first issue of the Official Bulletin of the Mickey Mouse Club on April 15, 1930.  By 1932, the Club had 1 million members, and in 1933 its first British club opened at Darlington's Arcade Cinema.  In 1935, with so many clubs around the world, Disney begins to phase out the club.  The Mickey Mouse Club was Walt Disney's second venture into producing a television series, the first being the Walt Disney anthology television series, initially titled Disneyland.  Disney used both shows to help finance and promote the building of the Disneyland theme park.  Being busy with these projects and others, Disney turned The Mickey Mouse Club over to Bill Walsh to create and develop the format, initially aided by Hal Adelquist.  The result was a variety show for children, with such regular features as a newsreel, a cartoon, and a serial, as well as music, talent and comedy segments.  One unique feature of the show was the Mouseketeer Roll Call, in which many (but not all) of that day's line-up of regular performers would introduce themselves by name to the television audience.  Mickey Mouse himself appeared in every show not only in vintage cartoons originally made for theatrical release, but in opening, interstitial and closing segments made especially for the show. In both the vintage cartoons and in the new animated segments, Mickey was voiced by his creator Walt Disney.  (Disney had previously voiced the character theatrically from 1928 to 1947, and then was replaced by sound effects artist Jimmy MacDonald.)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mickey_Mouse_Club

The Mickey Mouse Club  Mickey Mouse is the host of this variety show with a club attended by a variety of kids being the Mouseketeers.  The usual content includes in-studio comedy and musical acts by those kids, classic as well as original cartoons and dramatic serials like "Spin and Marty" and "The Hardy Boys."  Release Date:  3 October 1955 (USA)   Runtime:  30 min (1957-1959) | 60 min (1955-1957)  three seasons  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047757/

House of Mouse (2001–2002)  TV Series -  30 min - collections of short cartoons hosted by Mickey and his Disney pals at his club, The House of Mouse.  four seasons  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272388/?ref_=tt_rec_tt

Presidential trivia  Barack Obama is our 44th president, but there actually have only been 43 presidents:  Cleveland was elected for two nonconsecutive terms and is counted twice, as our 22nd and 24th president.  Eight Presidents were born British subjects:  Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, J. Q. Adams, Jackson, and W. Harrison.  Fourteen Presidents served as vice presidents:  J. Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, Tyler, Fillmore, A. Johnson, Arthur, T. Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, Nixon, L. Johnson, Ford, and George H.W. Bush.  Vice Presidents were originally the presidential candidates receiving the second-largest number of electoral votes.  The Twelfth Amendment, passed in 1804, changed the system so that the electoral college voted separately for president and vice president.  The presidential candidate, however, gradually gained power over the nominating convention to choose his own running mate.  For two years the nation was run by a president and a vice president who were not elected by the people.  After Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned in 1973, President Nixon appointed Gerald Ford as vice president.  Nixon resigned the following year, which left Ford as president, and Ford's appointed vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, as second in line.  Four candidates won the popular vote but lost the presidency:  Andrew Jackson won the popular vote but lost the election to John Quincy Adams (1824); Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote but lost the election to Rutherford B. Hayes (1876); Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the election to Benjamin Harrison (1888); Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election to George W. Bush (2000).  http://www.infoplease.com/spot/prestrivia1.html  

Find the ten U.S. presidents related to each other and read that genealogists have determined that FDR was distantly related to a total of eleven U.S. presidents, five by blood and six by marriage at http://www.infoplease.com/spot/inaugural9.html 

Six presidents were named James, four named John, four named William, three named George and two named Andrew.

The outside of an eye, the part that’s visible when you look at someone’s face, functions just like a lens.  Light from the sun reflects off some object, such as a dog, then the light travels to your eye and is focused by a structure called the cornea, which acts like a lens in a camera.  By the time the image reaches the back of your eye, called the retina, it has been flipped upside down.  The retina has two kinds of cells:  rods and cones.  Rods can detect light and dark and sense motion and cones detect color.  Rod and cone cells are connected to the Optic Nerve, which carries the image from your eye to your brain.  Even though the image that comes through your eye is upside down, your brain learns to see things right side up.  The Mechanics of Vision

http://www.featbooks.com/read-online/the-mechanics-of-seeing-stanford-university

Right to Read Week is celebrated across the country at selected times in February and March.  Find some of the ideas including "favorite fictional characters" and "drop everything and read" at http://www.ehow.com/info_8628378_right-read-week-theme-ideas.html

Madeleine L'Engle  (1918–2007)  Born in New York City, author Madeleine L'Engle is best known for such novels as A Wrinkle in Time (1962) and A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978).  She was the only child of Charles Wadsworth and Madeleine Barnett Camp, a writer and a pianist.  L'Engle began writing at a young age, producing her first story when she was only five years old.   "I've been a writer ever since I could hold a pencil," L'Engle told Humanities magazine.   Madeleine L'Engle published her first novel, The Small Rain, in 1945.  Four years later, she published her first children's book, And Both Were Young (1949).  L'Engle's children were the first audience for her best known work, A Wrinkle in Time (1962).  She read them the story while she worked on it.  After dozens of rejections, L'Engle was finally able to find a publisher for this innovative tale.  A Wrinkle in Time follows the adventures of Meg Murry as she travels through time and space to find her missing scientist father.  She accompanied on this journey by her brother Charles Wallace and her friend Calvin O'Keefe, which is made possible by the assistance of three unusual beings known as Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which.  For the book, L'Engle drew inspiration from such varied sources as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and works of William Shakespeare.  The following year, L'Engle won the prestigious Newbery Medal for A Wrinkle in Time.  The novel, however, was not without controversy.  Over the years, it has been one of the most banned books because some believe that it is anti-Christian or that it promotes occultism.  The anti-Christian accusation seems especially odd as faith was always important to L'Engle.  She meditated on religious issues in such books as And It Was Good:  Reflections on Beginnings (1983).  L'Engle also worked at St. John the Divine in New York City as a librarian and writer-in-residence for more than three decades.  A Wrinkle in Time inspired L'Engle to write several sequels, creating what has become known as the Time Quintet.  Other titles in this series in A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet(1978), Many Waters (1986) and An Acceptable Time (1989).  L'Engle launched a related series of books, which feature the descendents of Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe, in 1965 with The Arm of the Starfish.  The two later titles in this trilogy are Dragons in the Waters (1976) and A House Like a Lotus (1984).  In addition to fiction, L'Engle also wrote poetry and numerous nonfiction titles, including several volumes of memoirs.  She also produced two books, Mothers and Daughters (1997) and Mothers and Sons (1999), with her daughter Maria Rooney.

http://www.biography.com/people/madeleine-lengle-9378983#synopsis

Mar. 23, 2015  It’s starting to look like James Patterson can’t give his money away fast enough.  Just two weeks after the bestselling writer announced that he planned to donate $1.25 million to school libraries, he has increased that total by $250,000.  On March 9, Patterson announced a plan to make grants of $1,000 to $10,000 that schools could use to repair or improve their libraries in any way.  The children’s publisher Scholastic pledged to match his grants with bonus points for books from the Scholastic Reading Club.  More than 750 requests a day started pouring in.  So now Patterson is raising his total grant to $1.5 million.  “I’m blown away by the number of parents and teachers who have shared the urgent needs of their community’s school library,” he said in a statement released this morning.  “It’s clear that our school libraries require critical help. I know we can’t solve the issues overnight, but I hope at the very least we’re able to raise awareness about the important position the school library plays in the educational achievement of children.”  Patterson’s grant program for school libraries is modeled after a similar program he administered last year to give away $1 million to more than 175 independent bookstores.  Ron Charles  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/03/23/james-patterson-increases-grants-to-school-libraries-by-250k/

On Mar. 23, 2015, in an attempt to improve air quality, authorities enacted a 24-hour restriction on cars with even-numbered license plates, halving the number of cars entering Paris and surrounding areas.  For one day last week, in fact, air quality in Paris was reported to be the worst among major global cities -- a distinction usually associated with Beijing or New Delhi.  Experts say the problem is caused by vehicle emissions, an absence of wind to disperse the pollutants and other meteorological conditions, including sunshine coupled with a drop in temperatures.  Those have combined to create a stagnant cover of warm air over Paris, which sits in the Seine basin, a geographic bowl.  Critics have pointed fingers at successive French governments that have promoted diesel vehicles by subsidizing the fuel so that it is about 15% cheaper than gasoline.  Though diesel is more fuel efficient and produces less carbon monoxide, it emits nitrogen oxides that react with sunlight to produce low-level ozone and fine soot particles known to cause bronchial irritation and cancer.  All over Paris, people are coughing, wheezing and sniffing as a spike in air pollution has made the French capital one of the smoggiest cities in the world.  Kim Willshire  http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-france-paris-smog-20150323-story.html#page=1

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1275  March 25, 2015  On this date in 1867, Arturo Toscanini, Italian conductor, was born.  On this date in 1881, Béla Bartók, Hungarian pianist and composer, was born. 

Museum Collections are a Library of Life  Much of what we know about biodiversity and its origins comes from the collection, preservation, and ongoing study of natural specimens and cultural remains.  Museum collections are libraries of the world's biological, cultural and environmental history and are vital to our ability to interpret the past and understand our place in its future.  As such, museums are stewards of this history, preserving it for posterity while fostering an informed appreciation of our complex and ever-changing world.  The Florida Museum's Division of Collections and Research is dedicated to understanding and preserving biological diversity and cultural heritage.  As of 2011, the Florida Museum houses more than 34 million specimens and objects, making it the Southeast's largest natural history museum and one of the top five nationally in terms of collections size.  Many of its individual department collections rank among the top 10 in the U.S., and some rank among the top 10 globally.  These holdings are available locally and internationally to scholars, scientists, students and the public through on-site study, public exhibitions, loans, publications, television and the Internet.

https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/discover/the-value-of-museums/collections-are-a-library-of-life/

See also The Library Photo Archives collection from the Field Museum in Chicago dating back to the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.  It comprises over 300,000 images in the areas of Anthropology, Botany, Geology, and Zoology.  http://www.fieldmuseum.org/science/research/area/photo-archives See also a description of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), comprising 27 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library.  The museum collections contain over 32 million specimens of plants, humans, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, and human cultural artifacts, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time, and occupies 1,600,000 square feet (150,000 m²).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Museum_of_Natural_History

Raggedy Ann’s creator was Johnny Gruelle, a free-lance cartoonist and editorial illustrator for The Indianapolis Star, The Cleveland Press, and The New York Herald, in the first few decades of the twentieth century.  Born in Arcola, Illinois in 1880, Gruelle moved at age two to Indianapolis, where his father Richard Gruelle came to associate and exhibit with the Hoosier Group of painters.  Richard Gruelle’s circle of friends included bestselling Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley.  Decades later, Richard’s son Johnny turned to the family friend’s verse in naming a forlorn rag doll found in the Indianapolis attic of his parents’ home, combining “The Raggedy Man” and “Little Orphant Annie” to produce the name “Raggedy Ann”.  After rehabilitating the doll’s features with a few strokes of his pen and a pair of buttons, the illustrator set about creating a story line for Raggedy Ann, initially to entertain his daughter Marcella.  After Marcella’s tragically premature death, Gruelle threw himself into writing and illustrating the Raggedy Ann Stories, the first volume of which was published by P.F. Volland in 1918.  Gruelle had simultaneously been designing a Raggedy Ann doll.  After his prototype received final approval from the US Patent Office, the dolls went into production and were used in Volland’s promotion of Gruelle’s book.  Publishing Ragged Andy Stories in 1920, Gruelle continued the saga of the red-headed ragamuffins through books and serialized newspaper stories until his death in 1938.  http://indianapublicmedia.org/momentofindianahistory/raggedy-anns-hoosier-ped 

POEM:  LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE  You’ve probably seen the 1982 movie Annie; maybe you’ve caught one of the musical’s many revivals.  And most everybody knows that the musical itself was adapted from a popular and long-running comic strip.  But did you know that all those were based, in turn, on the 1885 poem “Little Orphant Annie?”  Or that James Whitcomb Riley wrote the poem about a real-life orphan, Allie?   Find the poem at http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/10/07/gobble-uns/

POEM:  THE RAGGEDY MAN  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174221

Hill & Hollow Baked Beans adapted from Alfred Brumley's All-Day Singin' and Dinner on the Ground

4 c. dry beans, cooked & salt added

3 slices cooked salt pork or bacon, chopped

1/4 c. chopped onion

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. catsup

diced fruit (optional)  Mix ingredients together, put in casserole, and bake 25-30 minutes.

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

per se  (puhr SAY)  adverb   In or by itself; intrinsically.  From Latin per se, translation of Greek kath auto.  Earliest documented use:  1505.   NOTES:  Today’s term makes an appearance in the word ampersand which is a corruption of “and per se and”.   Earlier the & symbol was considered the 27th letter of the alphabet.  Yes, they used to say “A to ampersand” instead of “A to Z”.   Schoolchildren reciting the alphabet would end it with “& per se and”, meaning the symbol &, by itself, is the word “and”.  Where did the symbol & come from?  It’s a corruption of “et”, the Latin word for “and”.  That explains why sometimes “etc.” is written as “&c”

bona fide  (BOH-nuh fyd, FY-dee)  adjective:  Genuine.  adverb:  In good faith; sincerely.  From Latin bonus (good) + fides (faith).  Earliest documented use:  1542.

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Michael R. Sitton  Subject:  per se   Thank you for including information about the origins of the word ampersand, which for anyone in the Adirondack region of northern New York brings to mind the a popular hiking destination, Ampersand Mountain, near Saranac Lake, with spectacular views of the Saranac Lake region, Whiteface Mountain, and other peaks in the area.  The name is attributed to the winding course of a creek resembling the ampersand symbol; from Ampersand Creek came the name of the mountain.

From:  Bert Katz   Subject:  bona fide   I would say that “bona fide” has also become a noun.  As in, “The prospective employee presented his bona fides to the interviewer.”  In this case, “bona fides” means verifiable qualifications or skills.

                                     

Follow-up on stories about Sylvanus Pierson Jermain 

SP Jermain was also an urban planner in the fact that by establishing the parks his vision was to ultimately make a green ring around Toledo that never materialized, and the expressway really inhibited that notion.  A bronze sculpture of him is located at the Ottawa Park Golf course and was stolen some years ago.  The arts commission and the golf community raised funds to remake it and the new statue of him sits near the first tee at Ottawa Park.  The local amateur match play championship  is still held at Ottawa park and bears his name.  The SP Jermain Memorial Match Play Championship to be June 21-29, 2015.   Thank you, Muse reader!

References to Roman Law in U.S. Courts, a guest post by Dante Figueroa, a senior legal information analyst at the Law Library of Congress.  March 20, 2015   I have previously written about the amazing collection of Roman law resources at the Law Library of Congress.  In fact, the use of and reference to Roman law by U.S. courts has been widely documented.  A U.S. law professor has stated that the use of Roman law by U.S. courts was “an integral part of the larger jurisprudential process by which American jurists reached back to find a line of argument to be employed in understanding the case.”  (Samuel J. Astorino, Roman Law in American Law: Twentieth Century Cases of the Supreme Court, 40 Duq. L. Rev. 627 (2002).)  Find more information and a list of cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court referenced Roman law at http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2015/03/references-to-roman-law-in-us-courts/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1274  March 23, 2015  On this date in 1699, John Bartram, British-American botanist and explorer, was born.  On this date in 1857, Elisha Otis's first elevator was installed at 488 Broadway, New York City.

Pittsburgh  Feb. 25, 2015  One of Billie Nardozzi’s greatest strengths as a poet is persistence.  Writing poems is a hobby that began in 1978, when a suburban newspaper published his first, a tribute to the Beatles.  Today, his main outlet is the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  For eight years, as often as once a week, Mr. Nardozzi has paid more than $50 for a few inches of space in the Celebrations section, usually reserved for engagements and anniversaries.  “We usually pay people to write for the paper,” said the executive editor of the Post-Gazette, David Shribman.  “In a period of declining revenue, it’s always nice to have someone pay us.”   His style is plain spoken, his inspirations diverse.  “I hate negativity,” says Mr. Nardozzi, who often writes his poems, longhand, on a lined legal notepad in his home office.  The Poetry Foundation of Chicago, publisher of Poetry magazine, receives more than 100,000 poems a year.  It publishes 300 of them.  Some poets read their work in bars.  Others tape it to telephone poles.  Lynn Gentry, a poet and musician who lives in Brooklyn, sits with his manual typewriter in New York subway stations and writes poems on whatever topics passersby suggest.  He gets donations, typically $5 or $10.  John Mortara, a Boston poet, runs Voicemail Poems, a service that encourages people to phone in their verse for possible publication online.  Dana Killmeyer of Pottstown, Pa., has read poems on buses in Las Vegas.  James R. Hagerty  http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-this-pittsburgh-poet-rhyme-is-a-daily-vitamin-1424919961?tesla=y.

Sylvanus Pierson Jermain (July 31, 1859-April 20, 1935)

The “Father of Toledo Parks and Boulevards”, served four terms as President/Chairman of the Board of Parks Commissioners.  He served the City of Toledo as Director of Welfare, 1925-26.  He established Riverside, Ottawa, Walbridge, BayView and Collins Parks in Toledo.  SP founded the first nine hole golf course west of NYC at Ottawa Park in 1899, then designed the second nine holes in 1920-21.  SP also developed and founded golf courses at Bayview (1920), Spuyten Dyval (1930), Collins Parks (1932).  Mr. Jermain was a consultant in the building of Highland Meadows, Chippewa, and Glengarry country clubs.  He founded a children’s golf course at White City Park, which was renamed Jermain Park in his honor in 1915 at age 55.  SP was the President of the Toledo District Golf Association for thirteen years, 1922-34, and was appointed Life Member status.  SP was widely known around the world  as “The Father of Public Golf in America” and  especially in Toledo, Ohio.  http://www.ottawapark.org/linked/spjermainnopics.htm

Sylvanus Pierson Jermain was instrumental the founding of Inverness Club in 1903.  He served as the club’s first president, helped select the land upon which the course was built, and secured permission of the Village of Inverness, Scotland, to use the name and village crest for the club’s identity.  And Jermain, naturally, was at the forefront of persuading the United States Golf Association to bring the 1920 and 1931 U.S. Open championships to the Donald Ross-designed layout.  He also brought the first U.S. Public Links Championship to Ottawa Park in 1922.  But the man called “the father of golf in Toledo,” did even much more than all this, including writing a rules book for American golf.  Jermain was 48 when in 1907 he wrote the “American Code of Golf,” a simplified version of the rules guidelines from the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews that served as the first written set of rules for golf in the U.S.  He served as president of the Ohio Golf, Central States and Western Golf Associations in the early 1900s.  If all that isn’t enough, Jermain looms large in the inception of one of golf’s most popular events, the Ryder Cup.  He proffered the notion of creating an international match between golfers from Britain and America following the 1920 U.S. Open, and at one point prior to the creation of the Ryder Cup in 1927, an American businessman named Walter L. Ross, president of Nickel Plate Railroad and a member of Inverness Club, offered to donate a trophy if such a match would be held.  There were, in fact, two unofficial matches held in 1921 and ’26, the latter held in England and attended by British seed merchant Samuel Ryder, who eventually donated the cup that now bears his name.  http://www.usga.org/ChampEventArticle.aspx?id=21474840994

  

Carol Brodbeck, of Ypsilanti, Mich., said the apron trend today shows the interest many people have in connecting to fond memories of the past.  Some years ago, she was asked if she could give a talk on aprons for a local church group. After researching the topic, she found it most interesting and it brought back many pleasant memories from her childhood.  She got hooked, and has been presenting “Apron Artistry — Apron Ties Past to Present” to a variety of audiences, including many across southeastern Michigan.  Aprons were worn by fertility goddesses, high priests, and Roman soldiers, she said, and craftsmen have worn aprons for centuries.  Colors of aprons varied by trade.  “Gardeners, spinners, weavers, and garbage men always wore blue aprons.  I do not know why, but it was part of the whole hierarchy of class.”  Fishermen would wear oil-skin aprons, blacksmiths wore leather aprons, bakers wore white, butchers wore blue stripes, butlers wore green, English barbers wore checkered aprons, and stone masons wore white to blend with their trade, Mrs. Brodbeck said.  Janet Romaker  http://www.toledoblade.com/Culture/2015/03/15/Aprons-are-the-fabric-of-history-and-home.html  

The Muser:  When my children were little, I made colorful aprons and then traced outlines of their hands before giving them to their grandparents as gifts. Today, I usually wear aprons with business or organization names emblazoned on them.

Ballotpedia is an online encyclopedia about American politics and elections.  Our goal is to connect people to politics by providing accurate and objective information about politics at the local, state, and federal level.  Ballotpedia is published on a wiki platform, meaning any registered user is welcome to add knowledge and improve our content . Every submission to Ballotpedia is fact-checked and curated by our professional editing staff.   All Ballotpedia content must be neutral, accurate, and verifiable.  Ballotpedia is sponsored by the Lucy Burns Institute, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin.  The Lucy Burns Institute is funded entirely by private contributions, and does not receive government funding.  Find a list of current projects at http://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia:About

After 20 years, Internet Explorer is riding off into the sunset.  Microsoft had previously said that it was working on a new "Project Spartan" browser when it first showed off Windows 10.  Spartan will include Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant and the ability to annotate Web pages with a keyboard or digital pen.  It will also have a simplified reading mode for Web articles.  But, really, the important thing is that Internet Explorer will no longer be the default browser on Windows machines.  Spartan, whatever its  eventual name, will not be called Internet Explorer anything.  IE still commands the largest share of use among browsers.  https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0  If you are an Internet Explorer fan -- or, more likely, a business that isn't interested in upgrading any time soon -- Microsoft will continue to support IE and make it available on Windows 10 and older systems, according to a report from The Verge's Tom Warren at http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/17/8230631/microsoft-is-killing-off-the-internet-explorer-brand  Hayley Tsukayama  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/03/18/internet-explorer-we-hardly-wanted-to-know-ye/?hpid=z4

Welcome, sweet springtime.  There is no official first season of the year, but many consider spring as the first.  Hear Anton Rubinstein's Melody in F op.3 n.1 (we sing the words Welcome, Sweet Springtime to it sometimes) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pElT2Gu_qpI  3:48  Celebrate with The First Day of Spring by Leroy Anderson at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f51NbA8z20M  3:06 and Itzhak Perlman playing Spring, a violin concerto from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKthRw4KjEg  10:38

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1273  March 20, 2015  On this date in 1888, the very first Romani language operetta was staged in Moscow.  On this date in 1916, Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity.