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.

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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.