Wednesday, March 25, 2015

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  Mickey Mouse himself appeared in every show not only in vintage cartoons originally made for theatrical release, but in opening, interstitial and closing segments made especially for the show.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

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  (1918–2007Born 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.

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. 

No comments: