What Character Was Removed from the Alphabet?   The ampersand today is used primarily in business names, but that small character was once the 27^th part of the alphabet.  Where did it come from though?  The origin of its name is almost as bizarre as the name itself.  The shape of the character (&) predates the word ampersand by more than 1,500 years.  In the first century, Roman scribes wrote in cursive, so when they wrote the Latin word et which means “and” they linked the e and t.  Over time the combined letters came to signify the word “and” in English as well.  Certain versions of the ampersand, like that in the font Caslon, clearly reveal the origin of the shape.  The word “ampersand” came many years later when “&” was actually part of the English alphabet.  In the early 1800s, school children reciting their ABCs concluded the alphabet with the &.  It would have been confusing to say “X, Y, Z, and.”  Rather, the students said, “and per se and.”  “Per se” means “by itself,” so the students were essentially saying, “X, Y, Z, and by itself and.”  Over time, “and per se and” was slurred together into the word we use today:  ampersand.  When a word comes about from a mistaken pronunciation, it’s called a mondegreen.  http://blog.dictionary.com/ampersand/

Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman wrote It's a Small World in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which influenced the song's message.  They first presented the song to Walt Disney by singing in counterpoint while walking through the mock-up.  It is argued that this song is the single most performed and most widely translated song on earth.  The song tune and lyrics are the only Disney creations never to be copyrighted.  The song being considered annoying by people is referenced in The Lion King.  When Scar assumed the throne of Pride Rock, he took the majordomo Zazu as his prisoner and made him sing songs to him, preferably those with a "bounce" to it, prompting Zazu to start singing "It's a Small World", only to be immediately cut off by Scar, who clearly despised the song.  Also, in Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama, Dr. Drakken is shown using a torture chamber where a man is trapped in a room with the singing dolls.  Find lyrics at  http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/It's_a_Small_World_(song)

NOTE that Wonderland Music Company, Inc. copyrighted their arrangement of It's a Small World in 1963. 

Fruit curd is a dessert spread and topping usually made with citrus fruit, such as lemon, lime, orange or tangerine.  Among many recipes for lemon curd on the Web find recipes from Ina Garten http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/lemon-curd-recipe.html and Martha Stewart http://www.marthastewart.com/348239/lemon-curd

Investigators in England in the middle of the nineteenth century got a confession from a killer based on matching a bullet with the mold that made it.  In 1902 an expert witness (Oliver Wendell Holmes, no less) helped prosecutors convict a suspect by matching a bullet test-fired by the suspect’s gun to the murder slug.  However, it wasn’t until Calvin Goddard, a medical doctor and forensic scientist, published “Forensic Ballistics” in 1925 that the discipline truly took off.  Goddard is still known as the father of ballistic science.  The Kill Room, a novel by Jeffery Deaver   Link to selected recipes mentioned in The Kill Room, including Guinness-Venison stew  Chicken Costoletta  Ethel Rider’s Hot Milk Sponge Cake  and Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly  at http://www.jefferydeaver.com/novel/killroom/recipes/

The aptly named poisonwood tree (Metopium toxiferum) is beautiful and scary.  Its smoke and pollen can travel in the air and fill your lungs with its potent poison.  Poison ivy, sumac and cashews are its cousins in the Anacardiaceae family.  It is a prodigious seeder that Master Gardener Pat Rogers call a "native invasive."  In addition to the Florida Keys, it grows in the Caribbean, Central America and West Indies.  It thrives in our well-drained, nutrient-poor soil.  Often it grows in a tropical hammock as an understory tree beneath taller trees.  The glossy, dark-green leaves vary from 4 to 10 inches long and are broader at the top.  The leathery leaves curl under at the edges.  They are compound, typically with five alternate leaflets.  Sometimes you can see the black sap spotting the leaves.  Poisonwood drops its leaves and replaces them in the early spring.  The inconspicuous flowers are a greenish-white.  Why do we want this tree?  It may make us break out but it is a cornucopia of treasures for native wildlife.  Its nectar feeds butterflies such as the Bahamian swallowtail, Florida white, giant swallowtail, Julia, large orange sulphur, mangrove skipper, southern broken-dash and many others.  The fruit feeds the skittish and rare white-crowned pigeons during their mating season.  Audubon painted this bird in a Geiger tree.  (His assistant actually painted the tree.)  Florida liguus tree snails (l.f. lossmanicus), a state species of special concern, live on poisonwood.  Their many varieties of colored stripes make this snail's shell a favorite collectable.  Robin Robinson  http://keysnews.com/node/27445

Classic Potato Salad  There are many recipes for potato salad on the Web.  Here are two:   http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/august-2008-classic-potato-salad and http://www.wsj.com/articles/recipe-classic-potato-salad-1438801054

August 21, 2015  The Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage this week received the largest gift in its history—$1.24 million—to support research into sustaining and revitalizing endangered languages in Europe.  The five-year project will evaluate different approaches to keeping languages healthy, taking into account social, cultural, political and economic influences, said Michael Atwood Mason, director of the center, which is best known for putting on the annual Folklife Festival on the National Mall.  “There’s an enormous amount of excitement about developing well-researched and well-documented evidence about what’s working and what’s not,” Mason said.  The money is coming from Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a manufacturer of drugs for reproductive health, urology and gastroenterology, headquartered in Switzerland.  The very name of the company is derived from an endangered language:  Fering, spelled with one r, is a dialect of North Frisian, spoken on the German island of Föhr in the North Sea.  David Montgomery  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style-blog/wp/2015/08/21/a-million-bucks-to-save-vanishing-languages/?hpid=z10

August 22, 2015  Organizers of PEACOCKalypse at the Freer and Sackler galleries in June 2015 promised that the party would have the courtyard buzzing with danceable hits.  And so it did.  Nearly 1,000 visitors donned peacock-style feathers, sipped colorful cocktails and danced to live music until midnight.  The party, named for the Freer’s famed Peacock Room and its “alter-ego” exhibition, “Filthy Lucre,” was part of the Smithsonian galleries’ “Asia After Dark” series, which aims to “engage a new generation of young professional museumgoers and donors.”  But the courtyard wasn’t the only thing buzzing that night:  The galleries, with their millennia-old stone and metal sculptures, also were shaking from the amplified music.  Vibrations, although little understood in the art conservation field, can pose grave risks to art.  And as museums are increasingly hosting events to increase foot traffic and court younger visitors, those concerns are weighing on conservationists, the guardians of the precious pieces.  “If someone spills red wine on something, everyone can see it.  If somebody is moving chairs around and setting up tables for an event and they hit an object and chip it or break it, that you can see right away.  But with vibrations, sometimes you can have a cumulative effect that you cannot see,” says Terry Drayman-Weisser, who recently retired from Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, where she directed conservation and technical research for nearly 40 years.  Menachem Wecker   http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/earthquake-no-damage-but-what-about-loud-music/2015/08/20/ec05c1ac-30a1-11e5-97ae-30a30cca95d7_story.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1343  August 24, 2015  On this date in 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae were buried in volcanic ash.  (This traditional date has been challenged, and many scholars believe that the event occurred on October 24.)  On this date in 1891,  Thomas Edison patented the motion picture camera.