Twelve- to 18-year-old Millennials (born 1979-1994)  are referred to as “screenagers” because of their affinity for electronic communication via computer, phone, television screens.  Screenagers are at home in instant messaging and chat environments to a degree unmatched by preceding generations.  See the 207-page paper "The Library in the Life of the User:  Engaging with People Where They Live and Learn" compiled by Lynn Silipigni Connaway at http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/publications/2015/oclcresearch-library-in-life-of-user.pdf  The six-page introduction provides a helpful abstract of the document.

PARAPHRASE from The Last Dance, the 50th novel in the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain (pseudonym for Evan Hunter)  The company might have been forgiven for linking the singular “anyone” with the plural “theirs” because they didn't want to offend any feminist who might object to the proper but politically incorrect “his."  Easier to say "theirs" and play in ungrammatically safe, as if anyone cared.

Is “They” Acceptable as a Singular Pronoun?  by Mark Nichol  Every time I use they as a singular pronoun in one of my entries, someone posts a comment, or emails me, scolding me for my grammatical error.  Granted, multiple grammatical strategies are available for people to identify someone with a personal pronoun, each of which can be used exclusively or in combination with one or more of the others:  Use the male gender:  “Each person is entitled to his opinion.”  Use the female gender when all possible referents are women:  “Each nun is entitled to her opinion.”  Use both male and female genders:  “Each person is entitled to his or her (or his/her) opinion.”  Alternate gender references in repeated usage:  “Each person is entitled to his opinion.  However, she should also be receptive to those of others.”  (This strategy is best employed with distinct anecdotes in separate passages; it’s awkward in proximity as shown in this example.)  Use an indefinite article in place of a pronoun:  “Each person is entitled to an opinion.”  Recast the sentence to plural form:  “All people are entitled to their own opinions.”  I have used most of these strategies often.  However, there is an additional option:  “Each person is entitled to their opinion.”  This, to many people, is a controversial solution.  It’s true that style guides—which are often prescriptivist (“Do this”) rather than descriptivist (“This is what’s done”)—argue against using it, at best warning that writers who employ it may be considered to be in error.  The Chicago Manual of Style, for example, advises, “While [shouldn’t that be although?] this usage is accepted in casual contexts, it is still considered ungrammatical in formal writing.”  Many literate people who use the singular they in speech hesitate to do so in writing because of this prejudice.  As a result, too, there is a lingering resistance among many editors to allow it.  However, the singular they is widely accepted in written British English, and it is well documented in the works of many great writers, including Auden, Austen, Byron, Chaucer, Dickens, Eliot, Shakespeare, Shaw, Thackeray, and Trollope.  It was the singular pronoun of choice in English for hundreds of years before, in 1745, an otherwise-reasonable grammarian named Anne Fisher—yes, a woman—became possibly the first person to champion he as the universal pronoun of choice.  According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, “The use of they, their, them, and themselves as pronouns of indefinite gender and indefinite number is well established in speech and writing, even in literary and formal contexts.”  Meanwhile, R.W. Burchfield, editor of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, and Bryan A. Garner, in Garner’s Modern American Usage, predict the inevitable dominance of the singular they.  http://www.dailywritingtips.com/is-%E2%80%9Cthey%E2%80%9D-acceptable-as-a-singular-pronoun/

In a season of rich desserts, it can be refreshing to end a meal with a cheese course.  “I like the complexity of it,” says Pascal Vittu, head fromager at Daniel Boulud’s Daniel restaurant in New York City.  “And it’s always that time of the meal when everybody is resting and a little more social—I like the collegiality of sharing a cheese plate then.”  When putting together a cheese course as a finishing note, Mr. Vittu first likes to take his cues from what’s been drunk with the meal.  If diners have been drinking red wine, he’s likely to go with creamy, rich cheeses, for example.  “Avoid all fresh or goat milk cheeses--they carry a natural acidity to them that will clash with the tannins in red wine,” says Mr. Vittu, who has worked at Daniel since 1996.  “Go with a triple cream cheese or a richer, hard cheese.”  White wine, Mr. Vittu says, “to the surprise of people, often goes better with cheese.  If we’re talking about something very lean like a sauvignon blanc from California or the Loire Valley, we can go with a goat’s milk cheese.  Something creamy like a camembert or brie will go better with something more complex like a chardonnay, which is richer.”  Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan  Read more and see pictures at http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-art-of-the-cheese-plate-1447267094

The Halifax Central Library is a public library in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada on the corner of Spring Garden Road and Queen Street.  A new central library was discussed by library administrators for several decades and approved by the regional council in 2008.  The architects, a joint venture between local firm Fowler Bauld and Mitchell and Schmidt Hammer Lassen of Denmark, were chosen in 2010 through an international design competition.  Construction began later that year on a prominent downtown site that had been a parking lot for half a century.  The new library opened in December 2014 and has become a highly popular gathering place.  In addition to a book collection significantly larger than that of the former library, the new building houses a wide range of amenities including cafés, an auditorium, and community rooms.  The striking architecture is characterised by the fifth floor's cantilever over the entrance plaza, a central atrium criss-crossed by staircases, and the building's transparency and relationship to the urban context.  The library won a Lieutenant Governor’s Design Award in Architecture for 2014.  The library is a five-storey structure comprising about 11,000 square metres (120,000 sq ft) of space.  A skylighted atrium, criss-crossed by stairs and walkways, spans the interior height of the structure.  The main lobby and children's collection are concentrated on the lower floors, while much of the upper floors are designated as quiet areas.  A rooftop terrace with seating offers a broad view of Downtown, the South End, and Halifax Harbour.  The design, said to resemble a stack of books, has garnered international attention and was featured by CNN as one of ten "eye-popping" new buildings of 2014.  The building topped a list of "high-design libraries" compiled by enRoute and was covered on numerous architecture websites.  In the 2014 "Best of Halifax" awards, ranked annually by readers of The Coast, the library was voted the "Best Thing To Happen In Halifax In The Past Year" and the "Best Effort To Improve Halifax".  The library was also shortlisted for the World Building of the Year Award in the Civic and Community category at the 2015 World Architecture Festival in Singapore.  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Central_Library

“You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.”  “The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend.  When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.”  Oliver Goldsmith, writer and physician (1730-1774)   https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/65124.Oliver_Goldsmith

What word contains the five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) in the right order?  There are several of which the best known are abstemious and facetious.  Others include the rare botanical words acheilous, anemious and caesious.  The rare zoological word is annelidous.   And the chemical term is arsenious. http://www.english-for-students.com/Five-Vowels-1.html

The shortest word containing all five vowels exactly once is the six-letter EUNOIA, meaning alertness of mind an will (and also the title of a book by Canadian poet Christian Bok).  However, it is not included in any major English dictionary.  There are several seven-letter words containing all the vowels, including SEQUOIA, EULOGIA, MIAOUED, ADOULIE, EUCOSIA, EUNOMIA, EUTOPIA, MOINEAU, and DOULEIA.  The relatively common French word OISEAU (meaning bird) contains all five vowels, once each.  The shortest word with the five vowels occurring in alphabetical order is AERIOUS(airy), which has seven letters.  The longest such word is PHRAGELLIORHYNCHUS (a protozoan) with 18 letters.  There are two seven-letter words in Portuguese that contain the five vowels in alphabetical order:  ACEITOUand ALEIJOU.  SUOIDEA (the taxonomic group to which pigs belong) is the shortest word with the five vowels in reverse alphabetical order.  The longest such word is PUNCTOSCHMIDTELLA (a crustacean).  http://www.fun-with-words.com/word_vowels.html

November 27 and 28, 2015, viewers can see a northern minimum moonrise, the least-northern moonrise in the moon’s cycle.  This particular alignment won’t occur again for another 18.6 years.  Built about 2,000 years ago by people of the Hopewell culture, the Newark (Ohio) Earthworks and others like it are thought to have been some kind of astronomical observatory designed to align with certain points in the lunar cycle.  The earthen structure is thought to have been created on such a massive scale for better astronomical accuracy.  The Newark Earthworks feature an octagon that encloses about 50 acres.  Each of the eight sides is made of earthen mounds about 6 feet tall and 550 feet long.  The octagon joins with a circle encompassing an additional 20 acres.  The octagon marks certain points in the moon’s 18.6-year cycle.  Throughout the cycle are eight “ standstill points” where, as the moon rises or sets, it appears to stop going in one direction and begins going in another.  There are eight different alignments with the earthworks throughout the lunar cycle.  The Newark Earthworks site is a national historic landmark and was named in 2006 as the official prehistoric monument of the state.  A statewide committee also is working to get the Newark site and other Hopewell earthworks in Ohio listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.  Jennifer Smola  http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/11/27/moon-to-align-with-ancient-earthworks.html

100 Notable Books of 2015   Notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/books/review/100-notable-books-of-2015.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1385  November 30, 2015  On this date in 1982, Michael Jackson's second solo album, Thriller was released worldwide, and would become the best-selling record album in history.  On this date in 1993, the NFL awarded its 30th franchise to the Jacksonville Jaguars.  On this date in 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the Brady Bill) into law.

Christmas pudding is a type of pudding traditionally served as part of the Christmas dinner in Britain and in some other countries where it has been brought by British emigrants.  It has its origins in medieval England, and is sometimes known as plum pudding or just "pud",  though this can also refer to other kinds of boiled pudding involving dried fruit.  Despite the name "plum pudding," the pudding contains no actual plums due to the pre-Victorian use of the word "plums" as a term for raisins.  The pudding is composed of many dried fruits held together by egg and suet, sometimes moistened by treacle or molasses and flavoured with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and other spices.  The pudding is aged for a month, months, or even a year; the high alcohol content of the pudding prevents it from spoiling during this time.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pudding

Quodlibetal, an adjective with vowels in reverse order, means relating to a question or topic for debate or discussion.  From Latin quodlibetum, from Latin quod (what) + libet (it pleases), meaning “whatever pleases”.  Earlier the term referred to a mock exercise in discussion or debate.   A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  David Franks  Subject:  quodlibetal  In music, a quodlibet is a piece that incorporates melodies from diverse sources, usually with humorous intent.  For example, a quodlibet might contain recognizable snippets of “You Are My Sunshine”, “Stormy Weather” and “A Foggy Day”.  J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations includes a quodlibet as the final variation before the reprise of the aria that begins the work.  As the entire work is a tour de force of compositional techniques, this quodlibet is an interweaving of four tune fragments from two folk songs:  “Ich bin so lang nicht bei dir g’west” (“I have so long been away from you”) and “Kraut und Rüben haben mich vertreiben” (“Cabbage and turnips have driven me away”).  A recording of Rosalyn Tureck performing J.S. Bach's Aria mit 30 Veränderungen, BWV 988 "Goldberg Variations" - Var. 30 Quodlibet a 1 Clav. is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGgNRBE_Tkk  2:07

From:  Anu Garg:  Subject:  Odds &  Ends  The Netherlands (literally, lowlands) is also called Holland even though Holland is the name of a region in the country (North Holland and South Holland are two of the twelve provinces).  Holland was a powerful region of the country so its name was used for the whole country.  For the same reason, the name Russia was used for the former Soviet Union and England for the whole of the UK.  So, why “the” Netherlands?  Usually, when a place is named after a geographic feature, it goes with a definite article.  The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, but the seat of government is The Hague (from des Graven hage:  The Counts’ Hedge). The word Dutch comes from the same root as the word Deutschland, a Germanic word diota meaning people.

Costa Rica, Brazil, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia are the world’s top pineapple producers, and more than 300 billion pineapples a year are grown worldwide.  Hawaii grows only about 400 million pineapples a year, mostly for tourists, Hawaiians, and to ease occasional shortages in California.  Hawaii has no canneries.  It takes about 18 months for a plant to produce fruit. — Smithsonian.com, American Society for Horticultural Science.  http://thecourier.com/opinion/columns/2015/11/02/where-do-our-pineapples-come-from/

The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a "play with music", translated by German dramatist Elisabeth Hauptmann from John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, with music by Kurt Weill, and insertion ballads by François Villon and Rudyard Kipling as adapted by Bertolt Brecht.  The work offers a Socialist critique of the capitalist world.  It opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.  By 1933, when Weill and Brecht were forced to leave Germany by Hitler's Machtergreifung, the play had been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times on European stages.  Songs from The Threepenny Opera have been widely covered and become standards, most notably "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" ("The Ballad of Mack the Knife") and "Seeräuberjenny" ("Pirate Jenny").  There have been at least three film versions.  German director G. W. Pabst made a 1931 German- and French-language version simultaneously (a common practice in the early days of sound films).  Another version was directed by Wolfgang Staudte in West Germany in 1962 starring Curd Jürgens, Gert Fröbe, and Hildegard Knef.  Scenes withSammy Davis Jr. were added for its American release.  In 1989 an American version (renamed Mack the Knife) was released, directed by Menahem Golan, with Raúl Juliá as Macheath, Richard Harris as Peachum, Julie Walters as Mrs Peachum, Bill Nighy as Tiger Brown, Julia Migenes as Jenny, and Roger Daltrey as the Street Singer.  Andy Serkis has announced a collaboration with musician Nick Cave on a planned motion capture film of The Threepenny Opera.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threepenny_Opera

The roots of language:  what makes us different from other animals?  by Paul Ibbotson and Michael Tomasello   Language seems to have evolved just once, in one out of 8.7 million species on earth today.  The hunt is on to explain the foundations of this ability and what makes us different from other animals.  The intellectual most closely associated with trying to pin down that capacity is Noam Chomsky.  He proposed a universal grammatical blueprint that was unique to humans.  This blueprint operated like a computer program.  Instead of running Windows or Excel, this program performed “operations” on language–any language.  Regardless of which of the 6000+ human languages that this code could be exposed to, it would guide the learner to the correct adult grammar.  It was a bold claim:  despite the surface variations we hear between Swahili, Japanese and Latin, they are all run on the same piece of underlying software.  As ever, remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, and in the 50 years since some of these ideas were laid out, history has not been kind.  Read more and see Minna Sundberg’s illustration of the relationship of Indo-European and Uralic languages at http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/nov/05/roots-language-what-makes-us-different-animals

Uralic languages:  family of more than 20 related languages, all descended from a Proto-Uralic language that existed 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.  At its earliest stages, Uralic most probably included the ancestors of the Yukaghir language.  The Uralic languages are spoken by more than 25 million people scattered throughout northeastern Europe, northern Asia, and (through immigration) North America.  The most demographically important Uralic language is Hungarian, the official language of Hungary.  http://www.britannica.com/topic/Uralic-languages

In the fall of 2015, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and other federal officials announced the nation’s first national food loss and waste goal, calling for a 50 percent reduction by 2030.  The numbers are staggering.  The USDA says 30-40 percent of the food supply is wasted, the equivalent of 1,249 calories per American per day.  The impact is huge.  The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 21 percent of all municipal solid waste is food.  The cost includes the wasted water, soil, gasoline and other resources used to grow, ship and store that food.  And rotting food produces methane, a greenhouse gas.   Fighting food waste is an old battle for some generations.  The USDA launched food-waste campaigns during World War I and II, and some of the advice still applies: “serve just enough, save what will keep.”  The agency has also adopted new tools, including a smartphone app called FoodKeeper that offers cooking and storage tips, sends expiration reminders, and a 24/7 virtual expert to answer questions.  Food Tank, a think tank that focuses on the food system, has compiled a list of 13 other apps that connect farmers, retailers, consumers and donors to reduce food waste.  Here are other tips from the EPA on reducing food waste:  Shop your refrigerator first.  Cook or eat what you already have at home before buying more.  Plan your menu before you go shopping and buy only those things on your menu.  Buy only what you realistically need and will use.  Buying in bulk only saves money if you are able to use the food before it spoils.  Be creative.  If safe and healthy, use the edible parts of food that you normally do not eat.  For example, stale bread can be used to make croutons and beet tops can be sautèed for a side dish. 

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/11/24/editorial-waste-not-want-not-thanksgiving/76330134/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1384  November 27, 2015  On this date in 1968, Penny Ann Early became the first woman to play major professional basketball, for the Kentucky Colonels in an ABA game against the Los Angeles Stars.  On this date in 1973, the United States Senate voted 92–3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States.  (On December 6, the House  confirmed him 387–35).  Word of the Day for November 27  bodge verb  (Britain) To do a clumsy or inelegant job, usually as a temporary repair; mend, patch up, repair.  To work green wood using traditional country methods; to perform the craft of a bodger.

When I read some of the rules for speaking & writing the English language correctly—as that a sentence must never end with a particle—& perceive how implicitly even the learned obey it, I think—Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it.  February 3, 1860  Henry David Thoreau  https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=excerpts13 

GRAMMATICAL PARTICIPLES  Traditional meaning:  A particle is a part of speech which cannot be inflected, that is it can be neither declined nor conjugated.  Particles are the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction and the interjection.  Modern meaning:  In modern grammar, a particle is a function word that must be associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning.  Particles are a separate part of speech and are distinct from other classes of function words, such as articles, prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs.  Particles are typically words that encode grammatical categories (such as negation, mood, tense, or case), clitics, or fillers or (oral) discourse markers such as well, um, etc.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_particle

RIME  compose rhymes, be similar in sound, especially with respect to the last syllable "hat and cat rhyme," correspondence in the sounds of two or more lines (especially final sounds), ice crystals forming a white deposit (especially on objects outside)  WordNet 3.6

See other definitions, etymology and usage at http://www.finedictionary.com/rime.html

Read eight-page article "Rime and Reason" by J. W. Rankin PMLA Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1929), pp. 997-1004 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/457706?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

The cutting of huge figures or geoglyphs into the turf of English hillsides has been going on for more than 3000 years.  There are 56 hill figures scattered around England, with the vast majority on the chalk downlands of the southern part of the country.  The figures include giants, horses, crosses and regimental badges.  Though the majority of these glyphs date within the last three hundred years or so there are one or two that are much older.  The most famous of these figures is perhaps also the most mysterious, the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire.  The White Horse has recently been redated and shown to be even older than its previously assigned ancient pre-Roman Iron Age date.   More controversial are the Cerne Abbot Giant in Dorset and the enigmatic Long Man of Wilmington in Sussex.  Compared to the huge stone permanence of structures like the Avebury Monuments and Stonehenge, hill figures are much more transitory, ten or twenty years without scouring and the carving could be lost forever.  Brian Haughton  Read more and see pictures at http://www.ancient.eu/article/229/

A Parade of Monuments by Kenneth Chang   The story of Britain starts at the end of the last ice age.  In the cold, Britain emptied of people.  With so much ocean water frozen in glaciers, sea level was lower, and Britain was connected to the rest of Europe.  As the world warmed, they walked back until rising waters severed the land bridge.  Around 3800 B.C. the first large monuments appeared—rectangular mounds known as long barrows that served as burial chambers.  Around 3500 B.C., a two-mile-long, 100-yard-wide ditch was dug close to the Stonehenge site, what is known as the Stonehenge Cursus.  (Cursus is Latin for racetrack; the discoverer in the 18th century thought it was a Roman racetrack.)  The first stage of Stonehenge itself, a circular foundation ditch, was carved around 2900 B.C., and rings of timbers were erected.  About 400 years later came a heyday of henges.  (The defining characteristic of a henge is not the rocks or timbers sticking upward, but a circular ditch surrounded by a raised bank.  In this sense, Stonehenge today is not a true henge; its raised bank is inside the ditch.)  Twenty miles north of Stonehenge is Avebury, with three stone circles, the outermost more than 1,000 feet in diameter, so large that the town of Avebury has spread into the henge; at the center is a pub, the Red Lion, founded four centuries ago.  Closer to Stonehenge is Durrington Walls, a circular earthen structure about 1,600 feet in diameter.  Michael Parker Pearson of University College London has excavated houses at Durrington Walls and along the nearby River Avon, and he has proposed this is where the builders lived for the grandest stage of Stonehenge’s construction, which started around 2600 B.C.  The giant stones, weighing some 40 tons, were moved and carved.  He believes smaller bluestones, about two tons each, had been taken to Stonehenge during the initial construction from the Preseli mountains in Wales and now more, larger ones were hauled over.  Because early Britons had no written language, the simplest question—Why was it built?—has yet to be conclusively answered.  In Dr. Parker Pearson’s view, Durrington Walls was the land of the living, symbolized by the timbers of Woodhenge, while Stonehenge was the land of the dead.  He believes early Britons gathered at Durrington Walls to feast and then proceeded to Stonehenge to honor their ancestors.  Read more and see pictures at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/science/stonehenge-begins-to-yield-its-secrets.html

In a proposal published November 23, 2015, a federal task force recommended that drone pilots should be required to register to fly any aircraft that weighs little more than a half-pound.  Technically, the Federal Aviation Administration already requires the registration of all aircraft, including drones.  But the agency doesn’t currently enforce those rules for the kind of small recreational aircraft expected to be a hugely popular holiday gift this year.  With the popularity of drones only expected to grow, the FAA decided to convene the a task force to develop a registration scheme that could enforce accountability by creating a traceable link between a drone and its owner.  The task force—known as the “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Registration Task Force Aviation Rulemaking Committee”—included drone makers such as 3D Robotics and DJI; organizations such as the Air Line Pilots Association and the International Association of Chiefs of Police; and potential drone users (and retailers) such as Amazon and Wal-Mart.  For the moment, the task forces recommendations are just that; it’s not clear yet what the next steps are toward seeing the proposed rules debated or implemented.  http://www.wired.com/2015/11/even-super-small-drones-would-have-to-register-under-federal-proposal/

LeBron James reached yet another milestone on November 23, 2015, and the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar said he has no use for the historical comparisons that inevitably pop up when this happens.  With an assist to Kevin Love in the corner against the Orlando Magic, he moved into 25th all-time in career assists.  The only other player in the top 25 in both assists and scoring is Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson.  James told reporters that it was "very humbling to see my name linked with Big O," but wished NBA stars were treated more like quarterbacks.  From ESPN's Dave McMenamin:  "I think what we get caught up in, in our league too much, is trying to compare greats to greats, instead of just accepting and acknowledging and saying, 'Wow, these are just great players,'" James said after the Cleveland Cavaliers' 117-103 win over the Orlando Magic.  "I think in the NFL, when you talk about great quarterbacks, they don't really compare great quarterbacks.  They say, 'Oh, Joe Montana is great.'  You know, 'Tom Brady is great.  Aaron Rodgers is great.  Steve Young is great.' [Terry] Bradshaw, all those great quarterbacks, they never compare them as much.  "But when it comes to our sport, we're so eager to say, 'Who is better:  Oscar or [Michael] Jordan?' or 'Jordan or LeBron or Kobe [Bryant] or these guys?' instead of just accepting greatness.  And if you understand the history of the sport, then there is no way you could ever forget Oscar Robertson.  This guy, he averaged a triple-double for, like, forever."  James Herbert  http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on-basketball/25387684/lebron-james-says-we-shouldnt-be-comparing-great-players-so-much

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1383  November 25, 2015  On this date in 1874, the United States Greenback Party was established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.  On this date in 1915, Albert Einstein presented the field equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

July 9, 2008  Just moments after David Wroblewski sat down on a shaded bench in the oval-shaped dog run at 72nd Street in Riverside Park, a goldendoodle (half golden retriever, half poodle) jumped up and started licking his face.  It was exactly what you might expect would happen to the author of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,”  “Edgar Sawtelle” is his first book.  And while he said the formal outline for the story came to him in all of five minutes, it took more than 10 years to complete (really more like 15, he later confessed, saying he didn’t want aspiring writers just starting out to hear that and be discouraged).  The tale is structured along the lines of “Hamlet,” with elements of Rudyard Kipling and Stephen King mixed in with the Shakespeare.  More than anything, it is his intimate knowledge of dogs and his humanized versions of them that most distinguish Mr. Wroblewski’s work.  The 1934 book “Working Dogs,” about a project called Fortunate Fields to breed German shepherds for certain characteristics (like guiding the blind), was one of Mr. Wroblewski’s primary sources; he invents a correspondence between Edgar’s grandfather and an imagined director of the project that traces the evolution of these breeding theories.  Other details in the book are based on Mr. Wroblewski’s own experience.  His family ran a dog kennel in Pittsville, in central Wisconsin, when he was a boy.  It was a tough business, and after about five years, they had to give it up.  “I knew I wanted to write about dogs and the way that I knew them, not as fictional devices,” he said.  “Real dogs.”  The idea that Edgar would be mute was also a result of personal experience.  Mr. Wroblewski had to have minor surgery on his tongue in the early 1990s, which made it difficult to speak.  “I just stopped talking” for a while, he said. “I became very observant.”  He thought it would be interesting to have a character who couldn’t talk. Edgar, he said, “is hyper-observant in the way that Hamlet is hyper-verbal.”  Patricia Cohen   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/books/09dogs.html?pagewanted=all  See also The Book That Made Me A Reader David Wroblewski on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book at http://centerforfiction.org/for-readers/the-book-that-made-me-a-reader-archives/david-wroblewski-on-the-book-that-made-him-a-reader/

Canine Classics picked by David Wroblewski:  So Long, See You Tomorrow, The Jungle Book, The Call of the Wild, Dog Man, Adam's Task, Winterdance:  The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod, Animals in Translation, If Dogs Could Talk

As self-published books gain legitimacy, libraries develop ways to include local work in collections.  “We used to have an event in Glen Ellyn called BookFest involving local merchants and the library,” says Susan DeRonne, adult department director at Glen Ellyn (Illinois) Public Library (GEPL).  “[It] had a tent where self-published authors could sell their works, and it became more and more popular in its last years.”  GEPL is one of a growing number of libraries that are acquiring self-published books and making them available to patrons, either in dedicated collections or as part of their regular holdings.  These libraries recognize that many self-published works offer unique value and a way to provide service tailored to their community.  The library is currently looking at products that will allow it to offer self-published ebooks, and DeRonne says that the library has budgeted to include ebooks in the collection next year.  “We expect the collection to continue to grow, particularly when we add the ebook portion, and we’re looking forward to that,” she says.  The collections also offer another way for the library to connect to local writers’ communities. DeRonne says that GEPL doesn’t have a dedicated writers’ group, but it does belong to a group of Illinois libraries that sponsors a series of “Inside Writing and Publishing” seminars.  “That’s where we got a big chunk of our list of people who might want to submit their books,” she says.  The library also hosts programming related to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)—the annual event in which participants attempt to draft a novel within the month of November—and it will promote the Emerging Author Collection then as well.  Multnomah (Portland, Oregon) Central Library has established a series of programming related to self-publishing taking place through the end of the year to help local writers finish and publish their books, including a talk by Smashwords CEO Mark Coker.  Toronto Public Library (TPL) doesn’t have a special collection for self-published books, but the library has always considered self-published books for its regular collection and the number of self-published titles that authors ask the library to consider has grown significantly in recent years.  TPL now receives about 300 requests per year from authors to consider self-published books, although it ultimately adds far fewer than half of those to its collection as either hard copies or ebooks in OverDrive.   Greg Landgraf  http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2015/10/30/solving-the-self-published-puzzle/

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”  “The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.”   Hippocrates II of Cos (c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC), a Greek physician  https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/248774.Hippocrates?page=1  Find seven physicians named Hippocrates at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates_(physicians)

The Fee Library  Are subscription libraries seeing a rebirth?  If Seattle is any indicator, it appears so by Joseph Janes   A new library, the brainchild of David Brewster, is opening January 2016.  This isn’t a new branch of Seattle Public Library (SPL); it’s a new subscription library, rather grandly named Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum.   Read about it at   http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2015/10/30/fee-library-subscription-libraries/

The woman who was the epitomé of the "vamp" persona in cinema history, Theda Bara, was born Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 29th, 1890.  She was given her new name by Hollywood, and billed as the daughter of an Eastern potentate though her father was actually a tailor.  Theda had a conventional upbringing and schooling.  She went to New York to do a play after graduating from high school, and then she traveled to Hollywood to pursue a screen career.  Theda Bara's fabricated screen name was an anagram for "Arab death."  She was called a "vamp" because of her absurd, vampirish personality, on and off screen.  In her famous film "A Fool There Was" (1916), Theda supposedly hissed to the character who played her sweetheart:  "Kiss me, you fool!" (the line actually was "Kiss me, my fool!"--which somehow is funnier).  For publicity purposes Theda was often photographed with skulls and snakes, wearing beaded, fringed clothing which looks ridiculous today, but which obviously served as titillating shock value back in the 1910's.  Most of Theda's vamp films were made during a mere four year period.  When her contract was dropped by Fox, and her film career was essentially over, Theda tried to make it on Broadway for several years, but was not successful.  The public's tastes had changed.  Vamps were out, and the innocent virgin heroines played by Mary Pickford and Marguerite Clark were in.  In 1925 Theda returned to Hollywood to try and resurrect her career, but ended up playing caricatures of her former screen personality.  She retired completely from films in 1927.  http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/thedabara.html  See also https://silentology.wordpress.com/theda-bara/

See Unshelved comic strip including recommendations for books  and notices of talks and appearances by Ambaum & Barnes at  http://www.unshelved.com/   "Unshelved" is a registered trademark of Overdue Media LLC.

Global law firm Dentons, Singapore's Rodyk and Australian firm Gadens have agreed to come together to create the dominant global law firm in the Pacific Rim.  Expected to launch in 2016, the firm will have more than 7,300 lawyers, more than 9,000 timekeepers and nearly 13,000 people, working from more than 130 locations.  http://www.dentonscombination.com/pdf/pacific_rims_leading_global_law_firm.pdf

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1382  November 23, 2015  On this date in 1644,  John Milton published Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship.  On this date in 1924, Edwin Hubble's discovery that the Andromeda nebula is actually another island universe far outside of our own was first published in The New York Times.

Some New Jersey women voted as early as 1776.  Historians argue about just what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues meant when they declared "that all men are created equal."  Did the founders mean males only or were there some situations when "men" could mean all humans?  What natural or political rights, in their view, did women possess?  The unique case of women voters in New Jersey offers some clues.  The framers of New Jersey's first constitution in 1776 gave the vote to "all inhabitants of this colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds . . .  and have resided within the county . . . for twelve months."  The other twelve new states restricted voting to men.  Although some have argued that this gender-neutral language was a mistake, most historians agree that the clear intention was to allow some women to vote.  Because married women had no property in their own names and were assumed to be represented by their husbands' votes, only single women voted in New Jersey.  But, in the 1790s and 1800s, large numbers of unmarried New Jersey women regularly participated in elections and spoke out on political issues.  In 1807, the state's legislature ignored the constitution and restricted suffrage to white male citizens who paid taxes.  This was largely a result of the Democratic-Republican Party's attempt to unify its factions for the 1808 presidential election.  A faction within the party wanted to deny the vote to aliens and the non-tax-paying poor.  The liberal faction within the party gave way on this, but also took the vote from women, who tended to vote for the Federalist Party.  In this way, New Jersey's 30-year experiment with female suffrage ended-not mainly because of opposition to the idea of women voting, but for reasons of party politics  Bob Blythe    http://www.nps.gov/revwar/about_the_revolution/voting_rights.html

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) launched an updated and redesigned version of Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government.  The educational website is named after one of our Nation’s most influential Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin.  The site is full of educational content on the workings of the U.S. Government and U.S. history.  GPO partnered with the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to ensure educational content is easy to comprehend and age appropriate.  Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government:  http://bensguide.gpo.gov/”

http://www.bespacific.com/gpo-launches-next-generation-of-guide-to-us-government/

A group of community members gather every month at Woods Hole (Mass.) Public Library, they try to stay within the lines—quite literally.  “We purchase a couple of coloring books and I print out some free coloring pages that are available online, and we just get together and color,” says librarian Kellie Porter, who started the library’s Coloring Club in May 2015.  The club has seen about 15–20 members a month, ranging from tweens to 70-year-olds.  “I really try to play up the whole relaxation aspect of it,” she says, “so I put on relaxing bird songs and try to make a soothing environment.”  Adult coloring books have become popular in recent years, with the release of Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford’s 2013 Secret Garden:  An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book and Dover Publications’ 2012 Creative Haven coloring book series.  Alison Marcotte  

Read more and see pictures at http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/coloring-book-clubs-cross-the-line-into-libraries/

Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home Thanksgiving PT1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afdh_i3Kmy0  11:45

Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home Thanksgiving PT2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDHiS5ivkN8  10:12

At the height of Julia Child’s fame in the 1970s and ‘80s, Thanksgiving guests often felt the need to tell her she should get her home number removed from the public directory.  (This was an analog tool called a “telephone book.”)  The phone would ring all day said Sheryl Julian, now the food editor for The Boston Globe, who celebrated Thanksgiving dinner in the Childs’ home in 1976 and 1977.  “Every time she hung up, it would ring again, and it would be another total stranger with a turkey problem.”  No matter how busy, Child would hand off whatever kitchen task she was doing, take the phone and talk the nervous cook down from the ledge.  But Child refused to unlist her number or turn off the phone; instead, she embraced the role of national Thanksgiving commander-in-chief.  “Whatever they seemed to be saying, she usually just told the callers not to worry,” Julian said.  “I even heard her tell people that turkey wasn’t meant to be served hot.  She just wanted them to relax.”  Julia Moskin  Read more at http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article45304674.html

See the suit worn by TV’s Superman, George Reeves at the Ohio History Center on exhibit through January 3, 2016.  On special loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., the super suit was worn by Reeves, who portrayed mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent and his heroic alter ego, Superman, in the TV series The Adventures of Superman.  The series aired nationally from 1952–1958.  Superman was created in the 1930s by Cleveland high school students Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.  The duo was inspired by pulp magazines of the day, specifically the science–fiction publication Amazing Stories.  They wrote the first comic strips from their homes in the Glenville neighborhood on the east side of the city.  Superman first graced the cover of Action Comics No. 1 in 1938.  The famous red, blue and yellow suit is joined by an array of newly added comic books, records, TV memorabilia, radios and more items of mid-century pop culture in the exhibit 1950s:  Building the American Dream.  See Superman’s signature suit at the Ohio History Center museum at 800 E. 17^th Ave. in Columbus.  For more information about the exhibit, call 800.686.6124 or visit ohiohistory.org/superman.  https://www.ohiohistory.org/about-us/newsroom/september/superman-suit-at-ohio-history-center

The earliest known depiction of the merry-go-round is in 500 A.D. in the Byzantine Empire, which depicts baskets, carrying riders, suspended from a central pole.  The first merry-go-round created in the United States was in Hessville, Ohio.  It was created by Franz Wiesenhoffer during the 1840s.  https://allweatherseal.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/national-merry-go-round-day/  See also http://www.richlandcarrousel.com/ (Mansfield, OH) and http://www.merrygoroundmuseum.org/ (Sandusky, OH) 

The Food and Drug Administration on November 19, 2015 approved the nation's first genetically altered animal--a salmon genetically engineered to grow twice as fast as its natural counterpart.  AquAdvantage, produced by Massachusetts-based AquaBounty, is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon and has been given a gene from the ocean pout, an eel-like fish.  The result is a fish that grows larger and faster than traditional salmon.  Food-safety activists, environmental groups and traditional salmon fishing industries, not to mention lawmakers from Alaska, have long opposed the approval of the fish--which they derisively refer to as "Frankenfish"--and have argued that its existence could open the door to a broad range of potentially unsafe genetically modified animal foods. Knowing an FDA approval was likely, critics have in recent years won commitments from some of the nation's most recognizable chains— including Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Target—to not sell the fish.  The FDA said that its decision, two decades in the making, was "based on sound science and a comprehensive review," and that regulators are confident "that food from the fish is safe to eat."  The agency will require that the AquaBounty salmon be raised only in land-based, contained tanks in two specific facilities in Canada and Panama.  Brady Dennis   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/11/19/the-fda-just-approved-the-nations-first-genetically-engineered-animal-a-salmon-that-grows-twice-as-fast/

See also FDA November 19, 2015 news release at http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm473249.htm

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1381  November 20, 2015  On this date in 1789, New Jersey became the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.  On this date in 1805, Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio premiered in Vienna.