On December 28, 2015, President Barack Obama signed into law a ban on tiny plastic particles used in personal cosmetic products that scientists say are polluting U.S. lakes, rivers and the oceans.  The bipartisan "Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015," (H.R. 321), passed by the U.S. House on Dec. 7, "prohibits the manufacture and introduction into interstate commerce of rinse-off cosmetics containing intentionally-added plastic microbeads."  The tiny plastic beads, about the size of a pen-tip, have been shown to filter through municipal wastewater treatment plants after consumers rinse them down the drain while using soaps, toothpaste and other products that contain them.  The House bill was co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St Joseph, and Rep. Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey.  The Senate approved the bill Dec. 18.  The law will phase microbeads out of consumer products over the next few years, starting with a ban on manufacturing the beads in July 2017, followed by product-specific manufacturing and sales bans in 2018 and 2019.  Garret Ellison  http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/12/obama_signs_ban_on_microbead_p.html

Degas and the Dance until January 10, 2016  Toledo Museum of Art   Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, on loan from the Clark Art Institute of Williamstown, Massachusetts, occupies center stage in this exhibition that revolves around Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas (1834-1917), one of France’s leading Impressionists.  Originally modeled in wax in 1880-81, the 38-inch tall figure was cast in bronze in 1919-21 and depicts Marie van Goethem, a student in the Ballet School of the Paris Opéra.  Ten other works by Degas on the subject of ballet, including bronze sculptures and paintings, will be shown.  Among them are TMA’s bronze Study in Nude of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen and pastel The Dancers, as well as important works on loan from the Museé d’Orsay in Paris, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Gallery of Art and The Phillips Collection, both in Washington, D.C.  The exhibition is presented in celebration of The Toledo Ballet’s 75th annual performance of “The Nutcracker” and will include a section of memorabilia and costumes from the ballet.  http://www.toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/degasandthedance/  Find sonnets of Edgar Degas in a library near you.  See sample search using the zip code 43606 (and link to more information about Edgar Degas) at http://www.worldcat.org/title/huit-sonnets-dedgar-degas/oclc/2274539

The Rise of Sneaker Culture until February 28, 2016  Toledo Museum of Art explores the athletic shoe from its origins in the mid-1800s to its current place in high-fashion.  This traveling exhibition, organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, is the first exhibition in the United States to present a comprehensive survey of the sneaker’s complex design, history, and immense cultural significance. The Toledo Museum of Art is the only Ohio venue for this show.  http://www.toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/the-rise-of-sneaker-culture/

Newsmakers 2015:  The year’s new words by Aaron Hutchins  http://www.macleans.ca/society/newsmakers-2015-the-years-new-words/

2015 has been a huge year for space exploration with some unprecedented findings by Matthew Dunn   http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/2015-has-been-a-huge-year-for-space-exploration-with-some-unprecedented-findings/news-story/6e47b7ee242f85a6ee60ece8ee4d917f

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO WOOLWORTH'S?   July 18, 1997  The Woolworth Corporation said yesterday that it would shutter all 400 of its remaining five-and-dime stores, closing the book on a 117-year history of a store that offered lipstick, diapers and a milk shake at a discount all under one roof.  The store closings were widely expected and indeed encouraged by Wall Street.  But they underscore how much American retailing has changed in the last two decades as its oldest icons--Montgomery Ward, the Sears, Roebuck catalogue and now Woolworth--have faded or died.  Clever, strong-willed merchants have been replaced by computer systems, and American shoppers no longer have time to linger over a grilled cheese sandwich at a store lunch counter.  Among discount stores, Woolworth is only the last, if the most prominent, victim of larger and stronger competitors like Wal-Mart and Target, which offer more selection, quicker checkout and often lower prices.  Kresge long ago became Kmart, Ben Franklin has been folded into Wal-Mart and hundreds of local chains have faded into the collective memory of a nation warmly nostalgic for old stores but not willing to shop in them.  The Woolworth stores will be closed in stages; the first to be closed will be in metropolitan New York by the end of the year.  ''Woolworth was 100 years ago what Wal-Mart is today,'' said Robert Sobel, a professor of business history at Hofstra University.  ''First, there were dry goods stores, then they were called variety stores and every town had something like that.  But all the chains disappeared because there was no need for them.  What would Woolworth sell that you couldn't buy somewhere else?  You can get eyebrow tweezers at a drugstore.''  The original store, the Great 5 Cents Store, was opened in 1879 by Frank Woolworth in Utica, N.Y., where its first sale, a five-cent fire shovel, was made.  That same year, he opened the mother of all Woolworth stores in Lancaster, Pa.  The next year he added 10 cents to the name and prices.  The empire grew with its sales of mustache cups, egg whips, pie plates and flour dredges.  Woolworth dominated the discount sector for the early half of the century.  But the postwar exodus to the suburbs soon created pressures, as shoppers left behind Woolworth's and other Main Street stores for malls and larger stores on highways.  More recently, Woolworth was eclipsed by large-format stores that offered more merchandise, and squeezed the retailer's prices.  At the same time, Woolworth, like many other retailing companies, became obsessed with expansion, adding a bunch of specialty stores, some of them successful, many of them not.  Jennifer Steinhauer  Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/18/business/woolworth-gives-up-on-the-five-and-dime.html

Ellsworth Kelly, one of America’s great 20th-century abstract artists, who in the years after World War II shaped a distinctive style of American painting by combining the solid shapes and brilliant colors of European abstraction with forms distilled from everyday life, died on Decmeber 27, 2015 at his home in Spencertown, N.Y.  He was 92.  Mr. Kelly was a true original, forging his art equally from the observational exactitude he gained as a youthful bird-watching enthusiast; from skills he developed as a designer of camouflage patterns while in the Army; and from exercises in automatic drawing he picked up from European surrealism.  He was living in France during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism in New York and only distantly aware of art in the United States.  When he returned to America in 1954, he settled on what was then an out-of-the-way section of Manhattan for art, the Financial District, and had little interaction with many of his contemporaries.  The result was a deeply personal and exploratory art, one that subscribed to no ready orthodoxies, and that opened up wide the possibilities of abstraction for his own generation and those to come.  Born in Newburgh, N.Y., on May 31, 1923, Mr. Kelly studied painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston after his discharge from the Army in 1945.  But his formative years as an artist were in Paris, which he had visited briefly during World War II, and where he returned to live in 1948 with support from the G.I. Bill.  Read extensive article by Holland Cotter at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/arts/ellsworth-kelly-artist-who-mixed-european-abstraction-into-everyday-life-dies-at-92.html?_r=0  See picture and description of Ellsworth Kelly's 20-foot tall steel shaft Untitled in the Toledo Museum of Art's Sculpture Garden at http://classes.toledomuseum.org:8080/emuseum/view/objects/asitem/176/33/invno-desc?t:state:flow=23be7dc0-756e-4dce-80ec-4bb87041114f

The Soft Kitty song was first introduced in Season 1 of The Big Bang Theory, in the eleventh episode titled The Pancake Batter Anomaly.  It has subsequently been sung on seven more episodes.  Poet Edith Newlin wrote the lyrics for 'Warm Kitty' in 1937.  And now her daughters Margaret Perry and Ellen Chase believe they are owed compensation.  And they're demanding that CBS pay up.  The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan December 28, 2015.  At this time, Warner Bros., who produces the show, has declined to comment.  Willis Music purchased the book (written by Laura Pendleton MacCarteney) the song appeared in nearly 80 years ago.  They claim that they properly and legally licensed the song to Warner Bros, for the TV series.  Performance rights organization ASCAP lists Warner-Olive Music (a subsidiary of the Warner Music Group) as the song's publisher.  This suggests that the rights were transferred from Willis Music.  The key legal issue in this case, which will see it move forward, is whether or not the publisher acquired the rights to the songs contained in the book when they secured the rights to the book.  If they did not, Newlin's daughters may have a legal leg to stand on.  But if the publishing company did acquire the song rights when obtaining the book, the two woman stand to lose.  Especially since most publishing agreements have the songwriter assign their copyrights of the lyrics to the publisher.  The case will essentially come down to the wording of the contract.  The question is whether or not Newlin assigned the copyright of her song to the book publisher when she gave MacCarteney the right to publish her song in the book.  If she did, then MacCarteney would have had the right to transfer the copyright to Warner Bros. for use in the show.  If not, the poet's heirs maybe entitled to any profits from the use of said song, including merchandising dollars.  B. Alan Orange  http://movieweb.com/big-bang-theory-sued-soft-kitty-song/

LeBron James on turning 31 December 30, 2015:  "The stuff that I was doing back when I was 18, 19, 20 doesn't even compare to the life that I have now and what I like, what I enjoy, I don't want those days back," he said.  "I'm happy where I'm at.  I feel good." http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2015/12/lebron_james_on_turning_31_tod.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1401  December 30, 2015  On this date in 1813, British soldiers burned Buffalo, New York.  On this date in 1919, Lincoln's Inn in London, England admitted its first female bar student.