The Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center will become the home of a significant collection of oral histories provided by responders to the devastating Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the New York World Trade Center.  The collection, known as the "Remembering 9/11 Oral History Project," is being donated by physician Benjamin Luft, the Edmond Pellegrino Professor of Medicine at Stony Brook University School of Medicine and director of the Stony Brook WTC Wellness Program, who treated many of those responders following the tragedy.  "It is such a privilege for me to act as a conduit and be able to gift to the Library of Congress, our national repository of knowledge, our first 200 interviews with those who responded to the horrific attack of 9/11," said Dr. Luft.  The collection includes some 200 oral histories (each one hour to 1.5 hours long) and more than 1,000 digital photographs, manuscript materials, logbooks and indexes involving the personnel who responded to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers and who worked on response to the event, including rescue and recovery work on the building debris pile, over subsequent months.  The donation is only a portion of what Dr. Luft has collected, and future installments are expected.  The American Folklife Center and its predecessor, the Archive of Folk Culture, have collected public oral histories and other documentation following major events in U.S. history, such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II.  The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 and placed at the Library of Congress to "preserve and present American Folklife" through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, public programs and training.  The center includes the American Folklife Center Archive of Folk Culture, which was established in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.  Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s first federal cultural institution. http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2015/15-221.html?loclr=ealn

"It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them."--Pierre Beaumarchais  "I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent.  People know this, and steer clear of me at parties.  Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me."--Dave Barry  "No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other."--Jascha Heifetz  Find more quotes about arguments at http://www.best-quotes-poems.com/argument-quotes.html

Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, best known under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother, is a painting in oils on canvas created by the American-born painter James McNeill Whistler in 1871.  The painting is 56.81 by 63.94 inches (144.3 cm × 162.4 cm), displayed in a frame of Whistler's own design.  It is exhibited in and held by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, having been bought by the French state in 1891.  It is one of the most famous works by an American artist outside the United States.  Whistler's Mother, Wood's American Gothic, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream have all achieved something that most paintings—regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value—have not:  they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer.  These few works have successfully made the transition from the elite realm of the museum visitor to the enormous venue of popular culture.  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler%27s_Mother

American Gothic is a 1930 78 x 65.3 cm oil painting on beaver board by American Grant Wood (1891-1942).  This familiar image was exhibited publicly for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago, winning a three-hundred-dollar prize and instant fame for Grant Wood.  The impetus for the painting came while Wood was visiting the small town of Eldon in his native Iowa.  There he spotted a little wood farmhouse, with a single oversized window, made in a style called Carpenter Gothic.  “I imagined American Gothic people with their faces stretched out long to go with this American Gothic house,” he said.  He used his sister and his dentist as models for a farmer and his daughter, dressing them as if they were “tintypes from my old family album.”  http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/6565  Grant Wood’s home and studio was located at 5 Turner Alley, Cedar Rapids, Iowa,  from 1924 to 1935.  Grant Wood (1891-1942) was a prominent member of the Regionalist movement.  His most famous painting, American Gothic, was painted in this studio in 1930.  The Grant Wood Studio, owned and operated by the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art,  is a member of Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  http://www.crma.org/content/grant_wood/grant_wood_studio.aspx

Mona Lisa is thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine cloth merchant named Francesco del Giocondo--hence the alternative title, La Gioconda.  However, Leonardo seems to have taken the completed portrait to France rather than giving it to the person who commissioned it.  After his death, the painting entered François I's collection.  The history of the Mona Lisa is shrouded in mystery.  Among the aspects which remain unclear are the exact identity of the sitter, who commissioned the portrait, how long Leonardo worked on the painting, how long he kept it, and how it came to be in the French royal collection.  http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/mona-lisa-portrait-lisa-gherardini-wife-francesco-del-giocondo

The Scream, 1893, tempera and crayon on cardboard, 91 x 73.5 cm, is the best known and most frequently reproduced of all Munch’s motifs.  With its expressive colours, its flowing lines and striking overall effect, its appeal is universal.  Despite radical simplification, the landscape in the picture is recognisable as the Kristiania Fjord seen from Ekeberg, with a broad view over the fjord, the town and the hills beyond.  In the background to the left, at the end of the path with the balustrade that cuts diagonally across the picture, we see two strolling figures, often regarded as two friends whom Munch mentions in notes relating to the picture.  But the figure in the foreground is the first to capture the viewer’s attention.  Its hands are held to its head and its mouth is wide open in a silent scream, which is amplified by the undulating movement running through the surrounding landscape.  The figure is ambiguous and it is hard to say whether it is a man or a woman, young or old – or even if it is human at all.  The Scream was first exhibited at Munch’s solo exhibition in Berlin in 1893.  It was a central element in “The Frieze of Life”, and has been the theme of probing analysis and many suggested interpretations.  The painting also exists in a later version, which is in the possession of the Munch Museum.  In addition Munch worked with the motif in drawings, pastels and prints.  http://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/collections_and_research/our_collections/edvard_munch_in_the_national_museum/The+Scream,+1893.b7C_wljU1a.ips

Recommended by Muse reader:  Thunder Dog:  The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero  On September 11, 2001, Michael Hingson, his guide dog, Roselle, and many others walked down a stairwell from the 78th floor of the World Trade Center Tower 1(North Tower) to safety.  From the book:  Dogs have more than 200 million olfactory receptors in their noses compared to about 5 million for people.  Dogs can hear sound at four times the distance humans can.  Dick Rubinstein designed a controller for a braille terminal, and the project was written up and published in a 1972 issue of Communications of the ACM.  Dick was also involved in developing electronic mail (now called e-mail) as a communcations aid for deaf adults back in the late 1970s.  Ray Kurzweil is involved in fields such as optical character recognition and electronic keyboard instruments.  Kurzweil received the 1999 National Medal of Technology and Innovation technology, from President Bill Clinton. 

Roselle’s Dream Foundation is a 501©(3) nonprofit charitable organization intended to assist blind persons to live the life they want and to dream as big as they can. It is the intent of the Foundation to help society in general and blind persons in specific understand that blindness is not the characteristic that holds anyone back from achieving all they wish to be.  http://rosellefoundation.org/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1405  January 8, 2016  On this date in 1889, Herman Hollerith was issued US patent #395,791 for the 'Art of Applying Statistics'—his punched card calculator.  On this date in 1963, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was exhibited in the United States for the first time, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.