"For a teenager, libraries are a safe space.  And librarians are the keepers of that space, offering safety as well as adventure, challenge, and the broadening of young minds.  They are essential." - Veronica Roth  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veronica_Roth

The Iowa Writers' Workshop is a two-year residency program which culminates in the submission of a creative thesis (a novel, a collection of stories, or a book of poetry) and the awarding of a Master of Fine Arts degree.  The program typically admits up to fifty graduate students each year--approximately twenty-five each in the fiction and poetry programs.  http://writersworkshop.uiowa.edu/graduate-program/graduate-program

John Burnham Schwartz grew up in New York City.  At Harvard College, he majored in Japanese studies, and upon graduation accepted a position with a prominent Wall Street investment bank, before finally turning the position down after selling his first novel.  That book, BICYCLE DAYS, a coming of age story about a young American man in Japan, was published in 1989 on his 24th birthday.  It went on to become a critically acclaimed bestseller.  RESERVATION ROAD, his second novel about a family tragedy and its aftermath, published in 1998, was also critically acclaimed and a bestseller, and in 2007 it was made into a major motion picture based on Schwartz's screenplay.  Schwartz went on to publish CLAIRE MARVEL, a love story set in America and France, and, in 2008, THE COMMONER, a novel inspired by the lives of the current empress and crown princess of Japan.  Spanning seventy years of modern Japanese history and looking deep into the secret, ancient world of the Japanese Imperial Family, THE COMMONER won Schwartz some of the best reviews of his career.  In July of 2011, Random House published Schwartz's fifth novel, NORTHWEST CORNER, which picks up the lives of some of the characters from RESERVATION ROAD twelve years later.  Schwartz's work has been translated into more than 20 languages.  He is a recipient of a Lyndhurst Prize for mastery in the art of fiction, and his journalism has appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, and Vogue.  Schwartz has written screen adaptations of Dana Canedy's memoir A Journal for Jordan, and Nancy Horan's bestselling novel Loving Frank for Sony Pictures and Lionsgate, respectively, and has developed a dramatic television series for Showtime.  Schwartz has taught fiction writing at Harvard, the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Sarah Lawrence College.  He is the literary director of the Sun Valley Writers' Conference.  http://www.johnburnhamschwartz.com/author.php

Japan's Yamato dynasty traces its origins back to 660, making it the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world.  The 79-year-old Emperor Akihito has reigned since 1989 and is, according to legend, the 125th emperor in his line, though there's some debate as to the exact count of emperors.  His seat is called the Chrysanthemum Throne and sits in the Imperial Palace in Kyoto.  Read about other royal families, classified by monarchs who rule, monarchs with some political power, and ceremonial or figurehead monarchs.  Caitlin Dewey and Max Fisher  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/07/22/meet-the-worlds-other-25-royal-families/

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

sansculotte or sans-culotte  (sanz-kyoo-LOT) noun  1.  An extreme radical republican during the French Revolution.  2.  A radical or revolutionary.  From French, literally, without knee breeches.  In the French Revolution, this was the aristocrats’ term of contempt for the ill-clad volunteers of the Revolutionary army who rejected knee breeches as a symbol of the upper class and adopted pantaloons.  As often happens with such epithets, the revolutionaries themselves adopted it as a term of pride.  Earliest documented use: 1790.

bootleg  (BOOT-leg)  verb:  To make, sell, or transport something illegally.  noun:  Something illegally made, sold, or distributed.   adjective:  Made, sold, or distributed illegally.  From the practice of concealing a liquor flask in the leg of a boot.  Earliest documented use: 1889.

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Sarah S. Sole  Subject:  sansculotte   When I saw the word for today, why did I think of Toulouse-Latrec and can-can dancers and smoky Paris cafes?  I think that long ago I heard the can-can dancers were so-called because they were, well, sansculottes.

From:  James Krug  Subject:  sansculotte  My daughter, a French teacher, tells me that in contemporary French, sansculotte means you aren’t wearing any underpants!

From:  Richard  Alexander  Subject:  bootleg  In US and Canadian football, there’s the bootleg play, in which the quarterback, after taking the snap, runs in the direction of one of the sidelines; it’s usually preceded by a fake handoff to a running back who’s headed in the opposite direction. “Bootleg” comes from the quarterback’s hiding the ball from the defensive team by holding it close to his or her hip or thigh.  It’s deceptive--which is fine, of course--but not illegal.

How to microwave scrambled eggs  BEAT 2 eggs, 2 tbsp. milk, salt and pepper in microwave-safe bowl or 12-oz. coffee mug until blended.  MICROWAVE on HIGH 45 seconds:  STIR.  MICROWAVE until eggs are almost set, 30 to 45 seconds longer. SERVE immediately.

http://www.incredibleegg.org/cooking-school/egg-cookery/microwave-scramble-eggs/

Arabella Mansfield (born Belle Aurelia Babb 1846-1911) became America's first woman lawyer when she was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1869.  She was allowed to take the bar exam and passed with high scores, despite a state law restricting applicants to white males over the age of 21.  Shortly thereafter, Iowa changed its statute and became the first state in the Union to allow women to practice law, with the Court ruling that women should not be denied the right to practice law in Iowa based solely on their gender.  However, Mansfield never practiced law, but spent her professional life teaching.  She was professor of English at Iowa Wesleyan College, from which she also received an M.A. degree 1870 and an LL.B. law degree in 1872.  She continued to teach there until 1876.  Arabella Mansfield sought equal opportunities for women in all aspects of U.S. society.  She was active in the women's suffrage movement, joining the executive committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association in fall 1869, and worked with Susan B. Anthony.  The following spring, she became president and chair of the first Iowa state-wide women's suffrage convention.  She was the group's first secretary and campaigned for equal educational opportunities for women as well as voting rights.   She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1980.  In 2002 the Iowa Organization of Women Attorneys established the Arabella Mansfield Award to recognize outstanding women lawyers in Iowa. http://civilwarwomenblog.com/arabella-mansfield/ 

A More Perfect Union:  Mount Pleasant, Iowa residents revive a downtown landmark by Katherine Flynn   The brick Union Block building, constructed in 1862 and nearly destroyed by fire in 2011, has been rescued and renovated.  It’s the Union Block’s spacious third floor that holds the strongest echoes of the past.  Originally constructed to hold legal trials, it became a town hall for abolitionists and women’s suffrage activists, one of the only indoor spaces in the city big enough to hold hundreds of people.  Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth both took the podium there in the 1800s, bringing far-flung progressive ideas to the small farming community. And in perhaps the largest point of local pride, Arabella B. Mansfield took the bar exam on the third floor in 1869, becoming the first female lawyer in the United States 50 years before women had the right to vote.  Read more and see pictures at  https://savingplaces.org/stories/more-perfect-union-mount-pleasant-iowa-union-block#.Vp-WVPkrKUk

A move made by the U.S. Senate has become a landmark win for net neutrality:  the legislative body voted on February 11, 2016 to ban taxes on Internet access, keeping the medium an equal-opportunity resource for millions nationwide.  The vote, which passed 75-20, will now move on to the final stage of the legislation process:  into the hands of President Barack Obama for approval.  The Senate was the second of three gatekeepers set in place for turning the bill into law:  like the Senate, the House already passed the measure, which means that the only thing keeping the ban from becoming law is the lack of President Obama's signature.  The POTUS is expected to officialize the law-to-be sometime within the near future.  While the impetus of the bill is to neutralize access by keeping it exempt from taxation, some pointed out a noticeable absence in the legislation:  taxation of online retailers, which would hold companies like Apple and Amazon accountable for paying sales taxes—the same as non-digital physical stores.  While the caveat was missing from this particular bill, lawmakers said that they plan to address it in the near future, even as soon as this summer.  J.E. Reich  http://www.techtimes.com/articles/132884/20160211/the-u-s-senate-moved-to-keep-the-internet-tax-free.htm

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1425  February 12, 2016  On this date in 1914, in Washington, D.C., the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial was put into place.  On this date in 1924, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue received its premiere in a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music," in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Paul Whiteman and his band, with Gershwin playing the piano.