Such stuff as dreams are made on  Prospero:  Our revels now are ended.  These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air:  And like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind.  We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.  The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158  Anticipating his daughter's wedding to the Prince of Naples, Prospero has staged a short entertainment, with spirits taking the parts of Roman gods.  But he abruptly cuts the fun short when he remembers some pressing business.  He tries to calm the startled couple by explaining, somewhat off the point, that the "revels" (performance) they've witnessed were simply an illusion, bound sooner or later to melt into "thin air"—a phrase he coins.  Take note that Prospero says "made on," not "made of," despite Humphrey Bogart's famous last line in the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon:  "The stuff that dreams are made of."  (Bogart suggested the line to director John Huston, but neither seems to have brushed up his Shakespeare.)  Film buffs may think "made of" is the authentic phrase, but they're only dreaming.  http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/we-such-stuff-dreams-made

An urban heat island (UHI) is a city or metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities.  The phenomenon was first investigated and described by Luke Howard in the 1810s, although he was not the one to name the phenomenon.  The temperature difference usually is larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds are weak.  UHI is most noticeable during the summer and winter.  The main cause of the urban heat island effect is from the modification of land surfaces.  Waste heat generated by energy usage is a secondary contributor.  As a population center grows, it tends to expand its area and increase its average temperature.  The less-used term heat island refers to any area, populated or not, which is consistently hotter than the surrounding area.  Monthly rainfall is greater downwind of cities, partially due to the UHI.  Increases in heat within urban centers increases the length of growing seasons, and decreases the occurrence of weak tornadoes.  The UHI decreases air quality by increasing the production of pollutants such as ozone, and decreases water quality as warmer waters flow into area streams and put stress on their ecosystems.  Not all cities have a distinct urban heat island.  Mitigation of the urban heat island effect can be accomplished through the use of green roofs and the use of lighter-colored surfaces in urban areas, which reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island

How Much Warmer Was Your City in 2015? by K.K. Rebecca Lai   Scientists declared that 2015 was Earth’s hottest year on record.  In a database of 3,116 cities provided by AccuWeather, about 90 percent of them were warmer than normal.  Enter the name of a city to find how much warmer it was in 2015 than 2014 at  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/19/us/2015-year-in-weather-temperature-precipitation.html

The Romney Literary Society (also known as the Literary Society of Romney) existed from January 30, 1819 to February 15, 1886 in Romney, West Virginia.  Established as the Polemic Society of Romney, it became the first organization of its kind in the present-day state of West Virginia, and one of the first in the United States.  The society was founded by nine prominent men of Romney with the objectives of advancing literature and science, purchasing and maintaining a library, and improving educational opportunities.  The society debated an extensive range of scientific and social topics, often violating its own rules which banned religious and political subjects.  Even though its membership was relatively small, its debates and activities were frequently discussed throughout the Potomac Highlands region, and the organization greatly influenced trends of thought in the Romney community and surrounding areas.  The society's library began in 1819 with the acquisition of two books; by 1861, it had grown to contain approximately 3,000 volumes on subjects such as literature, science, history, and art.  The organization also sought to establish an institution for "the higher education of the youth of the community."  In 1820, as a result of this initiative, the teaching of the classics was introduced into the curriculum of Romney Academy, thus making the institution the first school of higher education in the Eastern Panhandle.  In 1846, the society constructed a building which housed the Romney Classical Institute and its library, both of which fell under the society's supervision.  The Romney Literary Society and the Romney Classical Institute flourished and continued to grow in importance and influence until the onset of the American Civil War in 1861.  The Romney Classical Institute building and its library were considered legitimate plunder by Union Army forces.  The society's library was emptied and three-fourths of its volumes were either scattered or destroyed.  The most valuable of these volumes were never recovered following the war's end.  Its records of proceedings between 1830 and 1861, the period during which the society engaged in most of its notable literary and philanthropic works, were also destroyed during the war.  Following the war's end, only 400 out of the library's nearly 3,000 volumes could be recovered, with only 200 of those books remaining on the library's shelves.  Between 10 and 20 of the library's recovered volumes only contained three to four of their original books.  The value of the recovered volumes was degraded, as many were damaged or broken.  The society members that returned home to Romney were too war-weary to revive the society when they discovered the ruins of the Romney Classical Institute and its library, which had been an expensive endeavor to accumulate and took almost a half-century of labor to amass.  The Romney Classical Institute was not restored and was in effect disestablished on account of the war.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romney_Literary_Society

Generations of admiring readers knew Harper Lee as the reclusive author of the classic novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  But a relative few were given a glimpse of another side of Ms. Lee: that of a witty, impish and loyal pen pal.  The cartoonist Berkeley Breathed was one person who shared a correspondence with Ms. Lee.  After her death on February 19, 2016 at the age of 89, Mr. Breathed wrote on Facebook of the letters they had exchanged through the years.  Later, he shared with The New York Times four letters he had received from Ms. Lee over 14 years, with the first coming in 1994 and the last arriving in 2008.  The letters detail the author’s quest for privacy, and show how Ms. Lee, who wrote some of the most beloved characters in fiction, became attached to another endearing figure as she aged:  Opus, a penguin in Mr. Breathed’s comic strips.  Mr. Breathed, a longtime fan who first wrote to Ms. Lee in 1972, when he was a high school freshman, said the rural backdrop for his Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoon, “Bloom County,” was inspired by sleepy Maycomb, Ala., the setting for “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and that he had written about a dozen strips that made direct reference to the novel.    His first letter to her went unanswered, but in 1994 Mr. Breathed tried again.  He wrote to Ms. Lee’s address in New York, asking to make a reference to the book in another one of his comic strips, “Outland.”  “Really, it was under the pretense of having an excuse to write to her again,” Mr. Breathed, 58, said in an interview.  “She had a role in the very thing that turned into a success later on.”  This time, he had better luck.  Ms. Lee, a consummate Southerner, had found his request to be gentlemanly.  Her response was just under 300 words, in a letter posted from a post office box in Monroeville, Ala.  She typed out the letter on onionskin paper, with correction fluid applied in spots.  (“God, I hate this machine,” she wrote of the typewriter at one point.)  “Not quite brain-dead, just absent from my N.Y.C. address to which my agent in all innocence forwarded your letter,” Ms. Lee wrote, by way of explanation for its timing.  “She sometimes has trouble finding me, too.”  Ms. Lee was known to be an active letter writer, both to people she knew and people she had never met.  A handful of examples have become public, including letters sent to the playwright Horton Foote and the New York architect Harold Caulfield, providing an informal look at a writer who famously shunned attention from the news media and went decades without publishing anything after the blockbuster success of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”  Katie Rogers  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/books/harper-lee-and-berkeley-breathed.html

"The Tumor" is one of the stranger literary digressions in recent memory.  Against the wishes of his agent, editor and publisher, John Grisham has  published a free book whose hero is a medical device called focused ultrasound.  Download free or order a hard copy at http://www.fusfoundation.org/download-the-tumor-by-john-grisham  Michael Rosenwald  http://www.afr.com/lifestyle/arts-and-entertainment/books/john-grishams-new-book-is-free-and-its-not-a-thriller--the-plot-thickens-20160222-gn0yfn

Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, professor emerita at the University of Michigan, a historian of early 19th century France and the French Revolution, who was known for research on the early printing press and was the first resident scholar, in 1979, of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, died at home in Washington, D.C., on January 31, 2016 at the age of 92.  Dr. Eisenstein, a historian, was the author of many books and articles, beginning with “The First Professional Revolutionist” in 1959.  “The Printing Press as an Agent of Change,” a two-volume, 750-page book, first printed in 1979 and reissued in 2012, was considered her most important work.  It examined how the printing press caused a cultural shift in Western civilization.  http://easthamptonstar.com/Obituaries/2016218/Elizabeth-L-Eisenstein-ScholarTennis-Champ

Humanity has been boiled down to six emotions.  On February 24, 2016--after tests in a few countries--Facebook is rolling out its augmented Like button “Reactions” to all users.  Read article by Josh Constine "boiled down to six emotions too" at http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/24/facebook-reactions/

                  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1431  February 24, 2016  On this date in 1803, in Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court of the United States established the principle of judicial review.  On this date in 1868, Andrew Johnson became the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives. He was later acquitted in the Senate.  Quote of the Day:  Come, live in my heart and pay no rent. - Samuel Lover, Irish songwriter, composer, novelist, and artist and grandfather of Victor Herbert (24 Feb 1797-1868)