Friday, July 29, 2016

Coopetition or co-opetition (sometimes spelled "coopertition" or "co-opertition") is a neologism coined to describe cooperative competition.  Coopetition is a portmanteau of cooperation and competition, emphasizing the "petition"-like nature of joint work.  Basic principles of co-opetitive structures have been described in game theory, a scientific field that received more attention with the book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944 and the works of John Forbes Nash on non-cooperative games.  It is also applied in the fields of political science and economics and even universally (works of V. Frank Asaro, J.D.:  Universal Co-opetition (2011), The Tortoise Shell Code, a novel (2012), and A Primal Wisdom, a non-fiction corollary to the novel (2014)).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coopetition  See also http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2015/Taylorcompetition.html and http://www.charleswarner.us/articles/competit.htm and https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/goal-posts/200909/cooperation-vs-competition-not-eitheror-proposition

The Modern News Consumer by Pew Research Center   News stories can now come piecemeal, as links or shares, putting less emphasis on the publisher.  And, hyper levels of immediacy and mobility can create an expectation that the news will come to us whether we look for it or not.  Read 47-page report at

A Snapshot of a 21st-Century Librarian by Adrienne Green   Libraries have had to evolve from providing the internet as a service, to being responsible for interacting with it, to indexing and archiving a rapidly increasing amount of information.  Theresa Quill, a research librarian at Indiana University, Bloomington, specializes in the relationship between geography and cultural behavior, and digital mapping.  While she assists students in the same ways librarians traditionally have, she also works on projects like making maps based on interesting novels and indexing Russian war maps.  See graphics and read interview at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/research-librarian/492911/  Thank you, Muse reader!  

Medical Dictionary by Stedman's   Type in a search term or browse the A-Z index at https://www.drugs.com/medical_dictionary.html

Data Mining Reveals the Six Basic Emotional Arcs of Storytelling--Scientists at the Computational Story Laboratory have analyzed novels to identify the building blocks of all stories from Emerging Technology from the arXiv  July 6, 2016   Back in 1995, Kurt Vonnegut gave a lecture in which he described his theory about the shapes of stories.  In the process, he plotted several examples on a blackboard. “There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can’t be fed into computers,” he said.  “They are beautiful shapes.”  The video is available on YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ   Vonnegut was representing in graphical form an idea that writers have explored for centuries—that stories follow emotional arcs, that these arcs can have different shapes, and that some shapes are better suited to storytelling than others.  Vonnegut mapped out several arcs in his lecture.  These include the simple arc encapsulating “man falls into hole, man gets out of hole” and the more complex one of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.”  Vonnegut is not alone in attempting to categorize stories into types, although he was probably the first to do it in graphical form.  Aristotle was at it over 2,000 years before him, and many others have followed in his footsteps.  However, there is little agreement on the number of different emotional arcs that arise in stories or their shape.  Estimates vary from three basic patterns to more than 30.  That changes thanks to the work of Andrew Reagan at the Computational Story Lab at the University of Vermont in Burlington and a few pals.  These guys have used sentiment analysis to map the emotional arcs of over 1,700 stories and then used data-mining techniques to reveal the most common arcs.  “We find a set of six core trajectories which form the building blocks of complex narratives,” they say.  They are also able to identify the stories that are the best examples of each arc.  Find examples of the six basic emotional arcs at  https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601848/data-mining-reveals-the-six-basic-emotional-arcs-of-storytelling/

The life-changing magic of tidying up:  How this 1 tip changed everything by Meena Hart Duerson   I can't remember when I first heard someone gushing over Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," but all of a sudden, it seemed like everyone I knew—or sat next to on the subway—was reading this mysterious Japanese organization manual.  Read more at http://www.today.com/series/one-small-thing/life-changing-magic-tidying-testing-marie-kondos-method-t21356  See also https://www.onekingslane.com/live-love-home/marie-kondo-book-declutter/

Helping Consumers Make Care Choices through Hospital Compare
by Kate Goodrich, MD, MHS, Director of Center for Clinical Standards and Quality  July 27, 2016   Over the past decade, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published information about the quality of care across the five different health care settings that most families encounter.  These easy-to-understand star ratings are available online and empower people to compare and choose across various types of facilities from nursing homes to home health agencies.  Today, we are updating the star ratings on the Hospital Compare website to help millions of patients and their families learn about the quality of hospitals, compare facilities in their area side-by-side, and ask important questions about care quality when visiting a hospital or other health care provider.  Today’s ratings include the Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating that reflects comprehensive quality information about the care provided at our nation’s hospitals.  The new Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating methodology takes 64 existing quality measures already reported on the Hospital Compare website and summarizes them into a unified rating of one to five stars.  The rating includes quality measures for routine care that the average individual receives, such as care received when being treated for heart attacks and pneumonia, to quality measures that focus on hospital-acquired infections, such as catheter-associated urinary tract infections.  Specialized and cutting edge care that certain hospitals provide such as specialized cancer care, are not reflected in these quality ratings.  Read more at https://blog.cms.gov/2016/07/27/helping-consumers-make-care-choices-through-hospital-compare/

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have selected Chicago's historic Jackson Park as the site of his presidential library, sources said July 27, 2016.  The choice, which leaked out ahead of a formal announcement expected next week, elated some South Side residents but disappointed advocates of the other finalist site, Washington Park, whose surrounding neighborhood is pockmarked by vacant lots.  Capping more than a year of competition between the two South Side sites, the selection will put the library within blocks of the popular Museum of Science and Industry and in a park that drew millions of visitors from around the world during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.  Like Washington Park and the Midway Plaisance, the strip of green that connects the two finalist sites, Jackson Park was designed by the great 19th-century landscape designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux.  Near the eastern edge of the University of Chicago campus, the 543-acre Jackson Park is a South Side oasis, with a wooded island in a picturesque lagoon, lush woods and a golf course.  Renowned architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien were chosen in June to lead the design of the library, aided by Chicago-based Interactive Design Architects.  Kathy BergenBlair Kamin and Katherine Skiba  Read more and see graphics at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obamalibrary/ct-obama-library-site-jackson-park-met-20160727-story.html


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1504  July 29, 2016  On this date in 1846, Sophie Menter, German pianist and composer, was born.  On this date in 1948, after a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, opened in London.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Duff is a Bahamian cuisine dessert dish made with fruit (especially guava) in a dough.  Fruit is folded into the dough and boiled, then served with a sauce.  Ingredients include fruit, butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, flour, rum, pepper, and baking powder.  The dessert is often accompanied by switcha (a lemon, water and sugar mixture) or beer.  Duff is also an english (possibly slang) term for pudding.  Examples are Christmas duff, Plum duff and Suet duff.  In the 1901 short story by Henry Lawson, The Ghosts of Many Christmases, published in Children of the Bush, plum pudding is referred to both as pudding and duff:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_(dessert)

Metaknowledge, and essay by George Musser   Dražen Prelec, a behavioural economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is working on a way to smarten up the hive mind.  One reason that crowds mess up, he notes, is the hegemony of common knowledge.  Even when people make independent judgments, they might be working off the same information.  When you average everyone’s judgments, information that is known to all gets counted repeatedly, once for each person, which gives it more significance than it deserves and drowns out diverse sources of knowledge.  In the end, the lowest common denominator dominates.  It’s a common scourge in social settings:  think of dinner conversations that consist of people repeating to one another the things they all read in The New York Times.  In many scientific disputes, too, the consensus viewpoint rests on a much slenderer base of knowledge than it might appear.  For instance, in the 1920s and ’30s, physicists intensely debated how to interpret quantum mechanics, and for decades thereafter textbooks recorded the dispute as a lopsided battle between Albert Einstein, fighting a lonely rearguard action against the new theory, and everyone else.  In fact, ‘everyone else’ was recycling the same arguments made by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, while Einstein was backed up by Erwin Schrödinger.  What looked like one versus many was really two on two.  Very little fresh knowledge entered the discussion until the 1960s.  Even today, Bohr and Heisenberg’s view (the so-called Copenhagen interpretation) is considered the standard one, a privileged status it never deserved.  Read more at https://aeon.co/essays/a-mathematical-bs-detector-can-boost-the-wisdom-of-crowds

knar  noun  A knot or burl on a tree or in wood.  from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License   A knot or burl in a tree; a knurl, a gnarl.  from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English  Middle English knarre, probably from Old English *cnear or from Middle Dutch and Middle Low German knorre.  (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)  Middle English knar (14th century, original sense “a stone”), from which also knurl (diminutive suffix) and later gnarl (variant).  (Wiktionary)   https://www.wordnik.com/words/knar

From:  Keith Allen  Subject:  knar  This word also means rough or complex and difficult terrain.  Commonly used by mountain bikers:  “That was some knar (or gnar) terrain!”
From: Anthony Shaw  Subject:  Knar  My late wife was of Armenian descent and was thus given an Armenian name, Knar, which is an Armenian musical instrument, usually a harp.  She was tiny, therefore I called her Knarig, “little harp”.

Bob Morris (born 1950) is an American novelist who writes Caribbean themed mysteries.  He is also the author of several collections of nonfiction, including "Gut Check," "Short Road to Hell," "The Man with the Fish on His Foot," "All Over the Map," and "The Whole Shebang."  Morris is president of Story Farm, a custom publishing company that creates books, magazines and other publications for a wide variety of clients.  He is an adjunct professor at Rollins College and teaches courses in food writing and crime fiction.  Bob Morris is a fourth-generation Floridian who forsook the family farm—a fernery in Lake County—to pursue a career in journalism.  The route was indirect.  After failing two consecutive terms of organic chemistry, Morris decided he was not cut out to be a marine biologist and set out to travel around the world instead.  His travels took him to a farming commune in Israel where his responsibilities included shoveling out the daily deposits of 12,000 chickens and 12,000 turkeys.  After graduating from the University of Florida, Morris went on to work at a number of newspapers, including the Florida Keys Free Press, the Fort Myers News-Press, the Orlando Sentinel, and the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group.  Among his achievements—founding the annual Queen Kumquat Sashay, a parade in downtown Orlando founded in 1986 and discontinued in 1997.   Morris and his family spent two years in Santa Barbara, California, where he created and launched AQUA, an international travel magazine for watersports enthusiasts.  Upon returning to Florida in 1999, he was editor in chief of Caribbean Travel & Life magazine and Gulfshore Life magazine.  Now a freelance writer and editor, Morris continues to travel widely and contributes to a number of publications, including National Geographic Traveler, Bon Appetit, Islands, Robb Report, Latitudes and Men's Fitness.  These travels have inspired his recent series of mystery novels from St. Martin’s Press, each of which takes place on a different Caribbean island.  The first one, Bahamarama, was released in November 2004 and was a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Mystery Novel and chosen by the Library Journal as one the year’s Top Five Mysteries.  Morris’s second novel, Jamaica Me Dead, was released in October 2005 and was a BookSense Pick by the American Booksellers Association. His third book, Bermuda Schwartz, a Florida Book Award bronze medal winner released in February 2007.  His fourth book in the series, A Deadly Silver Sea, published in late 2008 and his fifth book in the series, Baja Florida, in January 2010. 

State Voter Identification Requirements: Analysis, Legal Issues, and Policy Considerations   About 60% of U.S. voters live in the 33 states that require a voter at a polling place to produce an identification document (ID) before casting a ballot.  Among those states, 20 permit voters without ID to cast a ballot through alternative means, such as signing an affidavit; 13 strictly enforce the ID requirement.  The other 17 states and the District of Columbia have a range of nondocument requirements instead.  Read 37-page report at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42806.pdf

Canada has a voter registration system that is worth looking at.  Voter registration is an option on your annual tax return, which is a cheap way to capture/update accurate voter data.  Every employer is required by law to give employees up to three consecutive hours off work (paid) to vote.  Not a “national holiday”, but it does get the message across that voting is important.   Malcolm Wynden

First but not the Last:  Women Who Ran for President, an online exhibit from the National Women's History Museum  https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/u/0/exhibit/zAJim2pJexmPJw

Another word to denote a mealWhat about Brinner?  Breakfast for dinner.  My kids loved it!!!  Thank you, Muse reader.

Marni Nixon, a singer who ghost sang for leading actresses in films including "The King and I" and "West Side Story," died July 24, 2016.   She was 86.  Nixon, who was born Margaret Nixon McEathron Feb. 22, 1930, in Altadena, California, also acted in films and on TV and Broadway.  Her film credits include "The Sound of Music" and "I Think I Do."  She also appeared on TV's "Law and Order."  Her greatest fame, however, came after she dubbed the singing voices for Deborah Kerr in the Rodgers and Hammerstein film adaptation of "The King and I," for Natalie Wood in "West Side Story," and Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady."  Many years would pass before Nixon could talk about her unsung film roles, as she explained in an interview.  "You always had to sign a contract that nothing would be revealed," Nixon said in an interview on the ABC's "Nightline" news program in 2007.  "Twentieth Century Fox, when I did 'The King and I,' threatened me.  "They said, if anybody ever knows that you did any part of the dubbing for Deborah Kerr, we'll see to it that you don't work in town again."  http://www.legacy.com/news/celebrity-deaths/notable-deaths/article/marni-nixon-1930-2016  See also http://www.playbill.com/article/marni-nixon-voice-of-my-fair-lady-on-screen-dead-at-86

Poem of the week: The Beautiful Librarians by Sean O’Brien  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/16/the-beautiful-librarians-by-sean-o-brien-poem-of-the-week?CMP=share_btn_link  Thank you, Muse reader!


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1503  July 27, 2016  On this date in 1940, the animated short A Wild Hare was released, introducing the character of Bugs Bunny.  On this date in 1949, the initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner, took place.  Quote of the Day  In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary. - Kathleen Norris, novelist and columnist (27 Jul 1880-1966)

Monday, July 25, 2016

Potato plant poisoning occurs when someone eats the green tubers or new sprouts of the potato plant.  The poisonous ingredient is solanine (very toxic even in small amounts).  The poison is found throughout the plant, but especially in green potatoes and new sprouts.  Never eat potatoes that are spoiled or green below the skin.  Always throw away the sprouts.  Potatoes that are not green and have had any sprouts removed are safe to eat.  DO NOT touch or eat any plant with which you are not familiar.  Wash your hands after working in the garden or walking in the woods.  If you or someone you are with has an exposure, call your local emergency number (such as 911), or your local poison center can be reached directly by calling the national toll-free Poison Help hotline (1-800-222-1222) from anywhere in the United States.   https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002875.htm  See also http://listverse.com/2009/01/06/top-10-poisonous-foods-we-love-to-eat/ and http://www.reptilesmagazine.com/Reptile-Health/Habitats-Care/List-of-Plants-That-Can-Be-Toxic-To-Reptiles/

brupper  (mixing breakfast and supper or between morning and evening) joins brunch and linner as words to denote a meal. 

The English idiom "don't judge a book by its cover" is a metaphorical phrase which means "you shouldn't prejudge the worth or value of something, by its outward appearance alone".   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_judge_a_book_by_its_cover  Don't Judge a Movie by its Cover   http://amoonbrothersfilm.blogspot.com/2015/09/dont-judge-movie-by-its-cover.html  See also http://whatculture.com/film/12-film-titles-which-shouldnt-be-taken-literally  A good rule is "film first" if you're going to read a book and see the film.  The movies Dune and Chocolat will probably disappoint you if you have read the books first because you will be comparing changes.  Some people prefer different characterizations, events and endings.  See "Why ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ is one of those rare movies that’s better than the book" by Emily Yahr at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/07/01/why-the-devil-wears-prada-is-one-of-those-rare-movies-thats-better-than-the-book/

Succotash (from Narragansett sohquttahhash, "broken corn kernels") is a food dish consisting primarily of sweet corn with lima beans or other shell beans.  Other ingredients may be added including tomatoes and green or sweet red peppers.  Combining a grain with a legume provides a dish that is high in all essential amino acids.  Because of the relatively inexpensive and more readily available ingredients, the dish was popular during the Great Depression in the United States.  It was sometimes cooked in a casserole form, often with a light pie crust on top as in a traditional pot pie.  Succotash is a traditional dish of many Thanksgiving celebrations in New England as well as in Pennsylvania and other states.  In some parts of the American South, any mixture of vegetables prepared with lima beans and topped with lard or butter is called succotash.  Corn (maize), American beans, tomatoes, and peppers are New World foods.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succotash  For variety, substitute kidney, fava, or black beans for lima beans.


The Packard Library in Marysville, California opened in 1906 as the first free library west of the Mississippi.  https://holybeeofephesus.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/marysville-then-now-part-1/

National Register #78000829  Packard Library  301 4th Street  Marysville  Built 1905-1906
The library operated until 1977, when it was replaced by the new Yuba County Library.  The building was subsequently renovated and is now the Packard Library Theatre.  http://noehill.com/yuba/nat1978000829.asp

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation's historic places worthy of preservation.  Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archeological resources.  https://www.nps.gov/nr/

National Dance Day is observed each year on the last Saturday in July.  Created as a day to raise awareness about and encourage Americans to embrace dance as a fun and positive way to maintain good health and combat obesity.  National Dance Day achieved national recognition when in 2010, long-time proponent of healthy lifestyles, American congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, introduced a National Dance Day resolution to promote dance education and physical fitness.  For more information regarding National Dance Day, see:  http://dizzyfeetfoundation.org/national-dance-day
National Dance Day was launched in 2010 by  “So You Think You Can Dance” co-creator and Dizzy Feet Foundation co-president Nigel Lythgoe.  http://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-dance-day-last-saturday-in-july/

When music is played in public, such as at a campaign event, it is typically necessary to obtain a license for the musical composition (words and music).  It is not necessary to obtain a license from the owner of the sound recording (usually a record label).  The musical composition license is usually issued by a performing rights organization (“PRO”--such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC).  The license can be obtained by either the campaign or the venue (e.g., hotel, restaurant, stadium).  Venues usually pay periodic licenses to cover any performances of all the songs in a PRO’s catalog.  If this is not the case and a campaign itself pays, a license can be obtained for a specific venue event, or can cover a campaign’s events wherever they may take place (known as a “traveling license”).  If a campaign wants to use a particular song, it should check to confirm that it has a license from the PRO that administers rights in that song (PRO databases are typically available online).  It is only necessary to obtain a license from the owner of the musical composition for these live events.  However, some artists, performers or composers might assert non-copyright claims (false advertising, right of publicity, defamation, or false light) on the theory that the campaign has falsely implied that the artist, performer or composer has endorsed the candidate.  The public performance license obtained for use of the song at an event does not carry over to inclusion of the event in a video or clip.  While a case-by-case analysis may consider the amount of the song incidentally playing in the background of the clip, as a general rule a campaign still must obtain a “synch” or “master” license for inclusion of the song in an ad or video.  And, again, a performance license is needed for the musical composition within the ad or video to be played over the radio, TV, Internet, etc. (generally obtained through ASCAP, BMI or SESAC).  In most instances, a performance license is also needed for the use of a specific recording of the song within the ad or video (though this license is usually included in the “master” license.)  http://www.riaa.com/resources-learning/for-political-campaigns/  See also http://www.ascap.com/~/media/files/pdf/advocacy-legislation/political_campaign.pdf


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1502  July 25, 2016  On this date in 1683, Pieter Langendijk, Dutch playwright and poet, was born.  On this date in 1870, Maxfield Parrish, American painter and illustrator, was born.  On this date in 1966, Maureen Herman, American bass player (Babes in Toyland), was born.

Friday, July 22, 2016

Over its long and checkered history spanning 600 years, the word scent has changed its appearance more readily than a chameleon getting ready for a party.  It has appeared as “sent” and “cent”, among other forms.  In Taming of the Shrew Shakespeare has a huntsman says that his hound “pick’d out the dullest sent.”  "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.  My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth." - Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (4 Jul 1804-1864)  A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg 

Leslie Claire Margaret Caron (born 1931) is a Franco-American film actress and dancer who appeared in 45 films between 1951 and 2003.  Her autobiography, Thank Heaven, was published in 2010 in the UK and US, and in 2011 in a French version.  Caron started her career as a ballerina. Gene Kelly discovered her in the Roland Petit company "Ballet des Champs Elysées "and cast her to appear opposite him in the musical An American in Paris (1951), a role in which a pregnant Cyd Charisse was originally cast.  This role led to a long-termMGM contract and a sequence of films which included the musical The Glass Slipper (1955) and the drama The Man with a Cloak (1951), with Joseph Cotten and Barbara Stanwyck.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Caron  See also

Inchworms aren’t worms at all, but caterpillars who have legs at both ends of their bodies and none in the middle.  This makes them look odd when they move, shifting first one end and then the other, which has the effect of making them arch their bodies as they go.  Some people think that they look a lot like a measuring tape and that’s how they got the nickname inchworm.  In fact, another name for these small caterpillars is measuring worms.   http://animals.mom.me/inchworms-kids-8744.html  Inch Worm song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXi3bjKowJU  2:08  and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVp8oJ2N_1M  2:34

The Private Eye Writers of America (PWA) was founded in 1981 by Robert J. Randisi to recognize the private eye genre and its writers, and is probably best known for its annual Shamus Awards.  Membership is open to fans, writers, and publishing professionals.  There are three levels of membership:  Active, Associate, and International.  Find Shamus Award winners since 1982 at http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv72.html

Idiot's Delight is a 1939 MGM comedy-drama with a screenplay adapted by Robert E. Sherwood from his 1936 Pulitzer-Prize-winning play of the same name.  The movie showcases Clark Gable, in the same year that he played Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, and Norma Shearer in the declining phase of her career.  Although not a musical, it is notable as the only film where Gable sings and dances, performing "Puttin' on the Ritz" by Irving Berlinhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot%27s_Delight_(film)  Puttin' On The Ritz with Clark Gable  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij22kyvf2ps  1:18

Broadway Melody of 1938 is a 1937 musical film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and directed by Roy Del Ruth.  The film is essentially a backstage musical revue, featuring high-budget sets and cinematography in the MGM musical tradition.  The film stars Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor and features Buddy Ebsen, George Murphy, Judy Garland, Sophie Tucker, Raymond Walburn, Robert Benchley and Binnie Barnes.  The film is most notable for young Garland's performance of "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)", a tribute to Clark Gable which turned the teenage singer, who had been toiling in obscurity for a couple of years, into an overnight sensation, leading eventually to her being cast in The Wizard of Oz as Dorothy.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_Melody_of_1938  'DEAR MR GABLE' - ( 'YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU' ) sung by JUDY GARLAND  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFSczLif0q4  4:03

Isle Royale is an island of the Great Lakes, located in the northwest of Lake Superior, and part of Michigan.  The island and the 450 surrounding smaller islands and waters make up Isle Royale National Park.  The island is 45 miles long and 9 miles wide, with an area of 206.73 square miles (making it the largest natural island in Lake Superior, the second largest island in the Great Lakes (after Manitoulin Island), the third largest in the contiguous United States (after Long Island and Padre Island), and the 33rd largest island in the United States.  As of the 2000 census there was no permanent population.  After the island was made a national park, some existing residents were allowed to stay, and a few leases are still in effect.  Ferries from Michigan and Minnesota land at Rock Harbor on the eastern end of the island; this has a lodge, campground, and information center.  Ferries from Minnesota also run to Windigo on the western end, which has a visitor center and campground.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_Royale  The novel A Superior Death (1994) by Nevada Barr is set in Isle Royale National Park  http://mwp.olemiss.edu//dir/barr_nevada/

The American Museum of Science and Energy opened in 1949 in an old wartime cafeteria.  It was originally named the American Museum of Atomic Energy.  Its guided tours took visitors through the peaceful uses of atomic energy.  The present facility, opened in 1975, continues to provide the general public with energy information.  The name of the museum was changed to the American Museum of Science and Energy (AMSE) in 1978.  http://amse.org/about-amse/history/  300 S Tulane, Oak Ridge, TN 37830 (865) 576-3200  Email: info@amse.org  http://amse.org/

How to See Rock Art  Nestled along the United States-Mexico border in southwestern Texas and northwestern Coahuila, the Lower Pecos River Archeological region encompasses an area of about fifty square miles.  Though this cultural region is fairly small, more than 2,000 archeological sites have been recorded.  These sites cover a time span from the 19th century to over 10,000 years ago.  Over 325 pictograph sites have been documented containing some of North America’s oldest and largest pictographs.  These pictographs range in size from isolated motifs just a few inches tall to huge panels stretching more than 100 feet along the back of rock shelter walls.  Unlike other remote regions in the western United States, the vast majority of pictograph sites in the Lower Pecos River region are situated on private property and are therefore not open to public visitation.  https://www.nps.gov/amis/learn/historyculture/howtorockart.htm

The United States has 59 national parks.  Yellowstone was the first national park in the nation and in the world.  It was established by Congress in 1872.  There are 75,000 archeological sites and 27,000 historic and prehistoric structures inside U.S. National Parks.  The National Park System is comprised of more than 84 million acres of land.  Find a list of national parks at https://www.roadscholar.org/collections/national-parks-travel-facts/


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1501  July 22, 2016  On this date in 1924, Margaret Whiting, American singer, was born.  On this date in 1941, David M. Kennedy, American historian and author, was born.  Quote of the Day  Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door! - Emma Lazarus, poet and playwright (22 Jul 1849-1887) [from a poem written to raise funds for building the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty]

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Known to Native Americans as the Shining Mountains and the Backbone of the World, Glacier National Park preserves more than a million acres of forests, alpine meadows, lakes, rugged peaks and glacial-carved valleys in the Rocky Mountains.  Evidence of human use in this area dates back to over 10,000 years.  Read more and see pictures at http://www.legendsofamerica.com/mt-glacierpark.html

The Many Glacier Hotel, known as the “Gem of the West,” was constructed in 1914 and 1915 during a flurry of construction in the years after Glacier National Park was created.  The hotel was one of a series of structures built inside the park by the Great Northern Railway, which was trying to market Glacier as the “American Alps” to attract passengers to its trains.  Great Northern’s president at the time, Louis Hill, took a great deal of pride in developing the park and personally headed up numerous projects, including selecting the locations of the hotels and chalets.  In order to capitalize on that alpine theme, the Many Glacier Hotel and numerous other structures were built in the style of a Swiss chalet.  According to a 2002 National Park Service structure report, the “stylistic unity” at Glacier distinguished it from the development at Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and other western parks.  The Many Glacier Hotel complex was first added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and became a National Historic Landmark about a decade later.   Glacier Park spokesperson Denise Germann said the park service has been looking at restoring the spiral staircase for a decade but that funding has always been an issue.  http://flatheadbeacon.com/2015/05/04/glacier-park-to-restore-historic-many-glacier-staircase/

Glacier National Park's 'case of the missing staircase' will be solved this year by Vince Devlin   When the National Park Service announced $26 million in Centennial Challenge Projects it had approved for 2016, there were loads of them associated with improved trails. 
But only one will replace a missing staircase.  Magnificent Many Glacier Hotel in Glacier National Park will see the return of a double-helix staircase that was torn out in the 1950s.  The staircase used to circle from Many Glacier’s grand lobby down to the hotel’s “lakeside level.”  The double-helix staircase at the Many Glacier Hotel was removed 60-some years ago, apparently to make room for a gift shop in the lobby.  At the center of staircase was a fountain containing fish.  Some 35,000 guests stay at Many Glacier Hotel each summer.  Seasonal rangers who lead tours of the historic five-story hotel tell about the missing staircase, and how workers who tore it out in the 1950s discovered it was packed tight with bars of hotel soap.  Packrats had squirreled the stolen soaps away inside the staircase.  http://missoulian.com/news/local/glacier-national-park-s-case-of-the-missing-staircase-will/article_f3fe5436-6764-5167-9a59-01154974c2c5.html?mobile_touch=true

Poetry of the palate:  food—sweet or savory—is a source of inspiration by Mary Bileyu  Read poems about food and drink and see recipes at

Within the highly automated folds of Amazon’s online bookstore, there’s a small team of literary types whose main job is rather old school.  They read books, write about them and rank the works according to their qualities, helping readers sift through thousands of offerings while also planting the tech juggernaut’s flag in the world of literary culture.  In an engineer-driven company ruled by algorithms and metrics, the Amazon book editors are rare birds.  Once in a while, they’re misunderstood by authors and publishers who retain a deep suspicion of Amazon.com after years of clashes over the book industry’s future.  The editors produce Amazon Book Review, an online offering similar to literary supplements newspapers have been putting out for more than a century.  They also put together frequent lists of recommendations prominently displayed on Amazon’s bookstore.  In June 2016, after four intense meetings and a lot of hallway discussions, the team of editors picked “Lab Girl,” Hope Jahren’s memoir on becoming a plant biologist, as the best book of the year so far, an honor that some publishing experts say could help boost recognition and sales.  The current team was assembled by Amazon editorial director Sara Nelson, a renowned publishing veteran.  Nelson, however, is leaving after a four-year stint to become executive editor and vice president at HarperCollins, one of the big New York publishers.  “We’re not choosing books that are going to be in the canon,” Nelson said in an interview before her departure was announced.  “We’re choosing books that we think are going to connect with our readers.”  Ángel González  http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/how-amazons-team-of-old-school-book-reviewers-influences-what-we-read/

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  Many animals have given their names to colors in the English language. 
vermeil  (VUHR-mil, -mayl)  noun  1. Vermilion color: bright orange-red.  2. Metal, such as silver, bronze, or copper that has been gilded.  adjective  Bright red in color.  The word is coined after insects (of genus Kermes) that are used to make red dye.  From Latin vermiculus (little worm, kermes), diminutive of vermis (worm).
teal  (teel)  noun  1.  Any of the various species of small dabbling ducks.  2.  Greenish blue color.  adjective  Of greenish blue color.  From Middle English tele.  The color is named after the patches of this shade on the teal.
taupe  (toap, rhymes with rope)   noun  A brownish gray, similar to the color of moleskin.  adjective  Of a brownish gray color.  From French taupe (mole), from Latin talpa (mole).
sepia  (SEE-pee-uh)  noun  1.  A reddish brown color.  2.  A brown pigment originally made from the cuttlefish ink.  3.  A drawing made with this pigment.  4.  A monochrome photograph in this color.  adjective  Of a reddish-brown color.  From Latin sepia (cuttlefish), from Greek sepia (cuttlefish).
Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From:  Ellen Blackstone  Subject:  teal  I can never think of teal--the ducks--without recalling the collective noun for a group of teal. It is “spring” and it suggests both the sound and the action of several teal taking flight--a spring of teal!  More such collective nouns can be found at http://birdnote.org/show/murder-party-stare-or-siege.
From:  Nicholas Clifford   Subject:  taupe  For what it’s worth, the Prompter (a tenor role) in Richard Strauss’s marvelous opera Capriccio, is identified as Monsieur Taupe, and at least in the DVD version that I own, is portrayed by a small man who spends much of his time blinking--like a mole, of course.
From:  Juliet Ezeilo  Subject:  Sepia  Thanks for today’s word, sepia! Always reminds me of Wole Soyinka’s Telephone Conversation at http://allpoetry.com/poem/10379451-Telephone-Conversation-by-Wole-Soyinka
From:  Dennis Lynch  Subject:  Cuttlefish  Ah yes, the cuttlefish.  “A ten-armed marine mollusk differing from a squid in that it has an internal calcified shell.”  Fifty years ago in high school Latin we had to memorize that definition.  We were reading some of Pliny’s letters and the teacher went to the topic of the ink the Romans used when writing on papyrus.  Whenever I read the word cuttlefish, this definition immediately and automatically comes to mind.  And, yes, it did show up on a quiz.
From:  Bob Wilson  Subject:  sepia  Sepia in connection with photography has additional meaning beyond just being a color.  In traditional monochrome photography the “print” image consists of metallic silver (where there is a dark region, finely divided silver appears black) suspended in a coating on paper.  But, although silver is much more stable than the dyes making up a color image, it can fade as it is affected by chemicals in the air, on fingerprints, etc., such as sulfur compounds.  Sepia is used not as a dye but as a chemical that converts part or all of the silver chemically to silver sulfide, which has the color we associate with sepia toned prints.  That is even longer lasting than plain silver, so many of the very old photographs we still can enjoy are ones that were sepia toned.

ICE CREAM AND BOOK PAIRINGS FOR HOT SUMMER DAYS by ASHLEY BOWEN-MURPHY   There’s nothing better than reading outside on a warm, summer day.  Oh wait, yes there is!  Reading outside on a warm, summer day with ice cream.  I’m generally the sort of person who is happy to eat almost any ice cream flavor with just about any book.  That said, sometimes I enjoy matching my treat to the book I’ve got in front of me.  If you’re looking to sweeten your next reading session, or for a bookish way to celebrate National Ice Cream Month, find suggested ice cream and book pairings at http://bookriot.com/2016/07/12/ice-cream-and-book-pairings-for-hot-summer-days/  Thank you, Muse reader!


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1500  July 20, 2016  On this date in 1903, the Ford Motor Company shipped its first car.  On this date in 1940,  California opened its first freeway, the Arroyo Seco Parkway.  On this date in 2015, the United States and Cuba resumed full diplomatic relations after five decades.  Word of the Day  Earth-grazing adjective  (astronomy) (About a meteoroid) Entering the Earth's atmosphere and leaving into space again.  (astronomy) Approaching the Earth closely.