In 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Historic Preservation Act, a law that made preserving historic, architectural and archaeological resources whenever possible a policy of the federal government.  Since 1966, Ohio, the 36th-largest state geographically, has become the third-highest number of National Register listings:  more than 3800.  Echoes, v. 55, Sept./Oct. 2016   Find National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 at https://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/nhpa1966.htm and literary landmarks by state at http://www.ala.org/united/products_services/literarylandmarks/landmarksbystate/landmarksbystate

The color amber is a pure chroma color, located on the color wheel midway between the colors of gold and orange.  The color name is derived from the material also known as amber, which is commonly found in a range of yellow-orange-brown-red colors; likewise, as a color amber can refer to a range of yellow-orange colors.  In English the first recorded use of the term as a color name, rather than a reference to the specific substance, was in 1500.  Amber is one of several technically defined colors used in automotive signal lamps.  In North America, SAE standard J578 governs the colorimetry of vehicle lights, while outside North America the internationalized European ECE regulations hold force.  Both standards designate a range of orange-yellow hues in the CIE color space as "amber".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_(color)

While it doesn't quite roll off the tongue the way "cronut" does, and isn't as photogenic as the rainbow bagel, the mufgel is the new hybrid pastry on the block.  The mufgel is part bagel, part muffin and is the Franken-carb du jour at Williamsburg's The Bagel Store, the world's most viral bagel purveyor.  It was released on July 23rd, 2016 and while some genius is crafted over many years, owner Scot Rossillo was inspired by a Quick Draw radio commercial which made fun of food crazes in New York City.  He quickly came up with the recipe and started with two flavors:  carrot cake and chocolate chip crumb.  Currently the bakery makes 42 mufgels each day and sells out by close, says manager Scarlen Espinal.   "The rainbow bagel started just like that as well," she said.  "They were selling very few a day and now all of a sudden we bake thousands of rainbow bagels a day."  Emily Siegel  http://gothamist.com/2016/07/28/mufgel_williamsburg_gimmicks.php

July 14, 2016  Suzanne Corkin, who has died aged 79, was a neuroscientist who, for almost 50 years, worked with and cared for Henry Molaison, the most-studied patient in the history of brain science.  “Patient HM”, as he was known in the medical literature, had undergone an experimental operation to cure his epilepsy in 1953, when he was 27.  A hole had been drilled in the front of his skull and much of his hippocampus and amygdala removed.  The result was a profound amnesia, which caused Henry to forget all his post-operative experiences after just 30 seconds.  Despite this, he remained lucid and able to participate in hundreds of studies.  Assessing him in 1962 with her supervisor, Dr Brenda Milner, at McGill University in Montreal, Suzanne Corkin found that he had an above-average IQ and well-developed verbal skills, as well as a keen sense of humour.  At that time little was known about the nature of memory, which was assumed to be a global neurological process.  Through a series of experiments involving Henry, Dr Milner was able to cast light on the particular role of the hippocampus in retrieving and storing memories.  After 1966 Dr Corkin carried on her mentor’s work from the psychology department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  She was born Suzanne Hammond on May 18 1937 and grew up in West Hartford.  After graduating with a degree in Psychology from Smith College in Massachusetts, she moved to Montreal and Dr Milner’s laboratory.  In all she published more than 100 research papers on subjects such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and the neurological processes of healthy ageing.  Her longest working relationship, however, was with Henry Molaison--even if Henry never recognised it as such.  After his death in 2008 Dr Corkin’s study of his neuroanatomy continued.  His post-mortem scans were “beautiful . . . much clearer than what you could see in a living person, partly because we scanned him for so long”.   Henry’s brain was then sent to a lab in San Diego and sliced into 2,401 sections for further study.  Then, and only then, was his full name revealed to the public.  In Permanent Present Tense:  The Unforgettable Life of the Amnesic Patient, HM (2013), Dr Corkin spoke of her decades-long mission to protect Henry as a person in his own right, rather than as a series of “anonymous descriptions in textbooks”.   “His story is not just a medical curiosity,” she wrote.  “It is a testament to the impact that a single subject can have.”   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/07/14/suzanne-corkin-neuroscientist-who-did-groundbreaking-work-on-amn/

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  Each of this week’s words has two opposite meanings.

dabster  (DAB-stuhr)  noun  1.  An expert.  2.  A bungler.

salad days  (SAL-uhd dayz)  noun  1.  A period of youthful innocence and inexperience.  2.  period of great success:  heyday.

depthless  (DEPTH-les)  adjective   1.  Immeasurably deep.  2.  Shallow; superficial.

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From:  Anthony Vazquez  Subject:  Contranyms  I always enjoyed the riddle:  The name of which US state is made of two antonyms separated by the letter ‘i’?  Connect-i-cut is the only state that cleaves to the rule and is cleft with an ‘i’.

From:  Sue Goldstein  Subject:  Contranyms  I was quite pleased to see this week’s theme.  I have a list at my desk of antagonyms , which is a synonym for contranyms.  My favorites are “sanction”, “splice”, and “cleave”.  Also on the list are “hulled”, “seeded”, and “shelled”.  I was once asked to write something that sanctioned a particular activity, so I had to ask whether the person wanted to prohibit or permit the activity.  This was an important question since I am a nonpartisan legislative bill drafter.

From:  David Housden  Subject:  dabster  Here in the UK these days one is likely to observe that someone is a “dab hand"--in fact an expert.  However, people can be “dabbling” at something, in other words, they are unfamiliar with the task at hand--in fact an amateur.

From:  JB Bryant  Subject:  depthless  When I was in elementary school (centuries ago), my mother was going to be one of the parent drivers for our class field trip.  One of the other boys asked me, “Is your mom a reckless driver?”  When I answered “Yes,” he surprised me by saying he wasn’t going to ride with her.  I had never heard the word “reckless” before that, but it seemed obvious to me that it meant “without a wreck” just as penniless means without a penny.

September is the ninth month of the year in the modern day Gregorian calendar and its predecessor, the Julian calendar.  The month kept its original name from the Roman calendar in which septem means “seven” in Latin marking it as the seventh month.  September was named during a time when the calendar year began with March, which is why its name no longer corresponds with its placement in the Julian and Gregorian calendars.  September was the seventh month that had a length of 30 days in the Roman calendar.  It became the ninth month with a length of 29 days when King Numa Pompilius reformed the calendar and added the months of January and February around 700 BCE.  Julius Caesar added one day to the month making it 30 days long during the Julian calendar reform.  Its birth flowers are the forget-me-not, morning glory and aster.  The birthstone for September is the sapphire which means clear thinking.  http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/months/september.html

National anthem and sports   The first documented example was in May 1862, when Brooklyn inaugurated its first professional baseball field.  The "Star-Spangled Banner" was played during a pregame ceremony, and again "at intervals throughout the contest," the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported.  http://bklyn.newspapers.com/clip/451673/1862brooklyn_daily_eaglefirst_ssb_in/  In the decades that followed, the song resurfaced at baseball and college football games, usually during times of war and social upheaval.  The trend continued after Congress made the song the national anthem in 1931, and through World War II, when patriotic fervor, along with the development of modern public address systems, made the song part of the everyday routine.  By the 1970s, television and big-money sports turned the pre-game national anthem into an event unto itself, with popular musicians performing it to huge crowds.  Jon Schuppe  Read more and see pictures at  http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/history-behind-kaepernick-protest-sports-dissent-star-spangled-banner-n640256

The Olympics Games has its own flag and “hymn”, used when the Olympic flag is raised, usually during the opening and closing ceremonies.  The Olympic Hymn first appeared at the first Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens, Greece.  The lyrics were written in Greek by Greece’s national poet, Kostis Palamas and set to music by Spyros Samaras for the 1896 Games.  The hymn was not used again, nor was it officially adopted, for several decades; until the 1960 Games, each country would commission local composers to compose an Olympic hymn for that particular Games.  A hymn was officially adopted in 1954 and used in the 1956 Games, which was intended to be the Olympic hymn, but due to disputes, the original Olympic hymn was unanimously adopted as the official Olympic Hymn at the 1958 IOC meeting.  Written in Greek, the IOC’s preference is that the Olympic Hymn be performed in either English or Greek.  If it is to be performed in the local language, it is to be translated from the original Greek, rather than the English.  Starting with the 1924 Games, the winner’s national anthem for each event is played as their flag is hoisted in celebration.  Also, according to Olympic rules, national anthems cannot be longer than 80 seconds in length, causing some countries to create a shortened version of their anthem to be played at the Games in the event that their participant wins.  Also, a nation may choose to have another anthem played instead of their national one if they so choose; for example, at the 1992 Games, the former Soviet republics united under a team known as the “Unified Team”, whenever a member of this team won their event, they chose the song “Ode to Joy” to be played.  During the 1980 Games in Moscow, several non-Communist countries that were participating chose to have the Olympic Hymn played rather than their own anthem when they won their event.  Also, because of conflicts with China, Taiwan has a special song which they use for such events known as the “Flag Raising Song”.  http://www.nationalanthems.info/oly.htm

212 musicians voice support for 'Blurred Lines' appeal--Artists like Rivers Cuomo, Jennifer Hudson, Hans Zimmer, Jason Mraz, and more support Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke's appeal by Jessica Goodman   In December 2015, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams filed an appeal against the verdict that ordered them to pay Marvin Gaye’s family more than $5 million for copyright infringement when a judge determined “Blurred Lines” had copied from Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.”   http://www.ew.com/article/2015/03/10/blurred-lines-trial-robin-thicke-pharrell.  On August 24, 2016 more than 200 artists and musicians have backed Thicke and Williams’ appeal in an amicus brief filed with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to support the bid.  http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/31/blurred-lines-appeal-artists-support-amicus-brief  The pop stars' challenge follows a blockbuster trial in March 2015 that ended with a jury verdict that “Blurred Lines”—the best-selling single in the world in 2013—lifted key elements from Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up.”  A judge ordered the pair to pay $5.4 million and ongoing royalties to Gaye’s heirs.  http://www.law360.com/articles/780736/blurred-lines-verdict-will-chill-musical-creativity-9th-circ-told

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 1521  September 2. 2016  On this date in 1661, Georg Böhm, German organist and composer, was born.  On this date in 1919, Marge Champion, American actress, dancer, and choreographer, was born.