A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

hap  (hap)  noun  chance, fortune, an occurance  verb tr.  to occur, to clothe, cover, or wrap

From Old Norse happ (good luck).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root kobe (to suit, fit, or succeed), which also gave us happen, happy, hapless, and mishap.

ana  (A-nuh)  noun  collection of items, such as quotations, anecdotes, etc. related to a person, place, etc.  adverb  in equal quantities (used in prescriptions).  

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From:  Tom van Deijnen  Subject:  hap  The word hap has an additional specific meaning in the Shetland dialect: in the knitting tradition of the Shetland Isles, women knitted many items of clothing for themselves and for sale.  Amongst others they knitted very intricate and delicate lacey shawls to sell, but for their own everyday wear, they knitted haps: warm shawls from a sturdier and thicker yarn using simple knitting patterns.
From: Russ Spittler  Subject:  hap  In the 1930s and 1940s, trips to Grandma’s farm in central Pennsylvania put us kids to bed on cold nights under haps.  Such a “hap” was a home-made comforter of sorts, a cotton sheet lined with cotton stuffing and topped with random squares cut from old, worn out wool clothing and stitched together.

From:  Alex Blair  Subject:  hap  The second meaning for the verb takes me right to one of my favourite songs “Happed in Mist”, which some think should be the anthem for WWI:  a volunteer soldier, confused and disorientated, imagines he sees his lover, walks towards her, and is shot as a deserter (song, beautiful, written by Michael Marra, the late “Bard of Dundee”).  recording (3 min.)  lyrics
From:  Bruce Floyd  Subject:  hap  Thomas Hardy wrote a poem titled Hap.  In it, he avers that human suffering is nothing more than the blind indifference of the universe, a game of dice. He says that it'd be easier were the universe malefic, sadistic, delighted at causing our suffering. In this case, says Hardy, he could "bear it", somewhat reconciled that a malignant and superior force had unfairly tossed misery into his life.  Life, suggest Hardy, is all a matter of luck, be it good luck or bad luck.

From:  James McFarlane  Subject:  hap  This reminds me of a MAD Magazine skit in the 1970s, featuring the Lone Ranger and Tonto, "bringing help to the helpless and hap to the hapless".

From:  Barry Galloway  Subject:  ana  Then we can use “Anuana” in referring to a treasured collection of all things Gargian.

The word "bumblebee" is a compound of "bumble" + "bee"—"bumble" meaning to hum, buzz, drone, or move ineptly or flounderingly.  The generic name Bombus, assigned by Pierre André Latreille in 1802, is derived from the Latin word for a buzzing or humming sound.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term "bumblebee" was first recorded as having been used in the English language in the 1530 work Lesclarcissement by John Palsgrave, "I bomme, as a bombyll bee dothe."  However the OED also states that the term "humblebee" predates it, having first been used in 1450 in Fysshynge wyth Angle, "In Juyll the greshop & the humbylbee in the medow."  The latter term was used in A Midsummer Night's Dream (circa 1600) by William Shakespeare, "The honie-bags steale from the humble Bees."  An old provincial name, "dumbledor", also denoted a buzzing insect such as a bumblebee or cockchafer, "dumble" probably imitating the sound of these insects, while "dor" meant "beetle".  In On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin speculated about "humble-bees" and their interactions with other species:  I have [...] reason to believe that humble-bees are indispensable to the fertilisation of the heartsease (Viola tricolor), for other bees do not visit this flower.  From experiments which I have tried, I have found that the visits of bees, if not indispensable, are at least highly beneficial to the fertilisation of our clovers; but humble-bees alone visit the common red clover (Trifolium pratense), as other bees cannot reach the nectar.  However, "bumblebee" remained in use, for example in The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse (1910) by Beatrix Potter, "Suddenly round a corner, she met Babbitty Bumble--"Zizz, Bizz, Bizzz!" said the bumble bee."  Since World War II "humblebee" has fallen into near-total disuse.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee

At that first cry our held breath explodes and that first wan and crooked smile leaves our hearts helpless.  "On the Birth of a Baby"

In the Kentucky hills the corn is green and forming buttery kernels in the ear

each in a tight green wrapper, sleek and clean, slow-ripening in the mountain atmosphere . . .

Breathing the pine-sharp mountain air, and then breathing a prayer of thankfulness for grace

of April beauty that around me spills and holds my home in an embrace of hills.  "Hill-Country April"

Love has a way of coming, going, love has a way of shrinking, growing . . . Oh, love has a way, it is very clever--but never regret it:  never, ever!  "The Leaven of Love"

Hallie Cramer, 1976 winner of Ohio Poet of the Year from the Ohio Poetry Day Association  http://ohiopoetryassn.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-brief-look-at-ohio-poet-of-year.html

July 19, 2017  The Library of Congress opened its catalogs to the world.  Here’s why it matters by Melissa Levine, Lead Copyright Officer, Librarian, University of Michigan   Imagine you wanted to find books or journal articles on a particular subject.  Or find manuscripts by a particular author  Or locate serials, music or maps.  You would use a library catalog that includes facts--like title, author, publication date, subject headings and genre.  That information and more is stored in the treasure trove of library catalogs.  It is hard to overstate how important this library catalog information is, particularly as the amount of information expands every day.  With this information, scholars and librarians are able to find things in a predictable way.  What if you could also experiment with the data in those records to explore other kinds of research questions--like trends in subject matter, semantics in titles or patterns in the geographic source of works on a given topic?  Now it is possible.  The Library of Congress has made 25 million digital catalog records available for anyone to use at no charge.  The free data set includes records from 1968 to 2014.  This is the largest release of digital catalog records in history.  These records are part of a data ecosystem that crosses decades and parallels the evolution of information technology.  In my research about copyright and library collections, I rely on these kinds of records for information that can help determine the copyright status of works.  The data in these records already are embodied in library catalogs.  What’s new is the free accessibility of this organized data set for new kinds of inquiry.    For my part, I am considering how to use the library’s data to learn more about the history of publishing.  For example, it might be possible to see if there are trends in dates of publication, locations of publishers and patterns in subject matter.  It would be fruitful to correlate copyright information data retained by the U.S. Copyright Office to see if one could associate particular works with their copyright information like registration, renewal and ownership changes.  However, those records remain in formats that remain difficult to search or manipulate.  The records prior to 1978 are not yet available online at all from the U.S. Copyright Office.  Colleagues at the University of Michigan Library are studying the recently released records as a way to practice map-making and explore geographic patterns with visualizations based on the data.  They are thinking about gleaning locations from subject metadata and then mapping how those locations shift through time.  There’s a growing expectation that this kind of data should be freely available.  This is evidenced by the expanding number of open data initiatives, from institutional repositories such as Deep Blue Data here at the University of Michigan Library to the U.S. government’s data.gov.  The U.K.‘s Open Research Data Task Force just released a report discussing technical, infrastructure, policy and cultural matters to be addressed to support open data.  http://theconversation.com/the-library-of-congress-opened-its-catalogs-to-the-world-heres-why-it-matters-78570

Top White House officials have been duped into email exchanges with a British prankster posing as administration insiders.  Anthony Scaramucci, former White House director of communications, embarked on an electronic war of words with a man he believed to be former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.  He previously likened his relationship with Mr Priebus to the fratricidal bond between Cain and Abel and vowed to get him fired.  The prankster, linked to the @SINON_REBORN Twitter account, baited Mr Scaramucci by telling him “You’re well suited to your zero dollar pay scale”, calling him “breathtakingly hypocritical” and bemoaning the “diabolical” transition of power away from Mr Priebus.  The former director of communications lashed back with “You know what you did.  We all do” before suggesting Mr Priebus “Read Shakespeare.  Particularly Othello.”  Other US officials caught up in the so called ‘spearfishing’ of accounts include US homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, who gave out his personal email address to the prankster posing as Jared Kushner.   Kenza Bryan  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/anthony-scaramucci-reince-priebus-white-house-chief-of-staff-emails-prank-sinon-reborn-donald-trump-a7870196.html

Ordinary phishing involves malicious emails sent to any random email account, spear-phishing emails are designed to appear to come from someone the recipient knows and trusts.  One of the most famous examples of a spear-phishing attack that succeeded despite its suspicious nature targeted the RSA Security firm in 2011.  The attackers sent two different targeted phishing emails to four workers at RSA's parent company EMC.  The emails contained a malicious attachment with the file name “2011 Recruitment plan.xls,” which contained a zero-day exploit.  When one of the four recipients clicked on the attachment, the exploit attacked a vulnerability in Adobe Flash to install a backdoor onto the victim's computer.  The backdoor gave the attackers a foothold from which to conduct reconnaissance and map a way to more valuable systems on the company's network.  They eventually succeeded in stealing information related to the company’s SecurID two-factor authentication products.  The attack was surprising because everyone assumed that a top security firm like RSA would have trained employees who know better than to open suspicious emails.  Yet one of its employees not only opened one of the suspicious emails but retrieved it from his junk folder—after his email filter had deemed it suspicious—in order to open it.  Another surprising victim of a spear-phishing attack was the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.  The lab, also hacked in 2011, got hit with a phishing email that appeared to come from the human resources department and included a link to a web page where malware downloaded to victims' machines.  The attackers sent the email to 530 of the lab's 5,000 workers, and fifty seven people clicked on the malicious link in the email.  Only two machines got infected with the malware, but this was enough to get the attackers onto the network.  They were discovered only after administrators noticed megabytes of data being siphoned from the lab's network.  Kim Zetter  https://www.wired.com/2015/04/hacker-lexicon-spear-phishing/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1747  August 2, 2017  On this date in 1610,  Henry Hudson, searching for the Northwest Passage, sailed into what is now known as Hudson Bay.  On this date in 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was signed.  On this date in 1790, the first United States Census was conducted.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2  Word of the Day  pukka  adj  (originally South Asia) Genuine or authentic; hence of behaviour: correct, socially acceptable or proper.  Superior or of high quality; first-class.  (Britain, slang) Excellent, fantastic, great.