Hidden deep in the south-east corner of the Greek island of Evia, above a twisting maze of ravines that tumbles toward the Aegean Sea, the tiny village of Antia clings to the slopes of Mount Ochi.  As you travel here along a dizzying road from Karystos, through a mythical landscape of megalithic ‘dragon house’ stone tombs and giant Cyclopic boulders, you’ll hear an ancient siren song reverberating against the mountain walls.  That’s because for thousands of years, the inhabitants of Antia have used a remarkable whistled language that resembles the sounds of birds to communicate across the distant valleys.  Known as sfyria, it’s one of the rarest and most endangered languages in the world--a mysterious form of long-distance communication in which entire conversations, no matter how complex, can be whistled.  For the last two millennia, the only people who have been able to sound and understand sfyria’s secret notes are the shepherds and farmers from this hillside hamlet, each of whom has proudly passed down the tightly guarded tradition to their children.  But in the last few decades, Antia’s population has dwindled from 250 to 37, and as older whistlers lose their teeth, many can no longer sound sfyria’s sharp notes.  Today, there are only six people left on the planet who can still ‘speak’ this unspoken language.  According to Dimitra Hengen, a Greek linguist who accompanied me to Antia, sfyria is effectively a whistled version of spoken Greek, in which letters and syllables correspond to distinct tones and frequencies.  Because whistled sound waves are different from speech, messages in sfyria can travel up to 4km across open valleys, or roughly 10 times farther than shouting.  Today there are as many as 70 other whistled languages in the world, and they all exist in remote mountain villages like Antia.  Eliot Stein  Read more and see pictures at http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170731-greeces-disappearing-whistled-language

Poet Mary Oliver is an “indefatigable guide to the natural world,” wrote Maxine Kumin in the Women’s Review of Books, “particularly to its lesser-known aspects.”  Oliver’s verse focuses on the quiet of occurrences of nature:  industrious hummingbirds, egrets, motionless ponds, “lean owls / hunkering with their lamp-eyes.”   Oliver’s poetry has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and a Lannan Literary Award. Reviewing Dream Work (1986) for the Nation,critic Alicia Ostriker numbered Oliver among America’s finest poets, as “visionary as [Ralph Waldo] Emerson.”  Mary Oliver was born in 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio.  She attended both Ohio State University and Vassar College, but did not receive a degree from either institution.  As a young poet, Oliver was deeply influenced by Edna St. Vincent Millay and briefly lived in Millay’s home, helping Norma Millay organize her sister’s papers.   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-oliver   See also "Maria Shriver Interviews the Famously Private Poet Mary Oliver" at http://www.oprah.com/entertainment/maria-shriver-interviews-poet-mary-oliver

Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about.  "And Bob Dylan Too" (excerpt) by Mary Oliver  https://twonames15.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/and-bob-dylan-too-by-mary-oliver-passage-and-analysis/

I recently received a donation of about 200 books and, in sorting through them, found Ghosthunting Ohio by John B. Kachuba.  Some of the places rumored to be haunted serve food and, for those who want to visit, here's a selection:  Amber Rose in Dayton  http://www.theamberrose.com/about-us/, Golden Lamb in Lebanon  http://www.goldenlamb.com/dining/dining-menus-1/, Granville Inn in Granville  https://granvilleinn.com/dining/, Palm Court in Cincinnati  http://www.orchidsatpalmcourt.com/restaurants.aspx, The Levee House in Marietta  http://www.theleveehousemarietta.com/dinner-menu.html, and Main Street Cafe in Medina   http://www.themainstreetcafe.com/dinner-menu/ 

Treasure from a recent book donation:  Joy of Cooking, sixth edition by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker  Illustrated by Ikki Matsumoto and Ginnie Hofmann  The 1975 JOY is the bestselling edition of all time.  John, Marion's husband, was a major contributor to the 1975 edition as an editor and source of erudite literary quotes.  Besides testing recipes for this edition, the outdoorsman contributed backpacking menu suggestions, a section especially valuable to hikers, campers, and hunters.  Special features in this edition include the Know Your Ingredients chapter, which reveals vital characteristics of commonly used ingredients, detailing how and why they react as they do, how to measure them, how to substitute one for another, as well as what to look for when buying them. The book also includes information on nutrition, cooking processes and methods, and storing and preserving food.  The how-to illustrations number around 1,000, and this edition contains over 4,500 recipes.  http://www.thejoykitchen.com/all-about-joy/1975-edition   TIPS from Joy of Cooking:  Cut fresh or frozen bread with a very sharp hot knife.  Make quick butter spreads--to softened butter, add small amounts of one or more of the following:  lemon juice, dry mustard, horseradish, herbs, grated cheese.  Chill until spreading consistency.

Gars (or garpike) are members of the Lepisosteiformes (or Semionotiformes), an ancient holosteian order of ray-finned fish; fossils from this order are known from the late Cretaceous onwards.  The family Lepisosteidaeincludes seven living species of fish in two genera that inhabit fresh, brackish, and occasionally marine, waters of eastern North America, Central America and the Caribbean islands.  Gars have elongated bodies that are heavily armored with ganoid scales, and fronted by similarly elongated jaws filled with long, sharp teeth.  All of the gars are relatively large fish, but the alligator gar (Atractosteus spatula) is the largest, as specimens have been reported to be 3 m (9.8 ft) in length; however, they typically grow to 2 m (6.6 ft) and weigh over 45.3 kg (100 lb).  Gar flesh is edible and the hard skin and scales of gars are used by humans.  The name gar was originally used for a species of needlefish (Belone belone) found in the North Atlantic and likely taking its name from the Old English word for "spear".  Belone belone is now more commonly referred to as the "garfish" or "gar fish" to avoid confusion with the North American gars of the family Lepisosteidae.  Confusingly, the name "garfish" is commonly used for a number of other species of the related genera Strongylura, Tylosurus and Xenentodon of the family Belonidae.  The genus name Lepisosteus comes from the Greek lepis meaning "scale" and osteon meaning "bone".  Atractosteus is similarly derived from Greek, in this case from atraktos, meaning arrow.  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gar

The traditional distinction between the verbs enquire and inquire is that enquire is to be used for general senses of ‘ask’, while inquire is reserved for uses meaning ‘make a formal investigation’.

In practice, however, enquire, and the associated noun enquiry, are more common in British English while inquire (and the noun inquiry) are more common in American English, but otherwise there is little discernible distinction in the way the words are used.  Some style guides require that only inquire or only enquire be used.  Both words derive from the Old French enquerre, from a variant of the Latin inquirere, based on quaerere 'seek'.  The same root word can be seen in various modern English words, including acquire, require, conquer, quest, request, inquest, and question.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/enquire-or-inquire

August 17, 2017  CROWDCASTING  Surkus is a new app you’re about to hate that helps businesses manufacture an instant cool factor.  It achieves this by paying people— technically users, but might as well call them actors—to go wait in line or patronize a bar like movie extras.  Sounds like the service-industry equivalent of buying Twitter followers, except, as founder Stephen George tells the Washington Post, Surkus sees itself more as an “online matchmaker” for your city’s nightlife.  The company claims to have amassed an army of 150,000 users in five cities (New York, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco, and Miami).  They’ve already gummed up the tables, bar areas, door lines, and floor space at 4,200 events for some 750 clients, but you’ll never know which places because discretion is a prereq for participating.  Users can reportedly haul in as much as $100 per event, though the average is more like $25 to $40, with women oftentimes getting paid “considerably more” than men.  Clint Rainey  http://www.grubstreet.com/2017/08/this-new-app-pays-users-to-create-long-lines-at-restaurants.html  See also https://crowdsondemand.com/ and http://www.crowdsforrent.com/services.html

President Trump got in on the meme game August 24, 2017 with a retweet of an image that shows him "eclipsing" his predecessor, Barack Obama.  The original tweet from Jerry Travone featured the image, which included the caption "THE BEST ECLIPSE EVER!"  See the Travone tweet plus images of "the only eclipse i want to see today" showing Bernie Sanders eclipsing Trump and one of Barack Obama eclipsing Trump at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/08/24/president-trump-retweets-meme-him-eclipsing-barack-obama/598029001/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1760  August 25, 2017  On this date in 1981, Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Saturn.  On this date in 1989, Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Neptune, the second to last planet in the Solar System at the time.  On this date in 2012, Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space becoming the first man-made object to do so.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_25