A mononymous person is an individual who is known and addressed by a single name, or mononym.  In some cases, that name has been selected by the individual, who may have originally been given a polynym ("multiple name").  In the case of historical figures, it may be the only one of the individual's names that has survived and is still known today.  A number of visual artists, such as Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and Rembrandt, are commonly known by mononyms.  The modern Russian artist Erté formed his mononymous pseudonym from the initials of his actual name, as did the Belgian comics writers Hergé and Jijé.  Mononyms are also common in Indonesia, especially in Javanese names.  In some cases, such as those of former Presidents Sukarno and Suharto, the mononym is the full legal name.  Other mononyms, such as Rossa, Chrisye and Tohpati, are stage names taken from a nickname or are part of the full name.  In the Near East's Arab world, the Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said Esber (born 1930) at age 17 adopted the mononym pseudonym, Adunis, sometimes also spelled "Adonis".  A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in literature, he has been described as the greatest living poet of the Arab world.  Some persons, such as the artist Christo, the sculptor Chryssa, and the singer-songwriter Basia, have had polynymous names that were unwieldy, or unfamiliar and difficult to remember or to pronounce in the community in which they were currently active, but have not wanted to entirely change their names to something more familiar to the broad public at the cost of abandoning their sense of self-identification, and so have used only a single part of their full names.  The case of the Icelandic musician Björk is similar, but her use of a single name also has roots in her native culture.  Some mononym stage names are the performer's given name ( Elvis, Cher, Madonna) while others may be the performer's middle name (Rihanna, Drake), or surname (Liberace, Mantovani, Morrissey).  Some mononym stage names are invented ( Eminem, P!nk, Lorde), adopted words (Capucine, French for "nasturtium") or nicknames ( Sting, Bono, Fergie).  The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is known as "Lula", a nickname he officially added to his full name.  Such mononyms, which take their origin in given names, surnames or nicknames, are used because Portuguese names tend to be rather long.  The comedian and illusionist Teller, the silent half of the duo Penn & Teller, has legally changed his original polynym, Raymond Joseph Teller, to the mononym "Teller" and possesses a United States passport issued in that single name.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononymous_person

Gerrit Dou(1613-1675), considered the founder of the Dutch school of fijnschilderij, or fine painting, was born in Leiden on April 7, 1613, the son of Marytje Jansdr van Rosenburg and the glassmaker and engraver Douwe Jansz.  According to Orlers, Dou received his first instruction, in the art of glass engraving, from his father.  He was appren­ticed to the copper engraver Bartholomeus Dolen­do (c. 1571–c. 1629) for a year and a half, begin­ning in 1622 at the young age of nine, and then trained with the glass painter Pieter Couwenhorn (c. 1599–1654) for two years.  On February 14, 1628, Dou began his appren­ticeship with Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606 - 1669), which seems to have lasted until the master moved to Amsterdam some three or four years later.  At the time he entered Rembrandt’s workshop Dou was not quite fifteen years old and Rembrandt was only twenty-one.  Although there are no dated works by Dou from this period, a number of his pictures are so close in style to those of his teacher that they must have been painted at this time.  Indeed, early works by Dou have at times been attributed to Rembrandt himself, a confusion stemming in part from the fact that Dou and Rembrandt shared subjects and models during these years.  After Rembrandt went to Amsterdam, Dou pro­duced ever more finely wrought, highly finished compositions with increasingly smooth, enamel-like surfaces.  He also began to employ a range of cooler, paler colors in preference to the warm, darkish browns of his earlier works.  Dou painted a wide range of subjects, including genre scenes, history paintings, still lifes, portraits, and—unusual for a seventeenth-century Dutch painter—nudes.  He also began painting candlelit scenes during the 1650s.  His fame quite rightly rests, however, on the meticulously painted, small genre scenes that make up a large portion of his oeuvre.  These typically depict one or two figures engaging in some kind of domestic activity, either in an in­terior or else looking out over a windowsill—a compositional device that Dou was chiefly responsible for popularizing.  Many of these works are open to a considerable degree of symbolic interpretation, containing numerous, if sometimes ambiguous, vis­ual references to well-known contemporary proverbs or emblems.  Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.   See Gerrit Dou's self portrait at  https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1239.html

Lusophones are people who speak the Portuguese language, either as native speakers or as learners.   Similarly, the Lusosphere or Lusophony is a community of people who are culturally and linguistically linked to Portugal, either historically or by choice.  The Lusophone world is mainly a legacy of the Portuguese Empire, although Portuguese diaspora and Brazilian diaspora communities have also played a role in spreading the Portuguese language.  Even after the collapse of the empire, the corresponding countries continue to exhibit both cultural and political affinities, expressed in the existence of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), created in 1996.  The term Lusophone is a classical compound, whereby the combining form "Luso-" derives from the Latin term for an area roughly corresponding to modern Portugal, called Lusitania.  The suffix "-phone" derives from the Ancient Greek word φωνή (phōnē), meaning "voice".  The use of the term Lusophone mirrors similar terms, such as Anglophone for English-speakers, Francophone for French-speakers, Hispanophone for Spanish-speakers, and Russophone for Russian-speakers.  Find a list of officially Lusophone countries at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusophone

The Alchemy of Writing—Tips from a Non-Fiction and Fiction Pro  interview of Fred Waitzkin by Tim Farris   I taught myself.  I was a brash young guy, and I couldn’t accept criticism.  In 1984 I wrote a long piece for New York Magazine called “The Grungy World of Big Time Chess” that told the story of brilliant guys in New York who played the game with passion and devotion but couldn’t begin to make a living from it.  Anyhow, this legendary editor at Random House, Joe Fox, who loved chess, read the piece, and invited me to his office.  He asked me why I was so passionate about the game when I wasn’t even a player.  I told him that I had a six-year-old son who was remarkably good at chess, who beat up adults every afternoon playing in Washington Square Park.  “That’s your book. That’s what you have to write about,” said Fox.  So I began writing Searching for Bobby Fischer in terror.  I began taking notes about my feelings about Josh’s chess life.  We went to the park and Josh played heroic games against seasoned players—or they seemed that way to me.  I wrote it all down on yellow pads.  Each decision about his chess life seemed huge.  Find the six favorite short stories of Fred Waitzkin at

https://tim.blog/2013/03/24/the-alchemy-of-writing-tips-from-a-non-fiction-and-fiction-pro/

The Alchemy of Writing—More Tips from a Pro  part two of an interview with author Fred Waitzkin  For me, inspiration is primarily energy.  I always read back several pages before I try to write anything new.  Moving back through interesting material seems to give me momentum to push ahead . . .  Find the ten favorite books of Fred Waitzkin at https://tim.blog/2013/03/25/the-dream-merchant-waitzkin/

Few images are more strange and haunting than those discovered on some frozen film in 1930.  They reveal the mysterious fate of the S. A. Andrée Arctic Balloon Expedition of 1897, where a hot air balloon meant to sail over the North Pole instead crashed into the ice.  Swedish balloonist S. A. Andrée had set out with team members Nils Strindberg and Knut Fraenkel to make history, but planning and the harsh conditions of the Arctic cut their journey incredibly short.  The balloon launched from Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean in July of 1897.  However, inadequate testing of the balloon, Andrée’s insistence on using a “drag-rope” method of steering that trailed ropes on the ice, and just the quixotic nature of the expedition resulted in death for all three expedition members.  Allison Meier  See pictures at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-andree-balloon-crash-a-photographic-journey-through-to-most-surreal-of-arctic-disasters  See also The Ice Balloon, a doomed journey in the Arctic by Alec Wilkinson at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/04/19/the-ice-balloon

On the same night LeBron James finished out February 2018 by averaging a triple-double for the first time in a calendar month in his fabled 15-year career, James also became the first player in NBA history to tally more than 30,000 points, 8,000 rebounds and 8,000 assists.  Not only was it a first for the 33-year-old player's already-decorated career, but James also became the oldest player in NBA history to average a triple-double in a calendar month containing at least 10 games played, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.  The previous oldest to do it was Wilt Chamberlain in March 1968 at 31 years old.  With 20-plus points on Tuesday, James tied Michael Jordan for fourth place on the all-time list of 20-point performances with 926.  Dave McMenamin  http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/22598922/cleveland-cavaliers-lebron-james-averages-triple-double-month-february

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1850  February 28, 2018  On this date in 1827, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.  On this date in 1935, DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invented nylon.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_28