From April to September, 2014 Argentinian artist Amalia Ulman  created a character she portrayed on main social media platforms to see what were the things that engaged people and how they interacted with the fake lifestyle she showed.  Ulman called her performance Excellences & Perfections.  Basically, she studied the profiles most people tend to look up more.  With this, she determined that there were basically three main profiles that encompass the ultimate “Instagram girl” that is copied by many and generates more engagement from SM users:  the “cute girl,” the “sugar baby,” and the “living goddess.”  Once she got the elements of her personification and understood the requirements of these profiles, she devoted herself for five months creating a believable narrative to publish on her different platforms and replicate how people, more specifically women, present themselves online and how they’re seen as well.  The Amalia from social media went through extremely relatable events in her life.  She first moved to the city and documented the craziness of adapting to this new and rushed lifestyle.  She broke up with her boyfriend, with whom she had had a very long relationship, so you could find sad quotes and posts about growing from these experiences (accompanied, of course, by really cool pictures of her new life as a single, young, and beautiful woman).  She would go back to depressive states of being in which she did drugs (and openly documented pictures of this stage) and decided to have plastic surgery to make herself feel better.  This and the drugs naturally generated some ranting on social media, but she apologized to her followers, who took her back as soon as her life seemed to be getting better.  All in all by the end of her project she ended up getting around forty thousand followers who would avidly comment or like her many publications.  Maria Isabel Carrasco Cara Chards  Read more and see pictures at https://culturacolectiva.com/photography/amalia-ulman-excellences-and-perfections/  See also Amalia Ulman's Instagram art hoax exposed the flaws in selfie culture by Alicia Eler at https://www.cnn.com/style/article/amalia-ulman-instagram-excellences-perfections/index.html

In His Own Write is a nonsensical book by John Lennon first published on 23 March 1964.  It consists of short stories and poems, and line drawings, often surreal in nature.  The book was the first solo project by one of the members of the Beatles in any creative medium.  It was followed in 1965 by A Spaniard in the Works.  The book was transformed into a play, co-authored with Victor Spinetti, who directed, at the National Theatre, premiering on 18 June 1968, at the Old Vic.  Actor/director Jonathan Glew produced a three-handed adaptation of the book that premiered as a pay-what-you-want show at the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_His_Own_Write

The first house completed by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí opened to the public in autumn 2017, following a major restoration.  Featuring colourful tiles and ornate details, Casa Vicens was built by Gaudí between 1883 and 1885, as a summer home for real-estate broker Manel Vicens i Montaner.  Not only was it the first house built by the Catalan modernist, it was also his first completed building in Barcelona, where he went on to create masterpieces including Casa Batlló, Park Güell and the still yet-to-complete Sagrada Família.  Casa Vicens is one of eight projects that the architect built in or near Barcelona that are recognised by UNESCO as world heritage sites, and the last to open to the public.  Amy Frearson  See wonderful pictures at https://www.dezeen.com/2017/05/25/antoni-gaudi-first-house-casa-vicens-restoration-museum-barcelona/

March 12, 2018  from Anu Garg:  This week marks 24 years of Wordsmith.org.  It was on March 14 in 1994 that I started what grew into this organization with members in more than 170 countries.  There’s no word for a 24-year anniversary, but we can coin one:  quadrivicennial, from quadri- (four) + vicenary (relating to 20 years).  Words which follow the pattern verb + noun to describe a person  have been called tosspot words.

scofflaw   (SKOF-law)  noun  One who displays contempt for the law, especially in minor violations, such as failure to pay parking tickets.   A combination of scoff (to mock), from Middle English scof + law, from Old English lagu, from Old Norse (lagu), plural of lag (something laid or fixed).  Earliest documented use:  1924.  It’s not often that a word coined as a result of a competition becomes part of the language, but scofflaw did.  During Prohibition, banker Delcevare King of Quincy, Massachusetts announced a contest to coin a word to describe “a lawless drinker”. 

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day  The tosspot contest brought in more than 400 entries.  A tosspot word has the form:  verb + object, e.g. pickpocket.  Winners, in no particular order, are:

Scoffpunk:  Someone who displays contempt for punctuation and uses all the various forms in ways they shouldn’t be used, such as, quotations for emphasis or apostrophes for plurals.
Sonia Lyris

Shirkirk:  Someone who evades from going to church (as s/he is supposed to); the meaning may even be stretched to mean someone who avoids wedlock (by the church in particular).
Aqua  Para
Swirlpate  A vain man who, in an attempt to deny his true age, tries to hide his natural baldness by growing a long thin fringe of his remaining hair and artfully arranging it in a swirl over his hairless pate, deceiving no one but himself.  Such men have a theme song:  “We Shall Over-Comb!”  Joel Mabus

Delcevare King, a bank­er whose vigorous support of Prohibition led to the coining of the word “scofflaw,” died March 22, 1964 at the age of 89.  In 1923 Mr. King gained the nation's attention by offering $200 in gold for a new word best describing “the lawless drinker.”  “Scofflaw,” the entry of Miss Kate L. Butler of Dor­chester, Mass., was chosen over 25,000 others.  Mr. King, the su­perintendent of the Anti-Saloon League of America and a Bos­ton minister were the judges.  The word “scoff­ law” has lost much of its orig­inal meaning, and is now prin­cipally applied to those who ig­nore parking tickets.  Mr. King was a graduate of Harvard, class of ‘95.  Among his varied crusades was one to get the university color, crim­son, into the colors of the in­dividual classes.  He also fought a lonely battle in support of playing visiting teams’ school songs at Harvard football games.  On another occasion he took exception to the glorifica­tion of drinking in the song "Johnny Harvard."  Among the other causes Mr. King had pursued were a cam­paign to get President Coolidge to cut down his social activi­ties, a drive to introduce Esperanto as a second language in America and a project to draft Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1956.  Encouraged by his successful "scofflaw” contest, Mr. King offered a prize of $10 in 1933 for the best rallying cry for the National Recovery Admin­istration.  The winner, “N.R.A. Saves Us,” did not have the endurance of the previous choice. 

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/22/delcevare-king-banker-89-dead.html

 National Library Week (April 8- 14, 2018) is a time to celebrate the contributions of our nation's libraries and library workers and to promote library use and support.  From free access to books and online resources for families to library business centers that help support entrepreneurship and retraining, libraries offer opportunity to all.  The theme for 2018 National Library Week is "Libraries Lead," and American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer Misty Copeland will serve as 2018 National Library Week Honorary Chair.  National Library Week 2018 will mark the 60th anniversary of the first event, sponsored in 1958.  This national celebration is sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and observed in libraries across the country each April.  All types of libraries--school, public, academic and special--participate every year in National Library Week.  April:  School Library Month  Monday, April 9  The 2017 State of America's Libraries Report is released  Tuesday, April 10:  National Library Workers Day  Wednesday, April 11:  National Bookmobile Day  Thursday, April 12  Take Action for Libraries Day  http://www.ala.org/news/mediapresscenter/presskits/nlw

Before the Works Progress Administration sent packhorse librarians to reach rural Appalachia in the 1930s, there was the bookmobile.  The first of these was created by a Maryland librarian in 1905.  Sharlee Glenn's book Library on Wheels:  Mary Lemist Titcombe and America's First Bookmobile is a look at a forgotten piece of America's past.  BookPage  April 2018

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1867  April 2, 2018