St. Paris is a village in Champaign County, Ohio.  The population was 2,089 at the 2010 census.  The area where St. Paris now stands was originally inhabited by Native Americans.  The first white settlers arrived in 1797 and the village was founded in 1831 by David Huffman, who originally named it New Paris, after the French capital city of Paris.  Upon learning that another town in Ohio already had that name, he changed the name to St. Paris.  St. Paris was incorporated as a village in 1858.  One of the houses in the village, known as the "Monitor House", has been declared a historic site and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Paris,_Ohio

The best known maker of pony vehicles was Walborn & Riker in St. Paris, Ohio.  St. Paris is famous as ‘Pony Wagon Town.’  Freeman Riker perfected the proportional sizing of pony vehicles.  A pony is not a small horse; it has different proportions.  Cutting down a full-size carriage with smaller wheels and shorter shafts doesn’t work, though that was customary at the time.  In the Walborn & Riker catalogs the vehicles are shown sized to the height of the pony measured at the withers in inches:  below 34” or 34–40.”  This was their pride and the catalog was adamant about it.  Riker took six of his pony carriages, including his first “Little Princess” model, to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 with a life-size, paper mache pony.  They were a success and henceforth the main business of Walborn & Riker.   http://www.drivingdigest.com/articles/148-collecting-carriages

How the Basque language has survived by Nina Porzucki   Spoken in a region that spans northern Spain and across the border into southern France, it is not part of the Indo-European language family.  It’s not related to Spanish or French or German or Greek or any known language. The origins of the language are a bit of mystery.  “The Basque language has words coming from all languages that have been in Europe since prehistory from Latin and Celtic languages, and probably from languages before these Celtic languages.  Who knows what was spoken in Europe at the time.”  Link to The Land of the Basques, a 41:03 documentary featuring Orson Welles as narrator with Basque subtitles at https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-05-16/how-has-basque-language-survived

Pasta Shapes Dictionary  Campanelle (“Bells”)  Cavatappi (“Corkscrew”)  Ditalini (“Little Thimbles”)  Farfalle ("Bow Ties" or "Butterflies")  Fusilli  (“Twisted Spaghetti”)  Gemelli  (“Twins”)  Gigli  (“Lilies”)  Linguine  (“Little Tongues”)  Manicotti  (“Small Muffs”)  Orecchiette  (“Little Ears”)  Orzo  (“Barley”)   Penne  (“Quills” or “Feathers”)  Radiatori  (“Radiators”)  Rocchetti  (“Spool”)  Rotelle  (“Little Wheels”)  Rotini  (“Spirals” or “Twists”)  Spaghetti  (“A length of cord”)   Vermicelli  (“Little Worms”)  Ziti  (“Bridegrooms”)  Link to recipes and pasta cooking tips at https://pastafits.org/pasta-dictionary/  Use leftover pasta in salads, soups, stews, vegetables or eggs.

A universal language is one that can be communicated without words--for instance:  music, mathematics, hand signals, emoji, gestures.

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

obverse  noun:  OB-vuhrs  The side of a coin, medal, etc. that has the main design.  The front or the principal side of anything.  A counterpart to something.  adjective:  ob-VUHRS  Facing the observer.  Serving  as a counterpart to something.  From Latin obvertere (to turn toward), from ob- (toward) + vertere (to turn).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root wer- (to turn or bend), which is also the source of words such as wring, weird, writhe, worth, revert, and universe.  Earliest documented use:  1656.  The front of a coin is called the obverse, the other side is the reverse.  The obverse is also termed as the head because the front typically portrays the head of someone famous.  The reverse side is known as the tail even though it doesn’t show the tail of that famous person.

June 28, 2018  Mayflies are back in Cleveland, sticking to the sides of cars, buildings, walls, (sometimes) people--basically whatever they can land on.  Don't worry or panic if one lands on you.  Mayflies don't bite and they're signs that lakes, rivers and streams are healthy.  The mass of mayflies is so large this year it's showing up on weather radar.  According to MayflyNews.net, which tracks appearances of mayflies, the insects started showing up around June 18 in Port Clinton.  Midges are classified as flies and have one set of wings.  They're also known as "muffleheads."  They appear a few weeks earlier than mayflies.  Though they emerge from water, number of midges doesn't indicate water quality.  Midges are tolerant of pollution.   Mayflies are more closely related to dragonflies.  There are thousands of species of mayflies, classified into a group with the name ephemeroptera.  This comes from the word "ephemeral," meaning lasting for a very short time.  The name mayfly actually doesn't describe the insect at all, because mayflies aren't bugs and they typically appear in Cleveland in June.  Mayflies have longer bodies than midges and two pairs of long, gossamery wings. Neither of them bite.  Emily Bamforth  https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/06/mayflies_are_back_in_full_forc.html

June 28, 2018  Archaeologist Eckart Frahm didn't have much time to determine where the 4,000-year-old clay tablets had come from.  Homeland Security officials had given him just 2 1/2 days in a dimly lit New York warehouse to pore over the cuneiform inscriptions etched into the fragile, ancient pieces and report back.  "They were not in great shape.  They had infestations of salt in them, so it's not that I could say I had been able to read everything," says the Yale University professor.  "My main goal was to provide a general assessment from when and where did these tablets actually originate."  Frahm determined the tablets at the center of a federal case against the Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain were from a place few had ever heard of—an ancient Sumerian city called Irisagrig.  "You could argue that this is a lost city because this place has never been properly excavated and you don't even know exactly where it is," Frahm tells NPR.  But looters know.  The roughly 250 tablets Frahm examined in 2016 were among 5,500 objects, including ancient cylinder seals and clay seal impressions known as bullae, smuggled into the U.S. starting in 2010.  Shipped from the United Arab Emirates and Israel without declaring their true Iraqi origin, some of them were marked "ceramic tiles" or "clay tiles (sample)."  They'd been purchased by Hobby Lobby for $1.6 million.  In a settlement last year with the Justice Department, Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit the objects and paid a $3 million fine.  In May, about 3,800 objects were handed back to the Iraqi government at a ceremony at its Washington, D.C., embassy, and will be returned to Iraq later this year.  Jane Arraf  Read more and see pictures at https://www.npr.org/2018/06/28/623537440/hobby-lobbys-illegal-antiquities-shed-light-on-a-lost-looted-ancient-city-in-ira

Speculative-fiction writer Harlan Ellison, who penned short stories, novellas and criticism, contributed to TV series including “The Outer Limits,” “Star Trek” and “Babylon 5” and won a notable copyright infringement suit against ABC and Paramount and a settlement in a similar suit over “The Terminator,” died June 28, 2018 at the age of 84.  The prolific but cantankerous author famously penned the “Star Trek” episode “City on the Edge of Forever,” in which Kirk and Spock must go back in time to Depression-era America to put Earth history back on its rightful course, a goal that for Kirk means sacrificing the woman he loves (played by Joan Collins).  The final script was rewritten by “Star Trek” staffers to avoid the anti-war lesson Ellison had intended to impart about the ongoing Vietnam War, leaving Ellison unhappy.  His 1995 book “The City on the Edge of Forever:  The Original Teleplay That Became the Classic Star Trek Episode” contained two drafts by Ellison.  The author was still steaming over his experience more than four decades after the episode originally aired:  In 2009 Ellison sued CBS Paramount Television seeking revenue from merchandising and other sources from the episode; a settlement was reached six months later.  In a separate case, Ellison won $337,000 (later reduced a bit in a settlement) from ABC and Paramount Studios in 1980 for copyright infringement on a short story the author had penned with Ben Bova, “Brillo.”  Ellison and Bova had been asked to develop it at ABC, but the option there had lapsed; Ellison then showed it to Par execs, who said they weren’t interested.  ABC aired a Par-produced telepic called “Future Cop” in May 1976 and later a brief series of the same name.  The premise, about the first android policeman, was identical to that in “Brillo.”  In the litigious writer’s third victory against Hollywood, Ellison sued James Cameron and others behind 1984’s “The Terminator,” claiming that the film drew from material in two episodes of the original “The Outer Limits” series, “Soldier” and “Demon With a Glass Hand,” that he had penned and had aired in 1964.  Production company Hemdale and distributor Orion Pictures settled out of court and were required under the terms of the settlement to acknowledge Ellison’s work in the film’s end credits.  Carmel Dagan  https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/harlan-ellison-dead-dies-star-trek-1202861048/

See the winners of National Geographic's Travel Photographer of the Year contest for 2018  https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2018/06/28/national-geographic-travel-photographer-year/742906002/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1911  June 29, 2018  Word of the Day  abiogenesis  noun  The origination of living organisms from lifeless matter; such genesis as does not involve the action of living parents; spontaneous generation.  English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who coined the words biogenesis and abiogenesis, died on this day in 1895.  Wiktionary