Wednesday, August 1, 2018


On English packs of cards the design and wording on the ace of spades will tell you the maker’s name and, until 1860, the amount of tax paid.  Taxation on playing cards was a form of protectionism and a means of raising revenues for the Exchequer, but ultimately the amount received from playing card duty was less than the cost of administering the tax.  In his budget speech on 4th April 1960 the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the decision to abolish the excise duty on playing cards in the UK.  After this time the ace of spades remained a maker’s identification device with a more elaborate design than the other three aces, but no longer represented any tax or duty paid to the treasury.  http://www.wopc.co.uk/cards/ace-of-spades/anon-aces  See also https://i-p-c-s.org/faq/ace-of-spades.php and http://forums.ellusionist.com/showthread.php?77584-Importance-of-the-Ace-Of-Spades-(An-Essay)

What Adults Can Learn From Dutch Children’s Books bMichael Erard   It is an often overlooked fact that one of the easiest ways to learn about a foreign culture is through the books it produces for its children.  Shortly after my family moved to the Netherlands last summer, we discovered “zoekboeks” (pronounced “zhook-book”) the genre of kids’ picture books that invite you to search (“zoek”) for characters, objects or events obscured by visual busyness.  English-language books for kids are hard to come by here, and we didn’t speak or read Dutch yet, so the wordless zoekboek was a welcome find.  And then the zoekboek really opened my eyes.  If you know this genre only from its English-language offshoots like “Where’s Waldo,” you’ve been missing out.  Imagine paintings by Pieter Bruegel or Hieronymus Bosch, swarming with visual detail, except they’re not about peasants or gardens of earthly delights but recognizably contemporary life.  The zoekboek is closely related to a German genre, the Wimmelbuch, or “teeming book.”  A “wimmelbook”—in this era of fluid borders and cultures, the word is often rendered as a mash-up of German and English—is “a book of plenitude,” writes Cornelia Rémi, a German professor who is the only scholar known to consider the genre in depth.  She argues that the zoekboek and the wimmelbook differ from each other:  The zoekboek gives the reader explicit search tasks (where’s Waldo?) and often uses words, while the wordless wimmelbooks “allow for manifold reading options and encourage a highly active response from children and adults, which rightfully might be called a form of playing.”  When I now read traditional storybooks (which we also do at home), they seem rigid and prescribed in comparison.  The activity in wimmelbooks also has a healthy, comfortable publicness, almost as if people on the pages realize the walls of their houses are transparent—and they don’t mind.  Even though we see into houses in some wimmelbooks (because exterior walls have been magically dissolved), we don’t see into people’s heads; by featuring the exteriority of life in its community dimension, the wimmelbooks leave the people private.  In the pages of wimmelbooks, everyone lives as if they’ve never left, nor for that matter are they recently arrived.  Everyone is living together in their teeming everyday, and that may be a fine model for living together.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/opinion/sunday/dutch-childrens-books.html  Michael Erard is writer in residence at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. 

One of the strangest plants of the desert, the night blooming cereus, is a member of the cactus family that resembles nothing more than a dead bush most of the year.  It is rarely seen in the wild because of its inconspicuousness.  But for one midsummer's night each year, its exqusitely scented flower opens as night falls, then closes forever with the first rays of the morning sun.  Range:  Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts of southern Arizona, east to western Texas and south to northern Mexico.  Habitat:  Desert flats and washes between 3000 and 5000 feet, often in the shade of desert shrubs like creosote.  Flowers:  These very fragrant trumpet-shaped flowers, which bloom for only one night in June or July, are up to 4 inches wide and as much as 8 in.  The night blooming cereus has a tuberous, turnip-like root usually weighing 5 to 15 pounds (but in some specimens weighing over 100 pounds), which Native Americans used as a food source.  A close Baja relation (Peniocereus. johnstonii), called Saramatraca, Pitayita, or Matraca is locally popular for its edible tuber, which is said to account for the plant's scarcity there.  Night-blooming cereus is popular in rock gardens and can be grown from stem cuttings.  After the cut end is is allowed to heal for several weeks, it is planted in dry sand.  Like all cactus, night-blooming cereus may be protected in certain desert areas, and permits may be required to collect it.  See pictures at https://www.desertusa.com/cactus/night-blooming-cereus.html  and Cereus Blooms at Night (1996), a first novel published by film-maker, artist, and writer Shani Mootoo

Shani Mootoo worked as a visual artist and video maker before becoming a published writer.  After writing four novels, a book of poetry and of short stories, she has returned to painting and to photographyas she continues to write.  Mootoo earned a BFA from the University of Western Ontario, and an MA in English from the University of Guelph.  She currently holds the position of Associated Graduate Faculty at the University of Guelph in support of the Creative Writing program in the School of English and Theatre Studies.   Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad.  She lives in Canada.  https://www.shanimootoo.com/

“War is peace.  Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.”  “The best books . . .  are those that tell you what you know already.”  “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”  “It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”  1984, novel by George Orwell, pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950)

Famous Trials by Professor Douglas O. Linder   "In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy.  The press was to serve the governed, not the governors."  New York Times v. United States ["Pentagon Papers" Case]

THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT  Decided June 30, 1971  CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT  403 U.S. 713

LeBron James opens new public school in Akron:  'One of the greatest moments' of his life by Jeff Zillgitt   LeBron James and his charity, "The LeBron James Family Foundation,” partnered with Akron Public Schools to open the I PROMISE school for at-risk youths.  The school is a partnership between Akron and the LeBron James Family Foundation, and the idea originated a few years ago when James and his foundation’s leaders planned the next step in their effort to help students.  The name of schools stems from the foundations road map for students who promise to go to school, do their homework, listen to teachers, ask questions and find answers, be respectful of others and live a healthy life.  On July 29, 2018, James tweeted, “The jitters before the first day of school are real right now!!!  Tomorrow is going to be one of the greatest moments (if not the greatest) of my life when we open the #IPROMISE School.  This skinny kid from Akron who missed 83 days of school in the 4th grade had big dreams.”  In a way, the I Promise School is modeled after James’ childhood only more organized and professional.  James, who attended Akron Public Schools for eight years, and his mom, Gloria James, had help from the community--people who looked after them and made sure they got what they needed.  The classrooms will hold 20 students for every teacher, and 12 teachers have been hired for the 2018-19 school year.  There are 43 academic staffers, including a principal, assistant principal, four intervention specialists, tutor, English as a second language teacher, music instructor and a gym teacher.  IPS is a certified STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) school.  The school day is long--9 a.m.-5 p.m., and so is the school year, lasting July 30-May 17--and there will be a seven-week summer school.  Students will be served breakfast, lunch and a snack daily.  Read more and see pictures at https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2018/07/30/lebron-james-promise-school-akron-ohio/862159002/

Happy Anniversaries:  102nd--August 1, Haleakala National Park, Hawaii (detached from Hawaii National Park 1960) and Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii (split into Haleakala National Park and Hawaii National Park 1960; latter redesignated Hawaii Volcanoes National Park 1961)  142nd--August 2, Washington Monument  https://www.nps.gov/subjects/npscelebrates/park-anniversaries.htm

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1927  August 1, 2018  Thought for Today  Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. - Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1 Aug 1819-1891)  Word of the Day  august  adjective   Awe-inspiringmajesticnoblevenerable.  Of noble birth.  Wiktionary

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