Explore the story of the Ohio River and step aboard the W.P. Snyder Jr., the nation’s last intact steam-powered, stern-wheeled towboat.  The Ohio River Museum at 601 Front Street in  Marietta, Ohio consists of three exhibit buildings, the first chronicling the origins and natural history of the Ohio River.  The history of the steamboat on the Ohio River system is featured in the second building, along with a video presentation on river steamboats.  The last building features displays about boat building, mussels in the Ohio River system and tools and equipment from the steamboat era.  Outside the museum, on the Muskingum River, you can take an escorted tour of the W.P. Snyder Jr.  After your museum visit, cruise the Ohio River on the Valley Gem, a working sternwheeler docked next door to the Ohio River Museum.  Allow 1+ hours for visit.  https://www.ohiohistory.org/visit/museum-and-site-locator/ohio-river-museum  See a glossary of steamboat terms including carlin, cod-wad, gold-braid trade, and jackstaff at http://www.steamboats.org/history-education/glossary/

September 1, 2017  To commemorate the second anniversary of the death of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned while attempting to reach Greece in 2015, the author Khaled Hosseini, a UNHCR goodwill ambassador, has written Sea Prayer.  This imagined letter is written in the form of a monologue, delivered by a Syrian father to the son lying asleep in his lap, on the eve of their sea crossing to Europe.  Hosseini is the author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns and And the Mountains Echoed.  Sea Prayer is the first narrative animated virtual reality film created using Tilt Brush, a tool for painting in a 3D space with VR.  Using this tool, the Guardian’s in-house VR team, in collaboration with the acclaimed VR artist Liz Edwards, has brought Hosseini’s sensitive imagining of this letter to life.  Narrated by the Bafta-winning actor Adeel Akhtar, who takes the role of the father, Sea Prayer reflects on the city of Homs, a devastated war zone where he grew up and which he is being forced to leave behind with his son.  Hosseini’s piece also meditates on the dangerous sea crossing that lies ahead.  Sea Prayer is accompanied by a score specially composed by Sahba Aminikia, an Iranian-American contemporary classical music composer, and performed by the US-based string musicians Kronos Quartet and the musical saw player David Coulter.  Link to 7:05 video at  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/01/sea-prayer-a-360-story-inspired-by-refugee-alan-kurdi-khaled-hosseini

“Family is at the core of all my books,” Kahled Hosseini says.  “I’m from ­Afghanistan, where family is how you understand yourself and your place in society.  It’s integral to who you are and how you function.  Sea Prayer was a family story from the very start, because when these boats capsize, largely the people on board are families who have been forced into agonising choices.”  And though the number of arrivals of refugees by sea has dropped from more than one million in 2016 to less than 50,000 so far in 2018, this summer, dead children were still being picked up by coastguards on a regular basis.  Sea Prayer gives a human face to the stories behind the numbers, and begs people to think again when they look the other way or deride refugees as opportunists--or worse.  “The way we are wired as human beings means that we can understand something intellectually, but we are truly changed when we feel something emotionally that we can connect to,” thinks Hosseini.  “That’s what stories can do, they are the best teachers of empathy.  It’s how we understand each other.”  That open ending arrives less than ten minutes after the first page.  Given it is so short on text but so powerful in message, a lot of the potency also comes from Dan Williams’s remarkable illustrations.  Hosseini didn’t work directly with the British artist, but trusted his evocative body of previous work.  “Boy was that a good decision,” he laughs.  “I think Dan has done an unbelievable job; his work is so gorgeous and it perfectly captures the plight of the characters in this story.  It really elevates Sea Prayer to an entirely different emotional level; I don’t even have to read the words to feel moved by this book.”  And talking of words, Hosseini says there’s been a slight managing of expectations required for his huge fan base who have eagerly devoured information about a new Hosseini story.  He had to take to social media to explain that his latest release wasn’t a full novel--but a short, illustrated book.  Ben East  https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/khaled-hosseini-on-the-inspiration-behind-his-new-book-sea-prayer-1.765725   Khaled Hosseini was born in Afghanistan, moved to Paris, and became a US citizen following the Russian invasion of his native country in 1980.  https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2013/0329/10-influential-authors-who-came-to-the-US-as-immigrants/Khaled-Hosseini  See also Talk to Al Jazeera--Khaled Hosseini:  'Why I write about pain' at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=useqwpkN18E  25:00 and Khaled Hosseini Says Refugees Are Essential to America at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL6okJjXlOw  5:33

Australian researchers say they have developed a new tool that could help students cramming for exams--a font that helps the reader remember information.  Melbourne-based RMIT University’s behavioural business lab and design school teamed up to create “Sans Forgetica”, which they say uses psychological and design theories to aid memory retention.  About 400 university students have been involved in a study that found a small increase in the amount participants remembered--57% of text written in Sans Forgetica compared with 50% in a plain Arial.  Typography lecturer Stephen Banham said the font had an unusual seven-degree back slant to the left and gaps in each letter.  The font was designed with year 12 students cramming for exams in mind but could also be used to help people studying foreign languages and elderly people grappling with memory loss.  Banham, who has created about 20 fonts, said the typeface would be best used for short texts.  The font took about six months to develop and there were three different versions tested.  Lisa Martin  Click link at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/oct/04/font-of-all-knowledge-researchers-develop-typeface-they-say-can-boost-memory to see this article in Sans Forgetica. 

Will Vinton, an Oscar-winning animator who invented Claymation, a style of stop-motion animation, died October 4, 2018 at the age of 70.  He won an Oscar in 1975 for the animated short film “Closed Mondays” then founded Vinton Studios in Portland.  He won three Emmys as a producer.  Vinton Studios was best known for the 1986 California Raisins ad campaign featuring Claymation raisins dancing to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”  Vinton Studios at its peak in the late 1990s employed 400 people with annual revenue of $28 million.  Vinton asked Nike founder Phil Knight for financial help.  Knight purchased a stake in the company for $5 million in 1998.  The company’s financial woes continued, and Knight eventually seized control.  In 2003, the studio laid off Vinton without severance.  https://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/6576278-151/featured-obituary-animator-of-the-california-raisins

October 5, 2018  The latest treasure to emerge from the ruins of Pompeii is what's been dubbed an 'enchanted garden', a courtyard lined with images of mythical beasts.  The courtyard, which stands in a house in one of the less explored areas of the ancient city, is believed to be a lararium--a shrine to the Lares, Roman gods who were believed to protect the home and family.  While such shrines were a common feature of Roman houses, this lararium, covered in vividly coloured frescoes, is one of the finest examples discovered in Pompeii to date, according to archaeologists.  They believe that the walls once enclosed flowerbeds, where real flowers would have mingled with the plants, peacocks and other birds lining the panels.  Jessica Phelan  See pictures at https://www.thelocal.it/20181005/in-photos-enchanted-garden-discovered-pompeii

October 6, 2018  Opera singer Montserrat Caballé, whose duet with Freddie Mercury became the signature song of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, has died aged 85.  Her career spanned 50 years.  She had stints with the Basel Opera and Bremen Opera before her international breakthrough in 1965 in Lucrezia Borgia at Carnegie Hall in New York.  She went on to perform with the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera and Vienna State Opera, appearing opposite the likes of Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo.  The song Barcelona was first released in 1987 and later became an anthem for the city's 1992 Olympics, the year after Mercury died.  Caballé sang at the opening ceremony with Domingo and José Carreras.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45769808

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1965  October 8, 2018  COLUMBUS DAY  Celebration of Columbus's voyage in the early United States is recorded from as early as 1792, when the Tammany Society in New York City (for whom it became an annual tradition) and also the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston celebrated the 300th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the New World.  President Benjamin Harrison called upon the people of the United States to celebrate Columbus's landing in the New World on the 400th anniversary of the event.  Many Italian-Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage, and the first such celebration was held in New York City on October 12, 1866.  The day was first enshrined as a legal holiday in the United States through the lobbying of Angelo Noce, a first generation Italian, in Denver.  The first statewide holiday was proclaimed by Colorado governor Jesse F. McDonald in 1905, and it was made a statutory holiday in 1907.  In April 1934, as a result of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and New York City Italian leader Generoso Pope, Congress and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed October 12 a federal holiday under the name Columbus Day.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day  NOTE that Columbus never set foot on North America.