Oneself vs. one’s self  The two-word phrase one’s self is only justifiable when self is used in a spiritual, philosophical, or psychological sense.  In all other cases, one’s self can be replaced with the pronoun oneself.  https://grammarist.com/spelling/oneself-ones-self/

Origin of To Thine Own Self Be True  This phrase is one of the countless famous quotes coined by William Shakespeare.  In Act 1, Scene III of the famous play, Hamlet, Polonius says:  “This above all:  to thine own self be true  And it must follow, as the night the day  Thou canst not then be false to any man/Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!”  Today, these words of Polonius are pearls of wisdom by Shakespeare on living a good and balanced life.  https://literarydevices.net/to-thine-own-self-be-true/

ownself  (Singlish, emphatic) own self   2016 quote, John Chan, Singlish Notebook:  Did you paint this your ownself?  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ownself

Located on the edge of the eastern plains of New Mexico, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, is Las Vegas, New Mexico.  Las Vegas was established by a Mexican land grant in 1835.  Originally called Nuestra Senora de los Dolores de Las Vegas Grandes (our Lady of Sorrows of the Great Meadows) by settlers whose roots in the area went back to the early 1600’s, in the beginning, the settlement doubled as a fort, designed to be battened down for attacks by the Apache Indians.  One-story adobe houses circled a large, central plaza where stock could be driven to safety.  One of the colonists’ first large construction projects was the Acequia Madre (Mother Ditch), which was used to channel water from the Gallinas River.  After more than 150 years, this ancient Mother Ditch still winds behind the buildings on the Plaza and waters the gardens of the western portion of the town.  In 1846, after the United States declared war on Mexico, General Stephen W. Kearney led his Army of the West to Las Vegas to declare New Mexico a U.S. possession.  When he arrived, he found a thriving community of 1,500 Spanish settlers.  Today, this historic town of some 15,000 souls has over 900 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places.   https://www.legendsofamerica.com/nm-lasvegas/  See also http://www.lasvegasnm.gov/   On a December 19, 2018 talk show, Rachel Brosnahan ("The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," "House of Cards") called Las Vegas, New Mexico, the "city that always sleeps."  

Is the past tense of the verb benefit benefited or benefitted?  The quick answer is that both of them are acceptable.  Is the ending in a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern?  Yes, F-I-T are the last three letters.  Is the verb one syllable?  No, benefit is three syllables.  So now, you would only double the last consonant if it’s stressed.  Is it stressed?  That answer is not so cut-and-dried.  Benefit sounds a little different in British and American English.  Some say that the final F-I-T is unstresssed in American English.  By that criterion, you can write the past tense of benefit as benefited.  In the United States, this is the most common way to spell it.  Shundalyn  Allen  https://www.grammarly.com/blog/benefited-or-benefitted/

The Sea of Azov is unique for its shallow depth.  The sea, located in Eastern Europe, covers an area of 15058 square miles and borders Ukraine, Russia, and the Crimean Peninsula.  The sea is a northern extension of the Black Sea and is linked by the Kerch Strait.  The sea has a depth of between 30 feet and 46 feet with a volume of 112 square miles.  The floor of the sea is relatively smooth and flat owing to deposits of silt, sand, and shells from the inflow of rivers.  https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-is-the-shallowest-sea-in-the-world.html

Climate change, vanishing ice and erratic rain patterns are causing the wetlands in two Andean communities to shrink—and that's a big problem for the communities of Miraflores and Canchayllo.  The villagers depend on the puna, a set of alpine ecosystems above 13,000 feet that include grasslands and wetlands to graze sheep, cows, alpacas, llamas and vicuñas—animals that provide them with their livelihoods.  Instead of looking for modern solutions to improve access to water, the villagers turned to an old one:  centuries-old hydraulic systems that dot the Nor Yauyos Cochas Landscape Reserve, a state-protected natural area seven hours east of Lima.  These ancient systems have been used to help irrigate the reserve's pastures and provide nutrient-rich soil for hundreds of years.  So in 2013, the communities teamed up with scientists from U.S. nonprofit The Mountain Institute (TMI) and reserve authorities to devise plans to revive their historic waterways, including canals, lakes and reservoirs.  These efforts have earned the project international recognition, including an award in the Water Impact category in the Solution Search: Farming for Biodiversity contest in December 2017, organized by the International Climate Initiative.  And this spring it won the St Andrews Prize for the Environment, sponsored by the University of St Andrews in Scotland and ConocoPhillips.  Since the 1970s, Peru has lost more than 40 percent of its ice surfaces, a critical water source for the capital city of Lima and the rest of the semi-arid coast. This loss caused the wetlands to shrink, leading herders to overgraze what pastures were left.  The traditional practices that created and maintained the wetlands were disappearing, says Fernando Quiroz, the biologist in charge of the Nor Yauyos Cochas Landscape Reserve.  "People have been here since pre-Incan times and they have always rotated grazing areas and organized traditional festivities to clean up ditches."  If the ditches are not cleaned regularly, they tend to clog.  When these systems functioned they created bofedales, prairies engineered by ancient Peruvians to retain meltwater and rainfall.  In the Miraflores community, a pre-Hispanic reservoir lay empty and abandoned.  Restoring these hydraulic systems took two years—from 2013 to 2015—and the participation of the community, the government and scientists from La Molina National Agrarian University.  Funding and support came from local authorities, The Mountain Institute, the United Nations Development Programme and the German Ministry for the Environment through the U.N.'s Environment Programme.  In some cases, restoration meant cleaning and rehabilitating abandoned wells and canals so they would collect rainfall.  In others, the solution was a hybrid:  installing PVC pipes alongside the ancient stone system that would carry rainwater to pasture lands.  Once the hydraulic system was restored in the village of Canchayllo and water was released in an area of 800 hectares, in 2016, the flow found its way through old veins naturally carved in the soil where water had once streamed, says anthropologist Jorge Recharte, director of TMI's Andes program.  Elda L. Cantú  Read more and see pictures at https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/01/02/600833370/climate-change-is-bad-for-perus-pastures-but-theres-a-1-200-year-old-solution

THOUGHTS FOR TODAY  Our Mutual Friend (1864-1865)  Money and goods are certainly the best of references.  Bk. I, Ch. 4  'No one is useless in this world,' retorted the Secretary, 'who lightens the burden of it for any one else.'  Bk. III, Ch. 9 - Charles Dickens born February 7, 1812  https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2038  February 7, 2019