Friday, March 15, 2019


The old Hebron United Methodist Church, built in 1903, sits at the corner of Main and 5th streets in Hebron, Ohio.  A congregation hasn’t used the church for years.  The marquee on the front lawn reads:  “The Chouse.  A private residence.”  Valerie Mockus and her husband, Gary, moved back to Ohio from Florida buying the church at auction for $80,0000 in 2017.  The congregation had taken amazing care of the building, Valerie said, and it had only a couple of minor issues.  The Mockuses enlisted the help of Project Architecture in Hebron and Build Pro 360 in Columbus for the renovation.  “It was challenging to say the least,” said Jeff Cramblitt, vice president of Build Pro 360.  “The whole intention was to keep it as original as possible.”  Converting a church into a livable space presented a number of challenges.  For one, there was no kitchen.  Another issue was reworking the plumbing because there wasn’t a full bathroom in the entire building.  Sheridan Hendrix  See pictures at https://www.limaohio.com/wire/state-wire/344338/old-house-of-worship-becomes-new-home-for-ohio-couple

There are 62 counties in the state of New York.  The original twelve counties were created immediately after the British takeover of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, although two of these counties have since been abolished.  The most recent county formation in New York was in 1914, when Bronx County was created from the portions of New York City that had been annexed from Westchester County in the late 19th century and added to New York County.   Five of New York's counties are each coextensive with New York City's five boroughs and do not have county governments.  They are New York County (Manhattan), Kings County (Brooklyn), Bronx County (The Bronx), Richmond County (Staten Island), and Queens County (Queens).  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_New_York_(state)

New York's Bronx County is home to Poe Cottage where Author Edgar Allan Poe spent the last years of his life, home to the New York Yankees, maritime heritage as well as arts and entertainment such as off-off-Broadway shows.  Several colleges and universities are located in the Bronx. Fordham University, 3 CUNYs:  Hostos Community College, Bronx Community College and Herbert H. Lehman College, The College of Mount Saint Vincent, Manhattan College, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and two colleges based in Westchester County have Bronx campuses:  College of New Rochelle and Mercy College.  The State University of New York Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (Throggs Neck)—at the far southeastern tip of the Bronx—is the national leader in maritime education and houses the Maritime Industry Museum.  The Bronx also includes several small islands in the East River and Long Island Sound, such as City Island and Hart Island. Rikers Island in the East River, home to the large jail complex for the entire city, is also part of the Bronx.  https://www.ny.gov/counties/bronx

Is it ukulele or ukelele?  Both spellings have been used ever since the uke was introduced to the USA in the early 1900s.  Most of the vintage song books and song sheets I've collected from the 1920s and 30s spell it "ukelele."  Aaron Copland named his jazz piece "Ukelele Serenade" (which, by the way, has no ukes in it!).  The most common spelling today is ukulele.  The proper pronunciation is always a hot topic on the forums.  The Hawaiian pronunciation is "ook-oo-leh-le."  Purists, Hawaiians and aficionados prefer that.  Like many other words absorbed into English like vanilla, for example--it usually gets pronounced by the rules of English, not its native tongue.  Most people in North America call it a "you-koo-lay-lee" or even "you-kuh-lay-lee."  http://www.ianchadwick.com/ukuleles/pronounce.htm

NECESSORIES  1.  Necessary accessories.  2.  Things that one typically carries on one's person every day in order to maintain one's current standard of living.  https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Necessories

Restaurants are so loud because architects don’t design them to be quiet.  Much of this shift in design boils down to changing conceptions of what makes a space seem upscale or luxurious, as well as evolving trends in food service.  Right now, high-end surfaces connote luxury, such as the slate and wood of restaurants.  According to Architectural Digestmid-century modern and minimalism are both here to stay.  That means sparse, modern decor; high, exposed ceilings; and almost no soft goods, such as curtains, upholstery, or carpets.  These design features are a feast for the eyes, but a nightmare for the ears.  No soft goods and tall ceilings mean nothing is absorbing sound energy, and a room full of hard surfaces serves as a big sonic mirror, reflecting sound around the room.  The result is a loud space that renders speech unintelligible.  Another feature of today’s restaurants that greatly increases the loudness inside are open kitchens—where the making of the food is on full display.  Bars and restaurants continued to merge through the 1990s and 2000s, and that’s a big reason restaurants, on the whole, got noticeably louder.  Bars are raucous, and they present a different dining atmosphere from typical sit-down restaurants.  As the bar and dining area began to occupy the same space, their clientele and atmospheres combined, and the result was a lot louder than either one alone.   Kate Wagner  https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/how-restaurants-got-so-loud/576715/

deleted musical scene from the movie Vice starring Christian Bale and Steve Carell

Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr. (1920–1986) was an American science fiction writer best known for the novel Dune and its five sequels.  Though he became famous for his long novels, he was also a newspaper journalist, photographer, short story writerbook reviewer, ecological consultant and lecturer.  The Dune saga, set in the distant future and taking place over millennia, deals with complex themes such as human survival and evolution, ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics, and powerDune is the best-selling science fiction novel of all time and the series is widely considered to be among the classics of the genre.  Herbert began researching Dune in 1959.  He was able to devote himself wholeheartedly to his writing career because his wife returned to work full-time as an advertising writer for department stores, becoming the breadwinner during the 1960s.  He later told Willis E. McNelly that the novel originated when he was supposed to do a magazine article on sand dunes in the Oregon Dunes near Florence, Oregon.  He became too involved and ended up with far more raw material than needed for an article.  The article was never written, but instead planted the seed that led to Dune.  Dune took six years of research and writing to complete and it was much longer than commercial science fiction of the time was supposed to be.  Analog (the renamed Astounding, still edited by John W. Campbell) published it in two parts comprising eight installments, "Dune World" from December 1963 and "Prophet of Dune" in 1965.  It was then rejected by nearly twenty book publishers.   Beginning in 2012, Herbert's estate and WordFire Press have released four previously unpublished novels in e-book and paperback formats:  High-Opp (2012), Angels' Fall (2013), A Game of Authors (2013), and A Thorn in the Bush (2014).  In recent years, Frank Herbert's son Brian Herbert and author Kevin J. Anderson have added to the Dune franchise, using notes left behind by Frank Herbert and discovered over a decade after his death.  Brian Herbert and Anderson have written two prequel trilogies (Prelude to Dune and Legends of Dune) exploring the history of the Dune universe before the events within Dune, as well as two post-Chapterhouse Dune novels that complete the original series (Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune) based on Frank Herbert's own Dune 7 outline.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert#cite_note-PW_Dune_1997-45  The Muser read the book first and then was disappointed to find one character in the film featured with much more time and importance than in the book.

The Ides of March is a day on the Roman calendar that corresponds to 15 March.  It was marked by several religious observances and was notable for the Romans as a deadline for settling debts.  In 44 BC, it became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar which made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history.  The Romans did not number days of a month from the first to the last day.  Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month:  the Nones (5th or 7th, depending on the length of the month), the Ides (13th or 15th), and the Kalends (1st of the following month).  The Ides occurred near the midpoint, on the 13th for most months, but on the 15th for March, May, July, and October.  The Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the lunar origin of the Roman calendar.  See Julius Caesar, a play by William Shakespeare and The Ides of March, a novel by Thornton Wilder.  Read more and see graphics at

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2063  March 15, 2019

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