Monday, April 1, 2019


January 24, 2019  As Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted transition into their new offices, more than $100,000 is being spent to update signs on the Ohio border that reflect a new motto and the administration change.  The Ohio Department of Transportation oversees 36 road signs on the state’s borders that feature the names of the governor and lieutenant governor.  In 2015, TourismOhio launched the “Ohio. find it here” rebranding campaign, which required an update to the border signs.  Four signs were upgraded in 2016 with the new slogan and names of the then-governor and lieutenant governor, John Kasich and Mary Taylor.  The remaining 32 signs were scheduled to be replaced after an administration change to avoid doing it twice, according to ODOT spokesman Matt Bruning.  “We opted to do it all at once to avoid having to change out names on new signs,” Bruning stated in an email.  The new signs will cost more than $100,000; TourismOhio will pay more than half of the cost, with ODOT covering the remainder, Bruning said.  The signs, which replaced the “Welcome to Ohio” signage, are navy blue and feature an orange outline of the state.  The phrase “find it here” is printed in lowercase above the executive officers’ names.  Opinions on the campaign vary; one Twitter user wrote, “It’s fantastically awful.”  Multiple users questioned whether it was designed by a child, and many thought it was a joke.  The branding “reinforces, on an emotional level, the joy, happiness, excitement and shared connections people experience in Ohio,” according to TourismOhio’s website.  However, the campaign’s intention was lost to some.  “Are we luring people from around the country to Ohio by swiping their stuff and hiding it somewhere between Conneaut and Cincinnati so they can Find it Here?  Is Ohio the end of a scavenger hunt?” one person tweeted.  Maggie Prosser  https://www.limaohio.com/news/338407/about-those-100000-new-signs-at-ohios-borders  "Find it Here" is a good slogan for the Library of Congress.  Thank you, Muse reader!  A good slogan for any library.

Fascinating Facts about the Library of Congress  The Library was founded in 1800, making it the oldest federal cultural institution in the nation.  On August 24, 1814, British troops burned the Capitol building (where the Library was housed) and destroyed the Library's core collection of 3,000 volumes.  On January 30, 1815, Congress approved the purchase of Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of 6,487 books for $23,950.  The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world with more than 168 million items.  The Library receives some 15,000 items each working day and adds approximately 12,000 items to the collections daily.  The majority of the collections are received through the Copyright registration process, as the Library is home to the U.S. Copyright Office.  Materials are also acquired through gift, purchase, other government agencies (state, local and federal), Cataloging in Publication (a pre-publication arrangement with publishers) and exchange with libraries in the United States and abroad.  Items not selected for the collections or other internal purposes are used in the Library’s national and international exchange programs.  Approximately half of the Library’s book and serial collections are in languages other than English.  The collections contain materials in some 470 languages.  The Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division holds 600,000 volumes in the non-Roman script languages of the region.  The Library's Asian Division collection holds more than 3 million items, the largest assemblage of Chinese, Japanese and Korean materials outside of Asia, and one of the largest Tibetan collections in the world.  The Library holds the largest collection of Russian-language materials in the United States and the largest outside of Russia (more than 750,000 items).  The Library’s Iberian, Latin American and Caribbean collections, comprising more than 10 million items (books, journals, newspapers, maps, manuscripts, photographs, posters, recordings, sheet music and other materials) are the largest and most complete in the world.  The Law Library of Congress is the world's largest law library, with more than 2.9 million volumes, including one of the world's best rare law book collections and the most complete collection of foreign legal gazettes in the United States.  The Law Library contains United States congressional publications dating back to the nation's founding.  The Library holds the largest rare-book collection in North America (more than 700,000 volumes), including the largest collection of 15th-century books in the Western Hemisphere.  The collection also includes the first book printed in what is now the United States, “The Bay Psalm Book” (1640).  The Library possesses approximately 100 extremely rare children's books, including “The Children's New Play-Thing” (Philadelphia, 1763) and “The Children's Bible” (Philadelphia, 1763).  The smallest book in the Library of Congress is “Old King Cole.” It is 1/25” x 1/25”, or about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.  The largest book in the Library of Congress is a 5-by-7 foot book featuring color images of Bhutan.  One of the oldest examples of printing in the world--passages from a Buddhist sutra, or discourse, printed in 770 A.D.--is housed in the Library’s Asian Division.  The oldest written material in the Library is a cuneiform tablet dating from 2040 B.C.  Foremost among the Manuscript Division's holdings are the papers of 23 presidents, ranging from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge.  The Gutenberg Bible, one of the treasures of the Library of Congress, was purchased in 1930.  The 15th-century work is one of three perfect copies on vellum in the world.  The Library's Prints and Photographs Division contains more than 15 million visual images, including the most comprehensive international collection of posters in the world, the most comprehensive visual record of the Civil War, and pioneering documentation of America's historic architecture.  More than 1.2 million images are accessible on the Prints and Photographs online catalog at www.loc.gov/pictures/.  The facility houses 6 million items, including more than 3.6 million sound recordings and more than 1.8 million film, television and video items, representing more than a century of audiovisual production.  The Library holds the most comprehensive collection of American music in the world, more than 22 million items including 8.2 million pieces of sheet music.  The collection includes an extensive assemblage of original manuscripts by composers of the American musical theater and the largest collection of any one kind of musical instrument (flute) in the world.  With more than 6 million items, the Archive of Folk Culture in the American Folklife Center is the largest repository of traditional cultural documentation in the United States and one of the largest in the world.  It contains the largest collection of American Indian music and spoken word, including the earliest ethnographic field recordings made anywhere in the world.  The American Folklife Center administers the Veterans History Project, which was established by Congress in 2000 to preserve the reminiscences of the nation’s war veterans.  The American Folklife Center also administers and preserves the StoryCorps project, a nationwide grassroots initiative to record the oral histories of ordinary citizens.  Since 1931, the Library has provided books to the blind in braille and on sound recordings.  The Library's Geography and Map Division holds more than 5.6 million items, the world's largest collection of cartographic materials.  It has the largest collection of fire-insurance maps of cities and towns in the United States, providing unparalleled coverage of the growth of urban America from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries.  The collection also includes the 1507 world map by Martin Waldseemüller, known as "America’s Birth Certificate," the first document on which the name "America" appears.  The Library’s general collections contain the largest historical collection of U.S. telephone criss-cross (phone number and address) and city directories in the world.  The Library acquires more than 8,000 volumes a year and holds more than 124,000 telephone books and microfilmed city directories from 650 U.S. cities and towns.  This vast collection includes historical foreign telephone books and city directories (almost 1,500 per year received from more than 100 countries).  https://www.loc.gov/about/fascinating-facts/

The words amenitize and pedestrianize have been used since at least 2014.

More than 1.5 million visitors descend upon Washington, DC each year to admire over 3,000-cherry  trees.  The National Cherry Blossom Festival, running from March 20-April 14, 2019, is full of events that honor both American and Japanese cultures and represents a close bond forged between the two countries that began with Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki’s gift of the trees back in 1912.  The first donation of 2,000 trees, received in 1910, was burned on orders from President William Howard Taft.  Insects and disease had infested the gift, but after hearing about the plight of the first batch, the Japanese mayor sent another 3,020 trees to DC two years later.  One of the earliest recorded peak blooms occurred on March 15, 1990, while the latest recorded peak bloom occurred on April 18, 1958.  The majority of the cherry blossom trees around the Tidal Basin are of the Yoshino variety.  But another species, the Kwanzan, usually blooms two weeks after the Yoshino trees, giving visitors a second chance to catch the blossoms.

In a ceremony on March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two of these trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park.  At the end of the ceremony, the First Lady presented Viscountess Chinda with a bouquet of 'American Beauty' roses.  These two trees still stand at the terminus of 17th Street Southwest, marked by a large plaque.   By 1915, the United States government had responded with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan.  From 1913 to 1920, trees of the Somei-Yoshino variety, which comprised 1800 of the gift, were planted around the Tidal Basin.  Trees of the other 11 cultivars, and the remaining Yoshinos, were planted in East Potomac Park.  In 1927, a group of American school children re-enacted the initial planting.  This event is recognized as the first D.C. cherry blossom festival.  In 1934, the District of Columbia Commissioners sponsored a three-day celebration of the flowering cherry trees.  The Japanese gave 3,800 more Yoshino trees in 1965, which were accepted by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson.  These trees were grown in the United States and many were planted on the grounds of the Washington Monument.  For the occasion, the First Lady and Ryuji Takeuchi, wife of the Japanese ambassador, reenacted the 1912 planting.  In 1982, Japanese horticulturalists took cuttings from Yoshino trees in Washington, D.C., to replace cherry trees that had been destroyed in a flood in Japan.  From 1986 to 1988, 676 cherry trees were planted using $101,000 in private funds donated to the National Park Service to restore the trees to the number at the time of the original gift.

On August 24, 1814, an invading British army set fire to the White House, Capitol, and other public Washington, D.C. buildings in retaliation for an American attack on the Canadian capital, York, the year prior.  President James and First Lady Dolley Madison fled the attack, seeking safety in Leesburg, Virginia, and later Brookeville, Maryland.  Upon their return to Washington a few weeks later, with the White House destroyed, the First Family needed another place to stay.  The Madisons found the Octagon House, likely spared from British flames because of the tricolor flag its resident, French Minister Louis Serrurier, flew.  This unique Federalist-style home was completed in 1800, and was one of the grandest townhouses in the nation at the time. Although the Madisons were offered use of several homes, the Octagon House was nearby and met their needs, becoming the temporary White House when they moved in on September 8, 1814.  Presidential life quickly resumed a normal pace, although wartime anxieties cast a pall over social gatherings.  The Madisons maintained their living quarters on the second floor, in the southeast suite, which consisted of a small vestibule, a large bedroom with a fireplace, and a smaller dressing room.  The President used the adjoining circular tower room as a study and at least some of the time as a meeting place for his Cabinet. This was where the Treaty of Ghent was signed on February 17, 1815 before being sent to Congress for ratification, ending the War of 1812.  This masterpiece of late Federalist architecture features Coade stone decorative elements imported from England, as well as local construction materials.  The Octagon House became the home of the American Institute of Architects in 1899, and has been in their care ever since.  https://www.nps.gov/places/octagon-house.htm

"There's no such thing as a bad egg."  Jacques Pepin  March 24, 2019 op-ed in The Washington Post  Passion for food helped his family survive hard times during post-world War II France.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2070  April 1, 2019

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