George Gustav Heye (1874–1957) was a collector of Native American artifacts.  George graduated from Columbia College (now Columbia University) in 1896 with a degree in electrical engineering.  While superintending railroad construction in Kingman, Arizona in 1897, he acquired a Navajo deerskin shirt, as his first artifact.  He acquired individual items until 1903, then he began collecting material in larger numbers.  In 1915, Heye worked with Frederick W. Hodge and George H. Pepper on the Nacoochee Mound in White County Georgia.  The work was done through the Heye Foundation, the Museum of the American Indian, and the Bureau of American Ethnology, and was some of the most complete work of the time including numerous photographs.  In 1918, Heye and his colleagues published a report entitled The Nacoochee Mound In Georgia.  He accumulated the largest private collection of Native American objects in the world.  The collection was initially stored in Heye’s Madison Avenue apartment in New York City, and later in a rented room.  By 1908, he was referring to the collection as "The Heye Museum", and he was soon lending materials for exhibit at what later became the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia.  In 1916, he purchased from J. E. Standley of Ye Olde Curiosity Shop the collection of Alaskan Native artifacts that had won the gold medal for ethnological collections at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.  Eventually, the Heye collection was moved to the Heye Foundation’s Museum of the American Indian at 155th Street and Broadway, which broke ground in May 1916.  In 1919, he established the journal Indian Notes and Monographs.  The museum opened to the public in 1922, and closed in 1994, when the Smithsonian Institution opened the Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian in the former Custom House in lower Manhattan.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gustav_Heye



Sitting at the foot of the Wiechquaekeck Trail, an old Algonquin trade route (aka Broadway), the American Indian Museum’s New York location shares the Washington, D.C., location’s incredible collection and its commitment to celebrating the diverse history and contemporary voices of Native peoples throughout the western hemisphere.  https://www.si.edu/museums/american-indian-museum-heye-center



Before the 1800s bananas were rare in the United States, as well as Europe.  A sudden interest in the banana was sparked when Jules Verne in his 1873 novel Around the World in 80 Days called it "as healthy as bread and as succulent as cream."  Banana:  A Global History by Lorna Piatti-Farnell



Humor . . . is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity.  James Thurber (1894–1961) New York Post, Feb. 29, 1960  Thurber was referring to William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 'poetry . . . takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity'  Lyrical Ballads preface  See The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations, p. 327 and https://www.enotes.com/topics/william-wordsworth-and-samuel-taylor-coleridge



James Thurber suffered a serious eye injury at the age of seven caused by an arrow during a game of William Tell.  As an adult, sympathetic opthalmia took over his other eye making him totally blind.  At East High School, Thurber blossomed and was class president.  At OSU, he wrote for the school newspaper, edited the Sundial, and was a play-and songwriter for The Strollers dramatic club.  In 1927, after a few years of reporting at the Columbus Dispatch, he earned his first column "Credos and Curios," commentary, parody, observations and humor.  With the encouragement of E.B. White, he submitted cartoons and spot illustrations to The New Yorker before blindness set in.  Thurber published almost 30 books, pieces for various magazines, and short stories, the two of the most anthologized pieces of modern fiction:  "The Catbird Seat" and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."  Thurber stands as the first modern American author whose reputation became that of a writer of short stories.  Russell Baker



Rich Koz (born March 12, 1952) is an American actor and broadcaster best known as horror-movie host Svengoolie.  Out of costume, he is also the host of the syndicated The Three Stooges Stooge-a-Palooza program.  Koz got his start in broadcasting at WMTH-FM, the high school radio station at Maine East in Park Ridge, Illinois.  While Koz was at Northwestern University, he sent the original Svengoolie, Jerry G. Bishop, material for the horror-movie program.  Bishop subsequently invited Koz on to the show.  When the show was cancelled in 1973, Bishop and Koz worked together doing mornings on WMAQ radio in Chicago, and Koz worked with radio legend Dick Orkin on commercials and syndicated features, including "ChickenMan Returns for the Last Time Again."  When Bishop left for San Diego in 1978, he gave Koz permission to create a show known as Son of Svengoolie, now simply known as Svengoolie.  (The character is often known simply as "Sven.")  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Koz  See also R.I.P. Svengoolie:  The Baron of Berwyn at http://www.ravenousmonster.com/featured-article/rip-svengoolie-baron-berwyn/ and OPENING UP THE DUNGEON DOOR ON SVENGOOLIE: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS at https://svengoolie.com/faq



With a population of about 56,000, Greenland is a self-ruling part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and while its government decides on most domestic matters, foreign and security policy is handled by Copenhagen.  It has vast natural resources across its 811,000 square miles.  Greenland relies on $591 million of subsidies from Denmark annually, which make up about 60% of its annual budget, according to U.S. and Danish government statistics.  Though Greenland is technically part of North America, it is culturally and politically linked to Europe.  Following World War II, the U.S. under President Harry Truman developed a geopolitical interest in Greenland and in 1946 offered to buy it from Denmark for $100 million.  But Denmark refused to sell.  And that was the second failed attempt—the State Department had also launched an inquiry into buying Greenland and Iceland in 1867.  At a dinner with associates in spring of 2018, Donald Trump said someone had told him at a roundtable that Denmark was having financial trouble over its assistance to Greenland, and suggested that he should consider buying the island, according to one of the people.  “What do you guys think about that?” he asked the room, the person said.  “Do you think it would work?”  The person described the question less as a serious inquiry than as a joke.  Vivian Salama, Rebecca Ballhaus, Andrew Restuccia and Michael C. Bender  https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-eyes-a-new-real-estate-purchase-greenland-11565904223



Here are Barack Obama’s recommended books for summer 2019 reading:   “The collected works of Toni Morrison”, “The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead, “Exhalation,” a short story by Ted Chiang,  “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel, “Men Without Women,” a short story collection by Haruki Murakami, “American Spy” by Lauren Wilkinson,  “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr, “Lab Girl” by Hope Jahren, “Inland” by Téa Obreht, “How to Read the Air” by Dinaw Mengestu, and  “Maid” by Stephanie Land

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/15/books-on-barack-obamas-2019-summer-reading-list.html



Everybody in the world of children’s literature seemed to know Lee Bennett Hopkins, the renowned Cape Coral poet and Florida Hall of Famer who died August 8, 2019 at age 81.  His many friends included famous authors such as Judy Blume, Shel Silverstein, Lloyd Alexander, R.L. Stine and even the late Dr. Seuss (Hopkins called him “Ted’).  In 2017, Hopkins became the first Cape Coral resident to get inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame—and only the second from Lee County.  "Lee Bennett Hopkins is one of the most famous poetry anthologists in the world," Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner told The News-Press in 2017.  "His works are celebrated for their global appeal, the ability to reflect universal childhood experiences, and respect for cultural differences."  Their friendship eventually led to Hopkins donating thousands of books to Lee County Schools libraries and classrooms, and often talking to students at the schools.  There’s even a poetry corner dedicated to him at Ida S. Baker High School.  Hopkins had compiled more children's poetry anthologies than anyone else in U.S. history—more than 120 titles in all.  Those books appear in classrooms and public libraries across the country.  He was even listed in Guinness World Records as “the world's most prolific anthologist of poetry for children."  Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Hopkins was the oldest of three children raised by a single mother in the projects of Newark, New Jersey. Following in the footsteps of his favorite junior-high teacher, Hopkins became a teacher, himself.  Charles Runnells  Read much more and see pictures at

https://www.news-press.com/story/entertainment/2019/08/08/renowned-cape-coral-poet-lee-bennett-hopkins-dies-age-81/1953614001/



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2139  August 16, 2019