The Shah Waliullah Library is tucked away within the lanes of old Delhi.  The tiny home also performs host to poetry readings and discussions on art work, culture and politics.  Link to video by Abhishek Madhukar at https://bitbullentin.com/the-curiosity-library-of-oldschool-delhi/40841/


Bob Ross made three versions of each painting that appeared on “The Joy of Painting.”  The first was made before the show, to be used for reference.  The second was made in the 26 minutes of taping, sometimes with last-minute improvisations on the composition.  The third was made afterward, for the instructional books.  The paintings and other objects officially became part of the museum’s permanent collection on March 22, 2019.   Other items include an easel used during the first season of the show that had been converted from a stepladder and two handwritten notebooks used to plan the production of Seasons 2 and 3 of “The Joy of Painting.”  “The hardest part was choosing the paintings,” Eric Jentsch, the entertainment and sports curator for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, said. Mr. Jentsch and his colleague Ryan Lintelman visited Bob Ross Inc. in Herndon, Va., to find the images and materials that would best exemplify Mr. Ross’s lifetime of work.  The Smithsonian also acquired fan letters sent to Mr. Ross, including some written after he died of lymphoma in 1995 at the age of 52. “These letters help reveal the significant impact Ross has had on diverse individuals and communities, helping them to express and feel better about themselves,” Mr. Jentsch said.  How many Bob Ross paintings are there exactly?  We don’t know.  According to an analysis done by the website FiveThirtyEight, Mr. Ross painted in 381 of the 403 episodes of the show (the rest featured a guest).  If three versions were made of each of those paintings, at least 1,143 originals would exist.  Bob Ross Inc. estimates that it has 1,165 paintings stored on site.  But Mr. Ross also painted as an instructor, as well as for public events and for charity—so there may still be some paintings at large.  Larry Buchanan, Aaron Byrd, Alicia DeSantis and Emily Rhyne  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/arts/bob-ross-paintings-mystery.html



Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819.  Both of his grandfathers were celebrities of the Revolutionary War.  His mother’s father, Peter Gansevoort, had defended Fort Schuyler against the Redcoats.  His father’s father, Thomas Melvill (no “e”), one of Samuel Adams’ co-conspirators, took part in that infamous hooliganism called the Boston Tea Party.  After victory they both came into money.  Unfortunately for Herman Melville, his father, Allan, borrowed heavily from many quarters, including his wife’s not yet allotted inheritance, concealing debts, skipping out on creditors.  It was on the whaler Acushnet that Melville read The Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex, a memoir of the expedition whose destruction, out on Pacific waters after a gigantic sperm whale smashed its head into the ship, gave our not-yet author a first inkling of the plot of his greatest work.  In the 19th century, of course, whales were not intelligent creatures to be protected but monsters to be monetized.  by William T. Vollmann; photographs by Irenaeus Herok  Read much more and see graphics at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/voyage-french-polynesia-herman-melville-course-write-moby-dick-180972525/



indicia  Signs; indications.  Circumstances that point to the existence of a given fact as probable, but not certain.  The term is much used in Civil Law in a sense nearly or entirely synonymous with Circumstantial Evidence.  It denotes facts that give rise to inferences, rather than the inferences themselves.  West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2.  Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc.  All rights reserved.  indicia  from Latin for "signs," circumstances which tend to show or indicate that something is probable.  It is used in the form of "indicia of title," or "indicia of partnership," particularly when the "signs" are items like letters, certificates, or otherthings that one would not have unless the facts were as the

possessor claimed.  Copyright © 1981-2005 by Gerald N. Hill and Kathleen T. Hill.  All rights reserved.  indicia  characteristic marks, characteristics, expressions, features, hints, indications, marks, means of recognition, signs, symbols, tokens  Burton's Legal Thesaurus, 4E.  Copyright © 2007 by William C. Burton.  Used with permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.  https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/indicia



Six of the 2019 Ohioana Award winners, as well as the Marvin Grant recipient, were selected by juries.  The Readers’ Choice Award was determined by voters in a public online poll.  This year, more than 3,000 votes were cast for the Readers’ Choice Award.  First given in 1942, the Ohioana Book Awards are the second oldest, and among the most prestigious, state literary prizes in the nation.  Nearly every major writer from Ohio in the past 75 years has been honored, from James Thurber to Toni Morrison.  The Ohioana Awards will be presented Thursday, October 17, in the Atrium of Ohio’s historic Statehouse in Columbus.  Tickets for event, which are open to the public and include a pre-awards reception, will go on sale in mid-September.  The 2019 Ohioana Award winners are:  Fiction:  Moriel Rothman-Zecher, Sadness is a White Bird, Nonfiction:  David Giffels, Furnishing Eternity, About Ohio or an Ohioan:  Wil Haygood, Tigerland, Poetry:  Marcus Jackson, Pardon My Heart, Middle Grade/Young Adult Literature: Ellen Klages, Out of Left Field, Juvenile Literature:  Jacqueline Woodson, The Day You Begin  Readers’ Choice:  Rachel Wiley, Nothing is Okay, Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant, David Grandouiller.  The Marvin Grant, is a competitive prize for an Ohio writer age thirty or younger who has not yet published a book.  Born in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and raised in Jamestown, Ohio, David is a 2017 graduate of Cedarville College.  He writes essays and is currently in his third year as an MFA candidate in creative writing at The Ohio State University. 

http://www.ohioana.org/announcing-the-2019-ohioana-award-winners/



Dr. Barbara Gordon, Librarian?  Yep that’s right--not only was Batgirl a crime-fighter alongside Batman and Robin but she also had a PhD in Library Science and ran the Gotham City Public Library.  Just who are librarians--according to comics?  You could be a crime fighting superhero like Dr. Gordon, or you could be the “Lord Librarian” of the Halls of All-Knowing, helping Thor find the lost gods.  Megan Halsband  See graphics at https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2019/07/lets-talk-comics-librarians/



The phrase cut to the quick is one of those English idioms with a long history, derived from a word that is rarely used in present day.  To cut to the quick means to injure someone emotionally, to hurt someone with words or an action.  To cut someone to the quick means to deeply distress them.  The term cut to the quick includes the usage of the word quick in an archaic sense, and as a noun rather than an adjective.  In this sense, the term quick is derived from the Old English word cwic meaning alive or animated, probably derived from the Dutch word kwik which means bright and lively.  The phrase the quick and the dead was used in the titles of two films; one about a female gunslinger and one about American soldiers in World War II.  Today, the use of the word quick to mean living is largely limited to metaphor used by the literary author and the poet.  The idiom cut to the quick refers to cutting through the dead parts of something until reaching the living, sensitive part of that thing.  Synonyms that may be found in a thesaurus are degrade, humiliate, injure, mock.  Sometimes, cut to the quick is used to mean to get to the heart of the matter.  This is incorrect, confusing this idiom with the expression cut to the chase.  https://grammarist.com/idiom/cut-to-the-quick/         



-agogue, -agog, -agogic, -agoguery, -agogy  (Greek: usually a suffix meaning one of the following; lead, leading, leading forth, guide, guiding; bring, take; promoting, stimulating)  See list of words with the suffix -agogue, etc. “agogic” to “xenagogy” at http://wordquests.info//cgi/ice2-for.cgi?file=/hsphere/local/home/scribejo/wordquests.info/htm/L-Gk-agogue-A-X.htm&HIGHLIGHT=agogue



Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.  Toni Morrison  Nobel Lecture December 7, 1993  Link to audio recording at https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2136  August 9, 2019