The Toledo-Lucas County Public Library (TLCPL) is encouraging kids to read using comic books.  Librarian Franco Vitella noticed a group of students meeting up at the Maumee Branch Library after school.  Those kids had inspired him to apply for a grant from the Dollar General Literacy Foundation.  "I think comics kind of get some short shrift a lot of times and I'm happy to see that people are taking it seriously and that this grant can help move that forward a little bit."  The one-time $2,500 grant will allow TLCPL to launch two comic book clubs:  one at Gateway Middle School and the other at St. Patrick of Heatherdowns School.  Not only will TLCPL provide more than 150 comic books to 25 club members at each school, but students will get to keep them.  "It will be a great way to promote comics, get kids interested in different literacies and have them have a book that they can take home and have forever."  Comic books help promote visual literacy by analyzing symbolism and emotion in different panels.  "Everyone likes to have their books differently, whether that's the traditional book of holding it or audiobooks, those are huge right now," said Kelsey Cogan, TLCPL media relations coordinator.  "But then, visual literacy is another aspect that people like to get their books and just be able to learn, so this is one way that we can help that as well."  They can also help build confidence in timid readers.  "They're important for reluctant readers too, people who might not be eager to sit down with a 200-page novel, even when they're in middle school, and a comic book can be a great way to open those doors for them," Vitella said.  The Comic Book Clubs will let students vote on what books they'll read and each school is responsible for deciding which students will be part of the club. TLCPL is looking to get the them up and running in October, 2019.  Sophia Perricone  https://nbc24.com/news/local/grant-allows-toledo-lucas-county-public-library-to-start-comic-book-clubs-at-local-schools



Quid pro quo is a Latin phrase or saying.  It literally translates as to either “this for that” or “something for something.”  It often means an exchange of services for goods, with the implication that the transfer of one is fully contingent on the transfer of the other.  In the English-speaking world, the term often means an exchange of favors.  English phrases that have very similar or identical meanings include “tit for tat” or “give and take.”  A common saying is ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours.’  In the realm of common law, the term quid pro quo establishes that a service or item was traded between parties in return for something else of value, and often when the equity or the propriety of the transaction itself was questionable.  Contracts invariably have to include consideration, meaning the exact exchange of two things of value.  For instance, when you go to the store to buy a dozen eggs, a specific sum of money has to be given to the cashier before you have actually purchased the item.  So, the store has received something of value, but they’ve also given something that you and they agree is equal to its value.  In the realm of United States law, exchanges that seem to be lopsided might have their quid pro quo questioned.  


Courts might actually decide that if a quid pro quo is not really balanced or valid, then a contract is actually voided.  In cases of business contracts that are considered to be quid pro quo, a negative connotation is often assumed, because there are precedents where a big company would cross lines and ethical boundaries so that they might join other big companies in agreements that are mutually beneficial.  Mia Russell  http://abalawinfo.org/know-quid-pro-quo-means/



Corlears Hook Park, located at the intersection of Jackson and Cherry Streets along the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Drive on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is named after 17th century Dutch landowners, the Van Corlear family, and the geographic bend in the shoreline that had the shape of a hook.  Originally marshland that was used by the Lenape tribe to land their canoes, Dutch settlers of the mid-1600s swiftly took advantage of the area’s gradual coastal incline for loading and unloading of transport vessels.  At the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776, the British landing and advance upon General George Washington’s fleeing Continental Army was impeded by a series of hastily erected earthen barricades on the site.  In 1814 the Corlear neighborhood, as it was briefly called, underwent renovations as part of a relief project for thousands of Irish immigrants.  The site’s hills were leveled for use in landfill along the waterfront, making possible the busy docks that soon encouraged industrial and residential growth in the area.  In the 1880s, with the rising tide of immigration, rapid local industrialization, and overburdened tenements, many pressed for the creation of a nearby park.  Though the land for Corlears Hook Park was purchased by New York City in 1893, the park’s development was not completed until 1905.  By the late 1930s, the park’s broad, tree-lined promenade held a comfort station, playground, and baseball diamond, but, when the city began developing the East River’s shoreline in tandem with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Depression-era Works Progress Administration, Corlears Hook Park was reduced in size.  Directly reacting to the construction of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses began to draw up and execute plans to take advantage of the new landfill across this highway.  Over the next few years Moses’ addition of several parks properties along the entire eastern coastline of Manhattan, including East River Park, began to revitalize the Lower East Side.  Though Corlears Hook Park initially lost a large portion of land to the FDR Drive, the addition of the adjoining 57 acre-long East River Park in the 1940s granted the East Side neighborhoods an even larger area in which to walk and play.  Connected by footbridges and winding paths, Corlears Hook Park and the adjoining East River Park offer softball fields, tennis courts, skateboarding areas and a public performance space.  The two parks are part of the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, a 32 mile route of connected parks along the shoreline of Manhattan.  https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/corlears-hook-park/history



No balm in Gilead:  Boston Lyric Opera presents The Handmaid’s Tale by Kevin Wells   Thanks to an award-winning Hulu series and a troubling political climate, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale now resonates in popular culture as never before.  The Boston Lyric Opera’s May 9, 2019 world premiere of a new edition of Poul Ruders and Paul Bentley’s 2000 adaptation of the novel resonates even further by bringing its story to the place where it unfolds, Harvard Square.  https://bachtrack.com/review-ruders-handmaids-tale-boston-lyric-opera-may-2019



The Handmaid's Tale, one of Margaret Atwood's most famous novels, emerged in a brand new form October 16, 2013 in Winnipeg with the debut of a dance production by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.  Link to 2:53 video at https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/the-handmaid-s-tale-debuts-as-ballet-in-winnipeg-1.2055207



Dystopian fiction of the twentieth century has its beginnings in the utopian fiction of authors such as H.G. Wells and William Morris.  Wells called himself a ‘utopiographer’ and believed that scientific advancements would outlaw war and poverty, as he fictionalised in his novel Men Like Gods (1923).  This utopian ideal was also described in Morris, who wrote about the perfect socialist society in News From Nowhere (1890).  As the twentieth century dawned, authors were less convinced about this brand of scientific and political improvement.  Aldous Huxley, with his novel Brave New World (1932), started to criticise the utopian values of science and the domineering political ideals of novelists such as Wells and Morris.  The Handmaid's Tale is one of the dystopian tales discussed at   https://www.anthonyburgess.org/twentieth-century-dystopian-fiction/



Here’s a birthday toast to Bruce Springsteen, who turns 70 September 23, 2019.  He’s spent his sixties experimenting with crazy ideas he’d never tried before—his one-man Broadway show, his memoir Born to Run, his SoCal cowboy excursion Western Stars, dropped just a few months ago as a total surprise, with a film version set to hit theaters in October.  Rob Sheffield  Read much more and link to videos at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bruce-springsteen-70th-birthday-tribute-rob-sheffield-888036/



Banned Books Week (September 22-28, 2019) celebrates the freedom to read.  Typically held during the last week of September, it spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.  It brings together the entire book community—librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types—in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.  The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted for removal or restriction in libraries and schools.  By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.  Frequently Challenged Books  Top 10 Most Challenged Books  http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/banned  

WORD OF THE DAY  tellurian adjective  (not comparable)

(formal or literary) Of or relating to the earth; (specifically, chiefly science fiction) inhabiting planet Earth as opposed to other planets. [from mid 19th c.] quotations ▼  (mineralogy) Of a mineral: containing tellurium. quotations ▼ From Latin tellūs (“earth, ground; the globe, planet Earth; country, land”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *telh₂- (“to bear, carry; to endure, undergo”)  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tellurian#English



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2158  September 23, 2019