August 27, 2019  "If you're upset, that probably means I did something right, unfortunately," declares Tatiana Schlossberg toward the end of Inconspicuous Consumption:  The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have.  That sort of wry, matter-of-fact pronouncement is typical of Schlossberg, 29, a former New York Times science reporter (she's also Caroline Kennedy's daughter) whose first book is a plucky exploration of the myriad ways our casual lifestyle choices come at the expense of the planet and our fellow human beings.  (Spoiler alert:  Even the greenest among us are locked into a system that doesn't allow for many opt-outs.)  In four sections—the internet, food, fashion, and fuel—Schlossberg deconstructs the Rube Goldberg machine that is our post-industrial global economy, in which the ecological cost of consumption is outsourced, deferred, unaccounted for, or otherwise obscured.  Here's an example:  You probably think bingeing internet video is detrimental only to your own brain cells; in fact it guzzles energy that, owing to the geographical distribution of data centers, may be supplied by coal, contributing to the release of tens of millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year and also to the production of coal ash, a terrifyingly difficult-to-sequester toxic slurry that can pose a threat to our groundwater.  The demand for cashmere, and how cheap it has become, is a result of the glut of goats in Mongolia and China because of some complicated geopolitical forces around the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Japanese economy.  These goats have sharp hooves that break up the soil, leaving it unstable.  Also, the way they eat grass is to tear it up from the roots, so that further destabilizes soil.  What happens when all that soil is loose is that it blows around more easily, and contributes to desertification in Mongolia and inner Mongolia, a region of China.  extract of a condensed and edited interview by Julia Felsenthal  https://www.vogue.com/article/tatiana-schlossberg-inconspicuous-consumption-climate-change-interview



QUOTES by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist and sociologist   *The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.  *  Education has for its object the formation of character.  *  Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.  *  Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts—as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.  *   https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer



Feedback to subject of palindromes in A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg 

From:  Magda Jovanovic   Here are two palindromes, the first one in Slovenian and the second one in Serbian or Croatian language:  “Perica reže raci rep.”  (ž is pronounced as j in Jolie).  The meaning is The laundry girl is cutting the duck’s tail.  As a kid, I always asked myself what the duck had to do with laundry.  The Serbian/Croatian palindrome is nicer:  “Ana voli Milovana” which means Ana loves Milovan. 
From:  Susan Jones  If you do not know the short story AINMOSNI by Roger Angell, long-time contributor to The New Yorker, it is about a man obsessed with palindromes and it has led me through a lifelong love affair with them. 
From:  Richard Stallman  The city of Neuquén, in Argentina, has a name that is a seven-letter palindrome. Does any place have a longer palindrome as its name? 
From:  Virginia McGee Butler  My great-grandmother’s given name of Susanna was shortened, and she was always called Anna.  She married a man with a last name of Hannah so that she became Anna Hannah.  This made a curiosity of two palindromic names with one fitting inside the other.  Her daughter-in-law, my grandmother, continued the palindromic tradition since her name was Ada and she became Ada Hannah.  Find Anu Garg's MPM (Massive Palindrome Miner) at https://wordsmith.org/palindrome/



Architect James Renwick, Jr. (1818–1895) designed some of the most famous buildings in America.  Renwick's body of work spans a variety of architectural styles throughout the United States, and two of his buildings, the Smithsonian Institution Building and the Renwick Gallery, are a part of the Smithsonian Institution.  Born in the Bloomingdale District of Manhattan, New York, Renwick's parents Margaret Brevoort, a member of a well-established New York family, and James Renwick, an engineer and professor of natural philosophy at Columbia College, now Columbia University, provided the young man with a cultured lifestyle.  Following in his father's footsteps, Renwick entered Columbia College at the age of twelve and graduated in 1836.  He received an MA three years later.  After working as a structural engineer for the Erie Railroad, in 1843 Renwick entered a competition to design the Grace Episcopal Church in New York City.  Despite his lack of formal training, Renwick won the competition to design the church.  His winning design followed the English Gothic style.  In 1846, Renwick won the competition for the design of the Smithsonian Institution Building or "Castle."  For this building, Renwick utilized numerous architectural styles and his knowledge of architectural history.  The Castle design consisted of different architectural styles that came from 12th century Europe, sometimes called Saxon, Norman, Gothic, or Romanesque.  It was this Romanesque style that was requested by the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian.  However, Renwick skillfully intertwined Gothic elements into the Castle, including rose windows, vaulted ceilings, and tall thin windows.  After completing the Castle, Renwick went on to design what is considered his finest achievement, St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.  https://siarchives.si.edu/history/featured-topics/stories/james-renwick-jr-architect-smithsonian-buildings



Starchitect is a portmanteau used to describe architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into idols of the architecture world and may even have given them some degree of fame among the general public.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starchitect



SEPTEMBER 21, 2019-DECEMBER 29, 2019  Ohio Presidents:  Surprising Legacies  The United States has had eight presidents from Ohio between the years 1841 and 1923, including five who served in the Civil War.  William Henry Harrison, the first president from Ohio, was also the first one to die in office.  Benjamin Harrison's wife, Caroline, put up the first Christmas tree in the White House.  This exhibition features items related to the lives of the presidents and their wives, in addition to campaign materials and lesser-known facts.  DECORATIVE ARTS CENTER OF OHIO  145 E. Main St., Lancaster, OH  43130 www.decartsohio.org 740/681-1423  ADMISSION:  Free  HOURS: Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat.-Sun. 1-4 p.m.  https://www.ohiomagazine.com/Events/Details/the-ohio-presidents-surprising-legacies



Soprano Jessye Norman died September 30, 2019 at the age of 74.  "My parents told me that I started singing at the same time as I started speaking," Norman said in 2014.  The little girl from Augusta, Ga., with the big voice sang in church, school—and, she said, a few unusual venues.  "I'd sing for the opening of a supermarket, as I always say.  There was even an opening of a car wash at some point.  They weren't, sort of, very elegant settings all the time."  Inspired by the acclaimed contralto Marian Anderson, whose 78 records Norman listened to at a neighbor's home, she went on to develop her own singular sound that rang out in the world's top opera houses,  "It's important to give back," she said, "and I find it really disquieting and disarming for me to see how little we pay attention to arts education for our students these days."  In the fall of 2018, she was honored as a "Library Lion" at the New York Public Library, where she sang a duet with Renee Fleming.  Tom Huizenga  Link to video at https://www.npr.org/2019/09/30/765886905/opera-singer-jessye-norman-dies-at-74



Word of the Day for October 2  verb pleach (third-person singular simple present pleaches, present participle pleaching, simple past and past participle pleached)  (transitive) To unite by interweaving, as (horticulture) branches of shrubs, trees, etc., to create a hedge; to interlock, to plash. quotations ▼ Synonyms:  entwine, interlace, plait  Derived terms:  impleach, pleached (adjective), pleacher

pleaching (noun)  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pleach#English



http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2163  October 2, 2019