Creighton Tull Chaney (1906–1973), known by his stage name Lon Chaney Jr., was an American actor known for playing Larry Talbot in the film The Wolf Man (1941) and its various crossovers, Count Alucard (Dracula spelled backward) in Son of Dracula, Frankenstein's monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), the Mummy in three pictures, and various other roles in many Universal horror films.  He also portrayed Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men (1939) and supporting parts in dozens of mainstream movies.  Originally referenced in films as Creighton Chaney, he was later credited as "Lon Chaney, Jr." in 1935, and after Man Made Monster (1941), beginning as early as The Wolf Man later that same year, he was almost always billed under his more famous father's name as Lon Chaney.  Chaney had English, French, and Irish ancestry, and his career in movies and television spanned four decades, from 1931 to 1971.  It was only after his father's death that Chaney began to act in films, billed by his own name.  He began with an uncredited bit part in the serial The Galloping Ghost (1931) and signed a contract with RKO who gave him small roles in a number of films, including Girl Crazy (1932), The Roadhouse Murder (1932), Bird of Paradise (1932), and The Most Dangerous Game (1932).  In the 1960s, Chaney specialised in horror films, such as House of Terror (1960), The Devil's Messenger (1961) and The Haunted Palace (1963), replacing Boris Karloff in the latter for Roger Corman.  His bread-and-butter work during the 60s was television--where he made guest appearances on everything from Wagon Train to The Monkees--and in a string of supporting roles in low-budget Westerns produced by A. C. Lyles for Paramount.  In 1962, Chaney gained a chance to briefly play Quasimodo in a simulacrum of his father's make-up, as well as return to his roles of the Mummy and the Wolf Man on the television series Route 66 with friends Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre.  During this era, he starred in Jack Hill's Spider Baby (filmed 1964, released 1968), for which he also sang the title song.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lon_Chaney_Jr.

Navarro Scott Mammedaty (Momaday), a Kiowa, was born at the Indian Hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma on February 27, 1934, and was brought home to his grandfather’s homestead in Mountain View, Oklahoma.  He grew up on several reservations across New Mexico.  In 1958, Momaday received a B.A. in political science from the University of New Mexico.  He later attended graduate school at Stanford University, where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English, in 1960 and 1963, respectively.  His books of poetry include “In the Bear’s House” (St. Martin’s Press, 1999), “In the Presence of the Sun:  Stories and Poems, 1961-1991” (1992), and “The Gourd Dancer” (1976).  His first novel, “House Made of Dawn” (1969) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  He is author of several other novels. He is also the editor of various anthologies and collections.  Momaday has procured many honors, which include the designation as a UNESCO Artist for Peace, 2007 Oklahoma Centennial State Poet Laureate, Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement, an Academy of American Poets Prize, an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Premio Letterario Internationale “Mondello,” Italy’s highest literary award.  He is recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He holds twelve honorary degrees from American colleges and universities, including Yale University, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Wisconsin.  He recently won the Ken Burns American Heritage Prize, presented by the American Prairie Reserve.  Momaday was a founding Trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian, and sits on the Boards of First Nations Development Institute and the School of American Research.  He has taught as a tenured professor at the Universities of Stanford, Arizona, and California, Berkley, and has been a visiting professor at Columbia, Princeton, and in Moscow.  He currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and continues to work in poetry, prose, and painting.  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/n-scott-momaday-biography/12210/

Gung-ho is an English term with the current meaning of "enthusiastic" or "overzealous".  It is an anglicised pronunciation of gōng hé, which is also sometimes anglicised as kung-ho.  Gōng hé is a shortened version of the term gōngyè hézuòshè or Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, which was abbreviated as "Indusco" in English.  The two Chinese characters gōng and hé mean respectively 'work' and 'together'.  The linguist Albert Moe studied both the origin and the usage of the term in English.  He concluded that the term is an "Americanism that is derived from the Chinese, but its several accepted American meanings have no resemblance whatsoever to the recognized meaning in the original language" and that its "various linguistic uses, as they have developed in the United States, have been peculiar to American speech."  In Chinese, concludes Moe, "this is neither a slogan nor a battle cry; it is only a name for an organization."  The term was picked up by United States Marine Corps Major Evans Carlson from his New Zealand friend, Rewi Alley, one of the founders of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives.  Carlson explained in a 1943 interview:  "I was trying to build up the same sort of working spirit I had seen in China, where all the soldiers dedicated themselves to one idea and worked together to put that idea over.  I told the boys about it again and again.  I told them of the motto of the Chinese Cooperatives, Gung Ho.  It means Work Together—Work in Harmony . . . "  Later Carlson used gung-ho during his (unconventional) command of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion.  From there, it spread throughout the U.S. Marine Corps hence the association between the two, where it was used as an expression of spirit and into American society as a whole when the phrase became the title of a 1943 war film, Gung Ho! about the 2nd Raider Battalion's raid on Makin Island in 1942.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung-ho

Maxine Hong Kingston (born Maxine Ting Ting Hong October 27, 1940) is a Chinese American author and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962.  Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese Americans.  Kingston has contributed to the feminist movement with such works as her memoir The Woman Warrior, which discusses gender and ethnicity and how these concepts affect the lives of women.  She has received several awards for her contributions to Chinese American literature, including the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1981 for China Men.  Kingston was drawn to writing at a young age and won a five-dollar prize from "Girl Scout Magazine" for an essay she wrote titled "I Am an American."  She majored in engineering at The University of California, Berkeley before switching to English.  In 1962 Kingston married Earll Kingston, an actor, and began a high school teaching career.  A documentary produced by Gayle K. Yamada, Maxine Hong Kingston:  Talking Story, was released in 1990.  Featuring notable Asian American authors such as Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang, it explored Kingston's life, paying particular attention to her commentary on cultural heritage and both sexual and racial oppression.  The production was awarded the CINE Golden Eagle in 1990.  Kingston also participated in the production of Bill Moyers' PBS historical documentary, Becoming American: The Chinese Experience.  Kingston was awarded the 1997 National Humanities Medal by President of the United States Bill Clinton. S he was a member of the committee to choose the design for the California commemorative quarter.  Kingston was arrested on International Women's Day (March 8) in 2003.  Participating in an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. that was coordinated by the women-initiated organization Code Pink, Kingston refused to leave the street after being instructed to do so by local police forces.  She shared a jail cell with authors Alice Walker and Terry Tempest Williams who were also participants in the demonstration.  Kingston's anti-war stance has significantly trickled into her work; she has stated that writing The Fifth Book of Peace was initiated and inspired by growing up during World War II.  Kingston was honored as a 175th Speaker Series writer at Emma Willard School in September 2005.  In April, 2007, Kingston was awarded the Northern California Book Award Special Award in Publishing for Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006), an anthology which she edited.  In July, 2014, Kingston was awarded the 2013 National Medal of Arts by President of the United States Barack Obama.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxine_Hong_Kingston  See also https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/13/featuresreviews.guardianreview6

The Glass Castle is a 2005 memoir by Jeannette Walls.  The book recounts the unconventional, poverty-stricken upbringing Jeannette and her siblings had at the hands of their deeply dysfunctional parents.  The title refers to her father’s long held intention of building his dream house, a glass castle.  The memoir spent over 260 weeks in hardcover on The New York Times Best Seller list and it remains on the list (now in paperback form) as of the list dated June 3, 2018, having persisted for 421 weeks.  By late 2007, The Glass Castle had sold over 2.7 million copies, had been translated into 22 languages, and received the Christopher Award, the American Library Association's Alex Award (2006) and the Books for Better Living Award.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Castle

January 13, 2020  Since it was founded more than a century ago, the New York Public Library has seen millions of books checked in and out.  But the book that's been checked out the most is a simple story about a child enjoying his city's first snowfall.  The library, the second largest in the US after the Library of Congress, has released its list of the Top 10 checkouts of all time.  Topping it is "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats.  That picture book has been borrowed a whopping 485,584 times since it was published in 1962.  The story--about an African American boy named Peter--is "one of the earliest examples of diversity in children's books," the library said.  Coming in second is another beloved children's book, Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat," which was checked out 469,650 times.  Other children's books included in the list are Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" with 436,016 checkouts and E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web" with 337,948.  Margaret Wise Brown's "Goodnight Moon," would also have been among the top checkouts, if not for a children's librarian named Anne Carroll Moore.  Moore disliked the story so much when it was published in 1947 that the library didn't carry it until 1972, according to a library statement.  Alicia Lee  Read top ten checkouts list at https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/us/new-york-public-library-top-10-checked-out-books-trnd/index.html

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY  It is not what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable. - Moliere, actor and playwright (15 Jan 1622-1673)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2210  January 15, 2020