Betty Smith (born Elisabeth Lillian Wehner; 1896–1972) was an American author.  She is best known for her 1943 bestselling book A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  As a child, Smith developed an early passion for the written word, and at age eight she received an A for a school composition.  "I knew then," she was reported as saying, "that I would write a book one day."  She made great use of the then-new public library near her home on Leonard Street, and at age 11, had two poems published in a school publication.  At the University of Michigan, Smith audited a number of journalism and playwriting courses and was a student in some of the classes of Professor Kenneth Thorpe Rowe.  Under the guidance of Rowe, she wrote several plays, including the three-act "Jonica Starrs," a story of adultery and the break-up of a marriage.  The play was given a full production in Ann Arbor in June 1930, and later that same year, was performed at the Detroit Playhouse.  Smith's life reached a turning point when she won the University of Michigan's Avery Hopwood Award for a play she had written.  Sources differ whether the play was "Jonica Starrs" or "Francie Nolan," which introduced the character that was to later appear in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  With the conferring of the Hopwood Award, Smith was invited to study drama at Yale University, where, under the tutelage of the renowned teacher George Baker, she wrote several plays during her two-year fellowship.  At this time, she met a budding playwright, Robert V. Finch, known as "Bob," who became a close confidante and companion.  With outside pressures mounting, particularly money concerns, as the fellowship had ended, her studies at Yale came to an end in the spring of 1934.  Moreover, she deeply missed her children, who had been placed with her sister's family on Long Island.

Because Smith never completed high school, she was unable to formally matriculate at the University of Michigan; she never earned a Bachelor of Arts, despite having taken more than enough courses.  And without the B.A., she was unable to earn the Master of Fine Arts degree at Yale.  In 1947, Smith's second book Tomorrow Will Be Better was published.  Set in the tenements of 1920s Brooklyn, the novel presents a realistic portrayal of young adults who seek a brighter future.  Published just four years after A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the second book naturally drew critical comparisons to the first because both novels dealt with family life in Brooklyn and the struggle with poverty.  Margy Shannon, the central character in "Tomorrow," is from a poor family with a dominant mother.  She meets and is courted by Frankie, a fellow Brooklynite, also contending with poverty.  They strive to improve their lot, attempting to overcome the many personal and financial obstacles in their way.  Tomorrow was published to mixed reviews.  It received a positive notice in The New York Times, which noted the work is noticeably different in spirit from Smith's first book and praised Smith's writing style as "remarkable for its unpretentiousness—an easy, tidy, direct kind of prose which calls no attention to itself."  Other reviews, however, were less warm, often judging the novel as "gloomy."  Maggie-Now was published in 1958.  Joy in the Morning, Smith's fourth, and last, novel appeared in 1963.  The novel was adapted into the 1965 film of the same name.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Smith 

PARAPHRASES from Tomorrow Will Be Better by Betty Smith  *  better to remember things the way they should have been  *  learn to make and take jokes  *  the waiter presented the tray of pastries as if offering diamonds and rubies to a queen  *  prickling smell of browning onion smells and crisp crack of eggs broken against a pan’s rim--these were the symphony of home  *  many a true word is spoken as a joke  *  understanding doesn’t always indicate sanction, conversion or forgiveness  *  she abhorred the vacuum made by unfinished sentences 

New Jersey passed the Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act and Regulations in 1949, a response to the perceived risk associated with the rapidly growing number of motorists having to handle highly flammable gasoline.  On paper, before the downfall of casual smoking and before pumps were fitted with an assortment of safety features, that was, in all fairness, potentially risky.  We still see station fires, and they’re terrifying on the rare occasions that they happen.  The Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act mandates that “no person dispense fuel at a gasoline station, unless that person is an attendant who has received fuel dispensing instructions.”  If you are caught breaking this law, you could “be liable for a penalty of not less than $50 and not more than $250 for a first offense and not more than $500 for each subsequent offense.”  Oregon has long been the only other U.S. state with a similar widespread law against self-service, adopted in 1951.  The state voted on repealing the law in 1982, but the measure didn’t pass.  Since then, Oregon state law has been amended to allow some non-certified motorists in certain counties, under certain conditions, in low-population areas or during particular periods of the day, to now pump their own fuel unattended.  Justin T. Westbrook  https://jalopnik.com/heres-why-some-places-in-the-u-s-still-wont-let-you-pu-1846694716 

February 13 is World Radio Day, which is recognized by the United Nations to highlight the importance of radio for sharing information, promoting diversity of ideas, and reaching remote communities and vulnerable people, and its role in emergency communication during disasters. United Nations Radio was established February 13, 1946.  Wiktionary 

Team Fluff won the 18th Puppy Bowl on Sunday against Team Ruff by a slim margin with a final score of 73-69 after a face-off that lasted three hours.  The bowl featured more than 100 adoptable puppy players from 67 shelters and rescues from 33 states, according to Discovery.  Sandra Gonzalez and Emma Tucker  See pictures at   https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/13/entertainment/puppy-bowl/index.html 

Cooper Kupp secured eight catches for 92 yards and two touchdowns and was Super Bowl MVP on February 13, 2022.  The Washington Post  The Rams’ 23-20 win over the Bengals was transformed by one player:  Aaron Donald, who had two sacks and put constant pressure on Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow.  The Wall Street Journal 

For one human being to love another:  that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. - Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist (4 Dec 1875-1926) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2495  February 14, 2022