The Ottawa, also known as the Odawa dialect of the Ojibwe language is spoken by the Ottawa people in southern Ontario in Canada, and northern Michigan in the United States.  Descendants of migrant Ottawa speakers live in Kansas and Oklahoma.  The first recorded meeting of Ottawa speakers and Europeans occurred in 1615 when a party of Ottawas encountered explorer Samuel de Champlain on the north shore of Georgian Bay.  Ottawa is written in an alphabetic system using Latin letters, and is known to its speakers as Nishnaabemwin "speaking the native language" or Daawaamwin " speaking Ottawa".  Ottawa is one of the Ojibwe dialects that has undergone the most language change, although it shares many features with other dialects.  The most distinctive change is a pervasive pattern of vowel syncope that deletes short vowels in many words, resulting in significant changes in their pronunciation.  This and other innovations in pronunciation, in addition to changes in word structure and vocabulary, differentiate Ottawa from other dialects of Ojibwe.  Like other Ojibwe dialects, Ottawa grammar includes animate and inanimate noun gender, subclasses of verbs that are dependent upon gender, combinations of prefixes and suffixes that are connected with particular verb subclasses, and complex patterns of word formation.  Ottawa has a relatively flexible word order compared with languages such as English.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_dialect   

An embarrassment of riches is an idiom that means an overabundance of something, or too much of a good thing, that originated in 1738 as John Ozell's translation of a French play, L'Embarras des richesses (1726), by Léonor Jean Christine Soulas d'Allainval.  The idiom has also inspired other works and been included in their titles. This includes:  The Embarrassment of Riches (1906), a play by Louis K. Anspacher, and a 1918 drama film of the same name based on the Anspacher play; a 2006 music album of this name by Elephant Micah; the history book The Embarrassment of Riches:  An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age by Simon Schama; and An Embarrassment of Riches, a 2000 novel written by Filipino author Charlson Ong.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarrassment_of_riches  Thank you, Muse reader!   

Zabar's (ZAY-barz), founded in 1934, is an appetizing store at 2245 Broadway and 80th Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, founded by Louis Zabar and Lillian Zabar.  It is known for its selection of bagels, smoked fish, olives, and cheeses.  The music video of Vampire Weekend's "Sunflower" was filmed in Zabar's.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabar%27s   

Babar the Elephant is a character who first appeared in 1931 in the French children's book Histoire de Babar by Jean de Brunhoff.  The book is based on a tale that Brunhoff's wife, Cécile, had invented for their children.  It tells of a young elephant, named Babar, whose mother is killed by a hunter.  Babar escapes, and in the process leaves the jungle in exile, visits a big city, and returns to bring the benefits of civilization to his fellow elephants.  Just as he returns to his community of elephants, their king dies from eating a bad mushroom.  Because of his travels and civilization, Babar is chosen king of the elephant kingdom.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babar_the_Elephant   

Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, located in Farmington Hills, Michigan, is devoted to a huge collection of coin-operated animatronic dummies, mechanical games and other oddities.  Exhibits include, for example, the classic gypsy Fortune teller machine that used to grace many a carnival sideshow.  Most of the machines still function, so visitors are encouraged to bring change.  Marvin's is open 365 days a year.  The museum's founder, Marvin Yagoda, had been collecting the items that populate the 5,500-square-foot museum for over 60 years.  He graduated from University of Michigan as a pharmacist taking over his father’s store Sam's Drugs in Detroit.  Yagoda was a recognized expert in the field of mechanical and electrical game apparatus; he has been involved in appraisal of such items for the television series American Pickers.  Yagoda died in 2017, at the age of 78.  Marvin's son Jeremy grew up in the business and carries on his father's legacy.  Tally Hall, a band from nearby Ann Arbor, titled an album after the museum.  Tally Hall was the name of the shopping mall where Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum existed before the indoor mall was converted to an outdoor strip mall in the late 1980s.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin%27s_Marvelous_Mechanical_Museum   

JPEG is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography.  The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality.  JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality.  Since its introduction in 1992, JPEG has been the most widely used image compression standard in the world, and the most widely used digital image format, with several billion JPEG images produced every day as of 2015.  The term "JPEG" is an acronym for the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which created the standard in 1992.  JPEG was largely responsible for the proliferation of digital images and digital photos across the Internet, and later social media.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG

Wildlife Photographer of the Year grand title award for 2022 goes to American Karine Aigner for her photo called "The big buzz."  The extraordinary scene depicts a ball of buzzing male cactus bees intent on mating with the sole female in the scrum, against a backdrop of scorching sands on a Texas ranch.  She is the fifth woman to be awarded the grand title award in the competition's 58-year history, organizers said.  Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum in London, where the images will be exhibited from October 14, 2022.  Hafsa Khalil  https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/wildlife-photographer-awards-2022-scli-scn-intl/index.html  See also https://weather.com/en-IN/india/biodiversity/news/2022-10-12-wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-2022-winning-photos-announced   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2577  October 14, 2022