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From:  Bartlett (via Wordsmith Talk forum)  Subject Reduplicative World Tour

When I retire (someday) I have long planned to take a world tour of places with two names the same! Walla-Walla as you noted in the introduction to this week's theme, and also: Baden Baden, Bora Bora, Pago Pago, Ubu Ubu, Paw Paw, New York, New York, Bella Bella, and Wagga Wagga, just to name a few.
From:  Eleanor Jackson  Subject:  reduplication
A children's book, Double Trouble in Walla Walla by Andrew Clements, is a hilarious read replete with irrepressible and rhythmic reduplication throughout.  I used to read it to my grandchildren amid uncontrollable giggling from all of us. Highly recommended fun for adults and kids!  And on another note, when I was a sorority pledge many years ago, we were required to memorize all the chapters and their locations.  The easiest one of all was Gamma Gamma chapter in Walla Walla (Whitman College).
From:  Chuck Domitrovich  Subject:  reduplications
In addition to Walla Walla, Washington state also has Hamma Hamma and Tumtum.
From:  Gene Oubre  Subject:  Luego Luego
Luego in Spanish means later (hasta luego meaning until later), but when it is reduplicated, it takes on a different meaning of later, meaning more immediately, meaning "right away" or "just after".
From:  David Amdal  Subject:  plurals by reduplication
The Indonesian language uses reduplication to indicate plurals.  So one fish is ikan, two or more fish are ikan ikan.  Usually printed ikan2 in newspapers, etc.

Doctor:  Treatment is not complicated:  eat, rest and take this . . . the scrawled prescription read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes.  Take ten pages, twice a day, till end of course.

Patient:  Obeying instructions, I spent two days in bed, eating and sleeping and reading Sherlock Holmes.  I confess I overdosed on my prescribed treatment, gulping down one story after another.  paraphrase from The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Nicholas Jones talks to Diane Setterfield about her first novel, The Thirteenth Tale, a compelling emotional mystery in the timeless vein of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling.  http://www.orionbooks.co.uk/authors/interviews/diane-setterfield-author-of-the-thirteenth-tale-talks-with-juliet-stevenson-and-nicholas-jones

The Decameron is a collection of 100 tales by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio written between 1350 and 1353.  It is a medieval allegorical work best known for its bawdy tales of love, appearing in all its possibilities from the erotic to the tragic.  Many notable writers such as Shakespeare and Chaucer are said to have borrowed from it.  The tale begins with 7 women and 3 men who move to a country villa to escape the Black Death in Florence.  The group stays there for fourteen days and on ten of those days they each tell one tale on a set theme.  Each day a different person is King or Queen and they decide what the theme will be.  One character Dioneo, who usually tells the tenth tale each day, has the right to tell a tale on any topic he wishes, due to his wit.  http://listverse.com/2007/12/10/10-days-of-the-decameron/

Like The Decameron or 1001 Nights, Roman Payne’s novel, Rooftop Solioquy,  has a “frame story,” or an outer-story and inner-story: the opera that Alexandre (as the narrator is [usually] called in Rooftop Soliloquy) is writing, is a love story, a combination of The Odyssey and Midsummer Night’s Dream.  http://www.greatnovels.org/

August 13  Over the decades, thousands of art lovers have clandestinely found their way by foot, snowshoe, snowmobile and ski to a field about 50 kilometres north of Toronto to peer at and walk around Shift, a still relatively unknown outdoor installation completed in 1972 by internationally acclaimed sculptor Richard Serra.  Clandestinely, because Shift’s six large concrete forms, each 20 centimetres thick and 1.5 metres high, zigzagging over about four hectares of rolling countryside, were a private commission in 1970 from Toronto art collector Roger Davidson for land owned by his family.  Serra was only 32 and a relative unknown in the international art world when he finished Shift, one of the first of the many large site-specific works that have become his signature in the past four decades.  Currently hailed as “the world’s greatest living sculptor,” he works mostly in steel and it’s not uncommon for one of his larger pieces to sell for as much as $10-million (U.S.).  Now, as development pressure around Toronto intensifies, including in the Township of King, where Shift is found, a struggle over the fate of this pioneering work of minimalism is under way.   A significant moment in the Shift saga is occurring this week in the township as the Ontario Conservation Review Board (CRB) holds a hearing on the installation possibly being designated a heritage property.  The hearing, which started on Monday, is happening more than 21/2 years after the township’s council voted to designate Shift, situated on agricultural land currently planted with corn, a protected cultural landscape under the Ontario Heritage Act.  Hickory Hill Investments (a subsidiary of Great Gulf Group of Companies, a Toronto-based developer) owns the land on which Shift is found and announced in early 2010 that it would appeal that decision to the CRB, a quasi-judicial agency that reviews the protection of heritage properties throughout Ontartio.  Although parts of the 96 hectares where the Serra sculpture is located are covered by the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan, Hickory Hill has housing and other development plans for some of the site.   At the conclusion of this week’s hearing, the CRB has at least 30 days in which to report to King Township that it recommends heritage designation, sides with the developer in recommending no such designation or draws no conclusion with respect to both sides.  At the Monday-morning hearing, Chris Barnett, counsel for Hickory Hill, said that “saving” Shift by using the Ontario Heritage Act is unnecessary because “it is not at risk” by the developer. His client “recognizes it as a significant piece of art,” he said, and has no intention of demolishing it. Moreover, the township can ensure its conservation with heritage easements (currently crops are sown within 1.5 metres of the concrete forms) and binding title agreements for future owners without securing heritage status. Such a designation now would be akin to “reaching within a private piece of property … to conserve a private piece of art” – an unprecedented action under the Heritage Act, he suggested.  In a 2009 draft agreement subsequently voted down by King councillors, Hickory Hill said it wouldn’t “harm, alter or destroy” Shift in its development of the site.  However, the draft said the developer would have no responsibility for the maintenance or repair of the installation, including “damage by third parties, weather or the elements.” Moreover, the developer would not allow, contrary to the wishes of Serra aficionados and some King residents, regular public access to the sculpture.  (In 2007, Hickory Hill proposed any such access should be limited to one day a year.)  Public access and visibility may prove moot at the hearing. Matiland noted that provincial legislation does not define a cultural landscape by the nature of its access, visibility or whether its privately owned or public or a mix thereof.  James Adams  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/art-and-architecture/fight-waged-over-richard-serra-sculpture-in-field-north-of-toronto/article4479378/

Four modern naval and Coast Guard vessels, plus a reconstruction of one of the oldest, will be the focal points of the first Navy Week in Toledo's history next week.  But while the ships' parade up the Maumee River will get Navy Week into full swing on Aug. 23, sailors are scheduled to begin event-related community appearances and presentations Aug. 20, and a series of Navy Band and Marine Corps Band concerts are set to start Aug. 21 with lunchtime performances at two Toledo sites.  The visit by the guided-missile frigate USS De Wert, coastal patrol boat USS Hurricane, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mobile Bay, frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec, and U.S. Brig Niagara are part of a six-city Navy Week tour of the Great Lakes timed to commemorate the War of 1812, during which the Battle of Lake Erie played a pivotal role in determining the future of both the United States' westward expansion and Canada's future independence.  Read more and link to scheduled events at:  http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2012/08/16/Navy-vessels-converge-on-Glass-City-for-week-of-festivities.html   

Aug. 15  If you build it, they will come.  But if you make it free, they may well come in droves. 

Attendance at the Detroit Institute of Arts more than tripled last week compared with the same five-day period in 2011.  Starting Aug. 8, the DIA opened its doors for free to residents of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties in exchange for voters' approval a day earlier of a property tax in all three counties to support the museum.  Nearly 8,000 visitors poured into the museum through Sunday, about 5,000 of whom were admitted free as residents of the tri-county area.  About 2,000 people paid general admission fees, and 900 others were admitted free as members.  http://www.freep.com/article/20120815/ENT05/308150122/Attendance-more-than-triples-at-DIA-after-millage  See also:    http://www.freep.com/article/20120807/ENT05/120807090/dia-millage-supporters-last-minute-votes

In 2001, Jim O’Neill kicked off a decade-long investment boom with a catchy acronym for the four largest emerging-market economies—Brazil, Russia, India, and China.  The Goldman Sachs (GS) Asset Management chairman is now promoting a new foursome of fast-track countries: Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Turkey.  In terms of GDP and fund holdings, the MIST nations are the biggest markets in Goldman Sachs’s N-11 Equity Fund.  Launched in February 2011, the fund has $113 million in assets (as of June 30) spread out across 73 stocks.  Not to be outdone, Citigroup (C) last year introduced CARBS—a designation that stands for Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa.  As a group, these countries supply 25 percent to 50 percent of the world’s commodities.  Analysts at BlackRock (BLK) came up with the fiscally strong CASSH economies, as in Canada, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, and Hong Kong.  And then there are the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain).   Eric Martin  http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-09/move-over-brics-dot-here-come-the-mists

Neil Dawson (born Christchurch, 1948) is a prominent New Zealand sculptor.  His best known works are large-scale civic pieces crafted from aluminium and stainless steel, often made using a lattice of natural forms which between them form a geometric whole. Dawson's best-known pieces include The Chalice, a large inverted cone in Cathedral Square, Christchurch, and Ferns, a sphere created from metal fern leaves which hangs above Wellington's Civic Square.  Major overseas commissions include Globe, for the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and Canopy, for Brisbane's Queensland Art Gallery.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Dawson  See also:  http://gibbsfarm.org.nz/dawson.php

Karen Keninger became director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in March.  She is the first person who is blind to direct the Braille and talking-book program.  Keninger is former director of the Iowa Department for the Blind, a provider of vocational rehabilitation and independent-living programs and library services for blind and visually impaired individuals.  Read interview at:  http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/newsmaker/karen-keninger

On borrowing digital books from the library by Ann Carrns

E-books may cost less than physical ones, but the spending quickly mounts when you’re an avid reader and you download volumes at will.  When I got my credit card bill for my Barnes & Noble account, which feeds my Nook reader, it gave me pause — and got me wondering about borrowing e-books from my library.  I found that borrowing digital books isn’t as easy as it should be.  A study released in June from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 12 percent of adults who read e-books have borrowed from a library.  But more than half of e-book borrowers from libraries reported that the library did not carry a book they wanted, and half said that at some point they discovered there was a waiting list to borrow the book.  My experience at my local library mirrors those findings.  I logged onto the Web site (using my card number and PIN, established when I got the card).  Then I clicked on a tab that said “Download audio books and e-books.”  To my disappointment, I wasn’t able to download books wirelessly to my Nook, as I do when buying books online.  Instead, I was directed to download Adobe’s e-reader software, Digital Editions, to my laptop.  This took a few minutes and wasn’t entirely intuitive, but it has to be done only once.  After downloading the Adobe software, I had to download the e-book to my laptop first, and then transfer it — with a USB cable — to my Nook.  All a bit of an annoyance . But one I could brush off, if the reward was a meaty selection of e-books, gratis.  Unfortunately, the menu is limited.  Many publishers are nervous that borrowing e-books from libraries is too easy and will cut into digital sales, so they refuse to sell them to libraries, or restrict the number of times a digital book can be loaned.  Read more at: 
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/on-borrowing-digital-books-from-the-library/

See also:  http://pewinternet.org/Press-Releases/2012/Libraries-patrons-and-ebooks.aspx

The bells were ringing across London for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and rang out again to welcome the world to the 2012 Olympic & Paralympics Games.  One thing all the chimes have in common is the work, skill and the history of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in the east end of the UK capital city.  Records list the foundry as Britain’s oldest manufacturing company, having been established in 1570 (during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I) and being in continuous business since that date.  But it had been thought that the company may have a longer history and, shortly after the 400 years’ celebration in 1970, a link was established founders in Aldgate and Whitechapel going back to 1420 (in the reign of Henry V and 72 years before Columbus sailed for America).  At two metres tall and three metres wide, the bell was designed and then completed by Whitechapel for installation in the Olympic Park after being cast at a foundry in the Netherlands.  The UK firm’s own foundry does not have the capacity to make such a large bell and sub-contracted the work to Royal Eijsbouts, located in Asten, Netherlands, founded in 1872.  Whitechapel’s famous bells include the original Liberty Bell (1752), the Great Bell of Montreal and, probably best known of all, Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster - the Parliament.  Cast in 1858, this is the largest bell that has ever been made at Whitechapel, weighing 13.5 tons.  Read more at:  http://www.ukti.gov.uk/lps/tradeindustry/item/352020.html 

Carambola, also known as star fruit, is the fruit of Averrhoa carambola, a species of tree native to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.  The fruit is popular throughout Southeast Asia, the South Pacific and parts of East Asia.  The tree is also cultivated throughout non-indigenous tropical areas, such as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the southern United States.  The fruit has distinctive ridges running down its sides (usually five, but can sometimes vary); in cross-section, it resembles a star, hence its name.  The entire fruit is edible and is usually eaten out of hand.  They may also be used in cooking, and can be made into relishes, preserves, and juice drinks.  See pictures at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carambola

Metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas (metro and micro areas) are geographic entities defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for use by Federal statistical agencies in collecting, tabulating, and publishing Federal statistics.  The term "Core Based Statistical Area" (CBSA) is a collective term for both metro and micro areas.  A metro area contains a core urban area of 50,000 or more population, and a micro area contains an urban core of at least 10,000 (but less than 50,000) population.  Each metro or micro area consists of one or more counties and includes the counties containing the core urban area, as well as any adjacent counties that have a high degree of social and economic integration (as measured by commuting to work) with the urban core.  http://www.census.gov/population/metro/

Aug. 15 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Julia Child, the trailblazing TV chef who made French cooking accessible to many Americans — becoming a jolly presence in our living rooms and an inspiration in our kitchens.  Google is celebrating her centenary with a colorful homepage Doodle that displays the array of her talents, from poultry to dessert — with the top of the Google “G” sitting in the first pot.

When the Oliver House opened its doors in 1859, Toledo, with a population nearing ten thousand, was in the midst of progress.  As a railroad center and growing commercial metropolis, the city served as the county seat, boasted a telegraph line, and had erected a bridge to span the Maumee River.  When commissioned by Major William Oliver, renowned architect Isaiah Rogers designed a first class modern hotel for “one of the most delightful portions of the city”.  Located in the section of downtown referred to as the Middlegrounds, the hotel would have a main front overlooking a beautiful park with shade trees and private rooms that offered a view of the Maumee River.  Famous for his palace hotel designs, Rogers also gained national recognition as Chief of the Bureau of Construction in the U.S. Treasury Department, a position appointed to him by President Lincoln.  Advertisements proudly announced the million and a quarter bricks that went into the construction and the 171 rooms each with its own fireplace, running water, and gas lighting.  Beautiful furnishings such as rosewood chairs, a carved piano, and lace curtains decorated the interior of the Oliver House.  Guests enjoyed all the finest luxuries, including an omnibus that transported travelers from the railroad station to the hotel.  In 1919, Edward N. Riddle bought the Oliver House and converted it into an industrial plant for the Riddle Co., manufacturers of lighting fixtures.  The new plant required that the interior be totally gutted.  The only remnants of the grand hotel were two ornamental marble mantels, some wallpaper, and a black walnut and ash floor in the lobby area.  In 1947 the Oliver House changed owners again.  Used for industrial purposes once more, it housed an axel manufacturer called Toledo Wheel & Rim.  Twenty years later, in 1967, Successful Sales Co purchased the Oliver House, for show and storage of novelty items that the company sold.  At this time, the building was also occupied by various small businesses.  Today, the Oliver House stands as the only remaining hotel designed by Isaiah Rogers. Happily, it has been returned to the public once again as a place of social activity and entertainment.  See more plus pictures at:  http://www.theoliverhousetoledo.com/history.html 

A lawyer sentenced to prison for participating in stock fraud has lost a lawsuit seeking the right to a jigsaw puzzle in prison.  U.S. District Judge John Gleeson of Brooklyn ruled against inmate Alan Berkun’s First Amendment claim, the New York Post reports at:  http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/judge_lawyer_jigsaw_jail_has_puzzles_YvaZn3mprPH8BY4EJe05TK   “Berkun has failed to show that his possession of a jigsaw puzzle is expressive and therefore constitutionally protected,” Gleeson wrote.  ”Even if the reassembled image itself were protected by the First Amendment, Berkun has not shown how the act of assembling the pieces is in any way expressive conduct.”  Government lawyers said the prison was justified in banning the puzzle because it could “cause unnecessary clutter, pose a fire hazard, and/or limit Berkun’s living area,” according to a prior New York Post story at:  http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/con_goes_to_pieces_over_jigsaw_p1rk4XjancsdauFpORNmtO#ixzz20RgykqK5.  Berkun ordered the puzzle from Amazon.com.  http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/a_puzzling_decision_judge_rules_against_lawyer-prisoners_first_amendment_ji/

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a break from her duties as a member of the high court to appear as the main attraction on a panel at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in Chicago called, “Arias of Law: The Rule of Law at Work in Opera and the Supreme Court.”  “The founders of our country were great men with a vision,” Justice Ginsburg said. “They were held back from realizing their idea by the times in which they lived.  But, she added, their notion was that society would evolve and that the clauses of the Constitution would grow with society.  “The Constitution would always be in tune with society that the law is meant to serve.”  The panel included performances by members of the Ryan Opera Center and Lyric Opera of Chicago.  Among them, “I Accept Their Verdict” from Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd and “When I Went To The Bar,” from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe.  Justice Ginsburg was joined on the panel by U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. and Anthony Freud, the general director of the Chicago’s Lyric Opera, himself a trained attorney.  Craig Martin, a partner in the Chicago office of the law firm, Jenner & Block LLP, moderated the panel.  A hand-out for the panel kicked off the discussion by noting that some say lawyers are like opera singers because they love the sound of their own voices.  Justice Ginsburg’s love of the opera is quite well known, by the way.  She’s made cameo appearances in Washington National Opera productions. 

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/08/03/justice-ginsburg-on-opera-and-constitution/  

See the panel discussion at:  http://www.scribd.com/doc/101957508/Arias-of-Law-Program

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Here in Washington State we have a town named Walla Walla ("place of many rivers") from a Sahaptian language word walla, meaning river.  Linguists call such repetition of a word reduplication.  Reduplication occurs when a word is formed by repeating another word, sometimes with a slight change in sound (for example, shilly-shally).  This repetition may be used to indicate plurality, to intensify the idea, to convey the idea of "etc." and so on.
chop-chop  (chop-chop)  adverb:  Quickly.  
From Chinese Pidgin English chop (fast).  Pidgin is a simplified language that develops when two groups that do not have a language in common come in contact, usually for trade.  Chinese Pidgin English was used in ports in southern China.  The word pidgin is said to have been formed from the Chinese pronunciation of the word business.  Earliest documented use:  1834.
froufrou  (FROO-froo)  noun:
1.  Something fancy, elaborate, and showy.
2.  A rustling sound, as of a silk dress.
From French, of imitative origin. Earliest documented use: 1870.
chichi  (SHEE-shee)
adjective:  Affectedly elegant.  noun:  Showy stylishness.
From French, of imitative origin. Earliest documented use: 1908.
chin-chin  (CHIN-chin)
noun:  A chat.  verb intr.:  To chat.
interjection: Used as a toast, greeting, or farewell.
From Chinese ching-ching (please-please). Earliest documented use:  1795.
yada yada  (YAH-duh YAH-duh)
adverb:  And so on.  noun:  Uninteresting, long-winded talk.
Of imitative origin.  The word is often mistaken for being Yiddish.  Earliest documented use: 1967.

Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist's Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets

August 12, 2012–January 7, 2013

Museum of Modern Art  11 West 53 Street New York  (212) 708-9400

This MoMA gallery exhibition and accompanying film retrospective will be the first presentation of the Quay Brothers' work in all their fields of creative activity.  Internationally renowned moving image artists and designers, the Quay Brothers were born outside Philadelphia and have worked from their London studio, Atelier Koninck, since the late 1970s.  For over 30 years, they have been in the avant-garde of stop-motion puppet animation and live-action movie-making in the Eastern European tradition of filmmakers like Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Svankmajer and the Russian Yuri Norstein, and have championed a design aesthetic influenced by the graphic surrealism of Polish poster artists of the 1950s and 1960s.  Beginning with their student films in 1971, the Quay Brothers have produced over 45 moving image works, including two features, music videos, dance films, documentaries, and signature personal works, including The Street of Crocodiles (1986), the Stille Nacht series (1988–2008), Institute Benjamenta (1995), and In Absentia (2000).  They have also designed sets and projections for opera, drama, and concert performances such as Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa (1991), Ionesco’s The Chairs (Tony-nominated design, 1997), Richard Ayre’s The Cricket Recovers (2005), and recent site-specific pieces based on the work of Bartók and Kafka.  http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1240 

Works by Olympians have been on display in London throughout the Games.  The pieces form part of the collection of the Art of the Olympians museum in Fort Myers, Fla., a two-year-old institution celebrating the creative talents of Olympians past and present.  It also pays homage to an often-forgotten piece of Olympic history:  Art was a competitive event in the early period of the Games, from 1912 to 1948.  Medals were given in architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture.  In 2008, before the Fort Myers museum was completed, organizers sent 30 pieces to the Beijing Olympics.  But they were housed in a distant location and partly outdoors, prompting museum officials to send replicas instead of originals.  This year, most of the exhibit is at University College London (with additional pieces on display in Torbay, England), in the heart of the city.  It has drawn a few thousand visitors, organizers say. 

http://stream.wsj.com/story/london-olympics-2012/SS-2-13789/SS-2-44603/

Art of the Olympians Museum  1300 Hendry Street  Fort Myers, FL 33901  (239) 332-5055  http://www.artoftheolympians.org/meet-the-artists.html

Тop 10 • Best Panoramas • 360° Virtual Tours  Includes New York, Angel Waterfall and Machu Pichu.  Thanks, Paul.  http://www.airpano.com/List-Aerial-Panoramas-Top10.php

In late August 1814, in the middle of a blazing hot summer, a British fleet under the command of Admiral Sir George Cockburn, with military forces under the command of Major General Robert Ross, sailed into the Patuxent River, disembarked and marched inland towards Washington.  They inflicted the first ever defeat on an American army in the field at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24^th, then swanned into Washington.  No-one was there to surrender the city.  President James Madison was with his routed troops.  His wife, Dolley, had escaped after supervising the evacuation of precious items from the White House, including the Washington portrait.  Others, junior clerks in the main, did what they could to save important state documents, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, international treaties, and the correspondence of George Washington...".  Before they did anything, the British, hot and tired after their march and the fight with the American army, helped themselves to the food and drink laid out for the president and his anticipated guests in the White House dining room.  Then they set fire to the White House, the Capitol and other government buildings – the Navy Yards had already been fired by the retreating Americans to keep the stores out of British hands.  Private property was scrupulously preserved, however, and the Patent Office was also saved, through the intervention of William Thornton, the superintendent of patents, who persuaded the British that the record of inventions contained in the building was too valuable to be lost.   Then there were the books in the Library of Congress – some 3000 of them (as against the more than 18 million volumes now in the library's collection), all of them painstakingly acquired with scarce, hard-won funds, mostly since the move to the new capital; most of them, ironically, published in Great Britain.  They would, if still extant, in the words of one scholar, be worth "an oil sheik's ransom."  As far as is known only a single one of these volumes survived the fire – and it was not returned until 1940.  Read more about looting and find some titles of the original 1814 collection of the Library of Congress at:  http://www.llrx.com/features/librcongresswar1812.htm

The culture of North America changed forever in the year 1513.  In April, the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed while searching for the fabled isle of Bimini.  The exact landing spot where Ponce and his men came ashore remains unknown, but it was apparently somewhere between the Cape Canaveral area and the mouth of the St. Johns River.  Searching for this historic site, archeologists have conducted numerous "digs" at the Fountain of Youth, a National Archeological Park, where a Timucuan Indian village called Seloy was located and where the city of St. Augustine had its beginning.  Ponce de Leon was on a mission of exploration, not settlement, and his visit to northeast Florida was brief.  Because he arrived during the Easter season, known as the Pascua Florida, Ponce named his new discovery La Florida – a name still used today.  Besides naming the land and claiming it for Spain, Ponce de Leon made a discovery that was to lead to the creation of St. Augustine.  Sailing along the Florida coastline, Ponce de Leon realized that a strong current was carrying his ships rapidly northward.  This would aid in quickly returning Spanish ships home and was later called the Gulf Stream.   http://www.augustine.com/history/ponce-leon.php

With the support of a grant from The Homeland Foundation, the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut ulitizes EmbARK, an image-based software program to organize its collections and make them readily available to the public.  To date, the Museum has entered information on over 6,000 objects in its permanent collection.  You are invited to explore and tour the Museum's extensive collections of American art and history, including the recently acquired Hartford Steam Boiler Collection.  Visitors can search individual or groups of collection items by using specific keywords.  http://collections.flogris.org/

The Olympic motto is the hendiatris Citius, Altius, Fortius, which is Latin for "Faster, Higher, Stronger".  The motto was proposed by Pierre de Coubertin on the creation of the International Olympic Committee in 1894.  De Coubertin borrowed it from his friend Henri Didon, a Dominican priest who, amongst other things, was an athletics enthusiast.  The motto was introduced in 1924 at the Olympic Games in Paris.   The symbol of the Olympic Games is composed of five interlocking rings, coloured blue, yellow, black, green, and red on a white field.  This was originally designed in 1912 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games.  According to de Coubertin, the ring colours with the white background stand for those colors that appeared on all the national flags that competed in the Olympic games at that time.  The 1914 Congress had to be suspended because of the outbreak of World War I, but the symbol and flag were later adopted.  They would first officially debut at the Games of the VII Olympiad in Antwerp, Belgium in 1920.  The symbol's popularity and widespread use began during the lead-up to the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.  Carl Diem, president of the Organizing Committee of the 1936 Summer Olympics, wanted to hold a torchbearers' ceremony in the stadium at Delphi, site of the famous oracle, where the Pythian Games were also held.  For this reason he ordered construction of a milestone with the Olympic rings carved in the sides, and that a torchbearer should carry the flame along with an escort of three others from there to Berlin.  The ceremony was celebrated but the stone was never removed.  Later, two British authors Lynn and Gray Poole when visiting Delphi in the late 1950s saw the stone and reported in their "History of the Ancient Games" that the Olympic rings design came from ancient Greece.  This has become known as "Carl Diem's Stone".  This created a myth that the symbol had an ancient Greek origin.  The current view of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is that the symbol "reinforces the idea" that the Olympic Movement is international and welcomes all countries of the world to join.  As can be read in the Olympic Charter, the Olympic symbol represents the union of the five regions of the world and the meeting of athletes from throughout the world at the Olympic Games.  However, no continent is represented by any specific ring.  The Olympic flag was created by Pierre De Coubertin in 1914.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_symbols 

The International Day of the World's Indigenous People is observed on August 9 each year to promote and protect the rights of the world’s indigenous population.  This event also recognizes the achievements and contributions that indigenous people make to improve world issues such as environmental protection.  It was first pronounced by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1994, marking the day of the first meeting of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations of the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, in 1982.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Day_of_the_World%27s_Indigenous_People

August 9 events

1173 – Construction of the campanile of the cathedral of Pisa (now known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa) begins; it will take two centuries to complete.

1854 – Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden.
1892 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for a two-way telegraph.
1945 – World War II: Nagasaki is devastated when an atomic bomb, Fat Man, is dropped by the United States B-29 Bockscar. 39,000 people are killed outright.
1945 – World War II: The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and begins the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation.
1965 – Singapore is expelled from Malaysia and becomes the first and only country to date to gain independence unwillingly.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_9

On August 9, 2012 Singaporeans are encouraged to show their patriotic fervor by displaying their country's flag proudly, sharing snapshots of their favorite local foods and dancing along to a fresh new national theme song.  But there is another, distinctly unofficial, national song in Singapore these days.  It is asking locals to try something else on their country's big day:  Make love for Singapore.  The soulful rap, which is part of a new ad campaign to promote Mentos mints, is called "National Night," and it exhorts Singaporeans to "do their civic duty" to help solve the city-state's low birthrate by making a baby on Aug. 9.  "It's National Night, let's make Singapore's birthrate spike," a female vocalist sings over jittery synthesizers and drumbeats, as her male counterpart shouts phrases like "that's right" and "the birthrate won't spike itself!"  "Singapore's population, it needs some increasin', so forget waving flags, August 9th we be freaking," the rap continues.  Shibani Mahtani http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443545504577567052477900124.html?mod=ITP_AHED

The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all tapped the treasures of Socotra’s natural world:  aromatic resins such as frankincense, medicinal aloe extract, and the dark red sap of the dragon’s blood tree, used for healing and as an artist’s color.  Adventurers came to harvest the island’s wealth, despite stories that it was guarded by giant snakes living in its caves.  The Queen of Sheba, Alexander the Great, and Marco Polo were among those who coveted Socotra’s riches.  The value of incense and dragon’s blood peaked during the time of the Roman Empire.  Afterward, the island served mostly as a way station for traders, passing centuries in relative cultural isolation.  Socotra’s residents lived generation after generation as their ancestors had: the mountain Bedouin minding their goats, the coastal residents fishing, and everyone harvesting dates . Island history was passed down through poetry, recited in the Socotri language.  Other than its strategic location off the Horn of Africa, there simply wasn’t anything about Socotra that interested the outside world.  But that has changed.  Research around the turn of the 20th century proved that this tropical island, despite its size of only 83 by 27 miles, ranks among the world’s most important centers of biodiversity, combining elements of Africa, Asia, and Europe in ways that still puzzle biologists.  The number of endemic plant species (those found nowhere else) per square mile on Socotra and three small outlying islands is the fourth highest of any island group on Earth—after Seychelles, New Caledonia, and Hawaii. The Hajhir Mountains, the rugged granite peaks that rise to nearly 5,000 feet in the center of the island, are likely home to the highest density of endemic plants in southwest Asia.  Every vista on Socotra, from the hot, dry lowlands to the mist-shrouded mountains, reveals wonders seen nowhere else. 

See photo of dragon's blood tree at:  http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/socotra/white-text

The DVD-by-mail model, on which Netflix built its success, was enabled by the first sale doctrine, which cuts off a copyright owner’s distribution right with respect to a particular copy of a copyrighted work when that copy is first sold.  Because of the first sale doctrine, Netflix was not required to get permission from movie studios to set up its business.  In the early days, Netflix simply bought DVDs—lots of them—from whatever retailers were selling them and then rented those DVDs to its customers. If the movie studios didn’t like that, well, too bad.  Over time, as its customer base grew, Netflix did enter into direct purchasing and revenue sharing agreements with studios, but it wasn’t copyright law that required it to do so—at least not directly.  Netflix agreed to play ball with the studios in part to get more reliable access to larger numbers of DVDs.  If Netflix could have lawfully acquired enough DVDs to supply customer demand without bargaining with the studios, it would have had the right under copyright law to rent every last one, forever, without remitting a dime in copyright licensing fees.  Eventually, though, it became clear to both Netflix and the studios that streaming was the wave of the future.  And delivering movies by stream to remote customers is not covered by the first sale doctrine.   Unlike the DVD-by-mail model, Netflix streaming implicates the movie studios’ public performance right in their copyrighted works.  The law right now is a little unclear on this point, the question being under what circumstances streaming to the home is a transmission “to the public” within the meaning of the Copyright Act (James Grimmelmann has a great rundown of the cases and their tortured logic at:  http://laboratorium.net/archive/2011/03/16/that_zediva_thing_its_so_not_going_to_work

Annemarie Bridy  http://www.llrx.com/features/declineofdvdbymail.htm 

Q:  Why do we use the term "dollar" for our money?
A:  It comes from the German word "thaler," which was a large silver coin. Thalers were popular everywhere and other countries made their own, including Spain.  American colonists often traded in the "Spanish dollar," so "dollar" was an easy choice as a name for America's new currency.  The dollar was one of the first silver coins made in the United States, in 1794.  

 U.S. Mint.   http://www.thecourier.com/Opinion/columns/2012/Jul/JU/ar_JU_073012.asp?d=073012,2012,Jul,30&c=c_13 

Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of Xultún in Guatemala's Petén region, archaeologists have uncovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the town's scribe, its walls adorned with unique paintings -- one depicting a lineup of men in black uniforms -- and hundreds of scrawled numbers.  Many are calculations relating to the Maya calendar.   The vegetation-covered structure was first spotted in 2010 by Saturno's student Max Chamberlain, who was following looters' trenches to explore the site of Xultún, hidden in the remote rain forest of the Petén.  Then, supported by a series of grants from the National Geographic Society, Saturno and his team launched an organized exploration and excavation of the house, working urgently to beat the region's rainy seasons, which threatened to erase what time had so far preserved.  Xultún, a 12-square-mile site where tens of thousands once lived, was first discovered about 100 years ago by a Guatemalan worker and roughly mapped in the 1920s by Sylvanus Morley, who named the site "Xultún" -- "end stone."  Scientists from Harvard University mapped more of the site in the 1970s.  The house discovered by Saturno's team was numbered 54 of 56 structures counted and mapped at that time.  Thousands at Xultún remain uncounted.  The team's excavations reveal that monumental construction at Xultún began in the first centuries B.C.  The site thrived until the end of the Classic Maya period; the site's last carved monument dates to around 890 A.D.  Xultún stood only about five miles from San Bartolo, where in 2001 Saturno found rare, extensive murals painted on the walls of a ritual structure by the ancient Maya.  See a photo of one mural at:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120510141953.htm 

The art of writing can be reduced to a few simple rules. Colson Whitehead shares 11 rules, and at least one will surprise you.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/books/review/colson-whiteheads-rules-for-writing.html?pagewanted=all 

Writer James Barrie awarded his copyright on Peter Pan to a London children's hospital in 1929.  As far as the Great Ormond Street Hospital is concerned, it owns the rights so long as Peter remains airborne -- or at least until 2023, when the hospital's U.S. copyright over the original Peter Pan play expires. In a suit filed in San Francisco federal court in late 2002, Emily Somma -- author of "After the Rain: A New Adventure for Peter Pan" -- says the characters created a century ago now belong to the world.  Peter Pan, Wendy, Tinker Bell and Captain Hook first appeared in Barrie's book "The Little White Bird" in 1902, followed two years later by Barrie's better-known stage play.  The hospital's blanket copyright protection ended in 1987 -- 50 years after Barrie's death.  Britain's Parliament then granted the hospital a perpetual right to royalties from any British publication.  The works are in the public domain in Canada, free of copyright restrictions.  But in the United States, a 1976 law extended the hospital's copyright over the 1904 Peter Pan play and all works derived from it until 2023.  The hospital says its rights to the play and its characters entitle it to forbid U.S. sales of any competing works involving Peter Pan.  http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Lawsuit-seeks-to-eliminate-copyright-on-Peter-Pan-2708750.php

Great Ormond Street Hospital (“the Hospital”) and June Emily Somma on March 22, 2005 announce the resolution of two years’ litigation concerning the copyright and trademark rights surround J M Barrie’s story and character Peter Pan.  The parties wish to express their shared

understanding that Ms. Somma’s novel After the Rain: A New Adventure for Peter Pan

constitutes a fair use which does not infringe on any of the US intellectual property rights

currently held by the Hospital.  The Hospital believes that Ms Somma has made an important

contribution to the field of children’s literature and recognises her love of children.  The Hospital and Ms Somma have put in place an arrangement consisting of mutually-agreed conditions under which Ms Somma may develop After the Rain and the further adventures of his storyline and characters.  http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/attachments/SommaPressRelease.pdf 

In Ohio, R.C. 4507.06 states:

“(A)(1)  Every application for a driver’s license or motorcycle operator’s license or endorsement, or duplicate of any such license or endorsement, shall be made upon the approved form furnished by the registrar of motor vehicles and shall be signed by the applicant.

Every application shall state the following: 

(a)  The applicant’s name, date of birth, social security number if such has been assigned, sex, general description, including height, weight, color of hair, and eyes, residence address, including county of residence, duration of residence in this state, and country of citizenship;…”

courtesy of Peter Mattiace, editor, The Courier

A few Ohio residents have had to state how long they have lived in Ohio when renewing their drivers licenses recently, and the editor of the Findlay, Ohio paper contacted the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.  This provision has been part of the Ohio Revised Code since at least 1985.  There is no requirement for Ohio legislative histories to be kept, so the original intent for this question is anyone's guess. 

The World Heritage list kept by Unesco is full of historic city centers, old bridges and unique mosques and palaces.  Early in July 2012, a somewhat different site made it onto the blue-ribbon list:  a collection of 19th-century folk-art decoration and wall paintings by artists whose work remains hidden away in farm buildings in the Swedish countryside.   Some of the painters' names are unknown, but the art, in the north-central province of Hälsingland, was getting a higher profile even before the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization decided to add seven farms to its heritage list because of their "outstanding universal value."  (The list now includes 745 cultural attractions world-wide.)  J.S. Marcus  See picture by "the blue painter" in 1853 at:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443343704577549113384614298.html?mod=googlenews_wsj 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com