Books are the carriers of civilization.  Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.  Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.  They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time.  They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind.  Books are humanity in print.  Barbara W. Tuchman Historian, Journalist (1912–1989)  [Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Nov. 1980), pp. 16-32]  http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/137261.Barbara_W_Tuchman    See also http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-tuchman-21018951#personal-life

Feb. 9, 2015  A tattered copy of the Magna Carta has been discovered in the archives of the municipality of Sandwich, a sleepy seaside town in eastern England, according to the local government and a historian at the University of East Anglia.  News of the find comes just as the charter, often regarded as England’s first step towards civil rights, marks its 800th anniversary.  Events have been scheduled across the country to mark the occasion, including a recent reunion of the four surviving copies of the original version, issued in 1215, in London this month.  Between 1215 and 1300, other copies of the Magna Carta were marked with a royal seal, only two dozen of which are known to exist.  The copy found in Sandwich, in the county of Kent, dates to 1300, when King Edward I issued the final version of the charter marked with such a seal.  The original version signed in 1215 was issued by King John, an unpopular ruler under pressure to check his own power in the interest of preventing civil war.  The document affirms the king as subject to the law like any other citizen.  Christopher D. Shea  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/unearthed-from-towns-archives-copy-of-magna-carta-from-1300/?_r=0

Puddingstone, also known as either pudding stone or plum-pudding stone, is a popular name applied to a conglomerate that consists of distinctly rounded pebbles whose colors contrast sharply with the color of the finer-grained, often sandy, matrix or cement surrounding them.  The rounded pebbles and the sharp contrast in color gives this type of conglomerate the appearance of a raisin or Christmas pudding.  There are different types of puddingstone, with different composition, origin, and geographical distribution.  Examples of different types of puddingstones include the Hertfordshire, Schunemunk, Roxbury, and St. Joseph Island (Drummond Island), puddingstones.  See pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puddingstone_%28rock%29

The Monographs and Open Access Project was set up to consider the place of monographs in the arts, humanities and social science disciplines, and how they fit into the developing world of open access to research.  The project was led by Geoffrey Crossick, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and was commissioned by HEFCE in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).  Evidence to support the project was gathered through an programme of consultations, surveys, data-gathering and research activities.  The research was supported and shaped by an Expert Reference Group of publishers, academics, librarians, funders, open access experts in the UK and overseas.  Find main points of the report at http://www.bespacific.com/monographs-open-access/

The name "Adirondack" may have derived from the Iroquois word "ha-de-ron-dah", which means "bark-eater," a derisive term they gave to the Algonquins.  See the history of the Adirondacks, a timeline starting at 10,000 BC at http://adirondack-history.com/timeline.htm

Many times, abandoned buildings will just sit there untouched and slowly fall into ruin.  They are often covered in graffiti, decked in spider webs, and they look like something out of a horror film.  McAllen is a town in the southern section of Texas that saw one of its Walmart locations go out of business and sit idle for many years.  After the store shuttered, it eventually fell into the property of the city, and the decision was made to turn the building into a public library.  At the size of nearly two-and-a-half football fields, it is now the largest single location public library in the United States.  Todd Briscoe  See many pictures at http://www.littlethings.com/abandoned-walmart-becomes-library/

PROSCIUTTO:  interview with Herb Eckhouse, co-owner of La Quercia in Norwalk, Iowa  Ham that you buy in the supermarket is cooked.  There are three ways you can protect meat and make it safe to eat for a long period.  One of the ways is to cook it.  You kill the bacteria by heating them.  One of them is to dry it.  That's what we do with prosciutto.  You take the water out and then the bacteria can't live.  Then when you dry the meat, you can then age it and get that really rich, complex flavor and that transformation of texture.  The time for drying and curing varies with the kind of meat we're using and the way we prepare it.  It's a minimum of 9 months and a maximum of about 3 years.

http://www.splendidtable.org/story/is-this-prosciutto-heaven-no-its-iowa 

DISTANCE BETWEEN CITIES   Find the distance as the crow flies, by car, estimated driving time, and "best route" marked at http://www.distance-cities.com/  Example:  Forest Hills, NY to Hoboken, NJ at http://www.distance-cities.com/search?from=forest+hills%2C+ny&to=hoboken%2C+nj

X-ray technique reads burnt Vesuvius scroll by Jonathan Webb  For the first time, words have been read from a burnt, rolled-up scroll buried by Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.  The scrolls of Herculaneum, the only classical library still in existence, were blasted by volcanic gas hotter than 300C and are desperately fragile.  Deep inside one scroll, physicists distinguished the ink from the paper using a 3D X-ray imaging technique sometimes used in breast scans.  They believe that other scrolls could also be deciphered without unrolling.  The work appears in the journal Nature Communications.  The resort town of Herculaneum, sometimes called "the other Pompeii", was similarly buried in ash by Vesuvius.  A remarkable library of scrolls was excavated from one of its villas in the 18th century.  Although some unrolled fragments have been read successfully, particularly in recent years with the help of infra-red cameras, such unwinding efforts were eventually abandoned because of how much of the scrolls they destroyed.  Read article and see pictures at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30888767

Feb. 17, 2016  Princeton University received a $300 million collection of rare books including the famed 1455 Gutenberg Bible and the first printing of the works of William Shakespeare.  The 2,500-volume collection was bequeathed by philanthropist William Scheide, who died in November at age 100.  The university in Princeton, New Jersey, has housed Scheide’s library since 1959.  The collection also includes an original printing of the Declaration of Independence, Paul Revere’s print engraving of the Boston Massacre and autograph music sketchbooks of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and Wagner.  The gift is the largest in Princeton’s history.  At the heart of the collection are the first six printed editions of the bible, including the Gutenberg, the first substantial book printed in Europe using movable type.  Even more valuable is the original printing of Shakespeare, known as the First Folio, accompanied by the second, third and fourth folios.  The collection was started by Scheide’s grandfather, also named William, who made his fortune in the 19th century Pennsylvania oil boom.  The younger Scheide, a musician, bibliophile and philanthropist, graduated from Princeton in 1936 with a degree in history.  He earned a master’s in music from Columbia and founded the Bach Aria Group.  Princeton is designing a new space for the Scheide collection as part of a renovation of its Firestone Library.  The school said it’s digitizing materials including the Gutenberg bible and making them available on its website.  Chris Staiti  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-17/princeton-gets-gutenberg-bible-in-300-million-rare-book-gift

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1258  February 18, 2015  On this date in 1848, Louis Comfort Tiffany, American stained glass artist, was born.  On this date in 1979, snow fell in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history.

How J.K. Rowling Plotted Harry Potter with a Hand-Drawn Spreadsheet by Colin Marshall   At the height of the Harry Potter novels’ popularity, I asked a number of people why those books in particular enjoyed such a devoted readership.  Everyone gave almost the same answer: that author J.K. Rowling “tells a good story.”  The response at once clarified everything and nothing; of course a “good story” can draw a large, enthusiastic (and, at that time, impatient) readership, but what does it take to actually tell a good story?   See a scrap of a piece of lined paper containing part of the handwritten plot spreadsheet she used to write the fifth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/j-k-rowling-plotted-harry-potter-with-a-hand-drawn-spreadsheet.html

If "Mark Twain Said It," He Probably Didn't by Mark Peters  

Sept. 27, 2009   That Mark Twain was something else, wasn't he?  He said so many memorable things, like "If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes" and "Golf is a good walk spoiled."  What a writer, what a guy.  Unfortunately--even though Twain is the great American humorist--he didn't say either of those things.  Twain is what scholar Fred Shapiro calls a "quote magnet," someone who receives credit for sayings and proverbs that never passed their lips or pens.  Also called "Churchillian drift" by Nigel Rees, quote magnetism is a common phenomenon that infects everything from student papers to political speeches, and respected books of quotations aren't immune.  As quote experts Rees and Shapiro have shown, "So-and-so said" are some of the least trustworthy words in the language.  I interviewed Fred Shapiro, librarian and lecturer at Yale Law School and editor of The Yale Book of Quotations by phone, and he said that while Churchill may be a top quote magnet in England, there's no doubt the top American is Mark Twain.  For example, Shapiro found the New England weather quote in print 10 years before the earliest attribution to Twain; the golf quote appeared 35 years before.  Shapiro advises skepticism regarding all Twain-isms:  "If you just assume that any quote from Twain is apocryphal, you won't be wrong very often."  In America, Shapiro said that "people associated with folksiness" such as Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Yogi Berra are the big quote magnets.  Another folksy fellow is George W. Bush, who often gets credit for the supposed Bushism "strategery,"  which was actually coined by Bush impersonator Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live.  Similarly, the Sarah Palin one-liner "I can see Russia from my house" is a Tiny Fey-ism, not a Palinism.  There are many ways a quotation can be disapproved, as Shapiro and his research assistants learned during the six years it took to compile the Yale Book of Quotations.  Shapiro said, "There's a tendency to improve quotes."  That improvement works in a few ways:  If I cite Mark Twain instead of my cousin Billy, the quote is improved and my own case bolstered.  Wording gets revised, too.  For example, Shakespeare's "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him" is oft-misquoted as "Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well," which Shapiro notes is "better than the original."  Shapiro says that quotes are made more concise and memorable, and archaic words may be replaced.  http://magazine.good.is/articles/if-mark-twain-said-it-he-probably-didnt

The Werner projection is a pseudoconic equal-area map projection sometimes called the Stab-Werner or Stabius-Werner projection.  Like other heart-shaped projections, it is also categorized as cordiform.  Stab-Werner refers to two originators:  Johannes Werner (1466–1528), a parish priest in Nuremberg, refined and promoted this projection that had been developed earlier by Johannes Stabius (Stab) of Vienna around 1500.  The projection is a limiting form of the Bonne projection, having its standard parallel at one of the poles (90°N/S).  Distances along each parallel and along the central meridian are correct, as are all distances from the north pole.    Link to a list of map projections and see two beautiful graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_projection

Costco Wholesale Corp., acknowledging its split with American Express Co., said on Feb. 13, 2015 that it is close to reaching a deal with a new credit card company for exclusive rights to serve the giant retailer's customers.  Costco should be in a position to announce the new partner "probably sooner rather than later," said spokesman Bob Nelson, raising the possibility that could happen as early as next week.  The company, based in Issaquah, Wash., east of Seattle, has been talking with several credit card firms for some time in anticipation of a break with AmEx, Nelson said.  Last fall, Costco ended its partnership with AmEx in Canada, choosing instead a Capital One MasterCard.  American Express customers spend an average of $142.82 per transaction versus $90.44 for MasterCard, $84.67 for Visa and $63.91 for Discover Financial Services, according to Jim Sinegal, a senior analyst for Morningstar Inc.  For AmEx, the strategy had the double benefit of generating high fee income while keeping credit risk down.  Even today, about 80% of the company's revenue comes from swiping the cards and only 20% from interest income on pending balances, Sinegal said.  AmEx also was an early mover in the rewards business, offering exclusive perks with airlines and hotels, and in the partnership business, such as with Costco.  The partnership had allowed AmEx to expand its distribution to Costco's relatively affluent members, and Costco got access to AmEx's high spenders.  And the retailer's heft gave it the ability to demand lower swipe fees than smaller merchants paid to AmEx.  Dean Starkman and E. Scott Reckard  

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-costco-amex-20150214-story.html

Featured in the New York Times, the "Modern Love" column runs essays every week about love, loss, desire and the human condition.  Filled with people's personal stories that are both vulnerably honest and edifying, the column has its own cult readership and is probably one of the most valued columns running today.  Here are eight "Modern Love" columns to read this week including "To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This" an essay by Mandy Len Catron telling the story of how she  asked her date 36 questions from a 1997 psychology experiment to see if she could create the special intimacy often associated with love.  http://www.techtimes.com/articles/31866/20150210/the-8-best-modern-love-columns-to-read-this-valentine-s-day.htm

Philip Levine revealed the poetry in the lives working people, and especially the people and places of his youth — in the auto factories and working class homes of urban Detroit.  In a career that spanned six decades, he was a United States Poet Laureate, and winner of two National Book Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.  He died Feb. 14, 2015 in Fresno, Calif.  He was 87.  In 2004, at the age of 76, Levine said his biggest literary influence was the New Jersey poet, William Carlos Williams.  "He seemed able in his best poetry — to find poetry almost anywhere, anywhere," Levine said.   "And that was the big lesson I got from him:  Don't scorn your life just because it's not dramatic, or it's impoverished, or it looks dull, or it's workaday.  Don't scorn it.  It is where poetry is taking place if you've got the sensitivity to see it, if your eyes are open."  Tom Vitale  

See examples of Levine's poetry at http://www.npr.org/2015/02/15/384096472/philip-levine-who-found-poetry-on-detroits-assembly-lines-dies-at-87

Feb. 16, 2015  Conan O'Brien spent the weekend in Cuba.  He is now the first U.S. late-night host to film on mainland Cuba since the embargo began in 1962.  (Brian Williams, David Muir and Scott Pelley have all broadcast from there in recent months.)  The last time a late-night American show visited the country was in 1959, when Jack Paar of the Tonight Show interviewed Fidel Castro, a move that earned him some criticism at the time, notes Deadline.  The episode, which promises to offer a glimpse into the daily life of Cubans, will air on March 4 at 11 p.m. ET/PT on TBS.  http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2015/02/16/conan-films-in-cuba-first-late-night-host/23485345/

Happy Presidents Day (with no apostrophe--according to the Associated Press Stylebook.)  Only about 35 percent of workers get a paid day off for Presidents Day, according to the Bloomberg BNA's Holiday Practices Survey.  George Washington died in 1799, and the next year his birthday became an annual day of remembrance.  It merged into Presidents Day to include Lincoln and to be observed on the third Monday in February, beginning in the 1960s. As far as the federal government is concerned, it's still just known as Washington's birthday.  Al Lewis  http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/feature/5-things/2015/02/5-things-to-know-about-presidents-day.html?page=all

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1257  February 16, 2015  On this date in 1923, Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.  

On this date in 1937, Wallace H. Carothers received a United States patent for nylon.

“A library is many things,” E.B. White once wrote in a letter to the children of a little town to inspire them to fall in love with their new library.  “But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books… Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had.”  Maria Popova:  As the daughter of a formally trained librarian and an enormous lover of, collaborator with, and supporter of public libraries I was instantly enamored with The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by photographer Robert Dawson — at once a love letter and a lament eighteen years in the making, a wistful yet hopeful reminder of just what’s at stake if we let the greatest bastion of public knowledge humanity has ever known slip into the neglected corner of cultural priorities.  Read more at http://www.bespacific.com/public-library-photographic-love-letter-humanitys-greatest-sanctuary-knowledge-freedom-democracy/

Galette is a term used in French cuisine to designate various types of flat round or freeform crusty cakes, or, in the case of a Breton galette (galette bretonne), a pancake made with buckwheat flour usually with a savoury filling.  In French Canada the term galette is usually applied to pastries best described as large cookies.  This terminology is also used in Brittany, context providing differentiation with the Breton galette.  Galette, or more properly Breton galette is also the name given in most French crêperies to savoury buckwheat flour pancakes, while those made from wheat flour, much smaller in size and mostly served with a sweet filling, are branded crêpes.  This type of galette is a large, thin pancake mostly associated with the region of Brittany, where it replaced at times bread as basic food, but it is eaten countrywide.   Buckwheat was introduced as a crop suitable to impoverished soils and buckwheat pancakes were known in other regions where this crop was cultivated, such as Limousin or Auvergne.  It is frequently garnished with egg, meat, fish, cheese, cut vegetables, apple slices, berries, or similar ingredients.  One of the most popular varieties is a galette covered with grated Emmental cheese, a slice of ham, and an egg cooked on the galette.  In France, this is known as a galette complète (a complete galette).  Another variety is a hot sausage wrapped in a galette (called galette saucisse, a tradition of Rennes, France) and eaten like a hot dog.  See pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galette  Find recipe for Bread Galettes on Salad Greens by Jacques Pépin at http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/bread-galettes-on-salad-greens

The world’s largest archive of animal vocalizations and other nature sounds is now available online.  This resource for students, filmmakers, scientists and curious wildlife aficionados took archivists a dozen years to assemble and make ready for the web.  “In terms of speed and the breadth of material now accessible to anyone in the world, this is really revolutionary,” audio curator Greg Budney said in a press release, describing the milestone just achieved by the Macaulay Library archive at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  The collection goes way back to 1929. It contains nearly 150,000 digital audio recordings equaling more than 10 terabytes of data with a total run time of 7,513 hours.  About 9,000 species are represented.  Many are birds, but the collection also includes sounds of whales, elephants, frogs, primates and more.  Jennifer Viegas  http://news.discovery.com/animals/insects/largest-archive-of-animal-sounds-now-available-online-130116.htm  Search recordings at http://macaulaylibrary.org/search?tab=audio  OWL TRIVIA:  Santa Duc   The name comes from Grand-Duc, the largest European owl who sings during the night.  In Provencal it translates as Canta Duc, which in time became Santa Duc. 

Collage derives its name from the French verb coller, to glue.  The work of art is made by gluing things to the surface.  Collage became an art form during the Synthetic Cubist period of Picasso and Braque.  At first, Pablo Picasso glued oil cloth to his surface of Still Life with Chair Caning in May of 1912.  He glued a rope around the edge of the oval canvas.  Georges Braque then glued imitation wood-grained wallpaper to his Fruit Dish and Glass (September 1912).  Braque's work is called papier collé (glued or pasted paper), a specific type of collage.  During the Dada movement, Hannah Höch (German, 1889-1978) glued bits of photographs from magazines and advertising in such works as Cut with a Kitchen Knife, (1919-20).  Fellow Dadaist Kurt Schwitters (German, 1887-1948) also glued bits of paper he found in newspapers, advertisements and other discarded matter beginning in 1919.  Schwitters called his collages and assemblages Merzbilder, a word derived from the German word "Kommerz" (Commerce, as in banking) which had been on a fragment of an advertisement in his first work, and bilder ("pictures").  The exclusive use of photos in collage is called photomontage.  http://arthistory.about.com/od/glossary_c/a/c_collage.htm

The refined table sugar we now consider a staple was once so rare and expensive it was called "white gold".  Sugar cane, which was the first source of sugar, is a perennial grass that originated in Asia but is now grown in tropical and subtropical areas.  (Before the arrival of sugar cane, honey and fruit were the only sweeteners.)   During the Napoleonic war, when the supply of cane sugar was cut off, the development of an alternative source of sugar was discovered, beets.  The sugar derived from these two sources is 99.8% pure sucrose, a complex sugar composed of glucose and fructose.  When using sugar most people think of it only as a sweetener.  But when sugar is used in baking its role becomes more complex as it also adds volume, tenderness, texture, color, and acts as a preservative.  There are different types of sugar and the size of the granules can differ.  Sugars vary in color from white to dark brown depending on the amount of molasses added during processing.  The size of the sugar crystal affects the amount of air that can be incorporated into the batter during the creaming of the sugar and fat.  For example, granulated sugar will incorporate more air into the batter than confectioner's sugar. The size of the crystal will also affect how quickly the sugar will dissolve in the batter.  Therefore confectioner's sugar will dissolve quicker in the batter than granulated sugar.  White sugar is a refined sugar derived from sugar cane and sugar beets.  Read about various sugars such as superfine (castor or caster), coarse (decorators or pearl), crystal, confectioners (powdered or icing), invert, brown, raw, Demerara, Muscovada (or Barbados sugar), and

Turbinado at http://www.joyofbaking.com/sugar.html

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Feb. 10, 2015 reversed a decision in a copyright lawsuit against founders of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees the Four Seasons and developers of the group’s biographical musical “Jersey Boys.”  Donna Cobrello, whose late husband ghostwrote the autobiography of ex-Four Seasons member and Las Vegas resident Tommy DeVito, may be entitled to royalties, according to the ruling from the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit.  The case was sent back to Nevada federal court.  Besides DeVito, Cobrello’s copyright suit named Four Seasons members Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio and businesses associated with “Jersey Boys.”  A Nevada federal judge in 2011 denied Cobrello’s claims of copyright infringement and failure to pay royalties.  Her late husband, Rex Woodard, finished DeVito’s biography in 1991, according to court documents.  But Woodard died from lung cancer the same year, Cobrello said, before the duo could find a publisher.  DeVito registered a near-identical copy of the autobiography with the U.S. Copyright Office under only his own name four months before her husband’s death, Cobrello said.  That work eventually became the basis for “Jersey Boys” and other works that should have earned her royalties as her husband’s heir.  The federal court in Nevada denied Cobrello’s claims in 2011, saying DeVito granted a “selectively exclusive license” to the eventual producers of the musical, not copyright interest.  But in its decision, the 9th Circuit cited a 1984 decision from a case it heard, Oddo v. Ries, saying “a co-owner of a copyright must account to other co-owners for any profits he earns from licensing or use of the copyright.”   Daniel Mayeda, the attorney for Valli and Gaudio, said he is still analyzing the decision but expects a positive outcome for his clients.  “At the end of the day, I think we will get a finding that there was no infringement of the autobiography in ‘Jersey Boys,’” Mayeda said.  Las Vegas copyright attorney Mark Borghese called this case “extremely complex.”  “Not only do we have a situation where there are co-copyright owners, but one of the owners entered into multiple agreements without the knowledge or consent of the other,” he said.  “It is one of the peculiarities of intellectual property law.  When you have two owners, they both have an equal right to do whatever they want with their rights.  This inevitably leads to disputes.”  The Tony Award-winning stage version of “Jersey Boys” debuted on Broadway in 2005 and expanded to the Strip in 2009, opening at the Palazzo.  It’s now at the Paris Las Vegas.  Colton Lochhead 

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/9th-circuit-reverses-decision-copyright-suit-linked-jersey-boys

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1256  February 13, 2015  On this date in 1633, Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.  On this date in 1914, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers was established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.

The Century of Progress Architectural District, a part of the eastern unit of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, is an historic district on Lake Front Drive in Beverly Shores, Porter County, Indiana.  The district comprises five buildings, all from the Homes of Tomorrow Exhibition during the1933 Century of Progress World's Fair which took place in Chicago.  Intended to display the future of housing, the Century of Progress Homes reflect a variety of designs, experimental materials and new technologies.  On June 30, 1986, the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places   See pictures and descriptions of the five houses at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_Progress_Architectural_District

The Chicago World's Fair was held on 427 acres (much of it landfill) on Lake Michigan, immediately south of Chicago's downtown area, from 12th Street to 39th Street (now Pershing Road).  Today, Meigs Field and McCormick Place occupy this site.  A Century of Progress officially opened on May 27, 1933 and closed on November 12 of that year.  Although originally planned for the 1933 season only, it was extended for another year, reopening on May 26, 1934, and closing on October 31, 1934.  This extension was due in part to the fair's public popularity, but mainly as an effort to earn sufficient income to retire its debts.  http://www.chicagohs.org/history/century.html

The word 'doily' is an eponym, named after a certain Mr Doiley, Doyly or Doyley, who kept a draper's shop in the Strand, according to one of the citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.  Draper is another word not heard very often these days, but a draper is someone who sells cloth.  Originally doily meant a type of cloth; as the OED puts it:  "The name of a woollen stuff, ‘at once cheap and genteel’, introduced for summer wear in the latter part of the 17th century".  What we now call a doily, started off with the name 'doily-napkin'; in the 18th century it was spelt with a capital D.  The material was lacy and had holes in it so that the good-quality of the wooden table under the doily was visible to guests.  When, in the 20th century (the heyday was the 1950s), doilies began to be mass-produced out of paper, the holey pattern was retained.

http://virtuallinguist.typepad.com/the_virtual_linguist/2011/03/doily.html

Back in 1964 a pair of Australian scientists, Isabel Joy Bear and R. G. Thomas, began the scientific study of rain’s aroma in earnest with an article in Nature titled “Nature of Agrillaceous Odor.”  In it, they coined the term petrichor to help explain the phenomenon, combining a pair of Greek roots:  petra (stone) and ichor (the blood of gods in ancient myth).  In that study and subsequent research, they determined that one of the main causes of this distinctive smell is a blend of oils secreted by some plants during arid periods.  When a rainstorm comes after a drought, compounds from the oils—which accumulate over time in dry rocks and soil—are mixed and released into the air.  The duo also observed that the oils inhibit seed germination, and speculated that plants produce them to limit competition for scarce water supplies during dry times.  These airborne oils combine with other compounds to produce the smell.  In moist, forested areas in particular, a common substance is geosmin, a chemical produced by a soil-dwelling bacteria known as actinomycetes.  The bacteria secrete the compound when they produce spores, then the force of rain landing on the ground sends these spores up into the air, and the moist air conveys the chemical into our noses.  Joseph Stromberg  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-makes-rain-smell-so-good-13806085/?no-ist  Thank you, Muse reader.

Parcel has come to us via Old French from the post-classical Latin particella, a part or portion.  That makes part and parcel a tautology, since both words in effect mean the same thing.  English loves this kind of doublet:  nooks and crannies, hale and hearty, safe and sound, rack and ruin, dribs and drabs.  Many derive from the ancient legal practice of including words of closely similar meaning to make sure that the sense covers all eventualities:  aid and abet, fit and proper, all and sundry.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-par3.htm

Ernest William Hornung (1866–1921) was an English author and poet known for writing the A. J. Raffles series of stories about a gentleman thief in late 19th-century London.  Hornung was educated at Uppingham School; as a result of poor health he left the school in December 1883 to travel to Sydney, where he stayed for two years.  He drew on his Australian experiences as a background when he began writing, initially short stories and later novels.  In 1898 he wrote "In the Chains of Crime", which introduced Raffles and his sidekick, Bunny Manders; the characters were based partly on his friends Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, and also on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.  Aside from his Raffles stories, Hornung was a prodigious writer of fiction, publishing numerous books from 1890, with A Bride from the Bush to his 1914 novel The Crime Doctor.  Read more and see pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._W._Hornung

One of the most influential of all Italian Renaissance buildings is perhaps the most diminutive and discreetly located.  On Rome’s Janiculum Hill, in the courtyard of the monastery of S. Pietro in Montorio, is a tiny domed structure, popularly known as the Tempietto (Italian for small  temple).  Dating from ca. 1502, it was commissioned by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to mark the traditional site of St. Peter’s crucifixion.  The design of its architect, Donato Bramante (1444-1514), consists of a dome supported on a two-tier drum, the bottom portion of which is encircled by a Doric peristyle topped by a balustrade.  This composition, which may have been inspired by the ancient tholos form, has served as the prototype for countless monumental domes throughout the Western World.  The Tempietto is also noteworthy as one of the few buildings of the Renaissance to achieve published approbation by contemporary architects.  Sabastiano Serlio (1475-1554) considered the Tempietto important enough to include a plan, elevation, and section in his famous treatise L’Architettura, published in installments beginning in 1537.  It was Andrea Palladio who recognized the true ingenuity of the design.  In Book IV of Quattro Libri (1570), the section where Palladio presented his restoration drawings of ancient temples, we find a plan and elevation of the Tempietto.  Calder Loft  Find pictures of domes around the world, including the U.S. Capitol, inspired by the Tempietto at http://blog.classicist.org/?p=5723

Probably America’s earliest example of the application of full pedimented portico to a domestic work is Whitehall, near Annapolis.  Built in the 1760s for Governor Horatio Sharp, the mansion’s central section is fronted by a finely executed tetrastyle portico employing the

Corinthian order.  Whitehall was followed by James Madison’s Montpelier, in Orange County, Virginia.  Here, in the 1790s, Madison enlarged his father’s colonial house and added a Tuscan portico to signal his growing importance as a statesman.  Montpelier’s was one of the first truly monumental pedimented porticos to embellish an American house.  This expression of the Palladian ideal was suggested here by Madison’s friend Thomas Jefferson.  Calder Loft  See pictures of buildings in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia at https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/32824/PalladioAmerica_FINAL.pdf

When Will You Marry? (Tahitian: Nafea faa ipoipo?) is an oil painting from 1892 by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin.  On loan to the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland for nearly a half-century, it was sold privately by the family of Rudolf Staechelin to an unknown buyer, reportedly to Qatar Museums, in February 2015 for close to $300 million, the highest price ever paid for a work of art.  See graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Will_You_Marry%3F

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1255  February 11, 2015  On this date in 1812, Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry "gerrymandered" for the first time.  On this date in 1938, BBC Television produced the world's first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Čapek play R.U.R., that coined the term "robot".

Shakespeare liked to use the word passing as an adverb modifying adjectives, meaning “surpassingly, exceedingly.”  https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=%22passing+strange%22+%22passing+gentle%22+adverb+surpassingly  Find terms such as passing strange, passing excellent, passing welcome, passing gentle and passing courteous at http://archive.org/stream/worksofshakespea19038shak/worksofshakespea19038shak_djvu.txt

Pell-mell (usually hyphenated, but sometimes spelled pellmell) works (1) as an adverb meaning in a confused or reckless manner, and (2) as an adjective meaning confused or disordered in action.  The English word comes from the French pêle-mêle.  The French word is nearly a millennium old, and its exact origins are mysterious—though the second syllable is likely related to the verb mesler, which means to mix.  http://grammarist.com/words/pell-mell/

Perfect Rhyme, also called exact rhyme, full rhyme means two or more words or phrases share the same last stressed vowel and all sounds following that vowel.  Examples:  towel / vowel,  aboard / ignored   Older poetry used considerably more perfect rhyme than current poetry does.

Slant rhyme, also called half rhyme, off rhyme, near rhyme is when either the stressed vowel or the sounds following it differ and don’t match.  Slant rhyme is  prevalent in current poetry.

Examples:  bite / fire (only the long i sound, the stressed vowel, matches; consonants differ)

courage/bunker  (only match is the UR sound of our and er).  Slant rhyme can also use different vowels, but same consonants.  Examples:  sound, sand;  blade, blood;  food, fade. 

http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/users/m/morillo/public/prosody1.htm

A small confectionery morsel that can be consumed in one or two bites is called a petit four.  The name literally means “small oven” and comes from the way in which the tiny treats were traditionally cooked.  During the 1800s, an oven was little more than a large stone cabinet with a fire lit underneath it.  Under these circumstances, temperature control was essentially non-existent.  As a result, French bakers had only two oven “settings”:  blazing hot, and cooling down.  The blazing hot setting was reached when the coals under the oven were burning at maximum capacity.  This mode of cooking was referred to as “grand four” – literally, “big oven” – and was used to cook meats.  Once the fire under the stone oven was extinguished, much of the heat was retained.  Consequently it took a very long time for these ovens to cool down.  This cooling process, when the oven still retained some latent heat, was referred to as petit four.  The trapped heat was just enough to cook tiny, individual pastries – which eventually assumed the name of the type of oven they were cooked in.  Traditional petits fours are divided into four categories:  sec, glaces, frais and deguises.  http://courses.escoffieronline.com/tiny-pastries-the-petit-four-story/

Phrasal verbs are usually two-word phrases consisting of verb + adverb or verb + preposition.   Find a list of about 200 verbal phrases, including ask around and catch up, at https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/phrasal-verbs-list.htm

As easy as pie is a popular colloquial idiom which is used to describe a task or experience as pleasurable and simple.  The idiom does not refer to the making of a pie, but rather to the act of consuming a pie ("as easy as eating a pie") which is usually a simple and pleasurable experience.  The phrase is often interchanged with piece of cake, which shares the same connotation.  There are some claims that the phrase originated in the 1920s from the Indigenous Australian expression "pie at" or "pie on" from the Maori term "pai" which means "good", but it was used in the Saturday Evening Post in 1913 (22 Feb.), and in 1910 by Zane Grey in "The Young Forester", and is probably a development of the phrase "like eating pie", first recorded in "Sporting Life" in 1886.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_easy_as_pie

PIN number, ATM machine, SAT tests, ISBN number end with the word represented by the preceding initial.  Find a list of such redundancies at

http://www.fun-with-words.com/redundant_acronyms.html

In audio engineering, electronics, physics, and many other fields, the color of a noise signal (a signal produced by a stochastic process) is generally understood to be some broad characteristic of its power spectrum.  Different "colors" of noise have significantly different properties:  for example, as audio signals they will sound differently to human ears, and as images they will have a visibly different texture.  This sense of "color" for noise signals is similar to the concept of timbre in music (which is also called "tone color"); however the latter is almost always used for sound, and may consider very detailed features of the spectrum.  The practice of naming kinds of noise after colors started with "white noise", a signal whose spectrum has equal power within any equal interval of frequencies.  That name was given by analogy with "white light", which was (incorrectly) assumed to have such a "flat" power spectrum over the visible range.  Other color names, like "pink", "red", and "blue" were then given to noise with other spectral profiles, often (but not always) in reference to the color of light with similar spectra.  Some of those names have standard definitions in certain disciplines, while others are very informal and poorly defined.  Read more and see graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise

'As pleased as Punch' (very pleased) derives from the puppet character Mr. Punch.  Punch's name itself derives from Polichinello (spelled various ways, including Punchinello), a puppet used in the 16th century Commedia dell'arte.  In performance, the grotesque Punch character is depicted as self-satisfied and delighted with his evil deeds, squawking "That's the way to do it!" whenever he dispatches another victim.  The show had an Italian origin but has been much changed over the years.  It began in Britain at the time of the restoration of the monarchy in the 17th century.  The earliest known record of the phrase 'as pleased as Punch' is from William Gifford's satires The Baviad, and Maeviad, 1797:  Oh! how my fingers itch to pull thy nose!  As pleased as Punch, I'd hold it in my gripe.  'As pleased as Punch' is now the most common form of the expression, but when the term was coined it was just as usual to say 'as proud as Punch'.  Charles Dickens, for example used the two terms interchangeably in his novels.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/as-pleased-as-punch.html       

The Morgan Library is Hosting An Alice in Wonderland Exhibit by Maryann Yinon   How has Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland stood the test of time?  The Morgan Library & Museum is hosting an exhibit called “Alice: 150 Years of Wonderland.”  The curators plan to bring over the original manuscript for Carroll’s beloved children’s book “across the pond” from the London’s British Library to New York City.  Other items that will be displayed include drawings, letters, rare editions of the book, and vintage photos.  The opening date has been scheduled for June 26, 2015 and the closing date has been set for October 11, 2015.   “The enchanting tale of Wonderland was first told ‘one golden afternoon’ to Alice Liddell and her two sisters.  Delighted by the fantastic world of logic and nonsense inhabited by rabbits in waistcoats and playing card gardeners, Alice begged for a written copy of her namesake’s adventures underground.  Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll) painstakingly wrote out the story, illustrating the original manuscript with his own pen and ink drawings.”   Download a free digital edition of the novel at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11  http://www.adweek.com/galleycat/the-morgan-library-is-hosting-an-alice-in-wonderland-exhibit/97642

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1254  February 9, 2015  On this date in 1825, after no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams President of the United States.  On this date in 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a joint resolution of Congress establishing the U.S. Weather Bureau.