The Antiquities Act of 1906, (Pub.L. 59–209, 34 Stat. 225, 16 U.S.C. § 431–433), is an act passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by Theodore Roosevelt on June 8, 1906.  This law gives the President of the United States the authority to, by presidential proclamation, create national monuments from public lands to protect significant natural, cultural or scientific features.  The Act has been used over a hundred times since its passage.  Its use occasionally creates significant controversy.  The Act was intended to allow the President to set aside certain valuable public natural areas as park and conservation land.  The 1906 act stated that it was intended for:  ". . . the protection of objects of historic and scientific interest."  These areas are given the title of "National Monuments."  It also allows the President to reserve or accept private lands for that purpose.  The aim is to protect all historic and prehistoric sites on United States federal lands and to prohibit excavation or destruction of these antiquities.  With this act, this can be done much more quickly than going through the Congressional process of creating a National Park.  The Act states that areas of the monuments are to be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.  The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld presidential proclamations under the Antiquities Act, ruling each time that the Act gives the president nearly-unfettered discretion as to the nature of the object to be protected and the size of the area reserved.  Some areas designated as National Monuments have later been converted into National Parks, or incorporated into existing National Parks.  The first use of the Act protected a large geographic feature--President Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower National Monument on September 24, 1906.  President Roosevelt also used it to create the Grand Canyon National Monument--the first step in protecting that place of great historic and scientific interest.  At 140,000 square miles, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is the largest protected area proclaimed.  The smallest, Father Millet Cross National Monument, was a mere 0.0074 acres. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquities_Act  According to Nature Conservancy magazine, June-July 2016, President Obama has used the Antiquities Act 23 times, more than any other president.

Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin in 1969, and lives in Canada.  Her first feature film, Room, directed by Lenny Abrahamson and starring Brie Larson, was nominated for four Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Picture. Most recently she published Frog Music, a literary mystery inspired by a murder in San Francisco, 1876.   Other books are the historical novels The Sealed Letter, Life Mask, Slammerkin, and contemporary ones Landing, Hood and Stir-fry; short-story collections Astray, Three and a Half Deaths (UK ebook), Touchy Subjects, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, and Kissing the Witch; and literary history including Inseparable, We Are Michael Field, and Passions Between Women, as well as two anthologies that span the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.  http://www.emmadonoghue.com/

If I leave anything out, the editor fills it in--what we term the news is something of a crazy quilt of fact and fiction.  Paraphrase from Frog Music, a novel by Emma Donoghue  Song notes by chapter and a French glossary in order of use appear at the end of the book.

May 17, 2016  You're probably never seeing Hamilton, the blockbuster, critically-praised Broadway musical from wunderkind Lin-Manuel Miranda, but the New York Historical Society's upcoming exhibit about the Founding Father will be plenty accessible.  The exhibit, Summer of Hamilton, promises to welcome everyone to the "the room where it happens."  The NYHS acknowledges the "fervent popularity" around Alexander Hamilton Hamilton, thanks to the musical (and Ron Chernow's biography, which inspired the show) will cover Hamilton's relationship with New York and his legacy in the U.S. government.  Among the highlights that will be on view during the Summer of Hamilton are life-size bronze statues depicting Hamilton and Burr in the midst of their deadly duel, pistols drawn and aimed at one another. The statues, created by sculptor Kim Crowley, were previously on loan to The Public Theater and were displayed in its lobby during the off-Broadway run of Hamilton.  Also featured will be the monumental tall case clock presented to Hamilton in 1796 by the Bank of New York, which will return to the New-York Historical Society after a years-long loan to the Bank.  Hamilton’s desk, at which the prolific writer penned his correspondence, will be exhibited on loan from the Museum of the City of New York.  Displayed with these items, an exhibition by the Gilder Lehrman Institute will present nine key documents from Hamilton’s life, including his famous “nut brown maid” love letter to his fiancée, Elizabeth Schuyler; the infamous pamphlet admitting to his affair with Maria Reynolds; the plan for the federal government that he proposed during the Constitutional Convention; the first federal budget printed in his Report on Public Credit; and a letter supporting Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr in the Election of 1800, which stated “In a choice of Evils let them take the least―Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr.”  Above these documents will hang New-York Historical’s portrait of the statesman by John Trumbull, painted shortly after Hamilton’s untimely death in 1804.  Select video clips from the Broadway show will also be shown, enhancing the connection between Hamilton the musical and these historical items.  On view in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, additional documents from New-York Historical’s collection will help answer the question posed in the musical―“who tells your story”―by focusing on Hamilton’s relationships with other Founding Fathers and his widow’s attempt to secure his place in history.  Later in 2017, the Library will showcase documents highlighting Hamilton’s impact on public policy in the early republic.  Replicas of the dueling pistols used by Hamilton and Burr, on loan from the JPMorgan Chase Historical Collection, continue to be exhibited as part of New York Rising, a permanent installation on a 42-foot wall in the Museum facing Central Park West, which illustrates New York’s critical contribution to the founding of the U.S.  The installation also features the marble cenotaph marking where Hamilton was wounded; a bust of Hamilton by Giuseppe Ceracchi depicting him in the guise of a Roman Senator; a gold mourning ring set with a lock of Hamilton’s hair that Elizabeth Hamilton gave to Nathaniel Pendleton, Hamilton’s second in the duel; Pendleton’s statements about the regulations of the duel; portraits of Aaron Burr and his gifted daughter Theodosia Burr painted by John Vanderlyn; various correspondence written in the aftermath of the duel; and Burr’s death mask.  Jen Chung  http://gothamist.com/2016/05/17/ny_historical_society_plans_sumer_o.php  See also http://www.nyhistory.org/explore/alexander-hamilton and http://www.biography.com/people/aaron-burr-9232241

Modal verbs are a type of auxiliary verb which express the mood of another verb.  They are used to express ideas such as:  possibility, prediction, speculation, deduction and necessity.  Find concepts, characteristics and examples of can, could, may, might, must, ought to, shall, should, and will at http://www.learn-english-today.com/lessons/lesson_contents/verbs/modals.html

A federal court upheld net-neutrality regulations designed to ensure an open internet, handing a victory to the Obama administration and a defeat to telephone and cable providers.  The Washington-based U.S. Court of Appeals June 14, 2016 acted after a decade of debate over web access that pitted Silicon Valley against companies that provide internet access to homes and businesses.  The court likened internet service providers to utilities, saying they “act as neutral, indiscriminate platforms for transmission of speech.”  The ruling is a triumph for the  Federal Communications Commission’s Democratic majority that passed the rules last year.  It is a win for Alphabet Inc.’s Google, online video provider Netflix Inc. and others who championed the notion of an open internet where internet service providers are prevented from offering speedier lanes to those willing to pay extra for them.  “The open internet rules are here to stay,” Pantelis Michalopoulos, an attorney who represented Netflix and Dish Network Corp. in the case, said in an e-mail.  “There is no doubt who is the winner:  the open internet.  The gatekeepers may not block or throttle our information.  They may not ask information to pay tolls.”  Challengers including AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp. said the rule would discourage innovation and investment.  AT&T said it would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160614/TECHNOLOGY/160619927

The $5 Billion Battle For The American Dinner Plate by Elizbeth Segran   The meal kit is a relatively recent innovation.   It was born in Stockholm, Sweden, when Kicki Theander, a mother of three, observed that many families wanted to eat home-cooked dinners but struggled to manage the logistics of meal planning, purchasing, and cooking.  In 2007, she launched Middagsfrid (roughly translated: "dinner time bliss"), a service that brought bags of groceries to people’s doors.  It was an instant hit.  Theander’s brand quickly spread to Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, and spawned a range of competing companies.  At least 10 different meal-kit companies now operate in Sweden alone, and the country's population is under 10 million people.  In the U.S., boxed-meal services were initially adopted by millennial urbanites.  Plated, Blue Apron, and HelloFresh are all headquartered in New York and although they are available nationwide, they tend to do particularly well in cities like New York and San Francisco where grocery shopping can be a challenge because many people don’t have cars.  "Our customers are primarily living in and around major metro areas," Nick Taranto, Plated’s co-CEO and cofounder tells Fast Company.  "They are largely college-educated, dual-income families with no kids."  Big-city dwellers are also used to spending a lot of money on food, since the cost of living tends to be high where they live.  This is another reason they might be more amenable to boxed meals, which are an expensive proposition.  Taranto says that while $12 a meal is a costly dinnertime time option for many, it is a reasonable expense to a segment of consumers whose alternative options include eating out, either at fast casual chains like Panera Bread or at fine dining establishments, or buying groceries from upmarket grocery stores like Whole Foods."  http://www.fastcompany.com/3046685/most-creative-people/the-5-billion-battle-for-the-american-dinner-plate

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1485  June 17, 2016  On this date in 1631, Mumtaz Mahal died during childbirth.  Her husband, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan I, will spend the next 17 years building her mausoleum, the Taj Mahal.  On this date in 1673,  French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet reached the Mississippi River and became the first Europeans to make a detailed account of its course.  Word of the Day:  chyron  noun  A set of graphics or words at the bottom of a television screen, sometimes unrelated to the current viewing content.  Quote of the Day:  The ultimate sense of security will be when we come to recognize that we are all part of one human race.  Our primary allegiance is to the human race and not to one particular color or border.  I think the sooner we renounce the sanctity of these many identities and try to identify ourselves with the human race the sooner we will get a better world and a safer world. -Mohamed ElBaradei, diplomat, Nobel laureate (b. June 17, 1942)

Sweating in the Stacks:  University library offers exercise bikes for student use by Christopher Shaffer   In February, 2016, Troy (Ala.) University Dean of Library Services Christopher Shaffer brought fitness to the ­libraries when he made available six exercise bikes for student use.  The endeavor made national headlines.  Here, Shaffer explains his motivations, the bikes’ reception, and plans for the future.  Troy University’s motto is “Educate the mind to think, the heart to feel, and the body to act.”  I was thinking of those words as well as the American Library Association’s Libraries Transform campaign when I came across an article on exercise bikes that featured tables for laptops from a company called FitDesk.  The bikes were reasonably priced at $299 each, so I ordered three for our library in Troy and three for our extension campus library in Dothan, Alabama.  We placed the Troy library bikes in a large space that had been previously used as the archives processing room.  At Dothan, the bikes are in a combination computer room–group study area, but they are being moved to a larger space that is currently being converted from an office into a student space.  We added the hybrid exercise-study equipment to our libraries for a variety of reasons.  To begin with, it just seemed like a cool idea.  There were deeper motivations, though.  There were health reasons as well.  Obesity is a severe problem in the United States, and Alabama has one of the highest rates (33.5%) in the nation. The cause is not just our diets but the fact that technology has made us sedentary creatures. Students and faculty tend to spend the bulk of their day in front of a computer.  We cannot alter that fact, but we can alter what they do while looking at the monitor.  We also wanted to change how academic libraries are perceived.  I want students to view our libraries as places where they want to be.  I like the idea of them coming in, checking out a video for pleasure, and watching it on their computer while they exercise for an hour.  If they enjoy being at the library for reasons other than academics, maybe they will be more comfortable visiting the library—and approaching librarians—in the future.  The response from students, faculty, and others has been overwhelmingly positive.  https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2016/05/02/sweating-in-stacks/

FitDesk Bike Desks have also been installed at universities including Tulane, Clemson and Penn State Worthington Scranton, according to FitDesk co-founder Ryan Moore, who started the company from his garage in 2010.  http://college.usatoday.com/2016/03/25/students-sweat-it-out-and-study-on-library-exercise-bikes/

Lorn and forlorn are synonyms that can both mean "desolate" or "forsaken." The similarity in form and meaning of the two words is hardly a coincidence.  Lorn comes down to us from loren, the Middle English past participle of the verb lesen ("to lose"), itself a descendent of the Old English lēosan.  Similarly, forlorn comes from the Middle English forloren, a descendent of Old English verb forlēosan, which also means "to lose."  The "for-" in forlorn is a no longer productive prefix meaning, among other things, "completely," "excessively," or "to exhaustion."  Nowadays, forlorn is considerably more common than "lorn."  "Lorn" does, however, appear as the second element in the compound lovelorn ("bereft of love or of a lover").  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lorn

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", commonly known as "Prufrock", is a poem by American-British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965).  Eliot began writing "Prufrock" in February 1910, and it was first published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse at the instigation of Ezra Pound (1885–1972).  It was later printed as part of a twelve-poem pamphlet (or chapbook) titled Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917.  The poem's structure was heavily influenced by Eliot's extensive reading of Dante Alighieri and makes several references to the Bible and other literary works—including William Shakespeare's plays Henry IV Part II, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet, the poetry of seventeenth-century metaphysical poet John Donne, and the nineteenth-century French Symbolists.  American composer John Craton set the entire poem to music for tenor and strings in a six-movement work of the same title (2004).  Read more, including references in popular culture, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Love_Song_of_J._Alfred_Prufrock   Find The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock at http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

ARCHAIC WORDS  despect  verb  To hold in contempt, to despise, to look down on, to scorn  welkin  ‎noun  The sky, the upper air; the heavens  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page

If the purpose of art is to show the mystery and wonder of existence, nothing in our century has done that more suggestively and grandly than the startling new images of nature that science is unveiling almost every day.  Astronomy is not the only scientific discipline uncovering these marvels.  The eerie underwater worlds of “black smokers”--volcanic vents swarming with strange life--and close video encounters with giant squid and other deep sea creaturesreveal the secrets of life on Earth.  The Large Hadron Collider has even released images of subatomic particle collisions.  Science has become art as never before.  Ever since Galileo pointed a telescope at the moon and published his own drawings of what he saw in 1610, astronomy has been a science of enhanced looking. Great art should fill us with a new vision of the world--indeed, the cosmos--and our place in it.  The last professional artists who really did that were Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.  Today’s greatest artists will never be famous as individuals or sell their work for millions--Nasa’s Hubble images are free to use--because the most beautiful images of today are being created by teams of scientists using advanced technology.  Jonathan Jones   See amazing pictures at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jun/12/why-most-important-art-today-made-in-space

American history has just been slightly rewritten.  Previously, experts had believed that the Native Americans of central Massachusetts spoke a single language, Loup (pronounced “Lou,” literally meaning “wolf”).  But new research shows http://www.sunypress.edu/p-6202-papers-of-the-forty-fourth-algo.aspx  that they spoke at least five different languages.  “It's like some European families where you can have three different languages at the dinner table,” says Ives Goddard, curator emeritus and senior linguist in the department of anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.  The lost languages were re-discovered by taking another look at several manuscripts written by French missionaries who were also working as linguists in the mid 1700s.  While working on her master's thesis at the University of Manitoba, Holly Gustafson compiled lists of verb forms found in one of the manuscripts. Goddard noticed some contradictions in the compilation.  “In the course of doing this [Gustafson] sometimes says there's this set of forms that is this way and another set of forms another way,” says Goddard.  The fact that there were three different words recorded for beaver was also suspicious.  “And I looked at this and thought there is too much difference. That made me think that there was more than one language involved,” he says.  Jackson Landers  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/five-lost-languages-rediscovered-massachusetts-180959043/?no-ist

Rep. Mike Turner of Dayton won the first round in a battle between House Republicans and the Library of Congress.  The U.S. House approved a spending bill June 10, 2016 that included an amendment backed by Turner which would force the Library of Congress to continue using words such as “aliens” and “illegal aliens” when describing people who entered the United States illegally.  In March 2016, the library announced it would use the phrases “non-citizens” or “unauthorized immigration” to describe undocumented immigrants, who in the past have been referred to illegal aliens.  The library said the new words were less offensive and more accurate.  To House Republicans, the library’s decision was “political correctness” run amuck. So Turner sponsored an amendment that told the library to knock it off and return to “illegal aliens.”  http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/rep-turner-wants-library-of-congress-to-keep-sayin/nrdj4/  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1484  June 15, 2016  On this date in 1776, Delaware voted to suspend government under the British Crown and separate officially from Pennsylvania.  On this date in 1919,   John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight from St. John's, Newfoundland to Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.

Nelly Toll was born in Lwόw, Poland in 1935.  She recalls being six years old when the Germans entered Lwόw.  First greeted as heroes, the Germans quickly turned their attention to the persecution and deportation of the Jews.  During this period Toll created a diary which documented the trauma of hiding from the Nazis.  She also created some sixty watercolor paintings which illustrated a fantasy world in which there was happiness and hope.  As a young child, Toll lived with her mother in a room in the home of a Catholic family, and hid in a “secret window,” standing mutely on the sill of a window bricked-up from the outside when required to hide.  As described by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the life of Nelly and children like her “was a life in shadows, where a careless remark, a denunciation, or the murmurings of inquisitive neighbors could lead to discovery and death.”  Given a watercolor set by her mother, she painted small pictures of what she imagined a normal life would resemble.  The images are filled with friends playing outside, pretty new dresses, parties, dinners, pets, and family—things that young Nelly could not have in hiding.  In stark contrast to the imaginary world of her paintings, Toll also kept a diary that chronicled a young child’s experience of life in Nazioccupied Poland.  Toll and her mother were liberated by the Russian army in July, 1944, and later emigrated to the United States.  Toll reported she and her remaining family celebrated the end of the war in Krakόw, Poland in May, 1945.  As an adult Toll wrote an award-winning book about her experience, Behind the Secret Window (1993), based on her childhood diary.  http://www.massillonmuseum.org/media/1/7/ImaginingABetterWorld_NellyTollBio.pdf

Trailer for "Imagining a Better World:  The Nelly Toll Story"  Produced by DOCdance Productions in partnership with Massillon Museum  2014  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMRvHPsCQuI   2:08

Puzzling for learning: A crossed stick, a cross tick, acrostic by Debra Josephson Abrams

http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/puzzling-for-learning-a-crossed-stick-a-cross-tick-acrostic/education

The suffix -ful has been derived from the English word "full" and the literal meaning is "full of".  The suffix -ful can also mean "characterised by or given, able or tending to be something".  The suffix -ful is written with only one 'l'.  The suffix -less has been derived from the English word "less" and the literal meaning is "without" or "lacking".  The suffix -less can mean "unable to act or be acted on in a specified way".  https://www.englishpower.eu/en/ep-free-lessons/intermediate/adjectives-and-adverbs/adjective-formation-suffixes-ful-and-less#.V0h83fkrKUk

seldom-used words with the suffix -ful or -less:  aidful, regardful  https://www.morewords.com/contains/ful/  artless, stripeless  https://www.morewords.com/contains/less/

IDIOM  Up to (one's) neck in alligators  business adage   The full expression is some variation of:   "When you are up to your neck in alligators, it's easy to forget that the goal was to drain the swamp."  It is easy to be so overcome or preoccupied by various tangential worries, problems, or tasks that one loses sight of the ultimate goal or objective.  http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/up+to+my+neck+in+alligators

East of Lancashire, England lies Pendle Hill, known for its historical association with witch trials, scientific discoveries about air pressure, and religious visions that led to the founding of the Quaker movement.  It is also known for having a tautological name.  A tautological name has two parts that are redundant, or synonymous.  Tautological place names usually come about when more than one language goes into the name.  Some California examples that mix Spanish and English are Laguna Lake (Lake Lake) and Lake Lagunita (Lake Little Lake).  The Pendle in Pendle Hill is derived from Pen-hyll, a combination of the Cumbric word for hill and the Old English word for hill.  So Pendle Hill is really Hill Hill Hill.  Read about other redundant place names, including Lake Tahoe, La Brea tar pits, Sahara Desert, El Camino Real, Mississippi River, and East Timor at http://mentalfloss.com/article/50004/11-totally-redundant-place-names

NAME CHANGES  Lady Gaga  (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta born 1986), Bob Dylan

(Robert Allen Zimmerman born 1941)  Al Jolson (Asa Yoelson born 1886)  Kirk Douglas ( Issur Danielovitch born 1916)

How do authors pronounce their names?  Among the examples are:  • Louise Erdrich  “Er-drik.”, • Lisa Kleypas “KLY-pus.”, • John Lescroart “Less-kwah.”, • Gillian Flynn “Gil-lian” (Gil like a fish gill)  Mid-Continent Public Library  http://www.mymcpl.org/blog/they-pronounce-their-name-how  Mid-Continent Public Library, officially known as Consolidated Library District #3, is a consolidated public library system serving Clay, Platte, and Jackson Counties in Missouri, with headquarters in Independence, Missouri.  See also https://www.bookbrowse.com/authors/author_pronunciations/index.cfm? and http://www.teachingbooks.net/pronunciations.cgi

Excerpt from Engaging Babies in the Library: Putting Theory Into Practice by Debra J. Knoll (ALA Editions, 2016).   Babies, toddlers, and care providers are only one set of many populations served by children’s librarians.  Nevertheless, baby brain research has galvanized the profession to try to do more, and it has.  Librarians are now beginning to realize the impact they have on a baby’s development can influence his or her developing brain for a lifetime, and they are doing whatever it takes to make these early years happy and positive.  The stakes here are high.  After all, these are human lives growing and developing very quickly.  Find "baby steps" and "big steps" for librarians and administrators in committing to engage babies, and the Four Respects of Anne Carroll Moore, a pioneer of children’s librarianship who served New York Public Library from 1906 to 1941, and are still embraced by children’s librarians today at

  https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2016/05/31/engaging-babies-library-childrens-librarians/  

Scientists and archaeologists have long known that the Antikythera Mechanism—a device that was discovered in an ancient shipwreck near Crete in 1901—was astonishingly ahead of its time when it was built nearly 2,100 years ago.  After more than a decade’s efforts that involved using state-of-the art scanning devices to decipher about 3,500 characters of explanatory text written in ancient Greek beneath the surface of the corroded fragments, scientists have come to the conclusion that the device was used for both astronomical and astrological purposes.  “Now we have texts that you can actually read as ancient Greek, what we had before was like something on the radio with a lot of static,” Alexander Jones, a historian from New York University and a member of the team that deciphered the text, reportedly said.  “It’s a lot of detail for us because it comes from a period from which we know very little about Greek astronomy and essentially nothing about the technology, except what we gather from here. So these very small texts are a very big thing for us.”  Avaneesh Pandey   http://www.ibtimes.com/antikythera-mechanism-mysteries-2100-year-old-computer-revealed-after-decade-long-2381170

The 148th Belmont Stakes (1 1/2 miles on dirt; $1.5 million purse)  Winner:  Creator, by a nose  Time: 2:28.57  http://pix11.com/2016/06/11/belmont-stakes-2016-results-who-won-the-festival-of-racing/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1483  June 13, 2016  On this date in 1963, Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, was born.  On this date in 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Miranda v. Arizona that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

It’s twilight time for printed dictionaries, whose word-filled bulk weighed down desks, held open doors and by turns inspired and intimidated writers searching for the perfect word.  Lexicography—the making of dictionaries—has gone digital.  Though a few are still published, the dictionary’s time as printed, bound documents is almost up.  In this meantime, Joe Janes turns the attention of his Documents that Changed the World podcast series to the man as firmly identified with dictionaries as Hershey is with chocolate, Noah Webster, and the 70,000-word “American Dictionary of the English language” he published in 1828.  It was one of the last dictionaries to be compiled by a single person.  In the podcasts, Janes, an associate professor in the UW Information School, explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less known.  All the podcasts are available online through the iSchool website, and on iTunes, where the series has more than 250,000 downloads.  Webster, who lived from 1758 to 1843, was at times a failed farmer, an uninspired teacher, a state representative, a co-founder of Amherst College, a copyright advocate and a friend of George Washington once dubbed by biographer as a “forgotten founding father.”  He was also a Federalist and dedicated revolutionary who deeply loved his country.  Though the first English dictionary dates back to 1604, it was Webster and his 1828 volume that was credited with capturing the language of the new nation.  Janes said, “This dictionary was the first serious articulation of American English as it was growing increasingly distinct from the British variety.”  Peter Kelley  http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/05/26/documents-that-changed-the-world-noah-websters-dictionary-1828/

The Songs & Poetry Of Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791)   Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration Of Independence is best known for his role as an ardent patriot during the American Revolution.  After studying law, he served as secretary to the Pennsylvanian Indian commission, as customs collector for the port of Newcastle in Delaware and then as a New Jersey Provincial Assemblyman.  He resigned these last posts in 1776 because they conflicted with the revolutionary cause.  In 1778 he was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, and later was an active member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  His judicial posts included serving from 1779 until 1789 as a Judge of the Admiralty, appointed by the State of Pennsylvania, and then from 1790 to 1791 as a Judge of Pennsylvania's U.S. District Court.  He was also active in the Library Company and the American Philosophical Society.  Throughout his adult life, Hopkinson wrote poetry and satire on the politically derisive issues of the day.  He penned a popular and humorous work on the 1787 Constitutional Convention.  He was also an accomplished harpsichordist and composer.  His work "My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free," set to the words of Thomas Parnell's "Love and Innocence," is the first extant secular song by a native American composer.  Many historians believe that one James Bremner, may have been Hopkinson's music teacher.  Bremner arrived in Philadelphia from England in 1763, was a violinist and was part of a music ensemble,with Hopkinson on the harpsichord, Governor John Penn on violin, and other players on strings, French horn, and the German flute and they would gather in various Philadelphia homes for an evening's concert.

http://www.amaranthpublishing.com/Hopkinson.htm

A limited liability company (LLC) is a corporate structure whereby the members of the company cannot be held personally liable for the company's debts or liabilities.  Limited liability companies (LLC) differ slightly from one country to the next.  However, it is essentially a hybrid entity that combines the characteristics of a corporation and a partnership or sole proprietorship.  While the limited liability feature is similar to that of a corporation, the availability of flow-through taxation to the members of a LLC is a feature of partnerships.  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/llc.asp  Example of an LLC:  Heartland Healthcare Services LLC distributes pharmaceutical products to long term care centers and institutional pharmacies.  It also provides consulting services to long-term care facilities.  The company was founded in 1994 and is based in Toledo, Ohio.  Heartland Healthcare Services LLC is a joint venture between HCR ManorCare, Inc. and Omnicare Inc.  http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=4312369

Convictions arising from defendants' participation in a series of armed robberies is affirmed where the government does not violate the Fourth Amendment when it obtains historical cell-site location information (CSLI) from a service provider without a warrant.  Link to United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit case published May 31, 2016 at

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/summary/opinion/us-4th-circuit/2016/05/31/276462.html

Award-winning author Margaret Atwood’s recent projects involve both reimagining a 400-year-old classic and envisioning what literature itself might look like 100 years from now.  Her latest novel, Hag-Seed, rewrites The Tempest as part of a new series for Hogarth Press in which celebrated novelists interpret Shakespeare’s plays.  Atwood spoke with American Libraries about her new work and the future of libraries.  How did you get involved with the Hogarth Shakespeare project?  I got an email, of course—all of these things start that way.  This email was from Becky Hardy, the Hogarth Shakespeare editor.  She asked what play I would choose to do, and I said The Tempest. What was it about The Tempest that appealed to you?  I’ve written about The Tempest before. In Negotiating with the Dead:  A Writer on Writing(Cambridge University Press, 2002), one of the chapters is about Prospero and Mephistopheles.  The play is about magical artifacts and good or bad, so I already had been thinking quite a bit about it.  Can we talk about another recent project of yours, the Future Library of Norway, a time-capsule project of Scottish artist Katie Paterson?  A forest has been planted in Norway that will grow for 100 years, and 100 authors will contribute one manuscript.  There were some preconditions; one was that what you put in the box had to be made of words only.  What kind of artifact made of words would be up to you. There could be two copies only, and those were to be given to the Future Library.  And you weren’t allowed to say what was in the box.  Of course as soon it was announced, people have been trying to get it out of me, to no avail.  All the boxes will be opened in 100 years and enough trees will be cut from the forest to make the paper to print the Future Library Anthology.  Read the rest of the interview at https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2016/05/31/newsmaker-margaret-atwood/

PARAPHRASE from 300 Days of Sun, a novel by Deborah Lawrenson  Portuguese sounds like Russian . . .  sounds shush and slip around like shining, sliding cobbles under your feet.

Top 10s   Authors choose their favourite books on their chosen theme.  Lists, including such themes as Top 10 Modern Medieval Tales and Top 10 Chases in Literature collected from 1999 to June 2016 appear at https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/toptens

Thank you, Muse reader! 

The "Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary" is being released in 2016 to celebrate the centenary of Dahl’s birth.  The dictionary will contain 8,000 words—over 500 of which were invented by Dahl himself.  The rest of the words are used in his novels, often in an unusual or distinctive way.  http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-31/roald-dahl-s-gobblefunk-words-get-their-own-dictionary

politician-speak: family values, New York values, flip-flopper, small government v. big government, insider v. outsider, bully pulpit, overreach, failed policies, "Democrat Party" as a slur, “What the American people want is . . .”  See also http://www.jargondatabase.com/Category/Political

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1482  June 10, 2016  On this date in 1935, Dr. Robert Smith  and Bill Wilson founded Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio.  The birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous was in the Stan Hywet estate.  Henrietta Seiberling's involvement with the Oxford Group, a religious fellowship movement, confirmed her belief that ordinary people had the power to change their lives.  On Mother's Day 1935, through mutual friendships, she brought together Mr. Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, both admitted alcoholics.  Their discussion in the Gate Lodge resulted in identifying the principles that were to become the cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous.  http://www.stanhywet.org/gate-lodge  On this date in 1963, John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex into law as part of his New Frontier Program.

The small village of Dennison, Ohio lies halfway between Columbus, OH and Pittsburgh, PA, exactly 100 miles to the east and west of these major cities.  This was not a coincidence, but specifically chosen because a steam engine only went 100 miles before it had to take on coal, water and change crews.  Thus, Dennison is a true railroad town in every sense--it was founded in 1864 as a water stop for the railroad.  Dennison, Ohio became one of the most complete railroad shops and yards in the country at the turn-of-the 20th Century, boasting 40 acres of railroad shops, 21 passenger trains a day, 21 freight trains a day and 3,000 railroad employees.  Dennison was on the most direct route from New York City to St. Louis.  The Village became a freight and passenger terminal and the headquarters for the Panhandle Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad.  What began in 1855 as the Steubenville and Indiana Railroad, was transformed into the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railway in 1868.  Eventually consolidated into the Pennsylvania Railroad, the nation’s standard railroad, at the turn-of the century, the Dennison yards experienced a golden era until hit hard by a strike in 1921.  Despite resurgence during wartime, the yards never recovered.  As shops closed, the yards experienced a steady decline.  The development of affordable cars and highways had a devastating impact on the train industry.  In 1968, Penn Central controlled the line and saw the last passenger train stop at the Depot in the 1970s.  The yards were phased out, and Conrail was at the helm in 1976.  In the early 1980s, the line was downgraded and freight was rerouted to other Conrail lines.  In a landmark decision, the FCC stopped Conrail from tearing all the tracks out.  The State of Ohio purchased the tracks, and in 1992, the Ohio Central Railroad Systems became operators of the line, renaming it the Columbus & Ohio River Railroad.  Since that time, tourist train excursions have operated on the line, and attention has focused on rebuilding the freight business.  The Dennison Depot, built in 1873 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, stands as a proud symbol of Dennison’s vast railroad heritage.  Purchased by the Village of Dennison from Conrail in 1984, the Depot was originally restored by a strong grassroots volunteer group and local vocational school students.  It reopened in 1989 in memory of the many railroad employees, servicemen and women, and travelers who passed through its doors.  Although Dennison was the site of a WWI Red Cross Canteen, it is perhaps most famous for its role during WWII.  These yards were located on a railway which provided a key link to the Strategic Corridor for National Defense going east-west.  This trunk line played a vital role in the disbursement of troops during WWII, making the strong welded rail heavily traveled and the likely location for a serviceman’s Canteen.  The Dennison Depot Servicemen’s Canteen operated from March 19, 1942 to April 8, 1946.  A million and a half G.I.s were served free food, coffee and smiles by 3,987 volunteers from eight counties at the Dennison Depot Salvation Army Servicemen’s Canteen.  The Canteen operated around the clock, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, providing a great boost to the home front effort and earning the town the nickname “Dreamsville, USA”.   In 1989, the Dennison Railroad Depot Museum opened to the public.  http://dennisondepot.org/new_website/about-2/

Glenn Miller - Dreamsville, Ohio  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2EQvRcrQw 

3:04      

The Polar Express is a children's book written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg, originally published in 1985.  As the story goes a young boy is lying in bed on Christmas Eve awaiting Santa's arrival when he hears the sound of a train outside his home, The Polar Express.  He is invited by the conductor to come aboard the train, which is filled with children and heading to the North Pole to meet Santa and the elves.  During the journey the kids are treated to hot chocolate and cookies, which is what has inspired their serving aboard Polar Express tourist trains today.  The story concludes with the young boy being picked by Santa to receive the first gift of Christmas and he chooses a simple, silver bell from Santa's sleigh.  Interestingly, though, once he returns home and awakes on Christmas morning he notices that the bell is still in his possession.  Find locations that offer official Polar Express trains at http://www.american-rails.com/polar-express-train-rides.html

railroad museums  http://www.gregariousrailfan.com/Museums.html

There is an opposite to hibernate:  it is aestivate (or estivate), and it means “to pass the summer, or any prolonged period of hot or dry conditions, in a state of torpor or suspended animation” (OED’s definition).  Where hibernate derives from hibernare, aestivate comes from aestivare, ‘to (spend the) summer.’  Estivate is a relatively new word—the first citation (in the form “aestivation“) is  credited to Charles Darwin in his 1839 account of his voyage on the HMS Beagle.  Its recent coinage might not be too surprising.  It also turns out that hibernate is nearly as new:  first use, in the sense we care about, was in an 1816 entomology text.  Of course, animals were known to hibernate before this word was coined, but a specific word, to label a specific biological process, hadn’t been needed before that time.  What are some animals that estivate?  There are enough to make the word useful.  Numerous reptiles and amphibians estivate, including some tortoises, salamanders, and frogs.  Some land snails do it.  A few insects and some types of crab do it.  It’s rare in mammals, with only one species of lemur and (maybe) an African hedgehog known to do it.  The most often cited example of estivation is the lungfish, several species of which burrow into the ground and create protective cocoons to wait out the dry season.  It’s something of a legend that lungfish can survive like this indefinitely, but they usually only estivate for a few months, until the next rainy season.  One reference suggests that lungfish can remain in this state for up to four years, but beyond that would be difficult:  their form of estivation requires slowly using up their own muscle mass.  https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/hibernating-for-the-summer-thats-estivating/

You can't answer a question if you don't understand it fully.  As a librarian, I've been asked to find "recent" articles or cases.  To my mind, recent means in the last few months.  When the patron is referring to something that happened 16 years earlier, I am on the wrong track.  So, sometimes follow up a question with one of your own.  (Does recent mean during this past year--or a few years ago?)  Or, re-phrase the question and ask if that is what is needed.

In geology and geomorphology, a hogback is a long narrow ridge or series of hills with a narrow crest and steep slopes of nearly equal inclination on both flanks.  Typically, this term is restricted to a ridge created by the differential erosion of outcropping, steeply dipping (greater than 30° - 40°), homoclinal, typically sedimentary strata.  One side, its backslope, of a hogback consists of the surface (bedding plane) of steeply dipping rock stratum, which is called a "dip slope."  Its other side, its escarpment or "frontslope" or "scarp slope", is an erosion face that cuts through the dipping strata that comprises the hogback.  The name for this landform refers to its resemblance in outline to the back of a hog.  It was named after a hogback, Hog's Back, of the North Downs in Surrey, England.  This term is also used for any ridge with a sharp summit and steep slopes of nearly equal inclination on both flanks. It is sometimes applied to drumlins and, in Maine, to both eskers and ridges known as "horsebacks".  Find examples of hogbacks in Europe and America at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogback_(geology)

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
From:  Elizabeth Kingson  Subject:  Fractious   Many years ago, we had a feisty black kitten that my daughter named Fractious.  Thinking back, the kid couldn’t have been more than five years old at the time.  Her large vocabulary started young!

From:  Alex Freeman  Subject:  Fractious  One of many amusing propaganda-type posters in the victorianesque world shows a harassed-looking young woman holding a screaming infant with the headline, “Madam!  Quieten that fractious child!”  It amused me no end and to this day it is what runs through my head whenever I am in the vicinity of a child who cannot be quiet!

The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.  Mahatma Gandhi   Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.  Paul Boose 

Always forgive your enemies--nothing annoys them so much.  Oscar Wilde  http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2007/06/25/10-inspirational-quotes-on-forgiveness/

Pronunciation of nouns v. verbs using the same word:  AHB-ject v. ahb-JECT, object: PRAH-ject v.- pro-JECT, project

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1481  June 8, 2016  On this date in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law, authorizing the President to restrict the use of certain parcels of public land with historical or conservation value.  On this date in 1949, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.