In an unprecedented bout of internationalism, five of the world’s major ballet companies will participate in a 20-hour-long live streaming event that will give ballet fans worldwide an intensive behind-the-scenes look at company classes, rehearsals and coaching.  The event, called “World Ballet Day,” will take place on Oct. 1, and features the Australian Ballet, the Bolshoi Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, the Royal Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet in successive four-hour slots, beginning at 12 p.m. local time in Melbourne, and moving across continents and time zones to Moscow, London, Toronto and San Francisco.  The live stream will be available on YouTube and on each ballet company’s website.  Viewers will be able to ask questions and interact with each company via a live forum throughout the day, and are invited to film themselves doing a pirouette and submit it for later inclusion in a short film.  And in case anyone can’t stay awake to fully compare and contrast, the full streaming will be available afterward on YouTube.  Roslyn Sulkas  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/five-ballet-companies-join-for-live-streaming-world-ballet-day/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

I bet you didn't know that the New York Public Library is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Library Way this month.  You may have no idea where it's even located.  Library Way extends from Park to Fifth avenues along 41st Street.  And it's distinguished by 44 bronze sidewalk plaques featuring quotes from the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, Julia Alvarez, Mark Twain and Tom Stoppard.  There are actually 98 plaques, according to library spokeswoman Amy Geduldig—an equal number on both sides of 41st Street that are identical to each other.  The quotes were selected during the 1990s by a panel that included representatives from the library; the Grand Central Partnership, which manages the Grand Central Business Improvement District; and the New Yorker magazine.  And the plaques, which are graphically intriguing in their own right, were designed by Gregg LeFevre.  Ralph Gardner, Jr.  http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-great-library-way-1411003094

Behind every championship team is a strategy that may sound strange to everyone else.  Auburn's happens to taste that way, too.  Beyond the usual explanations for Auburn's remarkable rise from 3-9 in 2012 to winning the Southeastern Conference last year is a secret that hadn't been revealed until now.  Over the last two seasons, the Tigers have been experimenting with an elixir-like potion.  "We were doing beet juice," says Auburn dietitian Scott Sehnert.  Before each game, between team warm-ups and the opening kickoff, Auburn's staff distributes small pouches of beetroot concentrate.  The players swirl the beetroot crystals around their water bottles and then slug the deep-purple concoction—which they don't exactly savor.  "The worst thing in the entire world," said Auburn tight end C.J. Uzomah.  "It is nasty."  But they aren't drinking it for the taste.  In recent years, sports scientists have seized on the discovery that beetroot juice is rich with nitrate.  That has led to multiple studies revealing possible performance benefits that range from increased muscle efficiency to decreases in fatigue levels.  Ben Cohen  Read much more and see pictures at http://online.wsj.com/articles/auburns-secret-sauce-beet-juice-1410978433

Montana-based poet and photographer Tyler Knott Gregson has written at least one new poem a day for his blog http://tylerknott.com/ over the past five years.  Every morning, he posts a photo with a caption and a haiku.  Around lunchtime, he puts up a longer poem, composed on a typewriter and scanned into his computer.  He shares the works on Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook—and he hasn't missed a day yet.  The Wall Street Journal  September 19, 2014

The Nebula Award for Best Novelette is given each year by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) to a science fiction or fantasy novelette published in English or translated into English and released in the United States or on the internet during the previous calendar year.  A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a novelette if it is between 7,500 and 17,500 words; awards are also given out for pieces of longer lengths in the Novel and Novella categories, and for shorter lengths in the Short Story category.  The Nebula Award for Best Novelette has been awarded annually since 1966.  Find list of  winners from 1966-2014 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula_Award_for_Best_Novelette

Established in 1895, Stone Laboratory is the oldest freshwater biological field station in the United States and the center of Ohio State University’s teaching and research on Lake Erie.  The lab serves as a base for more than 65 researchers from 12 agencies and academic institutions, all working year-round to solve the most pressing problems facing the Great Lakes.  The Gem of Lake Erie.  Gib.  The Rock.  Gibraltar Island has many names and a long history.  Originally a territory of the state of Connecticut, it was purchased by New York banker Pierpont Edwards in 1807.  Soon after, it became a key in the War of 1812 when, on September 10, 1813, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry used the island as a lookout point to spot the approaching British fleet before the Battle of Lake Erie.  Read more, see pictures, and link to resources at http://stonelab.osu.edu/about/

The Scottish referendum on Sept. 18, 2014 was interesting not just for what it said about Britain, but also for what it said about the state of political forecasting.  The polls were volatile; they often gave conflicting signals; and it took them until the last few weeks to even start to suspect that this would be a close race. T he major polls in the past week ranged from a 6-point lead for the Yes vote to a 7-point lead for the No vote.  And this wide range wasn’t because of wild fluctuations in public opinion.  It was the result of two surveys that were taken within a day of each other.  The prediction markets, on the other hand, yielded much more reliable forecasts.  Despite the demise of Intrade, these markets remain extremely active, and over at Betfair, bettors rated the chances of a No vote at around 80 percent, an estimate that remained remarkably stable over the past week, fluctuating by only a few points.  British bookies were laying similar odds.  According to The Financial Times, a Ladbrokes spokesman argued earlier this week that the referendum would be the biggest political betting event in history, noting that his firm had taken more money in bets than the last British general election and American presidential election combined.  Betting on the likely winning margin also suggested that the No vote was most likely to win by around 4 points.  Yes, bettors underestimated the winning margin, but they were still closer than the election-week polling average.  My own research with Microsoft’s David Rothschild suggests that pollsters could do a better job if they learned from prediction markets.  Instead of focusing on whom people say they plan to vote for, ask them instead to focus on who they think will win. Typically, asking people who they think will win yields better forecasts, possibly because it leads them to also reflect on the opinions of those around them, and perhaps also because it may yield more honest answers.  It’s an idea with particular relevance to the case of the Scottish referendum.  As Stephen Fisher, an associate professor of political sociology at the University of Oxford, has noted, there is a historical tendency for polling to overstate the likelihood of success of referendums, possibly because we’re more willing to tell pollsters we will vote for change than to actually do so.   Such biases are less likely to distort polls that ask people who they think will win.  Justin Wolfers  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/upshot/scotlands-no-vote-a-loss-for-pollsters-and-a-win-for-betting-markets.html?abt=0002&abg=0

If it hadn’t been for The New Yorker, A.R. Gurney’s 1988 play might have never made it to the Great White Way.  At the show’s Broadway opening on Sept. 18, 2014 at the Brooks Atkinson Theater the playwright explained that he submitted the script to the publication in the 1980s for consideration.  When he received a rejection note saying they “don’t publish plays” Gurney and his agent figured the editors were right and “Love Letters” was in fact a play.  A very low maintenance, cost-effective two-hander.  The two-actor cast — Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy — required only a table and two chairs.  From there, with the text of the letters in front of them, the duo read the 90-minute epistolary tale of the lifelong correspondence between a man and a woman who may or may not be the love of each others’ lives.  Dennehy and Farrow are the first of a crop of big-name actors who will rotate in and out of the show in the coming months.  Among the actors on board for stints in the show are Alan Alda, Candice Bergen, Stacy Keach, Diana Rigg, Anjelica Huston and Martin Sheen.  Addie Morfoot  http://variety.com/2014/scene/news/brian-dennehy-mia-farrow-love-letters-broadway-opening-night-1201309461/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1194  September 22, 2014  On this date in 1789, the office of United States Postmaster General was established.  On this date in 1869, Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold premiered in Munich.

The largest ever Vancouver Writers Fest is happening this fall with authors ranging from the international — including Norway’s Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ireland’s Eimear McBride and Iceland’s Sjon — to the hyper local — such as Steven Galloway, Caroline Adderson and Ian Weir.  “For me, this is a very international festival,” said Hal Wake, festival artistic director.  This national and international lineup reaffirms our role at the Writers Fest to introduce some of the most significant writers in the world to readers who may only have had a passing knowledge of them.  We love to present authors who have achieved success alongside brilliant new writers who are about to become the buzz of the literary world.”  More than 100 authors will be in Vancouver participating in about 86 events Oct. 21 to 26, 2014 including panel discussions, readings, a literary cabaret and other events.  Other notable authors include Colm Toibin, who will appear in conversation in the event’s finale with author Jane Smiley.  Tracy Sherlock  http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Vancouver+Writers+Fest+This+year+writing+writ+large/10121665/story.html

The female name of Marion is a diminutive form for Mary--the word "marionette" means "little Mary".  Puppets have been traced back to 2000 BC Egypt, as well as dolls found in tombs dating back to Greek and Roman times.  Japan and India also have a history of early puppetry.  More modern locations famous for puppetry include the Czech Republic and Austria.

http://www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/From-Puppets-to-Muppets-345646.html

The curtain rises in a quaint theater in Prague's tourist hub to reveal a sly libertine nobleman, Don Giovanni, trying to carry off Donna Anna, the Commandant's daughter.  Anna resists, and Giovanni emerges from the Commandant's palace, pursued by Anna, who wants him punished.  Her father rushes to help and is killed by Giovanni.  This is the first of many dramatic and comical scenes in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni, composed as a gift to Prague.  When Mozart wrote the tale of the incorrigible lothario, chances are he envisioned a grandiose production filled with dramatic effects, impassioned scenes and larger-than-life characters.  He probably did not expect those larger-than-life characters to be a mere 2 feet tall and carved from wood — marionettes, to be exact.  I caught this absurdist and amusing production of Don Giovanni at the National Marionette Theater in Prague, which staged the city's first marionette version of the Mozart opera in 1991 and has since performed it 3,000 times.  Marionette operas and theater are a prominent part of Prague's contemporary arts and culture scene, but they are also rooted in a long tradition going back to the 12th century, when marionettes were used in religious ceremonies and folk customs.  Today they're part of the city's tourist industry too. You can barely wander down a street without encountering wooden stringed puppets beckoning you to watch them dance or take them home as a pricey souvenir.  These marionettes, waiting to be brought to life at nearly every corner, also add to the visitor's sense that Prague is a fairy tale come to life, with its castles, romantic bridges, cobblestoned streets and the sounds of Vivaldi ringing out from church courtyards.  "Puppets are to Prague what pizza is to Rome," says puppeteer Vlad Brodsky.  Apparently Rome, or rather Italy, played a part in forming Prague's puppetry history.  In the 16th century, traveling comedians from Germany and Austria began performing puppet shows at Czech markets and in houses of the nobility.  A century later, Italian string marionettes also migrated here and started appearing in theaters.  Charmaine Noronha  http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2008-10-27-prague-puppet-shows_N.htm?csp=34

There is a National Marionette Theatre in the United States owned and operated by the Syrotiak family of Brattleboro, Vermont.  Read about it and see pictures at http://www.nmtshow.com/aboutus.html

Reader feedback:  Don't know if you've ever covered "hyperpalatables."  "These foods are deliberately engineered in such a way that they surpass the reward properties of traditional foods, such as vegetables, fruits, and nuts.  Food chemists achieve this by suffusing products with increased levels of fat, sugar, flavors, and food additives."

Here are some foods deliberately designed to hook you at the first whiff or taste:  1. Soft drinks  2. Cured Meats  3. Microwave Popcorn  4. Salty, Roasted Snacks  5. All Fast Food  Extracted from article by Martha Rosenberg originally appearing on AlterNet http://www.salon.com/2014/06/07/5_unhealthy_foods_engineered_to_be_addictive_partner/  See also How the Food Makers Captured Our Brains at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/health/23well.html

Most Americans know nothing of Francis Scott Key, except for the story of how he came to write our national anthem.  Much of his prominence during his life, however, came from his work as a lawyer.  He served as U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. from 1833-1841, practiced in the federal courts, and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.  He enjoyed the respect of peers and those in high public office.  President Andrew Jackson, for example, called upon him to travel to Alabama to negotiate a land dispute.  Francis Scott Key also had a sense of humor, and some of his poems contain humorous rhymes and puns, as illustrated in the lines below, from a poem addressed to a judge.

“May it please your honor to hear the petition
Of a poor old mare in a miserable condition,
Who has come this cold night to beg that your honor
Will consider her ease and take pity upon her.
Her master has turned her out in the street,
And the stones are too hard to lie down on, or eat;
Entertainment for horses she sees every where,
But, alas! there is none, as it seems, for a mare.
She has wandered about, cold, hungry, and weary,
And can’t even get in the Penitentiary.”

from Petition for a Habeas Corpus
to the Honorable James Sewall Morsell…

http://baltimoreauthors.ubalt.edu/writers/fscottkey.htm  See also http://www.legallanguage.com/resources/poems/starspangledbanner/

Royal and Ancient Golf Club Votes to Admit Female Members by Karen Crouse  As evening descended here, on the same day Scots voted on whether to declare independence from the United Kingdom, Peter Dawson, the secretary of the club, announced the results of a postal balloting of the club’s 2,400 male members, many of whom were on site in matching blue jackets and patterned blue ties.  About three-quarters of the members participated in the voting, he said, with 85 percent of them opting to accept women.  The policy will take effect immediately, and the club said some women would be put on a fast track for membership to avoid languishing on the long waiting list.  The decision carries powerful symbolism.  The Royal and Ancient Golf Club is a 260-year-old institution that calls itself the spiritual home of golf.  The separate governing body it created in 2004, called the R & A, is entrusted with running the British Open and helping adjudicate the game’s rules, making it one of the sport’s primary seats of power.  But the male-only membership had increasingly become an anachronism that cast the club in an unfavorable light with fans, golfers and tournament sponsors.  It also undermined one of the main mandates of the R & A, which is to expand the game.  The R & A still has three male-only clubs in the Open rotation — Muirfield, Royal St. George’s and Royal Troon — meaning the debate over membership policy could continue in Britain despite the change in policy at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club.  From a pragmatic standpoint, the club’s gender bias had undercut the ability of Louise Richardson, the St. Andrews University principal, to conduct business. She could not take visiting donors for a meal at the clubhouse.  In an interview with The New York Times in May, Richardson discussed what she saw as the difference between socializing with like-minded individuals and discriminatory policies.  “What’s different is when people are excluded from access to something unique by a category to which they’re assigned or have no control,” she said.  “That’s access to a unique set of privileges, and that’s different than going for a drink with your buddies.”  Richardson said she had not been wholly excluded from the club.  “People have said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take you to lunch,’ ” she said.  “But I’ve said, ‘I’m not eating in the clubhouse until women can enter.’ ”  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/sports/golf/royal-and-ancient-golf-club-votes-to-admit-women.html?_r=0

Scottish voters rejected a heated bid for independence, providing a narrow escape for a British government that scrambled to dole out promises of new local powers for Edinburgh to head off the breakup of a 307-year-old union.  Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said early Friday, Sept. 19, 2014 he had accepted that the majority of Scottish voters had decided not to become an independent country.  The tally at around 6:30 a.m. local time, which included results from 31 of the 32 districts in Scotland, showed 55% of voters rejecting the independence question and 45% favoring it.  About 3.5 million votes had been  counted. More than four million people were registered to vote in the election.  The Wall Street Journal  September 19, 2014

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1193  September 19, 2014  On this date in 1879, the Blackpool Illuminations were switched on for the first time.  On this date in 1893, in New Zealand, the Electoral Act of 1893 gave all women in New Zealand the right to vote.

Edible Gardens Go to the Ballpark by Maria Finn  San Francisco is not the first place to do this.  Groundskeepers at the San Diego’s Padres Petco Park planted edibles in 2012 behind the home team’s bullpen and the head chef uses the peppers in salsa and some of the other veggies for garnish.  But the garden at the AT&T Park is making more of a splash.  It may not be the first, but it’s the most ambitious to date.   Leafy greens and spindly herbs grow on aeroponic towers, a lightweight, water-wise alternative to planters.  This collaboration between The San Francisco Giants and their food service partner, Bon Appétit Management Company,with designs by  Blasen Landscape Architecture and EDG, are helping fans get more roughage into their game-day diet.  The produce will be used in the restaurants on-site, and to power-up Giants’ players with kale salads and smoothies.  See pictures at http://modernfarmer.com/2014/06/edible-gardens-go-ballpark/

Emerson Burkhart (1905-1969) was an American artist based in Columbus, Ohio.  In 1934, Burkhart received a commission from the WPA Federal Art Project for a mural over the auditorium at Central High School in Columbus.  The Federal Art Project intended to give artists like Burkhart employment during the Great Depression and provide art for non-federal government buildings.  Burkhart created a 13’ by 70’ mural, known as Music, featuring young women and men dancing and playing musical instruments.  Just four years later, in 1938, the principal ordered that the mural be painted over as “it was too sexy.”  Starting in 1999, over the course of six years, 1,000 art students from the Fort Hayes Metropolitan Education Center, under the supervision of art conservators, worked to remove the paint that once covered the mural.  After its restoration, the mural was installed at Greater Columbus Convention Center.  In 1938, Burkhart received his second commission from the WPA for ten life size murals at Stillman Hall on the Ohio State University campus and he was paid $1,209 for 13 months of work.  Each mural featured important historical figures like Walt Whitman and David Thoreau. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson_Burkhart

Pearl Zane Gray was born on January 31, 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio, a town founded by his mother's ancestors.  (The spelling of the Gray family name was changed to "Grey" sometime during the late 1890s.)  As a youth in Ohio, he developed interests in fishing, baseball and writing.  All three pursuits would later bring him acclaim.  Grey's baseball prowess led to a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania's Dental Department.  He graduated in 1896 with a degree in dentistry, but chose to play amateur baseball for several seasons, practicing dentistry intermittently.  He established his own dental practice in New York City in 1898.  While residing in New York, he continued to play baseball. He loved to get away from the city, and began visiting Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania.  There he fished and enjoyed the outdoors as in his youth.  On one of these outings in 1900, Zane ("Doc") met 17-year-old Lina Elise Roth, or "Dolly" as he called her, while canoeing near the Delaware House, a grand boarding house on the river.  Dolly was a positive influence in Grey's struggle to become a successful writer.  Her encouragement and belief in his abilities led him to continue writing despite rejection by publishers.  Grey's first published article was "A Day on the Delaware," in Recreation magazine, May 1902.  In 1903, Grey wrote, illustrated and published his first novel, Betty Zane, with money from Dolly.  In 1905, Dolly became Zane's wife.  He left dentistry to pursue writing full-time and the couple settled into a farmhouse overlooking the junction of the Lackawaxen and Delaware rivers.  In 1906, they took a honeymoon trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and to California - Grey's first trip west.  In 1907, Grey met Western conservationist Colonel J. C. "Buffalo" Jones at a meeting of the Campfire Club in New York City.  Using the last of his wife's inheritance, Grey accompanied Jones, as a writer and photographer, on a hunting expedition to the Grand Canyon.  This trip marked a turning point in Grey's career as it opened up new vistas in subject matter for his writing.  He wrote an account of this adventure, The Last of the Plainsmen, published by Outing Press in 1908.  In 1910, Harper & Brothers published The Heritage of the Desert, Zane Grey's first western novel and his first real success.  Next came Grey's most noted work, Riders of the Purple Sage, published in 1912.  By 1915, Grey had 15 books in print (frontier/baseball/juvenile adventure/western) along with many fishing and outdoor adventure articles and serialized stories.   Grey's success and wealth enabled him to travel the world in pursuit of his favorite sport - fishing.  Grey held over ten world records for large game fish.  He was the first person to catch a fish over 1,000 pounds on rod and reel (1,040- pound blue marlin in 1930, Tahiti).  His last recognized world-record catch, for a 618-pound silver marlin, was not surpassed until 1953.  Zane Grey died October 23, 1939, at the age of 67.  When Dolly died in 1957, the ashes of both were interred in a cemetery near their home in Lackawaxen, fulfilling their wish to rest together beside the Delaware River.  In 1945, six years after Zane Grey's death, his wife Dolly sold their Lackawaxen house to Helen James, daughter of Zane's long-time friend Alvah James.  In 1948, Helen opened the Zane Grey Inn, which she operated for twenty- five years.  Over the years, she collected memorabilia associated with Grey and discovered original artwork and other items of interest in her new home.  From 1973 until 1989, Helen and her husband, artist Albert H. Davis, operated the Zane Grey Museum to display the Grey memorabilia, photographs, and books in the rooms that served as Grey's office and study.  The museum was sold in 1989 to the National Park Service.  It was included in the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River because of Zane Grey's association with the Delaware River and its effect upon the budding writer.  Today the museum is self guided with National Park Service rangers and volunteers available to answer questions and provide for sale a variety of Zane Grey books currently in print.  http://www.nps.gov/upde/historyculture/zanegrey.htm  The world of Zane Grey is also celebrated in Payson, Arizona http://paysonrimcountry.com/Western-Heritage/Zane-Grey-History and Norwich, Ohio http://consumer.discoverohio.com/searchdetails.aspx?detail=70919

Arian is a suffix forming personal nouns corresponding to Latin adjectives ending in -ārius or English adjectives or nouns ending in - ary.  It forms nouns noting a person who supports, advocates, or practices a doctrine, theory, or set of principles associated with the base word.  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/-arian  Examples in long use:  librarian, veterinarian.  Examples of recent words:  cybrarian, flextarian.  Find words ending in arian at http://www.bestwordlist.com/f/a/5/wordsendingarian.htm

Meet The 2014 Winners Of The MacArthur 'Genius Grants'  One is becoming as well-known for her autobiographical work as she is for her test for what movies meet a gender-balance baseline.  Another directed one of the best-reviewed and most surreal documentaries of the past decade and has a follow-up on this year's film-festival circuit.  Another has been leading the fight for gay-marriage rights since 2004 in Massachusetts.  Alongside cartoonist Alison Bechdel, The Act of Killing director Joshua Oppenheimer and attorney Mary Bonauto, other 2014 MacArthur Award winners are exploring the subtleties of race via psychology and poetry, using math to model the human brain or define the limits of prime numbers, or providing physical, home and job security to some of the country's most at-risk populations.  See pictures and stories at http://www.npr.org/2014/09/17/349120236/meet-the-2014-winners-of-the-macarthur-genius-grants

This time of year there's little question Americans are pumped about pumpkin.  We gobble up about $300 million worth of pumpkin-flavored products annually, mostly from September through November.  Although few vegetables boast the same level of fandom, the craze doesn't always have nutrition experts smiling.  Starbucks recently was criticized because its famed Pumpkin Spice Latte doesn't contain actual pumpkin.  Nor do many of the other pumpkin-flavored products, including Nabisco's new Pumpkin Spice Oreos, set to hit shelves next week.  But, in most cases, the lack of pumpkin isn't the biggest health concern.  It's the sugar.  Nutrition expert Joyce Hanna, associate director of the Health Improvement Program at Stanford, points out that a 12-oz. Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte with nonfat milk and no whipped cream contains 37 grams of sugar.  That's a tad more than seven teaspoons.

Kathryn Roethel  http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Pumpkin-is-healthful-but-flavored-products-can-be-5761175.php

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1192  September 17, 2014  On this date in 1630, the city of Boston, Massachusetts was founded.  On this date in 1776, the Presidio of San Francisco was founded in New Spain.

BANNED BOOKS WEEK 2014:  September 21-27

A list of the top ten frequently challenged books of 2013 has been released as part of the State of America's Library Report.  Each year, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom compiles the list to inform the public about censorship in libraries and schools.  A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. The number of challenges reflects only incidents reported.  Find the top ten books for 2013 (out of 307 challenges as reported by the Office for Intellectual Freedom) plus the reasons for their inclusion at http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10#2013

About 6,000 carousels were made in the United States between about 1890 and 1930.  Only about 200 remain today; the rest have been abandoned, destroyed by fire or flood, or broken up and sold to collectors.  On some carousels, like Cafesjian's Carousel in St. Paul, Minnesota, all the figures are horses.  Others, called menagerie machines, feature a variety of animals such as cats, goats, rabbits, ostriches, pigs, giraffes, and deer.  If the figures go up and down as the carousel turns, they are called jumpers.  If they are bolted to the floor, they are called standers.  Some carousels with standers made the ride more interesting by inviting riders on the outside row to try to catch a brass ring.  Carousel experts generally speak of three styles of carousel figures:  Philadelphia style, Coney Island style and County Fair style.
Philadelphia style:  The bodies of Philadelphia style animals tend to be large, strong and realistic. They were carved by men--mostly German immigrants--working for one of several companies in Philadelphia's Germantown section.  The first of these companies was founded by carver Gustav Dentzel and operated later by his sons William and Edward. Daniel C. Muller was another influential carver and carousel builder.  Nearby, the Philadelphia Toboggan Company employed some influential carvers of its own.
Coney Island style:  The bodies of Coney Island animals tend to be more slender and stylized than their Philadelphia counterparts.  Manes are more fanciful, expressions are more spirited and trappings are often studded with jewels.  Among the famous creators of Coney Island style figures are Charles Looff, Marcus Illions and Charles Carmel.

County Fair style:  County Fair figures generally have very small and slender bodies because they were placed on carousels that were taken apart and moved every week or so, making the circuit of fairs and festivals.  Among the best-known manufacturers of these portable carousels are the Herschell-Spillman Company of North Tonawanda, New York, and the C.W. Parker Company of Leavenworth, Kansas.   http://www.ourfaircarousel.org/america'scarousels.html  

Opened in 1990, the Merry-Go-Round Museum in Sandusky, Ohio got its start thanks to a simple stamp.  In 1988, the U.S. Postal Service issued a set of four stamps commemorating carousel figures from around the country.  One of those featured was the King Armored horse at Cedar Point’s Kiddieland carousel.  To celebrate the first-day issue of the stamps, a group of residents decided to throw a party.  They put together a carousel display, hoping a few hundred people would attend.   Instead, more than 2,000 showed up.  Now, the Merry-Go-Round Museum is filled with a menagerie of carousel animals including the traditional “painted ponies”, ostriches, giraffes, and a “sealobster.”   http://www.clueintocleveland.com/2014/08/06/my-lakeerielove-story-a-merry-visit-to-sandusky-ohio/  See pictures of Sandusky, Ohio's Merry-Go-Round Museum set in a former post office building at http://www.merrygoroundmuseum.org/ and http://meredithhaleart.blogspot.com/2014/07/sanduskys-merry-go-round-museum.html

kit and kaboodle   Caboodle has a complicated history.  It’s been spelt down the years in many different ways, and these days is usually listed in dictionaries with an initial “c”.  It means a collection of objects, sometimes of people.  It commonly turns up in the whole caboodle, meaning “the whole lot”.  It’s recorded in the US from the middle of the nineteenth century.  It’s probable that the word was originally boodle, with the phrase being the whole kit and boodle, but that the initial sound “k” was added to boodle for euphony.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-who2.htm 

Alliterative phrases:  She sells sea-shells down by the sea-shore; Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; give up the ghost; good as gold; pleased as punch; strut your stuff

Alliterative brand names:  Dunkin’ Donuts; PayPal; Best Buy; Coca-Cola; Bed Bath & Beyond; Krispy Kreme

Alliterative characters:  Porky Pig; Lois Lane; Lex Luthor; Clark Kent; Donald Duck; Spongebob Squarepants

In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme.  The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of theGermanic languages, where scholars use the term 'alliterative poetry' rather broadly to indicate a tradition which not only shares alliteration as its primary ornament but also certain metrical characteristics.  The Old English epic Beowulf, as well as most other Old English poetry, the Old High German Muspilli, the Old Saxon Heliand, the Old Norse Poetic Edda, and many Middle English poems such as Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the Alliterative Morte Arthur all use alliterative verse.  Find about rules, forms and revivals at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliterative_verse  

Prosody is the rhythm and sounds used in poetry.

Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated a "nationality" by its Statute of Autonomy.  Catalonia comprises four provinces:  Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona.  The capital and largest city is Barcelona, the second largest city in Spain, and the centre of one of the largest metropolitan areas in Europe, and it comprises most of the territory of the former Principality of Catalonia, with the remainder now part of France.  Catalonia is bordered by France and Andorra to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the east, and the Spanish regions of Aragon and the Valencian Community to west and south respectively.  The official languages are Spanish, Catalan, and Aranese (an Occitan dialect). 

Read much more and see pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalonia

On September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key composed the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner" after witnessing the massive overnight British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812. Key, an American lawyer, watched the siege while under detainment on a British ship and penned the famous words after observing with awe that Fort McHenry's flag survived the 1,800-bomb assault.  After circulating as a handbill, the patriotic lyrics were published in a Baltimore newspaper on September 20, 1814.  Key's words were later set to the tune of "To Anacreon in Heaven," a popular English song. Throughout the 19th century, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was regarded as the national anthem by most branches of the U.S. armed forces and other groups, but it was not until 1916, and the signing of an executive order by President Woodrow Wilson, that it was formally designated as such.  In March 1931, Congress passed an act confirming Wilson's presidential order, and on March 3 President Hoover signed it into law.  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-star-spangled-banner-becomes-official 

When I couldn't answer a trivia question about which president signed the law making the Star Spangled Banner the national anthem, I typed in list u.s. presidents and went to 1931, because one thing I remembered was that it happened in 1931.  Find a list of presidents and vice-presidents at http://www.presidentsusa.net/presvplist.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1191  September 15, 2014  On this date in 1835, the  HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reached the Galápagos Islands.  The ship landed at Chatham or San Cristobal, the easternmost of the archipelago.  On this date in 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.

Sailing stones, sliding rocks, and moving rocks all refer to a geological phenomenon where rocks move and inscribe long tracks along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention.  The stones move only every two or three years and most tracks develop over three or four years.  Stones with rough bottoms leave straight striated tracks while those with smooth bottoms tend to wander.  Stones sometimes turn over, exposing another edge to the ground and leaving a different track in the stone's wake.  Trails differ in both direction and length.  Rocks that start next to each other may travel parallel for a time, before one abruptly changes direction to the left, right, or even back to the direction from which it came.  Trail length also varies – two similarly sized and shaped rocks may travel uniformly, then one could move ahead or stop in its track.  Tracks of sliding rocks have been observed and studied in various locations, including Little Bonnie Claire Playa in Nevada, and most notably Racetrack Playa, Death Valley National Park, California.  Read more and see pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones

Boulders of natural concrete by Sarah Griffiths  The Māoris explained the presence of almost perfectly spherical boulders on Koekohe Beach, on the South island of New Zealand, as eel baskets washed up from an enormous, sunken canoe.  But the science behind the unusual rocks is much stranger.  The Moeraki Boulders, measuring up to three metres in diameter, were in fact formed from ancient sea sediments around 60 million years ago.  Found on New Zealand's Otago coast in isolation as well as clusters, the formations have been exposed through shoreline erosion from the coastal cliffs that frame the beach.  Experts say the unusual rocks are the result of erosion, time and concretion - when a compact mass of sedimentary rock is formed by the precipitation of natural mineral cement within the spaces between sediment grains.  See about a dozen pictures at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2385913/The-mysterious-Moeraki-Boulders-Maori-legend-natural-concrete-date-60-MILLION-years.html

The Greek prefix peri means around or near.  Examples:  perimeter, periscope, perigee, perihelion.  The Greek suffix ize means to make, to do something with.  Examples:  hypothesize, itemize, hospitalize, winterize.  Find a list of Greek prefixes and suffixes at http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/Wordpower/handouts/gkaffix.pdf

A smoketree (Cotinus coggygriaI) is a multi-stemmed small tree that turns a smoky pink color from June through August.  Leaves are showy, turning from medium blue-green to yellow-red-purple in the fall.  http://www.arborday.org/treeguide/treeDetail.cfm?ID=32

"Creosote bush" (Larrea tridentata) is named for its olfactory similarity to the pungent wood preservative used on fence posts and telephone poles.  "Cheese bush" (Hymenoclea salsola), another common aromatic shrub, actually smells like cheese.  "Cheese-weed" (Malva parviflora) produces wheel-shaped fruits composed of one-seeded sections.  The sections fit together like a wheel of cheese.  

http://www.desertusa.com/flowers/flower-names.html

The first Long Night Against Procrastination was held at the European University Viadrina, Germany in 2010 as a way of supporting students academically.   At the University of Manitoba, they advertised the 2014 event this way:  A free, all-night event providing a safe and quiet study/writing space for students at a critical point in the semester.  Reference librarians and writing tutors will be available to work with students to help them make progress with their papers.  Light refreshments will be provided at midnight and prizes drawn throughout the night.   Greg Landgraf  http://umanitoba.ca/longnight/  

"Procrastination control" and "breaking down walls" are just two of many phrases used in articles about this widespread trend.

German vehicle-maker Daimler has an innovative approach to holiday email, which many people about to return from holiday may well wish their company would copy, writes William Kremer.  There ought to be a word - and perhaps there is, in German - for the mix of feelings that accompanies composing and activating a holiday out-of-office message.  There's smugness, of course, and a gratifying sense of laying down one's virtual tools after a horribly long shift.  But for many of us, these nice feelings are tempered by the knowledge that in two weeks, refreshed but depressed, we will have to trawl through hundreds of emails, many of which will be conference room notifications for meetings about crises that have passed.   But for employees at Daimler things are a little different.  Email these people while they are on holiday and you will get a message like this:  I am on vacation.  I cannot read your email.  Your email is being  deleted.  Please contact Hans or Monika if it's really important, or resend the email after I'm back in the office.  Danke Schoen.  Apparently, people receiving such a notification rarely get angry.  "The response is basically 99% positive, because everybody says, 'That's a real nice thing, I would love to have that too,'" Daimler spokesman Oliver Wihofszki told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.  The auto-delete policy - which is optional - follows a piece of government-funded research on work-life balance, which Daimler carried out in 2010 and 2011 with psychologists from the University of Heidelberg.  The company now trains managers to set a good work-life example, and encourages them to set aside time when no meetings can be scheduled.  This is supposed to be a time when workers can concentrate on their job, or take time off for any extra hours they have spent in the office.  Daimler's move follows Volkswagen's decision to turn email off after office hours and new guidelines in France ordering workers in some sectors to ignore work emails when they go home.  It's not pure altruism though, as the company explained when the policy was launched:  "The aim of the project is to maintain the balance between the work and home life of Daimler employees so as to safeguard their performance in the long run."  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28786117

Stonehenge secrets revealed by underground map by Maria Dasi Espuig  Archaeologists have unveiled the most detailed map ever produced of the earth beneath Stonehenge and its surrounds.  They combined different instruments to scan the area to a depth of three metres, with unprecedented resolution.  Early results suggest that the monument was accompanied by 17 neighbouring shrines.  Among the surprises yielded by the research are traces of up to 60 huge stones or pillars which formed part of the 1.5km-wide "super henge" previously identified at nearby Durrington Walls.  

Read more and see graphics at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29126854

Saturday Night Live became an unlikely symbol for one opponent of the proposed campaign finance amendment, now before the Senate, which is intended to counter the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case and limit corporations in engaging in political speech.  Looking to mount a defense for corporate interests, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said the amendment might make it a “criminal offense” for “S.N.L.” to engage in political satire because it is a show owned by NBC, which is a corporation.  Mr. Cruz suggested that Lorne Michaels, the creator of “Saturday Night Live,” could be jailed for making fun of any politician if the amendment were to become law.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/business/media/chris-pratt-to-host-the-40th-season-premiere-of-saturday-night-live.html?ref=television&_r=0

Barbra Streisand is going to be on the ‘Tonight Show’ for the first time in more than 50 years by Soraya Nadia McDonald  Barbra Streisand will be Jimmy Fallon’s only guest on Sept. 15, 2014 when she appears to promote her new album, “Partners,” which comes out Sept. 16.  The last time she was on the show, she was promoting her debut album with Johnny Carson in 1963.   Find  the track listing for “Partners” and link to a 2:22 video of Streisand singing “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” with Josh Groban at http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/09/11/barbra-streisand-is-going-to-be-on-the-tonight-show-for-the-first-time-in-50-years/?tid=hp_mm&hpid=z3

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1190  September 12, 2014  On this date in 1609, Henry Hudson began his exploration of the Hudson River while aboard the Halve Maen.  On this date in 1910,  Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in Munich premiered with a chorus of 852 singers and an orchestra of 171 players.