Christmas pudding is a type of pudding traditionally served as part of the Christmas dinner in Britain and in some other countries where it has been brought by British emigrants.  It has its origins in medieval England, and is sometimes known as plum pudding or just "pud",  though this can also refer to other kinds of boiled pudding involving dried fruit.  Despite the name "plum pudding," the pudding contains no actual plums due to the pre-Victorian use of the word "plums" as a term for raisins.  The pudding is composed of many dried fruits held together by egg and suet, sometimes moistened by treacle or molasses and flavoured with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and other spices.  The pudding is aged for a month, months, or even a year; the high alcohol content of the pudding prevents it from spoiling during this time.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_pudding

Quodlibetal, an adjective with vowels in reverse order, means relating to a question or topic for debate or discussion.  From Latin quodlibetum, from Latin quod (what) + libet (it pleases), meaning “whatever pleases”.  Earlier the term referred to a mock exercise in discussion or debate.   A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

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From:  David Franks  Subject:  quodlibetal  In music, a quodlibet is a piece that incorporates melodies from diverse sources, usually with humorous intent.  For example, a quodlibet might contain recognizable snippets of “You Are My Sunshine”, “Stormy Weather” and “A Foggy Day”.  J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations includes a quodlibet as the final variation before the reprise of the aria that begins the work.  As the entire work is a tour de force of compositional techniques, this quodlibet is an interweaving of four tune fragments from two folk songs:  “Ich bin so lang nicht bei dir g’west” (“I have so long been away from you”) and “Kraut und Rüben haben mich vertreiben” (“Cabbage and turnips have driven me away”).  A recording of Rosalyn Tureck performing J.S. Bach's Aria mit 30 Veränderungen, BWV 988 "Goldberg Variations" - Var. 30 Quodlibet a 1 Clav. is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGgNRBE_Tkk  2:07

From:  Anu Garg:  Subject:  Odds &  Ends  The Netherlands (literally, lowlands) is also called Holland even though Holland is the name of a region in the country (North Holland and South Holland are two of the twelve provinces).  Holland was a powerful region of the country so its name was used for the whole country.  For the same reason, the name Russia was used for the former Soviet Union and England for the whole of the UK.  So, why “the” Netherlands?  Usually, when a place is named after a geographic feature, it goes with a definite article.  The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, but the seat of government is The Hague (from des Graven hage:  The Counts’ Hedge). The word Dutch comes from the same root as the word Deutschland, a Germanic word diota meaning people.

Costa Rica, Brazil, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia are the world’s top pineapple producers, and more than 300 billion pineapples a year are grown worldwide.  Hawaii grows only about 400 million pineapples a year, mostly for tourists, Hawaiians, and to ease occasional shortages in California.  Hawaii has no canneries.  It takes about 18 months for a plant to produce fruit. — Smithsonian.com, American Society for Horticultural Science.  http://thecourier.com/opinion/columns/2015/11/02/where-do-our-pineapples-come-from/

The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a "play with music", translated by German dramatist Elisabeth Hauptmann from John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, with music by Kurt Weill, and insertion ballads by François Villon and Rudyard Kipling as adapted by Bertolt Brecht.  The work offers a Socialist critique of the capitalist world.  It opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.  By 1933, when Weill and Brecht were forced to leave Germany by Hitler's Machtergreifung, the play had been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times on European stages.  Songs from The Threepenny Opera have been widely covered and become standards, most notably "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" ("The Ballad of Mack the Knife") and "Seeräuberjenny" ("Pirate Jenny").  There have been at least three film versions.  German director G. W. Pabst made a 1931 German- and French-language version simultaneously (a common practice in the early days of sound films).  Another version was directed by Wolfgang Staudte in West Germany in 1962 starring Curd Jürgens, Gert Fröbe, and Hildegard Knef.  Scenes withSammy Davis Jr. were added for its American release.  In 1989 an American version (renamed Mack the Knife) was released, directed by Menahem Golan, with Raúl Juliá as Macheath, Richard Harris as Peachum, Julie Walters as Mrs Peachum, Bill Nighy as Tiger Brown, Julia Migenes as Jenny, and Roger Daltrey as the Street Singer.  Andy Serkis has announced a collaboration with musician Nick Cave on a planned motion capture film of The Threepenny Opera.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Threepenny_Opera

The roots of language:  what makes us different from other animals?  by Paul Ibbotson and Michael Tomasello   Language seems to have evolved just once, in one out of 8.7 million species on earth today.  The hunt is on to explain the foundations of this ability and what makes us different from other animals.  The intellectual most closely associated with trying to pin down that capacity is Noam Chomsky.  He proposed a universal grammatical blueprint that was unique to humans.  This blueprint operated like a computer program.  Instead of running Windows or Excel, this program performed “operations” on language–any language.  Regardless of which of the 6000+ human languages that this code could be exposed to, it would guide the learner to the correct adult grammar.  It was a bold claim:  despite the surface variations we hear between Swahili, Japanese and Latin, they are all run on the same piece of underlying software.  As ever, remarkable claims require remarkable evidence, and in the 50 years since some of these ideas were laid out, history has not been kind.  Read more and see Minna Sundberg’s illustration of the relationship of Indo-European and Uralic languages at http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/nov/05/roots-language-what-makes-us-different-animals

Uralic languages:  family of more than 20 related languages, all descended from a Proto-Uralic language that existed 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.  At its earliest stages, Uralic most probably included the ancestors of the Yukaghir language.  The Uralic languages are spoken by more than 25 million people scattered throughout northeastern Europe, northern Asia, and (through immigration) North America.  The most demographically important Uralic language is Hungarian, the official language of Hungary.  http://www.britannica.com/topic/Uralic-languages

In the fall of 2015, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and other federal officials announced the nation’s first national food loss and waste goal, calling for a 50 percent reduction by 2030.  The numbers are staggering.  The USDA says 30-40 percent of the food supply is wasted, the equivalent of 1,249 calories per American per day.  The impact is huge.  The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 21 percent of all municipal solid waste is food.  The cost includes the wasted water, soil, gasoline and other resources used to grow, ship and store that food.  And rotting food produces methane, a greenhouse gas.   Fighting food waste is an old battle for some generations.  The USDA launched food-waste campaigns during World War I and II, and some of the advice still applies: “serve just enough, save what will keep.”  The agency has also adopted new tools, including a smartphone app called FoodKeeper that offers cooking and storage tips, sends expiration reminders, and a 24/7 virtual expert to answer questions.  Food Tank, a think tank that focuses on the food system, has compiled a list of 13 other apps that connect farmers, retailers, consumers and donors to reduce food waste.  Here are other tips from the EPA on reducing food waste:  Shop your refrigerator first.  Cook or eat what you already have at home before buying more.  Plan your menu before you go shopping and buy only those things on your menu.  Buy only what you realistically need and will use.  Buying in bulk only saves money if you are able to use the food before it spoils.  Be creative.  If safe and healthy, use the edible parts of food that you normally do not eat.  For example, stale bread can be used to make croutons and beet tops can be sautèed for a side dish. 

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/11/24/editorial-waste-not-want-not-thanksgiving/76330134/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1384  November 27, 2015  On this date in 1968, Penny Ann Early became the first woman to play major professional basketball, for the Kentucky Colonels in an ABA game against the Los Angeles Stars.  On this date in 1973, the United States Senate voted 92–3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States.  (On December 6, the House  confirmed him 387–35).  Word of the Day for November 27  bodge verb  (Britain) To do a clumsy or inelegant job, usually as a temporary repair; mend, patch up, repair.  To work green wood using traditional country methods; to perform the craft of a bodger.

When I read some of the rules for speaking & writing the English language correctly—as that a sentence must never end with a particle—& perceive how implicitly even the learned obey it, I think—Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it.  February 3, 1860  Henry David Thoreau  https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=excerpts13 

GRAMMATICAL PARTICIPLES  Traditional meaning:  A particle is a part of speech which cannot be inflected, that is it can be neither declined nor conjugated.  Particles are the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction and the interjection.  Modern meaning:  In modern grammar, a particle is a function word that must be associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning.  Particles are a separate part of speech and are distinct from other classes of function words, such as articles, prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs.  Particles are typically words that encode grammatical categories (such as negation, mood, tense, or case), clitics, or fillers or (oral) discourse markers such as well, um, etc.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_particle

RIME  compose rhymes, be similar in sound, especially with respect to the last syllable "hat and cat rhyme," correspondence in the sounds of two or more lines (especially final sounds), ice crystals forming a white deposit (especially on objects outside)  WordNet 3.6

See other definitions, etymology and usage at http://www.finedictionary.com/rime.html

Read eight-page article "Rime and Reason" by J. W. Rankin PMLA Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1929), pp. 997-1004 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/457706?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

The cutting of huge figures or geoglyphs into the turf of English hillsides has been going on for more than 3000 years.  There are 56 hill figures scattered around England, with the vast majority on the chalk downlands of the southern part of the country.  The figures include giants, horses, crosses and regimental badges.  Though the majority of these glyphs date within the last three hundred years or so there are one or two that are much older.  The most famous of these figures is perhaps also the most mysterious, the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire.  The White Horse has recently been redated and shown to be even older than its previously assigned ancient pre-Roman Iron Age date.   More controversial are the Cerne Abbot Giant in Dorset and the enigmatic Long Man of Wilmington in Sussex.  Compared to the huge stone permanence of structures like the Avebury Monuments and Stonehenge, hill figures are much more transitory, ten or twenty years without scouring and the carving could be lost forever.  Brian Haughton  Read more and see pictures at http://www.ancient.eu/article/229/

A Parade of Monuments by Kenneth Chang   The story of Britain starts at the end of the last ice age.  In the cold, Britain emptied of people.  With so much ocean water frozen in glaciers, sea level was lower, and Britain was connected to the rest of Europe.  As the world warmed, they walked back until rising waters severed the land bridge.  Around 3800 B.C. the first large monuments appeared—rectangular mounds known as long barrows that served as burial chambers.  Around 3500 B.C., a two-mile-long, 100-yard-wide ditch was dug close to the Stonehenge site, what is known as the Stonehenge Cursus.  (Cursus is Latin for racetrack; the discoverer in the 18th century thought it was a Roman racetrack.)  The first stage of Stonehenge itself, a circular foundation ditch, was carved around 2900 B.C., and rings of timbers were erected.  About 400 years later came a heyday of henges.  (The defining characteristic of a henge is not the rocks or timbers sticking upward, but a circular ditch surrounded by a raised bank.  In this sense, Stonehenge today is not a true henge; its raised bank is inside the ditch.)  Twenty miles north of Stonehenge is Avebury, with three stone circles, the outermost more than 1,000 feet in diameter, so large that the town of Avebury has spread into the henge; at the center is a pub, the Red Lion, founded four centuries ago.  Closer to Stonehenge is Durrington Walls, a circular earthen structure about 1,600 feet in diameter.  Michael Parker Pearson of University College London has excavated houses at Durrington Walls and along the nearby River Avon, and he has proposed this is where the builders lived for the grandest stage of Stonehenge’s construction, which started around 2600 B.C.  The giant stones, weighing some 40 tons, were moved and carved.  He believes smaller bluestones, about two tons each, had been taken to Stonehenge during the initial construction from the Preseli mountains in Wales and now more, larger ones were hauled over.  Because early Britons had no written language, the simplest question—Why was it built?—has yet to be conclusively answered.  In Dr. Parker Pearson’s view, Durrington Walls was the land of the living, symbolized by the timbers of Woodhenge, while Stonehenge was the land of the dead.  He believes early Britons gathered at Durrington Walls to feast and then proceeded to Stonehenge to honor their ancestors.  Read more and see pictures at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/science/stonehenge-begins-to-yield-its-secrets.html

In a proposal published November 23, 2015, a federal task force recommended that drone pilots should be required to register to fly any aircraft that weighs little more than a half-pound.  Technically, the Federal Aviation Administration already requires the registration of all aircraft, including drones.  But the agency doesn’t currently enforce those rules for the kind of small recreational aircraft expected to be a hugely popular holiday gift this year.  With the popularity of drones only expected to grow, the FAA decided to convene the a task force to develop a registration scheme that could enforce accountability by creating a traceable link between a drone and its owner.  The task force—known as the “Unmanned Aircraft Systems Registration Task Force Aviation Rulemaking Committee”—included drone makers such as 3D Robotics and DJI; organizations such as the Air Line Pilots Association and the International Association of Chiefs of Police; and potential drone users (and retailers) such as Amazon and Wal-Mart.  For the moment, the task forces recommendations are just that; it’s not clear yet what the next steps are toward seeing the proposed rules debated or implemented.  http://www.wired.com/2015/11/even-super-small-drones-would-have-to-register-under-federal-proposal/

LeBron James reached yet another milestone on November 23, 2015, and the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar said he has no use for the historical comparisons that inevitably pop up when this happens.  With an assist to Kevin Love in the corner against the Orlando Magic, he moved into 25th all-time in career assists.  The only other player in the top 25 in both assists and scoring is Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson.  James told reporters that it was "very humbling to see my name linked with Big O," but wished NBA stars were treated more like quarterbacks.  From ESPN's Dave McMenamin:  "I think what we get caught up in, in our league too much, is trying to compare greats to greats, instead of just accepting and acknowledging and saying, 'Wow, these are just great players,'" James said after the Cleveland Cavaliers' 117-103 win over the Orlando Magic.  "I think in the NFL, when you talk about great quarterbacks, they don't really compare great quarterbacks.  They say, 'Oh, Joe Montana is great.'  You know, 'Tom Brady is great.  Aaron Rodgers is great.  Steve Young is great.' [Terry] Bradshaw, all those great quarterbacks, they never compare them as much.  "But when it comes to our sport, we're so eager to say, 'Who is better:  Oscar or [Michael] Jordan?' or 'Jordan or LeBron or Kobe [Bryant] or these guys?' instead of just accepting greatness.  And if you understand the history of the sport, then there is no way you could ever forget Oscar Robertson.  This guy, he averaged a triple-double for, like, forever."  James Herbert  http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on-basketball/25387684/lebron-james-says-we-shouldnt-be-comparing-great-players-so-much

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1383  November 25, 2015  On this date in 1874, the United States Greenback Party was established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.  On this date in 1915, Albert Einstein presented the field equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

July 9, 2008  Just moments after David Wroblewski sat down on a shaded bench in the oval-shaped dog run at 72nd Street in Riverside Park, a goldendoodle (half golden retriever, half poodle) jumped up and started licking his face.  It was exactly what you might expect would happen to the author of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle,”  “Edgar Sawtelle” is his first book.  And while he said the formal outline for the story came to him in all of five minutes, it took more than 10 years to complete (really more like 15, he later confessed, saying he didn’t want aspiring writers just starting out to hear that and be discouraged).  The tale is structured along the lines of “Hamlet,” with elements of Rudyard Kipling and Stephen King mixed in with the Shakespeare.  More than anything, it is his intimate knowledge of dogs and his humanized versions of them that most distinguish Mr. Wroblewski’s work.  The 1934 book “Working Dogs,” about a project called Fortunate Fields to breed German shepherds for certain characteristics (like guiding the blind), was one of Mr. Wroblewski’s primary sources; he invents a correspondence between Edgar’s grandfather and an imagined director of the project that traces the evolution of these breeding theories.  Other details in the book are based on Mr. Wroblewski’s own experience.  His family ran a dog kennel in Pittsville, in central Wisconsin, when he was a boy.  It was a tough business, and after about five years, they had to give it up.  “I knew I wanted to write about dogs and the way that I knew them, not as fictional devices,” he said.  “Real dogs.”  The idea that Edgar would be mute was also a result of personal experience.  Mr. Wroblewski had to have minor surgery on his tongue in the early 1990s, which made it difficult to speak.  “I just stopped talking” for a while, he said. “I became very observant.”  He thought it would be interesting to have a character who couldn’t talk. Edgar, he said, “is hyper-observant in the way that Hamlet is hyper-verbal.”  Patricia Cohen   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/books/09dogs.html?pagewanted=all  See also The Book That Made Me A Reader David Wroblewski on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book at http://centerforfiction.org/for-readers/the-book-that-made-me-a-reader-archives/david-wroblewski-on-the-book-that-made-him-a-reader/

Canine Classics picked by David Wroblewski:  So Long, See You Tomorrow, The Jungle Book, The Call of the Wild, Dog Man, Adam's Task, Winterdance:  The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod, Animals in Translation, If Dogs Could Talk

As self-published books gain legitimacy, libraries develop ways to include local work in collections.  “We used to have an event in Glen Ellyn called BookFest involving local merchants and the library,” says Susan DeRonne, adult department director at Glen Ellyn (Illinois) Public Library (GEPL).  “[It] had a tent where self-published authors could sell their works, and it became more and more popular in its last years.”  GEPL is one of a growing number of libraries that are acquiring self-published books and making them available to patrons, either in dedicated collections or as part of their regular holdings.  These libraries recognize that many self-published works offer unique value and a way to provide service tailored to their community.  The library is currently looking at products that will allow it to offer self-published ebooks, and DeRonne says that the library has budgeted to include ebooks in the collection next year.  “We expect the collection to continue to grow, particularly when we add the ebook portion, and we’re looking forward to that,” she says.  The collections also offer another way for the library to connect to local writers’ communities. DeRonne says that GEPL doesn’t have a dedicated writers’ group, but it does belong to a group of Illinois libraries that sponsors a series of “Inside Writing and Publishing” seminars.  “That’s where we got a big chunk of our list of people who might want to submit their books,” she says.  The library also hosts programming related to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)—the annual event in which participants attempt to draft a novel within the month of November—and it will promote the Emerging Author Collection then as well.  Multnomah (Portland, Oregon) Central Library has established a series of programming related to self-publishing taking place through the end of the year to help local writers finish and publish their books, including a talk by Smashwords CEO Mark Coker.  Toronto Public Library (TPL) doesn’t have a special collection for self-published books, but the library has always considered self-published books for its regular collection and the number of self-published titles that authors ask the library to consider has grown significantly in recent years.  TPL now receives about 300 requests per year from authors to consider self-published books, although it ultimately adds far fewer than half of those to its collection as either hard copies or ebooks in OverDrive.   Greg Landgraf  http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2015/10/30/solving-the-self-published-puzzle/

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”  “The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.”   Hippocrates II of Cos (c. 460 BC – c. 370 BC), a Greek physician  https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/248774.Hippocrates?page=1  Find seven physicians named Hippocrates at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates_(physicians)

The Fee Library  Are subscription libraries seeing a rebirth?  If Seattle is any indicator, it appears so by Joseph Janes   A new library, the brainchild of David Brewster, is opening January 2016.  This isn’t a new branch of Seattle Public Library (SPL); it’s a new subscription library, rather grandly named Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum.   Read about it at   http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2015/10/30/fee-library-subscription-libraries/

The woman who was the epitomé of the "vamp" persona in cinema history, Theda Bara, was born Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 29th, 1890.  She was given her new name by Hollywood, and billed as the daughter of an Eastern potentate though her father was actually a tailor.  Theda had a conventional upbringing and schooling.  She went to New York to do a play after graduating from high school, and then she traveled to Hollywood to pursue a screen career.  Theda Bara's fabricated screen name was an anagram for "Arab death."  She was called a "vamp" because of her absurd, vampirish personality, on and off screen.  In her famous film "A Fool There Was" (1916), Theda supposedly hissed to the character who played her sweetheart:  "Kiss me, you fool!" (the line actually was "Kiss me, my fool!"--which somehow is funnier).  For publicity purposes Theda was often photographed with skulls and snakes, wearing beaded, fringed clothing which looks ridiculous today, but which obviously served as titillating shock value back in the 1910's.  Most of Theda's vamp films were made during a mere four year period.  When her contract was dropped by Fox, and her film career was essentially over, Theda tried to make it on Broadway for several years, but was not successful.  The public's tastes had changed.  Vamps were out, and the innocent virgin heroines played by Mary Pickford and Marguerite Clark were in.  In 1925 Theda returned to Hollywood to try and resurrect her career, but ended up playing caricatures of her former screen personality.  She retired completely from films in 1927.  http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/thedabara.html  See also https://silentology.wordpress.com/theda-bara/

See Unshelved comic strip including recommendations for books  and notices of talks and appearances by Ambaum & Barnes at  http://www.unshelved.com/   "Unshelved" is a registered trademark of Overdue Media LLC.

Global law firm Dentons, Singapore's Rodyk and Australian firm Gadens have agreed to come together to create the dominant global law firm in the Pacific Rim.  Expected to launch in 2016, the firm will have more than 7,300 lawyers, more than 9,000 timekeepers and nearly 13,000 people, working from more than 130 locations.  http://www.dentonscombination.com/pdf/pacific_rims_leading_global_law_firm.pdf

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1382  November 23, 2015  On this date in 1644,  John Milton published Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship.  On this date in 1924, Edwin Hubble's discovery that the Andromeda nebula is actually another island universe far outside of our own was first published in The New York Times.

Some New Jersey women voted as early as 1776.  Historians argue about just what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues meant when they declared "that all men are created equal."  Did the founders mean males only or were there some situations when "men" could mean all humans?  What natural or political rights, in their view, did women possess?  The unique case of women voters in New Jersey offers some clues.  The framers of New Jersey's first constitution in 1776 gave the vote to "all inhabitants of this colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds . . .  and have resided within the county . . . for twelve months."  The other twelve new states restricted voting to men.  Although some have argued that this gender-neutral language was a mistake, most historians agree that the clear intention was to allow some women to vote.  Because married women had no property in their own names and were assumed to be represented by their husbands' votes, only single women voted in New Jersey.  But, in the 1790s and 1800s, large numbers of unmarried New Jersey women regularly participated in elections and spoke out on political issues.  In 1807, the state's legislature ignored the constitution and restricted suffrage to white male citizens who paid taxes.  This was largely a result of the Democratic-Republican Party's attempt to unify its factions for the 1808 presidential election.  A faction within the party wanted to deny the vote to aliens and the non-tax-paying poor.  The liberal faction within the party gave way on this, but also took the vote from women, who tended to vote for the Federalist Party.  In this way, New Jersey's 30-year experiment with female suffrage ended-not mainly because of opposition to the idea of women voting, but for reasons of party politics  Bob Blythe    http://www.nps.gov/revwar/about_the_revolution/voting_rights.html

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) launched an updated and redesigned version of Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government.  The educational website is named after one of our Nation’s most influential Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin.  The site is full of educational content on the workings of the U.S. Government and U.S. history.  GPO partnered with the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to ensure educational content is easy to comprehend and age appropriate.  Ben’s Guide to the U.S. Government:  http://bensguide.gpo.gov/”

http://www.bespacific.com/gpo-launches-next-generation-of-guide-to-us-government/

A group of community members gather every month at Woods Hole (Mass.) Public Library, they try to stay within the lines—quite literally.  “We purchase a couple of coloring books and I print out some free coloring pages that are available online, and we just get together and color,” says librarian Kellie Porter, who started the library’s Coloring Club in May 2015.  The club has seen about 15–20 members a month, ranging from tweens to 70-year-olds.  “I really try to play up the whole relaxation aspect of it,” she says, “so I put on relaxing bird songs and try to make a soothing environment.”  Adult coloring books have become popular in recent years, with the release of Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford’s 2013 Secret Garden:  An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book and Dover Publications’ 2012 Creative Haven coloring book series.  Alison Marcotte  

Read more and see pictures at http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/coloring-book-clubs-cross-the-line-into-libraries/

Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home Thanksgiving PT1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afdh_i3Kmy0  11:45

Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home Thanksgiving PT2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDHiS5ivkN8  10:12

At the height of Julia Child’s fame in the 1970s and ‘80s, Thanksgiving guests often felt the need to tell her she should get her home number removed from the public directory.  (This was an analog tool called a “telephone book.”)  The phone would ring all day said Sheryl Julian, now the food editor for The Boston Globe, who celebrated Thanksgiving dinner in the Childs’ home in 1976 and 1977.  “Every time she hung up, it would ring again, and it would be another total stranger with a turkey problem.”  No matter how busy, Child would hand off whatever kitchen task she was doing, take the phone and talk the nervous cook down from the ledge.  But Child refused to unlist her number or turn off the phone; instead, she embraced the role of national Thanksgiving commander-in-chief.  “Whatever they seemed to be saying, she usually just told the callers not to worry,” Julian said.  “I even heard her tell people that turkey wasn’t meant to be served hot.  She just wanted them to relax.”  Julia Moskin  Read more at http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article45304674.html

See the suit worn by TV’s Superman, George Reeves at the Ohio History Center on exhibit through January 3, 2016.  On special loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., the super suit was worn by Reeves, who portrayed mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent and his heroic alter ego, Superman, in the TV series The Adventures of Superman.  The series aired nationally from 1952–1958.  Superman was created in the 1930s by Cleveland high school students Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.  The duo was inspired by pulp magazines of the day, specifically the science–fiction publication Amazing Stories.  They wrote the first comic strips from their homes in the Glenville neighborhood on the east side of the city.  Superman first graced the cover of Action Comics No. 1 in 1938.  The famous red, blue and yellow suit is joined by an array of newly added comic books, records, TV memorabilia, radios and more items of mid-century pop culture in the exhibit 1950s:  Building the American Dream.  See Superman’s signature suit at the Ohio History Center museum at 800 E. 17^th Ave. in Columbus.  For more information about the exhibit, call 800.686.6124 or visit ohiohistory.org/superman.  https://www.ohiohistory.org/about-us/newsroom/september/superman-suit-at-ohio-history-center

The earliest known depiction of the merry-go-round is in 500 A.D. in the Byzantine Empire, which depicts baskets, carrying riders, suspended from a central pole.  The first merry-go-round created in the United States was in Hessville, Ohio.  It was created by Franz Wiesenhoffer during the 1840s.  https://allweatherseal.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/national-merry-go-round-day/  See also http://www.richlandcarrousel.com/ (Mansfield, OH) and http://www.merrygoroundmuseum.org/ (Sandusky, OH) 

The Food and Drug Administration on November 19, 2015 approved the nation's first genetically altered animal--a salmon genetically engineered to grow twice as fast as its natural counterpart.  AquAdvantage, produced by Massachusetts-based AquaBounty, is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon and has been given a gene from the ocean pout, an eel-like fish.  The result is a fish that grows larger and faster than traditional salmon.  Food-safety activists, environmental groups and traditional salmon fishing industries, not to mention lawmakers from Alaska, have long opposed the approval of the fish--which they derisively refer to as "Frankenfish"--and have argued that its existence could open the door to a broad range of potentially unsafe genetically modified animal foods. Knowing an FDA approval was likely, critics have in recent years won commitments from some of the nation's most recognizable chains— including Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Target—to not sell the fish.  The FDA said that its decision, two decades in the making, was "based on sound science and a comprehensive review," and that regulators are confident "that food from the fish is safe to eat."  The agency will require that the AquaBounty salmon be raised only in land-based, contained tanks in two specific facilities in Canada and Panama.  Brady Dennis   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/11/19/the-fda-just-approved-the-nations-first-genetically-engineered-animal-a-salmon-that-grows-twice-as-fast/

See also FDA November 19, 2015 news release at http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm473249.htm

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1381  November 20, 2015  On this date in 1789, New Jersey became the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.  On this date in 1805, Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio premiered in Vienna.

Movieoke is a form of entertainment in which an amateur actor or actors perform along with a muted DVD in order to give voice to the character in the film.  The film is projected onto a screen behind the actor and onto an alternate monitor which provides subtitles and action cues.  Movieoke is a popular form of performative and interactive entertainment created by Anastasia Fite in New York City in 2003, and has since spread to other parts of the world.  The word stems from the English word "movie" and the Japanese word "karaoke", which itself stems from the word kara meaning "empty", and the English word "orchestra".  This term used to be slang for media where pre-recorded acting is substituted by a live performance.  The term movieoke can be interpreted as "virtual movie" because one can act along without the presence of a camera or crew.  The first cultural reference for Movieoke came from the 1993 film Arizona Dream starring Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis and Vincent Gallo.  During a talent show scene one of the characters performs a version of Movieoke (though does not mention the word movieoke).  Vincent Gallo's character Paul Leger performs a step by step remake of the famous crop dusting scene from Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest as the film is projected over him on stage.  Slightly different from East Village Movieoke in that the sound of the film is still present, Gallo syncs with the actor's dialog on stage.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movieoke

Participation in movies:  Buzz when "The Fly" starts its opening credits (I was in a movie theater when this happened) or get ideas for mimicry at The Rocky Horror Picture Show at http://www.rockyhorror.com/participation/  Speak along with recording in elevator at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland or Walt Disney World.

The prospect of one’s own death is not exactly a topic for casual dinner conversation.  But a movement that encourages group discussion of this weighty subject is growing, and organizers are finding that local libraries are one place where they won’t be silenced.  Since the first gathering, named death café, was held in the US in Columbus, Ohio, in July 2012, the forums have spread across the nation.  And many are beginning to appear in libraries, according to Lizzy Miles, an organizer for DeathCafe.com.  Miles, who organized the Columbus death café, tells American Libraries that she was inspired by her experience as a hospice social worker and by the work of Jon Underwood, who began holding death cafés in the UK in 2011.  She also credits a story in The New York Times (“Death Be Not Decaffeinated: Over Cup, Groups Face Taboo,” June 16, 2013) with helping attract interest in the movement.  “When I tell people I work in hospice, they immediately start telling me their personal stories about death and dying,”  Miles says.  “It was sort of this recognition that people have a desire to talk [about death].”  Miles says the death café concept is intended to be educational and is held in a neutral location where there is no perception of impropriety.  Miles notes that hundreds of death cafés have been held across the country over the last couple of years and have popped up in libraries in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Vermont.  “I think a library is a perfect place to hold a death café because libraries bring people together,” she says.  Librarians can  get involved by visiting DeathCafe.com to learn how to moderate the events.  Tim Inklebarger  http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2015/10/30/when-subject-is-death-library-death-cafes/

William Holmes McGuffey was a Miami University faculty member in 1836 when he compiled the first edition of the McGuffey Eclectic Reader at 410 East Spring Street in Oxford, Ohio.   Between 1836 and 1920 the Readers taught the expanding American public lessons in reading, spelling, and civic education by using memorable stories of honesty, hard work, thrift and personal respect.  His brother Alexander Hamilton McGuffey, who also lived here for a time, assisted later editions in the series.  After the Civil War, later editions of the Readers became the basic schoolbook in thirty-seven states.  By 1920 they had sold 122,000,000 copies, stimulating the growth of publishing houses in Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, and reshaping the American public school curriculum.  Scholars have credited the Readers with a major role in shaping democratic values across the expanding nation, facilitating unprecedented access to public literacy, and influencing the socialization of generations of immigrants to the United States.  Today the Readers remain in print, and are often used in home schooling.   McGuffey lived in a frame house at the Spring Street site in 1828, and in 1833 removed that structure and built a brick home there in a Federal vernacular style common to aspiring and successful families in southwest Ohio.  McGuffey left Miami in 1836 for presidencies at Cincinnati College and Ohio University, and later lived the rest of his life at the University of Virginia as Professor of Moral Philosophy.  To mark the Miami Sesquicentennial in 1958 the University purchased the house from heirs of Miami Treasurer Wallace P. Roudebush (who owned and lived in the home after 1926), and secured an endowment from Mrs. Emma Gould Blocker to operate it as a museum.  The site was awarded National Historic Landmark status in 1966 by the United States Department of the Interior.  Since reopening to the public after renovation June 15, 2002, McGuffey Museum has been open six afternoons weekly and attracted 5,900 visitors from Ohio, 28 states and seven countries.  http://miamioh.edu/cca/_files/mcguffey/documents/mcguffey_brief_history.pdf  See also http://miamioh.edu/cca/mcguffey-museum/

The eighth edition of the Library Journal Index of Public Library Service, sponsored by Baker & Taylor’s Bibliostat.  The LJ Index is a measurement tool that compares U.S. public libraries with their spending peers based on four per capita output measures:  circulation, library visits, program attendance, and public Internet computer use.  Scores on the LJ Index are produced by measuring the relationships between each library’s statistics and the averages for its expenditure category.  This year, there are 261 Star Libraries, 54 of which were not Star Libraries last year.  In 2015, 7,663 U.S. public libraries —more than ever before—were scored on the LJ Index of Public Library Service.  The 2015 LJ Index—the basis for the Star ratings—is derived from data recently released by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for FY13.  Eligible libraries are grouped by total operating expenditures and, within each of those groups, rated based on their differences from the means (or averages) of four per capita statistics: library visits, circulation, program attendance, and public Internet computer use.  Among libraries spending $30 million or more, there are two new three-Star winners:  Toledo–Lucas County Public Library and Indianapolis–Marion County Public Library.  Among libraries spending $10 million–$29.9 million, there are three new three-Star winners:  Birmingham Public Library, AL; Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh; and Stark County District Library, Canton, OH.  View the All Stars state by state at http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/11/managing-libraries/lj-index/class-of-2015/all-the-stars-2015-state-by-state

Fastest Roast Turkey by Sam Sifton  http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016948-fastest-roast-turkey  Squash and Celeriac Quinoa Stuffing by Tara Parker-Pope  http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017001-squash-and-celeriac-quinoa-stuffing  Hashed Brussels Sprouts With Lemon by Julia Moskin  http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/453-hashed-brussels-sprouts-with-lemon

The athletic teams of Watersmeet High School in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan, are known as the Nimrods. Their basketball team was the subject of a mini-series documentary about 10 years ago, entitled "Nimrod Nation."  It chronicled the team's efforts to duplicate the previous year's team's victory in the Michigan High Class D regional tournament.  Thank you, Muse reader!  Muser says:  Interesting on two points--use of the "mighty warrior" word--and how important sports documentaries are.  Of all documentaries we see, I think we remember the sports documentaries the best.  You might say they are heroic, and that's why we enjoy them.  Read about More than a Game, a 2008 documentary film that follows LeBron James and four of his teammates through the trials and tribulations of high school basketball in Akron, Ohio at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_than_a_Game

Happy Geography Awareness Week!  Recognizing that "too many young Americans are unable to make effective decisions, understand geo-spatial issues, or even recognize their impacts as global citizens," National Geographic created this annual observance to "raise awareness to this dangerous deficiency in American education."  Ben Carson's presidential campaign inadvertently underscored this point November 17, 2015, when it took to social media to share a map of the United States in which five New England states were placed in the wrong location.  Christopher Ingraham  See graphics at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/18/ben-carsons-campaign-made-a-u-s-map-and-put-a-bunch-of-states-in-the-wrong-place/

“I have waited 15 years for this moment,” Ta-Nehisi Coates told an audience that was almost entirely on its feet November 18, 2015.  He could have been speaking about this moment on stage, accepting the prestigious National Book Award for non-fiction for “Between the World and Me,” a moving meditation on race written to his teenage son.  But he was really referring to this moment in America, when police violence against African Americans has become the subject of national demonstrations and debate.  Fifteen years ago, Coates’s friend and Howard University classmate Prince Jones was killed by a police officer who mistook him for a suspect in a gun theft.  Jones, who was unarmed, was shot 5 times in the back.  Adam  Johnson won the fiction award for his short story collection “Fortune Smiles.”  Short story collections don’t often win the NBA fiction prize.  But this is the second year in a row that one has received the big-ticket literary award (last year’s winner was Phil Klay’s “Redeployment.”)  Neal Shusterman brought his son with him to accept the award for young people’s literature for “Challenger Deep.”  The novel about a schizophrenic teenager was inspired by Shusterman’s son Brendan.  The poetry award went to Robin Coste Lewis for “Voyage of the Sable Venus,” a debut collection that examines race and identity across generations and millennia.  All four winners will receive $10,000.  Writers James Patterson and Don DeLillo were also recognized at the ceremony, Patterson for his philanthropic efforts and DeLillo for “distinguished contribution to American letters.”  Sarah Kaplan  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/19/ta-nehisi-coates-adam-johnson-win-national-book-awards/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1380  November 19, 2015  On this date in 1905,  Tommy Dorsey, American trombonist, composer and bandleader (The California Ramblers), was born.  On this date in 1919, Alan Young, English-Canadian actor, singer, and director, was born.  

October 30, 2015  High in the skies over Kazakhstan, space-age technology has revealed an ancient mystery on the ground.  Satellite pictures of a remote and treeless northern steppe reveal colossal earthworks—geometric figures of squares, crosses, lines and rings the size of several football fields, recognizable only from the air and the oldest estimated at 8,000 years old.  The largest, near a Neolithic settlement, is a giant square of 101 raised mounds, its opposite corners connected by a diagonal cross, covering more terrain than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.  Another is a kind of three-limbed swastika, its arms ending in zigzags bent counterclockwise.  Described last year at an archaeology conference in Istanbul as unique and previously unstudied, the earthworks, in the Turgai region of northern Kazakhstan, now number at least 260—mounds, trenches and ramparts—arrayed in five basic shapes.  Spotted on Google Earth in 2007 by a Kazakh economist and archaeology enthusiast, Dmitriy Dey, the so-called Steppe Geoglyphs remain deeply puzzling and largely unknown to the outside world.  Two weeks ago, in the biggest sign so far of official interest in investigating the sites, NASA released clear satellite photographs of some of the figures from about 430 miles up, showing details as small as 30 centimeters by 30 centimeters.  “You can see the lines which connect the dots,” Mr. Dey said.  In the Cretaceous Period 100 million years ago, Turgai was bisected by a strait from what is now the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean.  The rich lands of the steppe were a destination for Stone Age tribes seeking hunting grounds, and Mr. Dey’s research suggests that the Mahandzhar culture, which flourished there from 7,000 B.C. to 5,000 B.C., could be linked to the older figures.  But scientists marvel that a nomadic population would have stayed in place for the time required to lay ramparts and dig out lake bed sediments to construct the huge mounds, originally 6 to 10 feet high and now 3 feet high and nearly 40 feet across.  Ralph Blumenthal   Read more and see pictures at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/science/nasa-adds-to-evidence-of-mysterious-ancient-earthworks.html

October 30, 2015  Newsmaker:  Pharrell Williams   The global pop star takes a break from his European tour to discuss the importance of libraries and literacy by  Sanhita SinhaRoy.   Grammy Award–winning singer, songwriter, and producer Pharrell Williams—best known for his 2014 global hit “Happy”—can now add “author” to his long list of accomplishments.  His recent picture book Happy! (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2015) features photos of children around the world celebrating life’s joys.  A native of Virginia Beach, Virginia, Williams credits his mother, who is a librarian and teacher, for being the biggest influence in his life.  Williams is featured in a new READ poster, available at the ALA Store.  Read his responses to questions from American Libraries while on tour in Europe.  http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2015/10/30/newsmaker-pharrell-williams/

EGGS  The domestication of fowl greatly increased the availability of eggs to ancient peoples.  This is thought by some to have begun in China in 6,000 BC.  Culinary evidence confirms breads and cakes using eggs were made by Ancient Egyptian and Roman peoples.  The reason most often sited was the recognition that eggs worked as binding (thickening) agents.  The origin of deviled eggs can't be attributed to one specific person, company, date or town.  The concept of deviled eggs begins with Ancient Rome.  Spicy stuffed eggs were known in 13th century Andalusia.  The name is an 18th century invention.  Not long after the Ancient Greeks and Romans domesticated fowl, egg dishes of all kinds figured prominently in cookery texts.  Eggs were eaten on their own (omelets, scrambled) and employed as congealing agents (custard, flan, souffles).  The ancestor of deviled eggs?  The first recipes for stuffed, hard-boiled were printed in medieval European texts.  These cooks stuffed their eggs with raisins, cheese and sweet spices.  Find a food timeline and recipes at http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodeggs.html

Have you ever tried deviled eggs with guacamole?  So simple, yet brilliant.  The “deviled” part comes from the chile in the guacamole.  Avocados are naturally creamy so you don’t need mayonnaise.  Find recipe and links to other recipes for deviled eggs at http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/guacamole_deviled_eggs/  Serve with ham and have a Dr. Seuss party if you like.

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts.  He published his first children's book, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, under the name of Dr. Seuss in 1937.  Next came a string of best sellers, including The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham.  His rhymes and characters are beloved by generations.  At age 18, Geisel left home to attend Dartmouth College, where he became the editor in chief of its humor magazine, Jack-O-Lantern.  When Geisel and his friends were caught drinking in his dorm room one night, in violation of Prohibition law, he was kicked off the magazine staff, but continued to contribute to it using the pseudonym "Seuss."  http://www.biography.com/people/dr-seuss-9479638  See also

Dr. Seuss quotes  https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/61105.Dr_Seuss

In most English-speaking countries, Nimrod is used to denote a hunter or warrior, because the biblical Nimrod is described as "a mighty hunter".  In American English, however, the term assumed a derogatory meaning, probably because of Bugs Bunny's references to Elmer Fudd as a "poor little Nimrod".  While this was most likely using the term's "hunter" sense, it contributed to the development of a sense "one who was easily confounded".  An alternative explanation of this sense is that it derives from the John Steinbeck memoir Travels with Charley: In Search of America, in which Steinbeck used the term sarcastically while describing an inquest that was held after a hunter accidentally shot his partner:  "The coroner questioning this nimrod . . . "   The Oxford English Dictionary, in turn, cites a 1933 writing as the first usage of nimrod to refer to a fool, predating Bugs Bunny by at least five years and Steinbeck by nearly thirty:  in Hecht and Fowler's Great Magoo, someone remarks "He's in love with her.  That makes about the tenth.  The same old Nimrod.  Won't let her alone for a second."  However, this could still have been used in the sense of a hunter (i.e. someone pursuing a love interest).  Another possible source of the sense is the play "The Lion of the West" by James Paulding.  First performed in 1831, it features a comedic characterization of Davy Crockett named Col. Nimrod Wildfire who attempts to woo a young French woman.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nimrod

When lightning flashes it is seen instantly.  But the sound it creates—thunder—travels much slower.  When lightning strikes close, thunder is heard as a loud bang.  But, farther away from the strike, sound from the nearest part of the flash is heard first, followed in a continuous, rolling manner by sound from other parts of the flash.  Lightning experts talk about "cold" and "hot" lightning, but they aren't referring to the temperature.  The temperature of any lightning stroke ranges from around 15,000 to 60,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  The terms "hot" and "cold" lightning refer to how long the current flows.   Electricity has positive and negative charges.  Lightning scientists have found that most lightning "lowers negative charge to the ground."  In other words, during a lightning stroke some of the excess negative charge in a cloud zips to the ground.  They have also found that some lightning discharges bring positive charge to the ground.  In general, positive lighting has a stronger current and does more damage.  Flashes of lightning that hit towers and high buildings such as the Empire State Building are positive.  The term "heat lightning" is actually a misnomer.  It refers to lightning that occurs so far away—usually 10 miles or more—that the observer cannot hear any thunder.  The term likely originates from the fact that the lightning is seen during the type of thunderstorms that develop during the late afternoon or evening of hot summer days.  Florida is the lightning capital of the USA and, in particular, the west-central area of Florida, which includes Tampa, St. Petersburg and Orlando, has the highest frequency of lightning.  Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes there an average of 90 days a year, with each square mile in the region hit about 10 times annually.  According to lightning expert Martin Uman of the University of Florida's Lightning Resarch Group, the average lightning bolt is about an inch wide and five miles long.  However, there have been much longer bolts.  The longest bolt ever recorded crossed an electrifying 118 miles in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Lightning can soar to temperatures of approximately 50,000°, five times hotter than the surface of the sun, and can contain as much as 200 million volts of electricity.  Lightning can travel quite far from a storm.  A "bolt from the blue" refers to a lightning strike that comes out of the back of a storm cloud and hits where it isn't raining, sometimes up to 25 miles away.  http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/archives-lighting-science.htm  See also  http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/science/science_continuing%20current.htm

P.F. Sloan (born Philip Gary Schlein in 1945) a folk-rock musician of the 1960s whose two best-known songs—“Eve of Destruction” and “Secret Agent Man”—became major hits for other performers, died November 15, 2015 at the age of  70.  In a long but spotty career, Mr. Sloan was a songwriter, record producer and member in the 1960s of a Los Angeles recording-session coterie known as the Wrecking Crew.  The Turtles, Herman’s Hermits, the Searchers and other groups recorded his compositions.  With frequent songwriting partner Steve Barri, he recorded surf music as the Fantastic Baggys.  Mr. Sloan’s guitar work graced several recordings by the Mamas and the Papas including the introduction to “California Dreamin’ ” (1965).  Inspired by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and other events, he wrote “Eve of Destruction.”  Folk rockers the Byrds had already rejected the song when Barry McGuire, a former member of the folk group the New Christy Minstrels, recorded it.  McGuire’s label, Dunhill, had so little faith in it that they released it as a B side.  However, the 1965 recording beat Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” for the No.1 spot on the Billboard pop charts.  Conservatives objected to the lyrics, even as many liberals considered it a cheap attempt to capi­tal­ize on the anti-war movement.  In England, the BBC banned it, as did several U.S. radio stations.  And a group named the Spokesmen immediately recorded a conservative rebuttal, “The Dawn of Correction.”  “Secret Agent Man,” which Mr. Sloan and Barri co-wrote for singer Johnny Rivers, became the theme to the English spy show “Secret Agent” starring Patrick McGoohan (the program was originally called “Danger Man” in England).  Mr. Sloan’s simple guitar hook on Rivers’s 1966 recording made it a standard for fledgling garage bands.  At 12, Mr. Sloan said, he was inspired to pursue a music career after getting an impromptu guitar lesson from Elvis Presley on “Love Me Tender” when he met the entertainer at a Hollywood music store.  Terence McCardle  Read more at https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/pf-sloan-folk-rock-songwriter-and-musician-dies-at-70/2015/11/17/5ebdabc4-8d36-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_story.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1379  November 18, 2015  On this date in 1865, Mark Twain's short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was published in the New York Saturday Press.  On this date in 1883, American and Canadian railroads instituted five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.  On this date in 1903, the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.