Irish Butter is made from cream that has been slightly cultured (think sour cream) before it is then pasteurized to kill the culture, and churned into butter, giving it a slight cheese flavor.  Much of the butter sold in Europe is made this way and is called 'cultured butter'.  Most North American Butter is called 'sweet cream butter' because it is not made from cultured (or 'soured') cream, but rather from fresh pasteurized cream.  There is also a very small difference in the amount of milk left in the Irish butter.  The milk is what allows butter to soften, and contributes to the small amount of protein in butter.  Irish butter has about 2 % less milk and so has 2% more butter fat than US butter (82 -vs- 80% fat).  The other difference is that much Irish butter is made from milk from mostly pasture fed (called grass fed) dairy cattle.  This imparts some subtle flavor notes and slightly different values for some micro-nutrients, but these change seasonally.  Fred Jewett  https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Irish-butter-and-standard-American-butter

Silent letters:  D in handkerchief and Wednesday; H in what, when, where, hour, honest, and honor.  Find more words with silent letters at https://www.thoughtco.com/pronunciation-silent-letters-1212086

Aphthong  noun  letter, or a combination of letters, employed in spelling a word, but in the pronunciation having no sound.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.  https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Aphthong

"Toledo isn't big, but it can hold everyone interesting in the world of astronomy at the same time."  How to Tell Toledo From the Night Sky, a novel by Lydia Netzer 

Lydia Netzer on the city of Toledo and How to Tell Toledo From the Night Sky  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z6IJsaBa4E  1:16  See also http://lydianetzer.blogspot.com/

Ramie is the generic name for a bast fibre fabric made from the stems of plants in the wider nettle family.  It is also known as nettle cloth, china grass cloth, grass linen, and rhea.  Most of these names denote a specific plant source for the fibre.  Nettle cloth usually indicates fabric from the European Urtica dioica, the stinging nettle.  China grass cloth comes from white ramie, and is considered to be better quality than rhea, which comes from green ramie).  Most of the ramie that is sold today is china grass/white ramie, and comes from the plant Boehmeria nivea, native to China and Japan, but widespread throughout Asia from ancient times.  Both white and green ramie were used historically across Asia.  Nettle fabric in Europe was made from stinging nettles.  Ramie, like linen, is a bast fibre, made from the cellulose stalk of a plant.  Ramie stalks have a very gummy sap, and require a labour-intensive de-gumming process, which is part of the reason that ramie is not generally as commercially popular as linen.  If improperly de-gummed and cleaned, ramie is quite rough, and becomes brittle very easily.  If properly processed, ramie fibres are naturally white, and do not require significant additional bleaching. They are also stronger than any other natural fibre, do not loose strength when wet, and are naturally antibacterial.  Today ramie is grown commercially in China, the Philippines, Brazil, and in small quantities in India and the US.  Most ramie is used for industrial applications:  mixed with jute as carpet backings, blended into car upholstery, and use for cord and rope.  Ramie popularity for fashion garments fluctuates hugely, based partly on trends, and partly on reactions to fluctuations in the prices of other fibres.  Leimomi Oakes  See graphics at http://thedreamstress.com/2014/06/terminology-what-is-ramie-or-nettle-cloth/

Bast fibre (also called phloem fibre or skin fibre) is plant fibre collected from the phloem (the "inner bark", sometimes called "skin") or bast surrounding the stem of certain dicotyledonous plants.  They support the conductive cells of the phloem and provide strength to the stem.  Some of the economically important bast fibres are obtained from herbs cultivated in agriculture, as for instance flax, hemp, or ramie, but also bast fibres from wild plants, as stinging nettle, and trees such as lime or linden, wisteria, and mulberry have been used in the past.  Bast fibres are classified as soft fibres, and are flexible.  Fibres from monocotyledonous plants, called "leaf fibre", are classified as hard fibres and are stiff.  From prehistoric times through at least the early twentieth century, bast shoes were woven from bast strips in the forest areas of Eastern Europe.  Where no other source of tanbark was available, bast has also been used for tanning leather.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bast_fibre

There is no difference in meaning between fiber and fibre.  Both spellings are many centuries old, and neither spelling was clearly prevalent on either side of the Atlantic until the second half of the 18th century.  This was a period in which many British educators began to consider it proper for English words of French and Latin origin to take their more French and Latin forms rather than their more Anglicized forms.  Fibre is the French spelling of the word from which the English word is derived, so it was promoted as the standard spelling.  The belief that French and Latin should hold sway over English never had much traction in the post-independence United States, and while Americans also favored the French spelling through the 19th century, the more phonetic fiber steadily gained ground through that century until becoming the preferred form around 1910.  http://grammarist.com/spelling/fiber-fibre/

Kalpudding, eh?  Yet there it was, front and center in the New York Times magazine.  I’ve tried Sam Sifton’s recipes before—some I’ve loved and adopted, others left me puzzled.  Since I’d never heard of this dish, I did some research online.  Oh, look, there are lots of recipes for it!  It’s Swedish.  The word “kal” is supposed to have one of those little circle things over the “a”, so it’s pronounced “coal.”  That means cabbage.  But the rest of the name—the “pudding” part—is misleading, because it’s really a meat loaf with cabbage on top.  And you must keep an open mind, because the first thing you do is cook the cabbage in butter and molasses.  Yes, molasses.  Never would have thought of that.  posted by Sheila Connolly  Find recipe at http://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com/2017/04/kalpudding-or-not-your-mothers-meatloaf.html

Two Broadway superpowers teamed for a new charity single as Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda and Dear Evan Hansen's Ben Platt unveiled the video for "Found/Tonight," a mash-up of Hamilton's "The Story of Tonight" and Dear Evan Hansen's "You Will Be Found."  Proceeds from the download of "Found/Tonight" will benefit March for Our Lives, which is leading the rally on Washington, D.C. on March 24th, 2018 to protest the government's inactivity on gun control.  "In the wake of Parkland, I was awestruck by the strength and leadership of the students and their ability to speak truth to power," Miranda said in a statement.  "In the midst of their grief, they mobilized the youth of our nation and created a movement.  This is their moment.  Not just for themselves, but for all of us.  This song is my way of helping to raise funds and awareness for their efforts, and to say Thank You, and that we are with you so let’s keep fighting, together."  "Better gun control is something that all Americans should be passionate about," Platt added.  "These students are paving the way for future generations and it’s so inspiring to see young people standing up for what is probably the most important cause right now in this country, and demanding action.  I hope that this song can play some small part in bringing about real change."  Daniel Kreps  Link to 3:13 video at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lin-manuel-miranda-shares-new-song-for-march-for-our-lives-w518009

Bestselling author James Patterson has increased his annual donations for classroom libraries from $1.75 million to $2 million.  Scholastic said on March 19, 2018 that Patterson is distributing 4,000 gifts of $500 each to teachers around the country, from Mechanic Falls, Maine, to Cheney, Kansas.  The so-called “Patterson Pledge” was launched in 2015 and is run in coordination with Scholastic Book Clubs, which adds book club points to Patterson’s contribution.  More than 80,000 teachers have applied for donations.  https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/latest-links/james-patterson-donates-2-million-school-libraries/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1861  March 21, 2018 

Daedalus was a craftsman and artist in Greek mythology, who had two sons, Icarus and Iapyx.  He is best known as the creator of the Labyrinth, a huge maze located under the court of King Minos of Crete, where the Minotaur, a half-man half-bull creature dwelt.  Later, Daedalus was kept imprisoned in a tower in Crete, so that the secret of the Labyrinth would not be spread to the public.  In order to escape, Daedalus created two sets of wings for himself and his young son Icarus, by using feathers and glueing them together with wax.  He gave one of the sets to Icarus and taught him how to fly.  However, he warned him not to fly too high as the sun would melt the wax, nor too low as the sea water would soak the feathers.  They left the tower jumping off the window and started flying towards freedom. Unfortunately, Icarus, forgetting his father's advice, started flying higher and higher, thus causing the wax on his wings to melt; he fell into the sea and drowned, while a nearby island took the name Icaria after him.  https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Daedalus/daedalus.html

In 1926, Constantin Brancusi created a sculpture of Bird in Space (now in the collection of the Seattle Art Museum) and sent it from Paris to New York City for an exhibition of his work at the Brummer Gallery.  Although the law permitted artworks, including sculpture, to enter the U.S. free from import taxes, when Bird arrived, officials refused to let it enter as art.  To qualify as “sculpture,” works had to be “reproductions by carving or casting, imitations of natural objects, chiefly the human form” (source:  Rowell).  Because Bird in Space did not look much like a bird at all, officials classified it as a utilitarian object (under “Kitchen Utensils and Hospital Supplies”) and levied against it 40% of the work’s value (source:  McClean).  Bewildered and exasperated by this assessment, Brancusi launched a complaint in court.  The initial question before the court was whether Brancusi’s work adequately resembled that which it was supposed to “imitate,” as indicated by its title.  Passing that test would make it a sculpture (and therefore art) and exempt it from customs duties.  The task of the trial became, however, how to define “sculpture”—and, for that matter, “art.”  Ultimately, the court was persuaded that its definition of what constituted art was out of date.  The decision of Judge J. Waite read, “In the meanwhile there has been developing a so-called new school of art, whose exponents attempt to portray abstract ideas rather than imitate natural objects.  Whether or not we are in sympathy with these newer ideas and the schools which represent them, we think the facts of their existence and their influence upon the art worlds as recognized by the courts must be considered” (Rowell).  Read more and see graphics at  https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2014/07/24/but-is-it-art-constantin-brancusi-vs-the-united-states/

There is no consensus on the difference between disc and disk, and in many contexts the two are used interchangeably.  Disk is the standard spelling for computer-related terms such as hard disk and floppy disk.  Disc is the standard spelling for phonograph records, albums (in the figurative sense—a group of songs presented in sequence), and components of plows and brake systems.  But both spellings are commonly used for (1) CDs, DVDs, and other compact optical disks; (2) flat, plate-like bones; (3) flat, circular objects, and (4) disk-shaped celestial bodies.  http://grammarist.com/spelling/disc-disk/

Gray and grey are different spellings of the same word, and both are used throughout the English-speaking world.  But gray is more common in American English, while grey is more common in all the other main varieties of English.  In the U.K., for instance, grey appears about twenty times for every instance of gray.  In the U.S. the ratio is reversed.  Both spellings, which have origins in the Old English grǽg, have existed hundreds of years.  http://grammarist.com/spelling/gray-grey/

Over the course of three days in April, the Toledo Lucas County Public Library will celebrate 300 years of collective service to the community with three Centennial anniversary celebrations.  Help us celebrate these beloved branches and the neighborhoods they serve. 
Monday, April 9  Mott Branch  1085 Door Street  10 a.m. – Welcome, presentations and ceremonial groundbreaking at the construction site.  10:45 – 11:30 a.m. – Reception with cookies, punch and family-friendly activities at the original branch site.

Tuesday, April 10  Maumee Branch  501 River Road  10 a.m. – Welcome and presentations.
10:30 a.m. - Special performance by the Maumee High School Select Choir.  10:45 – 11:30 a.m. – Reception with cookies, punch and family-friendly activities.
Thursday, April 12  South Branch  1736 Broad Street  10 a.m. – Welcome and presentations.  10:45 – 11:30 a.m. – Reception with cookies, punch and family-friendly activities. 
The week of April 4 is also National Library Week with a theme of “Libraries Lead.”  Libraries hold a special place throughout all of our neighborhoods, making this an especially fitting time to celebrate our leadership and service to the community.

"I'm always in favor of learnin' new ideas, 'long as they don't interfere with the way I already view things"  Border Music, a novel by Robert James Waller

           

Robert James Waller, whose best-selling, bittersweet 1992 romance novel The Bridges of Madison County was turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood and later into a soaring Broadway musical, died in 2017 at the age of 77.  In Bridges, which Waller famously wrote in 11 days, the roving National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid spends four days romancing Francesca Johnson, a war bride from Italy married to a no-nonsense Iowa farmer.  Waller’s novel reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and stayed on it for over three years, longer than any work of fiction since The Robe.  The Eastwood-directed 1995 movie grossed $182 million worldwide.  Weller grew up in Rockford, Iowa, and he was educated at the University of Northern Iowa and Indiana University, where he received his doctorate.  He taught management, economics, and applied mathematics at the University of Northern Iowa from 1968 to 1991.  Waller’s seven books include Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend, which unseated Bridges on the best-seller list, Border Music, Puerto Vallarta Squeeze and A Thousand County Roads:  An Epilogue to The Bridges of Madison County.  The last, a sequel to his monster hit, was prompted by thousands of letters from people who wanted to know more about the characters.  “Finally, I got curious and decided I’d find out—I wrote the book,” he told the AP in 2002.  A musical was made of The Bridges of Madison County in 2014 starring Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale with a score by Jason Robert Brown, but it closed after just 137 performances on Broadway.  A national tour starring Elizabeth Stanley kicked off in 2015.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2017/03/10/bridges-of-madison-county-author-robert-james-waller-dies-at-77/99009448/

           

Useful, but seldom used, four-letter words

mien (MEAN)  noun  look, attitude

whit (WIT)  noun  very small part or amount

mete (MEAT)  verb  dispense or allot justice

 “The 21st of March is the beginning of the new year,” said Mohcen Shahbaz, an Iranian doctoral candidate in electrical engineering at the University of Toledo.  That particular date will usher in Nowruz [noh-ROOZ], commonly known as the Persian new year, which literally translates to “new day.”  It is a celebration of beginnings and of spring and has roots in Zoroastrianism dating back more than 2,000 years while also having been adopted in modern times by the Baha’i faith, which was founded in Iran in 1863.  The date and time at which the 13-day holiday begins varies.  “Every year, we have a new time for changing the year,” said Mr. Shahbaz.  And the official beginning occurs “sometimes in the day and sometimes in the night,” he said, dependent upon the precise moment of the vernal equinox.  “Everybody celebrates,” Mr. Shahbaz said.  All religions join in this joyful occasion, because “it’s about the customs” rather than theology or nationality.  Millions of people throughout the former Persian Empire — Iran, Iraq, and surrounding countries in western Asia among them, along with expatriates around the world—will take part in the festivities.  Mary Bilyeu  Find recipes for Nowruz at http://www.toledoblade.com/Food/2018/03/19/Nowruz-Persian-new-year.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1860  March 20, 2018

David Lean's twelfth film was The Bridge on the River Kwai starring Alec Guinness and William Holden as P.O.W.'s working to build and/or destroy a bridge for the Japanese during World War II.  The film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Guinness), not to mention a handful of Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and even a Grammy nomination for its soundtrack.  The process of adapting Pierre Boulle's French-language novel Le Pont de la Riviere Kwai was difficult, but the two writers ultimately responsible for it were Carl Foreman (High Noon) and Michael Wilson (A Place in the Sun).  Neither of them got credit, though, as The Bridge on the River Kwai was released during the three-year period when people who'd ever been Communists (or who refused to answer questions about it before Congress) were ineligible for Academy Awards.  The screenplay was instead credited to the novelist, Boulle—which was quite a feat, since he didn’t speak or read English. In 1985, the Academy officially recognized Foreman and Wilson as the screenwriters and posthumously awarded the Oscar to them.  Boulle based his novel, published in 1952, on his own experiences as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, and on an infamous construction project that he wasn't involved with.  The Japanese did indeed force British, Dutch, Australian, and American prisoners to build the Burma Railway, resulting in some 13,000 POW deaths and at least 80,000 civilian deaths.  The real Kwai River was just a trickle near Burma, where Boulle set his bridge; the actual bridge had been built 200 miles away, near Bangkok.  A sketch of that bridge was used as the basis for the fictional one.  The movie's famous theme, The “Colonel Bogey March" was composed in 1914 by Kenneth Alford, a military band conductor. During World War II, British soldiers added words about Hitler, Goering, Himmler and Goebbels.  Lean wanted to use the tune in Kwai, figured those lyrics wouldn't pass the censors (or the approval of the composer's widow), and opted to have the troops whistle it instead.  Kwai's composer, Malcolm Arnold, wove the march into his Oscar-winning score so seamlessly that modern viewers may assume it was original to the film.  Eric D. Snider  http://mentalfloss.com/article/82646/13-fascinating-facts-about-bridge-river-kwai

As you go through online articles, magazine editorials, and news reports, you may encounter the use of the word sic.  It is typically italicized and enclosed in square brackets like this—[sic]—but what exactly does it mean?  Should you be paying any attention to this notation or should you just skim right past it?  It’s debatable how much weight you should be placing on “sic,” but you should at least know what it means.  It is a Latin word that roughly translates to “in such a manner” or “as such.”  That’s not really how we use it today, however.  Instead, you’ll find that when writers are quoting the work or words of other people, they’ll insert [sic] to indicate that the quote has been reproduced verbatim.  Typically, the quote will contain an incorrect or strange spelling of some kind and the writer wants to preserve that without it appearing to be a typo on their part.  If you were to pronounce “sic” in Latin, it would sound closer to the English word “seek.”  These days, we tend to anglicize the term to sound closer to the English word “sick.”  In terms of usage, [sic] is generally used to preserve an incorrect spelling, but it can also be used to preserve an inaccuracy in a quote as well.  http://btr.michaelkwan.com/2009/06/11/grammar-101-what-does-sic-mean/

Mix, Heat, Eat:  Fried Rice  In skillet with oil over medium-high heat, add 2 cups diced vegetables and  hot or teriyaki or soy sauce.  Stir fry briefly.  Add 1 c. cooked rice and, if desired, cooked meats.  Cook 1 minute.  Make a well and pour in 1 egg, stirring constantly.  When mostly cooked, stir everything together.  Add salt and pepper if needed.  Adapted from recipe at http://www.toledoblade.com/Mary-Bilyeu/2018/03/04/Dinner-for-One-Give-new-life-to-your-leftovers.html

February 1, 2018  Anthony Wayne shipwreck first from Lake Erie on National Registry by Jack Nissen   Ohio is a hotbed for historical preservation, but the state lacked a shipwreck  on the National Register of Historic Places until recently.  “The Anthony Wayne is a great example of the kinds of vessels that used to  supply Lake Erie in the 1800s,” said Kendra Kennedy, a maritime archaeologist  at the Ohio History Connection.  The Anthony Wayne shipwreck’s nomination to the national register ends mountains of research from an unlikely source:  a Texas A&M student’s thesis.  Shipwreck hunters confirmed the  ship was an old steamboat after its discovery in 2006, said Brad Kruger, a National Park Service cultural resource  specialist.  “After learning this, I began to do my  own research.  In 2008 I formed an archaeological survey and worked with  volunteers for a four week period,” said Kruger.  The first year of the survey reported the wreckage above the lakebed, most  notably its paddle wheels.  The following year, Kruger and his team excavated  around the wreck to see what the mud was hiding.  “We found a marine engine, one of  the earliest examples of one in the entire Great Lakes,” Kruger said.  “A fully  preserved engine, just under a few feet of mud.”  The Anthony Wayne was about seven miles north of Ohio when two of its  boilers exploded.  It sank to the bottom of Lake Erie in 1850.  http://thebeacon.net/beacon-news/news-ottawa-outdoors/item/13152-anthony-wayne-shipwreck-first-from-lake-erie-on-national-registry 

Remember That Shipwreck Story?  Here's What Really Happened!  Tom Kemp, GenealogyBank's Director of Genealogy Products, has been searching historical newspapers for nearly 50 years.  After reading sensationalist articles from the 1850s describing the sinking of the Anthony Wayne in Lake Erie, he dug deeper in old newspaper archives to separate the true from the false.  https://www.genealogybank.com/newsletter-archives/201202/remember-shipwreck-story-heres-what-really-happened 

coined recently:  getting Tillersoned--kept in a state of limbo about your future  coined recently:  de-wed--get a divorce

Despite claims by CNN, Time, USA Today, People, HuffPost, LiveScience and Newsweek, astronaut Scott Kelly’s DNA did not actually change by seven percent after two years in space, according to Prof. Chris Mason, professor at Weill Cornell Medicine and lead of the study.  Kelly’s body and genes were monitored closely during his two-year stint in space and compared against those of his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, in the NASA-backed “Twins Study” led by Prof. Mason, physiology and biophysics.  The extensive research of Mason’s team did not find that seven percent of Kelly’s genome changed after he left the Earth’s atmosphere.  While his genes remained the same, what changed was his gene expression—the activity of his cells, using that same genetic code, in deciding when and what proteins to manufacture.  Sarah Skinner  Read more at http://cornellsun.com/2018/03/16/despite-national-media-claims-7-of-astronauts-genes-did-not-change-in-space/

Scott Shoemaker was flooded with messages of support, death threats and offers from attorneys because of a viral internet post claiming his son was suspended for refusing to join the national walkout on March 14, 2018 to protest guns in schools.  The story wasn’t true, but that didn’t stop thousands from sharing it.  The photo of a Hilliard City Schools suspension slip made its way around Twitter and Facebook—along with Shoemaker’s name and phone number on it.  The now-viral story is 100 percent false, the Hilliard district says.  Shoemaker's son Jacob, a Hilliard Davidson 12th-grader, was suspended for failing to follow instructions to either join students outside or those in the study hall.  Shannon Gilchrist  http://www.the-review.com/news/20180315/hilliard-student-wasnt-suspended-for-avoiding-gun-protest-but-internet-doesnt-believe-that

Born in Toledo in 1928, Kate Wilhelm might have gone on to live a desperately ordinary life:  raised in Kentucky, she married young and had two children while her marriage fell apart. She was not born to science fiction—in fact, her first published novel, written in the midnight hours while her family slept, was "More Bitter Than Death" (1962), a mystery (a genre she returned to late in life with two popular long-running series of crime novels).  She once claimed that her decision to write SF was entirely serendipitous:  "I was a housewife with two young children, and I'd been reading an anthology, and I put it down and said to myself, 'I can do that.'  And I wrote 'The Mile-Long Spaceship,' and sold it."  She went on to write stories for a number of magazines, including the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which continued to publish her best stories right up until a few months before her death.  Selected for various "best of the year" anthologies, she was eventually introduced to the life of a full-time writer—as well as to her second husband and first-best editor, Damon Knight.  Wilhelm never quite "fit" into any of the genres she chose to briefly occupy—SF, crime, mystery, domestic realism­.  But despite her relative obscurity in the world of "serious" literature, she was an intensely present woman in the lives of other writers; and she seemed happiest when other writers were around.  With her husband, she helped organize some of the first Milford Workshops, an annual meeting of young and established writers that notably included the likes of Thomas M. Disch, Avram Davidson, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Theodore Sturgeon, Judith Merril and even a young Gustav Hasford (author of "The Short-Timers," a.k.a. Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket.")  And when the Milford Workshops eventually developed into the Clarion workshops for young writers of fantasy and SF, Wilhelm and Knight were among the first (and most valued) instructors, teaching there every year from 1969 through the late 1990s.  Over many decades, she taught and inspired more soon-to-be-major writers than could be recorded in a drawer-full of class registers, including Robert Crais, George Alec Effinger, Octavia Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson, Cory Doctorow, Jeff VanderMeer, Ted Chiang, Lucius Shepard Nicola Griffith—the list could easily fill any one tribute and spill over into another.   Scott Bradfield  http://www.latimes.com/books/la-et-jc-kate-wilhelm-appreciation-20180313-story.html   Kate Wilhelm died March 8, 2018 in Eugene, Oregon at the age of 89.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1859  March 19, 2018 

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.  https://www.nps.gov/upde/learn/historyculture/zanegrey.htm

Zane Grey Day - April 29, 2018 at the National Road & Zane Grey Museum, 8850 East Pike, Norwich, OH   Learn about U.S. 40, the old National Road that came to be called “the Main Street of America,” explore the adventure novels and Westerns of Zanesville author Zane Grey and see examples of the art pottery for which this region of Ohio was famous in the 20th century.  Exhibits speak to the history of the road, its construction and transportation, from wagons to cars.  A diorama of the National Road with many accompanying objects illustrates what it was like to travel on the National Road from the early 19th century, when the first tree was felled, to the mid-20th century.  The 3/8ths-scale diorama is 136 feet long.  The National Road, early America’s busiest land artery to the West, stretched from Cumberland, MD, to Vandalia, IL.  Begun in 1806, the “Main Street of America” was the only significant land link between the east coast and the western frontier in the early 19th century.  The dream of Washington and Jefferson, it was needed to move crops and goods between East and West and help immigration.  Zane Grey, born in Zanesville in 1872, wrote more than 80 books and is known for his novels of the old West.  Grey penned about 60 Westerns, nine novels about fishing, three books tracing the fate of the Ohio Zanes, a biography of the young George Washington and several short story collections.  His study is re-created in the museum and includes many manuscripts and other personal memorabilia. https://www.ohiohistory.org/visit/museum-and-site-locator/national-road-and-zane-grey-museum

                                                                                                

The World Happiness Report at http://worldhappiness.report/, published March 14, 2018, ranks 156 countries by happiness levels, based on factors such as life expectancy, social support and levels of corruption.  The Nordic countries have dominated the index since it first was produced in 2012.  Rounding out the Top 10 this year are Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia.  Unlike past years, the annual report published by the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network also evaluated 117 countries by the happiness and well-being of their immigrants.

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finland_tops_2018_un_global_happiness_index/10115928

Recharge with simple exercise:  walking, stretching, measured breathing.  Recharge with simple foods:  fruit, nuts, cheese.

The National Archives celebrates Women’s History Month, recognizing the great contributions that women have made to our nation.  Learn about the history of women in the United States by exploring their stories through letters, photographs, film, and other primary sources. 

Employee Affinity Groups (EAGs) at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) serve as a forum for education, communication, and professional development.  Through NARA's collaboration with the 2020 Women’s Vote Centennial Initiative  (WVCI) to observe the 19th Amendment Centennial Celebration, members of WAG will be providing updates to NARA’s research pages, which will be featured on the WVCI website.

Explore selected images from the National Archives Catalog related to Women's History.  https://www.archives.gov/news/topics/womens-history

The estate of Harper Lee has filed a lawsuit against the producers of a highly-anticipated Broadway adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, arguing that the Aaron Sorkin’s script “departs from the spirit of the novel”.  The lawsuit, filed on March 13, 2018 in Alabama by the late author’s lawyer Tonja Carter, alleges that Sorkin’s script has substantially altered Lee’s novel, despite a clause in the contract stipulating that “the play shall not derogate or depart in any manner from the spirit of the novel nor alter its characters”.  According to the lawsuit, the estate and Lee’s literary agent Andrew Nurnberg made repeated approaches to Hollywood producer Scott Rudin’s company, Rudinplay, letting them know that “for this classic, it is really important that any spin put on the characters, not least Atticus, does not contradict the author’s image of them”.  Atticus Finch, it states, is “based on Ms Lee’s own father, a small-town Alabama lawyer who represented black defendants in a criminal trial”, and “is portrayed in the novel as a model of wisdom, integrity, and professionalism”.   Alison Flood  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/15/harper-lee-estate-sues-over-broadway-version-of-to-kill-a-mockingbird

Amazon’s first Washington-area bookstore opens March 13 by Abha Bhattarai   The online behemoth, which has helped drive a number of traditional bookstores out of business, is hoping its loyal online following will translate into in-store customers on Georgetown’s M Street NW, in the same building that Barnes & Noble once inhabited before shutting in 2011.  At 10,000 square feet, the store is among the largest of Amazon’s 15 bookstores.  It includes 5,600 book titles—all of which are displayed with their covers facing out—as well as dozens of tablets and smart-home devices on display for customers to test.  Instead of price tags, each book comes with a review card that shows its star rating on Amazon.com and includes a snippet of a customer review. Customers are encouraged to use Amazon’s mobile app to scan items for prices.  Scanning machines throughout the store also alert shoppers to an item’s cost—which, for Prime members, is the same as on Amazon.com. Everyone else pays list price.  A section called “New Year New You” includes Vitamix blenders and Breville juicers, alongside espresso makers and wellness items.  The children’s section, where books are organized by age group, includes a table of magnetic toys and Fire Kids tablets.  Another area, called Amazon Launchpad, features start-up creations like sous-vide cooking tools and Mason jar fermentation kits. A small coffee bar downstairs is operated by Allegro Coffee, which is owned by Whole Foods Market.  (Amazon bought Whole Foods last year for $13.7 billion.)  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/03/12/amazons-first-washington-area-bookstore-opens-tuesday/?utm_term=.45b3f1e8836d  

Symbolic communication in the form of language underlies our unique ability to reason—or so the conventional wisdom holds.  A new study published March 15, 2018 in Science, though, suggests our capacity to reason logically may not actually depend on language, at least not fully.  The findings show babies still too young to speak can reason and make rational deductions.  The authors—a team hailing from several European institutions—studied infants aged 12 and 19 months, when language learning and speech production has just begun but before complex mastery has been achieved.  The children had to inspect distinct objects repeatedly—such as a dinosaur and a flower.  The items were initially hidden behind a black wall.  In one set of experiments the animation would show a cup scooping up the dinosaur.  Half of the time, the barrier would then be removed to reveal, as expected, the remaining flower. In the rest of the instances, though, the wall would disappear and a second dinosaur would be there.  The children deduced in these latter occurrences that something was not quite right, even though they were unable to articulate in words what was wrong.  Eye-tracking—a commonly used technique to gauge mental abilities in preverbal children and apes—showed infants stared significantly longer at scenes where the unexpected object appeared behind the barrier, suggesting they were confused by the reveal.  Bret Stetka  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/babies-think-logically-before-they-can-talk/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1858  March 16, 2018 

Prior to the creation of the Coptic alphabet in 300 AD, the Egyptian language was written in three non-alphabetic scripts:  Hieroglyphic, Hieratic and Demotic.  Each of these used a combination of pictographic/ideographic symbols and phonetic symbols, but it is important to recognize that they were three distinct scripts.  Hieroglyphic and Hieratic writing developed concurrently and independently of one another.  They were closely related, though the exact nature of their relationship is unknown.  There is little evidence to suggest that one descended from the other, but it is probable that they were mutually influential.  Hieratic was the more cursive of the two.  Both scripts were used from roughly 3200 BC until 400 AD.  Generally, Hieroglyphics were used for monumental inscriptions and decorative texts, and Hieratic was used for administrative texts which placed more importance in content than appearance, which were written by hand, and which needed to be written quickly.  Demotic writing developed around 600 BC.  It was derived from Hieratic writing, but developed into a highly cursive form so that the pictographic element of some symbols was lost.  Although many single symbols were still used to write whole words or concepts, the symbol did not necessarily visually resemble the concept it represented.  As Demotic writing gained popularity, it began to replace Hieratic writing in the administrative context, though Hieratic continued to be used in religious texts.  Demotic writing was used until roughly 400 AD, when all three scripts began to fall from use in favour of the Coptic alphabet.  Note that there is significant overlap in the dates during which the three scripts were used.  None of them entirely replaced another; they all were used concurrently in restricted domains.  Jacques Kinnaer  http://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=entry_detail&uid=yhvayd2uk7

Newspapers and magazines have suggested that emojis are a new kind of language, perhaps akin to the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt.  Could this be true?  However much such a thought might appeal to some of us, the use of emojis is actually quite limited. They mostly function as indicators of how we feel, or they're simply used for fun.  The use of emojis, then, can be compared to certain kinds of nonhuman animal communication, which generally has specific purposes.  This is not language in the human sense.  What of hieroglyphs?  They are not a language, but a system that evolved over time to record the ancient Egyptian language in physical form.  First of all, hieroglyphs were logograms, a sign or character that represented a word or phrase.  For example, the mouth-shaped symbol stood for the word "mouth," which was pronounced "r" (hieroglyphs do not record vowel sounds, just as many scripts in use today in the Middle East do not).  The use of the mouth-shaped symbol, then, represented the sound "r"—that is, the shape acted as a phonogram, a symbol representing a vocal sound.  Another example is the wave-shaped logogram, which represented the word "water" and was pronounced "n."  But the wave-shaped logogram could also be a phonogram to spell the word for "for" because it was pronounced as "n."  Once hieroglyphs became a way to spell sounds, they could be combined to spell larger words.  Thus the combination spelled "rn," the ancient Egyptian word for "name."  This process may seem cumbersome, but hieroglyphs allowed ancient Egyptians to compose numerous kinds of texts:  literary and mythological tales, histories and chronicles, religious hymns, scientific treatises and legal and medical texts, poems and songs, personal letters and biographies, even graffiti.  They wrote about anything that was important to them, just like we English speakers leverage the Roman alphabet today.  And that is why emojis are not a new language—or anything like hieroglyphs.  Joseph F. Eska  http://www.vtmag.vt.edu/sum16/question.html

In information technology, a glyph (pronounced GLIHF ; from a Greek word meaning carving) is a graphic symbol that provides the appearance or form for a character.  A glyph can be an alphabetic or numeric font or some other symbol that pictures an encoded character.  The following is from a document written as background for the Unicode character set standard.  An ideal characterization of characters and glyphs and their relationship may be stated as follows:  A character conveys distinctions in meaning or sounds.  A character has no intrinsic appearance.  A glyph conveys distinctions in form.  A glyph has no intrinsic meaning.  One or more characters may be depicted by one or more glyph representations (instances of an abstract glyph) in a possibly context dependent fashion.  In the Unicode standard, a character is stated to be an abstract entity and not a glyph (some visual representation of a character).  posted by Margaret Rouse  http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/glyph

Parnassus on Wheels is a 1917 novel written by Christopher Morley and published by Doubleday, Page & Company.  The title refers to the Mount Parnassus of Greek mythology; it was the home of the Muses.  Parnassus on Wheels is Morley's first novel, about a fictional traveling book-selling business.  The first of two novels to be written from a woman's perspective, as well as the prequel to a later novel (The Haunted Bookshop), Parnassus on Wheels was inspired by the novel The Friendly Road by David Grayson (pseudonym of Ray Stannard Baker), and starts with an open letter to Grayson, taking him to task for not concerning himself (except in passing) with his sister's opinion of and reaction to his adventure.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parnassus_on_Wheels  Borrow from a public library or read online at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5311

The Haunted Bookshop is a 1919 novel by journalist, poet and novelist Christopher Morley (1890-1957).   He was one of the founders of The Baker Street Irregulars.  It is very much a post World War I novel, a direct reaction to the war.  Which in a way is odd because it's also a feather light comedy.  It's also the sequel to an earlier novel, Parnassus on Wheels.  Much of this new novel (and I would guess much of the earlier one) appeared in The Bookman, a magazine devoted to bookselling concerns.  http://rrhorton.blogspot.com/2014/07/old-bestsellers-haunted-bookshop-by.html  Borrow from a public library or read online at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/172

Why should I use DuckDuckGo instead of Google?  The 23 answers include #1:  Google tracks you.  We don’t.  https://www.quora.com/Why-should-I-use-DuckDuckGo-instead-of-Google

"In this little corner of paradise, a discouraging word could not be heard over the breeze rattling cottonwood leaves, the river roaring happily as you please and from time to time rolling a small boulder on the submerged pathway."  "Of all the large cats, the cougar is the only one that purrs like the kitty nestled in your lap."  The Widow's Revenge, #14 in the Charlie Moon series of novels by James D. Doss 

James D. Doss (1939-2012) was a noted American mystery novel author.  He was the creator of the popular fictional Ute detective/rancher Charlie Moon, of whom he wrote 17 mystery novels.  James "Danny" Doss was born and raised in Kentucky and died in Los Alamos, New Mexico.  He was also an electrical engineer who worked on particle accelerators and biomedical technology for the University of California's Los Alamos National Laboratory, while writing his novels.  After retirement from Los Alamos National Laboratory, he continued to write his popular novels while living in Taos, New Mexico and Los Alamos, New Mexico.  See bibliography and link to an interview with Doss at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Doss

March 3, 2018  Last week The Economist considered the new South African president’s in-tray, advertising our advice on the cover with the words “Who Cyril Ramaphosa should fire”.  Shouldn’t that be “Whom Cyril Ramaphosa should fire”?  . On its face, our editors agreed, the grammar was clear.  It should be whom.  Who is used for subjects, whom for objects, including direct objects such as that of the verb to fire.  “He fires him”, not “He fires he”.  Thus, “He fires whom”.   The issue is not as simple as that.  Whom is one of the few remaining vestiges of case in English.  At the time of “Beowulf”, the great monster-slaying Anglo-Saxon epic, English nouns, pronouns and adjectives, plus words like the, all had an ending showing case.  Four different cases in Old English tell you whether a word is a subject, direct object, indirect object or possessor.  In English today just six words still show a distinction between subject and object:  I, he, she, we, they and who.  For the first five, making the case-distinction is mandatory nearly all of the time.  You cannot say “I love she and she loves I”.  Admittedly, some people say “between you and I”.  (It should be between you and me, because both you and me are objects of the preposition.)   The case, as it were, is getting stronger against whom.  Except in the most formal language—think courtrooms and prayers—this little word may not survive.  For whom, the bell tolls.

https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21737489-whom-bell-tolls-court-common-usage-old-pronoun-losing-its-case

For arguably the most famous physicist on Earth, Stephen Hawking—who died March 14, 2018 in Cambridge at 76 years old—was wrong a lot.  He thought, for a while, that black holes destroyed information, which physics says is a no-no.  He thought Cygnus X-1, an emitter of X-rays over 6,000 light years away, wouldn’t turn out to be a black hole.  (It did.)  He thought no one would ever find the Higgs boson, the particle indirectly responsible for the existence of mass in the universe. (Researchers at CERN found it in 2012.)  But Hawking was right a lot, too.  He and the physicist Roger Penrose described singularities, mind-bending physical concepts where relativity and quantum mechanics collapse inward on each other—as at the heart of a black hole.  It’s the sort of place that no human will ever see first-hand; the event horizon of a black hole smears matter across time and space like cosmic paste.  But Hawking’s mind was singular enough to see it, or at least imagine it.

His calculations helped show that as the young universe expanded and grew through inflation, fluctuations at the quantum scale—the smallest possible gradation of matter—became the galaxies we see around us.  No human will ever visit another galaxy, and the quantum realm barely waves at us in our technology, but Hawking envisioned them both.  And he calculated that black holes could sometimes explode, an image that would vex even the best visual effects wizard.  More than that, he could explain it to the rest of us.  Hawking was the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge until his retirement in 2009, the same position held by Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, and Paul Dirac.  But he was also a pre-eminent popularizer of some of the most brain-twisting concepts science has to offer.  His 1988 book A Brief History of Time has sold more than 10 million copies.  Adam Rogers  https://www.wired.com/story/stephen-hawking-a-physicist-transcending-space-and-time-passes-away-at-76/

 http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1857  March 14, 2018  On this date in  1794, Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin.  On this date in 1885, The Mikado, a light opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, received its first public performance in London.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_14

Word of the Day  Pi Day   proper noun  March 14th, an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi).