Mission Hill Family Estate brings Iceland to the Okanagan.  The ‘Encounters with Iceland’ is a major sculpture exhibition featuring the works of Icelandic artist Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir.  From now until October 2014 the interpretive exhibition will feature more than 40 large scale sculptures, the largest exhibition of the artist’s works ever in North America.  See pictures at http://www.kelownanow.com/tourism/tourism_info/news/Tourist_Information/14/06/25/Stunning_Icelandic_Sculptures_Free_to_View_at_Mission_Hill  NOTE that the exhibit was within walking distance of our bed and breakfast during our recent visit to the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia

The Okanagan Valley, about 155 miles long, is located in south central British Columbia.  The valley is almost dry enough to warrant being called a desert.  Dozens of parks surround Okanagan Lake, and activities include skiing, mountain biking, camping, hiking, backpacking, golf and diving.  Wildlife includes California bighorn sheep, and the area is famous for bird watching.  http://www.okanaganbritishcolumbia.com/

What's in a Name by John B. Theberge  A “desert” is variously defined, but in colloquial terms is “land where the water bucket is empty.”  Among climate-based definitions are:  average precipitation less than 250 mm per year and precipitation is less than potential evapotranspiration, that is, what comes down is less than what would go up if anything was left to go up.  The Osoyoos region in British Columbia, receiving an average of 317 mm per year, does not qualify under either definition.  Nor does it even qualify for “semidesert” under one definition, because it receives more than 178 mm.  But it does qualify for “semi-arid,” falling within the range of 250 to 500 mm.  

http://desert.org/index.php/our-desert/17-resources/34-what-s-in-a-name.html

Gellatly Nut Farm Regional Park is 4 hectares of a working heritage farm in the Okanagan Valley.  The Gellatly Nut Farm Society(GNFS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the hundred year old orchard and trees in perpetuity.  David Erskine Gellatly, his wife Eliza, and their eldest son David Jr. emigrated from Scotland to Ontario in 1883.  They spent ten years in Ontario before heading west.  In 1900 they purchased 320 acres at what is now known as Gellatly Point.  In 1910 David Sr. bought an additional 350 acres at Boucherie Flats.  His farm was prospering and the family venture now included the largest greenhouse in the interior, a box factory, packing house, and a wharf for dispatch of produce by boat.  The Gellatly Nut Farm became the cradle of hardy nut growing and breeding in North America.  The park opened to the public in September 2005.  The farm is a work in progress with ambitious plans underway to preserve, stabilize, restore, renovate, and rehabilitate the heritage buildings.  The GNFS's role is that of advisory/fundraising duties as well as managing the annual nut harvest which runs from mid August to mid November depending on the current year's growing conditions.  100% of proceeds from nut and seedling sales help support plans for the protection of the historic Gellatly Nut Farm.  http://www.regionaldistrict.com/services/parks-services/regional-parks/gellatly-nut-farm-regional-park.aspx 

An approximate value for Celsius or Fahrenheit or vice versa can be found just by memorizing a few landmark values and by knowing there are about 2 ° F in 1 ° C.  With each 10 degree Celsius temperature change there is an 18 degree Fahrenheit change.  Let's start with the temperature conversion everyone knows, 0 ° C = 32 ° F, each time 10 ° is added or subtracted to the Celsius temperature, add or subtract another 18 Fahrenheit.  0 ° C = 32 ° F; 10 ° C = 50 ° F; 20 ° C = 68 ° F; 30 ° C = 86 ° F  http://www.theweatherprediction.com/basic/conversions/  Another method for approximate conversion to Farenheit is to double Celsius and then add 30.  

Example:  20 Celsius doubled is 40, and 30 added makes 70.

One kilometer = 0.6214 miles.  Find metric conversions and charts at http://www.metric-conversions.org/  A method for approximate conversion from kilometers to miles is to subtract 50%, then add 10% back.  

Example:  10 kilometers halved is 5.  Add 1 to make 6 miles.

The use of the metric system for all purposes has been legal in Canada since 1873, but in fact only the scientific community used it until 1970 because its use was purely voluntary.  It was only after the adoption of resolutions favoring metrication by associations of scientists, engineers, manufacturers and builders, that the government in January 1970 announced in a "white paper" that Canada would go metric.  In 1971 the government appointed Metric Commission Canada with the mandate of planning and managing the conversion.  The Commission adopted the target of converting by 1980 every aspect of national life.  Some hundred sectorial committees, representing all aspects of the national life, were named and charged with drawing up plans.  To coordinate it all, every plan was entered in a critical path data base, with every plan ending at or before 1980.  Find chart for official metrfication from France (1795) to Jamaica (1998) at http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/international.html

Although the use of metric measurement standards in the United States has been authorized by law since 1866 (Act of July 28, 1866; 14 Stat. 339), the U.S. today is the only industrially developed nation which has not established a national policy of committing itself and taking steps to facilitate conversion to the metric system.  http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/205a

On 23 December 1975, President Gerald R. Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, which finally gave official federal sanction for the U.S. to convert to using the metric system.  However, the 10-year deadline (for conversion), which was in the original bill that was ready for the U.S. Congress to vote on, was somehow dropped from the final version of the bill.  So no deadline was set for making the U.S. transition to metric system usage.  This 1975 metric law did provide for a 17-member U.S. Metric Board (USMB) to be established to "coordinate the voluntary conversion to the metric system."  The Board was given no power to mandate metrication, but was directed to plan and coordinate metric conversion.  Two members of the USMA were nominated by President Ford, in 1976, to serve on the U.S. Metric Board.  However, President Ford's term expired before the U.S. Senate approved Ford's nominees.  Therefore, new nominees were named by President Jimmy Carter when he took office, but the USMB was not appointed until late in 1978.  In the 1980s, USMA worked with pro-metric groups and citizens to get several metric bills introduced.  But these bills either were defeated or died, without a vote, when the congressional year was over.  However, the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 finally was passed and signed by President Ronald Reagan.  This bill amended the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 to " . . . designate the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce."  From the late 1970s to early 1980s, the U.S. Metric Board held some meetings in various U.S. cities, but did little to forward the transition to metric.  In 1982, President Reagan retired the USMB, stating that it had served its purpose.  After disbanding of the USMB, a Metric Program (MP) Office was established under the Department of Commerce.

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/history.htm

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1184  August 29, 2014  

On this date in 1724, Giovanni Battista Casti, Italian poet and author was born.  

On this date in 1756, Jan Śniadecki, Polish mathematician and astronomer was born.

It is being billed as the “city’s living room.”  Its rooftop patio offers stunning views of Halifax harbour.  There is a 300-seat theatre, two cafes, gaming stations, two music studios, dedicated space for adult literacy, a First Nations reading circle and boardrooms for local entrepreneurs.   Halifax’s new $57.6-million gleaming glass library of the future is to open fall of 2014 – a 129,000-square-foot building in the city’s downtown with a unique cantilevered rectangular glass box on the top, suggesting a stack of books.  Environmentally sustainable and architecturally stunning, with elegant angles and lines, it is the first piece of modern architecture to be built in Halifax in decades, and the first major central library to be built in Canada in several years.  Libraries are competing with Google, the Internet and even Chapters and Starbucks, but they are holding their own.  In Canada, library use has increased slightly year after year, according to statistics from the Canadian Urban Libraries Council.  From 2008 to 2013, the CULC tracked an 18-per-cent increase in library use, which includes the population served, attendance at programs and number of programs offered.  In the United States, Sari Feldman, president-elect of the American Library Association, says in the future libraries “will be less about what we have for people and more about what we do for people.”  For Danish architect Morten Schmidt, whose firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen designed the Halifax library with its Nova Scotia partners, Fowler, Bauld & Mitchell, modern libraries are “much more places for social gathering.”  His firm, which has designed large libraries in Europe, including the extension of the Royal Library in Copenhagen, is now designing the New Central Library in Christchurch, N.Z.  The 2011 earthquake destroyed the library.  New Zealand officials toured the new Halifax library recently, and Mr. Schmidt says elements of it are being incorporated into the Christchurch design.  Jane Taber  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/halifax-looks-forward-to-the-opening-of-its-very-own-library-of-the-future/article20090514/

Nonagon  (9-gon) (also Enneagon)  From Latin:  nonus - "ninth" is a polygon with 9 sides.  A regular polygon has all sides equal and all interior angles equal.  An irregular polygon has sides not all the same length or whose interior angles do not all have the same measure.  http://www.mathopenref.com/nonagon.htmll  NOTE that I live in an "apartment of angles."  The walls in the master bedroom form an irregular nonagon.

From a muse reader  Have you ever thought about the use of "if not"?   To me "if" is ambiguous.  Sometimes it amplifies what precedes it.  Sometimes it further defines in a negative sense.  He is overweight, if not obese.  What does this mean?  Think about substituting "but not."  I notice it in speech all the time and I have to think, "what are they trying to say?" 

From the muser:  I think that "He is overweight, if not obese" means overweight and perhaps obese as well.  I think that "He is overweight, but not obese" means exactly what it says.

"if not" 

Meaning 1:  definitely  Nothing if not acts as an intensifier and means “definitely” or “certainly.”

Meaning 2:  and possibly  Similar phrases, such as most, if not all can be very confusing.  You should avoid this phrase unless you are discussing a truly uncertain situation

Meaning 3:  although not  Often, if not phrases are used to connect strong and weak descriptors.

Alex’s welcome was pleasant, if not enthusiastic.  Because enthusiastic is a stronger word than pleasant, we understand this sentence to mean that the welcome was not unpleasant but not very enthusiastic, either.  Here, the phrase if not means “although not.”

Meaning 4:  or even  In a similar sentence, if not may mean “or even”:  You will receive an answer in a matter of hours, if not minutes.  Here, the emphasis is on a rapid response: your answer will arrive in hours, or even minutes.   https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/bien-well/fra-eng/typographie-typography/nothingifnot-eng.html

"but not"  So far, I've found no definition for "but not" even though it's used frequently (for instance, but not heard, but not limited, but not others, but not too much).  But may be used as a conjunction, a prepostition, an adverb, a pronoun, or a noun.  Some definitions include:  1.  a  except for the fact; b  that —used after a negative; c without the concomitant that  but it pours>; d  if not  unless ; e than  but it stopped.

2.  a  on the contrary , on the other hand  notwithstanding—used to connect coordinate elements  but he did not answer>  but a sword>; b  yet  but proud>; c  with the exception of —used before a word often taken to be the subject of a clause  but the brave deserves the fair — John Dryden>.  Find more information at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/but

Harold Stirling Vanderbilt (1884-1970) of Newport RI, was a bridge authority whose revisions of auction bridge scoring principles created modern contract bridge, also a system-maker and a champion player.  He was born at Oakdale NY into the richest and most famous American family of that time.  His father, William Kissam Vanderbilt, died in 1920 leaving an estate of some $54.5 million.  Vanderbilt graduated from Harvard Law School in 1910, then entered his family's railroad business, New York Central, founded by his great-grandfather, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.  For many years he was a successful business executive.  His greatest fame in competitive fields is as a yachtsman.  His revision of right-of-way rules are still known as the Vanderbilt Rules.  Nevertheless, his lasting fame is more likely to come from his contributions to bridge.  Vanderbilt took up bridge seriously in 1906, and his partnership with J. B. Elwell was considered the strongest in the U.S. from 1910 to 1920.  During that period the contract bridge principle — counting only bid tricks toward game — was often proposed and rejected.  Experimenting with the proposed new game while on a cruise late in 1925, Vanderbilt originated the factors of vulnerability and inflated slam bonuses.  He produced a scoring table so balanced as to make nearly every aggressive or sacrifice bid an approximately even bet, allowing just enough differential to permit the exercise of nice judgment.  Vanderbilt's technical contribution was even greater.  He devised the first unified system of bidding, and was solely responsible for the artificial 1 bid to show a strong hand, the negative 1 response, the strong (16- to 18-point) notrump on balanced hands only, and the weak two-bid opening.  http://www.vanderbilt.edu/bridge/hsvanderbilt.htm

Jackrabbits are hares, leoprids belonging to the genus Lepus.  They are larger than rabbits and were named for their ears which caused people to call them "jackass rabbits," but the name was shortened over time.  Cottontail rabbits are leoprids of the species Lepus sylvaticus.  Their name comes from their fluffy white tail which resembles a ball of cotton.  Hares and rabbits, due to their powerful hind legs, are speedsters.  The hare can reach speeds up to 40 miles an hour while the smaller rabbit can attain speeds up to 20 miles per hour.  http://www.ehow.com/facts_5923054_jack-rabbit-vs_-cotton-tail.html  Find differences between hares and rabbits at http://www.diffen.com/difference/Hare_vs_Rabbit

Paraphrases from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, winner of the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the 2005 Pulitizer Prize  

Nursing a grudge--many people are tender of their resentments, as of the thing nearest their hearts. 

Oh, the strange riches of summer:  these slab-sided pumpkins and preposterous zucchinis.  

I've led a seemly life so long, I'm almost beginning to like it.

NOTE:  The town of Gilead is based on the real town of Tabor, Iowa in the southwest corner of the state.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1183  August 27, 2014  On this date in 1776, Battle of Long Island:  in what is now Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe defeated Americans under General George Washington.  On this date in 1859, Petroleum was  discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania leading to the world's first commercially successful oil well.

Weddings are being put through the social media washing machine by Nick Bilton  

A few months after attending my first hashtag wedding, I was invited to a more traditional ceremony (yes, wedding season is in full swing), where the bride sent out a flinty note to all the guests days before the event.  “Please do not post anything online,” she wrote, noting that cellphones were strictly prohibited.  That event, sans cellphones, was quite beautiful.  During the ceremony, people clapped (with both hands) as the bride floated down the aisle.  Guests listened attentively to the sermon.  And at dinner, people did this very strange thing:  They actually spoke to one another.  Using their mouths.  Not via text message or emoji.  But while the analog wedding was beautiful, I kept finding men hiding in the bathroom checking their email or World Cup scores.  Toward the end of the night, I bumped into a group of women trying to hide behind the tent while they took a group selfie.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/fashion/digital-weddings-2-0-hashtags-and-retweets.html?hpw&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

Liliom is a 1934 French fantasy film directed by Fritz Lang based on the Hungarian stage play of the same name by Ferenc Molnár.  The film stars Charles Boyer as Liliom, a carousel barker who is fired from his job after defending the chambermaid Julie (Madeleine Ozeray) from the jealousy of Mme. Muscat, the carousel owner who is infatuated with Liliom.  He moves in with Julie and they begin an affair.  When Liliom discovers he's about to become a father, he finds he needs money and participates in a robbery which goes awry.  Rather than allow himself to be arrested, Liliom kills himself and his soul is transported to a waiting room of Heaven.  A heavenly commissioner determines that Liliom will not be admitted into Heaven, only Purgatory, until he returns to earth to do one good deed.  Liliom was one of the two first French productions by producer Erich Pommer for Fox-Europa and director Fritz Lang's only French film.   Liliom premiered in France on April 27, 1934.  The original playwright, Ferenc Molnár, denounced the film because he did not receive screen credit on the poster.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliom_(1934_film)  

The 1956 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel is based on Liliom. 

The noun bane means a cause of great distress or annoyance.  Bane is also used as a name for people, characters and groups.  The adjective baneful means harmful or destructive. 

Forty-three states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) have adopted the Common Core State Standards.  See a map of states adopting the standards and link to the standards and other resources at http://www.corestandards.org/standards-in-your-state/

The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever  National Book Award Winner, 1958 by Neil Baldwin  In my research for this month's column, I kept coming across John Leonard's resonant reference to John Cheever (1912-1982) as "the Chekhov of the suburbs."  It struck me as neat, convenient literary shorthand.  It was predicated upon a received image of suburban life that has become all-too-common nowadays:  on the surface, we see manicured lawns, cars in driveways, children (mostly white) running carefree in the streets; and then at the end of the day, fathers walking slowly home from the train station, tie loosened, briefcase in one hand, rolled-up newspaper in the other, to be greeted by a smiling wife and dinner in the oven.  But as the lights go down, the darker dimension takes hold, and all the carefully-concealed secrets - alcoholism, adultery, dysfunctionality -- erupt to the surface, and the huge metaphor is complete, revealing raw facts about "the emptiness at the heart of the so-called American dream."  Critics have attributed John Cheever's slow ascent to recognition to the idea that he spent too much time and energy focusing upon upper middle-class, suburban characters; and also to his dedication to the short story form.  But let us remember that The Wapshot Chronicle was a novel--his first novel, no less.  And in perfect symmetry, his selected Stories won the National Book Award twenty years later.  Excerpted from the September, 2003 issue of Ingram's Advance e-letter, part of National Book Award Classics, a monthly series of essays, highlighting past Winners of the National Book Award  http://www.nationalbook.org/nbaclassics_jcheever.html

Archaeologists have found two ancient Mayan cities hidden in the jungle of southeastern Mexico, and the lead researcher says he believes there are "dozens" more to be found in the region.  Ivan Sprajc, associate professor at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, said his team found the ancient cities of Lagunita and Tamchen on the Yucatan peninsula in April by examining aerial photographs of the region.  Sprajc said the two cities reached their heyday in the Late and Terminal Classic periods (600-1000 AD).  At each site, researchers found palace-like buildings, pyramids and plazas.  One of the pyramids is almost 65 feet high.  They also found a facade featuring a monster-mouth doorway, which probably marked one of the main entrances to the center of the city.  Photographs from the sites showed stone pyramids jutting out from beneath dense foliage.  http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/travel/sns-rt-us-mexico-mayancities-20140822-story.html

Rocky Mountain National Park 100th Anniversary  Read about it, see pictures and link to resources at http://www.nps.gov/romo/planyourvisit/100th_anniversary.htm

The Wizard of Oz 75th Anniversary of film premiere on August 25, 2014  The film was based on the 1900 novel, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," by L. Frank Baum.  Find 75 facts about the film at http://parade.condenast.com/329429/linzlowe/75-weird-wonderful-facts-about-the-wizard-of-oz/

Wilderness Act 50th Anniversary  On September 3, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Wilderness Act.  This historic bill established the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) and set aside an initial 9.1 million acres of wildlands for the use and benefit of the American people.  Over the past 50 years, and as a result of America's support for wilderness, Congress has added over 100 million acres to this unique land preservation system.  The 1964 Wilderness Act defines "Wilderness" as areas where the earth and its communities of life are left unchanged by people, where the primary forces of nature are in control, and where people themselves are visitors who do not remain.  http://www.wilderness50th.org/about.php?useraction=about-anniversary

The Web 25th Anniversary  On March 12, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper proposing an “information management” system that became the conceptual and architectural structure for the Web.  He eventually released the code for his system—for free—to the world on Christmas Day in 1990.  It became a milestone in easing the way for ordinary people to access documents and interact over a network of computer networks called the internet—a system that had been around for years.  http://www.pewinternet.org/packages/the-web-at-25/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1182  August 25, 2014  

On this date in 1916, the United States National Park Service was created.

On this date in 1948, the House Un-American Activities Committee held the first-ever televised congressional hearing:  "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.

LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin was a German-built and -operated, passenger-carrying, hydrogen-filled, rigid airship which operated commercially from 1928 to 1937.  It was named after the German pioneer of airships, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who was a graf (count) in the German nobility.  During its operating life, the airship made 590 flights covering more than a million miles (1.6 million km).  It was designed to be operated by a crew of 36 officers and men.  The loss of the D-LZ 129 Hindenburg at Lakehurst on May 6, 1937 shattered public faith in the safety of hydrogen-filled airships making the continuation of their commercial passenger operations unsustainable unless the Graf Zeppelin and the still under construction LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II could convert to non-flammable helium, the only alternative lifting gas for airships.  Unlike the relatively inexpensive and universally available hydrogen, however, the vast majority of the world's available supplies of the much more costly, less buoyant, and harder to produce helium (it is an extracted byproduct of mined natural gas) were controlled by the United States.  Since 1925, the exportation of helium had also been tightly restricted by Congress although there is no record that the German Government had ever applied for an export license for helium to use in its airships prior to the Hindenburg's crash and fire.  Although the Graf Zeppelin II made 30 test, promotional, propaganda and military surveillance flights around Europe between the airship's launch in mid-September 1938 and its last flight 11 months later on August 20, made just 10 days before the formal start of World War II in Europe with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the LZ 130 never entered the commercial passenger service for which it was built.  The ultimate fates of both the original Graf Zeppelin (LZ 127) and the Graf Zeppelin II (LZ 130) were formally sealed on March 4, 1940, when German Air Minister Hermann Göring issued a decree ordering both to be immediately scrapped for salvage and their duralumin airframes and other structures to be melted down for reuse by the German military aircraft industry.  Read more and see graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

A living language, just like humans, adapts with time.  In the beginning, to broadcast was to sow seeds by scattering, a diaper was a kind of fabric, and a matrix was a womb.

harbinger  (HAHR-bin-juhr)  noun  One that foreshadows the approach of something.  verb tr.  To signal the arrival of something.  Originally, a harbinger was a host, a person who provided lodging.  With time the sense changed to a person sent in advance to find lodging for an army.

restive  (RES-tiv)  adjective  Restless, uneasy.  Earlier the word meant refusing to go forward, as in a restive horse.  Over time the word shifted in meaning and now it means the opposite.  Instead of "unable to advance", now it means "unable to remain still".

garble  (GAHR-buhl)  verb tr.  To distort a message, document, transmission, etc.   noun  An instance of garbling.  Originally the word meant to sift, for example to remove refuse from spices.  With time its meaning became distorted to what it is now.  From Old Italian garbellare (to sift), from Arabic gharbala (to select).

The World Trade Center ship, discovered in the rubble of the once-mighty skyscrapers, is starting to reveal its secrets.  The World Trade Center ship was discovered in July 2010, by workers at the Manhattan site.  A significant portion of the hull of the wooden ship was still preserved in wreckage found under debris from the attacks of 11 September 2001.  Samples of the ship, made from white pine, were obtained for testing.  These were then matched against samples of the wood with known ages and origins.  The best matches for seven samples taken from the hull were from trees felled around 280 years ago, near Philadelphia.  Researchers believe the wood used to construct the World Trade Center ship was likely harvested in 1773, or soon after.  Details in the design of the vessel are unlike that used by any large ship builder, suggesting the vessel may have been constructed by a small shipyard.  The layout of the entire ship was photographed and mapped for archeological study, before pieces were removed from its resting place.  Ed Cook, a research professor in the tree ring lab at the Lamon-Doherty Earth Observatory, examined wood samples obtained from Independence Hall in the early 1990's.  His maps of rings found in those samples matched the wood from the World Trade Center ship.  The ship is believed to be a Hudson River sloop, a type of vessel designed to ferry cargo and passengers in shallow, rocky water.  It likely sailed for two to three decades before coming into the city to retire.  Over years, it was covered in garbage and landfill before the Twin Towers were constructed over the artifact.  Investigation of the World Trade Center ship and how material used in its onstruction reveals the time and place of its construction was detailed in the journal Tree Ring Research.  James Maynard  http://www.techtimes.com/articles/11583/20140729/origin-of-18th-century-ship-found-in-debris-of-world-trade-center-finally-explained.htm

George Foster Peabody, was born on July 27, 1852, in Columbus, Georgia, the oldest of four children born to native New Englanders Elvira and George Henry Peabody.  Peabody's father had relocated the family from Connecticut to Columbus, where he ran a general store.  Growing up in Columbus, Peabody attended private school and later studied at Deer Hill Institute in Danbury, Connecticut.  The Civil War (1861-65) pushed the family into poverty, and by 1866 they had relocated to Brooklyn, New York, where the fourteen-year-old Peabody took a job with a wholesale dry goods firm.  In 1881 Peabody became a partner in the new investment firm, Spencer Trask and Company.  During the 1880s and 1890s the company began to work in several lucrative fields, including electrical construction financing and railroad construction in the western United States.  Peabody ran most of the company's railroad investments.  He was a member of the board of trustees for the American Church Institute for Negroes, which funded Episcopal schools in the South; the Penn Normal Industrial and Agricultural School in St. Helena, South Carolina; Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia; Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama; and the University of Georgia in Athens.  Peabody gave money for new buildings and also for the development of new programs and schools at these institutions.  By the 1900s Peabody's philanthropic work in education included serving as the treasurer for three boards:  the Southern Education Board, the General Education Board, and the Negro Rural School Fund. In 1903 he was granted honorary degrees by both Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.  His interest in the education system of his native state led Peabody to become one of the University of Georgia's main benefactors.  The Peabody Awards, the most prestigious awards given in broadcasting, are awarded by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia and bear not only Peabody's name but also his likeness on the medals.  The awards were first given out in 1941.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/george-foster-peabody-1852-1938

We have just returned from a two-week vacation in Seattle and British Columbia and you will read about places we've been in the near future.  I tried to remain Internet-free for 14 days, and almost made it--succumbing after 12 days.

The Italian verb "bruscare" means 'to roast over coals' and "brusciare" means 'to burn or toast,' which is how the first bruschetta was made.  The noun bruschetta is derived from these verbs although modern style bruschetta is often made from bread grilled in a skillet or baked in an oven until hard and dry.  If you order bruschetta in Italy, you will likely be served one piece of crusty, lightly toasted Italian bread slathered with olive oil with a clove of garlic on the side.  However, if you order bruschette, the plural of bruschetta, expect a plate of bruschetta with a variety of toppings.  Although all accounts of bruschetta's origins trace it back to Italy, the exact region and year of its birth are murky.  Ancient Romans reportedly used to test the quality of freshly pressed olive oil by smearing it on a piece of fire-toasted bread for tasting, a custom that is now common in all major olive-oil producing regions of Italy.  Certain accounts claim the oil-soaked bread was rubbed with a clove of garlic to bring out the flavors of the oil.  Other historical accounts of bruschetta claim it evolved from people trying to revitalize stale bread by soaking it with olive oil.  Cassie Damewood  http://www.ehow.com/info_8610344_history-bruschetta-bread.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1181  August 22, 2014  On this date in 1770, James Cook landed on Possession Island, Queensland and claimed the east coast of Australia as New South Wales in the name of King George III.  On this date in 1851, the  first America's Cup was won by the yacht America.

FRAME NARRATIVE:  The result of inserting one or more small stories within the body of a larger story that encompasses the smaller ones.  Often this term is used interchangeably with both the literary technique and the larger story itself that contains the smaller ones, which are called pericopes, "framed narratives" or "embedded narratives."  The most famous example is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in which the overarching frame narrative is the story of a band of pilgrims traveling to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury.  The band passes the time in a storytelling contest. The framed narratives are the individual stories told by the pilgrims who participate.  Another example is Boccaccio's Decameron, in which the frame narrative consists of a group of Italian noblemen and women fleeing the plague, and the framed narratives consist of the tales they tell each other to pass the time while they await the disease's passing.  The 1001 Arabian Nights is probably the most famous Middle Eastern frame narrative.  Here, in Bagdad, Scheherazade must delay her execution by beguiling her Caliph with a series of cliffhangers.  http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_f.html

Among earliest known frame stories are those preserved on the ancient Egyptian Papyrus Westcar.  Other early examples are from first millennium BCE ancient India.  The use of a frame story in which a single narrative is set in the context of the telling of a story is also a technique with a long history, dating back at least to the beginning section of the Odyssey, in which the narrator Odysseus tells of his wandering in the court of King Alcinous.  An extensive use of this device is Ovid's Metamorphoses where the stories nest several deep, to allow the inclusion of many different tales in one work.  Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights uses this literary device to tell the story of Heathcliff and Catherine, along with the subplots.  Her sister Anne also uses this device in her epistolary novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The main heroine's diary is framed by the narrator's story and letters.  Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is another good example of a book with multiple framed narratives.  The movie Amadeus is framed as a story an old Antonio Salieri tells to a young priest, because the movie is based more on stories Salieri told about Mozart than on historical fact.  Another use is a form of procatalepsis, where the writer puts the readers' possible reactions to the story in the characters listening to it. In The Princess Bride the frame of a grandfather reading the story to his reluctant grandson puts the cynical reaction a viewer might have to the romantic fairytale into the story in the grandson's persona, and helps defuse it. This is the use when the frame tells a story that lacks a strong narrative hook in its opening; the narrator can engage the reader's interest by telling the story to answer the curiosity of his listeners, or by warning them that the story began in an ordinary seeming way, but they must follow it to understand later actions, thereby identifying the reader's wondering whether the story is worth reading to the listeners'.  Such an approach was used by Edith Wharton in her novella Ethan Frome, in which a nameless narrator hears from many characters in the town of Starkfield about the main character Ethan's story.  A specialized form of the frame is a dream vision, where the narrator claims to have gone to sleep, dreamed the events of the story, and then awoken to tell the tale.  In modern usage, it is sometimes used in works of fantasy as a means toward suspension of disbelief about the marvels depicted in the story.   Another notable example that plays with frame narrative is the 1994 film Forrest Gump.  Most of the film is narrated by Forrest to various companions on the park bench.  However, in the last fifth or so of the film, Forrest gets up and leaves the bench, and we follow him as he meets with Jenny and her son.  This final segment suddenly has no narrator unlike the rest of the film that came before it, but is instead told through Forrest and Jenny's dialogues.  This approach is also demonstrated in the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire (adapted from the 2005 novel Q & A), about a poor street kid Jamal coming close to winning Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) and then being suspected of cheating.  Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness demonstrates a narrator telling a story, while the protagonist is quoted so as to give the framed appearance that he is telling the story.  Find a list of frame stories in role-playing video games at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_story.

An epidemic of poaching is sweeping Central and East Africa.  Countries such as Cameroon, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo are seeing their elephants slaughtered by the hundreds every year for their tusks.  And rhinos, whose keratin horns are prized in traditional medicine, are badly suffering, too.  It’s the worst outbreak of poaching since the 1980s, when more than 800 tons of ivory left Africa every year and the continent’s elephant populations plunged from 1.3 million to 600,000.  Most of the ivory is bound for Asia, especially China, where a booming economy means more people are able to afford ivory products that are considered status symbols:  bracelets, iPhone cases—even, in tragic irony, carved elephant figurines.  By some estimates, ivory prices have risen tenfold in the past five years.  http://magazine.nature.org/features/the-price-of-poaching.xml

Proposed ivory ban information, federal and state

U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director’s Order 210—February 25, 2014:   http://www.fws.gov/policy/do210.html  Appendix 1 to Director’s Order 210—Guidance to qualify for an “antique” exemption:  http://www.fws.gov/policy/do210A1.pdf  Amendment to Director’s Order 210—May 15, 2014:  http://www.fws.gov/policy/a1do210.pdf  Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES):   https://www.fws.gov/international/cites/cop16/cop16-resolution-cross-border-movement-of-musical-instruments.pdf  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Q&A about the proposed regulations:  http://www.fws.gov/international/travel-and-trade/ivory-ban-questions-and-answers.html

Recommendations from the President’s Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking meeting of June 9, 2014:  http://www.fws.gov/international/advisory-council-wildlife-trafficking/pdf/advisory-council-recommendations-06-09-14.pdf  Proposed State of New Jersey bill:  http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2014/Bills/A3500/3128_I1.HTM  New York State legislation:
http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2014/06/ny_leg_passes_ivory_rhino_horn_ban_062014.html

http://pianobuyer.wordpress.com/2014/06/24/new-federal-and-state-ivory-regulations-and-pianos/

Returning failed conversion projects back to rentals is a common use of Florida's condo-termination law these days.  "It is a classic case of unintended consequences" of the 2007 amendment, said Michael Gelfand, a West Palm Beach condo-association attorney who helped draft the legislation.  The current law came about in 2007, when lawmakers amended Florida's condo statutes to lower the thresholds for terminating complexes' condo status—changes inspired by several storms in 2004 and 2005 that left complexes so damaged that many owners couldn't afford nor agree upon repairs.  An ideal way to rebuild such a complex is for the owners to sell it to a developer with the capital to make the repairs and reopen it, often as rentals.  But, first, its condo status must be removed.  The 2007 amendment established that, to terminate a condo designation, at least 80% of a complex's owners must approve.  Second, to block a termination, 10% or more of the complex's owners must object.  Any holdouts on the losing end of a vote must be paid fair-market value for their units by the complex's buyer.  The 10%-objection threshold was aimed at allowing the majority's will to prevail.  Before 2007, the requirement in most cases for termination was unanimous approval of owners involved.  But the process could be blocked by a lone holdout owner, stymieing rehabilitation efforts.  Lawmakers also extended the termination guidelines to undamaged complexes, mostly to accommodate efforts to redevelop aged, obsolete complexes.  That opened the door for the guidelines to be applied to failed condo conversions to revert them entirely to rentals.  In many cases, the developers applying to terminate a complex's condo designation already own 80% or more of its units because they never succeeded in selling the units as condos in the first place.  Some 235 Florida complexes, about 1%, have ended their condo status since 2007.  Legal experts say the Florida condo-termination law can be seen as a "functional equivalent" of eminent domain, the process in which a government entity compels the sale of private property at fair-market value, sometimes on behalf of a private party, for economic development.  Kris Hudson  http://online.wsj.com/articles/in-florida-condo-battles-play-out-1407260650?mod=WSJ_newsreel_8

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1180  August 6, 2014  On this date in 1809, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet, was born.  On this date in 1826, Thomas Alexander Browne, Australian author, was born.

Gothic Geometry  Find text and graphics on arches (equilateral, ogee, lancet, Tudor and elliptical) and tracery (trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil and hexafoil) in a 30-page document by Joe Chigriller at http://faculty.scf.edu/condorj/256/presentations/Gothic%20Constructions.pdf

Rebus Principle by Donald Frazer

A rebus is a message spelt out in pictures that represents sounds rather than the things they are pictures of.  For example the picture of an eye, a bee, and a leaf can be put together to form the English rebus meaning “I be-lieve”, which has nothing to do with eyes, bees or leaves.  The term “rebus” can refer to the use of one or more pictograms representing one or more phonograms.  In the beginning, Ancient Egyptian writing relied heavily on pictographic signs representing concrete objects.  Words which cannot be represented easily by means of a picture, such as proper names, ideas and function words, were difficult to write.  The rebus principle provided the means to overcome this limitation.  Fully developed hieroglyphs read in rebus fashion were in use at Abydos in Ancient Egypt as early as 3400 BC.  http://egyptologyman.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/the-rebus-principle/

Sumerian writing was from top to bottom, but for reasons unknown, it changed to left-to-right very early on (perhaps around 3000 BCE).  This also affected the orientation of the signs by rotating all of them 90° counterclockwise.  Another change in this early system involved the "style" of the signs.  The early signs were more "linear" in that the strokes making up the signs were lines and curves.  But starting after 3000 BCE these strokes started to evolve into wedges, thus changing the visual style of the signs from linear to "cuneiform".  http://www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html  See also http://www.libraryofsymbolism.com/newsletters/3.pdf and    http://www.memidex.com/rebus

States have official birds, rocks and trees.  Increasingly, they also have official poets. According to a list maintained by the Library of Congress, 44 states and the District of Columbia have poet laureate or writer in residence positions, with a number dating only from the last two decades or so.  The craze isn’t just happening at the state level.  Boston and Los Angeles, among other cities, have established posts in recent years, while a Google search for “county poet laureate” yields thousands of hits.   Rob Casper, the head of the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, traces the broader laureate boom to the rise in the early 1990s of so-called activist national laureates like Joseph Brodsky, who sought to have poetry books placed in every hotel room in America, and Rita Dove, who brought Crow Indian schoolchildren, young poets from Washington and dozens of others to read their work at the Library of Congress.  Billy Collins, a former United States and New York State laureate, recalled the phone call in 2002, asking him to write a poem to be read before a joint session of Congress on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.  “They said I could do what I wanted, but then a voice chimed in and said, ‘Please mention the first responders and their heroic job, and oh, also say something positive about the future of the country,’ ” he said.  The poem he eventually wrote, “The Names,”was a spare elegy for the victims, organized around the alphabet.  Even less charged commissions can be tricky.  Sue Brannan Walker, who was Alabama’s laureate from 2003 to 2012, recalled being asked to write a poem for a social studies textbook that would mention various state features, including the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville.  “You can always talk about flying to the moon,” she said.  “That part was easier than writing about Alabama agriculture.”  Other laureates have taken the tradition of occasional poetry in a more personalized direction.  As part of the Poetry in Motion project’s Springfest, an event held in Grand Central Terminal in April, Marie Howe, the New York State laureate, organized The Poet Is In, a project inspired by Lucy Van Pelt’s advice booth in “Peanuts.”  A series of poets, including Tina Chang, Brooklyn’s laureate, each sat with a typewriter and three-minute egg timer, and invited passers-by to sit down and talk about an object hidden behind an imagined secret doorway, or a dream they had had.  The poets then banged out verse inspired by the imagery, and read it out loud to the sitter.  Jennifer Schuessler  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/arts/poet-laureates-multiply-but-job-requirements-vary-widely.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSectionSumSmallMedia&module=pocket-region&region=pocket-region&WT.nav=pocket-region&_r=0

To most English speakers, “platform” is a noun.  But among news organizations, it is quickly becoming a verb.  For publishers, the new meaning of “to platform” is something akin to:  Take a traditional media company and add technology that allows readers to upload digital content as varied as links, text, video and other media.  The result is a “publish first” model in which a lightly filtered, or unfiltered, stream of material moves from reader to reader, with the publication acting as a host and directing conversation but not controlling it.  If it does not quite eliminate the middleman, it goes a long way toward reducing his role, and some media companies view it as a way to enhance their relationship with readers while increasing content production at minimal cost.  Condé Nast Publications, for example, plans to allow a select group of writers to start posting on its Traveler website in mid-August 2014 as part of a series of experiments involving its magazines.  At Time Inc., Entertainment Weekly has television fans posting updates on their favorite shows, and at Gawker, readers can engage with each other as well as with writers, completely uncensored.  Leslie Kaufman  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/business/media/more-online-publishers-are-letting-readers-fill-the-space.html?hpw&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

Apple Inc on August 1, 2014 won preliminary court approval for its $450 million settlement of claims it harmed consumers by conspiring with five publishers to raise e-book prices.  In approving the accord, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan overcame concerns she had expressed over a settlement provision allowing Apple to pay just $70 million if related litigation were to drag out.  Apple has been appealing Cote's July 2013 finding, in a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, that it violated antitrust laws for colluding with the publishers to drive up e-book prices and impede rivals such as Amazon.com Inc.  In June, Apple agreed to settle related class-action litigation brought on behalf of consumers and 33 U.S. states.  That accord calls for Apple to pay $400 million to consumers and $50 million to lawyers if the federal appeals court in New York upholds Cote's findings, and nothing if the Cupertino, California-based company wins its appeal.  But if the appeals court overturns Cote and returns the case to her, perhaps for a new trial, Apple will owe $50 million to consumers and $20 million to lawyers.  Jonathan Stemple  http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/01/us-apple-ebooks-idUSKBN0G14YQ20140801

The night before Toledo officials warned people not to drink the municipal tap water, Jeff Reutter opened a federal website to check on the algae bloom in western Lake Erie.  The picture didn’t look bad, at first, to Reutter, an expert on toxic algae who is the director of the Ohio Sea Grant College Program.  The algae covered Maumee Bay, but the bloom was significantly smaller than the one in 2011 that stretched past Cleveland, ruining summer beach trips for families along the Lake Erie coast.  A closer look gave Reutter pause, though.  The most-intense parts of the bloom seemed to have settled right at the mouth of the Maumee River.  “It’s at the greatest concentration right in Maumee Bay,” Reutter said.  “And, unfortunately, that’s where the Toledo water intake is” for the city’s Collins Park Water Treatment Plant.  Early on August 2, 2014, Toledo officials confirmed Reutter’s fears. Tests at the plant showed levels of the toxin microcystin in Toledo’s drinking water that were above the 1 part per billion that the World Health Organization deems is safe to drink.  Boiling water concentrates that toxin, so a simple boil alert wasn’t an option.  Laura Arenschield  http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/08/04/this-bloom-is-in-bad-location.html  NOTE that individuals, groups and corporations are generously providing water to those in need, and the care shown to neighbors has been heartwarming.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1179  August 4, 2014  On this date in 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet was born.  On this date in 1859, Knut Hamsun, Norwegian author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate was born.