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.