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.