Books are the carriers of
civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature
dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of
civilization would have been impossible.
They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and
lighthouses erected in the sea of time.
They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of
the mind. Books are humanity in
print. Barbara W. Tuchman Historian, Journalist (1912–1989) [Bulletin
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Nov. 1980),
pp. 16-32] http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/137261.Barbara_W_Tuchman See also http://www.biography.com/people/barbara-tuchman-21018951#personal-life
Feb. 9, 2015 A tattered copy of the Magna Carta has been discovered in the archives of
the municipality of Sandwich, a sleepy seaside town in eastern England,
according to the local government and a historian at the University of East
Anglia. News of the find comes just as
the charter, often regarded as England’s first step towards civil rights, marks
its 800th anniversary. Events have been
scheduled across the country to mark the occasion, including a recent reunion
of the four surviving copies of the original version, issued
in 1215, in London
this month. Between 1215 and 1300, other
copies of the Magna Carta were marked with a royal seal, only two dozen of
which are known to exist. The copy found
in Sandwich, in the county of Kent, dates to 1300, when King Edward I issued
the final version of the charter marked with such a seal. The original version signed in 1215 was
issued by King John, an unpopular ruler under pressure to check his own power
in the interest of preventing civil war.
The document affirms the king as subject to the law like any other
citizen. Christopher D.
Shea http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/unearthed-from-towns-archives-copy-of-magna-carta-from-1300/?_r=0
Puddingstone, also known as either pudding
stone or plum-pudding
stone, is a popular name applied to a conglomerate that consists of distinctly rounded pebbles whose
colors contrast sharply with the color of the finer-grained, often sandy,
matrix or cement surrounding them. The
rounded pebbles and the sharp contrast in color gives this type of conglomerate
the appearance of a raisin or Christmas pudding. There are different types of
puddingstone, with different composition, origin, and geographical
distribution. Examples of different
types of puddingstones include the Hertfordshire, Schunemunk, Roxbury, and St.
Joseph Island (Drummond Island), puddingstones.
See pictures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puddingstone_%28rock%29
The Monographs and Open Access
Project was set up
to consider the place of monographs in the arts, humanities and social science
disciplines, and how they fit into the developing world of open access to
research. The project was led by
Geoffrey Crossick, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the School of
Advanced Study, University of London, and was commissioned by HEFCE in
partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Evidence to support the project was gathered through an programme of
consultations, surveys, data-gathering and research activities. The research was supported and shaped by an
Expert Reference Group of publishers, academics, librarians, funders, open
access experts in the UK and overseas.
Find main points of the report at http://www.bespacific.com/monographs-open-access/
The name "Adirondack" may have derived from the Iroquois
word "ha-de-ron-dah", which means "bark-eater," a derisive
term they gave to the Algonquins. See
the history of the Adirondacks, a timeline starting at 10,000 BC at http://adirondack-history.com/timeline.htm
Many times,
abandoned buildings will just sit there untouched and slowly fall into
ruin. They are often covered in
graffiti, decked in spider webs, and they look like something out of a horror
film. McAllen is a town in the southern
section of Texas that saw one of its Walmart locations go out of business and
sit idle for many years. After the store
shuttered, it eventually fell into the property of the city, and the decision
was made to turn the building into a public library. At the size of nearly two-and-a-half football
fields, it is now the largest single location public library in the United
States. Todd Briscoe See many pictures at http://www.littlethings.com/abandoned-walmart-becomes-library/
PROSCIUTTO: interview with Herb Eckhouse, co-owner of La Quercia in Norwalk, Iowa Ham that you buy in the supermarket is cooked. There are three ways you can protect meat and
make it safe to eat for a long period.
One of the ways is to cook it.
You kill the bacteria by heating them.
One of them is to dry it. That's
what we do with prosciutto. You take the
water out and then the bacteria can't live.
Then when you dry the meat, you can then age it and get that really
rich, complex flavor and that transformation of texture. The time for drying and curing varies with
the kind of meat we're using and the way we prepare it. It's a minimum of 9 months and a maximum of
about 3 years.
DISTANCE BETWEEN CITIES
Find the distance as the crow flies, by car, estimated driving time, and
"best route" marked at http://www.distance-cities.com/
Example: Forest Hills, NY to Hoboken, NJ at http://www.distance-cities.com/search?from=forest+hills%2C+ny&to=hoboken%2C+nj
X-ray technique reads burnt
Vesuvius scroll by Jonathan Webb
For the first time, words have been read from a burnt, rolled-up scroll
buried by Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The
scrolls of Herculaneum, the only classical library still in existence, were
blasted by volcanic gas hotter than 300C and are desperately fragile. Deep inside one scroll, physicists
distinguished the ink from the paper using a 3D X-ray imaging technique
sometimes used in breast scans. They
believe that other scrolls could also be deciphered without unrolling. The work appears in the journal Nature Communications. The resort town of Herculaneum, sometimes
called "the other Pompeii", was similarly buried in ash by Vesuvius. A remarkable library of scrolls was excavated
from one of its villas in the 18th century.
Although some unrolled fragments have been read successfully, particularly
in recent years with the
help of infra-red cameras, such unwinding efforts were eventually
abandoned because of how much of the scrolls they destroyed. Read article and see pictures at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30888767
Feb. 17, 2016 Princeton
University received a $300 million collection of rare books including the
famed 1455 Gutenberg Bible and the first printing of the works of William
Shakespeare. The 2,500-volume collection
was bequeathed by philanthropist William Scheide, who died in November at age
100. The university in Princeton, New
Jersey, has housed Scheide’s library since 1959. The collection also includes an original
printing of the Declaration of Independence, Paul Revere’s print engraving of
the Boston Massacre and autograph music sketchbooks of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart
and Wagner. The gift is the largest in
Princeton’s history. At the heart of the
collection are the first six printed editions of the bible, including the
Gutenberg, the first substantial book printed in Europe using movable type. Even more valuable is the original printing of
Shakespeare, known as the First Folio, accompanied by the second, third and
fourth folios. The collection was
started by Scheide’s grandfather, also named William, who made his fortune in
the 19th century Pennsylvania oil boom. The
younger Scheide, a musician, bibliophile and philanthropist, graduated from
Princeton in 1936 with a degree in history. He earned a master’s in music from Columbia
and founded the Bach Aria Group. Princeton
is designing a new space for the Scheide collection as part of a renovation of
its Firestone Library. The school said
it’s digitizing materials including the Gutenberg bible and making them
available on its website. Chris
Staiti http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-17/princeton-gets-gutenberg-bible-in-300-million-rare-book-gift
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1258
February 18, 2015 On this date in
1848, Louis
Comfort Tiffany, American stained glass artist, was born.
On this date in 1979, snow fell in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for
the only time in recorded history.
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