Friday, September 25, 2015

Elevated Parks on the Rise  The “High Line effect,” as some have termed it, has captured the imagination of citizens and policy makers alike in recent years; elevated parks have become trendy new public spaces.  Although the concept is not new, many elevated parks are now being constructed or considered across the country.  The case studies examined in this 47-page document prepared by Eric Brooks, Jamie Genevie and Alex Gonski include: ● Bridge of Flowers (Shelburne Falls, MA) ● Walnut Street Bridge (Chattanooga, TN) ● The High Line (New York, NY) ● Bloomingdale Trail (Chicago, IL) ● Reading Viaduct (Philadelphia, PA) ● Providence River Pedestrian Bridge (Providence, RI) is found at http://bridgepark.org/sites/default/files/Virginia%20Tech%20Elevated%20Parks%20on%20the%20Rise%20-%2011th%20Street%20Bridge%20Park.pdf

The American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, preserves, archives, and displays a collection of signs.  The museum also displays the equipment utilized in the design and manufacture of signs.  Tod Swormstedt began working on the museum in 1999.  It opened to the public in 2005.  Swormstedt's family owns the signage industry trade journal Signs of the Times, which has been published since 1906.  Swormstedt's grandfather, H.C. Menefee, was the first editor of the publication, and purchased it for himself in 1911.  Swormstedt had been working at the journal for over twenty years before becoming inspired to start a sign museum in 1999.  His family provided $1 million for the project, and figures from the signage industry gave donations of their own.  The museum was founded as a nonprofit corporation.  Swormstedt considered building the museum in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Memphis, and other sites, but eventually settled on Cincinnati, the base of operations for Signs of the Times.  Over 200 signs and other objects are on display at the museum, and over 3,800 items are cataloged.  Many signs owned by the museum were too large to fit the original exhibit space.  To better accommodate the collection, the museum began purchasing a 42,000-square-foot (3,900 m2) property in Camp Washington, Cincinnati in 2007.  The new location is part of the Oesterlein Machine Company-Fashion Frocks, Inc. Complex, a National Register of Historic Places building.  The museum opened in its new home in June, 2012, and the new building displays about 500 signs and artifacts many of which are on a faux streetscape in a town called "Signville".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Museum  

Alex Grecian (born Alexander Douglas Grecian on August 6, 1969) is an American author of short fiction, novels, comic books, and graphic novels.  His notable works include the comic book series Proof and the novels in the Scotland Yard's Murder Squad:  The Yard, The Black Country, The Devil's Workshop, The Harvest Man, and The Blue Girl.  As a child and a teenager, Grecian read the works of C. S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe.  He later became a fan of crime fiction, reading the works of authors as diverse as Graham Greene, Donald E. Westlake, Ross Macdonald, and John D. MacDonald.  Other influences include John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon, and Stephen King.  Find bibliography and a list of selected awards and honors at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Grecian

Rolling Pin Bakehouse offers homemade baked goods that you can order by phone or through a contact form.  Orders are picked up by appointment at a roadside stand located at 14401 Winters Road, Roanoke, Indiana between Fort Wayne and Huntington.  Their sugar cream pie was featured in a nationwide PBS documentary aired on August 25, 2015 titled “A Few Good Pie Places”.  Find map at http://www.rollingpinbakehouse.com/  Link to a history of the pie at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/dining/republican-senate-lunch-tradition-draws-on-the-flavors-of-home.html   Find recipes for sugar cream pie at  http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/05/hoosier-sugar-cream-pie-recipe.html and http://www.midwestliving.com/recipe/pies/indiana-sugar-cream-pie/

The Winds of Provence, the region of southeast France along the Mediterranean from the Alps to the mouth of the Rhone River, are an important feature of Provençal life, and each one has a traditional local name, in the Provençal language.  The most famous Provençal winds are:  the Mistral, a cold dry north or northwest wind, which blows down through the Rhone Valley to the Mediterranean, and can reach speeds of ninety kilometers an hour; the Levant, a very humid east wind, which brings moisture from the eastern Mediterranean; the Tramontane, a strong, cold and dry north wind, similar to the Mistral, which blows from the Massif Central mountains toward the Mediterranean to the west of the Rhone; the Marin, a strong, wet and cloudy south wind, which blows in from the Gulf of Lion; and the Sirocco, a southeast wind coming from the Sahara desert in Africa, can reach hurricane force, and brings either reddish dust or heavy rains.  The winds of Provence, particularly the Mistral, have long had an influence on the architecture of Provence.  The mas traditionally faces southeast, with its back to the Mistral, and many Provençal churches have open iron grill bell towers, which allow the Mistral wind to pass through.  Traditional compass roses in Provence have the names of the winds by the points of the compass.  See an illustration, which shows Midi, or the South, at the top at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winds_of_Provence

A mas is a traditional farmhouse found in the Provence and Midi regions of France, as well as in Catalonia where it is also named masia (in Catalan) or masía (in Spanish).  A mas was a largely self-sufficient economic unit, which could produce its own fruit, vegetables, grain, milk, meat and even silkworms.  It was constructed of local stone, with the kitchen and room for animals on the ground floor, and bedrooms, storage places for food and often a room for raising silkworms on the upper floor.  Not every farmhouse in Provence is a mas.  A mas was distinct from the other traditional kind of house in Provence, the bastide, which was the home of a wealthy family.  The mas of Provence and Catalonia always faces to the south to offer protection against the mistral wind coming from the north.  And because of the mistral, there are no windows facing north, while on all the other sides, windows are narrow to protect against the heat of summer and the cold of winter.  A mas is almost always rectangular, with two sloping roofs.  In Catalonia, the tenant of a mas is called a masover, as different from the real landowner.

Autumn in Denali Park by Alan Taylor   Summers in Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve are short seasons, followed by even shorter autumns, then long, cold winters.  Located just 250 miles south of the Arctic Circle, the park is home to more than 200 species of animals, all now in the midst of preparation for the coming snows.  The autumn colors in this subarctic wilderness burst to life in September, as yellow leaves of birch and aspen trees dot the forests, and shrubs and grasses give a rusty shade to mountain slopes.  

September 22, 2015  If you've already read the entirety of the Harry Potter series, watched the films multiple times, and still find yourself craving more magic, you're in luck.  Pottermore, J.K. Rowling's website devoted to all things Potter just got a complete make-over, complete with a new features section where fans will find everything from insights from Hagrid to how to make wands.  Rowling also released a short history of the Potter family tree, titled "The Potter Family."  Dating back to the 12th century, it's sure to satisfy even the most loyal Potterhead.  Madison Malone Kircher  Read more and see pictures at http://www.techinsider.io/jk-rowling-releases-new-harry-potter-details-2015-9


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1352  September 25, 2015  On this date in 1789, Congress passed twelve amendments to the United States Constitution:  The Congressional Apportionment Amendment (which was never ratified), the Congressional Compensation Amendment, and the ten that are known as the Bill of Rights.  On this date in 1906, in the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Leonardo Torres y Quevedo successfully demonstrated the invention of the Telekino in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore, in what is considered the birth of the remote control.  

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