The black-and-orange monarch butterfly has become nature's celebrity and a rallying symbol of agreeable, grass-roots environmentalism after news spread over the past two years of a stark decline in its population—90 percent in the last 20 years.  The growing number of campaigns to save monarchs range from initiatives launched by President Barack Obama to those by an eastern Iowa Facebook group, from university research scientists to Iowa farmers.  Even bicyclists in the middle of their own zany migration on RAGBRAI got into the act in July 2015.  David Osterberg, professor of occupational and environmental health at the University of Iowa, helped mold milkweed seed balls to the size of a big marble for the Monarchs in Eastern Iowa group to hand out to RAGBRAI riders, who tossed them into ditches on the way out of Mount Vernon.  The Obama administration launched a plan in March 2015 to increase the number of pollinators and monarchs by seeding habitat along the Interstate Highway 35 "monarch flyway" from Texas to Minnesota.  When it comes from the highest levels, says U.S. Fish and Wildlife's Doug Helmers, you know it's a movement.  As the private lands coordinator for the agency in Iowa, he has worked with Iowa landowners on a series of small patches of more than 10 acres of land to grow milkweed, using a $200,000 budget, half of it from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.  He has seen more enthusiasm for the project than any he can remember.  Mike Killen  http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/life/2015/07/24/monarch-decline-iowa-milkweed/30629973/

"I am a reference librarian at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library who graduated from the  University of Texas at Austin.  I have worked in public libraries in Texas, Missouri, and Illinois. I am interested in promoting reference services and the reading of good books."  View Rick's blog at http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/  In addition to links to library book reviews and news, you may search subjects in the blog archives.  Find results for architecture at http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/search/label/architecture

QUOTES from A Conspiracy of Friends by Alexander McCall Smith  “If we eat pies, then we should never, not for one moment, look down on the making of them.”  “Saying 'believe me' all the time is a sign of insecurity."

Born in Rhodesia, Alexander McCall Smith has a great fondness for Africa:  he co-wrote what remains the only guide to the legal system of Botswana and founded the country's first centre for opera training.  He has also been involved in numerous other charitable projects in Botswana and throughout the African continent.  As a highly respected professor of medical law, he has served in a number of high-profile committees on medical ethics both in the UK and for UNESCO.  He is also famously a founder member of the Really Terrible Orchestra of Great Britain, created to give those without notable musical talent the opportunity to perform in public.  They now perform adequately to packed houses.  Among Smith's favorite books are Excellent Women (Barbara Pym has been described as the Jane Austen of our times, and I would concur with this view.  She created a whole world of people living rather mousy lives, illuminated with poignant detail.  She is extremely funny in an understated way.) and A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Christopher Alexander is an architectural guru whose work is greatly appreciated by a growing band of followers.  This book is astounding.  I dip into it at odd moments, savouring the insights of this prophet of humane architecture and design.  He changed the way I feel about buildings; after you read it, prepare to look at the world around you with very different eyes.)  http://www.foyles.co.uk/alexander-mccall-smith-favourite-books

Out of your element:  like a fish out of water (English) like an octopus in a garage (Spanish)  Find many idioms in I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World by Jag Bhalla

A monopthong is a single vowel sound.  A dipthong is a vowel sound which, within a specific language, is usually considered to be a "single" sound, but actually consists of two vowel sounds occurring consecutively in the same syllable.  A tripthong is a consecutive sequence of three vowel sounds.  In many varieties of English tripthongs tend to be avoided by the use of an "intrusive" consonant (our will be pronounced /aʊwə/ rather than /aʊə/ and player as /pleɪjə/ rather than /pleɪə/).  However, in other varieties of English, such as Australian English, they are common.  See examples at http://eltnotebook.blogspot.com/2013/01/an-elt-glossary-monopthong-dipthong.html    

A backpack is a type of bag that is carried on one’s back.  There are many types of backpacks:  rucksack, knapsack, packsack, pack, etc.  A rucksack and a knapsack are essentially types of backpacks.  Alternatively, a Haversack is a one shouldered bag.  

See pictures, descriptions and comparisons at http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-backpack-haversack-knapsack-and-rucksack 

See a list of largest libraries that store 15 million items or more since 2008.  

Find locations, size, budget, number of visitors by year, and staff at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_libraries

WHO AM I?  I was born in 1928 and appeared in over 100 movies beginning in 1956, including Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype in 1980.  I appeared as myself in a 2014 documentary.  Look for my films on TV around Halloween.

In the 17th century, the term jack- o’-lantern meant a man with a lantern, or a night watchman. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1370  October 30, 2015  On this date in 1938, Orson Welles broadcast his radio play of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.  On this date in 1945, Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signed a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color line.

It’s thanks to wine that vinegar exists.  It is the natural offspring.  It’s a fact:  leave a bottle of wine uncorked and it will become vinegar.  One finds traces of vinegar production in Egypt and in Mespotania more than 5000 years ago.  During the Roman age, as well as Greek age, the most common beverage was, for a very long time, water mixed with a light vinegar.  It was used for everything, not only as a refreshing drink, but also as a condiment.  It was flavoured with herbs, flowers or fruit.  It was also appreciated for the conservation of wild game and for its therapeutical properties.  It is no doubt that it is the very first natural antibiotic of all time.  Link to recipes and to information on mustard at http://www.vinaigre.com/History-of-Vinegar

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was one of the most extraordinary scientists in history, leaving a legacy of scientific contributions which include an understanding of how microorganisms carry on the biochemical process of fermentation, the establishment of the causal relationship between microorganisms and disease, and the concept of destroying microorganisms to halt the transmission of communicable disease.  These achievements led him to be called the founder of microbiology.  After his early education Pasteur went to Paris, studied at the Sorbonne, then began teaching chemistry while still a student.  After being appointed chemistry professor at a new university in Lille, France, Pasteur began work on yeast cells and showed how they produce alcohol and carbon dioxide from sugar during the process of fermentation.  He found that fermentation would take place only when living yeast cells were present.  Establishing himself as a serious, hard-working chemist, Pasteur was called upon to tackle some of the problems plaguing the French beverage industry at the time.  Of special concern was the spoiling of wine and beer, which caused great economic loss and tarnished France's reputation for fine vintage wines.  Vintners wanted to know the cause of l'amer, a condition that was destroying the best burgundies.  Pasteur suggested that heating the wine gently at about 120°F would kill the bacteria that produced lactic acid and let the wine age properly.  Pasteur's book Etudes sur le Vin, published in 1866 was a testament to two of his great passions--the scientific method and his love of wine.  It caused another French Revolution--one in wine-making, as Pasteur suggested that greater cleanliness was need to eliminate bacteria and that this could be done with heat.  The idea of heating to kill microorganisms was applied to other perishable fluids like milk and the idea of pasteurization was born.  In his work with yeast, Pasteur also found that air should be kept from fermenting wine, but was necessary for the production of vinegar.  In the presence of oxygen, yeasts and bacteria break down alcohol into acetic acid--vinegar.  Pasteur also informed the vinegar industry that vinegar production could be increased by adding more microorganisms to the fermenting mixture.  Pasteur carried on many experiments with yeast.  He showed that fermentation can take place without oxygen (anaerobic conditions), but that the process still involved living things such as yeast.  He did several experiments to show (as Lazzaro Spallanzani had a century earlier) that living things do not arise spontaneously but rather come from other living things.  To disprove the idea of spontaneous generation, Pasteur boiled meat extract and left it exposed to air in a flask with a long S-shaped neck.  There was no decay observed because microorganisms from the air did not reach the extract.  On the way to performing his experiment Pasteur had also invented what has come to be known as sterile technique, boiling or heating of instruments and food to prevent the proliferation of microorganisms.  In 1862 Pasteur was called upon to help solve a crisis in another ailing French industry.  The silkworms that produced silk fabric were dying of an unknown disease.  So armed with his microscope, Pasteur went to the south of France in 1865.  He found the tiny parasites that were killing the silkworms and affecting their food, mulberry leaves.  His solution seemed drastic at the time.  He suggested destroying all the unhealthy worms and starting with new cultures.  Pasteur then turned his attention to human and animal diseases.  He had believed for some time that microscopic organisms cause disease and that these tiny microorganisms could travel from person to person spreading the disease.  Other scientists had expressed this thought before, but Pasteur had more experience using the microscope and identifying different kinds of microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi.    Pasteur discovered that weakened microbes make a good vaccine by imparting immunity without actually producing the disease.  Pasteur then began work on a vaccine for anthrax, and in 1881 produced a vaccine that successfully prevented the deadly disease.  Pasteur's last great scientific achievement was developing a successful treatment for rabies.  http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/83/Louis-Pasteur.html

Introduction:  A Brief History of College Football  by Robert M. Ours

From www.footballencyclopedia.com/cfeintro.htm  The first intercollegiate football contest was played on November 6th, 1869, at New Brunswick, New Jersey.  Rutgers beat Princeton 6 goals to 4, using a soccer-style round ball, played on a huge field (120 yards long and 75 yards wide) with 25 players on each side.  The sport grew slowly at first with Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and Stevens Tech fielding teams by 1875.  In 1876 a crossbar was added to the goal posts at a height of 10 feet (in effect to the present day), the field was reduced to nearly modern dimensions, and the number of players on each side was lowered to 15.  The sport did not really begin to resemble the modern game until former Yale player Walter Camp revised the rules in the early 1880s:  limit players to 11 on a side, establishing a scrimmage system for putting the ball in play, and he instituted a system of downs for advancing the ball, requiring a team to make 5 yards in 3 downs (the current system of 4 downs to make 10 yards was not adopted until 1912).  The first-down rule of 1882 required the marking of yard lines on the field and led to the term gridiron.  With these changes the game spread more rapidly, and some 250 colleges were participating by the beginning of the twentieth century.  Although the first All-America team was named in 1889, numbers to identify individual players were not recommended until 1915, and it wasn't until 1937 that numerals were required on both the front and back of game jerseys.  In 1967 this rule was further modified to require numbering according to position, with offensive players ineligible to receive forward passes assigned numbers in the 50-79 range.  Read more at http://www.collegefootballpoll.com/history_of_college_football.html

COLLEGE NAME CHANGES

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey.   Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton was the fourth chartered institution of higher education in the Thirteen Colonies and thus one of the nine Colonial Colleges established before the American Revolution.  The institution moved to Newark in 1747, then to the current site nine years later, where it was renamed Princeton University in honor of its host community of Princeton in 1896.

Rutgers University, the eighth of nine colleges established during the American colonial period, was chartered as Queen's College on 10 November 1766.  It was renamed Rutgers College in 1825 after Colonel Henry Rutgers (1745–1830), an American Revolutionary War hero philanthropist and an early benefactor of the school.  With the development of graduated education, Rutgers College was renamed Rutgers University in 1924.

New Jersey State Normal School (1855) name changes:  1908 New Jersey State Normal School at Trenton, 1929 New Jersey State Teachers College and State Normal School at Trenton, 1937 New Jersey State Teachers College at Trenton, 1958 Trenton State College, 1996 The College of New Jersey.

James Madison University is a public coeducational research university located in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  Founded in 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Harrisonburg, the institution was renamed Madison College in 1938, in honor of President James Madison, and named James Madison University in 1977. 

The University at Lewisburg (Pa.) in 1881, facing dire financial circumstances, turned to William Bucknell, a charter member of the board of trustees, for help.  His donation of $50,000 ($1,221,897 today) saved the university from ruin.  In 1886, in recognition of Bucknell's support of the school, the trustees voted unanimously to change the name of the University at Lewisburg to Bucknell University. 

Trine University in Angola, Indiana was founded in 1884 as Tri-State Normal College, and retained the reference to the "Tri-State" area for more than 120 years--so named because of the school's location in Indiana and its proximity to Michigan and Ohio.  In 1906 the school was renamed Tri-State College, and again in 1975 as Tri-State University.  In 2008, the school's name was changed to the current Trine University, in honor of alumnus Dr. Ralph Trine. 

The Rise and Fall of Digital Amnesia by Kapersky Lab  • Across the United States, the study shows that an overwhelming number of consumers can easily admit their dependency on the Internet and devices as a tool for remembering.  Almost all (91.2%) of those surveyed agreed that they use the Internet as an online extension of their brain.  Almost half (44.0%) also admit that their smartphone serves as their memory--everything they need to recall and want to have easy access to is all on it.  • In addition, many consumers are happy to forget, or risk forgetting information they can easily find--or find again online.  When faced with a question, half of U.S. consumers would turn to the Internet before trying to remember and 28.9% would forget an online fact as soon as they had used it.  • Contrary to general assumptions, Digital Amnesia is not only affecting younger digital natives--the study found that it was equally and some times more prevalent in older age groups.  • The loss or compromise of data stored on digital devices, and smartphones in particular, would cause immense distress, particularly among women and people under 35.  More than half of women (51.0%) and almost the same number of 25 to 34 year-olds (48.6%) say it would fill them with sadness, since there are memories stored on their connected devices that they would never get back.  However, it caused the even younger participants the most fear.  One in four women (27.1%) and 35.0% of respondents age 16 to 24 say they would panic:  their devices are the only place they store images and contact information.  • Worryingly, despite this growing reliance on connected devices, the study found that consumers across America are failing to adequately protect them with IT security.  Just one in three (30.5%) installs extra IT security, such as an anti-virus software solution on their smartphone and one in five (20.7%) adds any security to their tablet.  28.0% doesn’t protect any of their devices with additional security.  See 15-page report at https://kasperskycontenthub.com/usa/files/2015/06/Digital-Amnesia-Report.pdf

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1369  October 28, 2015  On this date in 1848, the first railroad in Spain between Barcelona and Mataró was opened.  On this date in 1893,  Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathétique, received its première performance in St. Petersburg, only nine days before the composer's death.

John Brady's 10-book "Matt Minogue Mystery" series beings with A Stone in the Heart (1988), as DS Matthew (Matt) Minogue returns to duty and the Murder Squad after nearly being killed when the British Ambassador is assassinated.  The early books in the series are set in the late 1980s and the stories are infused with the ongoing tensions of the Northern conflict.  Brady is a native of Dublin.  He studied at Trinity College Dublin and emigrated to Canada when he was 20.  He worked there as a bank official, an RCMP clerical officer and a teacher.  He now divides his time between Ireland and Canada.  http://crimeire.blogspot.com/2015/01/john-brady.html

Paraphrases from A Stone in the Heart by John Brady   a crowd of yobboes (louts, yokels) . . .   she  preferred the condensed richness of a quick sermon--she preferred the apt word to the hyperbole . . .

“Belfast upspeak” describes the upward inflection you find in Belfast English (and perhaps Northern Irish accents generally).  In a nutshell, upspeak is the tendency to go up at the end of sentences?  So everything sounds a bit like a question?  At least to American ears?  Upspeak obviously isn’t confined to Belfast or Northern Ireland.  It also seems common in Northern English and Scottish accents (Liverpool perhaps being the most famous example of this).  And it has made headway in the US, as in the classic Valley Girl accent (“I was driving to the mall?  To buy a bikini?”)  http://dialectblog.com/2011/05/23/belfast-upspeak/

When two or more subjects are connected by “and”, the verb is plural.  He and I are good friends. 
If two singular nouns refer to the same person, the verb must be singular.  The secretary and cashier was present. (That means the same person was a secretary and cashier).  Note:  To find out whether the two words refer to the same person or two different persons, look at the article or possessive adjective.  If there are two articles or possessives, there are two different persons.  In that case, the verb must be in plural. 
If we get the word “each” and “every” before singular subjects, the verb is singular.  Every member was ready to speak. 
Two or more singular subjects connected by or, nor, either…or, neither…nor take singular verb.  Either he or his brother might have done this. 
When the subjects, connected by or, nor, either…or, neither…nor, are of different numbers.  The verb must be plural and the plural subject must be put just before the verb.  Mr. Gobi or his brothers have to do this. 
When the subjects connected by or, nor, either…or, neither…nor are of different persons.  The verb agrees in person with the subject that comes just before it.  He or I have to be there. 
When subjects which are different in person or number or both are connected by ‘and’, the verb is plural.  He and I are friends. 
For a collective noun, usually a singular verb is used, but when the individuals in the group are taken into consideration, a plural verb is used.  The committee meets tomorrow.  Find more rules and examples at http://www.english-for-students.com/Verb-and-Subject.html

The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup, was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United Kingdom (under the name "Operation Boot") and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project).  Mossadegh had sought to audit the books of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now BP) and to change the terms of the company's access to Iranian petroleum reserves.  Upon the refusal of the AIOC to co-operate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize the assets of the company and expel their representatives from the country.  Following the coup in 1953, a government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran (Persian for king), to rule the country more firmly as monarch.  He relied heavily on US and UK support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979.  In August 2013, 60 years after, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) admitted that it was involved in both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government."  Iran's oil had been discovered and later controlled by the British-owned AIOC.  Popular discontent with the AIOC began in the late 1940s:  a large segment of Iran's public and a number of politicians saw the company as exploitative and a central tool of continued British imperialism in Iran.  Despite Mosaddegh's popular support, the AIOC was unwilling to allow Iranian authorities to audit the company accounts or to renegotiate the terms of its access to Iranian petroleum.  In 1951, Iran's petroleum industry was nationalized with near-unanimous support of the Majlis in a bill introduced by Mossadegh who led the Iranian nationalist party, the National Front.  In response, Britain instigated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically.  Initially, Britain mobilized its military to seize control of the British-built Abadan oil refinery, then the world's largest, but Prime Minister Clement Attlee opted instead to tighten the economic boycott while using Iranian agents to undermine Mosaddegh's government.  With a change to more conservative governments in both Britain and the United States, Winston Churchill and the Eisenhower administration decided to overthrow Iran's government, though the predecessor Truman administration had opposed a coup.  Classified documents show that British intelligence officials played a pivotal role in initiating and planning the coup, and that the AIOC contributed $25,000 towards the expense of bribing officials.  As a condition for restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, in 1954 the U.S. required removal of the AIOC's monopoly; five American petroleum companies, Royal Dutch Shell, and the Compagnie Française des Pétroles, were to draw Iran's petroleum after the successful coup d'état—Operation Ajax.  The Shah declared this to be a "victory" for Iranians, with the massive influx of money from this agreement resolving the economic collapse from the last three years, and allowing him to carry out his planned modernization projects.   Operation Ajax's formal leader was senior CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., while career agent Donald Wilber was the operational leader, planner, and executor of the deposition of Mosaddegh. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Gerald M. Panter on his web pages  "Atget's Paris:  Then and Now" compares Atget's 1890s photos of streets and buildings in Paris with carefully matched contemporary photos of the same scenes.  http://www.gmpanter.com/atget-s-paris.html   (See the 22 pictures he posts by clicking on the arrows underneath the picture of Église Saint-Sulpice on the first page.)  Christopher Rauschenberg has also put out a book of such comparisons.  See "Paris Changing: Revisiting Eugene Atget's Paris" on Amazon and elsewhere.  Thank you, Muse reader!

FOOD AND DRINK NEWS

The Museum of Food and Drink is opening its first permanent location, on October 28, 2015 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Its debut exhibition, “Flavor:  Making It and Faking It,” is a multisensory take on what executive director Peter Kim called the little-known story of the flavor industry.  The museum has been in the works for more than a decade.  Joshua Barone  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/museum-of-food-and-drink-to-open-permanent-space-in-brooklyn/  MOFAD is located at 62 Bayard St in Brooklyn.

October 21, 2015  A U.S. magistrate judge in Miami has ruled that Anheuser-Busch InBev falsely led American beer drinkers to believe that Beck’s was authentically German and approved an estimated $20 million settlement, according to The Wall Street Journal.  Beck’s signature green bottle is emblazoned with a label that says it “Originated in Bremen, Germany” and is “German Quality” beer, duping customers as to its true production location.  Beck’s is currently made in St. Louis after the company moved production there from Germany in 2012.  The settlement covers consumers who purchased Beck’s Light and Beck’s Dark beers since May 2011.  To get your money, you’ll have until next month to fill out an online form to claim your refund.  With all your receipts, you can claim as much as $50.  No such luck?  You can still get as much as $12 back.  Laura Lorenzetti 

http://fortune.com/2015/10/21/becks-settlement/

The 2016 Zagat Guide to New York City was released October 13, 2015, with a few surprises.  A notable addition to the top 20 restaurants is Graffiti, which received a 28 (on a scale of 1 to 30) for food.  Last year Graffiti also received a 28, but from too few voters to put it on the top 20 food list, said Evan Barbour, a spokeswoman for the guide. 

Daniel Boulud’s flagship, Daniel, has climbed back into the rarefied circle of restaurants with a 29 for food; it received that score back in 2012 but then dropped to 28.  It joins Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin and David Bouley’s namesake restaurant, Bouley, at that highest score.  Tim and Nina Zagat, both lawyers, began the survey informally, polling friends about restaurants in Paris.  Then they added New York, and before long had a new career.  In 2011 they sold the survey to Google, which now conducts and publishes the surveys.  Florence Fabricant  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/dining/zagat-guide-nyc-2016.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1368  October 26, 2015  On this date in 1825, the Erie Canal opened from Albany, New York to Lake Erie.  On this date in 1861, the Pony Express officially ceased operations.

Writing is talking to someone else on paper.  Anybody who can think clearly can write clearly, about any subject at all.  [...] the essence of writing is rewriting.  Good writers know that very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time or the fifth time.  I often find myself reading with interest about a topic I never thought would interest me--some scientific quest, perhaps.  What holds me is the enthusiasm of the writer for his field.  Clutter is the disease of American writing.  We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.  The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.  Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what--these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence.  Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can't exist without the other.  On Writing Well:  The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsserithttp://books.danielhofstetter.com/on-writing-well/

Metrication (or metrification) is the process of introducing the International System of Units (or SI), commonly known as the metric system, to replace the traditional or customary units of measurement of a country or region. Although all U.S. customary units have been redefined in terms of SI units, the United States does not commonly mandate the use of SI.  This, according to the CIA Factbook, makes the US one of only three countries, alongside Myanmar (Burma) and Liberia, that have not adopted the metric system as their official system of weights and measures.  Although the Constitution gave the authority to dictate standards of measure to Congress, it was not until 1832 that the customary system of units was formalized.  In the early 19th century, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (the government's surveying and map-making agency) used meter and kilogram standards brought from France.  In 1866, Congress authorized the use of the metric system and supplied each state with a set of standard metric weights and measures.  In 1875, the United States solidified its commitment to the development of the internationally recognized metric system by becoming one of the original seventeen signatory nations to the Metre Convention or the Treaty of the Metre.  The signing of this international agreement concluded five years of meetings in which the metric system was reformulated, refining the accuracy of its standards.  The Metre Convention established the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (Bureau international des poids et mesures, BIPM) in Sèvres, France, to provide standards of measurement for worldwide use.  Under the Mendenhall Order in 1893, metric standards, developed through international cooperation under the auspices of BIPM, were adopted as the fundamental standards for length and mass in the United States.  The U.S. customary units such as the foot and pound have been defined in relation to metric units ever since.  The 1895 Constitution of Utah, in Article X, Section 11, originally mandated that:  "The Metric System shall be taught in the public schools of the State."  This section was, however, later repealed.  The General Conference on Weights and Measures is the governing body for the modern metric system and comprises the signing nations of the Treaty of the Metre.  The General Conference on Weights and Measures approved an updated version of the metric system in 1960 named Le Système international d'unités (International System of Units) and abbreviated SI.  On February 10, 1964, the National Bureau of Standards (former name of National Institute of Standards and Technology) issued a statement that it will use the metric system except where this would have an obvious detrimental effect.  In 1968, Congress authorized the U.S. Metric Study, a three-year study of systems of measurement in the U.S., with emphasis on the feasibility of metrication.  The United States Department of Commerce conducted the study.  A 45-member advisory panel consulted and took testimony from hundreds of consumers, business organizations, labor groups, manufacturers, and state and local officials.  The final report of the study concluded that the U.S. would eventually join the rest of the world in the use of the metric system of measurement.  The study found that metric units were already implemented in many areas and that its use was increasing.  The majority of study participants believed that conversion to the metric system was in the best interests of the U.S., particularly in view of the importance of foreign trade and the increasing influence of technology in the U.S.  On December 31, 2012, a petition was created on the White House's petitioning system, petitioning the White House to "Make the Metric system the standard in the United States, instead of the Imperial system."  On January 10, 2013, this petition garnered over 25,000 signatures--exceeding the threshold needed to require the Obama Administration to officially respond to the petition.  Patrick D. Gallagher, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, provided the official response stating that customary units were defined in the metric system, thus making the nation "bilingual" in terms of measurement systems.  Gallagher also said that using the metric system was a choice to be made by individuals.  Early in 2013 a bill was introduced by state Representative Karl Rhoads of Hawaii that seeks to make the metric system mandatory within his state.  Called “Relating to the Metric System,” the bill stipulates that the law would go into effect on January 1, 2018.  As of June 2014, bill HB36 didn't gain enough support and was considered dead.  If the bill had become law, Hawaii would have been the first state to introduce the metric system throughout its state on a broad scale.  In January 2015, Oregon congressman Brian Boquist at the request of David Pearl, proposed Oregon Senate Bill 166, which is similar to Hawaii's bill.  The bill would establish the International System of Units as the official measurement of units within the state of Oregon.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States

The life and the intention of Eugene Atget (1857-1927) are fundamentally unknown to us.  He was born in Libourne, near Bordeaux, and worked as a sailor during his youth; from the sea he turned to the stage, with no more than minor success; at forty he quit acting, and after a tentative experiment with painting Atget became a photographer, and began his true life's work.  Atget's work is unique on two levels.  He was the maker of a great visual catalogue of the fruits of French culture, as it survived in and near Paris in the first quarter of this century.  He was in addition a photographer of such authority and originality that his work remains a bench mark against which much of the most sophisticated contemporary photography measures itself.  Other photographers had been concerned with describing specific facts (documentation), or with exploiting their indivisual sensibilities (self-expression).  Atget enconpassed and transcended both approaches when he set himself the task of understanding and interpreting in visual terms a complex, ancient, and living tradition.  See pictures and link to quotes, videos and references at http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Eugene-Atget.html  Atget was not particularly well known in his lifetime, but in the 1920s the aging photographer came to the attention of modern art's avant-garde.  Man Ray, an expatriate American photographer and painter who was associated with the Dada and surrealist movements, met Atget between 1921 and 1924, in all likelihood because Man Ray's studio was a few steps down the street from Atget's apartment.  Atget's images, which simultaneously appear real and dreamlike, appealed to Man Ray's surrealist sympathies, especially his interest in the outmoded; he bought about 50 photographs and in 1926 had four of them reproduced in a surrealist journal, La Révolution Surréaliste.  Man Ray encouraged others from his artistic circle to visit Atget.  Julien Levy, an American filmmaker, bought as many Atget prints as Atget would permit, eventually exhibiting them at a gallery he would open in New York.  When Atget died, his executor and close friend, André Calmettes, ensured the photographer's legacy by dividing the negatives and prints between the French government's Commission des monuments historiques and Berenice Abbott; as Abbott herself became a towering figure of 20th-century photography, she continued to work throughout her career to promote Atget, even making prints from his negatives.

http://www.nga.gov/feature/atget/bio.shtm

Safe Preserving: What to do with green tomatoes?

http://fyi.uwex.edu/safepreserving/2013/09/19/safe-preserving-what-to-do-with-green-tomatoes/

Bok Choy: 10 Fun Facts by Chloe Thompson

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/bok-choy-10-healthy-facts

Rovi Corporation and Michigan State University announced on October 19, 2015 that Rovi has donated a rare and valuable media collection to MSU.  This donation establishes the largest media collection held by a library in the United States.  The new “Rovi Media Collection” is comprised of close to one million CDs, Blu-Rays, DVDs, and video games, and is now publicly available through the MSU library and interlibrary loan services.  “We are honored to be the proprietors of the largest media archive in the country, which has quickly become the most requested material in the Michigan inter-library loan system,” said Clifford H. Haka, director of libraries, Michigan State University.  “The ‘Rovi Media Collection’ dramatically enhances our teaching curriculum and research within the College of Music, popular culture and film studies, and an emerging gaming program.  Assembling a collection of such cultural and historic importance and overall magnitude would simply not have been feasible with our current budget.  https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/rovi-and-michigan-state-university-establish-largest-us-library-media-collection-2015-10-19

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1367  October 23, 2015  On this date in 1861, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.  On this date in 1906, Alberto Santos-Dumont flew an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France.

Confessions of Kwame Alexander  “Being sort of uncool and goofy [as a teenager], I was always trying to figure out the best way to communicate with girls,” he said.  What I discovered that I did have, and a lot of guys didn’t, was a way with words.  I knew how to arrange words and make them dance on a page.  And, of course, that came from reading.”  Alexander will headline the October 22, 2015 Authors! Authors! lecture at the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, co-sponsored by The Blade.  To be honest, he clarified, adolescence meant “rediscovering” reading after being introduced to the joy of books early on by his parents.   “My parents were my first librarians,” he said.  “My father wrote 16 books; he was a book publisher—and my mother was an English teacher.  From a very early age we were reading and writing, and certainly I enjoyed being read to as a child.   “But I think once I got to middle school I sort of fell out of love with books.  I was being forced to read at home, and a lot of these books were these huge texts my father made me read.  Both at home and school I wasn’t really being given books that I was interested in, so I sort of lost the interest and excitement I had as a kid.”  In February 2015, Alexander won the Newbery Medal, the American Library Association’s highest honor in children’s literature, for The Crossover, which details the exploits of basketball-playing twins JB and Josh.  Written in verse, the writer said it was designed to introduce children to poetry, while also targeting a neglected segment of the youth market:  boys.  “I know I wanted to play outside with my friends when I was a boy, and my sister was probably more apt to be in the house reading a book,” he said.  “If you give boys books that are interesting to them they will read, and that’s ultimately the goal.  That’s what I set out to do with The Crossover, write a book that boys couldn’t put down.  “Books are like amusement parks; sometimes you have to let kids choose the ride.  I think boys do want to read and imagine a world for themselves.  But you have got to give them something that will connect with them. That really goes for anybody.” Authors! Authors! with Kwame Alexander  October 22, 2015, 7 p.m.  McMaster Center at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library, 325 N. Michigan St.  Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for students   Information:  419-259-5266 or visit toledolibrary.org.  Mike Pearson   http://www.toledoblade.com/Books/2015/10/18/Celebrated-writer-makes-books-cool-to-speak-at-Authors-Authors-Kwame-Alexander.html  See also Five questions for Kwame Alexander

http://www.hbook.com/2015/02/authors-illustrators/interviews/five-questions-kwame-alexander/ and 2015 Newbery-Caldecott-Wilder Banquet June 28, 2015  Kwame Alexander--The Crossover  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnh3JNCMLq8  27:04

Brothers Stephen Quay and Timothy Quay are esteemed filmmakers, film directors and animators.  They are identical twins most famously known as both either Brothers Quay or the Quay Brothers.  Indeed their collaborative stop-motion animations are extremely well known for the ways in which they have been influential to the field.  They were born on June 17, 1947 in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a town that had an important European immigrant influx.  They attended art school together at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, USA and at the Royal College of Art in London, UK in the late 1960s where they would set their studio and where they still live today as well.  They are both professors of Animated Film at The European Graduate School where they have taught an intensive summer seminar, typically in the form of a workshop.  It is during their time studying in Philadelphia that they would take film courses and in doing so would see for the first time the surrealist movies of Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), the ones by the Danish film director Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968), who is considered by many critic as being one of the most important directors of all times.  But the two brothers would also be introduced to the films of the Russian movie director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) as well as the ones of Swedish movie and theater director Ingmar Bergman (1918- ).   With their first movies, Stephen and Timothy Quay would show a particular taste for esoteric influences.  Indeed they began with the Polish animators Walerian Borowczyk (1923 - 2006) and Jan Lenica (1928-2001).  They would then show their inspiration was grounded by the work of writers such as the famous Czech novelist Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956), the avant-gardes Belgian dramatist Michel de Ghelderode (1898-1962), the Russian and French animator Wladyslaw Starewicz (1882-1965).  Moreover, Czech composers Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) as well as Zdeněk Liška (1922-1983) would be a great source of inspiration for them.  The same would be true with the Polish composer Leszek Jankowski (1956- ) who would in fact write original musical scores for a good deal of their films.  The Quay Brothers would create films that the critics would often call surreal and which usually involve inanimate objects coming to life.  In 1998 they were the recipient of the prestigious Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for their outstanding effort on the play The Chairs (originally “Les Chaise”) by the Romanian and French Theatre of the Absurd playwright Eugène Ionesco (1909-1994).  The other recipient that same year was Richard Hudson (1954- ) for his work on the famous musical The Lion King.  http://www.egs.edu/faculty/stephen-timothy-quay/biography/  Interview with Stop Motion Animation Pioneers, The Brothers Quay

by Edward Douglas  http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/features/474489-interview-with-stop-motion-animation-pioneers-the-brothers-quay

The next generation of drones, which are just beginning to roll out, doesn’t require users to hold remote controllers:  They are hands-free.  Simply toss them in the air, and they will follow you like Tinker Bell.  With names such as Lily (around $700 on pre-order) and Nixie (not yet available for pre-order), they are capable of recording breathtaking video footage and trailing adventure travelers across bridges and streams, down ski slopes and into secluded gardens.  Nixie, which you can wear on your wrist until you want to fling it off for a photo or video, has a “boomerang mode” that allows it to fly back to you as if it were a trained raptor.  There is no denying that the latest drone technology is impressive.  And the footage is striking.  Adventure travelers who wish to watch themselves scale Kilimanjaro or surf in Hawaii along the North Shore of Oahu will no doubt want one.  But if selfie-drones become staples of every traveler who can afford them, we stand to lose more than we stand to gain when it comes to privacy, safety and quality-of-life factors like peace and beauty.  Strolling Sheep Meadow in Central Park in New York on a warm spring day is already an art with all of the dodging of footballs and Frisbees one must perfect to survive.  If a drone is in midair when its battery dies, it falls from the sky.  Pitfalls abound.  Yet when it comes to travel, there is no greater concern than drone use near airports.  The Federal Aviation Administration said in August 2015 that pilot reports of close calls with drones had increased drastically in 2015, to more than 650 sightings by Aug. 9, up from 238 in all of 2014.  “Pilots of a variety of different types of aircraft—including many large, commercial air carriers—reported spotting 16 unmanned aircraft in June of 2014, and 36 the following month,” the F.A.A. said in a statement.  “This year, 138 pilots reported seeing drones at altitudes of up to 10,000 feet during the month of June, and another 137 in July.”  Drones have been spotted near all of the New York area’s major airports, including John F. Kennedy International, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International in New Jersey.  Last year, pilots on major carriers reported seeing drones 100 feet off a wing (Delta) and flying under the plane’s nose (JetBlue).  Stephanie Rosenbloom  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/travel/selfie-camera-drones.html

A compound noun is a noun that is made with two or more words.  A compound noun is usually [noun + noun] or [adjective + noun], but there are other combinations.  Each compound noun acts as a single unit and can be modified by adjectives and other nouns.  There are three forms for compound nouns:  open or spaced (tennis shoe); hyphenated (six-pack); and closed or solid (bedroom).  See examples at https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/nouns-compound.htm

John Tukey (1915-2000) as an American mathematician best known for development of the FFT algorithm and box plot.  The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distribution, the Tukey test of additivity, and the Teichmüller–Tukey lemma all bear his name.  Mr. Tukey coined many statistical terms that have become part of common usage, but the two most famous coinages attributed to him were related to computer science.  While working with John von Neumann on early computer designs, Tukey introduced the word "bit" as a contraction of "binary digit".  The term "bit" was first used in an article by Claude Shannon in 1948.  In 2000, Fred Shapiro, a librarian at the Yale Law School, published a letter revealing that Tukey's 1958 paper "The Teaching of Concrete Mathematics" contained the earliest known usage of the term "software" found in a search of JSTOR's electronic archives, predating the OED's citation by two years.  This led many to credit Tukey with coining the term, particularly in obituaries published that same year, although Tukey never claimed credit for any such coinage.  In 1995, Paul Niquette claimed he had originally coined the term in October 1953, although he could not find any documents supporting his claim.  The earliest known publication of the term "software" in an engineering context was in August 1953 by Richard R. Carhart, in a Rand Corporation Research Memorandum.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tukey

suffix:  ware  [in uncountable nouns]  1 things made of a particular material, especially for use in the home:  glassware, silverware  2 things used in a particular place for the preparation or serving of food:  ovenware, tableware  3 things used in operating a computer:  software (programs), shareware  (programs which can be shared via the Internet)  http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/-ware

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1366  October 21, 2015  On this date in 1879, Thomas Edison invented a workable electric light bulb at his laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J. which was tested the next day and lasted 13.5 hours.  This would be the invention of the first commercially practical incandescent light.  Popular belief is that he invented the first light bulb, which he did not.  On this date in 1959, in New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opened to the public.