On December 28, 2015, President Barack Obama signed into law a ban on tiny plastic
particles used in personal cosmetic products that scientists say are
polluting U.S. lakes, rivers and the oceans.
The bipartisan "Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015," (H.R. 321), passed by
the U.S. House on Dec. 7, "prohibits the manufacture and introduction into
interstate commerce of rinse-off cosmetics containing intentionally-added
plastic microbeads." The tiny
plastic beads, about the size of a pen-tip, have been shown to filter through municipal wastewater
treatment plants after consumers
rinse them down the drain while using soaps, toothpaste and other products that
contain them. The House bill was co-sponsored by
U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St Joseph, and Rep. Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey. The Senate approved the
bill Dec. 18. The law will phase
microbeads out of consumer products over the next few years, starting with a
ban on manufacturing the beads in July 2017, followed by product-specific
manufacturing and sales bans in 2018 and 2019. Garret Ellison
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/12/obama_signs_ban_on_microbead_p.html
Degas and the Dance until January 10,
2016 Toledo Museum of Art Little
Dancer of Fourteen Years, on loan from the Clark Art Institute of
Williamstown, Massachusetts, occupies center stage in this exhibition that
revolves around Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas (1834-1917), one of France’s
leading Impressionists. Originally
modeled in wax in 1880-81, the 38-inch tall figure was cast in bronze in
1919-21 and depicts Marie van Goethem, a student in the Ballet School of the Paris
Opéra. Ten other works by Degas on the
subject of ballet, including bronze sculptures and paintings, will be
shown. Among them are TMA’s bronze Study in Nude of Little Dancer
Aged Fourteen and
pastel The Dancers, as well as important works on loan from
the Museé d’Orsay in Paris, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown,
Massachusetts, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Gallery of Art
and The Phillips Collection, both in Washington, D.C. The exhibition is presented in celebration of
The Toledo Ballet’s 75th annual performance of “The Nutcracker” and will
include a section of memorabilia and costumes from the ballet. http://www.toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/degasandthedance/ Find sonnets of Edgar Degas in a library near
you. See sample search using the zip
code 43606 (and link to more information about Edgar Degas) at http://www.worldcat.org/title/huit-sonnets-dedgar-degas/oclc/2274539
The
Rise of Sneaker Culture until February 28, 2016 Toledo Museum of Art explores the athletic shoe from its
origins in the mid-1800s to its current place in high-fashion. This traveling exhibition, organized by the
American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto, is the first
exhibition in the United States to present a comprehensive survey of the
sneaker’s complex design, history, and immense cultural significance. The Toledo
Museum of Art is the only Ohio venue for this show. http://www.toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/the-rise-of-sneaker-culture/
Newsmakers 2015: The year’s new words by Aaron Hutchins http://www.macleans.ca/society/newsmakers-2015-the-years-new-words/
2015 has been a huge year for space
exploration with some unprecedented findings by Matthew Dunn
http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/space/2015-has-been-a-huge-year-for-space-exploration-with-some-unprecedented-findings/news-story/6e47b7ee242f85a6ee60ece8ee4d917f
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO WOOLWORTH'S? July
18, 1997 The Woolworth Corporation said
yesterday that it would shutter all 400 of its remaining five-and-dime stores,
closing the book on a 117-year history of a store that offered lipstick,
diapers and a milk shake at a discount all under one roof. The store closings were widely expected and
indeed encouraged by Wall Street. But
they underscore how much American retailing has changed in the last two decades
as its oldest icons--Montgomery Ward, the Sears, Roebuck catalogue and now
Woolworth--have faded or died. Clever,
strong-willed merchants have been replaced by computer systems, and American
shoppers no longer have time to linger over a grilled cheese sandwich at a
store lunch counter. Among discount
stores, Woolworth is only the last, if the most prominent, victim of larger and
stronger competitors like Wal-Mart and Target, which offer more selection,
quicker checkout and often lower prices.
Kresge long ago became Kmart, Ben Franklin has been folded into Wal-Mart
and hundreds of local chains have faded into the collective memory of a nation
warmly nostalgic for old stores but not willing to shop in them. The Woolworth stores will be closed in
stages; the first to be closed will be in metropolitan New York by the end of
the year. ''Woolworth was 100 years ago what
Wal-Mart is today,'' said Robert Sobel, a professor of business history at
Hofstra University. ''First, there were
dry goods stores, then they were called variety stores and every town had
something like that. But all the chains
disappeared because there was no need for them.
What would Woolworth sell that you couldn't buy somewhere else? You can get eyebrow tweezers at a
drugstore.'' The original store, the
Great 5 Cents Store, was opened in 1879 by Frank Woolworth in Utica, N.Y.,
where its first sale, a five-cent fire shovel, was made. That same year, he opened the mother of all
Woolworth stores in Lancaster, Pa. The
next year he added 10 cents to the name and prices. The empire grew with its sales of mustache
cups, egg whips, pie plates and flour dredges.
Woolworth dominated the discount sector for the early half of the
century. But the postwar exodus to the
suburbs soon created pressures, as shoppers left behind Woolworth's and other
Main Street stores for malls and larger stores on highways. More recently, Woolworth was eclipsed by
large-format stores that offered more merchandise, and squeezed the retailer's
prices. At the same time, Woolworth,
like many other retailing companies, became obsessed with expansion, adding a
bunch of specialty stores, some of them successful, many of them not. Jennifer Steinhauer Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/18/business/woolworth-gives-up-on-the-five-and-dime.html
Ellsworth Kelly,
one of America’s great 20th-century abstract artists, who in the years after
World War II shaped a distinctive style of American painting by combining the
solid shapes and brilliant colors of European abstraction with forms distilled
from everyday life, died on Decmeber 27, 2015 at his home in Spencertown, N.Y. He was 92.
Mr. Kelly was a true original, forging his art equally from the
observational exactitude he gained as a youthful bird-watching enthusiast; from
skills he developed as a designer of camouflage patterns while in the Army; and
from exercises in automatic drawing he picked up from European surrealism. He was living in France during the heyday of
Abstract Expressionism in New York and only distantly aware of art in the
United States. When he returned to
America in 1954, he settled on what was then an out-of-the-way section of
Manhattan for art, the Financial District, and had little interaction with many
of his contemporaries. The result was a
deeply personal and exploratory art, one that subscribed to no ready
orthodoxies, and that opened up wide the possibilities of abstraction for his
own generation and those to come. Born
in Newburgh, N.Y., on May 31, 1923, Mr. Kelly studied painting at the School of
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston after his discharge from the Army in 1945. But his formative years as an artist were in
Paris, which he had visited briefly during World War II, and where he returned
to live in 1948 with support from the G.I. Bill. Read extensive
article by Holland Cotter at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/arts/ellsworth-kelly-artist-who-mixed-european-abstraction-into-everyday-life-dies-at-92.html?_r=0 See picture and description of Ellsworth
Kelly's 20-foot tall steel shaft Untitled in the Toledo Museum of Art's
Sculpture Garden at http://classes.toledomuseum.org:8080/emuseum/view/objects/asitem/176/33/invno-desc?t:state:flow=23be7dc0-756e-4dce-80ec-4bb87041114f
The Soft Kitty song was first introduced in Season 1 of
The Big Bang Theory, in the eleventh episode titled The Pancake Batter
Anomaly. It has subsequently been sung
on seven more episodes. Poet Edith Newlin wrote the lyrics for 'Warm Kitty' in
1937. And now her daughters Margaret
Perry and Ellen Chase believe they are owed compensation. And they're demanding that CBS pay up. The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan December
28, 2015. At this time, Warner
Bros., who produces the show, has declined to comment. Willis Music purchased the book (written by Laura Pendleton MacCarteney) the song
appeared in nearly 80 years ago. They
claim that they properly and legally licensed the song to Warner Bros, for the
TV series. Performance rights
organization ASCAP lists Warner-Olive Music (a subsidiary of the Warner Music
Group) as the song's publisher. This
suggests that the rights were transferred from Willis Music. The key legal issue in this case, which will
see it move forward, is whether or not the publisher acquired the rights to the
songs contained in the book when they secured the rights to the book. If they did not, Newlin's daughters may have a
legal leg to stand on. But if the
publishing company did acquire the song rights when obtaining the book, the two
woman stand to lose. Especially since
most publishing agreements have the songwriter assign their copyrights of the
lyrics to the publisher. The case will
essentially come down to the wording of the contract. The question is whether or not Newlin assigned
the copyright of her song to the book publisher when she gave MacCarteney the
right to publish her song in the book. If she did, then MacCarteney would have had
the right to transfer the copyright to Warner Bros. for use in the show. If not, the poet's heirs maybe entitled to any
profits from the use of said song, including merchandising dollars. B. Alan
Orange http://movieweb.com/big-bang-theory-sued-soft-kitty-song/
LeBron James
on turning 31 December 30, 2015: "The stuff that I was doing back when I was 18,
19, 20 doesn't even compare to the life that I have now and what I like, what I
enjoy, I don't want those days back," he said. "I'm happy where I'm at. I feel good." http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2015/12/lebron_james_on_turning_31_tod.html
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1401
December 30, 2015 On this date in
1813, British soldiers burned Buffalo, New York. On this date in 1919, Lincoln's Inn in London, England admitted its first
female bar student.
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