Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:  The danger of a single story  filmed July 2009 at TEDGlobal 2009  https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story  18:49  The New York Times Book Review asked novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to write a short story about the American election.  Titled The Arrangements, a work of fiction, it is due to be published July 3, 2016.

Seth Meyers doesn’t mind if you call him bookish.  One of the first things you notice about the Emmy-nominated Saturday Night Live head writer who became the host of NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers in 2014, is how much he loves doing a deep dive into anything literary.  He grew up loving to read and spent many an hour in his Bedford, N.H., hometown library.  “Both of my parents were huge readers,” says Meyers of his “pretty chatty family,” made up of his mom, Hilary, a French teacher, his dad, Laurence, who worked in finance, and his younger brother, Josh, an actor.  “When we went on vacation, everyone was responsible for having enough books to make it through without bothering the others.  That was a big jumping-off point. I’ve never wanted to go anywhere without a book.”  On the job at NBC, Meyers says authors are among his favorite guests. Si ce the show’s inception in 2014, he’s featured 52—and counting—including one of his favorites, Junot Díaz, whose 2007 novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, received widespread acclaim and numerous awards.  “Many authors on our show have never been on a talk show before, but the reality is that whatever fears they have about being on TV are trumped by their natural abilities as story- tellers,” he says.  Or maybe it’s just that Meyers puts them at ease.  “I think authors are the people you want to end up next to at a dinner party,” he says.  Lambeth Hochwald  http://parade.com/486454/lhochwald/seth-meyers-loves-books-and-late-nights/

The idea of "mansplaining"—explaining without regard to the fact that the explainee knows more than the explainer, often done by a man to a woman—has exploded into mainstream political commentary.  In the Sept. 1903 issue of The Atlantic, New England theologian Lyman Abbott wrote an article called "Why Women Do Not Wish the Suffrage."  http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/03sep/0309suffrage.htm   Abbott writes:  I believe it is because woman feels, if she does not clearly see, that the question of woman suffrage is more than merely political; that it concerns the nature and structure of society,—the home, the church, the industrial organism, the state, the social fabric.  And to a change which involves a revolution in all of these she interposes an inflexible though generally a silent opposition.  It is for these silent women—whose voices are not heard in conventions, who write no leaders, deliver no lectures, and visit no legislative assemblies—that I speak.  The commonly cited birthday of the idea is 2008.  That year, a portion of an essay by Rebecca Solnit, called "Men Explain Things To Me," appeared in the Los Angeles Times.  http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/13/opinion/op-solnit13  Solnit didn't use the word "mansplain"; she merely, well, explained it, describing the time a man explained a book to her without acknowledging that she herself wrote it.  Lily Rothman  Find amusing cartoon at  http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/a-cultural-history-of-mansplaining/264380/

Offspring of mansplain:  womansplain coined in 2013(?)  taxsplain coined in 2014(? )

Stationary or stationery?  This pair of confusable homophones (words that sound the same) and near-homographs (words that are spelled the same) causes no end of spelling-related fails: 

Stationary  This word is an adjective, and in general use, it means ‘not moving, or not meant to move’.  There are two specialized meanings of stationary, related to stability or lack of movement:  (1)  not changing in quantity or condition and (2) having no apparent motion or longitude.  Stationery  This is a noun, with two meanings, both related to paper goods:  (1) items such as paper, pens, folders, notebooks used in an office and (2) specially designed and printed notepaper, envelopes, invitations, etc.  http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/04/stationary-or-stationery/  MEMORY AID  Think of the a in stationary as an anchor.

Compliment or complement?  If you compliment someone, you are expressing admiration for them, or praising them for something.  If one thing complements another, each of the two separate items function or look better because they are together--they both contribute something that enhances or improves the overall effect.  http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/04/compliment-or-complement/

MEMORY AID  Think of the first e in complement as enhance or effect.

Ronald (Ron) Chernow (born 1949) is an American writer, journalist, historian, and biographer.  Historian Andrew Cayton said, "Chernow is no ordinary writer.  Like his popular biographies of John D. Rockefeller and Alexander Hamilton, his Washington while long, is vivid and well paced.  If Chernow's sense of historical context is sometimes superficial, his understanding of psychology is acute and his portraits of individuals memorable."  He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2011 American History Book Prize for his book, Washington: A Life.  He is also the recipient of the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his 1990 book, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance.   His biographies of Alexander Hamilton and John D. Rockefeller Sr. were both nominated for National Book Critics Circle Awards, while The Warburgs:  The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family was honored with the 1993 George S. Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing.  As a freelance journalist, he has written over 60 articles in national publications.  Find Chernow's honors and awards, published works, and filmography at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Chernow

"History Makers:  A Conversation" An interview with Ron Chernow by Kenneth T. Jackson and Valerie Paley   See 65-page document at http://www.alexanderhamiltonexhibition.org/about/Ron%20Chernow%20Interview.pdf

Who owns the minerals under Ohio Township Section 16? by Porter Wright   In the Federal Land Ordinance of 1785, Ohio was required to reserve one section of land (i.e., one square mile, usually section 16), in every Ohio township for the support of public education.  Extending that federal mandate, in 1917, the Ohio Legislature passed a law that, among other provisions, provided, “It is declared to be the policy of the state to conserve . . .  mineral resources of the [school lands held in trust] . . .  and to this end the state reserves all gas, oil, coal, iron and other minerals that may be upon or under the said school lands . . . . ” H.B. No. 192, passed March, 20, 1917 (107 Ohio Laws 357).  Read part one of the report at http://www.oilandgaslawreport.com/2013/07/12/who-owns-the-minerals-under-ohio-township-section-16/  followed by part two at http://www.oilandgaslawreport.com/2013/07/26/part-2-who-owns-the-minerals-under-ohio-township-section-16/ and part 3 at http://www.oilandgaslawreport.com/2013/07/26/part-2-who-owns-the-minerals-under-ohio-township-section-16/  Thank you, Muse reader!

Why do commentators rank basketball players over or under others in their playing ability?  See an example at http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/charles-barkley-still-refuses-to-put-lebron-among-the-greatest/  I don't recall this "listing" happening in other sports, or in other fields--such as music and art.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1490  June 29, 2016  On this date in 1858, George Washington Goethals, American general and engineer, co-designer of the Panama Canal, was born.  On this date in 1898, Yvonne Lefébure, French pianist and educator, was born. 

American Samoa, a group of five volcanic islands and two coral atolls located some 2,600 mi south of Hawaii in the South Pacific, is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the U.S.  It includes the eastern Samoan islands of Tutuila, Aunu'u, and Rose; three islands (Ta'u, Olosega, and Ofu) of the Manu'a group; and Swains Island.  Around 1000 B.C. Proto-polynesians established themselves in the islands, and their descendants are one of the few remaining Polynesian societies.  The Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen sighted the Manu'a Islands in 1722.  American Samoa has been a territory of the United States since April 17, 1900, when the High Chiefs of Tutuila signed the first of two Deeds of Cession for the islands to the U.S. (Congress ratified the Deeds in 1929.)  Swains Island, which is privately owned, came under U.S. administration in 1925.  The people of American Samoa are U.S. nationals, not U.S. citizens, but many have become naturalized American citizens.  http://www.infoplease.com/country/american-samoa.html

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill  (1874-1965) was a British politician and statesman, best known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II.  He was Prime Minister of the UK from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.  He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953.  Find quotes, disputed quotes and misattributed quotes at https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#Quotes_about_Churchill

JibJab Media v. Ludlow Music ("This Land" Parody)   In June 2004 JibJab creators of the fantastically popular "This Land" animated parody lampooning John Kerry and George Bush were threatened with a copyright lawsuit for the soundtrack which was based on Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land."  The threat came from Ludlow Music Inc. the music publisher that claimed to own the song.  JibJab sued Ludlow in federal court in July 2004 seeking judicial confirmation that JibJab's work was a protected "fair use" and did not infringe Ludlow's copyrights.  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) served as counsel to JibJab.  During the course of the litigation EFF discovered that the copyright to "This Land is Your Land" expired in 1973 putting the song into the public domain.  The initial copyright term was triggered when Guthrie sold his first versions of the song as sheet music in 1945 (this sheet music is available in the Guthrie archives at the Library of Congress; EFF has posted a copy).  The copyright on the song then ran out when Ludlow failed to renew its registration in 1973.   JibJab and Ludlow ultimately settled the litigation.  As part of the settlement of the case JibJab remains free to continue distributing the "This Land" animation without further interference from Ludlow.

https://www.eff.org/cases/jibjab-media-inc-v-ludlow-music-inc

More than 70 years after Woody Guthrie wrote “‘This Land is Your Land,” attorneys for an electronica group are going to court in hopes of having the rights to the folk classic deemed as inclusive as the country described by its lyrics.  A class action complaint filed June 14, 2016 in Manhattan Federal Court on behalf of local band Satorii argues that Guthrie’s 1944 song “This Land is Your Land” should be brought into public domain.  Attorneys for Satorii claim the group paid $45.50 in 2016 in order to obtain the licensing rights needed to record a cover version of the Guthrie classic.  As alleged in the lawsuit, however, any valid copyright associated with the song should have expired decades earlier.  "As artists, we respect the copyright protections afforded all creative works,” Satorii lead singer Jerrra Blues said in astatement released by attorneys at law firm Wolf Haldenstein.  “However, those protections end at a certain point so that others can create their own new works.  That’s one reason we create music, so that someday our work will be in the public domain for all to use.”  Ludlow Music managed to copyright the song in 1956, and for 60 years has claimed to control the song’s reproduction, distribution and public performance rights under federal copyright law.  In securing those rights, however, Satorii’s attorneys argue that Ludlow failed to acknowledge that the song had already been copyrighted by Guthrie more than a decade earlier, as well as the fact that Guthrie borrowed the melody from an antiquated gospel hymn he had heard previously.  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/16/copyright-case-aims-bring-land-your-land-public-do/

Many cooking references describe fricassee simply as a French stew, usually with a white sauce.  Mastering the Art of French Cooking describes it as "halfway between a saute and a stew" in that a saute has no liquid added, while a stew includes liquid from the beginning.  In a fricassee, cut-up meat is first sauteed (but not browned), then liquid is added and it is simmered to finish cooking.  Cookbook author James Peterson notes that some modernized versions of the recipe call for the meat to be thoroughly browned before braising, but the classical version requires that both meat and vegetables remain white, with no caramelization. ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fricassee

Chicken Fricassee with Vermouth  http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/6850-chicken-fricassee-with-vermouth

When archivists at California's Stanford University received the collected papers of the late palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould in 2004, they knew right away they had a problem.  Many of the 'papers' were actually on computer disks of various kinds, in the form of 52 megabytes of data spread across more than 1,100 files—all from long-outdated systems.  “It was a large collection, as you can imagine,” says Michael Olson, service manager for the Born Digital/Forensics Lab at Stanford University Libraries.  “He used a lot of early word processing for his writing, lots of disks and diskettes in different formats.”  After considerable effort the Stanford archivists did get Gould's papers into order—first by finding hardware that could read the obsolete disks, and then by deciphering what they found there.  “We had some challenges finding old applications to figure out what word processor he used, that sort of thing,” says Olson.  The Gould papers were an early indication of an issue that's been rapidly worsening:  four decades after the personal-computer revolution brought word processing and number crunching to the desktop, the first generation of early adopters is retiring or dying.  So how do archivists recover and preserve what's left behind?  “People around the world have information stored on disks that are less readable with every passing day,” says Christopher Lee, a researcher in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in Chapel Hill.  “This includes floppies, Zip disks, CDs, DVDs, flash drives, hard drives and a variety of other media.”  Many files can be accessed only with long-obsolete hardware, and all are subject to physical deterioration that will ultimately make them unreadable by any means.  By now, many libraries, archives and museums have accumulated shelves full of such material, stashed away in the hope that if it's ever needed, somebody, somewhere will be able to figure out how to access it.  Mark Wolverton  Read more at http://www.nature.com/news/digital-forensics-from-the-crime-lab-to-the-library-1.19998?utm_campaign=News%20you%20can%20use&utm_content=35510265&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

How many of you get robocalls that starts something like this:  Congratulations, our records indicate that you recently applied for a payday loan . . . our lenders have taken a second look at your . . .   They may seem to be from various places in the country, although I got a call on June 24, 2016 that said LIFE INSURANCE rather than a city name.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1489  June 27, 2016  On this date in 1898, the first solo circumnavigation of the globe was completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia.  On this date in 1932,  Anna Moffo, American operatic soprano, was born.  Word of the Day:  from pillar to post  adverb (idiomatic)  From one place (or person, or task) to another; hither and thither.  June 27 marks the start of The Championships at Wimbledon, UK, in 2016.

The jackfruit is the largest tree fruit in the world, capable of reaching 100 pounds.  And it grows on the branches and the trunks of trees that can reach 30, 40, 50 feet.  Jackfruits are also a nutritional bonanza:  high in protein, potassium and vitamin B.  And, with about 95 calories in about a half a cup, they aren't quite as high-carb or caloric as staples like rice or corn.  Yet the jackfruit is "an underutilized crop" in the tropical-to-subtropical climate where it thrives, says Nyree Zerega, director of the graduate program in plant biology and conservation at Northwestern University and the Chicago Botanic Garden.  In countries like India and Bangladesh, where the jackfruit was once widely cultivated, it has fallen out of favor.  It's a versatile food source and thus a potential economic boon for countries that market it.  Jackfruits can be dried, roasted, added to soups, used in chips, jams, juices, ice cream.  The seeds can be boiled, roasted or ground into flour.  Even the tree itself is valuable:  high-quality, rot-resistant timber for furniture and musical instruments.  Or you can eat a jackfruit fresh.  The jackfruit is made up of hundreds or even thousands of individual flowers that are fused together.  We eat the "fleshy petals" that surround the seed, which is the actual fruit.  Marc Silver http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/01/308708000/heres-the-scoop-on-jackfruit-a-ginormous-fruit-to-feed-the-world

May 28, 2016  Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport offers food, drinks, and even live video of the alligator exhibit at the Tennessee Aquarium to help travelers pass time awaiting their flights.  Soon, airport patrons will have access to a bookstore as well.  Friends of the Library, calling the business model a first for an airport nationally, will lease about 750 square feet in the lower level of the terminal where it will sell books.  William Sundquist, chairman of the group that supports Chattanooga Public Library, said plans are to provide books which will be mainly donated or are library discards.  The store will be unmanned with sales done on "the honor system," he said, permitting buyers to pay either in cash or with a credit card.  "We'll restock on a weekly basis," Sundquist told the Chattanooga Airport Authority this week.  "We're really thrilled about this opportunity to bring library material to the airport.  We'll make sure it's maintained properly and looks good."  All of the proceeds will support the library, he said.  Mike Pare  http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/diary/story/2016/may/28/library-grosell-books-chattanoogairport/368152/

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg   ricochet words/clone words/reduplicatives   Sometimes a word is repeated exactly (pooh-pooh, blah-blah), other times with a change in a letter (itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie).

hugger-mugger  (HUHG-uhr MUHG-uh)  noun  1. Confusion.  2. Secrecy.  adjective  1. Confused.  2. Secret.  verb tr., intr.:  To keep secret or act in a secretive manner.  adverb  1. Secretly.  2.  Confusingly.

argle-bargle  (AHR-guhl BAHR-guhl)  noun  1.  A vigorous discussion or noisy dispute.  2.  Nonsense.  From reduplication of argle, alteration of argue. 

hoity-toity  (HOI-tee TOI-tee)  adjective  Haughty; pretentious; huffy.  From reduplication of hoit (to romp).

hurly-burly  (HUHR-lee BUHR-lee)   noun  Disorder; confusion; commotion; uproar.   adjective  Characterized by disorder, confusion, commotion, uproar, etc.  A reduplication of hurling, from hurl (to toss).

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From:  Elaine Fear  Subject:  Double Trouble in Walla Walla

Double Trouble in Walla Walla by Andrew Clements. This delightful but crazy book has amused my grandchildren ever since they were quite little!

From:  Carl Rosenberg  Subject:  hurly-burly  My favourite usage of this term is the witches in Macbeth:  “When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.”

From:  Janet Rizvi  Subject:  Hugger Mugger  Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre!  My mother was reading the novel, about 70 years ago, and I, aged seven or thereabouts, was totally flummoxed by the title.  As well as the idea of hugger-mugger, it was the first time I heard of the Louvre; and from that day to this whenever the Louvre floats into my consciousness for any reason, it’s with a background frisson of rushing and confusion.  What you call reduplicatives are, as you are surely aware, common in Hindi/Urdu. In one Hindi grammar that I studied, they were identified as ‘jingling appositives’.

From:  Pegi Bevins  Subject:  Hugger-Mugger  We bought the Huggermugger board game years ago and still play it.  As you can imagine, the goal of the game is to reveal the secret word.  Great game and a must for those of us who love language!

Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world.  He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described so.  The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs.  The rhyme is listed in the Roud Folk Song Index as No. 13026.  Humpty Dumpty has become a highly popular nursery rhyme character. American actor George L. Fox (1825–77) helped to popularise the character in nineteenth-century stage productions of pantomime versions, music, and rhyme.  The character is also a common literary allusion, particularly to refer to a person in an insecure position, something that would be difficult to reconstruct once broken, or a short and fat person.  Humpty Dumpty has been used in a large range of literary works in addition to his appearance as a character in Through the Looking-Glass, including L. Frank Baum's Mother Goose in Prose (1901), where the rhyming riddle is devised by the daughter of the king, having witnessed Humpty's "death" and her father's soldiers' efforts to save him.  In Neil Gaiman's early short story The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds, the Humpty Dumpty story is turned into a film noir-style hardboiledcrime story, involving also Cock Robin, the Queen of Hearts, Little Bo Peep, Old Mother Hubbard, and other characters from popular nursery rhymes.  Robert Rankin used Humpty Dumpty as one victim of a serial fairy-tale character murderer in The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse (2002).  Jasper Fforde included Humpty Dumpty in his novels The Well of Lost Plots (2003) and The Big Over Easy (2005), which use him respectively as a ringleader of dissatisfied nursery rhyme characters threatening to strike and as the victim of a murder. The rhyme has also been used as a reference in more serious literary works, including as a recurring motif of the Fall of Man in James Joyce's 1939 novel Finnegans Wake.  Robert Penn Warren's 1946 American novel All the King's Men is the story of populist politician Willie Stark's rise to the position of governor and eventual fall, based on the career of the corrupt Louisiana Senator Huey Long.  It won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize and was twice made into a film All the King's Men in 1949 and 2006, the former winning the Academy Award for best motion picture.  This was echoed in Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's book All the President's Men, about the Watergate scandal, referring to the failure of the President's staff to repair the damage once the scandal had leaked out.  It was filmed as All the President's Men in 1976, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.  Similarly, Humpty Dumpty is referred to in Paul Auster's 1985 novel City of Glass, when two characters discuss him as "the purest embodiment of the human condition" and quote extensively from Through the Looking Glass.  It has also been used as a common motif in popular music, including Hank Thompson's "Humpty Dumpty Heart" (1948), The Monkees' "All the King's Horses" (1966), Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses" (1972), Tori Amos's "Humpty Dumpty" (1992), and Travis's "The Humpty Dumpty Love Song" (2001).  In jazz, Ornette Coleman and Chick Corea wrote different compositions, both titled Humpty Dumpty.  In the Dolly Parton song Starting Over Again, it's all the king's horses and all the king's men who can't put the divorced couple back together again.  Humpty Dumpty has been used to demonstrate the second law of thermodynamics.  The law describes a process known as entropy, a measure of the number of specific ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder".  The higher the entropy, the higher the disorder.  After his fall and subsequent shattering, the inability to put him together again is representative of this principle, as it would be highly unlikely (though not impossible) to return him to his earlier state of lower entropy, as the entropy of an isolated system never decreases.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpty_Dumpty

Brexit:  the world’s most complex divorce begins by Alex Barker  

There are rough guidelines on how to proceed, but the negotiation will be largely improvised.  Estimates of how long it will take range from two years to a decade or more.  The goal is to unwind Britain's 43-year membership of the bloc, disentangle and sever the legacy of shared sovereignty, and then reshape the biggest single market on earth.  Three fundamental issues arise.  On substance, what political and commercial arrangements will Brexit Britain demand and will the EU accept them?  In execution, will the exit deal—the divorce and breaking of old obligations—be struck at the same time as a trade agreement covering post-Brexit trade?  And if no, is a transition possible to ensure a soft landing?  Across the continent, markets, officials, presidents and prime ministers know that Britain and its former partners in the EU are embarking on a potentially dangerous political voyage, navigating largely in the dark.  "Until the UK formally leaves the EU, EU law will continue to apply to and within the UK and by this I mean rights as well as obligations," he added.  "All the procedures for the withdrawal of the UK from the EU are clear and set out in the treaties."  Lawyers in Whitehall and Brussels see two distinct tracks.  The first is under Article 50 of the EU treaties—the so-called "exit clause"—which lays down a two-year renewable deadline for a country to leave.  A second track makes arrangements for future relations, from trade to co-operation on security or law enforcement.  This is a more complex negotiation and, once agreed, harder to ratify. It requires unanimity and approval by more than 30 European, national and regional parliaments, possibly after national referendums.  There are alternatives.  One is to attempt a divorce on British terms.  The Leave campaign has outlined plans to legislate in the House of Commons to repeal some EU obligations immediately, while holding-off on invoking the Article 50 divorce clause to deprive the EU of leverage on timing.  By law, nothing fundamental will change for British companies in the coming weeks, months and possibly years. The formal EU rupture is some time away.  But Britain has been thrown into political turmoil.  David Cameron's decision to step down as prime minister triggers a Conservative party leadership race could take several months to play out.   Mr Cameron made clear the decision on when to trigger Article 50 is for his successor.   means any formal EU negotiations will not start until the autumn at the earliest.  http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/24/brexit-the-worlds-most-complex-divorce-begins.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1488  June 24, 2016  On this date in 1880, O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, was first performed at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français.  (The Canadian House of Commons overwhelmingly passed Bill C-210 by a vote of 225 to 74 on June 14, 2016, tweaking the third line of “O Canada” to incorporate gender-neutral phrasing.)  All thy sons is now all of us.  The French-language version of the anthem, which uses different lyrics than its Anglophonic counterpart, is already gender-neutral.  See http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/06/o-canada-gender-neutral/487298/  On this date in 1939, Siam was renamed Thailand by Plaek Phibunsongkhram, the country's third prime minister.  (On July 20th, 1948, the Siamese constituent assembly voted to change the name of Siam to Thailand, the change to come into effect the following year.  Muang Thai or Thailand means ‘land of the free’ and the name had been changed before, in 1939, but the anti-Axis powers refused to recognise the new name after Siam allied herself with the Japanese and in 1942 declared war on the United States and the United Kingdom.)  See http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/siam-officially-renamed-thailand

File powder-- powdered leaves of the sassafras tree   When ground, file powder smells like eucalyptus or juicy fruit gum.  File powder is a necessary ingredient for Cajun cuisine, especially Gumbo.  In addition to contributing an unusual flavor, the powder also acts as a thickener when added to liquid.  Long before the use of file powder for Creole and Cajun cooking, Choctaw Indians pounded sassafras leaves into powder and added them to soups and stews.  Store in a cool, dark place for no more than 6 months.  Stir into a dish after it's removed from the heat because undue cooking makes file tough and stringy.  http://www.food.com/about/file-powder-902  File is pronounced FEE-lay.

Computer systems have helped catalogue libraries for decades, but if some reckless reader has put a book back in the wrong spot, it's a daunting task for librarians to search the entire building for it--but not for robotic librarians.  Researchers at A*STAR's Institute for Infocomm Research are designing robots that can self-navigate through libraries at night, scanning spines and shelves to report back on missing or out-of-place books.  This autonomous robotic shelf-scanning (AuRoSS) platform scans RFID tags on the books and produces a report.  In the morning, the human librarians can check the results and can easily see which books are in the wrong spot and where they belong.  There's still a need for human labor, but it's far less time-consuming than manually searching every shelf for misplaced titles.  Michael Irving

http://www.gizmag.com/robotic-librarians-hit-books/43666/

Jules Léotard, the French acrobat who performed the first flying trapeze act on record at the Cirque Napoléon in Paris on November 12, 1859, was the daring young man who ‘flies through the air with the greatest of ease’ in the music hall song.  He also left his name to the leotard, the tight, sleeveless garment which he wore and which showed his muscular frame to advantage.  Léotard and the great French tightrope walker Blondin led the way in the development of breathtaking performances on the trapeze and the high wire in 19th-century circuses.  Léotard developed his act in his teens at his father’s house in Toulouse, which had a swimming pool.  He fixed up a trapeze above the pool, which functioned as his safety net, and practised various tricks.  In the basic act the acrobat takes off from a high board, holding the ‘fly bar’ of the trapeze, and lands in the hands of a catcher, who is dangling from another swinging trapeze.  Both of them continue swinging until the catcher throws the acrobat back to the fly bar in the ‘return’.  See picture at http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/first-flying-trapeze-performed

April 28, 2016  Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin has signed legislation to automatically register eligible voters who apply for a driver’s license or state ID, making the Green Mountain State fourth in the nation to enact an automatic voter-registration law.  State officials estimate the new AVR law, which takes effect after the 2016 election, could add 30,000 to 50,000 voters to the state’s rolls.  Oregon has begun proactively adding unregistered citizens to its rolls.  California will soon follow suit under a state law signed in 2015.  Serious efforts to enact similar proposals through legislative action or citizen ballot initiatives are underway in several other states, including Illinois, Maryland, and Ohio.  The drive has won endorsements in the last year from President Obama and both Democrats running to succeed him in the White House.  Democratic legislators included AVR in a bill revamping the state’s election system last year, alongside other changes to early voting and online registration.  But Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, derided the proposals as costly and “reckless” when vetoing the legislation in November, 2015.  Only one state has bucked the partisan trend so far.  In West Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature, lawmakers from both parties fashioned a compromise bill that combined a moderate voter-ID law favored by Republicans with an AVR system proposed by Democrats.  Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, signed it into law on April 13, 2016.  Matt Ford   http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/vermont-automatic-voter-registration/480423/

Find your state's voter registration deadlines for the Federal General Election.  This page provides a summary of information taken from state election office websites.  This information can change.  For the most complete and up-to-date information, contact your state election office.  https://www.usa.gov/voter-registration-deadlines

Dis means apart or not.  Find a list of words beginning with dis, including disease, disguise and disgust at http://www.morewords.com/starts-with/dis/  See also http://membean.com/wrotds/dis-apart

Lisbon is the capital and the largest city of Portugal, with a population of 552,700 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km².  Its urban area extends beyond the city's administrative limits with a population of around 2.7 million people, being the 11th-most populous urban area in the European Union.  About 2.8 million people live in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (which represents approximately 27% of the country's population).  It is continental Europe's westernmost capital city and the only one along the Atlantic coast.  Lisbon lies in the western Iberian Peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean and the River Tagus.  The westernmost areas of its metro area is the westernmost point of Continental Europe.  Nicknames:  A Cidade das Sete Colinas (The City of Seven Hills), Rainha do Mar (Queen of the Sea), A Cidade da Tolerância (The City of Tolerance), A Cidade da Luz (The City of the Light)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon

100 Cities and Their Nicknames by Miruna Corneanumiruna  http://travelaway.me/100-cities-and-their-nicknames/

The first time I saw LeBron James play basketball was during his final year at St Vincent-St Mary High School.  By then he was already a national sensation--Sports Illustrated had featured him on the cover months earlier under the headline “The Chosen One”--and his senior season was essentially a barnstorming tour that filled smaller arenas around the country and sated the intense curiosity of a pre-YouTube world.  Several of his games were broadcast nationally on ESPN2, a rarity for high school basketball.  Still more were available on pay-per-view, which is unheard of.  When the circus came to my hometown of Philadelphia, a sellout crowd packed the Palestra to the corners.  It was three days before Christmas 2002.  LeBron devoured rebounds like each was his last.  He whipped passes from outrageous angles with pace and uncanny precision, finding his team-mates in perfect position for easy baskets.  He could play the one through the five and defend them just the same.  Every action was exacted with economy of movement and effortless calm, the way a Formula One driver can navigate a car with the casual indifference of a channel surfer idly flicking the remote.  The funny thing is, the LeBron of today is not all that different.  Even against the best competition in the world, he can still bend the game to his will and make grown men look no more capable of stopping him than a gaggle of high school kids.  Fourteen years after that first look LeBron has somehow realized the impossible expectations heaped on those teenage shoulders, never more than Sunday night, June 19, 2016 when he fulfilled a promise to his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers by leading perhaps the most snake-bitten team in professional sports to their first NBA championship.  Bryan Armen Graham  https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/jun/20/lebron-james-cleveland-cavaliers-nba-title-goat

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1487  June 22, 2016  On this date in 1611, the crew of the Discovery mutinied against its captain, English navigator Henry Hudson, and set him, his teenage son, and seven supporters adrift in a small, open boat.  Hudson and the eight others were never seen again.  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hudson-set-adrift-by-mutineers

See also http://www.livescience.com/5530-mutiny-murder-happened-henry-hudson.html  On this date in 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill.

Hidden in Yosemite National Park’s peaceful northwest corner, Hetch Hetchy Valley is a treasure worth visiting in all seasons.  In spring, two of North America’s tallest waterfalls plummet spectacularly over thousand-foot granite cliffs.  The dramatic cliffs surrounding these waterfalls add to the grandeur that John Muir compared to the more well known Yosemite Valley.  In 1870, Muir called Hetch Hetchy Valley “a wonderfully exact counterpart of the great Yosemite.”  People have lived in Hetch Hetchy Valley for more than 6,000 years.  American Indian cultures were prominent before the 1850s when the first Euro-Americans came looking for gold and a place to graze livestock.  The valley name probably derived from the Miwok word, hatchhatchie, which means “edible grasses.”  San Francisco was facing a chronic water and power shortage.  In 1906, an earthquake and fire devastated San Francisco, adding urgency and public sympathy to the search for an adequate water supply.  Congress passed the Raker Act in 1913, authorizing the construction of a dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley as well as another dam at Lake Eleanor.  The first phase of construction on the O’Shaughnessy Dam (named for the chief engineer) was completed in 1923 and the final phase, raising the height of the dam, was completed in 1938.  Today the 117-billion-gallon reservoir supplies pristine drinking water to 2.4 million Bay Area residents and industrial users.  It also supplies hydro-electric power generated by two plants downstream.  The reservoir is eight miles long and the largest single body of water in Yosemite.  https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/upload/hetchhetchy-sitebull.pdf  See also http://www.nature.org/magazine/archives/a-wild-idea.xml

April 28, 2016  Suit calling for draining Hetch Hetchy dismissed by Emily Green  A state court judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to restore Yosemite National Park’s Hetch Hetchy Valley to its natural state by draining the reservoir that provides drinking water to the Bay Area.  The Oakland group Restore Hetch Hetchy argued that the flooding of the valley and operation of the O’Shaughnessy Dam violated the state Constitution, which prohibits any “unreasonable method of diversion of water” by public agencies.  But Tuolumne County Superior Court Judge Kevin M. Seibert ruled that the federal Raker Act of 1913, which authorized the dam and reservoir, overrides any state law that could eliminate the dam.  Seibert also ruled that the group’s intervention came much too late, because the deadline for filing suit was four years after the state constitutional language was added in 1928.  http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Suit-calling-for-draining-Hetch-Hetchy-dismissed-7382484.php

Sky Islands of North America by Matt Skroch   One hundred miles north of Tucson, Arizona, the massive bulk of high country called the Colorado Plateau and Rocky Mountains jut into central Arizona and western New Mexico with iconic snow capped peaks and montane rivers.  These thick forests and deep canyons form the Mogollon Rim, which signifies the abrupt edge found on the Plateau’s southern flank.  The largest continuous stand of ponderosa pine in the world is found there, hosting the last bulwark of temperately inclined constituents before precipitously giving way to a more broken country of mountains and valleys below.  In the opposite direction—150 miles southeast of Tucson—the other mountainous spine of North America, the mighty Sierra Madre Occidental and its subtropical forests of pines and parrots gives way just before reaching the Arizona-New Mexico border.  Here, an entirely different set of ecosystems have evolved over the millennia, adapting to warmer temperatures and strong connections to the western Hemisphere’s tropical latitudes.  Between and connecting these two massive continental backbones, 40 distinct mountain ranges form the Sky Island region of North America.  This globally unique convergence—the north-south overlap of two major cordilleras spanning the temperate and subtropical latitudes—begins to form the foundation for ecological interactions found nowhere else on earth.  To add to this special connection, an additional biogeographical phenomenon occurs at the Sky Island intersection, as well.  Spanning the lower elevations of western Arizona and northwestern Mexico, the Sonoran desert and its towering saguaro cacti creep eastward into higher elevations.  Tucson, which sits at the eastern edge of the Sonoran desert, marks the western gateway into the Sky Islands.  East from there, the Sky Island landscape increasingly represents the cold-adapted constituents of the Chihuahuan desert, which spill westward over the lowest point in the continental divide from southcentral New Mexico and Chihuahua, Mexico.  These two major bioregional convergences—the north-south span of the temperate and subtropical along with the east-west overlap of the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts—set the stage for an eruption of life.  This intermingling of bioregional edges brings together different life forms evolved from vastly different places on the continent, finding themselves tucked together in unusual associations within the Sky Islands.   Read more and see graphics at http://www.terrain.org/articles/21/skroch.htm  See also http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/coronado/landmanagement/resourcemanagement/?cid=stelprdb5123259

National Book Festival  Herbert’s Dune, a 1965 science-fiction novel adapted into a film starring Sting, Pirsing’s cult classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and children’s favourite The Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss–real name Theodore Geisel–all make the cut.  So too does the prolific and popular Stephen King with The Stand.  Guy Lamolinara, director of National Book Festival, said:  “It’s not supposed to be a diverse list or the best American books.  It’s the books that are most dear to people.”  Some 17,200 people responded to the library’s survey.  Of the 65 books included, 40 were picked directly by the public.  An additional 25 titles were selected by the public from a list created for the 2012 Library of Congress exhibition Books That Shaped America.  A new free exhibition, America Reads, opened at the library on June 16, 2016, featuring rare editions usually withheld from public view, along with a video in which six Pulitzer Prize winners, including Jennifer Egan and Rita Dove, discuss the books that they think shaped the US.   “Ayn Rand evidently has a large fanbase,” Lamolinara commented.  Other striking choices on the new list include Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and East of Eden, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Among the less conventional books is The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith’s 1830 sacred text of the Latter-day Saint movement; Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child; and the stage plays Death of a Salesman and The Crucible by Arthur Miller.  The original group of 25 included canonical texts such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, Dr Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care.  David Smith   https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/17/library-of-congress-american-books-public-poll

National Anthem performed at 2016 NBA finals  Six of the seven performances were a cappella:  John Legend, Jessica Ruiz and fans (3 times), Andy Grammer, and Aloe Blacc who started in 4/4 and switched to 3/4 time at the word "twilight".  Carlos Santana on guitar and Cindy Blackman Santana on drums played an instrumental version in 4/4 time rather than the traditional 3/4 time. 

National anthem in duple meter  Star-Spangled Banner performed by José Feliciano prior to game 5 of the 1968 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1ZQawbo4Mo  2:11

Link to Beyoncé singing the national anthem (in duple meter until close to the end when she switched to triple meter) at the 2013 presidential inauguration.  https://osaycanyouhear.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/adding-a-beat-to-the-banner-the-power-of-44-time/  2:34

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1486  June 20, 2016  On this date in 1782, Congress adopted the Great Seal of the United States.  On this date in 1877, Alexander Graham Bell installed the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.  Word of the Day:  economical with the truth  adjective  Not telling the whole truth, especially in order to present a false image of a situation; untruthful; lying.