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.