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.