It’s twilight time for printed dictionaries, whose word-filled bulk weighed down desks, held open
doors and by turns inspired and intimidated writers searching for the perfect
word. Lexicography—the making of
dictionaries—has gone digital. Though a
few are still published, the dictionary’s time as printed, bound documents is
almost up. In this meantime, Joe Janes turns the attention of his Documents that
Changed the World podcast
series to the man as firmly identified with dictionaries as Hershey is with
chocolate, Noah Webster, and the
70,000-word “American Dictionary of the English language” he published in
1828. It was one of the last
dictionaries to be compiled by a single person.
In the podcasts, Janes, an associate professor in the UW Information School, explores the origin and
often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less
known. All the podcasts are available
online through the iSchool website, and on iTunes, where the
series has more than 250,000 downloads.
Webster, who lived from 1758 to 1843, was at times a failed farmer, an
uninspired teacher, a state representative, a co-founder of Amherst College, a
copyright advocate and a friend of George Washington once dubbed by biographer
as a “forgotten founding father.” He was
also a Federalist and dedicated revolutionary who deeply loved his
country. Though the first English dictionary
dates back to 1604, it was Webster and his 1828 volume that was credited with
capturing the language of the new nation.
Janes said, “This dictionary was the first serious articulation of
American English as it was growing increasingly distinct from the British
variety.” Peter Kelley http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/05/26/documents-that-changed-the-world-noah-websters-dictionary-1828/
The Songs & Poetry Of Francis
Hopkinson (1737-1791)
Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration Of Independence is best
known for his role as an ardent patriot during the American Revolution. After studying law, he served as secretary to
the Pennsylvanian Indian commission, as customs collector for the port of
Newcastle in Delaware and then as a New Jersey Provincial Assemblyman. He resigned these last posts in 1776 because
they conflicted with the revolutionary cause.
In 1778 he was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, and later
was an active member of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. His judicial posts included serving from 1779
until 1789 as a Judge of the Admiralty, appointed by the State of Pennsylvania,
and then from 1790 to 1791 as a Judge of Pennsylvania's U.S. District
Court. He was also active in the Library
Company and the American Philosophical Society.
Throughout his adult life, Hopkinson wrote poetry and satire on the
politically derisive issues of the day.
He penned a popular and humorous work on the 1787 Constitutional
Convention. He was also an accomplished
harpsichordist and composer. His work
"My Days Have Been So Wondrous Free," set to the words of Thomas
Parnell's "Love and Innocence," is the first extant secular song by a
native American composer. Many
historians believe that one James Bremner, may have been Hopkinson's music
teacher. Bremner arrived in Philadelphia
from England in 1763, was a violinist and was part of a music ensemble,with
Hopkinson on the harpsichord, Governor John Penn on violin, and other players
on strings, French horn, and the German flute and they would gather in various
Philadelphia homes for an evening's concert.
A limited liability company (LLC) is a corporate structure
whereby the members of the company cannot be held personally liable for the
company's debts or liabilities. Limited
liability companies (LLC) differ slightly from one country to
the next. However, it is essentially a
hybrid entity that combines the characteristics of a corporation and a partnership or sole
proprietorship. While the limited liability feature is
similar to that of a corporation, the availability of flow-through taxation to the members of a LLC is a feature of partnerships. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/llc.asp Example of an LLC: Heartland Healthcare Services LLC distributes
pharmaceutical products to long term care centers and institutional
pharmacies. It also provides consulting
services to long-term care facilities.
The company was founded in 1994 and is based in Toledo, Ohio. Heartland Healthcare Services LLC is a joint
venture between HCR ManorCare, Inc. and Omnicare Inc. http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=4312369
Convictions
arising from defendants' participation in a series of armed robberies is
affirmed where the government does not violate the Fourth Amendment when it
obtains historical cell-site location information (CSLI) from a service
provider without a warrant. Link to United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit case
published May 31, 2016 at
Award-winning author Margaret Atwood’s recent projects
involve both reimagining a 400-year-old classic and envisioning what literature
itself might look like 100 years from now.
Her latest novel, Hag-Seed, rewrites The Tempest as part of a new series for Hogarth
Press in which celebrated novelists interpret Shakespeare’s plays. Atwood spoke with American Libraries about her new work and the future of
libraries. How did you get
involved with the Hogarth Shakespeare project?
I got an email, of course—all of these things start that
way. This email was from Becky Hardy,
the Hogarth Shakespeare editor. She
asked what play I would choose to do, and I said The Tempest. What was
it about The
Tempest that
appealed to you? I’ve written
about The Tempest before.
In Negotiating with the
Dead: A Writer on Writing(Cambridge
University Press, 2002), one of the chapters is about Prospero and
Mephistopheles. The play is about
magical artifacts and good or bad, so I already had been thinking quite a bit
about it. Can we talk about
another recent project of yours, the Future Library of Norway, a
time-capsule project of Scottish artist Katie Paterson? A forest has been planted in Norway
that will grow for 100 years, and 100 authors will contribute one
manuscript. There were some
preconditions; one was that what you put in the box had to be made of words
only. What kind of artifact made of
words would be up to you. There could be two copies only, and those were to be
given to the Future Library. And you
weren’t allowed to say what was in the box.
Of course as soon it was announced, people have been trying to get it
out of me, to no avail. All the boxes
will be opened in 100 years and enough trees will be cut from the forest to
make the paper to print the Future Library Anthology. Read the rest of the interview at https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2016/05/31/newsmaker-margaret-atwood/
PARAPHRASE from 300 Days of Sun, a novel by Deborah Lawrenson Portuguese sounds like Russian . .
. sounds shush and slip around like
shining, sliding cobbles under your feet.
Top 10s Authors choose their favourite books on their chosen
theme. Lists, including such themes as
Top 10 Modern Medieval Tales and Top 10 Chases in Literature collected from
1999 to June 2016 appear at https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/toptens
Thank
you, Muse reader!
The "Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary" is being released in 2016 to celebrate the
centenary of Dahl’s birth. The
dictionary will contain 8,000 words—over 500 of which were invented by Dahl
himself. The rest of the words are used
in his novels, often in an unusual or distinctive way. http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-31/roald-dahl-s-gobblefunk-words-get-their-own-dictionary
politician-speak: family values, New York values, flip-flopper, small
government v. big government, insider v. outsider, bully pulpit, overreach, failed
policies, "Democrat Party" as a slur, “What the American people
want is . . .” See also http://www.jargondatabase.com/Category/Political
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1482
June 10, 2016 On this date in 1935,
Dr. Robert Smith and Bill Wilson founded Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio. The birthplace
of Alcoholics Anonymous was in the Stan Hywet estate. Henrietta Seiberling's involvement
with the Oxford Group, a religious fellowship movement, confirmed her belief
that ordinary people had the power to change their lives. On Mother's Day
1935, through mutual friendships, she brought together Mr. Bill Wilson and Dr.
Bob Smith, both admitted alcoholics. Their discussion in the Gate Lodge
resulted in identifying the principles that were to become the cornerstone of
Alcoholics Anonymous. http://www.stanhywet.org/gate-lodge
On this date in 1963, John F.
Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of
1963 aimed at
abolishing wage disparity based on sex into law as part of his New Frontier Program.
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