Fanny Bullock Workman (1859–1925) was an American geographer, cartographer, explorer, travel writer, and mountaineer, notably in the Himalayas.  She was one of the first female professional mountaineers; she not only explored but also wrote about her adventures.  She set several women's altitude records, published eight travel books with her husband, and championed women's rights and women's suffrage.  Born to a wealthy family, Workman was educated in the finest schools available to women and traveled in Europe.  Her marriage to William Hunter Workman cemented these advantages, and, after being introduced to climbing in New Hampshire, Fanny Workman traveled the world with him.   They were able to capitalize on their wealth and connections to voyage around Europe, North Africa, and Asia.  The Workmans began their travels with bicycle tours of Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Algeria and India.  They cycled thousands of miles, sleeping wherever they could find shelter.  They wrote books about each trip and Fanny frequently commented on the state of the lives of women that she saw.  Their early bicycle tour narratives were better received than their mountaineering books.  Despite not having modern climbing equipment, the Workmans explored several glaciers and reached the summit of several mountains, eventually reaching 23,000 feet (7,000 m) on Pinnacle Peak, a women's altitude record at the time.  After their trips to the Himalaya, the Workmans gave lectures about their travels.  They were invited to learned societies; Fanny Workman became the first American woman to lecture at the Sorbonne and the second to speak at the Royal Geographical Society.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Bullock_Workman

Sometimes a book just gets loved to death.  A Bible, or a copy of “Charlotte’s Web,” for that matter, can be opened only so many times, even by the gentlest reader, before its spine weakens and surrenders.  And here is a dirty little secret:  Public libraries, despite their reputations for hushed wonder about the written word, can be rough places.  Automated sorting machines, whirring conveyor belts and hard bins can break a book and shorten its life.  Donald Vass, who has spent the past 26 years mending and tending to books for the King County Library System, has seen mechanical and human-inflicted damage and more.  At 57 and with not many years left before retirement, he says he believes he will be the last full-time traditional bookbinder ever to take up shears, brushes and needles here. The skills take too long to learn, he said, and no one is being groomed to take his place in “the mendery,” Room 111 at the library’s central service center, where not so many years ago, 10 people worked.  He uses hypodermic needles to shoot bits of wheat paste into the corners of dog-eared covers to stiffen them, and an old-fashioned screw press to hold pages in place while adhesives dry.  He talks of his repaired books—60 to 80 a month—as if they were children heading out into a dangerous, unpredictable world.  “I’m reluctant, many times, to send them out because I know what they’re going to be up against,” said Vass, who is used to working alone.  Menderies, often called book hospitals, were once common in library systems nationwide.  But the digital revolution, cost-control pressures and shifting reader tastes pushed many libraries away from paper and the maintenance of fragile old classics.   His prized piece of machinery is a large cast-iron board shear that had a previous life slicing boxes in a candy company.  Made in the early 20th century, it can cut a book’s replacement cover pieces, called boards, with absolute precision.  He bought it at an estate sale, covered with dirt and rust, for $50 and restored it.  Kirk Johnson  http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/issaquah-bookbinder-among-handful-at-libraries-nationwide-still-operating-a-mendery/

Doubleday Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, has acquired a never-before-published Mark Twain children's story, it was announced January 20, 2017 by Mallory Loehr, Senior Vice President & Publisher of the Random House/Golden Books, Doubleday, and Crown Books for Young Readers Group.  The story, a fairy tale left unfinished by Twain, will be brought to life by author Philip Stead and illustrator Erin Stead, the creators of the Caldecott Medal-winning A Sick Day for Amos McGee.  The book, THE PURLOINING OF PRINCE OLEOMARGARINE, an eleven-chapter, 152-page illustrated storybook for all ages, will be published on September 26, 2017, with a first printing of 250,000 copies.  The basis of this new work is sixteen pages of Twain's handwritten notes after telling his young daughters a fairy tale one night in 1879 while the family was staying in Paris, an event he documented in his journal.  In 2011, a visiting scholar at the Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California at Berkeley spotted the notes in the archives while conducting his own research and recognized their significance. http://www.broadwayworld.com/bwwbooks/article/Unpublished-Mark-Twain-Childrens-Book-to-be-Completed-and-Released-by-Random-House-926-20170120

What do Captain America, Wonder Woman and a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript have in common?  The Psychomachia, or ‘War of the Soul’, was composed by the Late Antique poet Prudentius in the 5th century and depicts an action-packed battle between the Virtues and Vices for possession of the human soul.  This allegory of good versus evil was hugely popular in the medieval period with about 300 surviving copies of the work, 20 of which were illuminated.  Two illuminated Anglo-Saxon copies are held at the British Library (now Additional MS 24199 and Cotton MS Cleopatra C VIII) and their illustrations can be compared to our comic books today.  Read more and see graphics at http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/01/the-psychomachia-an-anglo-saxon-comic-book.html

Francis Picabia:  Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction is a comprehensive survey of Picabia’s audacious, irreverent, and profoundly influential work across mediums.  This will be the first exhibition in the United States to chart his entire career, and the exhibition will run through March 19, 2017 at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.  Among the great modern artists of the past century, Francis Picabia (French, 1879–1953) also remains one of the most elusive.  He vigorously avoided any singular style, and his work encompassed painting, poetry, publishing, performance and film.  See pictures at https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1670  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Picabia

January 29, 2107  When Maurice Sendak died in 2012, he left a will directing that all his “rare edition books” go to the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia--a cache of 895 items that made up a large part of the celebrated author-illustrator’s own personal library of rare books.  But the Sendak estate contested the will, claiming that it had the right to keep many of the rare and valuable books.  After two years of litigation, the case recently came to a close, resolved through a combination of a Connecticut judge's rulings and an out-of-court settlement.  The net result:  643 books went to the Rosenbach, and 252 to the estate.  Many of the newly acquired books will be on display at the Rosenbach through April 30, 2017.  Peter Dobrin  Read much more and see graphics at http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/arts/Maurice_Sendaks_personal_library_comes_to_Philadelphia.html

The Rosenbach became affiliated with the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation in 2013, creating the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia.  This effort brought together two of the world’s preeminent collections of rare books, artifacts, and manuscripts, including Bram Stoker’s notes for Dracula with Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and thus creating one of the greatest collections of rare books, manuscripts, Americana, and artifacts anywhere in the world.  This affiliation also created a framework for endless new possibilities of sharing these collections with the public.  The Rosenbach is so named after Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and his brother Philip, whose personal collections form the heart of the collection today. https://libwww.freelibrary.org/locations/the-rosenbach/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1685   January 31, 3017  On this date in 1797, Franz Schubert, Austrian pianist and composer, was born.  On this date in 1862, Alvan Graham Clark discovered the white dwarf star Sirius B, a companion of Sirius, through an 18.5-inch (47 cm) telescope now located at Northwestern University.  On this date in 2010, Avatar became the first film to gross over $2 billion worldwide.

What is the difference between valuable and invaluable?  Something that’s valuable is worth a lot of money and would net a good price.  Something that’s invaluable, on the other hand, is valuable beyond estimation.  It’s priceless.  These adjectives can also apply to people, traits, actions, relationships and more.  Since we don’t typically appraise these for monetary value, this is where usage can get tricky.  Use invaluable when you want to step it up a notch.  A valuable employee is one who has desirable qualities and consistently makes positive contributions.  But a company would truly suffer at the loss of an invaluable employee.  https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/ask-writer/what-is-the-difference-between-valuable-and-invaluable

As happens with every presidential transition, the White House pages for the prior administration were removed immediately following the inauguration ceremony and replaced with those reflecting the new president.  It appears the Obama White House pages will now be found at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/   (information provided from Dudley Knox Library Naval Postgraduate School  courtesy of Ann M. Holman, Librarian at Darnall Medical Library, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center)  The Verge reports the launch of archivesocial.com/whitehouse, which stores all of the 250,000-plus Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest posts by President Barack Obama and his administration in a searchable collection.  http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/5/14181274/obama-social-media-archive-twitter-instagram-facebook  Thank you, Muse reader! 

Word of the Year (WOTY) 2016: Part 2. This is not fake news!  Posted on January 26, 2017 by thebettereditor   At last, for your reading pleasure (or displeasure, as the case may be):  the second part of the annual wrap-up of Word of the Year (WOTY) selections and related topics (part one is here).  It’s already late January of 2017, so all of this should have been settled some time ago.  Let’s blame this late post not on my procrastination, but on the fact that one of the sources on my ‘WOTY Watch List’ only released its final selection on January 25th.  They’re dragging out their “People’s Choice” selection until the 31st, but enough is enough:  I’ll add a postscript when that’s final.  The main reason I do this follow-up is to include the words nominated in various categories by the American Dialect Society, which doesn’t select a WOTY until the first week of January.  Because the ADS is made up of people who actually spend time thinking about language, and because they look at words in numerous categories (10 this year), most of the time their list is more interesting and includes better insight into what’s really going on with English than most of the others.  In the end, the ADS didn’t disappoint this year with their WOTY selection:  dumpster fire.  An excellent choice.  This word definitely saw a lot more use in 2016, in exactly the way they describe.  You can review all of the ADS nominees and see how they fared in balloting (there were clear favorites and clear rejections).  Macquarie Dictionary, in the meantime, went with “fake news.” Christopher Daly  Read more at https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/word-of-the-year-woty-2016-part-2-this-is-not-fake-news/

The Lane Sisters were four siblings who achieved success during the 1930s as a singing act, with their popularity leading to a series of successful films.  The sisters were Lola (1906-1981), Leota (1903-1963), Rosemary (1913-1974), and Priscilla (1915-1995).  Lola was born in Macy, Indiana and Leota, Rosemary, and Priscilla were born in Indianola, Iowa.  They changed their surname from "Mullican" when they began their careers.  Lola began her career as an actress in 1929 and made several films during the early 1930s.  By 1932 she had joined her three younger sisters to form a singing act.  First performing as a quartet with a dance band in 1932, the sisters toured the United States, and gradually their popularity grew.  In 1937 Priscilla was signed to a contract with Warner Brothers Studios.  She and Rosemary made their film debuts together in "Varsity Show" in 1937.  In the same year Lola played a strong supporting role in the Bette Davis crime melodrama "Marked Woman", as the type of hardboiled character that exemplified many of her later roles with Warner Brothers.  The following year Davis was offered a role in the film version of Fannie Hurst's novel "Sister Act" and when she turned down the part, Lola suggested to Jack Warner that the Lane Sisters would be suitable.  Each was tested for the roles of the four sisters, with only Leota being rejected as unsuitable.  The film was released in 1938 as "Four Daughters" with the fourth sister played by Gale Page.  The three Lane Sisters were promoted as "The Picture of American Girlhood" and the film was a great success, leading to more joint film appearances by the three sisters in sequels.  "Daughter's Courageous", and "Four Wives", (both 1939), and "Four Mothers" (1941) were popular successes.  Read more and see pictures at http://greatentertainersarchives.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-lane-sisters-and-their-mark-in.html

PARAPHRASES from The Gustav Sonata, a novel by Rose Tremain   ** Gin rummy is fairly simple with a little skill involved--without need for perpetual vigilance, as in bridge.  Friends thought gin rummy was a waste of time.  That's the point:  wasting time changes the nature of time, and the heart is stilled.  You may fall under the game's consoling spell.  ** This is not so Swiss--where's your famous self-mastery now?

Rose Tremain, born in London in 1943, was one of only five women writers to be included in Granta’s original list of 20 Best of Young British Novelists in 1983.  Her novels and short stories have been published worldwide in 27 countries and have won many prizes, including the Sunday Express book of the Year Award (for Restoration, also shortlisted for the Booker Prize); the Prix Femina Etranger, France (for Sacred Country); the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award (for Music & Silence) and the Orange Prize for Fiction 2008 (for The Road Home).  Restoration was filmed in 1995 and a stage version was produced in 2009.   Link to a list of her books at http://rosetremain.co.uk/about/biography/

Why tomatoes got bland—and how to make them sweet again  by Michael Price Jan. 26, 2017  Decades of commercial growing have altered the tomato’s genetic makeup, turning it from a once-sweet fruit into today’s relatively tasteless sandwich topper.  Now, a new study has uncovered which flavor-enhancing genes have been lost, giving growers a “roadmap” to breed tastiness back into their tomatoes.  “This is great work, which I believe could only be done by very few groups on Earth,” says Changbin Chen, a horticultural scientist at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, who wasn’t involved with the study.  “This is doable for commercial growers who supply the fresh tomato market.”  Tomatoes are among the highest-value crops in the world.  In the United States—the world’s second largest tomato grower behind China—they account for more than a billion dollars in sales annually.  Nutritionally, they are important sources of vitamins A and C.  But the large, plump, ruddy tomatoes available year-round in grocery stores taste much different than the small, multihued, berry-sized fruits that evolved more than 50 million years ago near Antarctica and were first domesticated in Central and South America some 2500 years ago.  The fruits spread throughout the world following Spanish colonization in the 16th century.  Over the next 400 years or so, hundreds of regional cultivars of tomatoes emerged, but they mostly stayed small, sweet, and flavorful.  To try to bring the taste of bland commercial tomatoes closer to that of their more appetizing ancestors, Harry Klee and an international team of horticultural researchers set out to decode exactly what has changed in the tomato genome.  They sequenced the genomes of 398 tomato varieties including commercially grown versions as well as wild, ancestral tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes—older, motley strains that are “light-years away from market tomatoes in terms of taste,” Klee says.   Over the next few years, the scientists assembled dozens of consumer panels and conducted taste tests with 101 university-grown tomato varieties, including both heirlooms and commercially grown fruits, recording which ones people liked most.  Comparing the consumer panels’ tomato preferences to their chemical profiles, the team came up with a list of 13 chemical compounds strongly linked to likability.  Going back to the tomato genome, the researchers identified specific genes responsible for the presence of these volatiles, as well as which heirloom varieties carried those genes, they report today in Science.  Klee says that by crossbreeding commercial tomato crops with these heirloom varieties over multiple generations, growers could, step-by-step, produce a tomato that’s large, plump, red, and disease resistant—but that also tastes pretty good.  This process would likely only take a few years, he says.  http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/why-tomatoes-got-bland-and-how-make-them-sweet-again

If you receive a phone call from someone asking “can you hear me,” hang up. You’re a potential victim in the latest scam circulating around the U.S.  Virginia police are now warning about the scheme, which also sparked warnings by Pennsylvania authorities late last year.  The “can you hear me” con is actually a variation on earlier scams aimed at getting the victim to say the word “yes” in a phone conversation.  That affirmative response is recorded by the fraudster and used to authorize unwanted charges on a phone or utility bill or on a purloined credit card.  “You say ‘yes,’ it gets recorded and they say that you have agreed to something,” said Susan Grant, director of consumer protection for the Consumer Federation of America. “I know that people think it’s impolite to hang up, but it’s a good strategy.”  But how can you get charged if you don’t provide a payment method?  The con artist already has your phone number, and many phone providers pass through third-party charges. 

Kathy Kristof  http://www.cbsnews.com/news/beware-new-can-you-hear-me-scam/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1684  January 30, 2017  On this date in 1847, Yerba Buena, California was renamed San Francisco, California.  On this date in 1862, the first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor was launched.  On this date in 1969, The Beatles' gave their last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert was broken up by the police.

Namby-Pamby  Long ago, when something was yours and it started with a consonant (let’s say a boat), you called it ‘my boat’.  When something started with a vowel and was yours (let’s say an elephant), you’d say . . . not ’my elephant’, but ’mine elephant’.  This is fairly archaic language that only really exists in a few places anymore, but it’s very similar to the difference between 'a’ and 'an’.  The my/mine rule does have evidence scattered around history, though, particularly in naming patterns:  You know the name 'Nancy’?  It comes from 'Ann(e)’.  Because parents would call their baby Anns 'mine Ann’, which became 'my Nan’, and then 'Nan’ and 'Nanny’ (the sense of 'nanny’ meaning aunt or caretaker comes from the Greek word for 'aunt’, 'nanna’, but the sense of 'nanny-goat'  comes from the nickname for 'Ann’) and eventually 'Nancy’.  Another name that got a similar treatment, though with much less permanence, was 'Ambrose’.  Ambrose became 'Amb’, became 'mine Amb’, became 'mine Amby’, became 'my Namby’.  Thus, the 'Namby’ in 'Namby-Pamby’ is referring specifically to someone named Ambrose.  http://etymologic.tumblr.com/post/33269566714/namby-pamby 

Namby Pamby is a term for affected, weak, and maudlin speech/verse.  It originates from Namby Pamby (1725) by Henry Carey.  Carey wrote his poem as a satire of Ambrose Philips and published it in his Poems on Several Occasions.  Its first publication was Namby Pamby: or, a panegyrick on the new versification address'd to A----- P----, where the A-- P-- implicated Ambrose Philips.  Philips had written a series of odes in a new prosody of seven-syllable lines and dedicated it to "all ages and characters, from Walpole sterrer of the realm, to miss Pulteney in the nursery."   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namby-pamby  See Namby Pamby by Henry Carey at http://poetry.literaturelearning.org/?q=node/666

Wasabi japonica is a slow growing, small (+/- 40 cm high) perennial from the Brassicaceae (cabbage) family, with heart-shaped, bright green leaves, long white stems, and a thick 10 –15 cm long rhizome, which is the part most sought after.  Wasabi is a very delicate plant, which traditionally grows wild in the mountains of Japan.  It is used since very ancient times for its medicinal properties, especially its anti-bacterial action.  It is also used as one of the main spices in the Japanese cuisine.  We came across wasabi japonica just by chance.  Wasabi is this green “mustard” which is generally served in Japanese restaurants with sashimi and sushi.  But then I heard that the “wasabi” we thought we ate was in reality a mix of horseradish, mustard and colouring!  Noucetta Kehdi  Read more and see pictures at http://www.eurohydro.com/pdf/articles/gb_hydroponics-and-wasabi-japonica.pdf

Joseph Otto Kesselring (1902–1967) was an American playwright known best for Arsenic and Old Lace, a hit on Broadway from 1939 to 1944 and other countries as well.  He was born in New York City to Henry and Frances Kesselring.  His father's parents were immigrants from Germany.  His mother was an English Canadian.   Kesselring spent much of his life in and around the theater.  In 1922 he began teaching vocal music and directed stage productions at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas a Mennonite school.  After two years, Kesselring left teaching and returned to the stage, working for two years with an amateur theatrical group in Niagara, New York.  He began working as a freelance playwright in 1933, completing 12 original plays, of which four were produced on Broadway:  There's Wisdom in Women (1935), Arsenic and Old Lace (1939), Four Twelves are 48 (1951), and Mother of that Wisdom (1963).   Arsenic and Old Lace ran for 1444 performances on Broadway and 1337 performances in London, and became a staple on the high school and dinner theater circuits.  The movie version released in 1944 was also a comedy hit.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kesselring

It is a novel lauded in the Netherlands as a modern classic, while its author is a literary titan.  But British readers are unlikely to have heard of The Evenings or Gerard Reve.  Nearly 70 years after the novel’s publication and 10 years after Reve’s death, it has finally been translated into English.  Set in Holland just after the second world war, it is a powerful story of an alienated young office worker who is cynical about his loving, middle-class parents and friends.  The novel went on to find such appreciation that it has never been out of print and was ranked by the Society of Dutch Literature as the country’s best novel of all time.  Daniel Seton, a commissioning editor at Pushkin Press, which is publishing it in the UK on 3 November 2017, said:  “It’s taught in schools over there.  It’s a kind of cultural touchstone . . . It’s highly acclaimed critically and very popular--quite a rare combination.”  The Pushkin edition’s jacket bears a comment from Herman Koch, the Dutch bestselling author of The Dinner, who draws parallels between The Evenings and classics by the Americans Jack Kerouac and JD Salinger:  “If The Evenings had appeared in English in the 1950s, it would have become every bit as much a classic as On the Road and The Catcher in the Rye.”  Dalya Alberge  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/22/gerard-reve-evenings-first-english-translation

Babies born in New Jersey this year will go home with a sturdy, safe box to sleep in and additional newborn essentials--all for free.  On January 26, 2017, the Garden State became the first in the US to launch a universal baby box program in an attempt to reduce infant mortality rates.  The baby box program follows the example of Finland, which has had a similar program in place since the 1930s.  Any expecting parent or parents of infants younger than 3 months old in New Jersey can take a short online educational program and receive a box filled with newborn essentials that can also serve as a safe sleeping space.  US Department of Health and Human Services guidelines for a safe sleeping environment for babies say parents should use a sleep surface such as a firm mattress or safety-approved crib covered by a fitted sheet, and nothing should be covering a baby's head.  Additionally, blankets, crib bumpers and pillows should be kept out of the sleep area.  Loose bedding and soft toys should also be left out, and smoking should be forbidden near the baby.   Babies should always be put on their back to go to sleep and be dressed in a one-piece sleeper, without a blanket, according to the guidelines.  Lastly, the baby's sleep area should be placed next to its parents, but parents should refrain from letting the baby sleep in an adult bed, chair or couch with parents or anyone else.  In 2016, an estimated 93% of infant fatalities associated with SUID in New Jersey were related to sleep and sleep environments, according to a report (PDF) from the New Jersey Child Fatality and Near Fatality Review Board.  http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/health/new-jersey-baby-boxes-safe-sleep/

It’s time to bid farewell to the Year of the Monkey and usher in the Year of the Rooster.  Chinese New Year, the most important traditional holiday in Chinese culture, begins Saturday, January 28, 2017.  What was for centuries a purely local celebration in China has now become a global holiday, with families across the world coming together to ring in the New Year on the lunar calendar.  In China, the official celebration lasts seven days, although traditional Chinese New Year is observed in some areas for upwards of two weeks or longer.  Common foods found at a typical Chinese New Year celebration might include dumplings, scallops, lettuce or clams for prosperity, shrimp for happiness, noodles for longevity, and chicken to represent a proper beginning and end to the year.  Fish is another important, and symbolic, part of any New Year meal.  “Fish is a very universal symbol all over China,” says Kian Lam Kho.  “The pronunciation is similar to how you say ‘leftover’ and symbolizes plentifulness.”  As families come together to celebrate Chinese New Year, many will give gifts of money in small red envelopes as well as tangerines or oranges to symbolize good luck.  They will also pay close attention to how many dishes are served for the meal.  “For the big feast, many families eat eight or nine dishes because eight represents prosperity and nine symbolizes infinity,” says Grace Young.  “Never eat four or seven dishes.  Four sounds like the word for death and seven is the celestial number for the deceased.”  Matt Lardie   Find recipe for stir-fried garlic lettuce at http://www.newsobserver.com/living/food-drink/mouthful-blog/article128214359.html

LONGEVITY NOODLES FOR CHINESE NEW YEAR  These noodles are traditionally served at Chinese New Year’s feasts.  An ancient Chinese belief says that long noodles are the key to a long life so don’t cut the noodles as you eat them.  Find recipe and pictures at http://hipfoodiemom.com/2014/01/31/longevity-noodles-for-chinese-new-year/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1683  January 25, 2017  On this date in 1606, the trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators (called Gunpowder Plot) began, ending with their execution on January 31.  On this date in 1756, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian pianist and composer, was born.  

According to local Washington, D.C. lore, the term lobbyist was coined by President Ulysses S. Grant during his tenure in office (1869-1877).  Grant, it is said, would frequent the famous Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue to seek reprieve from the demands of office. Despite his best efforts to keep his outings private, individuals standing in the hotel lobby would approach Grant and ask him for special favors or jobs.   President Grant apparently referred to these people as lobbyists.  It turns it turns out that the origin of the word lobbyist cannot, in fact, be traced to the majestic lobby of the Willard Hotel.  Rather, "lobbyist" was a part of the lexicon in the United States since well before 1850, with the name reportedly first used to refer to petitioners who would wait to speak to legislators in the lobby of the New York State Capitol in Albany.  Furthermore, the word "lobbying" can be found in print dating back to 1820.  Although history does not offer a definitive answer as to the very first derivations of the term lobbyist, several accounts trace the expression to London, England, where members of Parliament and their peers would gather in the lobbies of the Palace of Westminster before and after debate.  Lobbyist was reportedly in common usage in Britain throughout the 1800s, with one report suggesting that the origin of the moniker dates back to as early as 1640.  http://www.watermandc.com/origin-of-lobbyist.html

Paraphrase from The Silver Spoon, second book in the trilogy "A Modern Comedy", second part of the Forsyte Chronicles, Part III, Chapter 1, Circuses by John Galsworthy   Sensation-hunting had become a disease, and no one was being inoculated for it.  http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200741h.html

Three exceptional men from Dayton, Ohio, Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright and Paul Laurence Dunbar, found their creative outlet here through accomplishments and failures, and finally success.  However, these men offered the world something far greater, they offered the world hope, and the ability to take a dream and make it a reality.  Read about Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park at https://www.nps.gov/daav/index.htm   See pictures and descriptions of 16 trail sites  at http://www.aviationtrailinc.org/trailsites   Call  937-225-7705 for the current park schedule.

What’s the Difference Between “O” and “Oh”?  O say can you see . . . that this line begins with an “O” and not an “Oh”?  “O” may seem like just an old fashioned way to write “Oh,” but it actually has a slightly different meaning.  Consider some other famous O’s:  O Captain, my captain, O Pioneers, O Come All Ye Faithful, O Canada, O Brother Where Art Thou, O ye of little faith, O Christmas Tree.  These are all examples of what’s known as the vocative O—it indicates that someone or something is being directly addressed.  When you say “O Christmas tree” the “O” means you are talking right to the Christmas tree.  The rest of the song bears this out.  (Your branches are lovely! You’re always wearing that dress of green!)  Same for “O Canada” and pretty much any anthem.  The words to your school song probably go something like “O [alma mater], your campus is beautiful, and we think you’re great.”  “Oh” has a wider range.  It can indicate pain, surprise, disappointment, or really any emotional state.  While “oh, man!” could mean a number of things, “O man!” means “hey, you there … you man over there.”  The convention now is that while “oh” can be lower case, and is usually followed by a comma, “O” is always uppercase and without a comma.  But there hasn’t always been a strict separation between the two forms.  “Oh” and “O” were used interchangeably for a long time.  The meanings often overlap  too. When Juliet says, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” is she addressing him in her imagination or sighing with emotion?  A little of both.  It’s not hard to see why it’s so difficult to keep a firm border around vocative O in English.  Arika Okrent, author of In the Land of Invented Languages  http://mentalfloss.com/article/56582/whats-difference-between-o-and-oh  See also a list of interjections (words that have no grammatical meaning, but just signify emotions, such as "Aha" and "Wow") and their meanings at https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/interjections/

Chuck Finley appears to be a voracious reader, having checked out 2,361 books at the East Lake County (Florida) Library in a nine-month period this year.  But Finley didn't read a single one of the books, ranging from "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck to a kids book called "Why Do My Ears Pop?" by Ann Fullick.  That's because Finley isn't real.  The fictional character was concocted by two employees at the library, complete with a false address and driver's license number.  After allegations by an unidentified person made in November 2016, an investigation by the Lake County clerk of courts' inspector general's office concluded that Finley was a fake, and the county has since requested a systemwide audit of its libraries.  The goal behind the creation of "Chuck Finley" was to make sure certain books stayed on the shelves--books that aren't used for a long period can be discarded and removed from the library system.  George Dore, the library's branch supervisor who was put on administrative leave for his part in the episode, said he wanted to avoid having to later repurchase books purged from the shelf.  He said the same thing is being done at other libraries.  Jason Ruiter   http://www.newsherald.com/news/20170102/fake-readers-help-save-books

How To Make Zucchini Noodles by Elana Amsterdam   Some people use a spiralizer to make zucchini noodles (zoodles).  I prefer the julienne peeler for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s half the price of a spiralizer.  Second, it takes up about a tenth of the space.  So if you’re wondering how to make zucchini noodles, my advice is to do so with the julienne slicer!  It’s a breeze.  Find recipe and pictures at https://elanaspantry.com/how-to-make-zucchini-noodles/

Audrey Niffenegger (born 1963) is an American writer, artist and academic.  Niffenegger's debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, was published in 2003.  A film adaptation was released in 2009.  She has written a graphic novel, or "novel in pictures" as Niffenegger calls it, called The Three Incestuous Sisters.  This book tells the story of three unusual sisters who live in a seaside house.  The book has been compared to the work of Edward Gorey.  Another graphic novel, The Adventuress, was released on September 1, 2006.  The 2004 short story 'The Night Bookmobile' was serialised in 2008 in 'Visual Novel' format in The Guardian.  In March 2009, Niffenegger sold her second novel, a literary ghost story called Her Fearful Symmetry, to Charles Scribner's Sons for an advance of $5 million. The book was released on October 1, 2009 and is set in London's Highgate Cemetery where, during research for the book, Niffenegger acted as a tour guide.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Niffenegger

The American Library Association announced its annual children's book awards on January 23, 2017.  While the Caldecott and Newbery medals are the best known of these honors, this year, one of the lesser-known awards might attract the most attention.  That's because the Coretta Scott King Award for best African-American author went to Rep. John Lewis and his collaborator Andrew Aydin for March: Book Three, the third installment in the civil rights leader's graphic memoir.  Lewis' book also won three other awards from the library association—the first time an author has won that many awards in a single year.  In November, March won a National Book Award.  A Coretta Scott King Award is also given to the best African-American illustrator, and this year's went to Javaka Steptoe for Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.  Steptoe also won the prestigious Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book.  The Newbery Medal for outstanding contribution to children's literature went to Kelly Barnhill for The Girl Who Drank the Moon, a fantasy novel for middle school readers.  http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/23/511230924/john-lewis-graphic-novel-wins-4-american-library-association-awards

Book publisher orders more copies of ‘1984’ after sales surge by Matt Jaworowski   According to the report, “1984” first appeared on the online retailer’s top sellers list on January 23, 2017.  By the next day, it had risen to No. 1.  The list is updated every hour based on latest sales.  CNN is reporting Penguin, a book publisher with rights to Orwell’s “1984” has pushed through an order for 75,000 copies this week--notably larger than their average reprint.  Orwell’s novel tells a dystopian tale of a people ruled by an overbearing government fraught with surveillance, “doublethink” and public manipulation.  CNN also reports “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley and “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis--which follow similar themes of “1984”--also cracked Amazon’s top 100 top sellers list this week.   http://wtnh.com/2017/01/25/book-publisher-orders-more-copies-of-1984-after-sales-surge/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1682  January 25, 2017  On this date in 1858, Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn was played at the marriage of Queen Victoria's daughter, Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia, and became a popular wedding processional.  On this date in 1890, Nellie Bly completed her round-the-world journey in 72 days. 

Word of the Day  Burns night  noun  An event held on the evening of 25th January in celebration of the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns (born on that day in 1759), usually involving Scottish foods and recitals of his poetry.

The first cousin of the English language is alive and well in the Netherlands by Patrick Cox   English has become the world's premier language.  And Frisian . . .  it has managed to hang on, against the odds.  It's now making a comeback, partly thanks to the European Union and Dutch government support (sometimes begrudgingly) for Frisian language schools, news media and performance arts.  Frisians themselves are more likely to say their language has survived because of the determination of the Frisian people.  Non-Frisians in the Netherlands sometimes characterize this as stubbornness.  Whatever it is, people in villages across the province of Friesland still speak Frisian.  And increasingly, young people write in Frisian, especially when using social media.  So what about that connection with English?  It goes back at least 1,400 years.  The English king Ethelbert oversaw the establishment of the so-called Kentish laws, the first laws that we know of written in any Germanic language.  The Kentish Laws are the oldest surviving documents in Old English.  Read more and see pictures at http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-23/first-cousin-english-language-alive-and-well-netherlands

Winston Churchill was forty before he discovered the pleasures of painting.  The compositional challenge of depicting a landscape gave the heroic rebel in him temporary repose.  He possessed the heightened perception of the genuine artist to whom no scene is commonplace.  Over a period of forty-eight years his creativity yielded more than 500 pictures.  His art quickly became half passion, half philosophy.  He enjoyed holding forth in speech and print on the aesthetic rewards for amateur devotees.  To him it was the greatest of hobbies.  Encouragement to persevere with his hobby stemmed from an amateur prize (his first) which he won for "Winter Sunshine, Chartwell," a bright reflection of his Kentish home.  He sent five paintings to be exhibited in Paris in the 1920s.  Four were sold for £30 each.  Making money, it has been well established, was not the incentive, then or ever.  Sheer delight accounted for Churchill's devotion.  For the Paris test of his ability he hid his identity under an assumed name:  Charles Morin.  Churchill again favoured a pseudonym (Mr. Winter) in 1947 when offering works to the Royal Academy, so his fame in other spheres was not exploited.  Two pictures were accepted and eventually the title of Honorary Academician Extraordinary was conferred on him.  A winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Churchill was conscious of the abiding unity of poetry, painting and sculpture -- "sister arts."  Ron Cynewulf Robbins  https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/the-artist-winston-churchill.html

In 2015, an important collection of paintings by Winston Churchill was  accepted for the nation in lieu of inheritance tax and will mostly hang at his family home, the National Trust property Chartwell.  The 37 paintings were offered following the death of the wartime leader’s last surviving child, Mary Soames, who died aged 91 in May, 2014.  Many of Soames’ most prized possessions related to her father were sold at auction but she expressed a wish that the paintings, which were on long-term loan to Chartwell, should remain there.  In total, 35 paintings are being allocated to Chartwell, the earliest being Hoe Farm from 1915 and the latest being two from 1955, painted on holidays--The Grotto of the Ropemakers, Syracuse and a view of Marrakech.  Mark Brown  https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/10/winston-churchill-paintings-accepted-for-nation-in-lieu-of-tax  See also 165 works of art by Winston Churchill at http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=667 and 10 Politicians Who Tried Their Hands at Art at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/politicians-who-had-brushes-with-art-11291

Deep in the Folger Library, in Washington DC, Heather Wolfe, a paleographer specialising in Elizabethan England is a Shakespeare detective who, last year, made the career-defining discovery that is going to transform our understanding of Shakespeare’s biography.  In the simplest terms, Wolfe delivered the coup de grace to conspiracy theorists, including Vanessa Redgrave and Derek Jacobi, who contest the authenticity, even the existence, of the playwright known to contemporaries as Master Will Shakespeare.  Wolfe is an accidental sleuth.  Her scholar’s passion is as much for old manuscripts as for the obscurities surrounding our national poet.  Project Dustbunny, for example, one of her initiatives at the Folger Shakespeare Library, has made some extraordinary discoveries based on microscopic fragments of hair and skin accumulated in the crevices and gutters of 17th-century books.  Robert McCrum  Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jan/08/sherlock-holmes-of-the-library-cracks-shakespeare-identity

The loss of the ancient world's single greatest archive of knowledge, the Library of Alexandria, has been lamented for ages.  But how and why it was lost is still a mystery.  The mystery exists not for lack of suspects but from an excess of them.  Alexandria was founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great.  His successor as Pharaoh, Ptolomy II Soter, founded the Museum or Royal Library of Alexandria in 283 BC.  The Museum was a shrine of the Muses modeled after the Lyceum of Aristotle in Athens.  The Museum was a place of study which included lecture areas, gardens, a zoo, and shrines for each of the nine muses as well as the Library itself.  It has been estimated that at one time the Library of Alexandria held over half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India and many other nations.  Over 100 scholars lived at the Museum full time to perform research, write, lecture or translate and copy documents. T he library was so large it actually had another branch or "daughter" library at the Temple of Serapis.  The first person blamed for the destruction of the Library is none other than Julius Caesar himself.  In 48 BC, Caesar was pursuing Pompey into Egypt when he was suddenly cut off by an Egyptian fleet at Alexandria.  Greatly outnumbered and in enemy territory, Caesar ordered the ships in the harbor to be set on fire.  The fire spread and destroyed the Egyptian fleet. Unfortunately, it also burned down part of the city--the area where the great Library stood.  The second story of the Library's destruction is more popular, thanks primarily to Edward Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".  But the story is also a tad more complex.  Theophilus was Patriarch of Alexandria from 385 to 412 AD.  During his reign the Temple of Serapis was converted into a Christian Church (probably around 391 AD) and it is likely that many documents were destroyed then.  The Temple of Serapis was estimated to hold about ten percent of the overall Library of Alexandria's holdings.  The final individual to get blamed for the destruction is the Moslem Caliph Omar.  In 640 AD the Moslems took the city of Alexandria.  Upon learning of "a great library containing all the knowledge of the world" the conquering general supposedly asked Caliph Omar for instructions.  The Caliph has been quoted as saying of the Library's holdings, "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous."  So, allegedly, all the texts were destroyed by using them as tinder for the bathhouses of the city.  It is also quite likely that even if the Museum was destroyed with the main library the outlying "daughter" library at the Temple of Serapis continued on.  Many writers seem to equate the Library of Alexandria with the Library of Serapis although technically they were in two different parts of the city.  https://ehistory.osu.edu/articles/burning-library-alexandria

The dates of the Greek mathematician and engineer Heron of Alexandria are not known with certainty, but he must have worked between the first and third century CE.  Boas cites evidence in Heron's treatise Dioptra that Heron referred to an eclipse of the moon that occurred on March 13, 63, which would place him definitely in the first century.  In Heron's numerous surviving writings are designs for automata—machines operated by mechanical or pneumatic means.  These included devices for temples to instill faith by deceiving believers with "magical acts of the gods," for theatrical spectacles, and machines like a statue that poured wine.  Among his inventions were:  ♦ A windwheel operating a pipe organ—the first instance of wind powering a machine.  ♦ The first automatic vending machine.  When a coin was introduced through a slot on the top of the machine, a set amount of holy water was dispensed.  When the coin was deposited, it fell upon a pan attached to a lever.  The lever opened up a valve which let some water flow out.  The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until the coin fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve.  ♦ Mechanisms for the Greek theater, including an entirely mechanical puppet play almost ten minutes in length, powered by a binary-like system of ropes, knots, and simple machines operated by a rotating cylindrical cogwheel.  The sound of thunder was produced by the mechanically-timed dropping of metal balls onto a hidden drum.  http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=16  See also Heron's Inventions (includes graphics) by Martyn Shuttleworth  at https://explorable.com/heron-inventions

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1681  January 23, 2017  On this date in 1957, American inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sold the rights to his flying disc to the Wham-O toy company, which later renamed it the "Frisbee".  See also http://www.wfdf.org/history-stats/history-of-fyling-disc/4-history-of-the-frisbee and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_(sport)  On this date in 1964, the 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, was ratified.

If you were born in the United States or in another country which granted you its citizenship at birth “jure soli” (by law of the soil), you may claim Italian citizenship “jure sanguinis” (by law of the bloodline) by descent and be considered an Italian citizen if your ancestors were Italians at the time of your birth.  Find more information, including exceptions to the rule at http://www.ambwashingtondc.esteri.it/ambasciata_washington/en/informazioni_e_servizi/cittadinanza-jure-sanguinis.html   Michael Steven Bublé  (born 1975) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, actor and record producer.  He was recognized as an Italian citizen since birth by jure sanguinis in 2005.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bubl%C3%A9

There are more public libraries in America—some 9,000 central buildings and 7,500 branch locations—than McDonald’s restaurants, making them one of the most ubiquitous institutions in the nation.  Far from serving as obsolescent repositories for dead wood, libraries are integral, yet threatened, parts of the American social fabric.  Libraries, after all, are truly democratic spaces where all are welcome and where everything inside is available to everyone.  Few American institutions strive for “equity of access,” a core principle of the American Library Association, and even fewer pay more than lip service to the idea that services like the Internet are necessary aspects of life that simply must be made available to all members of society.  But despite their impact and import—much of it hidden from people of means who can independently (and often expensively) secure for themselves those services provided by the library—America is starving its libraries, cutting off millions of people from the stream of information that, like oxygen, powers the development and basic functions of society.  In response to a 2010 story by Chicago’s Fox affiliate, “Are Libraries Necessary, or a Waste of Tax Money?”, Commissioner of the Chicago Public Library Mary A. Dempsey explained, “There continues to exist in this country a vast digital divide.  It exists along lines of race and class and is only bridged consistently and equitably through the free access provided by the Chicago Public Library and all public libraries in this nation.  Some 60 percent.  In New York City, library funding is down $65 million since 2008, even though demand for library services is surging.  At the 217 local library branches across the city, there are waiting lists for English-language classes and computer-coding classes.  One-third of city residents—about 2.8 million people, more than the entire population of Chicago—has no home Internet access and must rely on services available at the public library.  Indeed, the Queens Library, which serves the most ethnically and economically diverse communities in the United States and which loaned out 15.7 million items during the 2014 fiscal year, has the highest circulation rate of any public library in the country.  Yet despite their popularity, City libraries are literally falling apart, and some branches in Brooklyn and the Bronx more resemble subway stations than literary oases.  Beyond mere fairness, there are viable economic reasons for sustaining New York City’s public libraries.  In 2010, the City of Philadelphia spent $33 million on its public libraries; private donations contributed $12 million more.  Subsequent to the funding, the value of an average home located within one quarter-mile of one of the city’s 54 public library branches rose $9,630.  In the aggregate, the public libraries contributed $698 million to home values in Philadelphia, which translated into an additional $18.5 million in property taxes for the city and school district.  Other studies have demonstrated that for every tax dollar that libraries take in, communities receive anywhere between $2.38 and $6.54 in return.  Katrina vanden Heuvel   Read more at https://www.thenation.com/article/why-public-libraries-matter/

On January 13, 2017 Barack Obama sat down in the Oval Office and talked about the indispensable role that books have played during his presidency and throughout his life—from his peripatetic and sometimes lonely boyhood, when “these worlds that were portable” provided companionship, to his youth when they helped him to figure out who he was, what he thought and what was important.  The writings of Lincoln, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Mr. Obama found, were “particularly helpful” when “what you wanted was a sense of solidarity,” adding “during very difficult moments, this job can be very isolating.”  “So sometimes you have to sort of hop across history to find folks who have been similarly feeling isolated, and that’s been useful.”  There is a handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address in the Lincoln Bedroom, and sometimes, in the evening, Mr. Obama says, he would wander over from his home office to read it.  Like Lincoln, Mr. Obama taught himself how to write, and for him, too, words became a way to define himself, and to communicate his ideas and ideals to the world.  Mr. Obama taught himself to write as a young man by keeping a journal and writing short stories when he was a community organizer in Chicago—working on them after he came home from work and drawing upon the stories of the people he met.  He had lunch last week with five novelists he admires—Dave Eggers, Colson Whitehead, Zadie Smith, Junot Díaz and Barbara Kingsolver. He not only talked with them about the political and media landscape, but also talked shop, asking how their book tours were going and remarking that he likes to write first drafts, long hand, on yellow legal pads.  Michiko Kakutani  Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/books/obamas-secret-to-surviving-the-white-house-years-books.html

January 9, 2017  A Wicker Park elementary parent called out the Chicago Teachers Union over the weekend on a national stage, claiming the union stopped parents who volunteered to staff their children’s school library after its librarian was laid off.  Mark Hendershot, a parent at A.N. Pritzker Elementary, penned an op-ed titled “The Library Lockout at Our Elementary School” published online by The Wall Street Journal in which he criticizes CTU for keeping parents from temporarily filling in to work a “union job” earlier this school year.  In the article, Hendershot said his 6-year-old first-grade daughter and her schoolmates have been unable to access library resources at Pritzker since their librarian was let go last fall.  Dozens of parents volunteered to fill the librarian’s role on a short-term basis until a full-time replacement could be found, but Hendershot said that plan was shot down before it got off the ground when a CTU member filed a formal complaint.  “Although the parents intended to do nothing more than help students check books in and out, the union claimed that the parents would be impermissibly filling a role reserved for teachers,” he wrote.  “The volunteer project was shut down following the meeting and the library is currently being used for dance classes.”  A CTU spokesman defended that decision, stating that a volunteer librarian would in fact violate the terms of the union’s contract with the Chicago Board of Education.  Matt Masterson  http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2017/01/09/cps-parent-calls-out-teachers-union-over-library-lockout

The first public library in Rome was founded by Asinius Pollio.  From the spoils of the war he constructed and erected the library in the Atrium Libertatis, which he adorned with statues of the most celebrated heroes as well as other famous works of art all open to the public.  The library had Greek and Latin wings, and reportedly its establishment posthumously fulfilled one of Caesar's ambitions.  Pollio retired into private life as a patron of literary figures and became a writer.  In retirement, Pollio organized literary readings where he encouraged authors to read their own work, and he was the first Roman author to recite his own works.  Read about other ancient libraries and see pictures at http://www.crystalinks.com/romelibrary.html  See also A Brief History of Roman Libraries by Javier Rodriguez at http://www.roman-empire.net/articles/article-005.html and The First-Known Public Library in Rome at http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=179

January 19, 2017  Literary adaptations are currently an incredibly popular trend in television, with Netflix’s revival of A Series of Unfortunate Events premiering this past week, and highly-anticipated adaptations of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods set to debut later this year.  Another Gaiman work, Good Omens, can now be added to that list.  Amazon has greenlit a miniseries based on the 1990 novel, which Neil Gaiman co-wrote with fellow fantasy author Terry Pratchett.  Jenna Anderson  http://comicbook.com/2017/01/20/terry-pratchett-neil-gaiman-good-omens-amazon/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1680  January 20, 2017  On this date in 1929, In Old Arizona, the first full-length talking motion picture filmed outdoors, was released.  On this date in 1937, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Nance Garner were sworn in for their second terms as U.S. President and U.S. Vice President, the first occasion a Presidential Inauguration occurred on January 20 rather than March 4 (following the ratification of the 20th Amendment).  See http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5105/