Wednesday, January 4, 2017

NAME CHANGES  Jack Palance (born Volodymyr Palahniuk 1919)  Michael Keaton (born Michael John Douglas 1951)  Mitchell Parish (born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky 1900)  Elvis Costello (born Declan Patrick MacManus 1954) Tony Bennett (born Anthony Dominick Benedetto 1926)  Performing under the name Joe Bari, Bennett was discovered in 1949 by Pearl Bailey, who asked him to open for her show in Greenwich Village.  He subsequently caught the attention of Bob Hope, who advised him to take the name Tony Bennett and put him in his road show.  http://www.biography.com/people/tony-bennett-9926699#career-revival

Jim Brower, age 101, died December 22, 2016 in Temperance, Michigan.  Since 1932, Jim Brower has created art work characterized by its attention to detail, execution, design, and often humor.  By the time Jim was in high school, his advanced skills in draftsmanship and composition were evident.  He was editor and art editor of his Charleston, WV, high school annual and at that time worked closely with the platemaker and printer who gave him a head start in the graphic art process.  When Jim was two, his family moved to Toledo where he finished grade school and the freshman year of high school.  The family returned to West Virginia in 1929 where Jim finished high school in Charleston in 1932, moved to Huntington in 1933 and back to Toledo in 1943.  While in Huntington, after a brief stint as an advertising art director, he went into private practice as the Jim Brower Studio.  In 1944, he purchased the Felz Art Studio and was a partner and art director of Brower, Brownsberger and Burda in Toledo through 1951.  In 1952, the partnership was dissolved and he opened the Jim Brower Studio with his primary customer being Owens-Illinois, Inc. along with others such as Toledo Edison, DeVilbiss Company, and Toledo advertising agencies.  From 1992 to 1997, Jim was Director of Art and Design for Meeks Heit Publishing Company.  He served as illustrator for its books, Education for Sexuality, 1970, Human Sexuality, 1982, Education for Sexuality and HIV/AIDS, 1993.  Jim was busy with advertising art and had painted no more than ten watercolors prior to 1978.  Jim's sense of humor often surfaces in his watercolors.  In 1984, Jim received the Watercolor Ohio ‘84 Gold Medal for a painting of old discarded ties titled “Candidates for Goodwill.”  Another work of his own image reflected in a light switch, and titled “Self Portraits Turn Me Off”, was given special juror's mention in an Ohio Watercolor Society show.  Jim served as president of the Northwestern Ohio Watercolor Society, 1983-84, and as president of the Toledo Federation of Art Societies, 1987-88.  He served on the Board of Directors of the Ohio Watercolor Society from 1986 to 1992 and for a number of years produced the annual exhibition catalog.  Jim designed the 1983 Return of the Jedi Star Wars glasses for Burger King.  He went on to win many national awards including the San Diego International, Watercolor Society, and more.  Jim painted more than forty paintings in his 100th year of life.  He was featured on the Smucker's Jelly jar in his 100th year and was honored by Willard Scott on national television for his community service.  Jim was a big supporter of the Toledo Public Library.  He cherished his relationship with the Monday Morning Painters and his membership in the Tile Club.  Jim's family established the Ohio Watercolor Jim Brower Lifetime Achievement Fund to honor his many contribution to the world of watercolor painting. 

In the United States, a designated survivor (or designated successor) is an individual in the presidential line of succession, usually a member of the United States Cabinet, who is arranged to be at a physically distant, secure, and undisclosed location when the President and the country's other top leaders (e.g., Vice President and Cabinet members) are gathered at a single location, such as during State of the Union addresses and presidential inaugurations.  This is intended to guarantee continuity of government in the event of a catastrophic occurrence that kills the President and many officials in the presidential line of succession.  If such an event occurred, killing both the President and Vice President, the surviving official highest in the line, possibly the designated survivor, would become the Acting President of the United States under the Presidential Succession Act.   The practice of naming a designated survivor originated during the Cold War with its risk of nuclear attack.  Only Cabinet members who are eligible to succeed to the presidency (i.e., natural-born citizens over the age of 35, who have resided in the United States for at least 14 years) are chosen as designated survivors.  For example, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was not a natural-born citizen (having emigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia) and was thus not in the line of presidential succession.  The designated survivor is provided presidential-level security and transport for the duration of the event.  An aide carries a nuclear football with them.  However, they are not given a briefing on what to do in the event that the other successors to the presidency are killed.   Find list of some designated survivors from 1981 to 2016 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_survivor

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born 1929) is an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction.  She has also written poetry and essays.  First published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality and ethnography.  In 2016, The New York Times described her as "America's greatest living science fiction writer", although she herself has said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".   She influenced such Booker Prize winners and other writers as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell--and notable science fiction and fantasy writers including Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks.  She has won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, each more than once.   In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.  Read much more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin

Le Guin is not a French name at all; it's Breton.  It's pronounced, to the best of my knowledge, just like its Welsh cognate gwyn—white, blond, fair.  Here I am in English:  URsuhluh (UR as in burr; or, in England, URsyoola) KROb'r l'GWIN.  http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-HowToPronounceMe.html  

Breton is a Celtic language spoken mainly in Brittany (Breizh) by about 210,000 people, about 35,000 of whom speak use it as an everyday language.  It is spoken mainly in western parts of Brittany, and is also spoken, to some extent, in parts of eastern Brittany, and by Breton immigrants in other parts of France, and in other countries.  The area known to the Romans as Armorica was renamed Brittany ("Little Britain") after the people who migrated there from Britain, particularly from Cornwall, in the 6th century AD.  Between 1880 to the middle of the 20th century, Breton was banned from schools and children were punished for speaking it.  This changed in 1951 with the promulgation of the Deixonne law, which allowed for the Breton language and culture to be taught for one to three hours a week in public education if the teacher is willing and able to do so.  Since then a number of schools and colleges have been set up providing either education through the medium of Breton or bilingual Breton/French education.
See Breton alphabet and pronunciation at http://www.omniglot.com/writing/breton.htm


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1673  January 4, 2017   On this date in 1904, the case, which became known as Gonzáles v. Williams, the Supreme Court determined that under the immigration laws, Isabel González of Puerto Rico was not an alien, and therefore could not be denied entry into New York.  The court, however declined to declare that she was a U.S. citizen.  Puerto Ricans came to be known as something in between: "noncitizen nationals."   (In 1917, the United States Congress passed the Jones-Shafroth Act which conferred United States citizenship on all citizens of Puerto Rico.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Gonz%C3%A1lez  On this date in 1957, Patty Loveless, American singer-songwriter and guitarist, was born.  Thought for todayIt is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor. - Max Eastman, journalist and poet (4 Jan 1883-1969)

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