February 17, 2017  MYSORE, India   It’s an unseasonably hot winter day in this southern city, and the midmorning sun is turning the crumbling yellow stucco of the 100-year-old City Central Library a shade paler.  A hawker is yelling on the busy road, trying to drum up business for his collection of old coins and medals.  As I take the stairs to the main level, I can see a bit of a line at the water fountain.  The occupants of the small reading room are all middle-age men poring over newspapers in at least three languages.  The ceiling fans whir.  Pages rustle.  Not one man is looking at his phone.  Overhead a framed poster features a paraphrase of a line from the novelist Neil Gaiman:  “Google can bring you 100,000 answers but a librarian can bring you the right one.”  Fighting words.  In the larger reading room the crowd is mixed.  An elderly woman looks up from her notebook; a lanky boy is mouthing the words he reads.  Every seat is occupied, and I wander between the stacks:  Astronomy, Home Economics, Satire in Kannada Literature.  Every so often, there are rumblings, among students gathered on the front steps or in the local press, that the library will close:  the predatory gaze of developers is never far.  And I’m more conscious than ever of the many things we would lose.  Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve used the library.  When I was growing up in Nairobi, Kenya, I would sometimes go to a tiny community library run by a church organization.  It was a stronghold of stalwarts; there were hardly ever any new faces.  The dust was thick.  Branches of a jacaranda tree pressed against the single large window.  The place had a vaguely medicinal smell, as though along with tonic for the mind, it administered tinctures and liniments.  One evening a few minutes before closing, the librarian and I were packing up at the same time.  He glanced over at one of my books and did a cinematic double take.  “That’s not from this library?” he asked.  “No, it’s mine,” I said, telling the truth but sounding cagey.  I was in early adolescence, and everything I said seemed like an admission of guilt.  “I’m reading it too,” he said, whipping out his own copy.  It was the same edition of Iris Murdoch’s “A Word Child.”  I looked at my copy for a few seconds and put it in my bag.  I felt a sudden rush to the head:  After years of longing to leave childhood behind, it felt as though I had finally become an adult.  Mahesh Rao  Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/opinion/sunday/an-elegy-for-the-library.html?_r=0

Regretful and Regrettable--Commonly Confused Words by Richard Nordquist   Though clearly related in meaning, the adjectives regretful and regrettable aren't synonyms.  An important thing to keep in mind is that only people are regretful, while actions, circumstances, or conditions are regrettable.  By extension, a person's face, expression, eyes, voice, or words may also be described as "regretful."  The adjective regretful means full of regret--that is, feeling or showing sadness or disappointment.  The adjective regrettable refers to something unfortunate, sad, or disappointing--that is, something causing or deserving regret.  http://grammar.about.com/od/alightersideofwriting/a/regretgloss.htm

Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) around the world.  Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant—the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter—which is approximately 3.14159.  Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal point.  As an irrational and transcendental number, it will continue infinitely without repetition or pattern.  While only a handful of digits are needed for typical calculations, Pi’s infinite nature makes it a fun challenge to memorize, and to computationally calculate more and more digits.  Link to Pi sightings (including a Pi Pie Pan) and a video of a Pi song at http://www.piday.org/

Leading Australian producer Jan Chapman was “devastated” by another mistake in the 2017 Oscars telecast.  In addition to the best picture gaffe, during the show’s In Memoriam segment, a photo of a living woman was mistakenly used.  Janet Patterson, an Australian costume designer and four-time Oscar nominee (“The Piano,” “Portrait of a Lady,” “Oscar and Lucinda” and “Bright Star”) passed away in October 2015.  Her name and occupation were correct in the montage, but the photo used was of Jan Chapman, a still-living Australian film producer.  Lawrence Lee and Patrick Frater  See the erroneous image at http://variety.com/2017/film/awards/oscars-in-memoriam-segment-janet-patterson-wrong-photo-jan-chapman-1201997597/

The mysterious woman who inspired a bestselling novel by Emma Jane Kirby  A romantic novel written more than half a century ago is so popular in Turkey that it has topped the country's bestseller list for the past three years.  Young people today seem to relate to the author, who was repeatedly censored, jailed and ultimately shot in mysterious circumstances.  Now, for the first time, Madonna in a Fur Coat is being published in English.  The author, Sabahattin Ali, had started two newspapers, both of which were destroyed almost as soon as they appeared.  And his very popular weekly satirical newspaper Marco Pasha, which he edited and owned, became a target of government censorship because of its political editorials.  He was twice imprisoned for his writing.  But today everyone wants to talk about Sabahattin Ali, especially the young for whom he's become a resistance icon, a man who dared stand up to the heavy hand of the state.  When I arrive at Filiz's apartment and recount this tale to her, Filiz becomes very emotional too.  For years she had to deny she was Ali's daughter--it was too dangerous in the 1940s to be associated with his outspoken socialist views.  If anyone asked who her father was, her mother told her she must politely change the subject.  "Nothing has changed in Turkey," Filiz says bitterly.  "The heavy censorship of the press, the imprisonment of journalists . . . now it's maybe even worse."  "We discovered some time ago that Maria, the Madonna, was a real woman," she tells me.  "My father wrote to a female friend when he was in prison and recounted the whole tale of his passion for this German lady to her."  Read much more and see pictures at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36213246

February 20, 2017  For more than a week, a popular West Frankfort, Illinois businessman and community leader has been in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a detention facility in Montgomery City, Missouri, as his neighbors, family and friends work to bring him home.  Carlos Hernandez Pacheco, 38, from Mexico, was arrested at his home in West Frankfort on Feb. 9 and has since been held in the Montgomery County Jail, which is also an ICE detention facility about an hour west of St. Louis.  He is being held over questions about his legal status in the U.S., as confirmed on Friday by an ICE official in an emailed response to The Southern Illinoisan.  His wife and three young boys, two of whom attend Frankfort Community Unit School District 168 schools—the other is not of school age yet—remain in their West Frankfort home while a lawyer works to secure Pacheco’s release on bond, said Tim Grigsby, owner of Simple Solutions Printing in West Frankfort and a close friend of Pacheco’s.  Pacheco is the manager of La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant in West Frankfort.  Pacheco’s wife and children are U.S. citizens, and it was not well known in the community that Pacheco was not.  He pays taxes, is an active member of the West Frankfort community and has been working for years to obtain legal status, Grigsby said.  “Even though his status was illegal, he was still contributing to our society,” Grigsby said.  “There’s a lot of misconceptions about what it means to have an illegal status.”  Molly Parker  Read more at http://thesouthern.com/news/local/friends-family-rally-behind-west-frankfort-restaurant-manager-detained-by/article_d25f994c-4fb5-572c-9710-48e50ffb24c2.html

The Australian children’s book author Mem Fox has suggested she might never return to the US after she was detained and insulted by border control agents at Los Angeles airport.  Fox, who is famous worldwide for her best-selling books including Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes and Possum Magic, was en route to a conference in Milwaukee earlier this month when she was stopped.  She told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation she was detained for one hour and 40 minutes and questioned by border agents for 15 minutes in front of a room full of people.  “I have never in my life been spoken to with such insolence, treated with such disdain, with so many insults and with so much gratuitous impoliteness,” Fox said.  Fox said she was questioned over her visa, despite having travelled to America 116 times before without incident.  She was eventually granted access to the country.  After lodging a complaint over her treatment with the Australian embassy in Washington and the US embassy in Canberra, Fox received an emailed apology from US officials.  Fox said she was shocked by her treatment and “couldn’t imagine” returning to the US.  Bonnie Malkin  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/25/australian-childrens-author-mem-fox-detained-by-us-border-control-i-sobbed-like-a-baby

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1699  February 28, 2017  On this date in 1827, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was incorporated, becoming the first railroad in America offering commercial transportation of both people and freight.  On this date in 1897, Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, was deposed by a French military force.  On this date in 1936, DuPont scientist Wallace Carothers invented nylon.

Antiquarian books worth more than £2m have been stolen by a gang who avoided a security system by abseiling into a west London warehouse.  The three thieves made off with more than 160 publications after raiding the storage facility near Heathrow in what has been labelled a Mission:  Impossible-style break-in.  The gang are reported to have climbed on to the building’s roof and bored holes through the reinforced glass-fibre skylights before rappelling down 40ft of rope while avoiding motion-sensor alarms.  Scotland Yard confirmed that “a number of valuable books”, many from the 15th and 16th centuries, were stolen during the burglary in Feltham between 29 and 30 January. 2017.  Experts said the most valuable item in the stolen haul was a 1566 copy of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, worth about £215,000.  Among the other books stolen were early works by Galileo, Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci and a 1569 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy.  George Sandeman  https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/12/thieves-steal-2m-of-rare-books-by-abseiling-into-warehouse

Conspiracy is a kind of religion, bringing solace to people in dark places, lending significance to their losses.  Red on Red, a novel by Edward Conlon

cede  verb (used with object)  to yield or formally surrender to another:  to cede territory.  origin:  Latin cēdere to go, yield  http://www.dictionary.com/browse/cede

Thirteen regional U.S. legal newspapers are among a group of newspapers that have been acquired by SoftBank Group Corp., the Japanese multi-national that also owns Sprint and that is known for its investments in the technology industry.  SoftBank has purchased GateHouse Media, a company that owns over 500 weekly and daily newspapers, the Boston Business Journal reports.  GateHouse owns BridgeTower Media, the subsidiary it formed in August 2016 after it acquired The Dolan Company, a publisher of legal and business newspapers all across the U.S., in December 2015.  BridgeTower’s legal newspapers include all of the Lawyers Weekly newspapers—which includes papers in Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Virginia—as well as Minnesota Lawyer, The Daily Record in Maryland, The Daily Record in New York, The Journal Record in Oklahoma, The Mecklenburg Times in North Carolina and the Wisconsin Law Journal.  Robert Ambrogi  http://www.lawsitesblog.com/2017/02/many-u-s-legal-newspapers-among-group-acquired-japanese-company-softbank.html

The European Union:  Questions and Answers by Kristin Archick Specialist in European Affairs February 21, 2017   Congressional Research Service 7-5700 www.crs.gov RS21372   The European Union (EU) is a political and economic partnership that represents a unique form of cooperation among sovereign countries.  The EU is the latest stage in a process of integration begun after World War II, initially by six Western European countries, to foster interdependence and make another war in Europe unthinkable.  The EU currently consists of 28 member states, including most of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and has helped to promote peace, stability, and economic prosperity throughout the European continent.  Read 19-page document at https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS21372.pdf

EPA website prior to January 20, 2017  https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/  You may link to current EPA website from the snapshot.

February 27, 2017  A French Holocaust historian traveling to speak at a symposium at Texas A&M University was detained by immigration officials in Houston and nearly deported, according to The Eagle, a newspaper covering the College Station, Tex., area.  The Washington Post and The Guardian also reported on the case.  Henry Rousso, an Egyptian-born French citizen, is a senior researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research.  Richard Golsan, the director of the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M, reported at the symposium that Rousso had been “mistakenly detained” upon arriving Wednesday evening.  “When he called me with this news two nights ago, he was waiting for customs officials to send him back to Paris as an illegal alien on the first flight out,” The Eagle reported Golsan as saying.  Golsan reported that Rousso was subsequently released after the intervention of a Texas A&M law professor and director of the university's Immigrant Rights Clinic.  Fatma Marouf, the director of the clinic, told The Guardian that Rousso entered the U.S. on a tourist visa.  Generally, those entering on tourist visas cannot work or receive compensation, but there are exceptions for foreign nationals giving academic lectures or speeches.  "My best guess is that it was his honorarium.  I don’t think the officer who decided to detain him really understood the visa requirement and the technicalities on getting an honorarium, which are permitted under his visa," Marouf told The Guardian.  Elizabeth Redden  https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/02/27/visiting-scholar-detained-and-nearly-deported

The son of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali was detained for hours by immigration officials earlier this month at a Florida airport, according to a family friend.  Muhammad Ali Jr., 44, and his mother, Khalilah Camacho-Ali, the second wife of Muhammad Ali, were arriving at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Feb. 7 after returning from speaking at a Black History Month event in Montego Bay, Jamaica.  They were pulled aside while going through customs because of their Arabic-sounding names, according to family friend and lawyer Chris Mancini.  Immigration officials let Camacho-Ali go after she showed them a photo of herself with her ex-husband, but her son did not have such a photo and wasn't as lucky.  Mancini said officials held and questioned Ali Jr. for nearly two hours, repeatedly asking him, "Where did you get your name from?" and "Are you Muslim?"  When Ali Jr. responded that yes, he is a Muslim, the officers kept questioning him about his religion and where he was born.  Ali Jr. was born in Philadelphia in 1972 and holds a U.S. passport.  Reached for comment via email Friday, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection wrote, "Due to the restrictions of the Privacy Act, U.S. Customs and Border Protection cannot discuss individual travelers; however, all international travelers arriving in the U.S. are subject to CBP inspection."  Danielle Lerner  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/02/24/muhammad-ali-jr-detained-immigration-officials-fla-airport/98379082/

The Academy Awards, or "Oscars", is a group of artistic and technical honors given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize excellence in cinematic achievements in the United States film industry as assessed by the Academy's voting membership.  The first Oscars, in 1929, lasted 15 minutes.  At the other end of the spectrum, the 2000 ceremony lasted four hours and four minutes.  In 2010, the organizers of the Academy Awards announced that winners' acceptance speeches must not run past 45 seconds.  This, according to organizer Bill Mechanic, was to ensure the elimination of what he termed "the single most hated thing on the show"--overly long and embarrassing displays of emotion.  In 2016, in a further effort to streamline speeches, winners' dedications were displayed on an on-screen ticker.  The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette.  The origin of the name is disputed.  Made of gold-plated britannium on a black metal base, it is 13.5 in (34.3 cm) tall, the award weighs 8.5 lb (3.856 kg) and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a crusader's sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes.  The five spokes represent the original branches of the Academy:  Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians.  Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Awards

The coming-of-age drama “Moonlight” won the Academy Award for best picture after the ceremony was plunged into chaos when “La La Land” was mistakenly announced as the best picture winner.  Shock and chaos spread through the Dolby Theatre when producers of “La La Land” were stopped in the middle of their acceptance speeches to be informed about the mistake.  “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz returned to the microphone and said it was “Moonlight” that had actually won best picture.  Host Jimmy Kimmel came forward to inform the cast that “Moonlight” had indeed won.  Horwitz then graciously passed his statue to the “Moonlight” producers.  Apparently, presenter Warren Beatty had been handed the wrong envelope.  Instead of best picture, he had been given a duplicate envelope for best actress in a leading role.  Beatty said he paused so long before the name was read because the envelope said Emma Stone, “La La Land.”  Actress Faye Dunaway read the name “La La Land” after chiding Beatty for taking so long to read the winner.  http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/02/27/after-botched-announcement-moonlight-awarded-best-picture-in-89th-annual-academy-awards/

Full list of 2017 Academy Award winners:  http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/02/26/2017-academy-awards-and-the-winners-are/

           

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1698  February 27, 2017  On this date in 425, the University of Constantinople was founded by Emperor Theodosius II at the urging of his wife Aelia Eudocia.  On this date in 1801, pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, Washington, D.C. was placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress.  On this date in 1922, a challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, was rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett.

MANHATTAN:  Houston Street is a major east-west thoroughfare in downtown Manhattan, running crosstown across the full width of the island of Manhattan, from Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive (FDR Drive) and East River Park on the East River to Pier 40 and West Street on the Hudson River.  It generally serves as the boundary between neighborhoods, with Alphabet City, the East Village, NoHo, Greenwich Village, and the West Village lying to the north of the street, and the Lower East Side, most of the Bowery, Nolita, and SoHo to the south.  The numeric street-naming grid in Manhattan, created as part of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, begins immediately north of Houston Street with 1st Street at Avenue A, although the grid does not fully come into effect until 13th Street.  The street's name is pronounced "how-stən", unlike the city of Houston in Texas, which is pronounced "hyoo-stən".  This is because the street was named for William Houstoun, whereas the city was named for Sam Houston.  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Street

QUOTES from The Silent Places, #4 in the George Hastings novels by James Patrick Hunt  "Torture usually leads to the wrong information."  " I don't see the point in being mad about things."

James Patrick Hunt is an English author born in 1964.  Hunt writes mystery and thriller novels.  While a portion of his early childhood was spent in England, he eventually moved to Oklahoma, the new setting affecting his sensibilities and impacting the sorts of stories he would come to write.  Hunt graduated from Parks College of Saint Louis University with a degree in aerospace engineering in 1986.  He eventually went to Marquette University Law School, leaving the institute in 1992 with a degree in law.  Find a list of Hunt's books at http://www.bookseriesinorder.com/james-patrick-hunt/

In Washington, D.C., on Capitol Hill, there are clocks everywhere.  Every Congressional office suite, according to the Architect of the Capitol, has at least three clocks in it.  There are around 4,000 clocks on the House side of the Hill, and just slightly less on the Senate side.  There are fancy, old clocks, that need to be regularly wound; there are newer, decorative clocks that adorn the mantlepieces of legislators’ personal offices; and there are practical wall clocks, with wide white faces, that look a lot like the clocks in elementary school hallways and classrooms.  These thousands of clocks, though, don’t just tell the time.  They’re part of system more than a century old that sends signals, in a code of sounds and lights, to members of the House and Senate.  Look along the top of a Congressional wall clock, and you’ll see seven small light bulbs.  Even the fancier clocks in members’ offices have them.  From time to time, these will light up in particular sequences, accompanied by loud, long buzzes or series of shorter buzzes.  These patterns all have meanings:  they’re meant to communicate to people working on the Hill when electronic votes are called, when one chamber or the other is adjourned or in recess, and when members need to think about actually being in the Senate or House chamber.

Sarah Laskow  http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/congressional-clocks-have-a-secret-code

Philip James Quinn Barry (1896–1949) was an American dramatist best known for his plays Holiday (1928) and The Philadelphia Story (1939), which were both made into films starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.  Barry's life as a writer started at the age of nine when he had a story called Tab the Cat published by a Rochester newspaper.  Four precocious years later, he wrote a three-act drama called No Thoroughfare, which went unproduced.  When he was at Yale, he devoted his time to writing poetry and short fiction while working for the Yale Literary Magazine.  In 1919, the Yale Dramatic Club staged his one-act play, Autonomy.  By the time he had enrolled in George Pierce Baker's playwriting course at Harvard at the end of the year, he was spending all his time writing plays.  His first full-length play for the class was A Punch for Judy, written in the spring 1921.  The Harvard workshop took "A Punch for Judy" on tour to Worcester, Utica, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Columbus, but it failed to win the backing of a New York producer.  Playwright Robert E. Sherwood met Barry at this time and thought him a "exasperating young twirp."  Sherwood would eventually become a good friend and colleague who came to appreciate what he termed Barry's "Irish, impish sense of comedy."   Many years later, Sherwood would finish writing Second Threshold, left incomplete at the time of Barry's death.  Find a list of Philip Barry's plays and a link to his papers at Georgetown University at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Barry

Marzipan  Sometimes called almond candy dough.  Almonds, sugar, glucose syrup, and water.  Gluten-free versions are available.  It can also sometimes contain egg whites.  Almond Paste  The same ingredients as marzipan, but with less sugar and almost double the amount of almonds.  Sometimes almond extract is added.  http://www.thekitchn.com/almond-paste-and-marzipan-what-46772

It was searching for the name “Jack Engle” in mid-19th-century newspapers that put Zachary Turpin on to the “warm lead” that turned into a “white hot” discovery:  A forgotten 165-year-old novel written by Walt Whitman.  Turpin, a Ph.D. student at the University of Houston, already made history last year when he discovered hitherto unknown musings on “Manly Health and Training” written by the author of "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."  That find was published online immediately by the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review at the University of Iowa and was recently brought out in book form by Regan Arts.  Turpin’s database searches for the character name “Jack Engle” came up with a business card-sized literary notice for the long-titled “Life and Adventures of Jack Engle:  An Auto-Biography; in which the reader will find some familiar characters.”  The short novel--or long tale--ran over the span of six issues of the Sunday Dispatch, a Manhattan newspaper for which there are very few microfilm copies remaining.  The only extant copies of the newspaper for the issues containing the novel, in fact, are located at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.  “It’s amazing to think that those six issues--bounded together in a volume in the Library of Congress archive--that’s the only existing original copy of the novel,” Turpin said. The discovery also is reviving discussions about why Whitman decided to give up writing sentimental and sensationalist fiction and became the experimental poet of democracy that we know today.  Until now, the last short story known to be written by Whitman was completed in 1848--a full seven years before Whitman self-published his first edition of "Leaves of Grass” in 1855.  The discovery of the 1852 publication of “Jack Engle” suggests that Whitman may have continued to write fiction right up to the publication of his ground-breaking book of poems.  Jeff Charis-Carlson  Read more and see pictures at http://www.press-citizen.com/story/news/education/university-of-iowa/2017/02/20/newly-discovered-novel-shows-walt-whitman-finding-his-way-leaves-grass/98059080/

Lead vs. lede  Long ago the noun lede was an alternative spelling of lead, but now lede is mainly journalism jargon for the introductory portion of a news story—or what might be called the lead portion of the news story.  Strictly speaking, the lede is the first sentence or short portion of an article that gives the gist of the story and contains the most important points readers need to know.  http://grammarist.com/usage/lead-lede/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1697  February 24, 2017  On this date in 1582, with the papal bull Inter gravissimas, Pope Gregory XIII announced the Gregorian calendar.  On this date in 1803, in Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court of the United States established the principle of judicial review.  Word of the Day:  logrolling in U.S. (figuratively)  (1)  A concerted effort to push forward mutually advantageous legislative agendas by combining two items, either or both of which might fail on its own, into a single bill that is more likely to pass.  (2)  Mutual recommendation of friends' or colleagues' services or products, such as book recommendations in literary reviews.

The fight against fake news is putting librarians on the front line--and they say they’re ready by Amanda Hoover   Following 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, which included a provision that allowed investigators to retrieve an individual’s library records with a warrant, many libraries stopped keeping browsing and checkout records, and they’ve since become safe places to use the internet or check out books and information without leaving a paper trail.  They also host free tax preparation and resources fairs, serve as gathering spaces for politically charged or educational events and speeches, and promote works that highlight the diversity in America.  Some have joined in efforts to archive public environmental data, following fears that the Trump administration may erase the kind of environmental evidence used to back regulations and bring crises, such as the water problems in Flint, Mich., to light.  From curating book collections to creating welcoming atmospheres, some argue, some say it’s impossible for libraries to remain completely above the political fray.  “You hear the refrain over and over again that libraries are going to become obsolete Rebecca McCorkindale, the assistant library director and creative director at the Gretna, Neb., library says.  “And if all we were was book warehouses we would probably would go the way of Borders.  A lot of people have not realized that we are information specialists.  It’s funny how little people know what their library can do for them.  I know at my library we can just go on and on about what we can do for a community--and what we’ve done and what we hope to do. ”  http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/2017/0215/The-fight-against-fake-news-is-putting-librarians-on-the-front-line-and-they-say-they-re-ready

Raymond Albert Kroc was born on October 5, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.  He was the eldest child of Louis Kroc, an employee of the telegraph company Western Union, and Rose, a homemaker.  Kroc's mother earned extra money teaching piano, and her son shared her talent at the keyboard.  Kroc was also fond of daydreaming; his parents sometimes called him "Danny Dreamer" after catching him lost in thought.  In his autobiography, Grinding It Out, Kroc wrote that his daydreams were not wasted, because "they were invariably linked to some form of action."  Kroc's first leap into business was with a lemonade stand he ran while he was in grammar school.  His next business venture was running a music store that he opened with two friends after his freshman year in high school.  They shut the store after several months.  Kroc also served customers at his uncle's soda fountain, selling ice cream and other refreshments.  There, Kroc explained in his autobiography, he learned an important lesson:  "you could influence people with a smile and enthusiasm and sell them a sundae when what they'd come in for was a cup of coffee."  After his sophomore year, Kroc left high school to become a door-to-door salesman.  A few months later, with the United States involved in World War I (1914-18), he lied about his age so he could become a Red Cross ambulance driver, but the war ended before Kroc could serve in Europe.  At seventeen, Kroc returned to sales and picked up extra income playing the piano.  After a series of jobs, Kroc married his first wife, Ethel Fleming, in 1922, and began selling paper cups.  He also ran a Chicago radio station, then tried selling real estate in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  By 1927, Kroc was back in Chicago selling paper cups, determined to make his career in sales.  In 1938, Kroc started selling a new product, a machine that could mix five milkshakes at once.  He formed his own company, Prince Castle Sales, and began traveling the country selling the "Multimixer."  Kroc struggled for a few years, and World War II (1939-45) forced a halt in sales.  After the war, Kroc's company thrived.  In one of his best years, he sold eight thousand mixers.  McDonald's became Kroc's company in 1961, when he gave the McDonald brothers $2.7 million for their share of the corporation.  Four years later, he sold stock in the company.  Over the years, Kroc's shares in McDonald's made him rich; he shared his wealth with others.  He started the Kroc Foundation, which supported research on diabetes (which killed his daughter Marilyn in 1973), arthritis, and multiple sclerosis.  On his seventieth birthday in 1972, Kroc gave $8 million to some of his top employees.  Over the years, the corporation also donated food and money to many charities, and the company encouraged local franchisees to get involved in their communities.  McDonald's best-known charitable effort is the Ronald McDonald Houses, homes near hospitals where families can stay for free while their children receive medical treatment.  In 1974, Kroc turned his attention from fast food to baseball, using his wealth to buy the San Diego Padres.  A lifelong baseball fan, Kroc tried to turn around the struggling team.  The Padres made the World Series for the first time in 1984, but Kroc did not live to see it.  He died that January in San Diego at the age of eighty-one.  After his death, his third wife, Joan, carried on his charitable work.  She donated tens of millions of dollars to San Diego organizations, and in 1995 she gave $50 million to the Ronald McDonald Children's Charities, which had been founded in Kroc's honor.  http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/businesses/M-Z/Kroc-Ray.html

REAL VS. REEL  Comparison of the movie The Founder (2017) and the history of McDonald's

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/founder/ See also http://www.carterburwell.com/projects/Founder.shtml

Long Overdue:  Why public libraries are finally eliminating the late-return fine by Ruth Graham   Since 2010, districts in northern Illinois, Massachusetts, California, and Ohio—to name a few—have eliminated some or all late fines.  Others are dramatically lowering penalties for late returns.  Eliminating fines, of course, also eliminates a revenue stream for a public institution that is often underfunded.  The Columbus, Ohio library system expects to forfeit between $500,000 and $600,000 this year.  But that represents less than 1 percent of its overall budget.  In fact, fines rarely make up a meaningful source of income for library systems.  In the summer of 2015, the 13 libraries of the High Plains Library District in northern Colorado decided to eliminate almost all their late fines.  The district has now had about 18 months to assess what it means to survive only on fines from DVDs and lost-material fees.  Naturally, revenue from fines and fees dropped, from about $180,000 in 2014 to an estimated $95,000 last year.   the system also got rid of most of its expensive credit-card machines and stopped leasing a change-counting machine that it had needed to process the avalanche of dimes and quarters.  Executive director Janine Reid says the overall financial impact has been neutral.  Meanwhile, circulation rose, including a 16 percent rise within the children’s department.  http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2017/02/librarians_are_realizing_that_overdue_fines_undercut_libraries_missions.html

Pączki are deep-fried pieces of dough shaped into flattened spheres and filled with confiture or other sweet filling.  Pączki are usually covered with powdered sugar, icing, glaze or bits of dried orange zest.  A small amount of grain alcohol (traditionally, Spiritus) is added to the dough before cooking; as it evaporates, it prevents the absorption of oil deep into the dough.  Although they look like German berliners, North American bismarcks or jelly doughnuts, pączki are made from especially rich dough containing eggs, fats, sugar, yeast and sometimes milk.  They feature a variety of fruit and creme fillings and can be glazed, or covered with granulated or powdered sugar.  Powidl (stewed plum jam) and wild rose hip jam are traditional fillings, but many others are used as well, including strawberry, Bavarian cream, blueberry, custard, raspberry, and apple.  Pączki have been known in Poland at least since the Middle Ages.  Jędrzej Kitowicz has described that during the reign of August III, under the influence of French cooks who came to Poland, pączki dough was improved, so that pączki became lighter, spongier, and more resilient.  In Poland, pączki are eaten especially on Fat Thursday (Tłusty Czwartek), the last Thursday prior to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.  The traditional reason for making pączki was to use up all the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit in the house, because their consumption was forbidden by Christian fasting practices during the season of Lent.  In North America, particularly the large Polish communities of Chicago, Detroit, and other large cities across the Midwest and Northeast, Paczki Day is celebrated annually by immigrants and locals alike.  The date of this observance merges with that of pre-Lenten traditions of other immigrants (e.g., Pancake Day, Mardi Gras) on Fat Tuesday.  With its sizable Polish population, Chicago celebrates the festival on both Fat Thursday and Fat Tuesday; pączki are also often eaten on Casimir Pulaski Day.  In Buffalo, Toledo, Cleveland, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, South Bend, and Windsor, Pączki Day is celebrated on Fat Tuesday.  In Hamtramck, Michigan, an enclave of Detroit, there is an annual Pączki Day (Shrove Tuesday) Parade, which has gained a devoted following.  Throughout the Metro Detroit area, it is so widespread that many bakeries attract lines of customers for pączki on Paczki Day.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%85czki  According to the food editor at The Toledo Blade, paczek (singular) is pronounced PAWN-chek and paczki (plural) is pronounced PAWNCH-kee. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1696  February 22, 2017  On this date in 1632, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was published.  On this date in 1853, Washington University in St. Louis was founded as Eliot Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri.  On this date in 1855, the Pennsylvania State University was founded in State College, Pennsylvania (as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania).

A pawpaw ("Indiana banana") is one of only a few large fruits native to the United States, and pawpaw trees (Asimina triloba) are found on the grounds of the Toledo Zoo.  The potato-shaped fruit ripens in late summer or early fall, and its flesh is custardy and sweet.  It can be frozen and substituted in recipes calling for banana.  Also within the Toledo Zoo's 70+ acres reside 9,700 animals representing more than 700 species.  Safari Magazine  Spring 2017

The Floating ecopolis, otherwise known as the Lilypad, is a model designed by Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut for future climatic refugees.  He proposed this model as a long-term solution to rising water level as per the GIEC (Intergovernmental group on the evolution of the climate) forecast.  It is a self-sufficient amphibious city and satisfies the four challenges laid down by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in March 2008--namely, climate, biodiversity, water and health.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_ecopolis

Sea level rise is an increasing threat to low-lying island nations around the world.  Many islands in French Polynesia could lose their coastlines or even disappear due to global warming.  In an effort to adapt to climate change, French Polynesian government officials signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with San Francisco's Seasteading Institute to jumpstart the development of the world's first self-sufficient floating city.  Lorraine Chow  Read more and see graphics at http://www.ecowatch.com/floating-city-sea-level-rise-2196056463.html

A macron is a diacritical mark, a straight bar (¯) placed above a letter, usually a vowel.  Its name derives from the Greek μακρόν (makrón), meaning "long", and was originally used to mark long or heavy syllables in Greco-Roman metrics.  It now more often marks a long vowel.  In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the macron is used to indicate a mid-tone; the sign for a long vowel is instead a modified triangular colon ⟨ː⟩.  The opposite is the breve ⟨˘⟩, which marks a short or light syllable or a short vowel.  Read more and find charts at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macron

accents, diacritical marks - non-standard characters signs that change the sound of letters and words.  Find a list of marks (and link to curiosities, glossaries, acronyms and puzzles) at http://www.businessballs.com/diacriticalmarks.htm

QUOTES from Edith Wharton  (1862-1937) American novelist, short story writer and designer  "There are two ways of spreading light:  to be The candle or the mirror that reflects it." - "Vesalius in Zante (1564)", in North American Review (November 1902), p. 631  "A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue." - "The Other Two," ch. 1, from The Descent of Man and Other Stories (1904)  https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edith_Wharton

On February 14, 2017 the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) partnered with OpenTheGovernment.org and more than 60 other public interest groups and associations on a letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), asking OMB to issue guidance reminding agencies that they are required under the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.) to give adequate public notice when making significant changes to information on their websites, including when information is taken down temporarily or removed.  The letter comes after weeks of concern expressed by AALL and other organizations about data and other information no longer being accessible on government websites.  The letter stated:  It is crucial that agencies comply with the law, so that the public does not lose access to vital government information that helps them protect themselves and hold the marketplace and their government accountable.  Failure to give adequate notice of removal could mean that years of government work on important issues are effectively lost to the public.  Moreover, providing the required notice will assure compliance with the law, smooth transition issues, ensure public participation, calm fears of censorship, and will reduce litigation costs for both the government and the public interest community.  http://www.bespacific.com/aall-joins-60-advocacy-groups-calling-for-open-access-info-on-government-websites/

February 17, 2017  ALTERNATIVE LANGUAGE  Trump casts all unfavorable news coverage as fake news.  In one tweet, he even went so far as to say that "any negative polls are fake news."  And many of his supporters have picked up and run with his new definition.  The ability to reshape language—even a little—is an awesome power to have.   Danielle Kutrzleben  Read more at http://www.npr.org/2017/02/17/515630467/with-fake-news-trump-moves-from-alternative-facts-to-alternative-language

February 18, 2017  Scientists say they have identified an underwater continent two-thirds the size of Australia—and they are calling it Zealandia.  This newly proposed continent is about 1.74 million square miles in size and 94 percent submerged.  But at its highest points, it protrudes above the ocean surface in the form of New Zealand and New Caledonia, according to a paper published in GSA Today, the journal of the Geological Society of America.  The proposed recognition of the continent of Zealandia does not represent the discovery of a new land mass.  Rather, the paper argues that the geological evidence suggests the land mass should be classified not as a collection of islands and fragments but as a bona fide continent.  "If we could pull the plug on the oceans, it would be clear to everyone we have mountain chains and a big, high-standing continent above the ocean crust," Nick Mortimer, a geologist at GNS Science in Dunedin, New Zealand, told Reuters.  Mortimer was the lead author of the paper, "Zealandia: Earth's Hidden Continent."  New discoveries about the geology of the region prove what has long been suspected, he said.  "Since about the 1920s, from time to time in geology papers people used the word 'continental' to describe various parts of New Zealand and the Catham Islands and New Caledonia," Mortimer said.  Don Melvin  http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/scientists-say-they-ve-discovered-hidden-continent-under-new-zealand-n722796

On February 20, 2017, INRIX, Inc. published its all-new Global Traffic Scorecard.  Based on a new methodology, INRIX analyzed 1,064 cities--240 in the U.S.--across 38 countries, making it the largest ever study of traffic congestion.  U.S. cities dominated the top 10 most congested cities globally, with Los Angeles (first), New York (third), San Francisco (fourth), Atlanta (eighth) and Miami (10th) each dealing with an economic drain on the city upwards of $2.5 billion caused by traffic congestion.  Los Angeles commuters spent an average of 104 hours last year in traffic jams during peak congestion hours--more than any other city in the world.  This contributed to congestion costing drivers in Los Angeles $2,408 each and the city as a whole $9.6 billion from direct and indirect costs.  Direct costs relate to the value of fuel and time wasted, and indirect costs refer to freight and business fees from company vehicles idling in traffic, which are passed on to households through higher prices.  Read more and see a table of the top ten most congested cities in the U.S. at http://finance.yahoo.com/news/los-angeles-tops-inrix-global-050100714.html  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1695  February 20, 2017  On this date in 1816, Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.  On this date in 1872, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in New York City.  On this date in 1877,  Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.