PARAPHRASES from Middle Man,#2 in the Lieutenant Rollie Waters novels by David Rich  . . . not owning anything that must be cared for or carried or coddled became a guiding principle . . . I built my identity on the absence of those things . . . Confession is terrible for the soul--I would never recommend it.

David Rich has sold screenplays to most of the major studios, and to production companies in the U.S. and Europe.  He wrote the feature film Renegades starring Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Philips, as well episodes of "MacGyver" and other shows.  He wrote three plays:  The Interview, The Rescue and W.A.R. (Women's Armed Resistance).  Raised in Chicago, David received his B.A. from Tulane, spent one rainy, Withnail-esque year in Wales, and earned his M.A. in English from University of Colorado.  http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/david-rich

Withnail-esque and Withnailabilia refer to the 1987 British black comedy film "Withnail and I".

PARAPHRASES from The Third Reich, a novel by Roberto Bolaño  translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer   The true test of health is lack of boredom.  They made up for any language deficiencies with their great skills as mimes.

Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (1953–2003) was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist.  In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes as a "work so rich and dazzling that it will surely draw readers and scholars for ages".  The New York Times described him as "the most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation"  The Third Reich (El Tercer Reich in Spanish) was written in 1989 but only discovered among Bolaño's papers after he died.  It was published in Spanish in 2010 and in English in 2011.  The protagonist is Udo Berger, a German war-game champion.  With his girlfriend Ingeborg he goes back to the small town on the Costa Brava where he spent his childhood summers.  He plays a game of Rise and Decline of the Third Reich with a stranger.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Bola%C3%B1o

HOMEMADE SAZON SEASONING MIX  The key ingredient in this spice mix is ground annatto (achiote), the spice that gives yellow rice that yellow color.  Annatto is derived from the seeds of achiote tree.  In India it’s referred to as sindoor, and in the Philippines, it is called atsuete.  If you can’t find this, turmeric would be a good substitute.   Gina Homolka  Find recipe at http://www.skinnytaste.com/homemade-sazon-seasoning-mix/

Every January the Public Relations Office at Lake Superior State University (Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan) releases its List of Banished Words, a not-so-serious exercise now in its 42nd year.  How time flies when you’re hip-deep in snark!  I love and hate the Banished Words List, in the same way that I feel both emotions for Word of the Year rankings.  They’re irritating exercises in self-indulgence, but they’re also wonderful snapshots of the psyche of a certain portion of humanity.  That annual insight, regardless of how cluttered it might be by other factors, is valuable.  While LSSU at times might not seem to take their own list seriously, there are always nuggets worth noticing in there.  This year's list is no exception.  Perhaps the most important thing to remember about this list of “banished” words (and you can no sooner banish a word than you can banish a color or a time of day) is that it’s not a scientific process.  It’s open to nominations from anyone, which are then reviewed and narrowed down by a committee.  It might not be arbitrary, but it’s dominated by popularity (or unpopularity) and pet peeves.  Which is perfectly fine, as long as you know that going in.  So let’s go in.  This year’s final list had 19 words and phrases on it.  Covering just a few gives a good sense of things. If you want to review the entire list, you'll find it at http://www.lssu.edu/banished/  Do I feel any of these words should really be banned or banished?  Not really.  I have long been of the opinion that bad words—by which I mean words that aren’t useful enough or are unnecessarily awkward or artificial—usually die out pretty quickly without help.  Christopher Daly  https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/banished-but-not-vanished/

           

Quotations either misquoted or erroneously attributed to Henry D. Thoreau  "Use what talent you possess:  the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."  Misattribution. The first known use, although it was unattributed, is from The Ladies Repository:  A Monthly Periodical, Devoted to Literature, Arts, and Religion, September 1874, p. 231.  It was reprinted two years later in The Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star, number 37, volume XXXVIII (Monday:  September 11, 1876) p. 583.  This quotation has also been misattributed to Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933).  "Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."  Misattribution.  This quotation first appeared in the 1980 edition (p. 331) of The Whole Earth Catalog—originally created by Stewart Brand in 1968—and a variant by the American Library Association, “Books will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no books,” appeared in the early 1980’s.  Both are in turn adapted from the line in a Gilbert Shelton Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers cartoon (“The Freaks Pull a Heist!”)  Misquotation/Misatribution.  "It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see."  The correct quotation is from Thoreau’s Journal of 5 August 1851:  “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”  The above quotation is by Richard D. Richardson Jr who wrote “It is not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” in his biography, Henry Thoreau:  A Life of the Mind (University of California Press, 1986) p. 171.  He was not quoting Thoreau.  Read more at https://www.walden.org/thoreau/mis-quotations/

Mostafa A. H. el-Abbadi, a Cambridge-educated historian of Greco-Roman antiquity and the soft-spoken visionary behind the revival of the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, died Feb. 13, 2017 in Alexandria.  He was 88.  Professor Abbadi’s dream of a new library—a modern version of the magnificent center of learning of ancient times—could be traced to 1972, when, as a scholar at the University of Alexandria, he concluded a lecture with an impassioned challenge.  “At the end, I said, ‘It is sad to see the new University of Alexandria without a library, without a proper library,’” he recalled in 2010.  “‘And if we want to justify our claim to be connected spiritually with the ancient tradition, we must follow the ancient example by starting a great universal library.’”  It was President Richard M. Nixon who blew wind into the sails of Professor Abbadi’s ambitious proposal.  When Nixon visited Egypt in 1974, he and President Anwar el-Sadat rode by train to Alexandria’s ancient ruins to observe their faded grandeur.  When Nixon asked about the ancient library’s location and history, no one in the Egyptian entourage had an answer.  Jonathan Guyer  Read much more and see pictures at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/middleeast/mostafa-el-abbadi-great-library-of-alexandria.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1670    March 1, 2017  On this date in 1781, the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation.  On this date in 1845, United States President John Tyler signed a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas.