Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Upperville is an unincorporated town in Fauquier County, Virginia, United States, along U.S. Route 50 fifty miles from downtown Washington, D.C..  Founded in the 1790s along Pantherskin Creek, it was originally named Carrstown by first settler Josephus Carr.  Through an 1819 Act passed by the Virginia General Assembly, the name was changed to Upperville.  John Updike wrote of Upperville in his sardonic 1961 poem Upon Learning That a Town Exists Called UppervilleUpperville has been designated as the Upperville Historic District and is a Virginia Historic Landmark that is listed in the National Register of Historic PlacesSee a picture of the Upperville Library at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upperville,_Virginia

Dull is an unincorporated community in Van Wert County, Ohio, United States.  Dull is 2.5 miles (4.0 km) west-southwest of Ohio City.  Dull was originally called McKee, and under the latter name was laid out in 1879 by J. M. Dull and others.  See location of Dull on Ohio map at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dull,_Ohio  NOTE that an enterprising Toledo librarian made a field trip to Dull.

The Brumback Library stands as the first county library in the United States.  Built with funds bequeathed to Van Wert County residents by John S. Brumback, an early entrepreneur, the building was dedicated in 1901.  The architecture is a combination of Gothic and Romanesque.  With its turreted towers and Ludowici roof, the library presents a most grand appearance amid the trees of the park where it is located.  In 1979, the Brumback Library was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, qualifying both because of its architecture and because of its place in the area's history.  The library has been selected by Library Journal as the number one library in the state of Ohio and number eight in the United States for libraries with similar budgets and funding levels.  See picture of library at http://visitvanwert.org/historical-attractions.php#Brumback

Restive arrived in the fifteenth century from the French word now spelled rétif, ultimately from Latin restare, to rest.  In its first incarnation it was spelled restiff and meant a horse that resisted control and in particular refused to move forwards when commanded.  Restiff remained in the language until the nineteenth century.  At the very end of the sixteenth century a variant form evolved from it in the modern spelling of restive, with a sense of being still or sluggish.  This spelling and sense likewise stayed in the language into the nineteenth century.  To confuse matters, by the middle of the seventeenth century, restive had borrowed the main sense of restiff, a stubborn refusal of a horse to do what it was told.  During the latter part of the nineteenth century, the skittishness and wild movements that often resulted from the refusal of a horse to obey caused restive to acquire the new meaning “fidgety” or “impatient”.  This has become our dominant one today.  Restive has muscled in on the territory of restless, both of them suggesting a physical manifestation of internal unease, but for different reasons.  Behind restive lie impatience, irritation, dissatisfaction, or boredom (J B Priestley wrote in 1929 in The Good Companions:   “The audience was growing restive; there was some stamping of feet at the back”).  A thesaurus will put restive with insubordinate, recalcitrant and unmanageable (reflecting the older sense of an uncooperative horse) as well as fidgety and impatient.  Restless, on the other hand, usually implies anxiety and you can often replace it by edgy, nervous, agitated or tense.  To have a restless night implies that you can’t sleep because you are turning over some problem in your mind or or are suffering some physical discomfort.  Many writers have tried to defend the older sense of restive against the newer one and to try to maintain a distinction between it and restless.  Sir Ernest Gowers wrote in the 1965 edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage:  “A horse may be restless when loose in a field, but can only be restive if it is resisting control.  A child can be restless from boredom, but can only be restive if someone is trying to make him do what he does not want.”  This distinction remains, though it is being eroded by users who consider restive and restless to be exact synonyms.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-res1.htm

NAME CHANGES  Blake Lively (born Blake Ellender Brown 1987)  Barbara Carroll (born Barbara Carole Coppersmith 1925)  Sting (born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner 1951)  Annie Oakley (born Phoebe Ann Moses 1860)  Joan Crawford  (born Lucille Fay LeSueur 1905?)

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg 
A back-formation is a word formed under the assumption that it must be the parent of an existing word.  For example, the verb “to burgle” appears to have given birth to its noun, but it’s the other way: burglar came first.  Similarly, we coined the verb “to typewrite” after the noun “typewriter”.
offing  (AW-fing, AWF-ing)  Near future (used in the phrase “in the offing”).  In nautical use, offing is the part of sea visible from the shore, but beyond anchoring ground.  From off (away), from of.  Earliest documented use:  1600.

The New York Public Library has digitized 100 "how to do it" cards found in cigarette boxes over 100 years ago, and the tips they give are so practical that millennials reading this might want to take notes.  Back in the day, cigarette cards were popular collectibles included in every pack, and displayed photos of celebrities, advertisements, and more.  Gallaher cigarettes, a UK-founded tobacco company that was once the largest in the world, decided to print a series of helpful how-to's on their cards, which ranged from mundane tasks (boiling potatoes) to unlikely scenarios (stopping a runaway horse).  Most of them are insanely clever, though, like how to make a fire extinguisher at home.  Who even knew you could do that?  The entire set of life hacks is now part of the NYPL's George Arents Collection.  Link to all Gallaher cards at http://www.boredpanda.com/vintage-100-year-old-life-hacks/?cexp_id=2355&cexp_var=2&_f=featured  Thank you, Muse reader!  See also https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/divisions/george-arents-collection  and https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/art-from-the-george-arents-collection-on-tobacco#/?tab=navigation

Frequently cited by journalists, public officials and researchers, the independent Quinnipiac University Poll regularly surveys residents in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and nationwide about political races, state and national elections, and issues of public concern, such as schools, taxes, transportation, municipal services and the environment. Known for its exactness and thoroughness, the Quinnipiac poll is featured regularly in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and on national network news broadcasts.  In 2010, respected public opinion polling analyst Nate Silver ranked the Quinnipiac University poll as most accurate among major polls conducting surveys in two states or more. 

How to Pronounce Quinnipiac  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il6wP5zj9OY and

The Associated Press Stylebook says it is “opening the door” to use of the singular they.  A new stylebook entry, which was announced March 23, 2107 as part of the AP’s session at the 21st national conference of ACES:  The Society for Editing in St. Petersburg, Fla., for the first time allows use of they as a singular pronoun or gender-neutral pronoun.  “We stress that it’s usually possible to write around that,” said Paula Froke, lead editor for the AP Stylebook.  “But we offer new advice for two reasons:  recognition that the spoken language uses they as singular and we also recognize the need for a pronoun for people who don’t identify as a he or a she.”  The new entry in the stylebook starts:  They, them, their  In most cases, a plural pronoun should agree in number with the antecedent: The children love the books their uncle gave them.  They/them/their is acceptable in limited cases as a singular and-or gender-neutral pronoun, when alternative wording is overly awkward or clumsy.  However, rewording usually is possible and always is preferable.  Clarity is a top priority; gender-neutral use of a singular they is unfamiliar to many readers.  We do not use other gender-neutral pronouns such as xe or ze.  Gerri Berendzen  Read more at http://www.copydesk.org/blog/2017/03/24/ap-style-for-first-time-allows-use-of-they-as-singular-pronoun/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1685  March 29, 2017  On this date in 1806, construction was authorized of the Great National Pike, better known as the Cumberland Road, becoming the first United States federal highway.  On this date in 1638, sachems--the Lenape name for their leaders--and Swedes hoping to establish a commercial colony for the New Sweden Company signed an agreement by which the newcomers received land on the western side of the Delaware River.  The settlers and soldiers built a log house and stockade, which they named after their Queen, Christina.  At its height in 1655, when New Sweden stretched across southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and all of Delaware, no more than 500 settlers lived in New Sweden.  http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-24

Word of the Day  fauxtatoes  noun  A dish of mashed cauliflower used as an alternative to potatoes by followers of a low-carbohydrate diet.

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