Anyone serving in any capacity in an organization must be passionate about their work.  Without a love of what we do and a desire to accomplish great things, we will not succeed.  Second, the most successful people in leadership positions are those who are positive.  Participate in meetings with attitudes of openness and respect, offering differences of opinion congenially and in a supportive way.  Finally, volunteers in positions of service must be patient.  It is a major act of self-control not to move too quickly before everyone has been heard, and all input has been weighed that affects any decision.  Michael Bedford  The American Organist  August 2017

Kansas City holds its fountains near and dear.  The City of Fountains Foundation, a local group dedicated to preserving Kansas City’s fountains, has officially counted more than 200 fountains throughout the metro area.  And that number is understated, because the foundation’s count excludes subdivision markers and fountains inside privately owned buildings.  It appears no other city has an official count, so Kansas City’s claim appears to be uncontested by virtue of indifference.  And for that matter, Kansas City may have more fountains than Rome.  Kansas City’s reputation as the “City of Fountains” can be traced to August Meyer and George Kessler, two urban planners from the 1890s credited with bringing the City Beautiful Movement to Kansas City.  Both men, having traveled extensively throughout Europe, sought to transform the burgeoning, but aesthetically lacking, cow town into a beautifully-manicured metropolis with “more boulevards than Paris and more fountains than Rome.”  Nathan Zoschke  http://info.umkc.edu/unews/all-around-town-true-of-false-five-facts-and-myths-about-kansas-city/

The Great Northern Hotel (1891-1940) was an impressive 500 room 16-story hotel that was located at the intersection of Dearborn and Jackson Boulevard in Chicago.  The hotel was originally constructed 891 by the architecture firm of D.H. Burnham and Company, and was originally called the “Chicago Hotel”, but Proprietors/Owners, Hulbert & Eden, changed the name to the “Great Northern”.  The Aeolian Pipe Organ at the Great Northern Hotel in Chicago, built and installed in 1896, was a renowned landmark in its day.  Read a story from the Chicago Chronicle in October, 1897:   "A few nights ago, when the big Aeolian at the Great Northern began its usual evening programme, it didn’t seem to work just right.  The Aeolian was doing its level best to play the wedding march from Lohengrin, but made an awful mess of it.  The first strain, which everyone remembers goes “Rum-tum-te-tum,” was followed by “Meouw-wow-ow.”  All the crowd looked up at the organ and tried to locate the spot where the unusual accompaniment came from.  The next strain of the march was followed by a screeching yowl that was heard clear up to the “G” floor.  People at dinner dropped their knives and forks and looked nervously at each other and then at the doors and windows.  Just as the third yell came out of the Aeolian, Proprietor Eden was seen on the second floor, stealthily moving toward the instrument with a ladder in his hand.  Mr. Eden crept up close to the Aeolian and listened for a moment.  Then he put his ladder against the right side and slowly made his way to the top.  When he got up he reached over and put his hand down inside of the E flat pipe.  There were no results at first.  Then he stood on tiptoe and shoved his arm to the shoulder down the mouth of the pipe.  There followed a terrible yowling and scratching, but the Colonel pulled, and with a noise like the departure of a tight cork from the neck of a beer bottle, he pulled the hotel cat out of the pipe and carried it down to the baggage room, where it belongs."  Read more and see many pictures at https://chicagology.com/goldenage/goldenage004/

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

middlescence  (mid-uhl-ES-uhns)  noun  The middle-age period of life.  Patterned after adolescence.  Earliest documented use: 1965 (adolescence is from 1425).

yeasayer  (YE-say-uhr)  noun  1.  A person with a confident and positive outlook.  2.  A person who agrees uncritically; a yes-man.  Patterned after the term naysayer.  Earliest documented use:  1934 (naysayer is from 1628)

BRITAIN TO SCRAP LIBOR BY 2021 by Huw Jones   A substitute for the widely-used Libor interest rate benchmark should be in place for banks to use by the end of 2021, the head of Britain's financial markets watchdog said.  Libor, a daily rate in a range of currencies, is based on submissions from banks of interest rates they believe they would be charged by others for borrowing money.  Banks have been fined billions of dollars for trying to manipulate the benchmark, forcing a rethink of its future.  The benchmark is used to price financial contracts worth $350 trillion, ranging from home loans to credit cards, and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said this month that such a reference rate should in future be based on actual market transactions and not banks' judgments.  Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, told an event in London on July 27, 2017 that work must "begin in earnest" on shifting to an alternative index, saying the end of 2021 would offer time to ensure a smooth transition.  http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-regulator-libor-idUSKBN1AC18L

LIBOR or ICE LIBOR (previously BBA LIBOR) is a benchmark rate that some of the world’s leading banks charge each other for short-term loans.  It stands for IntercontinentalExchange London Interbank Offered Rate and serves as the first step to calculating interest rates on various loans throughout the world.  LIBOR is administered by the ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA), and is based on five currencies:  U.S. dollar (USD), Euro (EUR), pound sterling (GBP), Japanese yen (JPY) and Swiss franc (CHF), and serves seven different maturities:  overnight, one week, and 1, 2, 3, 6 and 12 months.  There are a total of 35 different LIBOR rates each business day.  The most commonly quoted rate is the three-month U.S. dollar rate.  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/libor.asp

The word barouche is an anglicisation of the German word barutsche, via the Italian baroccio or biroccio and ultimately from the Latin birotus, "two-wheeled".  The name thus became a misnomer, as the later form of the carriage had four wheels.  The barouche, used in the 19th century, was a shallow vehicle with two double seats inside, arranged so that the sitters on the front seat faced those on the back seat.  It had carriage was suspended on C springs and used leather straps to connect parts.  It was drawn by a pair of high-quality horses and was used principally for leisure driving in the summer.  A light barouche was a barouchet or barouchette.  A barouche-sociable was described as a cross between a barouche and a victoria.  The barouche-landau is a form of carriage mentioned in Emma, published in 1816 by Jane Austen.  It "combines the best features of a barouche and a landau".  The structure of the carriage is heavier than it looks, because of the lack of a rigid roof structure.  An illustration of the expensive and more rarely seen vehicle, on account of the expense, is shown in a paper by Ed Ratcliffe, citing editor R. W. Chapman's collection of the works of Jane Austen, in the volume Minor Works a soft collapsible half-hood folding like a bellows over the back seat and a high outside box seat in front for the driver.  The entire, as noted in Ratcliffe's sources.  Barouches can be seen in the 21st century, as replicas of the carriages of an earlier time, in many places around the world.  The barouche followed from an earlier carriage type, called a calash or calèche:  this was also a light carriage with small wheels, inside seats for four passengers, a separate driver's seat and a folding top.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barouche

Buttered Roll Redux:  A Lowly Breakfast Food Begets High Drama by Sadie Stein  In New York, they’re on every corner—plus the coffee cart mid-block—pre-buttered and prepackaged, fast and cheap and extremely in control.  And while the component parts of butter and rolls are universally available, the Buttered Kaiser Roll is not a breakfast staple in most of the country—especially not as an official menu option. Could I walk into a diner elsewhere in the U.S. and ask for a Kaiser roll with butter at 8 a.m.?  Yes, I could, and I have.  But why would I, when I can get so many other, better, buttered breadstuffs—say, a behemoth cinnamon bun in Oregon, or a buttermilk biscuit in Nashville, or a fresh muffin in New England?  And yet, I love the buttered roll . . .  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/insider/buttered-roll-redux-a-lowly-breakfast-food-achieves-high-drama.html?hpw&rref=times-insider&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1753  August 14, 2017  On this date in 1888, an audio recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", one of the first recordings of music ever made, was played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison's phonograph in London, England.  On this date in 1893, France became the first country to introduce motor vehicle registration.  On this date in 1975, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the longest-running release in film history, opened in London.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_14