The Morris-Jumel Mansion is the oldest remaining house in Manhattan and is a museum highlighting over 200 years of New York history, art, and culture.  The mansion was built in 1765 as a summer villa, by Colonel Roger Morris and his wife, Mary Philipse.  Roger was born in England and Mary was born and raised in the colony of New York.  Their country estate was named “Mount Morris” and stretched over 130 acres from the Harlem to the Hudson Rivers.  Mount Morris was one of the highest points in Manhattan and offered clear views of New Jersey, Connecticut, and all of New York harbor.  With the help of their workers, the Morris family grew fruit trees and raised cows and sheep.  At that time the island of Manhattan was mostly woods and farms.  The roads were built on old trails made by the Native Americans.  Twenty years after the Revolutionary War, in 1810, Stephen Jumel purchased the house.  He had come to New York from southwestern France to make his fortune as a merchant.  Favorable tariffs and faster sailing technology made Atlantic trade in raw materials and luxury products highly lucrative.  In New York, Stephen married Eliza Bowen.  Eliza Bowen had grown up in a very poor family from Rhode Island, but ended up becoming one of the wealthiest women in New York.  At a moment when Stephen's business was foundering, Eliza applied herself to the real estate trade, buying and selling land and renting properties downtown.  Her success made large profits for her husband and herself at a time when it was very unusual for a woman to be so active in business.  After Stephen Jumel died in 1832, Eliza married Aaron Burr.  Burr ran for President in 1800, but lost the election to Thomas Jefferson.  As the runner-up, he became the Vice President, a position which did not carry much political power at the time.  He ran for Governor of New York in 1804 and lost this race as well.  Burr blamed his political opponent Alexander Hamilton for both these defeats.  He felt so wronged by Hamilton that he challenged him to a duel and killed him.  Burr was tried and acquitted.  Eliza filed for divorce in 1833, a lengthly process which wasn't finalized until 1836.  Eliza lived in the house until her death at the age of 90 in 1865, exactly one hundred years after the mansion was built.  In 1904 the city of New York purchased the house and turned it into a museum.  http://www.morrisjumel.org/briefhistory/

STAR_Net has distributed over 2 million free eclipse glasses and 4,000 education kits to over 7,000 library locations (public libraries, state libraries, book mobiles, tribal libraries).  This represents nearly one half of all libraries in the country.  To find a library in your area, zoom in on the interactive map above,  then click on a drop pin for contact information.  STAR_Net is a production of the Space Science Institute's National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) in collaboration with the American Library Association, the Lunar and Planetary Institute, and the Afterschool Alliance.  http://spacescience.org/software/libraries/map.php

Cheese sandwich souffle  Find recipe for four cheese sandwiches baked with eggs and milk at  https://saramoulton.com/2015/02/cheese-sandwich-souffle-2/

The Cranford Rose Garden has been one of Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s most popular attractions since it first opened in 1928.  In June, when the roses are in full bloom, tens of thousands of blossoms cascade down arches, climb up lattices, clamber over the pavilion, and pose in formal beds.  Here, in one of the largest collections in North America, over a thousand kinds of roses are cultivated.  The Cranford Rose Garden is a repository for roses both old and modern, including wild species, old garden roses, hybrid teas, grandifloras, floribundas, polyanthas, hybrid perpetuals, climbers, ramblers, and miniatures.  Some of the original roses planted in 1927 are still in the garden today.  https://www.bbg.org/collections/gardens/rose_garden

Portland’s International Rose Test Garden, unofficially known as the Portland Rose Garden, is the oldest official continuously operated public rose test garden in the United States and features more than 10,000 roses.  Each year hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world enjoy the sights and scents of the gardens, including its spectacular views of downtown and Mount Hood.  Conceived by Jesse A. Currey in 1915 and approved by Portland Parks in 1917, it started as a safe haven for hybrid roses grown in Europe during World War I.  Roses started arriving in Portland in 1918 and the garden and amphitheater were dedicated in 1924.  https://www.travelportland.com/article/portland-rose-garden/

Elizabeth Park in West Hartford, CT is the first municipal rose garden in the United States and the third largest rose garden in the country today.  Theodore Wirth began the design of the rose garden in September of 1903, and it opened in June 1904.  The rose garden began with about 190 varieties of roses, and this eventually grew to almost 1,000 by the 1950s.  The original main garden, the “square,” is an acre in size and has 132 rose beds.  Mr. Wirth’s original design of a square with a center circle and eight pathways remains today.  The North and South gardens, which are semi-circular sections, were added later to make up a total of 2.5 acres of roses, 475 beds, and the eight grass pathways.  There are over 15,000 rose bushes and 800 varieties of old and new roses in the garden.  Featured are hybrid tea, climbers, hybrid perpetual, and floribunda, shrub, and pillar roses, among others.  Ramblers grow on arches that radiate from the “gazebo,” or Rustic Summer House, which is covered in Virginia creeper.  The gazebo was built in 1904 as a part of the original plan.  In 2005, it was reconstructed with the original plans using red cedar.  Elizabeth Park rose garden became the first official test garden in 1912 for the American Rose Society founded in 1892, with the idea to test and to provide accurate information about roses for the public.  http://elizabethparkct.org/rose-garden.html

The Mark Twain House & Museum has restored the author's Hartford, Connecticut, home, where the author and his family lived from 1874 to 1891.  Twain wrote his most important works during the years he lived there, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  After Sam and Olivia Clemens sold their remarkable mansion to the Richard Bissell family in 1903, it changed owners several times.  The Bissells lived in the house until 1917.  For the next four years, they rented the building to the Kingswood School for boys.  In 1922, the house was sold to a developer who immediately made plans to turn the house into an apartment building.  According to a 1923 Hartford Courant article, “the apartments will be ready for occupancy on July 1.  There will be eleven apartments and in the basement there is to be a large dining hall to be used for commercial purposes or for functions arranged by the tenants.  Each apartment will have a large room with a fireplace and there will be three small bedrooms with folding beds ingeniously worked into the panels of the doors.”  The Friends of Hartford, led by Katherine Seymour Day, purchased the house in 1929.  In April of that year, a group called The Mark Twain Memorial and Library Commission was chartered, with the purpose of saving and restoring Mark Twain’s House.  From 1930 until 1956, the organization rented out the first floor to The Mark Twain Branch of the Hartford Public Library.  The remainder of the house was rented as private apartments through the 1960s.  Formal restoration of the house began in 1963, the same year the Mark Twain House was designated a National Historic Landmark.  The work began with the Billiard Room. Research, physical investigation and restoration of the rest of the house continued, and all the major rooms of the home were opened in time for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the house in 1974.  In 1999 the museum began a capital campaign that led to the opening of the museum center in 2003, by which time the organization had been renamed The Mark Twain House & Museum.  The new structure, strategically located and nestled in a hillside not to detract from the Mark Twain House, was designed by Robert A. M. Stern and was the first LEED-certified “green” museum in the United States.  A stunning example of Picturesque Gothic architecture, the 25-room home features a dramatic grand hall, a lush glass conservatory, a grand library and the handsome billiard room where Twain wrote his famous books.  National Geographic named it "one of the ten best historic homes in the world," and TIME magazine dubbed it "Downton Abbey's American Cousin."  Throughout the year, The Mark Twain House & Museum presents special events and educational programs that illuminate Twain's literary legacy for fans of all ages.  There are LIVING HISTORY TOURS, a behind-the-scenes look at The Mark Twain House with a costumed interpreter, nighttime Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours and murder-mystery CLUE Tours on select days and times.  Mark Twain House & Museum  351 Farmington Avenue  Hartford, CT  06105  860-247-0998

https://www.marktwainhouse.org/visitor/general_information.php

https://www.marktwainhouse.org/about/history.php

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1751  August 9, 2017  On this date in 1173, construction of the campanile of the Cathedral of Pisa (now known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa) began; it would take two centuries to complete.  On this date in 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_9  Word of the Day  merlion  noun  An imaginary creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish, particularly that which is one of the national symbols of Singapore (often Merlion); a depiction of this creature.  (heraldic charge)  A depiction of a bird similar to a house martin or swallow with stylized feet; a martlet.  (rare) Alternative form of merlin (“a small falcon, Falco columbarius”).  August 9 is Singapore’s National Day, which commemorates the nation’s independence  Wiktionary