Part of the National Park Service and listed on both the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark the Amana Colonies in Amana, Iowa were established in 1859.  After investigating sites in Kansas and Iowa, the True Inspirationists selected a location along the Iowa River valley about 20 miles west of Iowa City, Iowa for the relocation of their community.  This site offered extensive timberland, quarries for limestone and sandstone and long stretches of prairie filled with rich, black soil.  Construction of the first village began in the summer of 1855 and the new settlement was named "Amana," meaning "believe faithfully."  A new constitution was adopted as the Community of True Inspiration took on the legal identity of the Amana Society.  Amana villages each consisted of 40 to 100 buildings.  The barns and agricultural buildings were always clustered at the village edge.  Orchards, vineyards and gardens encircled the villages.  Typical houses were rectangular two-story buildings of wood post-and-beam construction, brick, or sandstone.  Each village had its own church, school, bakery, dairy, wine cellar, craft shops and general store.  There were also a number of communal kitchens in each village where groups of about 30-40 people ate their meals.  Read extensive article, see pictures, and link to other resources at https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/amana/communal.htm

THE LEADER’S CHALLENGE:  KNOWING WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO  posted by Keith Coats on 3rd October 2013   In the face of adaptive challenges, the place where you don’t know what to do, leaders need to know what to do.  Knowing what to do requires adaptive intelligence--something that will increasingly become the currency of effective leadership in the face of an uncertain, unpredictable and constantly changing world.  We have known for a long time that it is those who are most adaptive that will survive when things change.  I was recently asked by a CEO, “what in your opinion” he said, “will be the most important leadership trait or skill in order to navigate the future?”  It was a great question and one that without hesitation, I answered, “adaptive intelligence”.  Darwin highlighted this reality in his well-worn quote from his classic work The Origin of Species, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”.  (By the way, Darwin never said that it was “survival of the fittest”.  It’s obvious when you think about it:  it definitely is the survival of the most adaptable).  Distinguishing between technical problems and adaptive challenges is a vital skill for leaders.  Technical leadership is about using the skills and procedures that we are aware of to solve current problems and is typically accomplished by those in authority.  Adaptive leadership is having the guts and heart to learn new ways to bring needed deep transformation of culture in an organization or people and is generally done by the people with the problem and by adaptive leaders.  It is important to know the difference between these kinds of leadership because “the single most common source of leadership failure we’ve been able to identify--in politics, community life, business or the non-profit sector--is that people, especially those in positions of authority, treat adaptive challenges like technical problems” (Heifetz and Linsky, Leadership on the Line).  http://www.tomorrowtodayglobal.com/2013/10/03/the-leaders-challenge-knowing-what-to-do-when-you-dont-know-what-to-do-2/

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

From:  Bruce Floyd  Subject:  Emerson  Your quotation from Emerson-- “Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone”-- reminds me that Emerson says that each word was once a poem.  In his essay “The Poet”, Emerson says, “The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history.”  He goes on to say that even “though the origin of most words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius.”  He later says that “language is fossil poetry.” Emerson knows that our language, whether we know it or not, is full “of images, of tropes, which now . . .  have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”  As soon as humankind began to speak, metaphor came to life.  We’ve been speaking in metaphor for all our lives, though most of us don’t know it.  Every cliché was once fresh, a stroke of genius by th one who first said it.  In Moliere’s play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Monsieur Jourdain is surprised to find out he’s been speaking prose all his life.  We should be just as surprised to realize that we, more often than we think, speak poetry, hackneyed and overused, no more effective, but, nonetheless, poetry -- or what was once poetry.
From:  James Ertner  Subject:  claustrophobia  Q:  What do you call Santa’s fear of coming down a chimney?  A:  Claustrophobia.
From:  Srinivas Shastri   Subject:  claustromania  I’m reading the outlandish Great Soul of Siberia, where the author lives in a 6.5 x 6.5 x 6 feet enclosure for six months from October just to become part of the countryside and capture Siberian Tigers in their natural habitat.  Riveting!

The papers of American scientist, statesman and diplomat Benjamin Franklin have been digitized and are now available online for the first time from the Library of Congress.  The Library announced the digitization on April 17, 2018 in remembrance of the anniversary of Franklin’s death on April 17, 1790.  The Franklin papers consist of approximately 8,000 items mostly dating from the 1770s and 1780s.  These include the petition that the First Continental Congress sent to Franklin, then a colonial diplomat in London, to deliver to King George III; letterbooks Franklin kept as he negotiated the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War; drafts of the treaty; notes documenting his scientific observations, and correspondence with fellow scientists.  Read  more at https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-18-044/papers-of-benjamin-franklin-now-online/2018-04-17/

 “My grandfather taught me to grate Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese onto hot pasta before tossing it with the sauce.  The cheese sticks to the pasta and the sauce sticks to the cheese, creating a perfectly delicious bite—every bite.”  Reprinted from Giada’s Italy.  Copyright © 2018 by GDL Foods Inc.  Photographs by Aubrie Pick.  Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.  See recipe for Spicy Calabrian Shrimp at https://parade.com/650165/alison-ashton/spicy-calabrian-shrimp/

Giada Pamela De Laurentiis  (born August 22, 1970) is an Italian-born American chef, writer, and television personality.  She is the host of Food Network's Giada at Home.  She also appears regularly as a contributor and guest co-host on NBC's Today.  De Laurentiis is the founder of the catering business GDL Foods.   She is a winner of the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lifestyle Host, the Gracie Award for Best Television Host, and in 2012, she was inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame.  De Laurentiis was born in Rome, Italy, the eldest child of actress Veronica De Laurentiis and her first husband, actor-producer Alex De Benedetti.  De Benedetti was a close associate of Giada's maternal grandfather, film producer Dino De Laurentiis.  As a child, Giada often found herself in the family's kitchen and spent a great deal of time at her grandfather's restaurant, DDL Foodshow.  Her parents were married in February 1970 but were later divorced.  After her parents' divorce, Giada and her siblings moved to Southern California, where they took their mother's surname.  After graduating from Marymount High School in Los Angeles, De Laurentiis attended the University of California, Los Angeles, earning her bachelor's degree in social anthropology in 1996.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giada_De_Laurentiis

STINKY fruit has led to the evacuation of a university library in Melbourne’s CBD.  Traffic was disrupted around RMIT University on April 29, 2018 as around 600 staff and students cleared the building amid fears of a gas leak.  Almost 40 firefighters, including masked specialist crews, searched the building for the source of the smell, which turned out to be rotting durian left in a cupboard.  A Metropolitan Fire Brigade spokesman said the smell had alarmed staff and students as it permeated the airconditioning system.  Durian is a tropical fruit known for its strong smell.  It is commonly banned from hotel rooms and public transport in southeast Asia. Caitlin Guilfoyle and Ryan Tennison

https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/offbeat/hundreds-evacuated-after-rotten-durian-causes-stink-at-royal-melbourne-institute-of-technology-city-campus-ng-b88821202z   

See also Why Does the Durian Smell So Terrible? at  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-does-the-durian-fruit-smell-so-terrible-149205532/

Miss the full moon on April 29, 2018?  The moon will be past full, but closer to Jupiter, on April 30.  Deborah Byrd  See photos of the "pink moon" at http://earthsky.org/todays-image/photos-full-moon-jupiter-apr-2018

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1881  April 30, 2018 

"The poet writes 'my love is as deep as the ocean,' not 'the ocean is as deep as my love,' because the ocean epitomizes depth."  Michael Lewis - The Undoing Project, A Friendship That Changed Our Minds  See Michael Lewis discuss the Undoing Project, a book on behavioral economics and decision making with Mervyn King at New York University School of Business on December 8, 2016.    

https://www.c-span.org/video/?419485-1/michael-lewis-discusses-undoing-project  55:03

Lord Mervyn King joined New York University Stern School of Business in September 2014 as a Professor of Economics and Law, a joint appointment with New York University School of Law.  He was previously a distinguished visiting professor at both schools during the fall 2013 semester.  Lord King served as Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of its Monetary Policy Committee from 2003 to 2013.  He had been Deputy Governor from 1998 to 2003, Chief Economist and Executive Director from 1991, and a non-executive director of the Bank from 1990 to 1991.  A graduate of King's College, Cambridge with a first-class degree in economics, Lord King also studied at St. John's College, Cambridge.  He was a Kennedy scholar at Harvard University.  http://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/mervyn-king

The aerial part of the dandelion, or part which grows above the ground, include the leaves, stem, and flower.  It is generally advised that these parts be gathered while the dandelion is small because the taste of the leaves and stem is less bitter at this stage.  This is of more importance when the dandelion leaves and stem are to be used fresh for salads.  While small, fresh dandelions are a spring treat; the larger dandelions can be collected and preserved for making teas at a later date.  Find freezing instructions and recipe for dandelion tea at http://foragefood.blogspot.com/2014/02/how-to-preserve-dandelion-for-later-use.html  See also  https://proverbsthirtyonewoman.blogspot.com/2013/04/how-to-preserve-dandelion-greens-and.html#.Wso67i7waUk

Outside the U.S., there is no difference between flyer and flier.  They are interchangeable, though flyer is about twice as common as flier.  American writers tend to use flyer for small handbills and flier for people and things that fly.  This distinction does not run deep, though, and the two spellings are very often used interchangeably even in the U.S., so it’s safe to say that neither is correct or incorrect for any sense of the word.  Read more at http://grammarist.com/spelling/flier-flyer/ 

Toledo’s Unforgettable Judge Austin by Lou Hebert   Prior to the creation of a Municipal Court system, Toledo, like many cities, had for years used what was called a "Police Court".  In Toledo, that court was synonymous for several decades with one man:  Judge James Austin.  Judge Austin was undoubtedly one of the city's most powerful and colorful characters of the early 1900's.  According to some accounts, he was the compelling reason that Toledo decided to create a municipal court system of four judges and structured the city's court system.  It was said that a "certain class of citizens was being favored by Judge Austin."  In one edition of the 'Police Journal' of 1922, it was noted that “he withstood the continual howl of the newspapers and the public" for his actions in court.  Despite his critics, Judge Austin remained a popular figure in the city and was reelected to his judicial post many times over, even after the city had gone to a municipal court, Judge Austin was reelected to it and named its chief judge.  Even after assuming his new role as head of the court Judge James Austin continued to create headlines.  The 'New York Times' carried one story from 1920, when Austin couldn't decide the guilt or innocence of a local grocer charged with running a gambling operation and bribery.  So he asked the court audience to vote on it.  He handed out 34 ballots and the vote came back 27-7 in favor of acquittal.  In another infamous case, a group of southern musicians had been arrested in the city's notorious tenderloin district for panhandling, Judge Austin decided their best punishment would be to go get their instruments and come back and give the court a make shift concert, which they did.  It was his creativity in sentencing and his reputation for leniency that often sparked the most furor, for Judge Austin was of the mindset that a jail sentence was not always the best form of punishment.  He believed it did little good to sentence poor people to the workhouse for crimes that "rich people" got away with.  He was known as the “Golden Rule” judge, believing that to be fair, you had to understand what people were going through and that sometimes the heart was a better measure of punishment than laws.  In 1908, back when Toledo had a workhouse near Swan Creek and City Park known as "Duck Island", Judge Austin found himself "guilty" of curiosity and sentenced himself to a "day" at the prison, as an inmate, to see what the experience of a prisoner is really like.  On a bitterly cold day in February of that year, Judge Austin reported to "Duck Island" and subjected himself to endure the indignities of  being just another inmate.  Citizen Austin was treated no differently than others, ordered to strip and get into prison togs, march to the dining hall and was sent to a pond to cut ice for the ice boxes at the jail.  Upon his release, Austin said, he would have to do some "tall thinking" in the future before sending a man to the workhouse.  This was one of the reasons that Judge Austin had earned the nickname of the "Golden Rule" judge.  Another reason for his sobriquet was that the good judge was heavily influenced by the former Toledo Mayor Samuel "Golden Rule" Jones, who also believed that poor men deserve "second chances."  Like Judge Austin, Mayor Jones believed the court should not always punish, but serve to reform.  Thank you Muse reader! 

It’s often said that the most basic form of architecture is shelter.  There’s a famous illustration on the frontispiece of Marc-Antoine Laugier’s “Essay on Architecture,” a staple of Architecture 101 college syllabi, showing two tree branches lashed together to form a pitched roof: the so-called Primitive Hut.  Yet it’s possible to pare the idea down further.  In the simplest sense, human beings build two kinds of things in the world.  We build connective things and we build protective things.  We build tunnels and we build walls.  Tunnels suggest connection but also rule-breaking and escape.  Walls suggest not just division but authority and control.  Christopher Hawthorne  Read more and see pictures at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-ca-cm-building-type-border-wall-20171231-htmlstory.html

Allan Monga, a junior at Deering High School in Portland, Maine, traveled to Washington, D.C. to compete in the Poetry Out Loud contest on April 23, 2018.  It's a national competition in which students recite great works of poetry, and it's run by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.  But Monga, who says he fled violence in his home country of Zambia, was initially barred from the national final because of his immigration status:  He's an asylum seeker and does not yet have U.S. citizenship.  Poetry Out Loud's official rules require permanent residence, so Monga filed a lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.  A judge granted a motion allowing him to compete, and he went on to represent the state of Maine in the competition.  He read two poems but did not advance to the finals.  Read interview highlights including why he connects to "America" by Claude McKay.  A few comments from Allan Monga:  "Poetry is like a whole new world to me."  "It's like I'm in a relationship with poetry."  "Your feelings, or passion for it, grows everyday.  And honestly, I will not let anyone stand in between the relationship I have, I've grown for poetry."  https://www.npr.org/2018/04/24/605260963/asylum-seeking-student-says-nothing-can-stand-between-him-and-poetry

Bob Dorough, whose career began as a composer, arranger and singer in the booming New York jazz scene of the '50s and '60s before he became the musical keystone of Schoolhouse Rock!, died April 23, 2018 in Mt. Bethel, Penn. at the age of 94.  The Arkansas-born, Texas-raised Dorough began working in music in the army, serving as a composer, arranger and player in the Special Services Army Band between 1943 and '45, before getting a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Texas.  In the late '40s, Dorough made his way to New York, working there as a pianist and singer.  He released his debut album, Devil May Care, in 1956 on Gus Wildi's Bethlehem label.  In 1971, with the jazz money running thin, Dorough was asked by his boss at the advertising company where he had a day job to set the multiplication tables to music; his boss cited his children's ability to remember Hendrix and Rolling Stones lyrics, but not their school lessons.  "I got the idea that three is a magic number," Dorough told NPR's Rachel Martin in 2013.  "Then I looked in the magic book and sure enough, three is one of the magic numbers."  That concept became the song "Three Is a Magic Number" and the project would become the Grammy-nominated Multiplication Rock.  Originally intended as a school workbook, the concept was pitched and sold to ABC executive Michael Eisner, becoming the first of the long-running Schoolhouse Rock! series of educational cartoons that became an all-but inseparable part of of '70s and '80s childhood.  Read more and link to videos at https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/04/24/605232291/bob-dorough-jazz-musician-best-known-for-schoolhouse-rock-dead-at-94

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1880  April 25, 2018 

FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS  The papers of reformer and suffragist Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) span the period 1846-1934 with the bulk of the material dating from 1846 to 1906.  The collection, consisting of approximately 500 items (6,265 images) on seven recently digitized microfilm reels, includes correspondence, diaries, a daybook, scrapbooks, speeches, and miscellaneous items.  Donated by her niece, Lucy E. Anthony, the papers relate to Susan B. Anthony's interests in abolition and women's education, her campaign for women's property rights and suffrage in New York, and her work with the National Woman Suffrage Association, the organization she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded in 1869 when the suffrage movement split into two rival camps at odds about whether to press for a federal women's suffrage amendment or to seek state-by-state enfranchisement.  With the possible exception of her close collaborator Stanton, no woman is more associated with the campaign for women's voting rights than Anthony, whose name became so synonymous with suffrage that the federal amendment, which formally became the Nineteenth Amendment, was called for many years by its supporters as simply the Anthony Amendment.  A finding aid to the Susan B. Anthony Papers is available online with links to the digital content on this site.  The collection is arranged in five series:  Correspondence, 1846-1905  Letters to and from Anthony.  Arranged chronologically.  Daybook and Diaries, 1856-1906  One daybook and twenty-five diaries.  Arranged chronologically.  Scrapbooks, 1876-1934  Six volumes and two folders of clippings and memorabilia.  Speeches and Writings, 1848-1895  Speeches by Anthony.  Also includes The Woman's Bible, part one, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Arranged chronologically.  https://www.loc.gov/collections/susan-b-anthony-papers/about-this-collection/

Q.  What literary character is being described?  "His mood was particularly bright and joyous, with that somewhat sinister cheerfulness which was characteristic of his lighter moments."  A.  Sherlock Holmes in The Problem of Thor Bridge.  Borrow The Problem of Thor Bridge from your public library or read it online at https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/doyle/arthur_conan/d75ca/chapter7.html

Asportation is from a Latin verb which means (no surprise) “to carry away.”  OED has a first use citation from just after 1500, but it seems never to have been widely used, even in law.  Many online search results refer directly or indirectly back to 19th century texts, in turn based on lectures from a century earlier (Blackstone’s Commentaries, if you’re wondering).  The main reason the recent uses of asportation caught my attention is because it didn’t seem like the wording was quite right.  When I’ve run across it, it’s almost entirely been in the police blotters of local papers (in Massachusetts).  But . . . I can’t actually find the term “asportation” in the Massachusetts criminal code.  I’m not a lawyer but it seems to me that explicitly using this as part of the charge in a criminal complaint—when there is no such wording on the books—presents potential problems.  Asportation is an archaism; in Mass, the proper term is “shoplifting” and it’s covered in Part IV, Title I, Chapter 266, Section 30A of the state’s General Laws.  I’m not sure when asportation was dropped from the wording of the statute (if it was ever there), but it’s not in it at this time.  The law already includes specific references to shoplifting by concealing merchandise, shoplifting by switching a price tag, shoplifting by switching containers, and shoplifting by ringing up a false price, so those who deal with these cases might need to clarify the basic, plain vanilla, run-of-the-mill type of shoplifting.  And so, a new retronym is born: “shoplifting by asportation.” (Actually, the statute doesn’t use those terms, either, but the official jury instructions do.)  If this is true—it’s a retronymic use, not redundancy and verbosity—then the distinction should probably be added to the wording of the law.  Otherwise, everyone involved should stick to the simplest wording and use what’s actually in the statute: shoplifting by carrying away.  Christopher Daly  https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/asportation-unnecessary-wordiness-or-a-retronym-in-process/

Chicken & Turmeric Vermicelli Soup by Sabrina Ghayour  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/chicken-turmeric-vermicelli-soup?utm_campaign=TST_WNK_20180404&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_Newsletter&utm_content=Chicken%20&%20Turmeric%20Vermicelli%20Soup

July 3, 2017  In A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius  erupted violently, spewing pyroclastic flows across the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.  The eruption has become one of the most famous in history because the speed of the hot gases caught the locals unawares.  The intense heat captured many features of city life, including individuals as macabre still-lifes.  Much of this detail was then preserved beneath huge volumes of ash that rained down on the region.  One of the discoveries made in 1752 in Herculaneum was of an intact library.  This contained large numbers of papyrus scrolls of philosophical texts, many associated with the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara.  This is the only complete library that has survived from antiquity.  And while many of the rolls were destroyed by workmen at the time and by scientists and archaeologists later, some 1,800 rolls survive, most of them in the Naples National Archaeological Museum in Italy.  Today, Inna Bukreeva at the Institute of Nanotechnology in Rome, Italy, and a few pals say they have made significant improvements to the software.  As a result, they’ve peered inside these unopened rolls with unprecedented detail.  “We restored for the first time several extensive textual portions of Greek, the largest ever detected so far in unopened Herculaneum papyrus rolls,” they say.  The technique is straightforward in principle.  The team began by imaging the papyrus roll at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble using a technique called x-ray phase-contrast tomography.  This produces a 3-D representation of the roll in which the sheets can be identified and separated, at least in theory.  https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608209/first-virtual-unrolling-of-ancient-scroll-buried-by-vesuvius-reveals-early-text/

Brent Seales couldn't get access to the Herculaneum scrolls, so he looked elsewhere to prove his algorithms and software.  That led him to Jerusalem and this charred fragment, a 1,700-year-old scroll from a burned synagogue near the Dead Sea.  Brent Seales:  Is there a line up here?  Israeli archaeologists didn't expect much, but what Seales' software revealed was like a miracle.  Bill Whitaker:  What was it?  Brent Seales:  Well, it was the Bible.  He resurrected all the surviving Hebrew script, the oldest text of the Bible as we know it today.   The first two chapters of Leviticus in a scroll that, prior to that--was assumed to be nothing or so badly damaged no one would ever know.  Bill Whitaker:  This is what you hope to see in the Herculaneum scrolls?  Brent Seales:  Absolutely.  This is actually an identifiable text.  Following his breakthrough in Jerusalem, Graziano Rannochia admits Brent Seales' software is brilliant.  Now the Naples library, which wouldn't let Seales get his hands on the scrolls, is considering granting him access.  He's convinced the secrets of Herculaneum, locked away in the scrolls for 2,000 years, are just within reach.  See article from 60 Minutes broadcast April 3, 2018 at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/herculaneum-scrolls-can-technology-unravel-the-secrets-sealed-by-mt-vesuvius-2000-years-ago/

In Doha, the Qatar National Library was unveiled in April 2018-- a glitzy 42,000-square-meter space designed by Dutch architecture firm OMA, it's a new landmark for the city.  In the Netherlands, meanwhile, a 19th century church, which has been painstakingly converted into a library, opened its doors this year.  Across the world in Tianjin, in northeastern China, the futuristic Tianjin Binhai Library was unveiled in late 2017.  Its eye-shaped atrium was designed to be a "new urban living room."  "We designed this (space) as a public library for modern information," Ellen van Loon, who designed the Qatar National Library with Rem Koolhaas and Iyad Alsaka at OMA, tells CNN.  Of the part of the building that looks like an excavated cave, inspired by local archeological sites, she adds:  "It's not just another modern building somewhere in the middle of a country--this basically connects the building back to the culture.  It's a very different experience to going on the internet."  The advantage of designing a building as one big room (is that) ... when you enter you can see all the books in one go," van Loon says.  Inside, over one million books are available, housed in bookcases which are stacked on different levels, creating a terraced effect.  A "people mover system"--essentially, a wheelchair-friendly sloped elevator--takes guests to the level they want to get to.  Jamie Andrews, head of culture and learning at the British Library in London says that they've seen an increased number of people using the public spaces since free WiFi became available.  The purpose of a national library has been transformed--in some respects liberated--by the internet.  As well as putting more online, we find there's also an appetite for things that are original and authentic."  The collection includes items such as Beatles manuscripts, as well as a writing desk that once belonged to author Jane Austen, which are among the British Library's most popular attractions.  In Vught, a town in southern Netherlands, a church built in 1884 was transformed into a library with sliding bookshelves that house thousands of books.  The library, which forms part of the De Petrus Meeting Center, preserves the church's original layout and design details, such as its arched roof and stained glass windows.  There is, however, a newly built mezzanine floor of 5,380 square feet (500 square meters) where a study area and meeting rooms are located.  Andrea Lo  Read more and see pictures at https://www.cnn.com/style/article/modern-libraries/index.html  Thank you, Muse reader! 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1879  April 23, 2018  1635 – The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston.  1914 – First baseball game at Wrigley Field, then known as Weeghman Park, in Chicago.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_23

Janne Teller (born 1964), Danish novelist of Austrian-German background.  Her literature includes essays and short stories, has received numerous literary awards and grants, and is today translated into more than 26 languages.  Always confronting the larger philosophical questions of life and modern civilization, her books often spark controversial debate.  Janne Teller has published ia, the novel Odin's Island (1999), a modern Nordic saga and parable of political, historical and religious dispute, Europa, All that you Lack (2004) about the significance of history in war and love, Come, an existential novel about ethics in art and modern life, and most recently the novella African Roads (2013), and the short story collection Everything (2013).  She has also published the existential YA/crossover novel Nothing (2000) which was first banned, then has become an international bestseller, winning numerous international prizes and is today by many critics already deemed a modern classic.  Her unique passport-shaped book War, what if it were here about life as a refugee, she transforms to each country in which it is published--by now 16, and still growing (something, to the best of our knowledge, no author in the world has done before).  http://www.janneteller.dk/?English

Spaghetti with Lemon by Ruth Rogers, Sian Wyn Owen, Joseph Trivelli and Rose Gray   This recipe comes from a small trattoria outside of Positano.  We only make this in the summer when the basil is sun-drenched and the Amalfi lemons are fresh and ripe.  It is incredibly easy to make but be sure to cook the spaghetti al dente and follow the quantities in the recipe, as the flavors need to be balanced correctly.  https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/spaghetti-with-lemon?utm_campaign=TST_WNK_20180328&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sfmc_Newsletter&utm_content=Spaghetti%20with%20Lemon

The Brinton 1704 House is one of the oldest and best preserved historic homes in America, a hidden gem located in the heart of the Brandywine Battlefield.  The Brinton family, led by William the Elder, notable for his elderly age and “wild white hair,” settled the frontier of Pennsylvania with his wife and son to avoid persecution in England for his Quaker beliefs.  Although the family spent their first winter living in a cave, William’s son—affectionately known as William “the Builder” by Brintons today—eventually built the 1704 house where he lived with his own family, his wife Jane and their six children.  In 1950, Brinton descendants repurchased their ancestral home and spent the next seven years restoring it to its original appearance.  The furniture, objects, and artifacts in the home are authentic to the 17th and 18th centuries; a few of the objects of note include a beehive oven, a mortar and pestle brought by the Brintons to the colony, and the Brinton family Bible box.  Today members of the Brinton family travel from far and wide to visit the ancestral Quaker home of their family:  a house whose family history stretches back more than 300 years in Pennsylvania and nearly a millennia in England.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/brinton-1704-house

Born in Macon, Georgia, to Mac Hyman and Gwendolyn Holt Hyman, Gwyn Hyman Rubio grew up in south Georgia in the small town of Cordele, not far from Plains.  Her father was a writer himself and published the bestseller No Time for Sergeants in 1954 when he was only 31 years old.  It was turned into a popular play and film, starring Andy Griffith.  Upon graduating from Florida State University with a B.A. in English, Gwyn joined the Peace Corps, serving in Costa Rica and working as a preschool program coordinator and teacher in a village, without running water or electricity, near the Panamanian border.  She married her husband, Angel, also a volunteer, six months after her arrival.  They have been married now for over 40 years.  Gwyn’s youth was spent frantically running from her father’s vocation—seeking any other occupation—because she felt the stress of writing had precipitated his early death of a heart attack at the age of 39.  Throughout the 1970s, one job followed another until the couple wound up in 1980 in Berea, Kentucky.  In 1983 Gwyn could no longer run away from writing, from the realization that this was what she was meant to do.  Therefore, she applied and was accepted into the MFA Program for Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.  Not until her graduation in 1986 did she dedicate herself completely to writing.  Gwyn’s collection of short stories, Sharing Power, was nominated for a Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award.  Her short fiction has been published and anthologized around the country.  Her short story “Little Saint” received the Cecil Hackney Literary Award for first prize in the National Short Story Competition and later appeared in Prairie Schooner.  She has received grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.  In July, 1998, her first novel was published by Viking/Penguin.  Highlighted in Time Magazine by Barnes & Noble, Icy Sparks was one of several novels chosen to represent “The Next Wave of Great Literary Voices” in the Discover Great New Writers program.  http://gwynhymanrubio.com/bio.html

In many countries, white chocolate is not classified as chocolate at all, as it contains no cocoa solids, which gives it the smooth ivory or beige color.  White "chocolate" is the most fragile form of all chocolates and close attention must be paid to it while heating or melting as it will burn and seize very easily unless heated very slowly.  White chocolate originates from the cocoa (cacao) plant but lacks "chocolate" flavor due to the absence of the chocolate liquor which is what gives dark and milk chocolate their intense, bitter flavor and color.  White chocolate contains cocoa butter, milk solids, sugar, lecithin and flavorings (usually including vanilla).  Look for a brand that contains cocoa butter.  There are cheaper versions that don't contain any cocoa butter, and their flavor is inferior.  Link to recipes using  white chocolate at http://www.geniuskitchen.com/about/white-chocolate-225

stridulation  noun  A high-pitched chirping, grating, hissing, or squeaking sound, as male crickets and grasshoppers make by rubbing certain body parts together.  from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English   The act of making shrill sounds or musical notes by rubbing together certain hard parts, as is done by the males of many insects, especially by Orthoptera, such as crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts.  The noise itself.  Etymologies  from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License  1838, from earlier term stridulous; from Latin strīdulus ("giving a shrill sound, creaking"), from strīdō ("utter a shrill or harsh sound; creak, shriek, grate, hiss").  https://www.wordnik.com/words/stridulation

(1)  Mary Regula, who led a successful campaign to establish a national library to research and commemorate the disparate and often unsung roles played by presidential spouses, died on April 5, 2018  at her family’s farm in Navarre, Ohio. She was 91. 

(2)  Growing up in the 1960s, Storm Reyes lived and worked in migrant labor camps across Washington state.  When she was 8 years old, she began working full-time picking fruit for under a dollar an hour.  At StoryCorps, Storm shared stories of her difficult childhood with her son, Jeremy Hagquist, and remembers the day a bookmobile unexpectedly arrived, opening up new worlds and bringing hope.

(3)  From an article in The New York Times, a judge imposes juveniles to read from a list of books and report on their reactions.  A Virginia judge handed down an unusual sentence last year after five teenagers defaced a historic black schoolhouse with swastikas and the words “white power” and “black power.”  Instead of spending time in community service, Judge Avelina Jacob decided, the youths should read a book.  But not just any book.  They had to choose from a list of ones covering some of history’s most divisive and tragic periods.  The horrors of the Holocaust awaited them in “Night,” by Elie Wiesel.  The racism of the Jim Crow South was there in Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”  The brutal hysteria of persecution could be explored in “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller.  http://lisnews.org/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1878  April 21, 2018  Word of the Day  gens  noun  (Ancient Rome, historical)  A legally defined unit of Roman society, being a collection of people related through  a common ancestor by birth, marriage or adoption, possibly over many generations, and sharing the same nomen gentilicium.  (anthropology)  A tribal subgroup whose members are characterized by having the same descent, usually along the maleline.

Rome is traditionally regarded as having been founded on April 21.  Wiktionary

February 25, 2018  From Philip Jones, editor, the Bookseller   Hardbacks are still popular.  Hardback fiction brings in about £70m annually (roughly 20% of the printed fiction market), according to sales data from Nielsen BookScan.  Size also matters:  hardbacks are bigger than paperbacks, they take up more space in bookshops and are more visible--whether in window displays or on bookshop tables.  Hardbacks are also more profitable for publishers: they will often sell at twice the price of their paperback equivalent but do not cost twice as much to produce.  If a hardback becomes a bestseller, the publisher will often delay the paperback release even though that limits the book’s sales potential.  Last year sales of hardback fiction grew 11%.  When the ebook arrived 10 years ago, some pundits suggested format did not matter.  But they were wrong.  A beautiful hardback is a joy, something to cherish, shelve and pass on, and readers are prepared to pay for that just as some people still prefer the cinema over television.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/25/book-clinic-why-do-publishers-still-issue-hardbacks

We’re a nation of immigrants.  So is our food.  Look at the vast array of produce in the supermarket. Where did all these fruits and vegetables originally come from?  And how did they get here?  According to author Daniel Stone, we have one man to thank for the diversity of this bounty:  David Fairchild.  More than a century ago, Fairchild traveled the world, in search of interesting (and delicious) crops that could be grown by American farmers.  Traveling to every continent but Antarctica, Fairchild brought back thousands of possibilities.  Among Fairchild’s greatest hits:  the avocado (from Chile), kale (from Croatia) and the Meyer lemon (from China).  Just those three have a huge impact on what we eat now.  The avocado alone “should qualify Fairchild for sainthood,” Stone quipped.  “Fairchild grew up in Kansas.  He called them ‘alligator pears.’  Few Americans had seen them before.  In Chile, he found what was the ancestor to the Hass avocado.  He shipped back a thousand of them, hoping some would survive.”  That’s just for starters, Stone added.  Fairchild brought back soybeans (from Indonesia), peaches and oranges (from China), pomegranates (from Malta), nectarines (from Afghanistan), papayas (from Ceylon), red seedless grapes (from Italy) and hops (from Bavaria).  He also was responsible for introducing dates, mangoes, pistachios and wasabi to the American table.  In all, Fairchild is credited with more than 20,000 plant introductions to the U.S.  Debbie Arrington  Find recipes at http://www.sacbee.com/food-drink/recipes/article203553609.html

Most Americans don’t recognize the name Frank N. Meyer, but many are familiar with the fruit that bears his name.  Long thought to be a simple lemon-orange hybrid, the Meyer lemon is now believed to be a cross between three of the original citrus species—citron, mandarin, and pummelo—based on a 2016 genetics study led by French scientist Franck Curk.  Born in the Netherlands in 1875 as Frans Nicolaas Meijer, Meyer was one of a half-dozen explorers scouring the globe for new and hardier things to grow under the direction of long-serving agriculture secretary James Wilson.  Their combined efforts yielded a lot of what we eat today, including avocados, figs, and mangoes.  But Meyer’s unique personality, combined with the tremendous difficulty of his assignment, made him the group’s media darling and arguably the favorite of his boss, David Fairchild, head of the USDA’s Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction.  It was his job to think about such things:  Meyer worked for the U.S. government as an “agricultural explorer,” traveling across Asia in search of better food, like some early-20th-century Anthony Bourdain.  The fancy lemon that bears his name is one of some 2,500 types of plants—including multiple varieties of peach, pear, plum, and persimmon, to mention only a few of the p’s—that Meyer picked up during his four long missions to the Far East, braving all kinds of harsh conditions and violence along the way.  Meyer did more than just pick up some soybeans (over 100 different varieties throughout his 13-year career); he was also an early advocate for soy as a food source for humans, not just livestock.  Chris Shott  https://www.tastecooking.com/a-man-a-plan-a-lemon-china/

As we begin planning for the renovation of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library's main branch, we hope all members of the community will take part in the conversation and process by sharing their input and insight while attending the following community forums in the McMaster Center:

Forum 1:  Wednesday, May 2, 6 - 8 p.m.                 
Forum 2:  Wednesday, May 30, 6 - 8 p.m.                   
Forum 3:  Thursday, June 28, 6 - 8 p.m.                      
For information and updates throughout the planning and construction process, visit  

www.toledolibrary.org/construction/mainrenovation 

Salmon Mousse, or Absolute Power by Sadie Stein   I have been wrestling mightily lately. The temptation:  salmon mousse.  Like many Barbara Pym fans, I have long owned The Barbara Pym Cookbook, published in 1988 by the late author’s sister, Hilary, and Honor Wyatt.  And like many Barbara Pym fans, I have never dared cook from it.  By the jacket copy’s own admission, this is “an armchair cookbook,” a collection of quotations from Pym’s novels and corresponding recipes—they make for excellent reading, but they don’t excite one to run to the kitchen.  While minute meal descriptions are one of the great pleasures of the Pym oeuvre, many of the novels take place during the tyranny of postwar rationing.  However enthusiastic and sophisticated a cook she may have been—and by all accounts she certainly was—Barbara Pym’s recipes are not necessarily calculated to appeal to the twenty-first-century palate.  https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/08/17/salmon-mousse-or-absolute-power/  A treat for devotees of Pym, The Barbara Pym Cookbook offers a modest selection of recipes, adapted for the American kitchen, for foods mentioned in Pym's novels.  Others, such as ``a bowl of groats, fragrant as a cornfield and intriguingly surfaced with little pock marks,'' were Pym's favorites.  All are accompanied by prose morsels taken from the author's corpus.  Plain English food is served in abundance: steak and kidney pie, potted ham, sausage rolls.  https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-24706-7

Barbara Pym quotes  “Of course it's alright for librarians to smell of drink.”  “The burden of keeping three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.”  “Dulcie always found a public library a little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there.”  “I think just a cup of tea...' There was something to be said for tea and a comfortable chat about crematoria.”  “If only one could clear out one's mind and heart as ruthlessly as one did one's wardrobe.” 

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/104015.Barbara_Pym

It was on April 18, in 1944 that the Jerome Robbins-Leonard Bernstein ballet “Fancy Free” was first danced by the Ballet Theater at the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.  Bernstein himself conducted, and alongside Robbins and set designer Oliver Smith, took some 20 curtain calls.  “The ballet is strictly wartime America, 1944,” wrote Bernstein, “The curtain rises on a street corner with a lamp post, a side-street bar, and New York skyscrapers making a dizzying backdrop.  Three sailors explode onto the stage.  They are on 24-hour shore leave in the city and on the prowl for girls.  The tale of how they meet first one, then a second girl, and how they fight over them, lose them, and in the end take off after still a third, is the story of the ballet.”  In a curious parallel to the stage action described by Bernstein, the ballet had been first pitched to composer Morton Gould, who said he was too busy, then to Vincent Persichetti, who in turn suggested Bernstein as a third, and perhaps better choice to produce a more hip, jazzy, and danceable score.  Bernstein made piano four-hand recordings as he completed each section of the music, and mailed these off to his partners.  His piano-bench partner for those work-in-progress recordings, by the way, was none other than Aaron Copland.  Composers Datebook

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1877  April 18, 2018  Word of the Day  tit for tat  noun  Equivalent retribution; an act of returning exactly what one gets; an eye for an eye.