Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) was a Scottish privateer and Royal Navy officer who spent four years and four months as a castaway (1704–1709) after being marooned by his captain on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean.  He survived that ordeal, but succumbed to tropical illness a dozen years later while serving aboard HMS Weymouth off West Africa.  Selkirk was an unruly youth, and joined buccaneering voyages to the South Pacific during the War of the Spanish Succession.  One such expedition was on Cinque Ports, captained by Thomas Stradling under the overall command of William Dampier.  Stradling's ship stopped to resupply at the uninhabited Juan Fernández Islands, and Selkirk judged correctly that the craft was unseaworthy and asked to be left there.  By the time he was eventually rescued by English privateer Woodes Rogers, in company with Dampier, Selkirk had become adept at hunting and making use of the resources that he found on the island.  His story of survival was widely publicised after his return to England, becoming a source of inspiration for writer Daniel Defoe's fictional character Robinson Crusoe.  William Cowper's "The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk" is about Selkirk's feelings as the castaway lived all alone on the island.  This poem gave rise to the common phrase "monarch of all I survey.”  Charles Dickens used Selkirk as a simile in Chapter Two of The Pickwick Papers (1836).  Read about other uses of Selkirk in popular culture at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Selkirk

Built by Coca-Cola magnate and former mayor Asa Griggs Candler as Atlanta’s first steel skyscraper, the marble-clad Candler Building has stood over Peachtree Street and the northern edge of Woodruff Park since 1906.  It held the title of Atlanta’s tallest building for 23 years.  Plans emerged for converting the former office tower to a hotel in 2016, and office tenants were swiftly moved out.  The project stalled, however, and the National Register of Historic Places-listed building remained empty throughout 2017.  Following the transformation, Hilton reps are calling the 265-room property “majestic” and a fusion of “style, comfort, charm, and Southern hospitality.”  Inside and out, many of the building’s original Beaux-Arts, Gothic, and Renaissance-style architectural details were brushed up and preserved.  The property also includes By George, an elegant all-day French eatery by Chef Hugh Acheson.  One package offered as part of the October 2019 opening celebration included breakfast for two and—appropriately—two “signature Coca-Cola floats.”  Josh Green  See many pictures at https://atlanta.curbed.com/2019/10/24/20930167/downtown-atlanta-hotels-candler-hotel-where-to-stay

Most people want to be happier.  Psychological theories on happiness generally contend that happiness depends on the extent to which people have what they want.  For example, most people want money, and those who make more money tend to be slightly happier.  However, some theologians, particularly Rabbi Hyman Schachtel, argue that happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.  This maxim sounds reasonable enough, but can it be tested, and if so, is it true?  It turns out Schachtel’s maxim can be tested.  Texas Tech University psychologist Jeff Larsen and Amie McKibban of Wichita State University asked undergraduates to indicate whether they possessed 52 different material items (e.g., a car, stereo, bed).  If they had (say) a car, the researchers asked them to rate how much they wanted the car they had.  If they didn’t have a car, they were asked to rate how much they wanted one.  Larsen and McKibban then calculated the extent to which people want what they have and have what they want.  The findings show that wanting what you have is not the same as having what you want.  While people who have what they want tend to desire those items, the correlation between the two was far from perfect.  As for happiness, Rabbi Schachtel was both right and wrong.  The researchers found that people who want more of what they have tend to be happier than those who want less of what they have.  However, people who have more of what they want tend to be happier than those who have less of what they want.  These results, which appear in the April 2008 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, show that people tend to grow accustomed to newly acquired possessions and thereby derive less happiness from them.  They also suggest, however, that people can continue to want the things they have and that those who do so can achieve greater happiness.

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/is-happiness-having-what-you-want-wanting-what-you-have-or-both.html

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

bibliophage  (BIB-lee-uh-fayj)  noun  One who loves to read books; a bookworm.  From Greek biblio- (book) + -phage (one who eats).

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day

From:  Russ Talbot  Subject:  Bibliophilia  Bibliophilia’s a bit ho-hum.  Here’s a better one:  abibliophobia:  the fear of running out of books/things to read.

From:  Richard Freeman  Subject:  bibliophage  There’s an anecdote regarding the guitarist Mike Bloomfield (in the bio by Ed Ward), in which he reports that when sufficiently enamored of a passage, Bloomfield would tear out and eat the page(s).
From:  Grant Agnew  Subject:  Bibliophage  If there were a magazine for bibliophages, would it be called the Reader’s Digest?

From:  Charles Harp   Subject:  Head-scratchers  Canada is the world’s largest producer and exporter of lentils, and India is their biggest customer.  Lentils and other pulses (legumes) are an important staple food in India, most commonly in the preparation of dal.  Delicious and nutritious, dal is consumed daily by the masses.  Most likely those very lentils are grown in the Canadian prairie province of Saskatchewan.

Indian Dal is an easy and very flavorful vegetarian side dish made of yellow or red lentils and spice.  Also spelled dhal or dail or daal is a side dish made of yellow split peas that are cooked with spices and becomes a lovely shade of yellow.  The basic dal is just the lentils and turmeric, but many additions can be added like jalapeño and onion.  Lentils can become tough if you salt before cooked, so it is best to add the salt after.  Posted by Janette  Find recipe and pictures at  https://culinaryginger.com/indian-dal/

Apple does not let filmmakers show villains using iPhones on camera, movie director Rian Johnson said in an interview with Vanity Fair.  What isn't clear from Johnson's remarks is whether there's any legal force to Apple's alleged demand that movie villains not use iPhones.  If Apple is paying for product placement, it can obviously exert influence over how its products are used on screen.  In other cases, movie studios might be cautious about respecting Apple's wishes in order to avoid lawsuits, even if the studios would be within their rights to have a villain use an iPhone in a movie scene.  Jon Brodkin  https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/apple-wont-let-filmmakers-put-iphones-in-villains-hands-rian-johnson-says/

The Smithsonian Institution released nearly 3 million images for public use February 25, 2020 of 2-D and 3-D items from its vast collections.  Users of the Smithsonian Open Access initiative can download, edit and share any of these images for any purpose.  Previously, users could request some information or images for educational or personal use.  The online repository includes images, in addition to datasets and more, from the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, research centers, libraries, the National Zoo and more.  The information includes art in addition to items and information across sciences, histories, cultures, technologies and designs.  Marina Pitofsky  https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/484870-smithsonian-makes-nearly-3-million-pieces-of-art-available

Clive Cussler, the bestselling author and sea explorer, died February 24, 2020.  He was 88.  In his lifetime, Cussler was known for his books about underwater shipwreck discoveries--both fiction and nonfiction.  He published more than 50 during his career, two of which were later made into movies--"Raise the Titanic," released in 1980, and "Sahara," in 2005.  His books were published in more than 40 languages in over 100 countries, according to his website.  But Cussler wasn't just a novelist.  He was so passionate about maritime discoveries, he even started a nonprofit dedicated to them--National Underwater and Marine Agency--a volunteer foundation dedicated to "preserving our maritime heritage through the discovery, archaeological survey and conservation of shipwreck artifacts," the website reads.  Most of the financial support for the organization came from book royalties, the website says.  The organization has located more than 60 significant shipwrecks.  Leah Asmelash  https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/26/us/clive-cussler-dead-trnd/index.html

The chance of being born on a leap day is often said to be one in 1,461.  Four years is 1,460 days and adding one for the leap year you have 1,461.  So, odds of 1/1,461.  Babies born on 29 February are known as "leapers" or "leaplings".  https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17203353

The leap year cocktail (with four ingredients) has been around since the 1930s.  Find recipe at https://www.thespruceeats.com/leap-year-cocktail-recipe-760098

Leap year pudding (Skrikkeljaarpoeding)  Serve it warm.  https://www.rainbowcooking.co.nz/recipes/leap-year-pudding-skrikkeljaarpoeding

WORD OF THE DAY for February 28  boneseeker  noun  (physiology, radiology) Any element, especially a radioisotope, that has a tendency to accumulate in bones.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boneseeker#English

 http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2232  February 28, 2020

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located within the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.  It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere.  MONA houses ancient, modern and contemporary art from the David Walsh collection.  The precursor to MONA, the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities, was founded in 2001 by Tasmanian millionaire David Walsh.  It closed on 20 May 2006 to undergo $75 million renovations.  The new museum was officially opened on 21 January 2011, coinciding with the third MOFO festival. The afternoon opening party was attended by 1,350 invited guests.  2,500 members of the public were selected by random ballot for the evening event which included performances by The DC3, True Live, The Scientists of Modern Music, Wire, Health and The Cruel Sea.  The single-storey MONA building appears at street level to be dominated by its surroundings, but its interior possesses a spiral staircase that leads down to three larger levels of labyrinthine display spaces built into the side of the cliffs around Berriedale peninsula.  The decision to build it largely underground was taken, according to Walsh, to preserve the heritage setting of the two Roy Grounds houses on the property.  Walsh has also said that he wanted a building that "could sneak up on visitors rather than broadcast its presence . . . 'a sense of danger' that would enliven the experience of viewing art".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Old_and_New_Art

On the evening of December 12, 1829, American lawyer and politician John Ten Eyck Lansing Jr. left his Manhattan hotel to mail a letter at a dock in New York City, never to be seen again.  Lansing was 75 years old and was presumed drowned or perhaps murdered; his body was never recovered.  His fate was a major mystery in New York State at the time, rivaled only by the disappearance of William Morgan, the anti-Mason writer, in 1826 in upstate New York.  In the last century it has become less publicized since the disappearance of New York State Justice Joseph Force Crater in 1930.  Only one major clue to Lansing's disappearance has appeared since his death.  In 1882 the memoirs of Thurlow Weed, former Whig and Republican political leader in New York State, were published by Weed's grandson T. W. Barnes.  Weed wrote that Lansing was murdered by several prominent political and social figures who found he was in the way of their projects.  According to Weed, his unnamed source showed him papers to prove it, but begged Weed not to publish them until all the individuals had died.  Weed said they were all dead by 1870, but he did not wish to harm their respected family reputations, so upon advice of two friends he decided not to reveal what he had been told.  The town of Lansing in New York was named after John Lansing.  Lansing, Michigan, was named by settlers who came from Lansing, New York.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lansing_Jr.

How to not slice your hand open when cutting an avocado  1.  Make sure the knife is sharp.  2.  Choose a ripe avocado. 3.  Glide the knife, rather than chop, when cutting an avocado.  4.  Take the pit out by lightly chopping it and twisting it out slowly.  Julie Garcia  https://www.chron.com/lifestyle/renew-houston/nutrition/article/How-to-not-slice-your-hand-open-when-cutting-an-14270024.php

Grilled Cheese With Kimchi  J. KENJI LÓPEZ-ALT  https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/04/print/grilled-cheese-with-kimchi-recipe.html  yield:  one sandwich  time:  12 minutes

Nonsense literature is one of the great subsets of English literature, and for many of us a piece of nonsense verse is our first entry into the world of poetry.  This post lists ten of the greatest works of nonsense poetry as selected by Oliver Tearle.  The list includes ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’, ‘I Saw a Peacock’,  ‘The Great Panjandrum Himself’, ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’, ‘The Dong with the Luminous Nose’ and ‘The Crocodile’.  https://interestingliterature.com/2019/05/10-of-the-best-nonsense-poems-in-english-literature/

Serendipity is the occurrence of an unplanned fortunate discovery.  Serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of product invention and scientific discovery.  Serendipity is also seen as a potential design principle for online activities that would present a wide array of information and viewpoints, rather than just re-enforcing a user's opinion.  The first noted use of "serendipity" in the English language was by Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754.  In a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made about a lost painting of Bianca Cappello by Giorgio Vasari by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip.  The princes, he told his correspondent, were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of."  The name comes from Serendip, an old name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon), hence Sarandib by Arab traders.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity

The Mascot Hall of Fame, formally "The Mascot Hall of Fame Interactive Children's Museum", is a hall of fame for United States sports mascots.  It was founded by David Raymond, who was the original Phillie Phanatic from 1978 to 1993.  It was founded as an online-only hall, with an induction ceremony taking place each year in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  However, in September 2014, Raymond's mascot company signed a memorandum of understanding with the City of Whiting, Indiana, to develop a permanent Mascot Hall of Fame on the south shore of Lake Michigan.  The museum opened December 26, 2018.  The mission of the Mascot Hall of Fame is to honor mascot performers, performances, and programs that have positively affected their communities.  The Mascot Hall of Fame has also partnered with the Boys and Girls Clubs and holds an online auction contributing to that cause.  The main bulk of the items up for auction are pieces of signed sports memorabilia donated by professional sports teams around the nation.  See list of inductees and pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascot_Hall_of_Fame  Where:  1851 Front St., Whiting, Indiana  Information:  219-354-8814; www.mascothalloffame.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-ent-mascot-hall-1228-story.html

Sweet Potato Dessert is a simple baked sweet that uses sweet potatoes, sugar and butter.  It is usually called just “Sweet Potato.”  It has been around over 100 years in Japan.  https://www.japanesecooking101.com/sweet-potato-dessert-recipe/  See also https://www.yummly.com/recipes/japanese-sweet-potato

Minatamis Na Kamote  Dessert, Filipino

Prep Time: 10 mins  Cook Time:  50 mins  Servings:  6 

Ingredients 

2 pounds (about 4 large pieces) Japanese sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-inch cubes

2 tablespoons butter, cubed

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup orange juice  Find instructions and pictures at https://www.kawalingpinoy.com/minatamis-na-kamote/  Thank you, Muse reader!

The human body requires a variety of vitamins to function.  A healthy diet provides most vitamins that people need.  When diet alone doesn’t offer enough nutrients, taking vitamin supplements helps to fill in for dietary shortcomings.  Because supplements are not standardized and regulated as stringently as pharmaceuticals, it can be difficult to determine the amount of a substance in a specific preparation and to know an acceptable dosage.  Vitamin supplements may be measured in milligrams, micrograms or international units.  A.P. Mentzer  Find how to convert between units at  https://sciencing.com/convert-between-iu-mg-mcg-8298314.html

Diana Serra Cary, the child silent film star known by the nickname Baby Peggy, died February 24, 2020.  She was 101.  Born on October 29, 1918 as Peggy Jean Montgomery, Cary began her career in the film industry at the early age of 19 months.  During a visit with her mother and a friend to Century Film Studio in Hollywood, director Fred Fishbach became impressed with Peggy’s well-mannered behavior that led to her co-starring in short films. She soon began starring in her own series of films, becoming a major Hollywood celebrity and appearing in more than 100 shorts.  She starred in a short film as Little Red Riding Hood in 1922 and in Hansel and Gretel in 1923.  She starred in five feature-length films including “Captain January” in 1924 that was later remade as a musical starring Shirley Temple.  Her father, Jack Montgomery, was a cowboy who worked as a stuntman and an extra in cowboy films.  In 1924, Montgomery got into a pay dispute with producer Sol Lesser that ended Cary’s contract which also ended the young actress’ career.  Around the same time her grandfather stole all of the family’s earnings, leaving them broke.  The family gained back their fortune after touring the country for several years in the late 1920s, but hard times arose again with the Great Depression.  Several years after returning to Hollywood, Cary changed her name from Peggy to Diana, after actress Diana Wynyard, and began a career as a magazine writer and journalist.  In 1975, she began her book-writing career with “The Hollywood Posse,” a novel about the real cowboys who worked in movies.  Her autobiography, “What Ever Happened to Baby Peggy” was published in 1996 and she authored her last book, “The Drowning of the Moon,” when she was 99.  Klaritza Rico  https://variety.com/2020/film/news/baby-peggy-diana-serra-cary-dies-dead-1203514069/

FEBRUARY 26 BIRTHDAYS  1564 – Christopher Marlowe, English playwright, poet and translator (d. 1593), 1584 – Albert VI, Duke of Bavaria (d. 1666), 1587 – Stefano Landi, Italian composer and educator (d. 1639)  Wikipedia

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2231  February 26, 2020

Venice faces huge challenges.  When you have an aging population of only 53,000 and you're doing nothing to retain people who are young, you're going in the direction of the city disappearing.  The polemics about Venice always revolve around the same issues:  cruise ships, overtourism and the gradual exodus of locals from the city.  And while the authorities regularly make headlines for mooted initiatives--whether that's an "access contribution" for day trippers or a ban on new fast food stalls opening--many locals say that not enough is being done quickly enough.  Venice has been flooded by visitors for generations, of course, and Venetians have been leaving the city for decade--for ease of life, as well as because of irritation at tourists.  As mass tourism increases, visitors are more likely to pay $3 for a tchotchke made who knows where than $30 for a handmade, marble-papered notebook in a tradition dating back to the renaissance period.  More critically, the rise of Airbnb has transformed the city's housing infrastructure.  Why would a landlord rent their apartment to a Venetian when they can earn much more money by renting it by the night to tourists willing to pay a higher price?  The city authorities have reacted by banning new openings of fast food outlets in 2018.  They have forbidden the planning of new hotels in the historic center (Venice and the islands, other than the Lido) since June 2017.  That's not to say there have been no recent hotel openings.  New hotels for 2019 include Il Palazzo Experimental in Dorsoduro, near the Guggenheim Museum, and Hotel Indigo in the residential district of Sant'Elena.  However, the mayor's office says that anything that has opened since the law came into force, had permission to do so before, and has merely taken time to open.  The only exception: hotels that also offer a "public service."  This explains the current controversy in Venice around a proposed 10-story hotel in the residential district of Castello, one of the few local-centric areas remaining in Venice.  The rise of Airbnb has transformed the streets of Venice.  In August 2019, the city had no fewer than 8,907 listings, according to monitoring site Inside Airbnb.  Three quarters of them were entire properties (rather than a room in a local's house), and 63% of the hosts were advertising multiple properties.  Of course, that's not counting short-term rentals on other sites.  Julia Buckley  Read much more and see graphics at https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/venice-overtourism-situation-flooding/index.html

AGE CLASSIFICATIONS IN THE U.S.-1

World War II Generation (aka depression babies) – Those born prior to 1945

Baby Boomers – Those born 1946 to 1964

Generation X – Those born 1965 to 1982

Generation Y (aka the Millennials) – Those born after 1982  https://drdianehamilton.com/tag/depression-babies/

AGE CLASSIFICATIONS IN THE U.S.-2

Depression babies – born between 1926 and 1935

War babies – born between 1936 and 1945

Early baby boomers – born between 1946 and 1955

Late baby boomers – born between 1956 and 1965

Gen Xers – born between 1966 and 1975  Phillip Moeller  https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-best-life/2013/05/17/gen-x-and-late-baby-boomers-face-bleak-retirements

Charlie Wilson's War is a 2007 American biographical comedy-drama film, based on the story of U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson and CIA operative Gust Avrakotos, whose efforts led to Operation Cyclone, a program to organize and support the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War.  The film was directed by Mike Nichols (his final film) and written by Aaron Sorkin, who adapted George Crile III's 2003 book Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History.  Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman starred, with Amy Adams and Ned Beatty in supporting roles.  Some Reagan-era officials, including former Under Secretary of Defense Fred Ikle, have criticized some elements of the film.  The Washington Times reported claims that the film wrongly promotes the notion that the CIA-led operation funded Osama bin Laden and ultimately produced the September 11 attacks; however, other Reagan-era officials have been more supportive of the film.  In February 2008, it was revealed that the film would not play in Russian theaters.  The rights for the film were bought by Universal Pictures International (UPI) Russia.  It was speculated that the film would not appear because of a certain point of view that depicted the Soviet Union unfavorably.  UPI Russia head Yevgeny Beginin denied that, saying, "We simply decided that the film would not make a profit." Reaction from Russian bloggers was also negative.  One wrote:  "The whole film shows Russians, or rather Soviets, as brutal killers."  While the film depicts Wilson as an immediate advocate for supplying the mujahideen with Stinger missiles, a former Reagan administration official recalls that he and Wilson, while advocates for the mujahideen, were actually initially "lukewarm" on the idea of supplying these missiles.  Their opinion changed when they discovered that rebels were successful in downing Soviet gunships with them.  As such, they were actually not supplied until the second Reagan administration term, in 1987, and their provision was advocated mostly by Reagan defense officials and influential conservatives.  The film's happy ending came about because Tom Hanks did not feel comfortable with an original draft which ended on a scene featuring the September 11th Attacks according to Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film maker with inside information from the production.  Citing the original screenplay, which was very different from the final product, in Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy Matthew Alford wrote that the film gave up "the chance to produce what at least had the potential to be the Dr. Strangelove of our generation".  In his 2011 book Afgantsy, former British ambassador to Russia Rodric Braithwaite describes the film as "amusing but has only an intermittent connection with historical reality."   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson%27s_War_(film)

Throughout the world, in every culture, people have told stories--at home and at work, when the harvest was taken in, the wood was cut and carted, and the wool was woven.  Today, we still enjoy stories as deeply as did our ancestors, for our lives are bound together with stories; the tales, perhaps ever so ordinary, that seem to catch us up and in some obscure, almost magical way, help us make sense of our world.  In 1973, in a tiny Tennessee town, something happened that rekindled our national appreciation of the told story and became the spark plug for a major cultural movement--the rebirth of the art of storytelling.  It began serendipitously in Jonesborough, Tennessee, a 200-year-old town in the heart of the Southern Appalachian Mountains.  On the second Saturday night in October 1973, Jerry Clower, a Mississippi coon hunter and storyteller, leapt to the stage in a hot, jammed high school gymnasium and told tales to more than a thousand East Tennesseans.  They had come for some side-splitting humor in the tales that had made Clower a household name throughout the Deep South.  The crowd stomped and cheered and didn’t leave disappointed.  The next afternoon, under a warm October sun, an old farm wagon in Courthouse Square served as a stage.  And the storytellers were there—a former Arkansas congressman, a Tennessee banker, a college professor, a western North Carolina farmer.  They told their tales and breathed life into the first National Storytelling Festival.  Every October since 1973, thousands of travelers have visited Tennessee’s oldest town.  They come for one purpose-–to hear stories and to tell them at the National Storytelling Festival.  This celebration of America’s rich and varied storytelling tradition, the oldest and most respected gathering anywhere in America devoted to storytelling, has in turn spawned a national revival of this venerable art.  The National Storytelling Festival is produced by the International Storytelling Center.  https://www.storytellingcenter.net/about-us/our-story/  The International Storytelling Center (ISC) is located in the heart of downtown Jonesborough, at 100 W. Main Street.  Live programming is May through October, with special events scattered throughout the remainder of the year.  Information:  (423) 753-2171

Lisel Mueller (born Elisabeth Neumann, February 8, 1924–February 21, 2020) was a German-born American poet, translator and academic teacher.  Her family fled the Nazi regime, arriving in the U.S. in 1937 when she was 15.  She worked as a literary critic and taught at the University of Chicago, Elmhurst College and Goddard College. She began writing poetry in the 1950s and published her first collection in 1965, after years of self-study.  She received awards including the National Book Award in 1981 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1997, as the only German-born poet awarded that prize.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisel_Mueller  Link to poetry by poet and translator Lisel Mueller at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lisel-mueller

Katherine Johnson, a pioneering mathematician who, along with a group of other brilliant black women, made US space travel possible, has died at the age of 101.  Her calculations were responsible for safely rocketing men into space and securing the American lead in the space race against the Soviet Union.  For almost her entire life, her seminal work in American space travel went unnoticed. Only recently has Johnson's genius received national recognition.  NASA announced Johnson's death on February 24, 2020.  Johnson was part of NASA's "Computer Pool," a group of mathematicians whose data powered NASA's first successful space missions.  The group's success largely hinged on the accomplishments of its black women members.  Her work went largely unrecognized until the release of 2016's "Hidden Figures," a film portrayal of Johnson's accomplishments while the space agency was still largely segregated.  Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918.  Her preternatural talent for math was quickly evident, and she became one of three black students chosen to integrate West Virginia's graduate schools, according to her NASA biography.  She was tasked with performing trajectory analysis for Alan Shepherd's 1961 mission, the first American human spaceflight.  She co-authored a paper on the safety of orbital landings in 1960--the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division received credit for a report.  John Glenn requested her help before his orbit around Earth in 1962.  Scottie Andrew  See pictures at https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/24/us/katherine-johnson-death-scn-trnd/index.html

An Underwater Library and Other Hotel Amenities for Determined Bookworms:  From Miami to Cape Cod, 6 hotels and resorts with unconventional book collections and reading programs by

Kelsey Ogletree  The Wall Street Journal  updated February 21, 2020

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2230  February 25, 2020 

Logan Act, legislation enacted by the United States Congress (1799) forbids private citizens from engaging in unauthorized correspondence with foreign governments.  As amended, the act reads:  Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects. https://www.britannica.com/event/Logan-Act

The Logan Act is named for a Philadelphia doctor, George Logan, who traveled to Paris in 1798 at a time of heightened tension between the United States and the revolutionary government in France.  Logan’s mission was arguably a success:  France lifted an embargo against the United States and releasing American ships and sailors.  However, former President George Washington, then-President John Adams, and members of the Federalist Party who were hostile to France condemned Dr. Logan upon his return.  The act does not apply to U.S. citizens who obtain the current administration’s approval before approaching foreign officials.  For example, then-Rep. Bill Richardson did not violate the Logan Act when, at the behest of the Clinton administration, he traveled to Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, Serbia, and elsewhere to negotiate with U.S. adversaries.  Yet the “authority” exception extends beyond diplomatic envoys.  An earlier version of the statute used the phrase “without the permission or authority of the Government of the United States,” and the shortening of that phrase in 1948 does not seem to have been intended to effect a substantive change.  Interpreting the word “authority” to include legal permission is thus consistent with the statute’s history (as well as with one longstanding usage of the term).  The executive branch on more than one occasion appears to have endorsed the idea that the term “authority” encompasses more than just diplomatic missions undertaken at the administration’s urging.  In 1961, former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, labor leader Walter Reuther, and others were accused of violating the Logan Act when they spearheaded an effort to secure the release of prisoners held by Cuba following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.  The Justice Department dismissed those allegations on various grounds, including that the citizens acted with the knowledge and tacit assent of President John F. Kennedy’s administration.  And again in 1975, when Sens. George McGovern and John Sparkman were accused of violating the Logan Act by initiating contact with Cuba’s communist regime, the State Department under President Gerald Ford defended their actions on similar grounds.  Daniel J. Hemel, Eric A. Posner   https://www.lawfareblog.com/logan-act-and-its-limits

During the Great Depression, Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) photographed the unemployed men who wandered the streets.  Her photographs of migrant workers were often presented with captions featuring the words of the workers themselves.  Lange’s first exhibition, held in 1934, established her reputation as a skilled documentary photographer.  In 1940, Lange became the first woman awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.  One of the preeminent and pioneering documentary photographers of the 20th century, Dorothea Lange was born Dorothea Nutzhorn on May 26, 1895, in Hoboken, New Jersey.  Her father, Heinrich Nutzhorn, was a lawyer, and her mother, Johanna, stayed at home to raise Dorothea and her brother, Martin.  When she was 7, Dorothea contracted polio, which left her right leg and foot noticeably weakened.  Later, however, she’d feel almost appreciative of the effects the illness had on her life.  “[It] was the most important thing that happened to me, and formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me,” she said.  Following America’s entrance into World War II, Lange was hired by the Office of War Information (OWI) to photograph the internment of Japanese Americans.  In 1945, she was employed again by the OWI, this time to document the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations.  https://www.biography.com/artist/dorothea-lange  Find information on Dorothea Lange:  Words & Pictures, the first major MoMA exhibition of Lange’s in 50 years showing through May 9, 2020 at MoMA, Floor 2, 2 South, The Paul J. Sachs Galleries.  https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5079  The Museum of Modern Art is located at 11 W 53rd Street in Manhattan.  Find hours at https://www.moma.org/visit/

Baptized Alexander Bell, the inventor longed for a middle name as a child, perhaps to differentiate himself from his father and grandfather, who were both named Alexander.  On the boy’s 11th birthday, Bell’s father allowed the youngster to adopt the middle name “Graham” in honor of Alexander Graham, a former student of his who was boarding with the family.  Bell’s patent application for the telephone was filed on February 14, 1876, just hours before rival inventor Elisha Gray filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office that announced he was working on a similar invention.  On March 7, the 29-year-old Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone, and three days later Bell’s assistant, Thomas Watson, clearly heard the inventor’s voice crackle across a wire in their Boston laboratory in the first successful telephone transmission.  It didn’t take long for the first of hundreds of legal challenges to Bell’s patent to begin.  Five of them reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately upheld Bell’s claims in one of the longest patent battles in American history.  More than a century before the proliferation of cell phones, Bell invented a wireless telephone that transmitted conversations and sounds by beams of light.  Bell proclaimed his “photophone” (from the Greek words for “light” and “sound”), which was patented in 1880, to be “the greatest invention I have ever made; greater than the telephone.”  Given the technology of the time, however, the photophone’s utility proved limited.  It wasn’t until fiber-optic technology was developed many decades later that the transmission of sound by light found its first wide-scale commercial application.  In the weeks that followed the July 2, 1881, shooting of President James Garfield, the chief executive’s condition worsened as doctors made repeated probes with unsterilized fingers and instruments in order to find the location of one of the bullets.  Believing that “science should be able to discover some less barbarous method” for locating the bullet, Bell developed an electromagnetic machine that he tested on Civil War veterans who still had bullets lodged in their bodies.  Bell was twice summoned to Garfield’s White House bedside with his machine, but his “induction balance” failed to locate the bullet, in part due to interference caused by steel wires in the bed mattress and the president’s chief physician only permitting a search of the right side of the president’s body where he was convinced the bullet was lodged.  After Garfield’s death on September 19, the bullet was found to be on his left side.  In spite of gaining fame as the inventor of the telephone, Bell continued his lifelong work to help the hearing impaired.  In 1887, Captain Arthur Keller traveled from Alabama to meet with Bell in order to seek help for his 6-year-old daughter, Helen, who had become blind and mute at the age of 19 months, possibly from scarlet fever.  Bell directed them to Boston’s Perkins School for the Blind, where they met recent graduate Anne Sullivan, the miracle-working tutor who would teach Helen to write, speak and read Braille.  Keller dedicated her autobiography to Bell, whom she credited with opening the “door through which I should pass from darkness into light,” and the two remained lifelong friends.  Bell began experimenting in aviation in the 1890s, even developing giant manned tetrahedral kites.  His dreams of airplanes that could take off from water led him to work on the designs of winged hydrofoil boats that skipped across the water surface at high speeds.  The HD-4 model on which he collaborated reached a speed of more than 70 miles per hour during a 1919 test on a lake in Nova Scotia, a world water-speed record that stood for more than a decade.  Bell’s name remained in the popular lexicon after his death.  To honor the inventor’s contributions to acoustical science, the standard unit for the intensity of sound waves was named the “bel” in the 1920s.  The decibel, one-tenth of a bel, is the most commonly used metric for measuring the magnitude of noise.  Christopher Klein  Read more and see pictures at https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-alexander-graham-bell

The Comma Queen Meets Mr. Hyphen   At Merriam Webster, we enjoyed finding out that our Collegiate Dictionary has a nickname at The New Yorker--"Little Red Web."  And we enjoyed hosting Mary Norris, the Comma Queen, at our office, as she did her research into the history of dictionaries.  But mostly we take pleasure in being the ones responsible for introducing Mary to one of our all-time favorite books about the craft of editing:  a 1937 gem titled Meet Mr. Hyphen (And Put Him in His Place), written by Edward N. Teall, a proofreader on the 1934 Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition.  When we told Mary about the book, she was appropriately appreciative, but little did we know how heartily she would embrace Mr. Hyphen and sing his praises.  But here it is, on page 118:  The best thing ever written about hyphens is Meet Mr. Hyphen (And Put Him in His Place), by Edward N. Teall. ... [I]t may be the only full-length work on hyphens extant in English. ... Considering the rate at which the language changes, it is incredible that a study of hyphens from three generations ago remains relevant. Mr. Hyphen was onto something.  Teall and Mary agree that good compounding does not come from the overuse of hyphens.  Good compounding often comes from knowing when to leave a compound open (note that she is a copy editor, two words, and agrees with Teall that no hyphens are required in compounds involving –ly adverbs--"closely watched indicator") or when to close it up (she knows that it is high time to close up lifestyle).  Hence Teall's advice that people "should regard Mr. Hyphen with neither fear nor disrespect."  They should cultivate his acquaintance--but keep him in his proper place.  Don't let him crowd in where he doesn't belong, but insist on his doing what is expected of him.  He's a good fellow, but he has to be watched.  In the final pages Teall tells us:  It all boils down to this, that compounding is an art, not an exact science.  Personal preference, taste, and judgment are factors in it.  Words cannot be weighed and measured, blended by fixed and unfailing formula.  Or, as Mary puts it in her discussion about whether it should be "blue stained glass" or "blue-stained glass":  If commas are open to interpretation, hyphens are downright Delphic.  Mr. Hyphen couldn't have said it better himself.  Read an excerpt of Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris at https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/comma-queen-meets-mr-hyphen

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2229  February 24, 2020