The Fugates, commonly known as the "Blue Fugates" or the "Blue People of Kentucky", are an ancestral family living in the hills of Kentucky starting in the 19th century, where they are known for having a genetic trait that led to the blood disorder methemoglobinemia, causing the skin to appear blue.  Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith, who had married and settled near Hazard, Kentucky, in around 1820, were both carriers of the recessive methemoglobinemia (met-H) gene.  As a result, four of their nine children exhibited blue skin.  Their continued reproduction within the limited local gene pool along with a lack of transportation infrastructure ensured that many descendants of the Fugates were born with met-H. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Fugates   

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a 2019 novel by Kim Michele Richardson.  The story is a fictionalized account of real subjects in the history of eastern Kentucky.  Cussy Mary is a "Book Woman"—one of the Packhorse Librarians who delivered books to remote areas of the Appalachian Mountains during the Great Depression, from 1935 to 1943, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) program.  Cussy Mary is also a "Blue"—the last of a line of blue-skinned people, whose skin appears the unusual shade due to a rare genetic disorder.  As a Book Woman, Cussy Mary is highly regarded, but as a Blue, she is feared and reviled, and experiences racism, discrimination and violence.  In 1936 eastern Kentucky, 19-year-old Cussy Mary Carter works for the New Deal–funded Pack Horse Library Project, delivering reading material to the remote hill people of the Appalachian Mountains.  Cussy Mary, sometimes known as Bluet, lives with her coal-miner and labor-organizing father, and feels her work as a librarian honors her long-dead mother, who loved books.  The Carters are the last of the Blue People of Kentucky, considered to be "colored" by the segregationist white community.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_Woman_of_Troublesome_Creek  Some people call Cussy Mary a ‘circus freak’  *  “food was the most valuable thing you could give someone—the most generous gift a Kaintulk folk could bestow on another.”  *  “Like all Blues I’d grown up to be ‘careful,’ learning when to bow down and when to cower.”    

The 2024 National Book Winners include Percival Everett, James (fiction).  See the list at 2024 National Book Awardsaward winnerswinners  https://lithub.com/here-are-the-winners-of-the-2024-national-book-awards/   

Thomas Eugene Kurtz (1928–November 12, 2024) was an American computer scientist and educator.  A Dartmouth professor of mathematics, he and colleague John G. Kemeny set in motion the then revolutionary concept of making computers as freely available to college students as library books were, by implementing the concept of time-sharing at Dartmouth College.  In his mission to allow non-expert users to interact with the computer, he co-developed the BASIC programming language and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System during 1963 to 1964.  For his role in creating BASIC, the IEEE honored Kurtz in 1991 with the Computer Pioneer Award, and in 1994, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Kurtz   

Noun  deontology (usually uncountable, plural deontologies) (ethics)  Synonym of ethics (“the study of principles relating to right and wrong conduct”) [from c. 1826] synonym ▲quotations ▼ Synonym:  moral philosophy  (specifically) The normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether the action follows certain obligations or rules, rather than on either its inherent goodness or its consequences. [from 1930] quotations ▼   November 21, the third Thursday of November in 2024, was World Philosophy Day, which was first recognized by the United Nations in 2002 to emphasize the enduring value of philosophy for the development  of human thought.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deontology#English    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2878  November 22, 2024