Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th century American essayist and poet, said “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”  In 1991 a report from the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality ascribed the saying to the famous Native American Chief Seattle and suggested that the words were quite old.  Many people have used the phrase, and we can’t be sure where it comes from.  https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/22/borrow-earth/    

The birthday paradox, also known as the birthday problem, states that in a random group of 23 people, there is about a 50 percent chance that two people have the same birthday.  Is this really true? There are multiple reasons why this seems like a paradox.  One is that when in a room with 22 other people, if a person compares his or her birthday with the birthdays of the other people it would make for only 22 comparisons—only 22 chances for people to share the same birthday.  But when all 23 birthdays are compared against each other, it makes for much more than 22 comparisons.  How much more?  Well, the first person has 22 comparisons to make, but the second person was already compared to the first person, so there are only 21 comparisons to make.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bring-science-home-probability-birthday-paradox/  Thank you, Muse reader.   

Cape Cod cats they have no tails  They lost them all in sou’east gales.  (excerpt)  An American Sailor's Treasury by Frank Shay (1991)   

Grandma Gatewood's Walk:  The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars.  The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail.  And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin.  There she sang the first verse of “America, the Beautiful” and proclaimed, “I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it.”  Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times.  Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated.  The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented.  Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction.  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18527222-grandma-gatewood-s-walk    

The National Archives is brimming with historical documents written in cursive, including some that date back more than 200 years.  But these texts can be difficult to read and understand— particularly for Americans who never learned cursive in school.  That’s why the National Archives is looking for volunteers who can help transcribe and organize its many handwritten records: The goal of the Citizen Archivist program is to help “unlock history” by making digital documents more accessible, according to the project’s website.  Every year, the National Archives digitizes tens of millions of records.  The agency uses artificial intelligence and a technology known as optical character recognition to extract text from historical documents.  But these methods don’t always work, and they aren’t always accurate.  That’s where human volunteers come in.  By transcribing digital pages, volunteers make it easier for scholars, genealogists and curious history buffs to find and read historical documents.  Though cursive instruction was once standard, today’s educators and lawmakers are divided:  Should schools emphasize penmanship or keyboard skills?  But even as laptops, tablets and other devices become more ubiquitous, cursive is making a comeback.  More than 20 states now require schools to teach cursive, according to Education Week’s Brooke Schultz.  In California, a law mandating cursive instruction took effect in January 2024.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/can-you-read-this-cursive-handwriting-the-national-archives-wants-your-help-180985833/  Thank you, Muse reader!    

The Ohio State University Marching Band come with a signature moment in each game they play—the script "Ohio" formed by the band members on the field.  And you can't Form "Ohio" without someone to dot the "i."  That honor goes to two sousaphone players each game.  "There is no better tradition in college marching band, I think, than the script Ohio," said Christopher Hoch, the director of The Ohio State University Marching and Athletic Bands.  "Dotting the 'i' has been an honor in this band since 1936, and it's something that the sousaphone players, they come here to do that."  Mike Sterling,  a graduate of Twinsburg High School decided to pick up the horn in fifth grade, he hoped to one day play for The Ohio State University and be selected to dot the "i' at least once.  Sterling lived up to the challenges, and in 2024 against Notre Dame, he got to dot the 'i' for the very first time.  Sterling’s first time was against the Fighting Irish, and his last will be, too.  https://www.news5cleveland.com/sports/college-sports/osu/twinsburg-grad-dotting-i-for-ohio-state-university-marching-band-during-national-championship-game    

Satirical cartoonist, playwright and screenwriter Jules Feiffer has died at the age of  95. He was the illustrator of the children's classic "The Phantom Tollbooth."  Some artists draw every line as if they know just where it will end. Jules Feiffer never did.  Not for him the delicate feathering, diligent crosshatching or obsessive pointillism of the neurotically controlling craftsman.  His lines unfurled across the page like banners of the subconscious, zooming forward, doubling back and propelling the reader's gaze (and even, you had to suspect, his own) in directions nobody could have anticipated.   It wasn't just on the page that he hurled himself so intrepidly into the unknown.  In life, too, he continually aimed for unseen horizons.  When he died Jan. 17, 2025 of congestive heart failure at his home in Richfield Springs, N.Y., he left an abundant legacy across a range of artistic media. The history of graphic art, literature, film and the theater bear the imprint of his ever-distinctive, ever-wayward pen.  Over the years, he received other journalism awards:  a special George Polk Memorial Award, a Newspaper Guild Page One Award, an Overseas Press Club Award.  In 1995 he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and 2004 saw him inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards' Hall of Fame.  He wrote an animated short film, Munro, which won a 1961 Oscar.  https://www.npr.org/2025/01/21/839273361/jules-feiffer-dead 

http://librarianmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2898   January 22, 2025