The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone.  It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place using illusion and skilful manipulation.  He conjures up a storm, to lure his usurping brother Antonio and the complicit King Alonso of Naples to the island.  There, his machinations bring about the revelation of Antonio's lowly nature, the redemption of the King, and the marriage of Miranda to Alonso's son, Ferdinand.  The Tempest has more music than any other Shakespeare play.  Two settings of songs from The Tempest which may have been used in performances during Shakespeare's lifetime have survived.  These are "Full Fathom Five" and "Where The Bee Sucks There Suck I" in the 1659 publication Cheerful Ayres or Ballads, in which they are attributed to Robert Johnson, who regularly composed for the King's Men.  Versions of "Full Fathom Five" were recorded by Marianne Faithfull for Come My Way in 1965 and by Pete Seeger for Dangerous Songs!? in 1966.  The Decemberists' song "The Island:  Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel The Drowning" is thought by many to be based on the story of Caliban and Miranda.  Michael Nyman's Ariel Songs are taken from his score for the film Prospero's Books.  Among those who wrote incidental music to The Tempest were Arthur Sullivan.  His graduation piece, completed in 1861, was a set of incidental music to "The Tempest".  Revised and expanded, it was performed at The Crystal Palace in 1862, a year after his return to London, and was an immediate sensation.  Ernest Chausson:  in 1888 he wrote incidental music for La tempête, a French translation by Maurice Bouchor.  This is believed to be the first orchestral work that made use of the celesta.  Jean Sibelius:  his 1926 incidental music was written for a lavish production at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen.  At least forty-six operas or semi-operas based on The Tempest exist.  Frederic Reynolds produced an operatic version in 1821, with music by Sir Henry Bishop.  Choral settings of excerpts from The Tempest include Amy Beach's Come Unto These Yellow Sands (SSAA, from Three Shakespeare Songs), Matthew Harris' Full Fathom Five, I Shall No More to Sea, and Where the Bee Sucks (SATB, from Shakespeare Songs, Books I, V, VI), Ryan Kelly's The Tempest (SATB, a setting of the play's Scene I),Jaakko Mäntyjärvi's Full Fathom Five and A Scurvy Tune (SATB, from Four Shakespeare Songs and More Shakespeare Songs), Frank Martin's Songs of Ariel (SATB), Ralph Vaughan Williams' Full Fathom Five and The Cloud-capp'd Towers (SATB, from Three Shakespeare Songs), and David Willcocks' Full Fathom Five (SSA).  Orchestral works for concert presentation include Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's fantasy The Tempest (1873), Fibich's symphonic poem Bouře (1880), John Knowles Paine's symphonic poem The Tempest (1876), Benjamin Dale's overture (1902), Arthur Honegger's orchestral prelude (1923), and Egon Wellesz's Prosperos Beschwörungen (five works 1934–36).  Ballet sequences have been used in many performances of the play since Restoration times.  Stage musicals derived from The Tempest have been produced.  Find references to The Tempest in literature, art and film at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest

State-of- the-art was first called status of the art.

Stud poker was first called stud-horse poker.

Swiss chard was identified by a Swiss botanist and is a variety of Beta vulgaris.  The plant is also called silverbeet, Roman kale, and strawberry spinach.  A member of the goosefoot family,  other members are beets and spinach.  

http://www.webmd.com/diet/swiss-chard-9-healthy-facts 

Beet greens buzz  Grown in the Mediterranean region as far back as 2,000 B.C., beet cultivation spread to Babylonia in the eighth century, then to China around 850 A.D.  Within the botanical family, Chenopodiaceae , beet greens are factored alongside spinach, Swiss chard, quinoa, lamb's quarter, and a number of other wild plants, which means that beet greens can be placed in the “dark, leafy” category.  It’s best to use beet greens within two or three days after refrigeration.  Enjoy beet greens by themselves as a salad or with other leafy vegetables, or sauté them in a bit of olive oil or balsamic vinegar and salt for a delicious side dish.  If you find yourself with too many beet greens, don’t throw them away.  Freeze them and use for soup stock.

http://foodfacts.mercola.com/beet-greens.html

Ryan Hardy of Charlie Bird called scapece “perhaps the most genius of all Italian marinades.”  Like its Spanish cousin escabeche, scapece was originally designed for preserving fried fish.  “This combination of sweet and sour, garlic and mint makes zucchini or butternut squash shine even more brilliantly,” said Mr. Hardy.  “Use it with some whipped ricotta and toast.”  Recipe at  http://www.wsj.com/articles/scapece-recipe-1429799922  Recipe of Giada De Laurentiis instructs to marinate vegetables overnight and serve at room temperature with bread, fish or chicken.  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/zucchini-and-carrot-a-scapece-recipe2.html

Principal (noun, adjective) referring to someone or something which is highest in rank or importance, non-interest portion of a loan  Principle ( noun) law. tenet, or doctrine

Stationery(noun) paper that you use for writing letters or notes.  Stationary (adjective) not moving, fixed in one place, still

Compliment (noun, verb) kind or flattering remark.  Complement (noun, verb) full crew or a set-- they go well together

Nearsightedness (myopia) is a very common condition in which the light coming into the eye is not focused properly onto the retina, making it difficult to see objects far away.  The condition is usually caused by an elongation of the eyeball that occurs over time.  Farsightedness (hyperopia) is the opposite of myopia, and is usually caused by shortening of the eyeball.  Astigmatism is an imperfection of the cornea preventing part of it from focusing light onto the retina.  The result is a blurred area within an otherwise clear image.  This problem may occur along with either myopia or hyperopia.  These frequent conditions are termed "refractive errors."

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/wilmer/conditions/nearsight.html

The National Audubon Society is designating Lake Erie’s western and central basins as two of Earth’s most significant ecosystems.  Gary Langham, the society's chief scientist, announced the decision at the May 8, 2015 kickoff for the Biggest Week in American Birding.  He told hundreds of birders at the Maumee Bay Lodge and Conference Center in Oregon, Ohio that the society’s board has voted to designate the islands and shoreline in those basins as “globally important bird areas” and plans to make a formal announcement soon.  The Biggest Week in American Birding, a 10-day birding festival from Lucas to Lorain counties, is expected to draw 80,000 binocular-toting visitors through May 17.   http://www.toledoblade.com/news/2015/05/09/Event-kicks-off-with-honor-for-habitat.html  See also http://www.mageemarsh.org/ and http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2015/05/10/A-birding-paradise%28copy%29.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1295  May 11, 2015  On this date in 868, a copy of the Diamond Sutra was printed in China, making it the oldest known dated printed book.  On this date in 1820,  HMS Beagle, the ship that would take Charles Darwin on his scientific voyage, was launched.

Paraphrases from Us Conductors, a novel by Sean Michaels  The vacuum tubes, were like wineglasses, like seashells, like emeralds.  The theremin's sound is a stranger to the earth--its voice that is not a voice neither paused nor took a breath. 

May 3, 2015  For people into the music scene in Canada, Sean Michaels needs little introduction. His music blog, Said the Gramophone, is considered one of the go-to blogs for music reviews of every genre.  So for those who know and appreciate his writing style, it came as no surprise when his first novel was published last year.  While music is a theme in Us Conductors, the instrument at the heart of the story is not all that well known.  It's the theremin, invented about 100 years ago by a Russian scientist, Lev Termen.  Us Conductors is a story about love, music and espionage and it won him the Giller prize last fall.  Read a portion of an  interview with Sean Michaels at http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/sean-michaels-us-conductors-author-talks-about-his-inspiration-1.3057575  Born in the former capital of Scotland (Stirling) in 1982, Sean Michaels grew up in Ottawa, Canada.  He has lived in Montreal since 2000.  His music blog, Said the Gramophone, launched in March 2003, and added songs in November of that year.  It was one of the world's first mp3blogs.

Leon Theremin playing his own instrument

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5qf9O6c20o  1:32  

Lev Sergeyevich Termen, or Leon Theremin in the United States, was a Russian and Soviet inventor, most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments and the first to be mass produced.  He also devised the interlace technique for improving the quality of a video signal, still widely used in video and television technology.  His listening device, "The Thing", hung for seven years in plain view in the United States Ambassador's Moscow office and enabled Soviet agents to eavesdrop on secret conversations.  It is considered a predecessor of RFID technology.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Theremin#United_States

On an April night in 1960, Guy Carawan stood before a group of black students in Raleigh, N.C., and sang a little-known folk song.  With that single stroke, he created an anthem that would echo into history, sung at the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965, in apartheid-era South Africa, in international demonstrations in support of the Tiananmen Square protesters, at the dismantled Berlin Wall and beyond.  The song was “We Shall Overcome.”  Mr. Carawan, who died on May 2, 2015 at 87, did not write “We Shall Overcome,” nor did he claim to.  The now-familiar version of “We Shall Overcome” was forged by Mr. Carawan, Pete Seeger and others in the late 1950s, but its antecedents date to at least the 18th century.  The song’s present-day lyrics appear to have originated with “I’ll Overcome Some Day,” a hymn by a black Methodist minister, Charles Albert Tindley, that was published at the turn of the 20th century, though apparently to a different tune.  By the mid-1940s, Tindley’s words and the now-familiar melody had merged.  In 1945, the resulting song, known as “We Will Overcome,” was taken to the picket lines by striking tobacco workers in Charleston, S.C., who sang:  “We will overcome,/And we will win our rights someday.”    Margalit Fox  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/guy-carawan-dies-at-87-taught-a-generation-to-overcome-in-song.html

The various fish that come under the banner ‘hake’ are deep-sea members of the cod family and are popular throughout Europe and America.  Hake is quite a mild fish, with a white flaky texture and a flavour that is more subtle than that of cod.  In France, hake is called ‘saumon blanc’ (which translates as 'white salmon') while in the United States it’s known as ling or whiting (what is known as whiting in Europe is a different, less tasty fish).  Link to recipes at http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/hake

What if printed books went by ebook rules?  by Dennis Baron   I love ebooks.  Despite their unimaginative page design, monotonous fonts, curious approach to hyphenation, and clunky annotation utilities, they’re convenient and easy on my aging eyes.  But I wish they didn’t come wrapped in legalese.  Whenever I read a book on my iPad, for example, I have tacitly agreed to the 15,000-word statement of terms and conditions for the iTunes store.  It’s written by lawyers in language so dense and tedious it seems designed not to be read, except by other lawyers, and that’s odd, since these Terms of Service agreements (TOS) concern the use of books that are designed to be read.  But that’s OK, because Apple, the source of iBooks, and Amazon, with its similar Kindle Store, are not really publishers, not really booksellers, they’re "content providers" who function as third-party agents.  And these agents seem to think that ebooks are not really books:  Apple insists on calling them, not iBooks, but “iBooks Store Products,” and Amazon calls them, not Kindle books, but “Kindle Content.”  Read more at https://illinois.edu/blog/view/25

CLARIFICATION  The May 6, 2015 Muse said that L'allée Des Alyscamps was the big seller at Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art sale on May 5, 2015, bringing $US66.3 million ($83.2 million).   The number in parentheses refers to Australian dollars.  See the original New York Times article:  The sale, the first major auction of the spring season brought in a total of $368 million for Sotheby’s, making it the second-highest sale of Impressionist and modern art in the auction house’s history.  Last November, Sotheby’s took in $422 million from such a sale.  Bidders walked off with 50 of the 64 lots offered.  The rest were left unsold.  For the van Gogh, the work had last sold for $12 million in 2003.  The highest price paid for a van Gogh at auction was the $82.5 million paid in 1990 for his “Portrait of Dr. Gachet.”  See picture of L'allée Des Alyscamps at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/arts/design/van-gogh-painting-is-star-during-sothebys-auction.html  The auction was held in New York.  See also http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2015/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-n09340.html

Nestled in the Pennsylvania countryside, on and around the bucolic campus of Lehigh University, the Bethlehem Bach Festival, under the artistic direction of conductor Greg Funfgeld, is in its 108th season and going strong.  The Bach Choir of Bethlehem’s 100 volunteer singers perform the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and that of his sons and contemporaries with exceptional devotion.  Flanked by concerts of related vocal and instrumental works, Bach’s Mass in B-minor has been the centerpiece of the annual festival since 1900, when the complete work was presented here, for the first time in the U.S.  The festival is a compact affair spread over the weekends of May 1 and 2, and May 8 and 9, 2015.  Barrymore Laurence Scherer  http://www.wsj.com/articles/bethlehem-bach-festival-review-honoring-a-musical-master-1430949335

STORY OF A TOLEDO PHOTOGRAPHER:  Marty Reichenthal  Reichenthal was born in Rock Island, IL, and his relationship with Toledo began around age two or three.  “I was unceremoniously dropped here against my will to spend summers with relatives,” he said.  It was during one of those summers that his uncle, a local dentist, gave him a camera.  Marty was nine years old, and became fascinated with the device’s focus mechanism and shutter speeds.  Predictably, the veteran photographer hates the Photoshop culture.  He remarked, “Nothing is shooting today.  It’s really more of an additive technique.  Look at National Geographic.  They still do real pictures.”  Counting Irving Penn, Gordon Parks, Richard Avedon, and W. Eugene Smith as influences, Reichenthal still shoots photographs of friends and of his surroundings, most of which he keeps to himself.  He still vastly prefers black and white, though he likes the control of adding color. 

http://www.toledocitypaper.com/April-Issue-2-2015/Marty-Reichenthal/#Arts & Entertainment

STORY OF A TOLEDO POET AND WRITER:  Joel Lipman  Joel Lipman is Toledo’s first poet laureate.  A former creative writing instructor—he taught for 37 years at the University of Toledo—Lipman’s work has been published extensively in the small press community.  He has edited independent and university press books, and has made an impressive career of the written word.  Many writers just begin writing.  Some generate text and transfer it from one medium to the next, before arriving at a final product.   “When I write poems, I revise extensively,” he says.  “I jot rough notes in a notebook, work in pen or pencil, and then enter the text on my Apple and work out lineation and concrete composition on the machine.” This is the first in an ongoing series that explores regional writers’ work
and workspace.  http://www.toledocitypaper.com/May-Issue-1-2015/The-right-to-write/#Arts & Entertainment

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1294  May 8, 2015  On this date in 1745, Carl Stamitz, German violinist and composer was born.  On this date in 1829, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American pianist and composer, was born.

The American Civil War:  Through Artists’ Eyes  through July 5, 2015, The Toledo Museum of Art, Galleries 28 &29  See a myriopticon, stereoscopes, and hear music of the time such Farewell to the Star Spangled Banner and the Star Spangled Banner with Brilliant Variations.

THE MYRIOPTICON

The deadliest war in American history helped spark the career of one of the most important game makers in the United States.  Milton Bradley, a Springfield, Massachusetts, draftsman, print-maker, and designer, entered the game industry just before the Civil War with his popular The Checkered Game of Life.  After the war broke out, he produced several card and trivia games for children as well as portable versions of checkers and other games for soldiers.  In 1866 he created The Myriopticon:  A Historical Panorama of the Rebellion.  Panoramas had been popular in the United States since the late eighteenth-century, when artists and promoters began offering travelogues to the Holy Land or down the Mississippi through a series of paintings on a canvas hundreds of feet long and several yards high that slowly scrolled from one reel to another.  The Civil War inspired northern and southern entrepreneurs to create panoramas with patriotic, technical-sounding names for exhibition to audiences throughout the Union and Confederacy.  Northerners could see the “Grand Panorama of the War,” the “Polyrama of the War,” “Norton’s Great Panorama of Recent Battles,” the “Diorama and Polopticomarama of the War,” “The Mirror of the Rebellion,” and “A Cosmorama of Battles of the Civil War.” Southerners could view Burton’s “Southern Moving Dioramic Panorama,” “The Grand Panopticon Magicale of the War and Automaton Dramatique,” and Lee Mallory’s “Pantechnoptemon.”  A number of proprietors updated their exhibitions with additional battle scenes as the war progressed.  Most panoramas included a spoken narration, while many were accompanied by music.  The score to Stanley & Conant’s “Polemorama” featured “the Rattle of Musketry—the Booming of Cannon, mingled with the tumultuous noise of the deadly conflict.”  Life-sized or scale models of soldiers and ships stood or lay before the moving pictures, theatrical explosions and smoke raised the excitement level, and the strategic use of front- and back-lighting could change scenes from night to day or from peaceful reveries to violent confrontations before the audience’s eyes.  Panoramas were just one part of the war culture that emerged throughout the United States and Confederacy.  A Massachusetts boy named Willie Kingsbury created his own by coloring illustrations from Harper’s Weekly and pasting them together.  As he rolled the series of war scenes from one wooden spool to another, he narrated the events they portrayed to young neighbors and cousins.  Although it did not appear until after the war was over, the Myriopticon was part of this integration of childhood and war. 

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hcy/summary/v002/2.1.marten.html

THE STEREOSCOPE

Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 29, 1809.  He graduated from Harvard University at the age of 20, at which time he began writing poetry.  He switched his professional focus from law to medicine, and embarked upon a career as a professor and researcher at the medical schools of Harvard and Dartmouth. In 1840,  Dr. Holmes married Amelia Lee Jackson, a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice. The couple would later have two sons and a daughter, with their eldest son, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. becoming an influential Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.   Dr. Holmes maintained that photography was a transformative instrument that combined past memory with an appearance of contemporary social reality.  Intrigued by Professor Charles Wheatstone's invention of the stereoscope (also known as the English stereoscope), Dr. Holmes decided to construct his own variation in 1859.  He discussed the trials and tribulations of developing the hand or American stereoscope in his 1859 essay, "The Stereoscope and the Stereograph."  Dr. Holmes explained that he sought to create a simple device that could produce complex results.  The stereoscope needed two lenses and a supporting frame.  He also inserted slots to hold the stereographs in place, and added a grooved, dovetailed stand.  http://historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium2/pm.cgi?action=app_display&app=datasheet&app_id=2590

SEVENTEEN PROGRAMS accompany the exhibit including lectures, films, reenactments and music.  Find the schedule at http://www.toledomuseum.org/exhibitions/americancivilwar/

The word batik originates from the Javanese tik and means to dot.  To make a batik, selected areas of the cloth are blocked out by brushing or drawing hot wax over them, and the cloth is then dyed.  The parts covered in wax resist the dye and remain the original colour.  This process of waxing and dyeing can be repeated to create more elaborate and colourful designs.  After the final dyeing the wax is removed and the cloth is ready for wearing or showing.  http://www.batikguild.org.uk/whatisbatik.asp  

Batik is a pure-Java library that can be used to render, generate, and manipulate SVG graphics.  (SVG is an XML markup language for describing two-dimensional vector graphics.)  IBM supported the project and then donated the code to the Apache Software Foundation, where other companies and teams decided to join efforts.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batik_%28software%29

Paraphrase from Pleading Guilty, a novel by Scott Turow  He regarded agreement as a failure of his obligation to exercise critical intelligence--instead there is probing question, sly jest, a suggested alternative--a way for him to put an ax to your tree.  Excerpt of the Guardian's 2002 interview with Scott Turow   Q.  Is the Kindle County of your books Chicago?   A.  I got situated in Kindle County by accident because when I started writing Presumed Innocent I was writing about Boston.  Eight years later so much of Chicago had infiltrated this Boston-sized city that I had a kind of imaginary place so I renamed it Kindle County.  Q.  Is there a theme linking your books?  A.  All my novels are about the ambiguities that lie beneath the sharp edges of the law.  http://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/nov/24/crime.saulbellow

"Rabbit rabbit rabbit" is one variant of a common British superstition which states that a person should say or repeat the word "rabbit" or "rabbits", or "white rabbits", or some combination of these elements, out loud upon waking on the first day of the month, because doing so will ensure good luck for the duration of that month.  Chapter 1 of the Trixie Belden story The Mystery of the Emeralds (1962) is titled “Rabbit! Rabbit!” and discusses the tradition:  Trixie Belden awoke slowly, with the sound of a summer rain beating against her window.  She half-opened her eyes, stretched her arms above her head, and then, catching sight of a large sign tied to the foot of her bed, yelled out, “Rabbit! Rabbit!”  She bounced out of bed and ran out of her room and down the hall. “I’ve finally done it!” she cried . . .  Today it has spread to many English-speaking countries and in the United States the tradition is particularly found in northern New England although, like all folklore, determining its exact area of distribution is difficult.  The superstition may be related to the broader belief in the rabbit or hare being a "lucky" animal, as exhibited in the practice of carrying a rabbit's foot for luck.  

During the mid-1990s, U.S. children's cable channel Nickelodeon helped popularize the superstition in the United States as part of its "Nick Days", where during commercial breaks it would show an ad about the significance of the current date, whether it be an actual holiday, a largely-uncelebrated unofficial holiday, or a made-up day if nothing else is going on that specific day.  (The latter would be identified as a "Nickelodeon holiday".)  Nickelodeon would promote the last day of each month as "Rabbit Rabbit Day" and to remind kids to say it the next day, unless the last day of that specific month was an actual holiday, such as Halloween and New Year's Eve.  This practice stopped by the late 1990s.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_rabbit_rabbit  Thank you, Muse reader!

Van Gogh stars at Sotheby's big impressionist and modernist auction by Robin Pogrebin   On Nov. 1, 1888, Vincent van Gogh set up his easel in an ancient Roman necropolis in Arles, France, and painted an avenue of stone sarcophagi lined by towering poplars aflame with the colours of autumn.  Known as L'allée Des Alyscamps, it was the big seller at Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art evening sale on May 5, 2015, bringing $US66.3 million ($83.2 million) – when it had been expected to fetch $US40 million – as five bidders competed for a prize that ultimately went to an Asian private collector.  http://www.afr.com/lifestyle/arts-and-entertainment/art/van-gogh-stars-at-sothebys-big-impressionist-and-modernist-auction-20150506-ggvmyn

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1293  May 6, 2015  On this date in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris.  On this date in 1935, Executive Order 7034 created the Works Progress Administration.

With more than 2,000 distinct languages, Africa has a third of the world's languages with less than a seventh of the world's population.  By comparison, Europe, which has about an eighth of the world's population, has only about 300 languages.  Africa's linguistic diversity can even be found among individual Africans.  For instance, a study of 100 inhabitants in a city in western Uganda found that the average speaker knows 4.34 actual languages.  So why is this anyway?  To help explain diversity, linguists borrow tools from evolutionary biologists:   linguists explore the relationships between distinct languages in the same way evolutionary biologists explore family relationships and speciation of living things.  Given the parallels in these two fields, it's no coincidence that Africa, the place of highest genetic diversity, contains rich linguistic diversity as well.  Claire Felter  http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Science-Notebook/2015/0421/Why-does-Africa-have-so-many-languages

Mighty Joe Young may refer to:  Mighty Joe Young (1949 film); Mighty Joe Young (1998 film); Mighty Joe Young (musician), blues musician; or the original name for Stone Temple Pilots, who recorded the Mighty Joe Young Demo before changing their name.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mighty_Joe_Young  

Terry Moore, Ray Harryhausen, the star of the original Mighty Joe Young (1949), and the legendary stop-motion animator (who did most of the animation on the 1949 film) appear as an elderly couple at the gala in the 1998 film.  Looking at Jill Young, Terry Moore states, "She reminds me of somebody, but I can't think who."  Harryhausen replies, "You, when we first met."  Filmed in Hawaii and the U.S., Jill Young is played by Charlize Theron in the 1998 film.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120751/

Who was Lloyd George and why is the name a tongue twister when you repeat it several times?  David Lloyd George was a British prime minister from 1916-1922.  A silent film, The Life Story of David Lloyd George, was made in 1918 but not screened in public until 1996.  The name Lloyd George has two diphthongs in a row and the tongue and jaw move enough between the two sounds to make it hard to speak quickly.

How many U.S. presidents have first and last names beginning with the same letter?  Think about it a few minutes and then find the answer at http://www.presidentsusa.net/presvplist.html

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

colophon  (KOL-uh-fon, -fuhn)  noun  1.  A note at the end of the book giving information about its production:  font, paper, binding, printer, etc.  2.  A publisher’s emblem, usually on the spine or the title page of the book.  From Latin colophon, from Greek kolophon (summit, finishing touch).  Ultimately from the Indo-European root kel- (to be prominent; hill), which also gave us colonel, colonnade, column, culminate, excel, and hill.  Earliest documented use:  1628.

recto (REK-toh)  noun   The front of a leaf, the side that is to be read first.  From Latin recto folio (right-hand leaf), from rectus (right).  Ultimately from the Indo-European reg- (to move in a straight line, lead, or rule) that is also the source of regent, regime, direct, rectangle, erect, rectum, alert, source, surge, arrogate, abrogate, regent, and supererogatory.  Earliest documented use:  1789.

codex  (KOH-deks)  noun  A manuscript volume (as opposed to a scroll), especially of an ancient text.  From Latin codex (tree trunk, wood block, book).  Earliest documented use:  1581.

Feedback to A.Word.A.Day
From:  Douglas Rathbun   Subject:  colophon

Musicians are all aware of the word colophon, but referring to rosin -- particularly when we use foreign-made rosins that have the word on the package.  In most European languages the word for rosin is a variant of colophon (colofonia, colophane, Kolophonium), deriving from colophonia resina, resin from the pine trees of Colophon, an Ionic city situated on the summit of a ridge.

Republic of Vermont was formed unilaterally in 1777 from territory formerly associated with New York and New Hampshire.  The Vermont Constitution dates from 1777.  On 10 January 1791, the Republic of Vermont ratified the U.S. Constitution—the only state apart from the original 13 to do so.  Vermont was admitted to the union as the 14th state a few months later.  Most of Texas was part of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain (with some parts once part of the French Royal Province of Louisiana) until 1821, when New Spain became the independent United Mexican States.  The Mexican State of Texas declared and secured independence in 1836 as the Republic of Texas.  It was annexed by the United States and reduced to its current size in 1845.  Parts of the former Republic of Texas now lie within New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and southeastern Wyoming. 

Alta California was a province of New Spain until 1821, and then of Mexico until 1848.  It became American under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  At that time, Alta California included all of contemporary Upper California, northern Arizona, all of Nevada and Utah, and part of southwestern Wyoming.  California in its present size wrote a bilingual state constitution in 1849 and was granted statehood without going through the territorial phase in 1850.  (See the Compromise of 1850.)  In 1846, prior to formal declaration of the Mexican–American War, a small band of men originally from the United States proclaimed the independence of California—the so-called Bear Flag Republic—but this never became a formal entity, and lasted less than a month before the area came to be occupied by U.S. Army forces as part of the American conquest of northern Mexico in the Mexican–American War.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_that_were_never_U.S._territories

The Bay Psalm Book is the world's most expensive book.  It was printed in 1640, and sold at a Sotheby’s auction for $14.2 million on November 26, 2013.  The auction firm estimated the sale price would be between $15 million and $30 million--but the final price still ensured it became the world's most expensive printed book.  The world's most expensive paper document is Leonardo da Vinci's journal, Codex Leicester, which sold for $30.8 million in 1994.  The Bay Psalm Book was the first book printed in what became the United States and this copy was owned by the Old South Church in Boston.  And guess what? The church also has another copy that will not be sold.  At one time, this church owned FIVE copies.  The last Bay Psalm Book to be sold before this one was bought at a Sotheby's auction in 1947 for $151,000 by representatives bidding on behalf of Yale University.  Thank you. Muse reader!  See pictures and link to a video at http://www.abebooks.com/books/RareBooks/worlds-most-expensive-book/bay-psalm.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-CPrpt08-h00-baypalAH-341424GP-_-01cta&abersp=1

May 1, 2015  Bookface involves strategically lining up your face or another body part alongside a book cover that features a matching body part so that there appears a melding of life and art.  Librarians and other book lovers post these photos weekly on visual apps like Instagram, using the caption #BookfaceFriday.  The minitrend is giving a boost to the digital presence of institutions that are, by definition, purveyors of analog information.  A particularly ambitious bookface endeavor can call for a team effort.  Employees of the Burlingame Public Library in California enlisted six people to take 50 shots over 20 minutes for a triple bookface image featuring three mystery titles.  The photo — showing people’s faces morphing into the covers of “Guilt by Association” by Marcia Clark, “Devious” by Lisa Jackson and Charlaine Harris’s “Dead Until Dark” — generated nearly 150 likes on Instagram, almost three times the library’s average post.  Rachel Kramer Busse

See pictures and read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/fashion/oh-those-clever-librarians-and-their-bookface.html

May 4-10, 2015 -- the 96th anniversary!

Children's Book Week originated in the belief that children's books and literacy are life-changers.  In 1913, Franklin K. Matthiews, the librarian of the Boy Scouts of America, began touring the country to promote higher standards in children's books.  He proposed creating a Children's Book Week, which would be supported by all interested groups: publishers, booksellers, and librarians.  Mathiews enlisted two important allies:  Frederic G. Melcher, the visionary editor of Publishers Weekly, and Anne Carroll Moore, the Superintendent of Children's Works at the New York Public Library and a major figure in the library world.  With the help of Melcher and Moore, in 1916, the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association sponsored a Good Book Week with the Boy Scouts of America.  In 1944, the newly-established Children's Book Council assumed responsibility for administering Children's Book Week.  In 2008, Children’s Book Week moved from November to May.  At that time, administration of Children’s Book Week, including planning official events and creating original materials, was transferred to Every Child a Reader -- a 501 (c)(3) literacy non-profit dedicated to instilling a lifelong love of reading in children -- and the Children's Book Council became a CBW anchor sponsor.  http://www.bookweekonline.com/about  I remember taking Children's Literature, as an elective in library school more clearly than any other class.  During CBW, read a children's book or recall one of your favorites from the past.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1292  May 4, 2015  On this date in 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrived in New Netherland (present day Manhattan Island) aboard the See Meeuw.  On this date in 1776, Rhode Island became the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III.

Paraphrases from The Borrower, a novel by Rebecca Makkai  

(1)  The world's best question is:  "Hey, what do you think I should read?"  

(2)  Be wary of smiling musicians--they waltz into your library singing, swinging that con man briefcase--telling you the town could be saved with a little luck and a marching band.  

(3)  Who is bigger--Mrs. Bigger or Mrs. Bigger's baby?  The baby is just a little bigger.

Rebecca Makkai’s first story, at the age of three, was printed on the side of a cardboard box and told from the viewpoint of her stuffed Smurf doll.  Rebecca was born in 1978 and holds an MA from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English and a BA from Washington and Lee University.  Her short fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009, New Stories from the Midwest and Best American Fantasy, and featured on Public Radio International’s Selected Shorts and This American Life.  New stories and essays appear regularly in places like Harper’s, Tin House, the Wall Street Journal, and New England Review.  She has held fellowships at Yaddo, Ragdale, and the Sewanee and Wesleyan Writers Conferences.  She was an elementary Montessori teacher for twelve years before stopping to write full time.  Her first novel, The Borrower, was a Booklist Top Ten Debut, an Indie Next pick, and an O Magazine selection.  Her second novel, The Hundred-Year House, which appeared in July of 2014, is the story of a haunted house and a haunted family, told in reverse.  Her story collection, Music for Wartime, will appear in July, 2015.  She teaches at Lake Forest College and in Sierra Nevada College‘s MFA program, and runs StoryStudio Chicago‘s Novel-in-a-Year workshop.  Find out how to pronounce her name at http://rebeccamakkai.com/about/

A protagonist is the main character in a drama.  Technically, there can only be one protagonist in a drama, though writers often use the word in reference to two or more central characters. The antagonist is the main character’s chief opponent.  http://grammarist.com/usage/protagonist-antagonist/   

All stories must have a protagonist.  

Without one, human readers wouldn’t be able to relate to the tale.  

EXAMPLE #1:  I’m reading Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.  The protagonist is Brian.  There is no antagonist because the conflict in this story is man against nature, not man against man.  EXAMPLE #2:  I’m reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling.  The protagonist is Harry Potter .  The antagonist is Lord Voldemort.  The deuteragonist is Ron Weasley, because he’s Harry’s best friend.  Hermione is the tritagonist–the third most important character to the plot.  https://englishemporium.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/15-protagonists-antagonists-and-deuteragonists-oh-my/

How many state names can you say without touching your lips together?  Hints:  Remember that you touch lips to pronounce B, M and P.  View state names at https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/state-abbreviations.pdf

The original Bridal Chorus was written by Wagner as part of the opera “Lohengrin” in 1850, though it did not see widespread use until many decades later.  The line “Here comes the bride” (followed perhaps by “all dressed in white”) has no connection with the opera from which the song came; to my knowledge no one knows precisely when that started to be the words associated with the song.   http://www.weddingmusicproject.com/ceremony-music/wedding-processionals/bridal-chorus-variations/  The Muser heard a speaker say that the first four bars of the "Here comes the bride" arouse more emotion than any other four bars of music.

An American cook usually adds mayonnaise to the bowl when dressing canned tuna for a sandwich.  Tuna, mayonnaise, chopped celery on sliced store-bought whole-wheat bread, toasted or not.  Simple, satisfying and lovely if well made.  There’s nothing wrong with the American way, but David Tanis prefers to veer Italian.  Italian cooks invariably anoint their tuna with olive oil instead of mayonnaise.  In his version, the familiar trinity of capers, olives and anchovy is combined with olive oil, garlic and parsley to make a zesty salsa verde.  A split crusty baguette or ciabatta roll is painted liberally with this green sauce.  A lettuce leaf or two, some large flakes of tuna and a quartered moist-centered hard-cooked egg.  For the best results, choose high-quality Italian or Spanish canned tuna.  The oil-packed type is generally moister and tastier (but pour off the oil from the can and substitute extra virgin from a bottle).  It’s expensive, but well worth it.  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/dining/a-tuna-sandwich-with-a-touch-of-italy.html

subsist  verb (used without object)  

1.  to exist; continue in existence.  

2. to remain alive; live, as on food, resources, etc.  

3.  to have existence in, or by reason of, something

4.  to reside, lie, or consist (usually followed by in)  

5.  Philosophy.  to have timeless or abstract existence, as a number, relation, etc.  to have existence, especially independent existence

verb (used with object)  

6.  to provide sustenance or support for; maintain

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/subsist

subside  verb (used without object), subsided, subsiding.  

1.  to sink to a low or lower level 

2.  to become quiet, less active, or less violent; abate

3.  to sink or fall to the bottom; settle; precipitate

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/subside?s=t

April 30, 2015  Toledo-Lucas County Public Library has pledged to put a library card in the hand of every student, one of more than 30 communities to do so in a new effort championed by President Obama.  In addition to Toledo, Cleveland Public Library, Cuyahoga County Public Library, and Columbus Metropolitan Library have taken the pledge.  The effort is a continuation of ConnectED, a June, 2013, initiative with a goal of providing 99 percent of students with access to high-speed broadband and wireless Internet by 2018.  Rhonda Sewell, media relations coordinator for the library, said  a library card is “a treasure,” something the Toledo branches want every young person to have.  http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2015/04/30/Library-aims-to-give-every-student-a-card.html  See also http://connectedlibraries.pbworks.com/w/page/16355033/FrontPage

See Google doodles over the years including those for May 1, 2015 at http://www.google.com/doodles/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1291  May 1, 2015  On this date in 1579, Wolphert Gerretse, Dutch patentee and co-founder of the New Netherland colony in North America, was born.  On this date in 1582, Marco da Gagliano, Italian composer, was born.