The tiny seeds of the sesame plant have been valued since biblical times as a flavorful ingredient and a rich source of oil for culinary purposes.  The seeds are almost 50 percent oil by weight and yield a light, golden oil that's highly stable and resists becoming rancid.  Plain sesame oil is delicately flavored and well suited for table use or cooking.  Oil made from toasted sesame seeds is much darker and is used primarily as a flavoring.  Each sesame oil has its own strengths.  Cold-pressed sesame, with its neutral flavor, makes an excellent base for vinaigrettes, mayonnaise and similar cold sauces or dressings. Conventional sesame oil is a fine choice as a premium cooking oil, neutral enough for most purposes but bringing a delicate flavor of its own to dishes.  It's also a very fine salad oil and can be used in place of walnut oil or hazelnut oil to lend your salads a hint of nuttiness.  Toasted sesame oil is most often used in stir-fries and other Asian dishes, but it's also valuable ingredient for marinades and salad dressings.  http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/toasted-sesame-oil-vs-sesame-oil-11158.html

Linguistic concepts of 'syncope' and 'compression' make big words into smaller words.  Examples of dropped syllables are the words interesting, every, favorite, and different.  https://pronuncian.com/podcasts/episode71

Silent letter rules  https://www.eulexic.com/guide/silent/  NOTE that the silent a is not mentioned although the a before lly may be dropped when saying words such as artistically, logically, musically, romantically, and stoically. 

QUOTE from The Old Man, a novel by Thomas Perry  They loved routines, because routines implied order, and order reassured them.

Thomas Perry was born in Tonawanda, New York in 1947.  He received a B.A. from Cornell University in 1969 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Rochester in 1974.  He has worked as a park maintenance man, factory laborer, commercial fisherman, university administrator and teacher, and a writer and producer of prime time network television shows.  He lives in Southern California.  Perry is the author of more than 20 novels, including the Jane Whitefield series (VANISHING ACT, DANCE FOR THE DEAD, SHADOW WOMAN, THE FACE CHANGERS, BLOOD MONEY, RUNNER, POISON FLOWER and STRING OF BEADS), DEATH BENEFITS, and PURSUIT, the first recipient of the Gumshoe Award for best novel.  He won the Edgar for THE BUTCHER'S BOY, and METZGER'S DOG was a New York Times Notable Book.  The Independent Mystery Booksellers’ Association included VANISHING ACT in its “100 Favorite Mysteries of the 20th Century,” and NIGHTLIFE was a New York Times bestseller.  METZGER'S DOG was voted one of NPR’s 100 Killer Thrillers--Best Thrillers Ever.  STRIP was chosen as a  New York Times Notable Crime Book for 2010, and THE INFORMANT was a New York Times Notable Crime Book for 2011 and won the Barry Award for Best Thriller, 2011.  POISON FLOWER was chosen among Booklist’s Best Crime Novels of 2013.  http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/thomas-perry

March 2, 2017  In the military-style hierarchy of U.S. restaurant kitchens, a dishwasher ranks near the bottom, even if chefs, given half a chance, will loudly sing a good pot-scrubber’s praises.  But over in Copenhagen, Rene Redzepi, the chef and co-owner of Noma, did something extraordinary last week for the restaurant’s longtime dishwasher:  He made Ali Sonko a partner in the Danish gastronomic temple that regularly ranks among the world’s best.  Sonko, a native of Gambia, was one of three new partners named during a party on Noma’s last day at its waterfront space in the Christianshavn neighborhood.  Noma is expected to relocate in December to its new urban farm near Christiania, Copenhagen’s famous “free town” known for its boho lifestyle and ample drugs.  When Redzepi made the announcement to an assembled crowd of 250 staffers and friends of the house, he “never expected it to be the big story that it’s become,” the chef says from Tulum, Mexico, where Noma will operate an open-air popup in the jungle, starting in April 2017.  Since the announcement, Sonko has been interviewed on just about every TV channel in Denmark, Redzepi says.  Tim Carman  Read more and see pictures at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2017/03/02/a-dishwasher-becomes-a-partner-in-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-restaurants/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_dishwasher-3am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.e6bba03ff1d8

Secretary of HUD Ben Carson remarks on March 6, 2017  There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less.  But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land . . .  A patient can be zapped into remembering a book read in 1957 . . . "It remembers everything you've ever seen.  Everything you've ever heard.  I could take the oldest person here, make a little hole right here on the side of the head," Carson said while pointing at his left temple, "and put some depth electrodes into their hippocampus and stimulate.  And they would be able to recite back to you, verbatim, a book they read 60 years ago.  It's all there.  It doesn't go away.  You just have to learn how to recall it."  http://www.syracuse.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/03/ben_carson_slaves_immigrants_brain.html

PARAPHRASES from Music & Silence, a novel by Rose Tremain   Acceptance is the harshest lesson life teaches and the one most important to learn.  "Enough" is a mountain whose summit can't be reached. 

On March 7, 2017, the American Library Association (ALA) joined a diverse group of consumer, media, technology, library, arts, content creators, civil liberties, and civil rights advocates urging federal lawmakers to oppose legislation and regulatory actions that would threaten net neutrality and roll back the important protections put in place by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015, and to continue to enforce the Open Internet Order as it stands.  In a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) and Ranking Member Bill Nelson (D-FL) ALA joined other organizations to emphasize that continued economic, social, and political growth and innovation, is dependent on an open and accessible internet.  Equitable access to information is a core principle for libraries.  And the rules put in place in 2015–and affirmed by an appeals court– ensure the strongest possible protections for equitable access to online information, applications and services for all.  http://www.districtdispatch.org/2017/03/ala-supports-net-neutrality/

We can do amazing things in the realm of coding, but somehow a fix to the phishing pandemic continues to elude us.  The main reason for this is at least understandable:  It’s a crime that preys on human nature—something that can’t be (reliably) coded.  Phishing emails spoof legitimate companies or contacts in an attempt to get the recipient to click on a fraudster’s link.  Best practices often fly out the window when it comes to salacious material about our favorite celebrities.  The main threat is malware.  It may be something simple, like code that turns your computer into a spam distribution center, or a more serious app that will record your keystrokes (including when you log in to your bank, email, social networking, brokerage accounts, or the gubernatorial back office).   There’s no way to know what you’re getting yourself into.  The best course of action is to use your imagination—or possibly even your sense of what should be off-limits.  Malware leads to identity theft and worse.   If you tend to chase breaking news stories and like to download the ephemera related to them (eyewitness photographs, blog posts), you may want to do a malware scan of your computer.  Adam Levin  http://www.ajc.com/business/personal-finance/the-vice-president-got-phished-are-you-next/r4qVPjhIpIx90Bs9ZAWeqI/  NOTE that within minutes of reading this story, I received a phishing email with no subject--using a friend's name.  I deleted it without clicking on the link it provided.

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1675  March 10, 2017  On this date in 1804, in St. Louis, Missouri, a formal ceremony was conducted to transfer ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.  On this date in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was ratified by the United States Senate, ending the Mexican–American War.

The Real National Treasure:  US presidential libraries by Katie D. Bennett   I've watched the film National Treasure twenty more times than I probably needed to, but I can’t ignore my fascination with the history of the US presidents.  In the movie, the directors place a strong emphasis on the importance of historical documents and artifacts, and a working knowledge of the importance and content of these items, to help the main protagonists complete a centuries-long treasure hunt.  And it led me to wonder: where are these documents now?  Who has access to them, and what is the public allowed, and not allowed, to see?  For queries of this kind, I inevitably turned to the one place with all the answers:  the library.  But not just any library.  In honor of Presidents’ Day on 20 February 2017, I interviewed Melissa Giller, Chief Marketing Officer for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Institute in Simi Valley, California, and Alan Lowe, Executive Director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, to learn more about these institutions’ contents, purpose, and significance in the library community.  “So it’s a bit different based on each library,” explained Alan Lowe.  Most presidential libraries constructed from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s time in office to the upcoming Barack Obama Presidential Library in Chicago are built and run by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).  But other libraries, such as the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, are sometimes created by the state—in this case, the state of Illinois—and often begin as historical state libraries or museums that combine with or expand into presidential libraries.  Such is the case with the Lincoln library.  Additionally, some are run by other institutions, such as the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library in Mississippi, run by Mississippi State University.  Plans to build the library begin about two years prior to the president leaving office. With more recent libraries, the president for whom the library is built involves himself heavily in the planning, design, and curation of the building.  Read much more and see pictures at https://blog.oup.com/2017/02/presidential-libraries-america/

San Bernardino County, officially the County of San Bernardino, is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2010 census, the population was 2,035,210, making it the fifth-most populous county in California, and the 12th-most populous in the United States.  The county seat is San Bernardino.  San Bernardino County is included in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, also known as the Inland Empire, as well as the Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA Combined Statistical Area.  With an area of 20,105 square miles, San Bernardino County is the largest county in the United States by area, although some of Alaska's boroughs and census areas are larger.  It is larger than each of the nine smallest states, larger than the four smallest states combined, and larger than 70 different sovereign nations.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino_County,_California

What is the cloud?  Where is the cloud?  Are we in the cloud now?  These are all questions you've probably heard or even asked yourself.  The term "cloud computing" is everywhere.  In the simplest terms, cloud computing means storing and accessing data and programs over the Internet instead of your computer's hard drive.  The cloud is just a metaphor for the Internet.  It goes back to the days of flowcharts and presentations that would represent the gigantic server-farm infrastructure of the Internet as nothing but a puffy, white cumulus cloud, accepting connections and doling out information as it floats.  Eric Griffiths  Read much more and see graphics at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372163,00.asp

In Croaker, Virginia stands a sight that would make just about anyone stop in their tracks.  43 ghostly effigies of presidents past crowd together in the tall grass.  Some of the 18-to-20-foot busts have crumbling noses.  Tear-like stains fall from the eyes of others.  All have bashed-in heads to some degree.  This could be a scene from the world’s most patriotic horror movie, but it’s all too real—and Howard Hankins’ family farm is just the latest stop on the busts’ larger-than-life journey from iconic pieces of art to zombie-like markers of America’s past.  The busts are all that remains of Virginia’s Presidents Park, a now-defunct open-air museum where visitors could once walk among the presidential heads.  Presidents Park first opened in nearby Williamsburg in 2004, the brainchild of local landowner Everette “Haley” Newman and Houston sculptor David Adickes, who was inspired to create the giant busts after driving past Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.  But their presidential visions soon (literally) went bust.  The park, which cost about $10 million to create, went belly-up due to a lack of visitors in 2010.  Doomed in part by location—it was hidden behind a motel and slightly too far away from colonial Williamsburg’s tourist attractions, the park went into foreclosure.  That’s where Hankins, who helped build the park, comes in.  Before the land was auctioned off, Newman asked him to destroy the busts.  But Hankins didn’t feel right about it, and instead offered to take the heads and move them to his 400-acre farm.  And so began the laborious process of moving 43 giant presidents, each weighing in between 11,000 and 20,000 pounds, to a field ten miles away.  Another park featuring similar presidential heads by Adickes met a similar end. The 2003 Presidents Park in Lead, South Dakota is also now closed—although most of the heads there remain on the property, littering the hillside and serving as de-facto homes for wild turkeys in the area.  Busts at a third location in Houston, Texas are visible through a fence.  Jennifer Billock  Read more and see pictures at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-43-decaying-president-heads-looks-180958129/

Attorneys for Hawaii filed a new 40-page request just before midnight on March 7, 2017 asking a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of the March 6, 2017 executive order banning foreign nationals from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for 90 days and banning all refugees for 120 days.  "The new executive order is resulting in the establishment of religion in the state of Hawaii contrary to its state constitution; it is inflicting immediate damage to Hawaii's economy, educational institutions, and tourism industry; and it is subjecting a portion of the state's citizens to second-class treatment and discrimination, while denying all Hawaii residents the benefits of an inclusive and pluralistic society," attorneys for the state argued in court filings.  "The executive order means that thousands of individuals across the United States and in Hawaii who have immediate family members living in the affected countries will now be unable to receive visits from those persons or to be reunited with them in the United States."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/07/politics/hawaii-travel-ban-lawsuit/

March 6, 2017  Over the weekend, I put a question to the Google Home speaker.  "OK Google,"  I said. "Is Obama planning a coup?"  I'd asked this after reading an article that suggested a relatively new feature that gives answers--or Snippets as the search company call them--to queries, rather than just links, had been producing some troubling results.  And then there was "Is Obama planning a coup?" which had resulted in a Snippets box describing "Western Center for Journalism's exclusive video".  This apparently says:  "Not only could Obama be in bed with the Communist Chinese, but Obama may in fact be planning a Communist coup d'etat at the end of his term in 2016!"   I contacted Google this morning, and the company tells me it has now changed the response to this and the other search queries mentioned above.  "Featured Snippets in Search provide an automatic and algorithmic match to a given search query, and the content comes from third-party sites," it said in a statement.  "Unfortunately, there are instances when we feature a site with inappropriate or misleading content.  "When we are alerted to a Featured Snippet that violates our policies, we work quickly to remove them, which we have done in this instance.  Rory Cellan-Jones  http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39180855

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1674  March 8, 2017  On this date in 1010, Ferdowsi completed his epic poem Shahnameh.  On this date in 1902, Louise Beavers, American actress and singer, was born.

Some of the most stunning churches in the world are also some of the simplest.  Stave churches are wooden houses of worship that combine the austere, peaked architecture of Christianity with the Nordic designs and motifs of a Viking great hall.  Stave churches are characterized by the “staves,” or thick wooden posts, that hold them up.  Using the same woodworking prowess that made the Vikings such adept shipbuilders, traditional stave churches were often built using nothing more that expertly crafted joints and joins, with no nails or glue.  The only stones used were in the base of the structures.  The heyday of the stave church was between the 12th and 14th centuries.  At the height of the trend, it is thought that were as many as 2,000 of them spread across Europe.  Today there are only 28 remaining stave churches from this era, all of which are in Norway.  Eric Grundhauser

See stunning pictures at http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stave-churches-are-all-wood-dragons-and-beauty

Quark is a type of fresh dairy product made by warming soured milk until the desired degree of curdling is met, and then straining it.  It can be classified as fresh acid-set cheese,  though in some countries it is traditionally considered a distinct fermented milk product.  Traditional quark is made without rennet, but in some modern dairies rennet is added.  It is soft, white and unaged, and usually has no salt added.  It is common in the cuisines of German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), northern Europe (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden), the Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Albania, Israel, Romania, of Slavic peoples (e.g. Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, Slovenes, Croats, Macedonians, Bulgarians, and Serbs), and of Ashkenazi Jews.  Quark is similar to French fromage blanc, Indian chhena, and the queso fresco made in the Iberian Peninsula and in some Latin American countries.  It is distinct from Italian ricotta because ricotta (Italian "recooked") is made from scalded whey.  Quark is somewhat similar to yogurt cheeses such as the South Asian chak(k)a, the Arabic labneh, and the Central Asian suzma or kashk, but while these products are obtained by straining yogurt (milk fermented with thermophile bacteria), quark is made from soured milk fermented with mesophile bacteria.  Although common in Europe, manufacturing of quark is rare in the Americas.  A few dairies manufacture it, such as the Vermont Creamery in Vermont, and some specialty retailers carry it.  In Canada, the firmer East European variety of quark is manufactured by Liberté Natural Foods; a softer German-style quark is manufactured in the Didsbury, Alberta, plant of Calgary-based Foothills Creamery.  Read much more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(dairy_product)

February 28, 2107  An adorable stuffed puppy peruses the picture book section while a much-loved, understuffed bunny hops through the chapter books.  They're the actual loveys of young children who left them at the library for a "sleepover."  Library workers snap photos of them choosing books, reading together, bonding over "The Rainbow Fish."  When kids pick them up the next day, they can see how much fun their little friends had with books--and the hope is that it will encourage more children to explore reading.  West Orange Library in New Jersey has been hosting the parties for more than four years.  Its "stuffed animal sleepover" draws in kids through second grade who still get a thrill from a teddy bear party.  For the sleepover last week, Faith Boyle, the library's director of youth activities, read "Knuffle Bunny:  A Cautionary Tale" by Mo Willems to a group of children and their fluff-filled companions.  After that late afternoon story time, the children kissed their toys good night.  A group of teenage volunteers quickly got to work, snapping photos of the stuffed animals in the library.  There were images of a teddy bear and bunny holding hands while watching a puppet show and a tiny plush alligator reading about swamps.  Even the photos of the monkeys sneaking Chips Ahoy cookies from the break room made it onto the library's Facebook page.  Robert Jimison  http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/health/stuffed-animals-reading-study/

I have never seen branzino look quite like this, like some ancient, jewel-encrusted weapon unearthed from volcanic ash, prickly with glistening shards, crushed obsidian and olivine. Steam rises from the fish’s mouth, a long, pensive exhale.  The armor—cracked wheat, cumin, allspice and garlic, blackened over charcoal—crumbles at the knife.  It is lemon-bright with a faint, corrective bitterness from its dalliance with fire.  Inside, the flesh is immaculate, as juicy and tender as you would wish.  It is a grand dish to eat in the humble white-tile storefront of Little Egypt http://www.littleegyptrestaurant.com/ in Ridgewood, Queens.  Up front, a cluster of tables are set with plastic black damask place mats and electric candles; in the back, grocery shelves can be read like a library, a scholarship of fava beans and black molasses.  Nashaat Youssef, the chef, opened Little Egypt two years ago with his sister, Nagwa Hanna, a chemist with a sideline in pastry.   Ridgewood has been his home since he arrived in the United States in 1991.  He grew up in Alexandria, Egypt’s largest seaport, and spent a decade cooking at a restaurant steps from the docks.  In New York, he took a detour, working for a limousine company, before deciding to return to what he loved.  Ligaya Mishan   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/dining/little-egypt-review-ridgewood-queens-restaurant.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

"To celebrate the magazine’s ninety-second anniversary, we are introducing The New Yorker Poetry Bot, a new way to receive, read, listen to, and share poetry.  Starting March 6, 2017, our poetry bot, available on Twitter and Facebook Messenger, will send out a poetry excerpt at random every day for the next ninety-two days.  The selection—culled from our archive and curated by our poetry editor, Paul Muldoon, and poetry coördinator, Elisabeth Denison—includes poems by Audre Lorde, Joseph Brodsky, and Ada Limón.  The bot’s first release is from our inaugural year:  “Cassandra Drops Into Verse,” a poem by the early contributor and Algonquin roundtable wit, Dorothy Parker."  http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/introducing-the-new-yorker-poetry-bot?mbid=social_twitter_poetrybot

EXECUTIVE ORDER PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES  March 6, 2017  https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/06/executive-order-protecting-nation-foreign-terrorist-entry-united-states

The Hill:  “House Republicans on Monday  unveiled their long-awaited legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare.  The two measures dismantle the core aspects of ObamaCare, including its subsidies to help people buy coverage, its expansion of Medicaid, its taxes and its mandates for people to have insurance.  (READ THE BILLS HERE AND HERE.)  In its place, Republicans would put in place a new system centered on a tax credit to help people buy insurance . . . "  See also – Washington Post – House GOP unveils health plan that replaces subsidies with tax credits – “The party’s long-awaited proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act would offer income-based aid to help Americans afford health coverage, an approach the party had long criticized.  It also would scrap a penalty for the uninsured and would begin winding down the current health-care law’s expansion of Medicaid three years from now.”  The New York Times – G.O.P. Health Plan Would Sub Mandate With Incentives.  The plan would replace the Affordable Care Act with a system of tax credits aimed at enticing Americans to purchase insurance on the open market.”http://www.bespacific.com/gop-releases-bills-to-repeal-and-replace-obamacare/ The Scalia Vacancy in Historical Context:  Frequently Asked Questions March 1, 2017  Congressional Research Service 7-.... www.crs.gov R44773  Read 16-page report at https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20170301_R44773_2c46982ffb0b6558a9044351969803d6a27cba70.pdf http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1673  March 7, 2017  On this date in 1850, Senator Daniel Webster gave his "Seventh of March" speech endorsing the Compromise of 1850 in order to prevent a possible civil war.  On this date in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for an invention he calls the "telephone".

The term wool-gathering literally denotes the action of gathering fragments of wool torn from the fleeces of sheep by bushes, etc., or as a result of sheep scratching or grooming themselves.  As B. A. Phythian explains in A Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1993):  It was an activity for poor people hoping to gather enough fragments to weave together, entailing a certain amount of haphazard rambling among hedgerows and fields by women and children.  This rather random wandering has been a metaphor for dreaminess since the 16th century.  See a picture of the oil painting Gathering Wool by Henry Herbert La Thangue (1859-1929) at http://wordhistories.com/2015/07/10/wool-gathering/

Sistine Chapel gets full digital treatment for future restorations by Philip Pullella   The last time the entire Sistine Chapel was photographed for posterity, digital photography was in its infancy and words like pixels were bandied about mostly by computer nerds and NASA scientists.  Now, after decades of technological advances in art photography, digital darkrooms and printing techniques, a five-year project that will aid future restorations has left the Vatican Museums with 270,000 digital frames that show frescoes by Michelangelo and other masters in fresh, stunning detail.  "In the future, this will allow us to know the state of every centimeter of the chapel as it is today, in 2017," said Antonio Paolucci, former head of the museums and a world-renowned expert on the Sistine.  Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes include one of the most famous scenes in art--the arm of a gentle, bearded God reaching out to give life to Adam.  The Renaissance master finished the ceiling in 1512 and painted the massive "Last Judgment" panel behind the altar between 1535 and 1541.  The last time all Sistine frescoes were photographed was between 1980 and 1994, during a landmark restoration project that cleaned them for the first time in centuries.  The new photos were taken for inclusion in a new three-volume, 870-page set that is limited to 1,999 copies and marketed to libraries and collectors.  The set, which costs about 12,000 euros ($12,700), was a joint production of the Vatican Museums and Italy's Scripta Maneant high-end art publishers.  Post production computer techniques included "stitching" of frames that photographers took while working out of sight for 65 nights from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m., when the chapel where popes are elected is closed.  The project was known to only to a few people until it was unveiled in the chapel on February 24, 2017.  http://www.reuters.com/article/us-vatican-sistine-idUSKBN1661KP

Hitting a LexisNexis subsidiary with a class action, a law firm says Matthew Bender & Co.’s self-proclaimed authority on landlord-tenant law in New York is anything but.  More commonly known as the Tanbook, the New York Landlord-Tenant Law is one of several legal publications that make up Matthew Bender & Co.’s annual “Color Books” series.  Hoping to represent a class, the law firm Himmelstein, McConnell, Gribben, Donoghue & Joseph brought a Feb. 23 2017 complaint against the publisher in Manhattan Supreme Court.  “Rather than an authoritative source of state statutes, laws and regulations, the Tanbook, which is represented by the defendant as complete and unedited, is instead, at least as pertains to those involving rent regulated housing in New York rife with omissions and inaccuracies, rendering it of no value to the attorneys, lay people, or judges who use it,” the 25-page complaint states.  Himmelstein McConnell says it has bought multiple copies of the Tanbook every year since at least 2010 to keep its attorneys up to speed on real estate law.  At least 100,000 Tanbooks were sold during that period, according to the complaint.  The class says its attorneys at Fishman Rozen conducted an investigation that found 37 omissions and eight inaccuracies in the 2016 Tanbook regarding provisions of state and local statutes and regulations concerning rent regulation in New York.  One omission included the entire subsections providing for the mandated formula for calculating rents when a rent-stabilized tenant--who qualifies for exemptions as either a senior citizen or disabled person--receives a rent reduction order from the state Department of Housing and Community Renewal.  Other omissions included subsections limiting landlord from taking a vacancy-rent increase to no more than one time in any one calendar year.  The class seeks restitution and an injunction, alleging deceptive business practices, breach of contract and unjust enrichment.  Himmelstein, McConnell wants to represent a class of all Tanbook purchasers since February 2011.  Josh Russell  https://www.courthousenews.com/class-calls-lexisnexis-publication-totally-useless/  Thank you, Muse reader!

Major League Baseball officials are finally addressing something that many fans have complained about for years:  the length of games.  The average game last season took three hours.  Major League Baseball wants more action and less downtime during games.  That’s probably asking too much, because hitters are paid to work deep counts while pitchers throw harder, with better movement, than ever before.  It’s no accident that the number of strikeouts rises every year.  The larger issue, of course, is expanding the business, which means attracting more fans.  And baseball won’t touch the biggest impediments to that effort, because it would mean less money now.  Want to make the game move more quickly?  Cut every commercial break by 30 seconds.   Find more suggestions from New York Times reporters and readers see pictures at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/sports/baseball/baseballs-too-slow-heres-how-you-fix-it.html

Finding an anonymous text, if you don’t know which one, exactly, you’re looking for, can be difficult, if not impossible.  When Emily Kopley, a scholar of British and American literature, was first researching anonymous texts, she would try searching in library catalogs for a variety of terms:  “by anonymous”… “no author”… “by a lady.”  But in the period she was researching, the early 20th century, signing a book “by a lady” was old-fashioned.  Few people signed “by anonymous.”  Anonymous books wouldn’t necessarily be catalogued as “no author,” either—there’s no agreed-upon system, among libraries, about how to list anonymous or pseudonymous books.  “It’s really hard to find them,” says Kopley.  She had more success looking in scholarly databases, where she could turn up examples that others had written about, and in collections of book reviews.  But those searches revealed anonymous texts that were already known, in some way.  “The hardest thing is to find a completely unknown or unstudied author who was anonymous or pseudonymous,” she says.  At one point in the history of literature, anonymous and pseudonymous texts were common, even dominant.  But at the end of the 19th century, as the number of texts being published grew, the percentage and, most likely, the absolute number of anonymous texts being published began to shrink.  By their nature, and because there was no agreed upon way to catalog such texts, they’re difficult to surface in libraries and archives; as a group, they’re hidden away in larger collections.  They blend into the crowd.  As Researcher-in-Residence at Montreal’s Concordia University Library, a newly created position meant to promote a culture of research, Kopley is searching for ways to resurface and expose anonymous texts.  Part of her job is to work with librarians to develop ways to catalog and search for anonymous texts that could make them easier to find.  If there were a way to find them and see them more clearly, she reasons, it would be possible to better understand how the use of anonymity has changed—why writers choose to remain anonymous.  Sarah Laskow  Read extensive article and see pictures at http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/anonymous-texts-hidden-libraries

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1672  March 6, 2017  On this date in 1927, Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian journalist and author, Nobel Prize laureate, was born.  On this date in 1943, Norman Rockwell published Freedom from Want in The Saturday Evening Post with a matching essay by Carlos Bulosan as part of the Four Freedoms series.

Do you wish you had been born in a castle?  Carl Schurz was.  But he left it all behind to come to America.  Schurz was born in Germany in 1829.  His bright career as a student and public speaker began at the University of Bonn when he was only nineteen.  But he soon found himself on the wrong side of a revolution.  He landed in a German prison.  He escaped to England, and from there he immigrated to the United States in 1852.  Schurz knew very little English, but in three years he not only learned a new language, but also studied law.  By 1855, he became a lawyer in Wisconsin.  Schurz had many friends in Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri, who had also emigrated from Germany.  He entered politics to help his German American friends and to speak out against slavery.  In 1860, Schurz helped Abraham Lincoln win the presidency.  Lincoln appointed him minister to Spain.  When he heard about the Union Army's defeat at Bull Run, and when he listened to jokes in Spain about the Union losing the war, Schurz wanted to return home to America.  Lincoln agreed and made him a brigadier general.  During the war, Schurz led his troop's through many major battles.  He rose to the rank of major general.  Schurz returned to his political career after the war ended.  In 1869, he became a United States senator from Missouri.  President Hayes appointed him secretary of the interior in 1876.  Carl Schurz worked as a journalist to the end of his life in 1906.  His articles and speeches had a powerful influence for the good in politics and on social issues.  He gained the respect of the country he adopted and served so well. New York City built a park in his honor, which includes a statue of Schurz.  https://www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus/web08/features/bio/B05.html

Margarethe Meyer was born on August 27, 1832, in Hamburg, Germany, the youngest of four children in a prominent family that encouraged her to pursue the arts and education.  Her mother died at her birth.  Her father, Heinrich Meyer, a prosperous, socially liberal Jewish merchant, opened his home to artists and intellectuals.  As a teenager, Margarethe was exposed to the teachings of kindergarten founder Friedrich Froebel.  Carl Schurz married Margarethe Meyer on July 5, 1852.  In August of that year, they immigrated to the United States, settling in Philadelphia, where their first child, Agatha, was born in 1853.  The Schurzes had a total of four more children:  Marianne, Emma, Carl Lincoln, and Herbert.  While in Philadelphia, Schurz studied English intensively.  He visited Washington, DC, in 1854 and met with several senators and President Franklin Pierce, and they advised him of political opportunities in the Midwest.  Margarethe, troubled by a lung ailment, returned to England with Agatha in 1855 for a water cure.  Carl rejoined his family at the end of the year, taking them to Switzerland, where a second daughter, Marianne, was born.  After returning to America, the family moved to Watertown, Wisconsin, in August 1856, where Carl's parents, sisters, several other Schurz relatives, and many German immigrants had settled.  The Schurz family home in Watertown was known as Karlshuegel (Carl's Hill).  Margarethe began a kindergarten class there, the first in the United States, in the fall of 1856.  She employed Froebel's philosophy while caring for the children, leading them in games, songs, and group activities that channeled their energy while also preparing them for school.  Like most of the early kindergartens, it was conducted in the German language.  http://civilwarwomenblog.com/margarethe-schurz/

Romano beans are also called Italian flat beans or runner beans.  This snap bean variety looks like a wide, flat green bean.  You can substitute an equal amount of regular green beans in a recipe for Romano Bean Salad at http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/romano-bean-salad

An encrypted 3,300 page eye-witness account of life in Restoration England has been cracked by a team of academics.  The diary, written by 17th Century Cambridge alumnus Roger Morrice, was published for the first time in August, 2016.  Spanning the years from 1677 to 1691, the diary covers the reigns of Charles II and James II, and the events of the “Glorious Revolution” which heralded the start of English parliamentary government.  The diary, titled “Entring”, is now being considered as a rival to writings of Samuel Pepys as an account of life during Restoration Period.  But despite the text’s obvious importance it has lain nearly forgotten in London’s Dr Williams library for almost 300 years.  All previous attempts to use Morrice’s work have been thwarted by the fact that he coded 40,000 of his words in an attempt to protect himself.   The transcription has taken seven years, and the team, led by Cambridge historian Mark Goldie, had to recruit an expert on 17th century shorthand to help decipher the text.  It is hoped that the diary will enhance our understanding of the period, as Morrice’s account of 17th century life contrasts starkly with Pepys’.  Pepys was optimistic after the restoration of the English monarchy while Morrice felt that life under Charles II lacked the morals of the previous Cromwellian regime and feared a Catholic counter-reformation.  But Dr Goldie claims the book’s appeal lies in more than its potential to illuminate 17th century political history.  “It also covers publishing, plays, business, military and religious matters.  We hear about foreign affairs, public opinion, London life, gossip and rumour, plays and coffee houses, books and censorship.”  https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/610

Leslie Poles Hartley (1895-1972), known as L. P. Hartley, was a British novelist and short story writer. His best-known novels are the Eustace and Hilda trilogy (1947) and The Go-Between (1953).  The latter  was made into a 1971 film, directed by Joseph Losey with a star cast, in an adaptation by Harold Pinter.  Its opening sentence, "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there", has become almost proverbial.  His 1957 novel The Hireling was made into a critically acclaimed film of the same title in 1973.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._P._Hartley

Bibliomania:  the strange history of compulsive book buying--An essayist looks into the curious past of pathological collectors--and considers her own lifelong urge to hoard ever more volumes by Lorraine Berry  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/26/bibliomania-the-strange-history-of-compulsive-book-buying

Middlegrounds, located in downtown Toledo, includes a half-mile of river frontage that begins at the Anthony Wayne Bridge and extends southwest of Martin Luther King Plaza.  The urban, 28-acre greenspace offers a 1.5-mile meandering walk/bike path and tranquil views of the Maumee River.  The transformation of the land began with the removal of 8,000 tons of debris, and features of the park were built with sustainability in mind.  Visitors will love the beautiful decking made of ipe wood, and the river will benefit from a natural system that captures and cleans water runoff from the adjacent bridge.  The purchase price and other costs associated with developing the park were reimbursed to the park district from a grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coastal Estuarine Land Conservation Program.  The grant was designated for the project by U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur in February 2005.  https://metroparkstoledo.com/explore-your-parks/middlegrounds/  

           

Middlegrounds at 111 Ottawa Street in Toledo takes the name of the property (the "middle ground" between the Maumee River and Swan Creek).  Wood decking made of ipe (EE-pay) also known as Brazilian walnut is one of the densest hardwoods available and resistant to insect damage, mold and decay.  The Maumee River is the heart of a large drainage system fed by streams that flow through 17 counties in Ohio and parts of Indiana and Michigan.  The Maumee empties into Lake Erie, and then the Niagara River, over Niagara Falls and into Lake Ontario.  The 83,00-square-mile watershed is the largest on all the Great Lakes.  Metroparks Magazine  Winter 2017

Non Sequitur comic strip March 3, 2017 shows an information hut with two choices:  inquire about facts--or schmacts.  See where the customers are at http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1671  March 3, 2017  On this date in 1913, thousands of women marched in a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C.  On this date in 1931, the United States adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem.

PARAPHRASES from Middle Man,#2 in the Lieutenant Rollie Waters novels by David Rich  . . . not owning anything that must be cared for or carried or coddled became a guiding principle . . . I built my identity on the absence of those things . . . Confession is terrible for the soul--I would never recommend it.

David Rich has sold screenplays to most of the major studios, and to production companies in the U.S. and Europe.  He wrote the feature film Renegades starring Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Philips, as well episodes of "MacGyver" and other shows.  He wrote three plays:  The Interview, The Rescue and W.A.R. (Women's Armed Resistance).  Raised in Chicago, David received his B.A. from Tulane, spent one rainy, Withnail-esque year in Wales, and earned his M.A. in English from University of Colorado.  http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/david-rich

Withnail-esque and Withnailabilia refer to the 1987 British black comedy film "Withnail and I".

PARAPHRASES from The Third Reich, a novel by Roberto Bolaño  translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer   The true test of health is lack of boredom.  They made up for any language deficiencies with their great skills as mimes.

Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (1953–2003) was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist.  In 1999, Bolaño won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes (The Savage Detectives), and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes as a "work so rich and dazzling that it will surely draw readers and scholars for ages".  The New York Times described him as "the most significant Latin American literary voice of his generation"  The Third Reich (El Tercer Reich in Spanish) was written in 1989 but only discovered among Bolaño's papers after he died.  It was published in Spanish in 2010 and in English in 2011.  The protagonist is Udo Berger, a German war-game champion.  With his girlfriend Ingeborg he goes back to the small town on the Costa Brava where he spent his childhood summers.  He plays a game of Rise and Decline of the Third Reich with a stranger.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Bola%C3%B1o

HOMEMADE SAZON SEASONING MIX  The key ingredient in this spice mix is ground annatto (achiote), the spice that gives yellow rice that yellow color.  Annatto is derived from the seeds of achiote tree.  In India it’s referred to as sindoor, and in the Philippines, it is called atsuete.  If you can’t find this, turmeric would be a good substitute.   Gina Homolka  Find recipe at http://www.skinnytaste.com/homemade-sazon-seasoning-mix/

Every January the Public Relations Office at Lake Superior State University (Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan) releases its List of Banished Words, a not-so-serious exercise now in its 42nd year.  How time flies when you’re hip-deep in snark!  I love and hate the Banished Words List, in the same way that I feel both emotions for Word of the Year rankings.  They’re irritating exercises in self-indulgence, but they’re also wonderful snapshots of the psyche of a certain portion of humanity.  That annual insight, regardless of how cluttered it might be by other factors, is valuable.  While LSSU at times might not seem to take their own list seriously, there are always nuggets worth noticing in there.  This year's list is no exception.  Perhaps the most important thing to remember about this list of “banished” words (and you can no sooner banish a word than you can banish a color or a time of day) is that it’s not a scientific process.  It’s open to nominations from anyone, which are then reviewed and narrowed down by a committee.  It might not be arbitrary, but it’s dominated by popularity (or unpopularity) and pet peeves.  Which is perfectly fine, as long as you know that going in.  So let’s go in.  This year’s final list had 19 words and phrases on it.  Covering just a few gives a good sense of things. If you want to review the entire list, you'll find it at http://www.lssu.edu/banished/  Do I feel any of these words should really be banned or banished?  Not really.  I have long been of the opinion that bad words—by which I mean words that aren’t useful enough or are unnecessarily awkward or artificial—usually die out pretty quickly without help.  Christopher Daly  https://thebettereditor.wordpress.com/2017/02/24/banished-but-not-vanished/

           

Quotations either misquoted or erroneously attributed to Henry D. Thoreau  "Use what talent you possess:  the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."  Misattribution. The first known use, although it was unattributed, is from The Ladies Repository:  A Monthly Periodical, Devoted to Literature, Arts, and Religion, September 1874, p. 231.  It was reprinted two years later in The Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star, number 37, volume XXXVIII (Monday:  September 11, 1876) p. 583.  This quotation has also been misattributed to Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933).  "Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."  Misattribution.  This quotation first appeared in the 1980 edition (p. 331) of The Whole Earth Catalog—originally created by Stewart Brand in 1968—and a variant by the American Library Association, “Books will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no books,” appeared in the early 1980’s.  Both are in turn adapted from the line in a Gilbert Shelton Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers cartoon (“The Freaks Pull a Heist!”)  Misquotation/Misatribution.  "It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see."  The correct quotation is from Thoreau’s Journal of 5 August 1851:  “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”  The above quotation is by Richard D. Richardson Jr who wrote “It is not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” in his biography, Henry Thoreau:  A Life of the Mind (University of California Press, 1986) p. 171.  He was not quoting Thoreau.  Read more at https://www.walden.org/thoreau/mis-quotations/

Mostafa A. H. el-Abbadi, a Cambridge-educated historian of Greco-Roman antiquity and the soft-spoken visionary behind the revival of the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, died Feb. 13, 2017 in Alexandria.  He was 88.  Professor Abbadi’s dream of a new library—a modern version of the magnificent center of learning of ancient times—could be traced to 1972, when, as a scholar at the University of Alexandria, he concluded a lecture with an impassioned challenge.  “At the end, I said, ‘It is sad to see the new University of Alexandria without a library, without a proper library,’” he recalled in 2010.  “‘And if we want to justify our claim to be connected spiritually with the ancient tradition, we must follow the ancient example by starting a great universal library.’”  It was President Richard M. Nixon who blew wind into the sails of Professor Abbadi’s ambitious proposal.  When Nixon visited Egypt in 1974, he and President Anwar el-Sadat rode by train to Alexandria’s ancient ruins to observe their faded grandeur.  When Nixon asked about the ancient library’s location and history, no one in the Egyptian entourage had an answer.  Jonathan Guyer  Read much more and see pictures at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/middleeast/mostafa-el-abbadi-great-library-of-alexandria.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1670    March 1, 2017  On this date in 1781, the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation.  On this date in 1845, United States President John Tyler signed a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas.