Budapest is the capital and the most populous city of Hungary, and the tenth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits.  The city has an estimated population of 1,752,286 over a land area of about 525 square kilometres (203 square miles).  Budapest is both a city and county, and forms the centre of the Budapest metropolitan area, which has an area of 7,626 square kilometres (2,944 square miles) and a population of 3,303,786, comprising 33% of the population of Hungary.  The history of Budapest began when an early Celtic settlement transformed into the Roman town of Aquincum, the capital of Lower Pannonia.  The Hungarians arrived in the territory in the late 9th century.  The area was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241–42.  Buda became one of the centres of Renaissance humanist culture by the 15th century.  The Battle of Mohács, in 1526, was followed by nearly 150 years of Ottoman.  After the reconquest of Buda in 1686, the region entered a new age of prosperity.  Pest-Buda became a global city with the unification of Buda, Óbuda, and Pest on 17 November 1873, with the name 'Budapest' given to the new capital.  Budapest also became the co-capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a great power that dissolved in 1918, following World War I.  The city was the focal point of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Battle of Budapest in 1945, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.   The city has around 80 geothermal springs, the largest thermal water cave system, the second largest synagogue, and third largest Parliament building in the world. Budapest attracts around 12 million international tourists per year, making it a highly popular destination in Europe.  The city was chosen as the Best European Destination of 2019, a major poll conducted by EBD, a tourism organisation partnering with the European Commission.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest

For backpackers and other thrill seekers touring New Zealand, a whiff of danger has placed White Island firmly on adventure itineraries alongside bungee jumping, jetboating and white water rafting.  But the tragic events of December 9, 2019 have spotlighted the tourism industry that's built up around White Island and other volatile attractions.  It was only when I boarded the tour boat and signed a disclaimer that absolved anyone but myself of any responsibility that the reality of the trip's dangers hit home, but not enough to dissuade me or my fellow tourists from continuing.  After a couple of hours sailing, our party landed at White Island's Crater Bay, where we were greeted by what looked like an alien landscape.  The sea was lemon yellow, the rocks cinnamon brown, the sand pitch black and the air thick with the smell of an open latrine.  What was eerie, though, was the silence.  I was expecting a roar, at least a muted grumble, but no, the island was silent.  With pewter-gray ash and scoria covering much of the land; the scene could've been described as lunar if it weren't for the mist over the steam vents.  These vents came in every shade of yellow--from banana to butterscotch and all variations in between.  "Don't go anywhere near the vents," our guide said.  "The coolest ones clock 95 C (100 F).  The superheated ones can reach 200 C (400 F).  Some go deep down to 600 feet below sea level."  At some point, we reached a white line painted on the ground and were told to stop.  "From here on, the crust is thin," the guide said.  "Walk further and the ground might give in under your feet."  In front of us lay the main crater cloaked under a vapor cloud, a gate to the center of the Earth.  Back on the boat, the guide changed his sneakers.  He used a separate pair just for White Island.  "Plastic laces, holes with no metal eyelets; everything rusts there," he said.  John Malathronas  See graphics, including the 25,000 mile Ring of Fire at https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/new-zealand-volcano-tours-ads/index.html

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States.  Many Americans on the West Coast attributed declining wages and economic ills to Chinese workers.  Although the Chinese composed only .002 percent of the nation's population, Congress passed the exclusion act to placate worker demands and assuage prevalent concerns about maintaining white "racial purity."  Meant to curb the influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States, particularly California, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization.  President Chester A. Arthur signed it into law on May 6, 1882.  Chinese-Americans already in the country challenged the constitutionality of the discriminatory acts, but their efforts failed.  Proposed by California congressman Thomas J. Geary, The Geary Act went into effect on May 5, 1892.  It reinforced and extended the Chinese Exclusion Act’s ban on Chinese immigration for an additional ten years.  It also required Chinese residents in the U.S. to carry special documentation—certificates of residence—from the Internal Revenue Service.  Immigrants who were caught not carrying the certificates were sentenced to hard labor and deportation, and bail was only an option if the accused were vouched for by a “credible white witness.”  Chinese Americans were finally allowed to testify in court after the 1882 trial of laborer Yee Shun, though it would take decades for the immigration ban to be lifted.  The Supreme Court upheld the Geary Act in Fong Yue Ting v. United States in 1893, and in 1902 Chinese immigration was made permanently illegal.  The legislation proved very effective, and the Chinese population in the United States sharply declined.  https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/chinese-exclusion-act-1882  See also https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/chinese.html

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and first published in 1886.  It is about a London lawyer who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll and the misanthropic Mr. Hyde.  The work is known for its vivid portrayal of a split personality, and since the 1880s dozens of stage and film adaptations have been produced, although there have been no major adaptations to date that remain faithful to the narrative structure of Stevenson's original.  Most omit the figure of Utterson, telling the story from Jekyll's and Hyde's viewpoint and often having them played by the same actor, thus eliminating entirely the mystery aspect of the true identity of Hyde, which was the original's twist ending and not the basic premise it is today.  Many adaptations also introduce a romantic element which does not exist in the original story.  While Hyde is portrayed in the novella as an evil-looking man of diminutive height, many adaptations have taken liberties with the character's physical appearance, sometimes depicting him with bestial or monstrous features.  There are over 123 film versions, not including stage and radio, as well as a number of parodies and imitations.  See adaptations for stage, film, radio, TV, music, and books as well as appearances in other fiction at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptations_of_Strange_Case_of_Dr._Jekyll_and_Mr._Hyde

The Ugly Duckling is a 1959 British comedy film, directed by Lance Comfort and starring Bernard Bresslaw, Jon Pertwee and Reginald Beckwith.  The film is a comic adaptation of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde storyline and the opening credits include "with ideas stolen from Robert Louis Stevenson". The film has no connection to the Hans Christian Andersen story.  The tagline on posters was "HE'S A CHANGED MAN AFTER TAKING JEKYLL'S FAMILY REMEDY."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_Duckling_(1959_film)

Practically every modern author’s origin story includes a cherished memory of a library.  Few question the public library’s value as an important discovery channel, both in print and digital, especially in the thousands of communities across the United States without local booksellers.  The same is true for publishers.  Publishers depend on library preorders to help establish initial print runs ahead of publication.  And once books are published, library-hosted author events and community reading campaigns have been shown to drive consumer sales.  Many publishers even have full-time staff dedicated to marketing their books directly to librarians.  There is no question that public librarians themselves are unparalleled, often unheralded influencers, helping readers to discover books and authors through a plethora of in-person and online readers’ advisory services, regardless of publication date or bestseller list status.  And yet, despite all these tangible, measurable activities and a well of consumer research that consistently shows library patrons are also book buyers, there are still some publishers who continue to view library lending, in any format, with a cynical eye.  Why?  Most stakeholders would agree:  better data about the library’s role in the reading marketplace would be enormously useful.  True, the inherent complexity of aggregating and analyzing the many sources of data needed to measure the impact of libraries is challenging—there’s data from publishers and wholesalers, booksellers and libraries, and various industry organizations with overlapping and sometimes competing agendas.  And there is the ever-present silent elephant in every room:  Amazon.  But the challenge is by no means insurmountable, if only publishers were to deem it a priority.  Guy LeCharles Gonzales  https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/81977-ala-midwinter-2020-why-it-s-time-to-quantify-the-library-s-role-in-the-reading-marketplace.html

"Exorcise" or "Exercise"?  Exorcisms are limited to evil spirits.  The word “exorcise” comes from a Greek work for “oath,” so think of swearing an oath to get rid of an evil spirit, and in your mind, link the “o” from “oath” to the idea that “exorcise” is spelled with an “o.”  Exercising is for all kinds of mind and body activities.  Mignon Fogarty  https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/exorcise-or-exercise

Kifli or kipfel is a traditional yeast bread roll that is rolled and formed into a crescent before baking.  Crescent-shaped pastries are considered to be the oldest-surviving pastry shape and are believed to represent an ancient pagan tradition involving offerings to the moon goddess Selene.  Pastries of similar shape have been baked since the 10th century.  In Vienna kipfel dates to at earliest the 13th century and was likely traditionally baked in monasteries for Easter.  It is a common type of bread roll throughout much of central Europe and nearby countries, where it is called by different names.  It is probably the inspiration for the French croissant, which has a similar shape but is made with a different type of dough.  In Old High German, Kipfa means "carriage stanchion", referring to the stanchions or "horns" of a cart.  From the 13th century this usage refers to a bread shape of pagan origin.  In Hungarian, kifli means "twist" or "crescent".  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kifli

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2207  January 8, 2020

“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”  Blithe Spirit ― Noël Coward, English dramatist, actor and composer (1899-1973)

http://thinkexist.com/quotation/it-s_discouraging_to_think_how_many_people_are/216896.html

Duke Humfrey's Library is the oldest reading room in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.  It is named after Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, a connoisseur of literature, who donated his collection of 281 books to the university at his death in 1447.  Books were hand-written at the time and his legacy was considered an extraordinarily generous donation, since the university previously had only 20 books.  Only three books from the original donation remain, the rest having been removed in 1550 and probably burnt during the Reformation.  The library was restored and restocked by Thomas Bodley from 1598 onwards.  The books in the oldest part of the library are accommodated in oak bookcases that are at right angles to the walls on either side, with integrated reading desks.  The ceiling consists of panels painted with the coat of arms of the University of Oxford.  See picture at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Humfrey%27s_Library

LET'S TEACH CHILDREN TO BE HAPPY, NOT PERFECT  Original by:  Sara Espejo--Rincón del Tibet Version:  Peter Bristotte - May 29, 2019  Early ages are fundamental to all human beings, the need for protection, dependence on their caregivers, their thirst for love, and having their needs satisfied is what will determine, to a large extent, how they will develop as adults.  Most cultures overlook the primary needs of children and the purpose of life itself, to put them in a race for which they are not even prepared, arguing for competitiveness, leadership skills, independence, encouragement, and other attitudes and behaviors that help them to excel, overcoming the abilities and skills of others.  Children, like good sponges, absorb everything their main sources of influence offer them and it is those basic and constant ideas and beliefs that will accompany them for most of their lives.  It is only when the adult questions those beliefs that they will be able to turn them in favor.  The most valuable contribution we can give to our children is love, the respect for their times, for their tastes, for their preferences, for the quality of the time we offer with them, for the interest we show in their things, even if we don’t see them as important.  This is what will define their self-confidence, their self-esteem, their sense of belonging.  What is to be encouraged is their desire to be better than themselves, for them to make themselves better on a daily basis, no matter what their siblings, their classmates, or the neighbor's children do.  https://cdn2.sportngin.com/attachments/document/ce5b-1899376/LET_S_TEACH_CHILDREN_TO_BE_HAPPY__NOT_PERFECT.pdf

Green Eggs and Ham  Mash ripe avocado, add olive oil, lemon juice, ½ cup cooked ham (cubed), and salt and pepper.  Mix well--then add six or eight hard-boiled eggs, quartered.  See also

 https://eatingrichly.com/green-eggs-and-ham-recipe/ or https://www.foodandwine.com/video/how-make-green-eggs-and-ham or https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/amy-s-green-eggs-and-ham/

Rachel Harrison (born 1966, New York) is an American visual artist who is primarily known for her assemblage work and sculpture, but she has also engaged in performance art and drawing, and photography.  Her work often incorporates elements of photography and found objects, sometimes layering abstract forms with industrially manufactured elements.  She lives and works in New York.  In 1996 Harrison had her first exhibition, entitled Should home windows or shutters be required to withstand a direct hit from an eight-foot-long two-by-four shot from a cannon at 34 miles an hour, without creating a hole big enough to let through a three-inch sphere?, at the Arena Gallery in New York City founded by Art curator and dealer Renee Riccardo who said in an interview "No one at the time knew what to make of Harrison’s unusual work but many major critics including Roberta Smith of the New York Times felt compelled to write about".  In this show, Harrison established her predilection for producing sculptures that juxtapose a unique combination of found, purchased, and received items.  The title of the show was appropriated from a photo in The New York Times about housing improvement following the hurricane Andrew.  Since then, her works have been fabricated using a wide range of materials, such as honey, cans of peas, papier-mâché, and trash bags.  By using everyday goods and objects, Harrison frequently takes on the subject of consumer culture.  In an interview, she writes "I want people to be real with art, to be conscious and present with the object in order to experience it."  In 2013, Harrison received her first public art commission for the sculpture Moore to the Point in the Dallas City Hall Plaza, part of the Nasher Sculpture Center's Nasher XChange exhibition.  This piece points to and frames Henry Moore's sculpture, Three Forms Vertebrae near Dallas City Hall.  The work calls attention to how people interact with works of public art.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Harrison

Spitting Image is a British satirical television puppet show, created by Peter Fluck, Roger Law and Martin Lambie-Nairn.  First broadcast in February 1984, the series was produced by 'Spitting Image Productions' for Central Independent Television over 18 series which aired on the ITV network.  The series was nominated and won numerous awards, including ten BAFTA Television Awards, and two Emmy Awards in 1985 and 1986 in the Popular Arts Category.  The series features puppet caricatures of contemporary celebrities and public figures, including British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and other politicians, US president Ronald Reagan, and the British Royal Family; the series was the first to caricature Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother (as an elderly gin-drinker with a Beryl Reid voice).  One of the most-watched shows of the 1980s and early 1990s, Spitting Image satirised politics, entertainment, sport and British popular culture of the era.  At its peak it was watched by 15 million people.  The popularity of the show saw collaborations with musicians, including Phil Collins and Sting.  The series was cancelled in 1996 after viewing figures declined.  ITV had plans for a new series in 2006, but these were scrapped after a dispute over the Ant & Dec puppets used to host Best Ever Spitting Image, which were created against Roger Law's wishes.  In 2018, Law donated his entire archive--including scripts, puppet moulds, drawings and recordings--to Cambridge University.  In September 2019, Law announced the show would be returning with a new series.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitting_Image

The term 'spitting image' is an allusion to someone who is so like someone else as to appear to have been spat from his mouth.  The concept and phrase were in circulation by 1689, when George Farquhar used it in his play Love and a Bottle:  “Poor child!  He’s as like his own dada as if he were spit out of his mouth.”  https://www.gingersoftware.com/content/phrases/spitting-image/#.Xe0-BOhKiUk

December 29, 2019  The cave is in Indonesia—the limestone cave of Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4, on the island of Sulawesi, to be precise—and it was occupied, according to recent findings, more than forty thousand years ago, by early modern humans.  Inside it for all that time has been a fourteen-and-a-half-foot-wide image, painted in dark-red pigment, depicting about eight tiny bipedal figures, bearing what look to be spears and ropes, bravely hunting the local wild pigs and buffalo.  The discoverers of its antiquity, a team of archeologists at Griffith University, in Australia, including Maxime Aubert, the chief author of an article about the painting in Nature, call it “to our knowledge, currently the oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world.”  Adam Gopnik  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/06/storytelling-across-the-ages?verso=true

January 3, 2020  JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA—According to a statement released by the University of the Witwatersrand, researchers including scientists Lyn Wadley and Christine Sievers have found evidence that early modern humans collected and cooked starchy plant parts known as rhizomes some 170,000 years ago.  The charred rhizomes were recovered from fireplaces and ash dumps at South Africa’s Border Cave, which is located in the Lebombo Mountains, and identified with a scanning electron microscope as Hypoxis, a plant also known as the Yellow Star flower.  Today, the plant is still valued for the nutrition, energy, and fiber it provides.  To read about starch residues that might constitute the earliest known evidence of potato domestication in North America, go to "World Roundup: Utah."  https://www.archaeology.org/news/8334-200103-roasted-starchy-plants

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2206  January 6, 2020 

The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library champions the literary, artistic, and cultural contributions of the late writer, artist, teacher, and Indianapolis native Kurt Vonnegut.  The library continues Kurt Vonnegut’s fight against censorship and supports language and visual arts education through programs and outreach activities such as:  Teaching Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut and Jane Cox Vonnegut Writing Awards, Banned Books Week, So It Goes:  The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, Night of Vonnegut, VonnegutFest, Vonnegut Sessions, school tours and partnerships, original exhibits and art shows, traveling speakers and a traveling exhibit that you can request for your own local venues.  https://www.vonnegutlibrary.org/what-is-the-vonnegut-library/   Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library  543 Indiana Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46202, (317) 423-0391, founded in 2011

The famed “sword of Damocles” dates back to an ancient moral parable popularized by the Roman philosopher Cicero in his 45 B.C. book “Tusculan Disputations.”  Cicero’s version of the tale centers on Dionysius II, a tyrannical king who once ruled over the Sicilian city of Syracuse during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.  Though rich and powerful, Dionysius was supremely unhappy.  His iron-fisted rule had made him many enemies, and he was tormented by fears of assassination—so much so that he slept in a bedchamber surrounded by a moat and only trusted his daughters to shave his beard with a razor.  As Cicero tells it, the king’s dissatisfaction came to a head one day after a court flatterer named Damocles showered him with compliments and remarked how blissful his life must be.  “Since this life delights you,” an annoyed Dionysius replied, “do you wish to taste it yourself and make a trial of my good fortune?”  When Damocles agreed, Dionysius seated him on a golden couch and ordered a host of servants wait on him.  He was treated to succulent cuts of meat and lavished with scented perfumes and ointments.  Damocles couldn’t believe his luck, but just as he was starting to enjoy the life of a king, he noticed that Dionysius had also hung a razor-sharp sword from the ceiling.  It was positioned over Damocles’ head, suspended only by a single strand of horsehair.  From then on, the courtier’s fear for his life made it impossible for him to savor the opulence of the feast or enjoy the servants.  After casting several nervous glances at the blade dangling above him, he asked to be excused, saying he no longer wished to be so fortunate.  The parable later became a common motif in medieval literature, and the phrase “sword of Damocles” is now commonly used as a catchall term to describe a looming danger.  Likewise, the saying “hanging by a thread” has become shorthand for a fraught or precarious situation.  https://www.history.com/news/what-was-the-sword-of-damocles 

Babette's Feast is a 1987 Danish drama film directed by Gabriel Axel.  The film's screenplay was written by Axel based on the story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen).  Produced by Just Betzer, Bo Christensen, and Benni Korzen with funding from the Danish Film Institute, Babette's Feast was the first Danish cinema film of a Blixen story.  It was also the first Danish film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.  The elderly and pious Protestant sisters Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodil Kjer) live in a small village on the remote western coast of Jutland in 19th-century Denmark. Their father was a pastor who founded his own Pietistic conventicle.  With their father now dead and the austere sect drawing no new converts, the aging sisters preside over a dwindling congregation of white-haired believers.  The story flashes back 49 years, showing the sisters in their youth.  The beautiful girls have many suitors, but their father rejects them all, and indeed derides marriage.  Each daughter is courted by an impassioned suitor visiting Jutland--Martine by a charming young Swedish cavalry officer, Lorens Löwenhielm, and Philippa by a star baritone, Achille Papin, from the Paris opera, on hiatus to the silence of the coast.  Both sisters decide to stay with their father and spurn any life away from Jutland.  Thirty-five years later, Babette Hersant (Stéphane Audran) appears at their door.  She carries only a letter from Papin, explaining that she is a refugee from counter-revolutionary bloodshed in Paris and recommending her as a housekeeper.  The sisters cannot afford to take Babette in, but she offers to work for free.  Babette serves as their cook for the next 14 years, producing an improved version of the bland meals typical of the abstemious nature of the congregation and slowly gaining their respect.  Her only link to her former life is a lottery ticket that a friend in Paris renews for her every year.  One day, she wins the lottery of 10,000 francs.  Instead of using the money to return to Paris and her lost lifestyle, she decides to spend it preparing a delicious dinner for the sisters and their small congregation on the occasion of the founding pastor's hundredth birthday.  More than just a feast, the meal is an outpouring of Babette's appreciation, an act of self-sacrifice.  Babette tells no one that she is spending her entire winnings on the meal.  The sisters accept both Babette's meal and her offer to pay for the creation of a "real French dinner".  Babette arranges for her nephew to go to Paris and gather the supplies for the feast.  The ingredients are plentiful, sumptuous, and exotic, and their arrival causes much discussion among the villagers.  As the various never-before-seen ingredients arrive and preparations commence, the sisters begin to worry that the meal will become a sin of sensual luxury, if not some form of devilry.  In a hasty conference, the sisters and the congregation agree to eat the meal, but to forgo speaking of any pleasure in it and to make no mention of the food during the dinner.  Martine's former suitor, Lorens, now a famous general married to a member of the Queen's court, comes as the guest of his aunt, the local lady of the manor and a member of the old pastor's congregation.  He is unaware of the other guests' austere plans and as a man of the world and former attaché in Paris, he is the only person at the table qualified to comment on the meal.  He regales the guests with abundant information about the extraordinary food and drink, comparing it to a meal he enjoyed years earlier at the famous Café Anglais in Paris.  Although the other celebrants refuse to comment on the earthly pleasures of their meal, Babette's gifts break down their distrust and superstitions, elevating them physically and spiritually.  Old wrongs are forgotten, ancient loves are rekindled and a mystical redemption of the human spirit settles over the table.  The seven-course menu in the film consisted of:  "Potage à la Tortue" (turtle soup) served with Amontillado sherry, "Blinis Demidoff" (buckwheat pancakes with caviar and sour cream) served with Veuve Cliquot Champagne, "Cailles en Sarcophage" (quail in puff pastry shell with foie gras and truffle sauce) served with Clos de Vougeot Pinot Noir, an endive salad, "Savarin au Rhum avec des Figues et Fruit Glacée" (rum sponge cake with figs and candied cherries) served with Champagne, assorted cheeses and fruits served with Sauternes, and coffee with vieux marc Grande Champagne cognac.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babette%27s_Feast

The 1904 St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exhibition looms largest among fans of fair food.  The list of treats attributed to that fair is long, if somewhat inaccurate, and includes hot dogs, hamburgers, ice cream cones, banana splits, iced tea, Dr Pepper, cotton candy and peanut butter.  In reality, hot dogs had existed in some form in Germany for years, and iced tea had been mentioned on menus for at least 40 years before the fair.  Travelers to Germany had reported eating ice cream from edible cones in Düsseldorf since the late 1800s, and Dr Pepper had been sold in Waco, Texas, since 1885.  While these foods may have first been popularized at the fair, St. Louis can’t take all the credit for some of our favorite snacks.  Stephanie Butler   https://www.history.com/news/foods-of-the-worlds-fairs

25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites by Judith Herman  Includes off, go, and toss out.  The contronym (also spelled “contranym”) goes by many names, including auto-antonym, antagonym, enantiodrome, self-antonym, antilogy and Janus word (from the Roman god of beginnings and endings, often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions).  Can’t get enough of them?  The folks at Daily Writing Tips have rounded up even more.  Thank you, Muse reader!  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/25-words-that-are-their-own-opposites?utm_source=pocket-newtab

On Jan. 2, 2020, a collection of 1,131 letters from Nobel laureate and renowned writer Thomas Stearns Eliot, better known as T.S. Eliot, to his lifelong friend Emily Hale opens for research at Princeton University Library.  Dating from 1930 to 1957, the letters are the largest single series of Eliot’s correspondence and among the best-known sealed literary archives in the world.  Hale donated the letters to the Princeton University Library (PUL) more than 60 years ago.  She gave the letters with the stipulation that they remain sealed until 50 years after the death of Eliot or Hale, whoever survived the other.  Eliot died in 1965 and Hale soon thereafter, in 1969.  A Boston native, Hale was a speech and drama teacher at Simmons College, Milwaukee-Downer College, Scripps College and Smith College.  She and Eliot initially met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1912 when Eliot attended Harvard University, and they rekindled their friendship in 1927.  When Eliot moved abroad to England, the pair corresponded frequently.  When the collection was initially unsealed at PUL in October for processing and cataloging, the letters were still in their original envelopes and bundles, as Hale presumably kept them, according to Chloe Pfendler, processing archivist for the manuscripts division in PUL’s Special Collections.  The Eliot letters are under copyright until 2035 and will not be available for access online.  Researchers can access the collection on a first-come, first-served basis in Firestone Library’s Special Collections, located on C floor.   For more information about accessing the collections, visit the Special Collections website.  Stephanie Ramírez, Princeton University Library  Read more at https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/12/30/ts-eliot-letters-among-best-known-sealed-literary-archives-open-princeton-after-60

Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. - Douglas William Jerrold, playwright and humorist (3 Jan 1803-1857)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2205  January 3, 2020 

It’s largely accepted that the original version of the familiar smiley face was first created in Worcester, Massachusetts by the late Harvey Ross Ball, an American graphic artist and ad man.  Ball came up with the image in 1963 when he was commissioned to create a graphic to raise morale among the employees of an insurance company after a series of difficult mergers and acquisitions.  Ball finished the design in less than 10 minutes and was paid $45 for his work.  The State Mutual Life Assurance Company (now Allmerica Financial Corporation) made posters, buttons, and signs adorned with the jaundiced grin in the attempt to get their employees to smile more.  It’s uncertain whether or not the new logo boosted morale, but the smiling face was an immediate hit and the company produced thousands of buttons.  The image proliferated and was of course endlessly imitated but according to Bill Wallace, Executive Director of the Worcester Historical Museum, the authentic Harvey Ball-designed smiley face could always be identified by its distinguishing features:  the eyes are narrow ovals, one larger than the other, and the mouth is not a perfect arc but “almost like a Mona Lisa Mouth.”  Neither Ball nor State Mutual tried to trademark or copyright the design.  Although it seems clear that Ball has the strongest claim to the second most iconic smile in history, there’s much more to the story.  In the early 1970s, brothers Bernard and Murray Spain, owners of two Hallmark card shops in Philadelphia, came across the image in a button shop, noticed that it was incredibly popular, and simply appropriated it.  They knew that Harvey Ball came up with the design in the 1960s but after adding the slogan “Have a Happy Day” to the smile, the Brothers Spain were able to copyright the revised mark in 1971, and immediately began producing their own novelty items.  By the end of the year they had sold more than 50 million buttons and countless other products, turning a profit.  Despite their acknowledgment of Harvey’s design, the brothers publicly took credit for icon in 1971 when they appeared on the television show “What’s My Line.”  In Europe, there is another claimant to the smiley.  In 1972 French journalist Franklin Loufrani became the first person to register the mark for commercial use when he started using it to highlight the rare instances of good news in the newspaper France Soir.  Subsequently, he trademarked the smile, dubbed simply “Smiley,” in over 100 countries and launched the Smiley Company by selling smiley T-shirt transfers.  In 1996, Loufrani’s son Nicolas took over the family business and transformed it into an empire.  He formalized the mark with a style guide and further distributed it through global licensing agreements including, perhaps most notably, some of the earliest graphic emoticons.  Today, the Smiley Company makes more than $130 million a year and is one of the top 100 licensing companies of the world.  The company has taken a simple graphic gesture and transformed it into an enormous business as well as a corporate ideology that places a premium on “positivity.”  As for the American origin of the smiley, Nicolas Loufrani is skeptical of Harvey’s claim on the design even though, as evident in the above image, his father’s original newspaper icon is almost identical to Ball’s mark, idiosyncrasies and all.  Loufrani argues that the design of the smiley is so basic it can’t be credited to anyone.  On his company’s website, they prove this idea by showing what they claim to be the world’s first smiley face, a stone carving found in a French cave that dates to 2500 BC, as well as a smiley face graphic used for promotion by a New York radio station in 1960.  Copyright and trademark issues are complicated, and despite their views toward Ball’s design, when the Smiley Company attempted to trademark the image in the United States in 1997, they became embroiled in a legal battle with Walmart, which started using the smiley face as a corporate logo in 1996 and tried to claim ownership of it (because of course they did.)  The law suit lasted 10 years and cost both companies millions of dollars.  It was settled out of court in 2007 but its terms remain undisclosed.

Jimmy Stamp  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/who-really-invented-the-smiley-face-2058483/

A Super Ball (a.k.a. SuperBall) is a toy bouncing ball based on a type of synthetic rubber invented in 1964 by chemist Norman Stingley.  It is an extremely elastic ball made of Zectron which contains the synthetic polymer polybutadiene as well as hydrated silica, zinc oxide, stearic acid, and other ingredients.  This compound is vulcanized with sulfur at a temperature of 165 °C and formed at a pressure of 3500 psi.  The resulting Super Ball has a very high coefficient of restitution, and if dropped from shoulder level on a hard surface, a Super Ball bounces nearly all the way back; thrown down by an average adult, it can leap over a three-story building.  Toys similar to Super Balls are more generally known as bouncy balls, a term that covers other balls by different manufacturers with different formulations.  Stingley sought uses for is Polybutadiene synthetic rubber, as well as someone to manufacture it.  He first offered his invention to the Bettis Rubber Company, for whom he worked at the time, but they turned it down because the material was not very durable.  So Stingley took it to toy company Wham-O; they worked on developing a more durable version which they still manufacture today.  "It took us nearly two years to iron the kinks out of Super Ball before we produced it," said Richard Knerr, President of Wham-O in 1966.  "It always had that marvelous springiness . . . But it had a tendency to fly apart.  We've licked that with a very high-pressure technique for forming it.  Now we're selling millions."  Super Ball became a fad when it was introduced.  Peak production reached over 170,000 Super Balls per day.  By December 1965, over six million had been sold, and U.S. Presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy had five dozen shipped to the White House for the amusement of the staff.   Initially, the full-sized Super Ball sold for 98¢ at retail; by the end of 1966, its colorful miniature versions sold for as little as 10¢ in vending machines.  In the late 1960s, Wham-O made a giant Super Ball roughly the size of a bowling ball as a promotional stunt.  It fell from the 23rd story window (some reports say the roof) of an Australian hotel and destroyed a parked convertible car on the second bounce.  Composer Alcides Lanza purchased several Super Balls in 1965 as toys for his son, but soon he started experimenting with the sounds that they made when rubbed along the strings of a piano.  This resulted in his composition Plectros III (1971), in which he specifies that the performer should use a pair of Super Balls on sticks as mallets with which to strike and rub the strings and case of a piano.  Lamar Hunt, founder of the American Football League and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, watched his children playing with a Super Ball and then coined the term Super Bowl.  He wrote a letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle dated July 25, 1966:  "I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be improved upon."  The league's franchise owners had decided on the name AFL-NFL World Championship Game, but the media immediately picked up on Hunt's Super Bowl name, which became official beginning with the third annual game in 1969.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Ball

Thomas Edison received many patents in countries other than the United States.  No complete list exists, but Dyer and Martin's 1910 biography, Edison:  His Life and Inventions, contains a compilation of 1,239 non-U.S. patents awarded in 34 countries.  Edison's British patents for the years 1872–1880 appear in a bound volume in the Charles Batchelor collection.  There is an on-line database of all U.S. patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.  Patents before 1975 are searchable by patent number and classification, and patents issued between 1790 and 1836—which were not numbered—have been assigned chronologically ordered "X" numbers.  The USPTO also hosts a great deal of information about current patent practice. Databases at the Delphion Intellectual Property Network include U.S. patents since 1971, European patents since 1980, and Japanese patent abstracts since 1976.  U.S. Patents can also be searched through Google Patents.  Edison executed the first of his 1,093 successful U.S. patent applications on 13 October 1868, at the age of 21.  He filed an estimated 500–600 unsuccessful or abandoned applications as well.  Unfortunately, the names given Edison's patents are too irregular to make simple word searches an accurate means of finding patents for particular technologies.  His issued patents are presented here in three lists—by execution date, patent date, and subject. The execution and patent date lists are each presented in six parts to make the files less cumbersome.  The execution date of a patent application is the date on which the inventor signs the application, and hence is the date closest to the actual inventive activity.  However, in his early years Edison did not always rush to his patent lawyer with an invention, especially if there was little competition for the invention or he was feeling broke and unable to pay the various fees involved in an application.  In a few cases Edison removed some of the claims from an original application and filed a new application to cover those claims.  The execution date of such a patent can be considerably later than that of the original application even though the patent covers designs from the earlier date.  Link to more information at https://edison.rutgers.edu/patents.htm

Just when you thought attempting to trademark the word “The” was the greatest length Ohio State could reach in attempting to shield its precious brand, the school went ahead and picked a fight over a single letter.  Overtime Sports Inc., an online sports network, sued Ohio State University in federal court on December 23, 2019 after the school attempted to block the company from trademarking its letter “O” logo, according to the Associated Press.  Ohio State reportedly asked Overtime in July to stop using the logo, claiming it was too similar to its own trademarked block “O.”  In response, Overtime filed a lawsuit in New York City, where the company is based, to request that the school be prohibited from attempting to stop Overtime from using its logo.  Overtime’s trademark application is still reportedly pending at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  Jack Baer  https://sports.yahoo.com/ohio-state-overtime-block-o-lawsuit-trademark-235932616.html

Mariah Carey is the first artist ever to top the Billboard charts in four decades--and it's all thanks to her Christmas classic.  The elusive chanteuse scored a No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s and now, the 2020s.  "All I Want For Christmas Is You," originally released in 1994, is one of the very first hits of the new decade, Billboard confirmed.  The Billboard Hot 100 data combines radio airplay, sales and streaming data, and the latter measure likely boosted Carey's song to the top.  Scottie Andrew  https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/01/entertainment/mariah-carey-first-artist-billboard-four-decades-trnd/index.html

Starting on Jan. 1, 2020, anyone can legally remix George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, screen Buster Keaton’s silent films, or publish their own edition of Agatha Christie’s whodunnit The Man in the Brown Suit.  These classics are among the hundreds of books, films, novels, maps, music, and art created in 1924 that will enter the public domain come 2020.  Broadly speaking, copyright protection expires in the US after 95 years.  Anne Quito  Find list of works entering public domain at https://qz.com/1777256/list-of-copyrighted-works-entering-the-public-domain-in-2020/

The full lyrics to 'Auld Lang Syne' so you don't mumble your way through it  Elizabeth Wolfe and Kendall Trammell  Updated 7:02 AM ET, Tue December 31, 2019

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/31/us/auld-lang-syne-history-lyrics-trnd/index.html

LEFT IN 2019  Syd Mead (visual futurist designer), John Havlicek (Boston Celtic great), Leah Chase (chef and civil rights activist), John Paul Stevens, (U.S. Supreme Court justice), Howard “Hopalong” Cassady (Heisman Trophy winner at Ohio State and running back for the Detroit Lions), Elijah E. Cummings (U.S. House of Representatives member), Betty Ballantine ( half of a husband-and-wife team that helped invent the modern paperback), Monkey Punch (cartoonist), Leonard Bailey (doctor who planted a baboon heart into a newborn baby), I.M. Pei (architect), Cokie Roberts (journalist), Gahan Wilson (cartoonist), and Caroll Spinney (played Big Bird and gave Oscar the Grouch his growl). 

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. - E.M. Forster, novelist (1 Jan 1879-1970)

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2204  January 2, 2020