What’s in a name?  Well, if it’s ‘Insalata Caprese’, then years of history steeped in rich tradition is captured in those two delicious words.  Translating to ‘Salad of Capri’, the dish hails from the little island off the coast of Naples.  Most commonly seen as an appetizer, in Italy, the components of the salad are also popular pizza toppings (a la ‘Pizza Margherita’) and in sandwiches as well.  A picture perfect version includes:  beefsteak tomatoes, at the peak of sun kissed ripeness,  creamy fresh buffalo mozzarella, and tender fresh basil leaves that are hand plucked off stems rather than cut with a knife.  Contrary to most popular presentations here in the US, a true Italian Caprese Salad is not served with any kind of vinegar--the simple dressing is made up entirely by the best quality olive oil gently mingling with the natural juices of a sweet summer tomato sprinkled with a bit of salt and fresh cracked black pepper.  Jessica Roy  Find recipe at http://blogs.lowellsun.com/yourpersonalchef/2015/08/18/the-history-of-caprese-salad-insalata-caprese/

The pel in compel, impel, and propel derives from the Latin verb pellere, “to drive,” as in the way one drives sheep, forcing them to go in a certain direction.  compel:  transitive verb.  To urge irresistibly, oblige, force.   impel:  transitive verb.  To drive, force, or constrain a person to some action by acting upon her mind or feelings; to urge on, incite.  In a literal sense, impel means to cause something to move onward.  An engine, for example, impels a vehicle.  propel:  transitive verb.  To drive away or out. to drive or push forwards, onwards, or in a specified direction; to cause to move along.  Figuratively, propel means “to encourage or promote an enterprise or activity.”  One can “propel a person” in the sense of urging or spurring him on.  Three other pellere verbs in English are:  dispel:  to drive asunder, scatter; expel:  to drive out; repel:  to push or thrust away.  Maeve Maddox  http://www.dailywritingtips.com/compel-impel-and-propel/

PASTA RODS  Medium-sized rods like spaghetti are normally served with light tomato-based sauces.  Thin rods like angel hair pasta and vermicelli work best in broths or with thin sauces, while thicker rods like perciatelli go well with heavier, chunkier sauces.  Rods are best if they're served immediately after being cooked.  If you're planning to serve a lot of people, consider using small pasta tubes or shapes.  Angel hair pasta is like spaghetti, only the rods are very thin.  It's usually served in a broth or with very thin and delicate sauces.  Equivalents:   One pound dry = 1 ½ pounds fresh = 8 cups cooked substitutes:  CAPELLINI (similar, but just a bit thicker) OR VERMICELLI (thicker still) OR TAGLIOLINI (ribbons, not rods) OR SPAGHETTI (much thicker)  Find other pasta rods explained at http://www.foodsubs.com/PastaRods.html

Manhattan:  Fort Tryon Park  John D. Rockefeller, Jr. began acquiring private parcels in 1917 as part of his vision of developing a beautiful park with majestic views of the Hudson River and Palisades for the public.  He enlisted the Olmsted Brothers Firm, led by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., son of the architect of Central Park and his brother to develop a plan for the park in 1927.  The Olmsted Brothers designed the park and oversaw its construction between 1931 and 1935.  Rockefeller gifted the land to the City of New York in 1931, and construction began soon after, overseen by the Olmsted Brothers firm for Mr. Rockefeller.  In 1935, Rockefeller and Robert Moses dedicated the park to the public for use.  Decades after its creation, park goers can run or walk on the park's 8 miles of pathways, play on the lawns, and enjoy the city's largest garden with unrestricted public access, the Heather Garden.  Recently reinvigorated by public garden designers Lynden B. Miller and Ronda M. Brands, the garden boasts over 500 varieties of plants, trees and shrubs providing year round horticultural interest.  Fort Tryon Park is also home to the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that houses nearly 5,000 medieval works in a building comprised of several structures from Europe.  https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/fort-tryon-park

Manhattan:  The Octagon  Before it was rebuilt as a luxury high-rise, the Octagon was the New York City Lunatic Asylum from 1841 until 1894.  It was the subject of Nellie Bly's 1887 exposé that was published in the New York World and become her book "Ten Days in a Mad-House."  "The insane asylum on Blackwell's Island is a human rat-trap," Bly wrote.  "It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out."  Her stay at the women's wing of the asylum changed the way mental healthcare was looked at in America.  The building was abandoned from 1955 until 2000, when a private company bought the land and started construction on the luxury apartment building.  The only part of the original structure that still stands is the front entrance, which gives The Octagon its name.  Nicholas Parco  Read about the abandoned Renwick Smallpox Hospital and see pictures at http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/roosevelt-island-rich-frightening-history-article-1.2418027  Blackwell's Island is now called Roosevelt Island.  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox_Hospital

Mar-a-Lago is an estate and National Historic Landmark in Palm Beach, Florida, built from 1924 to 1927 by heiress and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post.  Post envisioned the house as a future winter retreat for American presidents and foreign dignitaries, and following her death in 1973 it was bequeathed to the nation.  However, successive presidents declined to use the mansion, which was returned to Post's estate in 1980 and in 1985 was purchased by Donald Trump, later 45th President of the United States.  The 126-room, 110,000-square-foot house contains the Mar-a-Lago Club, a members-only club with guest rooms, a spa, and other hotel-style amenities.  The Trump family maintains private quarters in a separate, closed-off area of the house and grounds.  Marjorie Merriweather Post built the house with her then-husband Edward F. Hutton.  Post hired Marion Sims Wyeth to design it, and Joseph Urban to create interior design and exterior decorations.  Mar-a-Lago was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1980.  After unsuccessfully trying to purchase and combine two apartments in Palm Beach for his family, Donald Trump learned about the estate and offered $15 million.  After the Post family rejected the offer, Trump threatened to block Mar-a-Lago's beach view, forcing the Post family to accept his last offer of less than $8 million in December 1985.  Trump renovated the estate, adding a 20,000-square-foot ballroom to the 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms, a 29-foot-long pietra dura marble top dining table, 12 fireplaces, and three bomb shelters.  On 18 January 2017, Trump officially named Mar-a-Lago his Winter White House.  The primary business occupying the estate is the Mar-a-Lago Club, which operates as resort and hotel for dues-paying members, and rents out estate venues for private events.  Membership at the Mar-a-Lago Club required a $200,000 initiation fee up until 2012 when it was lowered to $100,000.  The fee was returned to $200,000 in January 2017 following the election of Donald Trump as president  with $14,000 annual dues.  Overnight guests pay up to $2,000 a night.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar-a-Lago

Libraries Are For Everyone by Sabrina I. Pacifici on February 15, 2017 via GOOD – “Shortly after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, assistant library director Rebecca McCorkindale created a sign to let immigrants and longtime residents alike know “Libraries Are For Everyone.”  It was a simple message, but it quickly gained global momentum.  After publishing a blog post about the sign on February 2, McCorkindale checked her email the next day to find messages from librarians around the world wanting to use the image in their respective languages.  Some might consider it a bold move for a librarian to take a political stance during such polarizing times.  But McCorkindale sees it as a rather simple choice, telling PBS, “Libraries are the heart of a community, for anyone and everyone that lives there, regardless of their background.  And so we strongly believe that libraries are not neutral.  We stand up for human rights.”  http://www.bespacific.com/libraries-are-for-everyone/  See also via PBS – Why these librarians are protesting Trump’s executive orders

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1694  February 17, 2017  On this date in 1801, an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President of the United States and Burr, Vice President by the United States House of Representatives.  On this date in 1904, Madama Butterfly received its première at La Scala in Milan.  Thought for Today:  In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute. - Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) US Supreme Court Justice, FURMAN v. GEORGIA, (1972)  No. 69-5003  http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/408/238.html

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.  Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before emigrating to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison in New York City.  He soon struck out on his own with financial backers, setting up laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical devices.  His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla for a short time as a consultant.  His work in the formative years of electric-power development was involved in a corporate alternating current/direct current "War of Currents" as well as various patent battles.  He became a naturalized US citizen in 1891.  Tesla went on to pursue his ideas of wireless lighting and electricity distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs and made early (1893) pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices.  He tried to put these ideas to practical use in an ill-fated attempt at intercontinental wireless transmission, his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.  In his lab, he also conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging.  He also built a wireless-controlled boat, one of the first ever exhibited.  Tesla was renowned for his achievements and showmanship, eventually earning him a reputation in popular culture as an archetypal "mad scientist".  His patents earned him a considerable amount of money, much of which was used to finance his own projects with varying degrees of success.  He lived most of his life in a series of New York hotels.  His work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but in 1960, the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the SI unit of magnetic flux density the tesla in his honor.  There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s.  Read much more and see pictures at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Jack shows Meg his Tesla Coil  Clip from the film Coffee and Cigarettes by Jim Jarmusch  Jack and Meg White from the band The White Stripes  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL9bq3YmHJo  7:30  Be patient--dialogue does not start until 1:30.

ubiquitous  adjective  Present, appearing, or found everywhere.   Origin:  from modern Latin ubiquitas (from Latin ubique everywhere, from ubi where) + -ous.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ubiquitous

How can you cook the best pernil ever?  The number one rule is to do it the old fashioned way and don't change a thing.  Buy a pork 'shoulder picnic cut.'  If you don't find this particular piece then buy any large chunk of pork.  All it needs is lots of garlic (powder is ok), black pepper, oregano, and salt. Sprinkle the meat and bake . How easy is that?  Find specific instructions at http://www.elboricua.com/pernil.html

Manhattan:  Inwood  With its copious parkland, history and waterfront, Inwood offers residents a respite from the rest of the city.  Located on the northern tip of Manhattan, the neighborhood features a forest with glacial caves once used by Native Americans, at Inwood Hill Park on its western edge by the Hudson River.  Inwood’s physical landscape has remained mostly unchanged for decades due to zoning restrictions that limit buildings to seven stories.  The high-rise glass boxes popping up throughout the city are nowhere to be found in the neighborhood.  Read more and see pictures at http://www.amny.com/real-estate/city-living/manhattan/inwood-offers-beautiful-parks-plenty-of-history-in-manhattan-1.11951240

Manhattan:  Inwood Hill Park  Inwood Hill Park is a city-owned and maintained public park in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.  Situated on a high schist ridge that rises 200 feet above the Hudson River from Dyckman Street to the northern tip of the island, Inwood Hill Park's densely folded, glacially scoured topography contains the largest remaining forest land on Manhattan Island.  Unlike other Manhattan parks, Inwood Hill Park is largely natural, being non-landscaped.  Inwood Hill Park has a human history that goes back to the Pre-Columbian era.  Through the 17th century, Native Americans known as the Lenape inhabited the area.  There is evidence of a main encampment along the eastern edge of the park.  The Lenape relied on both the Hudson and Harlem Rivers as sources for food.  Artifacts and the remains of old campfires were found in Inwood's rock shelters, suggesting their use for shelter and temporary living quarters.  Legend has it that under a tulip tree in the park Peter Minuit, Director General of New Netherland, 'purchased' Manhattan from the a band of Native Americans in 1626 for the Dutch West India Company; the purchase price being a shipment of goods worth 60 guilders.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inwood_Hill_Park

posology  noun  (pharmacy)  1.  The study of the dosages of drugs, especially the determination of appropriate dosages.  2.  (mathematics, historical, rare)  In the works of English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832):  the study of quantity; mathematics.  Wiktionary

Bruce Springsteen admitted in a BBC Radio 2 interview in October 2016 that he wrote a ballad for the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone--the first movie in the Potter series- although it was never used.  On February 10, 2017, at least briefly, the world got a chance to hear that ballad.  The soft and slow “I’ll Stand By You Always” was recorded in 2001 and appeared on SoundCloud for a few hours, but has since been removed.  The song doesn’t have any direct references to Harry Potter, although it includes sincere lyrics like, “We'll let the night come and do what it may, together we'll find the courage, we'll find faith/ Until you awake.”  The first three Harry Potter used scores from composer John Williams, while subsequent films were composed by Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper and Alexandre Desplat.  Springsteen said in the BBC interview that it was "very uncharacteristic of something I'd sing myself."  He added that he still hopes to get it into a children’s movie someday.  Jillian Frankel  http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/7686171/bruce-springsteen-unreleased-harry-potter-song

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1693  February 15, 2017  On this date in 1764, the city of St. Louis was established in Spanish Louisiana (now Missouri).  On this date in 1867, the premiere of the Waltz For Choir at Vienna’s Dianabadsaal (Diana Bath Hall) took place.  Johann Strauss recalled a poem by Karl Isidor Beck (1817-79).  Each stanza ends with the line: ‘By the Danube, beautiful blue Danube’.  It gave him the inspiration and the title for his new work--although the Danube could never be described as blue and, at the time the waltz was written, it did not flow through Vienna.  When, later that year, Strauss introduced the waltz in its orchestral garb to Paris at the World Exhibition, it created a sensation. 

http://www.classicfm.com/composers/strauss-ii/guides/story-behind-blue-danube/

Vinland, the land of wild grapes in North America that was visited and named by Leif Eriksson about the year 1000 CE.  Its exact location is not known, but it was probably the area surrounding the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in what is now eastern Canada.  The most detailed information about Viking visits to Vinland is contained in two Norse sagas, Grænlendinga saga (“Saga of the Greenlanders”) and Eiríks saga rauða (“Erik the Red’s Saga”).  These two accounts differ somewhat.  According to the Grænlendinga saga, Bjarni Herjólfsson became the first European to sight mainland North America when his Greenland-bound ship was blown westward off course about 985.  He apparently sailed along the Atlantic coastline of eastern Canada and from there returned to Greenland.  About 1000 a crew of 35 men led by Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red, set out to try to find the land sighted by Bjarni. Leif’s expedition came first to an icy barren land that he called Helluland (“Land of Flat Rocks”); sailing southward, they encountered a flat wooded land, which Leif named Markland (“Land of Forests”).  Again they set sail southward and came to the warmer, more-hospitable area where they decided to stay and build a base, Leifsbúðir (“Leif’s Camp”).  Exploring from there, they found fine lumber and wild grapes, which led them to name the land Vinland (“Land of Wine”).  Birgitta Wallace  https://www.britannica.com/place/Vinland

Kamut is a type of specialty grain derived from an ancient Egyptian variety of wheat.  Consisting of large kernels that can be ground into flour, processed into flakes or cooked in the same manner as rice or barley, kamut can be substituted for wheat flour in baked goods or added to soups, pilafs or stews.  It is low in fat, cholesterol-free and higher in protein than wheat, with a 1-cup serving of cooked kamut providing 22 percent of the recommended daily allowance of protein for the average adult.  Kamut is also rich in nutrients that are essential for good health, including dietary fiber, manganese, magnesium and niacin.  http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/benefits-kamut-7394.html

KOA TREE  Common Names:  Koa, Hawaiian Koa  Scientific Name:  Acacia Koa  Color/Appearance:  Color can be highly variable, but tends to be medium golden or reddish brown, similar to Mahogany.  There are usually contrasting bands of color in the growth rings, and it is not uncommon to see boards with ribbon-like streaks of color.  Common Uses:  Veneer, furniture, cabinetry, musical instruments (especially guitars and ukuleles), canoes, gunstocks, carvings, bowls, and other turned/specialty wood objects.  Comments:  Although Koa is naturally quite abundant on the islands of Hawaii, most Koa forests have been cleared for grazing pastures; and since young Koa seedlings are edible for grazing animals, most new trees are prevented from growing to lumber-harvestable size.  As a result, mature Koa trees are either scarce, or in hard-to-access mountainous locations, and the price of Koa is likely to only increase further in the future.  Visually, Koa has been compared to Mahogany, while in terms of working and mechanical properties, it has been compared to Walnut.  Because of its nearly equal tangential and radial shrinkage, (its T/R Ratio is only 1.1), Koa tends to be quite stable regarding environmental changes in humidity.  Link to wood articles at http://www.wood-database.com/koa/

Michael Kidd (1915–2007) was an American film and stage choreographer, dancer and actor, whose career spanned five decades, and staged some of the leading Broadway and film musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.  Kidd, who was strongly influenced by Charlie Chaplin and Léonide Massine, was an innovator in what came to be known as the "integrated musical", in which dance movements are integral to the plot.  He was probably best known for his athletic dance numbers in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, a 1954 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical, and for choreographing Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in the "Girl Hunt Ballet" and "Dancing in the Dark" numbers in the 1953 musical film The Band Wagon.  Film critic Stephanie Zacharek called the barn-raising sequence in Seven Brides "one of the most rousing dance numbers ever put on screen".  He was the first choreographer to win five Tony Awards, and was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 1996 for advancing dance in film.  Kidd was born Milton Greenwald in New York City on the Lower East Side, the son of Abraham Greenwald, a barber, and his wife Lillian, who were Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia.  He moved to Brooklyn with his family and attended New Utrecht High School.  He became interested in dance after attending a modern dance performance, and went on to study under Blanche Evan, a dancer and choreographer.  He studied chemical engineering at the City College of New York, in 1936 and 1937, but left after being granted a scholarship to the School of American Ballet.  He toured the country as a member of the corps de ballet of Lincoln Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan, and performed in roles that included the lead in Billy the Kid, choreographed by Eugene Loring, which featured an orchestral arrangement by Aaron Copland.  He adopted the name "Michael Kidd" in 1942.  At the time he was performing with Ballet Caravan and all the dancers were urged to adopt "American" names.  He chose Kidd because it was short, easy to remember, and evocative of the pirate, Captain Kidd.  In 1941, Kidd became a soloist and assistant to Loring in his Dance Players.  He moved on to become a soloist for Ballet Theater, later known as the American Ballet Theater.  His performances there included Fancy Free (1944) choreographed by Jerome Robbins and with music by Leonard Bernstein, in which he played one of the three sailors.  While at the ABT, he created his own ballet, On Stage! (1945).  Although the play and his performance were well received, and the New York Times observed that Kidd was "hailed as one of the great hopes of postwar American ballet," he left Loring's company for Broadway in 1947 and never again worked in ballet.  Read more and see film and Broadway credits at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kidd

Barn Raising Dance (7 Brides for 7 Brothers) - MGM Studio Orchestra (HD)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TygmMPbwfjA  6:33 

Michael Kidd on "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd2pGMgrAkM  4:51

The source material for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was Stephen Vincent Benet's short story The Sobbin' Women originally published in the November 1938 issue of Argosy.  The Sobbin' Women was itself a parody of an ancient Greek story as taken from Plutarch's Life of Romulus about the Sabine Women, who were abducted by Roman soldiers to be their brides.  Benet's story updated the setting to the Oregon frontier of the 1850s and substituted the Roman men with seven rural brothers.  Bringing the tale of The Sobbin' Women to the big screen had long been producer Jack Cummings' pet project. Cummings, the nephew of Louis B. Mayer, had produced several successful musicals for MGM including Easy to Wed (1946) and Kiss Me Kate (1953).  Famed Broadway director Joshua Logan had already optioned the rights to Benet's story, however, with the intention of turning it into a stage musical.  After five years passed and Logan had not made progress with The Sobbin' Women, his option was up and MGM quickly snapped up the rights to the story on Cummings' behalf for $40,000.  Cummings immediately began to assemble a top rate team to work on the film version of The Sobbin' Women. He brought the husband and wife writing team of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich along with Dorothy Kingsley to adapt the story into a workable screenplay.  He then asked Stanley Donen to direct.  MGM didn't want to spend any money for original songs to use in The Sobbin' Women.  The studio management thought the film could use already existing American folk songs for musical numbers.  Stanley Donen fought hard to get an original musical score and new songs for the film, which MGM finally conceded.  Johnny Mercer was brought on board to write song lyrics.  At first composer Harold Arlen was to collaborate with Mercer on the music, but Mercer rejected working with Arlen.  "He's too picky about the words that go with his music," he explained.  Eventually Mercer partnered successfully with Gene de Paul, and together they came up with several new inspired songs for the film including "Bless Your Beautiful Hide," "June Bride," and "Sobbin' Women."  Showing on TCM Thursday February 23, 2017 at 8:00 p.m., Sunday March 12, 2017 at 4:00 p.m., and Thursday April 13, 2017 at 4:00 p.m.   http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/191150%7C0/The-Big-Idea-Seven-Brides-for-Seven-Brothers.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1692  February 13, 2017  On this date in1741, Andrew Bradford published the first issue of the American Magazine, the first magazine to be published in America.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bradford  On this date in 1867, work began on the covering of the Senne, burying Brussels's primary river and creating the modern central boulevards.  On this date in 1914, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers was established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.

Hope is a Symbolist oil painting by the English painter George Frederic Watts, the first two versions of which were completed in 1886.  Radically different from previous treatments of the subject, it shows a lone blindfolded female figure sitting on a globe, playing a lyre which has only a single string remaining.  The background is almost blank, its only visible feature a single star.  Watts intentionally used symbolism not traditionally associated with hope to make the painting's meaning ambiguous.  Hope proved popular with the Aesthetic Movement, who considered beauty the primary purpose of art and were unconcerned by the ambiguity of its message.  Reproductions in platinotype, and later cheap carbon prints, soon began to be sold.  Although Watts received many offers to buy the painting, he had agreed to donate his most important works to the nation and felt it would be inappropriate not to include Hope.  Consequently, later in 1886 Watts and his assistant Cecil Schott painted a second version.  On its completion Watts sold the original and donated the copy to the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum); thus, this second version is better known than the original.  He painted at least two further versions for private sale.  As cheap reproductions of Hope, and from 1908 high-quality prints, began to circulate in large quantities, it became a widely popular image.  President Theodore Roosevelt displayed a copy at his Sagamore Hill home in New York; reproductions circulated worldwide; and a 1922 film depicted Watts's creation of the painting and an imagined story behind it.  By this time Hope was coming to seem outdated and sentimental, and Watts was rapidly falling out of fashion.  Despite the decline in Watts's popularity, Hope remained influential.  Martin Luther King Jr. based a 1959 sermon, now known as Shattered Dreams, on the theme of the painting, as did Jeremiah Wright in Chicago in 1990.  Among the congregation for the latter was the young Barack Obama, who was deeply moved. Obama took "The Audacity of Hope" as the theme of his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote address, and as the title of his 2006 book; he based his successful 2008 presidential campaign around the theme of "Hope".  Read much more and see graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_(painting)

Sounds of Kenya from Kenna Lehmann  The hyrax looks like an adorable fluffy, over-sized rodent.  Looking at it, one might guess that it is the African equivalent of a guinea pig or a small-eared rabbit.  A little bit of research reveals that the hyrax is not a rodent but is, in fact, the closest living relative to elephants and manatees.  Ages ago, the ancestors of our sleep-disturbing hyrax were the dominant grazers in Africa.  They were much, much larger and they were all over the grasslands.  Then the antelopes, impala, and wildebeest came along and won the competition for the grasslands by being more efficient grazers.  To cope, the hyrax became smaller and took to the trees, bushes, and rocks.  There are currently three species of tree hyrax, three species of bush hyrax and five species of rock hyrax.  Their calls can range anywhere from “The loudest, largest, longest bullfrog croak the earth has ever heard,” past “Is that really a dragon screeching outside my window,” to “Someone is torture-murdering a baby out there.”  It’s hard to know which version is worse.  I fully expect you to now be thinking, “Surely, you must be exaggerating, Kenna.  You’re jet-lagged and lonely in the cottage.”  This is exactly why I recorded the little monsters.  See how long you can listen to this auditory torture at http://msuhyenas.blogspot.com/2014/06/sounds-of-kenya-sweet-soothing-serenade.html

Ford Reiche bought Halfway Rock Lighthouse, halfway between Cape Elizabeth and Cape Small, on a two-acre ledge 10 miles out to sea at government auction in 2014.  Halfway Rock Lighthouse was abandoned by the Coast Guard in 1975.  No preservation group or agency had the resources to take over, and it was put up for auction.  Reiche paid $283,000, the highest price ever paid for a Maine lighthouse.  Reiche, who ran a successful rail-to-truck transfer business in Auburn and is active in historic preservation, bought Halfway Rock Lighthouse to restore a maritime landmark once listed as one of Maine’s 10 most endangered historic properties.  Halfway Rock is what’s known as a wave-swept lighthouse.  The ledge is frequently submerged.  A surging sea constantly nips at the perimeter from all directions.  In violent storms, monster waves 60 feet high can pummel the rock.  To safely make the 10-mile transit from his marina in Freeport, Reiche purchased a 25-foot Safe Boats International Defender-class vessel at a Coast Guard auction.  With its reinforced aluminum hull and enclosed pilothouse, the military-grade responder boat can cruise at more than 40 mph and slice through scary seas.  Even so, sometimes Reiche and a work crew arrive at the rock to find that it’s just too dangerous to get from the mooring onto the landing ramp in a 10-foot inflatable.  Halfway Rock Lighthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Reiche is restoring the keepers quarters inside the tower and the attached wooden boathouse, galley and bedrooms to what they looked like in the 1950s.  He has pulled the walls back to their Douglas fir paneling, creating a cozy kitchen and eating area, made weather-tight with new windows and warmed by a Queen Atlantic wood range.  The materials and construction techniques used to achieve this period of interpretation, as it’s called, are scrutinized by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.  Tux Turkel  Read more at http://www.pressherald.com/2016/07/10/cumberland-man-works-to-restore-his-own-private-lighthouse/

They look a little like crop circles and a little like artistic earthworks.  Around the world, they have many names:  in the Namib Desert of Africa, they're called "fairy circles;" in Brazil they're dubbed "murundus," and in North America they're known as "Mima mounds."  In a recent paper for Nature titled "A theoretical foundation for multi-scale regular vegetation patterns," Princeton ecologist Corina E. Tarnita and her colleagues call them "landscapes of overdispersed (evenly spaced) elements."  All are regions where plants grow into such perfectly symmetrical, large-scale patterns that they seem unnatural.  Debates rage among ecologists about whether these patterned environments have a common cause and what it might be.  Two of the leading hypotheses involve plant cooperation and insect rivalries.  In areas where water resources are scarce or irregular, plants are known to engage in "scale-dependent feedbacks," where plants over a wide area grow into clusters rather than spreading out over a big area.  The plant clumps limit their sizes to make the best use of water, and this strategy leads to reproductive success.  It also might explain why we see patterns of plant growth that are characteristic of fairy circles and Mima mounds.  But some scientists who have studied the pattern say that more is going on.  They argue that water resources in these areas are being divvied up by warring groups of termites who suctioned water out of the dry areas and relocated it to their mounds.  Given that successful termite colonies tend to have territory sizes that are roughly comparable, this would explain why so many of these odd regions contain mounds as well as dry patches.  Tarnita and her colleagues' paper in Nature suggests that we're probably seeing an unusual interaction between plants and termites, both attempting to maintain access to water in dry areas.  Using a computer model that accounted for both plant and insect life cycles, the researchers were able to reproduce the exact patterns we see in fairy circles.  Annalee Newitz    Read more and see pictures at http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/all-over-the-globe-plants-are-growing-into-strange-circular-patterns/

NAME CHANGES  Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper 1901)  Sigourney Weaver (born Susan Alexandra Weaver 1949)  John Legend  (born John Roger Stephens 1978)  Dorothy Lamour  (born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton 1914)   Robert Indiana (born Robert Clark 1928)  Billy the Kid, The Kid, William H. Bonney (born William Henry McCarty Jr. 1859)

Merle Rubin reviews the novel, Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry   William Bonney (1859-81), popularly known as Billy the Kid, was a cattle thief who managed to kill 21 people before being killed himself at age 22.  Billy has been the subject of dime-store novels, serious literary works, and even a ballet by Aaron Copland, the American composer.  But Billy may well have found his ablest expositor in Larry McMurtry, who, far from lengthening a tale tall or glamorizing an unattractive character, has coolly taken his measure.  http://www.csmonitor.com/1988/1227/dbkid.html

The Kid was a celebrity in his own time, but his legend only grew after his death.  Beginning with the 1911 silent film “Billy the Kid,” the gun-toting outlaw’s story has appeared on the big screen more than 50 times.  http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-billy-the-kid

QUOTES from Anything for Billy, a novel by Larry McMurtry   "I suppose we all—even nuns—dream of a life other than the one we actually live on this indifferent earth."  "Billy's death was simple, and yet even the simplest events grow mossy with the passage of years.  If the students accepted the simple view of events in past times, how would their stiff brains ever get any exercise?"

Top 10 U.S. Locations With the Most Snow Days Per Year by Jonathan Belles  https://weather.com/news/weather/news/cities-most-snow-days

A small Oklahoma town is echoing the story line of '80s movie "Footloose" by canceling a Valentine's Day dance because of an arcane city ordinance enforcing a strict moral code.  KTUL-TV reports (http://bit.ly/2logzET ) that the organizer canceled the dance in Henryetta because it would have taken place 300 feet from a church, in violation of an ordinance that forbids dancing within 500 feet of a place of worship.  Mayor Jennifer Clason, who was born in Henryetta, says she always knew about the old city ordinance but that it has never been enforced.  Police Chief Steve Norman says his department has no interest in doing so.  Clason says city councilors will consider abolishing the ordinance during their Feb. 22, 2017 meeting.  http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/oklahoma-town-cancels-dance-because-of-old-city-ordinance/article_3ca1236c-1632-5602-932d-ddf68f0588bc.html

                                                                                                     

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1691  February 10, 2017  On this date in 1840, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.  On this day in 1942, the first gold record was presented to Glenn Miller for "Chattanooga Choo Choo".