Niles District Library "Friends of the Library" Book Sale April 14, 2011

The Niles, Michigan LIBRARY hosted a "Friends" event in its basement book sale area today:  $200 was the profit for the more than 2,000 books sold to many, many customers.  This is in coordination with the annual National Library Week activities.  For information about the Niles group go to:

http://www.nileslibrary.com/

A network news blog terms the weekend "showdown" the NEW NORMAL

from the NOTE (ABCNews dot-com list serv blog) by Michael Falcone and Amy Walter =

The House and Senate passed temporary resolutions to keep the government funded after midnight last night when it was scheduled to run out. A full agreement will need to be drafted and passed by Congress next week. The short-term "bridge," as House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, described it last night, includes the first $2 billion in cuts.

"I would expect the final vote on this to occur mid-next week," Boehner said. "This has been a long discussion and a long fight, but we fought to keep government spending down because it really will, in fact, help create a better environment for job creators in our country."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a speech on the Senate floor last night, "This is historic, what we've done."
BOTTOM LINE: It was messy. It was unnecessarily dramatic. But, it ended without monuments being shuttered or troops waiting for a paycheck. And, in the end, everyone gets to claim victory. Democrats get to say that they cut spending while also protecting women's reproductive rights. Republicans can crow that they forced President Obama and Sen. Harry Reid to make deeper cuts than Democrats wanted to make.
Welcome to the "new normal" of bipartisanship.

Government shutdown averted (11 p.m. before Midnight deadline) -- Wash. Post summation

from Paul Kane and other contributors main story (www.washingtonpost.com/ )

With an agreement, Congress seemed to have resolved a battle that had been brewing since last fall’s elections. As the shutdown ticked closer, it had transfixed and partially paralyzed a vast federal bureaucracy.

If the government had closed, it would have meant closures at national parks and federal agencies, a halt to trash pickup in the District, and furloughs for more than 800,000 governments workers. Just preparing for that had slowed federal business to a crawl in the last week.
Now, officials said, museums should re-open in the morning, and government workers should come to work as scheduled. Washington should continue as if nothing happened.
This budget fight involved just a tiny fraction of the $1 trillion-plus that Congress doles out every year. But the timing was more important than the numbers. This was the first battle since Republicans took the House of Representatives, promising to pare back government spending and deficits. So Republicans — led by Boehner, in his first intense engagement as a leader — were determined to stand their ground in their first fight.
Democrats, on the other hand, still hold the Senate and the White House. In the Senate, Democratic leaders were determined not to be outmaneuvered by Republicans. And in the White House, President Obama seemed interested in cementing his role as a calm mediator, a CEO.
And none of them wanted to be the first to blink. That might have set a damaging precedent for future fights with higher stakes, over the decision to raise the national debt limit, and to pass a 2012 budget.
Their brinksmanship lasted even into Friday, the last day before a shutdown that would likely have damaged both parties’ political fortunes.
Democrats used the day to repeatedly bash the other side for refusing to budge on an issue tied to abortion.
“The House leadership, with the speaker, have a very clear choice to make, and they don’t have much time to make that choice,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said in an afternoon news conference. “They can keep their word and significantly cut the federal deficit, or they can shut down the American government over women’s access to health care. If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is ridiculous.”
On the Republican side, Boehner emerged repeatedly to reiterate the same message: there was no deal yet.  “Most of the policy issues have been dealt with,” Boehner said Friday afternoon. “The big fight is over the spending.”

Space Shuttle Endeavour -- delayed take-off and Space Station rendezvous

from NASA mission update --

NASA Retargets Space Shuttle Endeavour's Launch for April 29


Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:08:41 AM EDT





Following discussions among the International Space Station partners on Sunday, NASA has targeted the launch of space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission for 3:47 p.m. EDT on Friday, April 29. The delay removes a scheduling conflict with a Russian Progress supply vehicle scheduled to launch April 27 and arrive at the station April 29.
NASA managers will hold a Flight Readiness Review on Tuesday, April 19, to assess the team's readiness to support launch. An official launch date will be selected at the conclusion of the meeting.
Only minor damage to space shuttle Endeavour's external fuel tank foam was identified during detailed inspections Saturday by technicians and engineers on Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Evaluations indicate there was no damage to the spacecraft. Teams were assessing any possible damage from severe storms that hit Kennedy on Wednesday and Thursday. ‪
Today, workers at the pad will continue closeouts in Endeavour's aft section and will load hydrazine into the shuttle's hydraulic power unit.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/rss_feed_above_snip_collection_archive_1.html

On this date in 1789 - invaluable member of Lewis & Clark Expedition that opened the American West

from Writer's Almanac (Garrison Keillor) - Today (April 6) is the birthday of the Shoshone woman Sacajawea, born in Idaho (sometime around 1789). She was kidnapped at age 10 by the Hidatsa tribe, sold into slavery, and bought by a French-Canadian trapper who made her one of his two wives. When Lewis and Clark hired the trapper to guide them to the Pacific, Sacajawea -- a teenager with her two-month-old baby on her back -- was part of the package. She was the only woman to accompany the permanent party to the Pacific Ocean and back.


Officially she acted as interpreter, since she could speak half a dozen Indian languages. But she also knew which plants were edible, and she saved the explorers' records when their boat overturned. In his notes, William Clark pointed out that tribes were inclined to believe that their party was friendly when they saw Sacajawea because a war party would never travel with a woman, especially one with a baby.

When the trip was over, Sacajawea received nothing. Her trapper husband got $500.33 and 320 acres of land. She died on December 22, 1812, of a 'putrid fever,' according to Clark's records. She was 23. Eight months later, Clark legally adopted her two children -- the boy who had been a baby on the expedition, Jean Baptiste, and an infant daughter, Lisette.

Blog entry from Blue II (Butler University mascot) -- Butler dot-edu

INTERVIEWER: please describe your experience at the NCAA Final Four (April 2010). Were you at all nervous about being surrounded by 70,000 screaming fans?

BB2: My experience at the NCAA Final Four was incredible. That’s the best way that I can explain. There really are not words that exist that allow me to really describe the magnitude of that experience. It made me the most popular dog in America and it made Butler a household name. While Coach Stevens and the men’s basketball team were the focus of the Final Four, I like to think I played the role of best supporting actor. It was the best experience of my life so far and I certainly hope to do it again someday.


I wasn’t nervous to be in front of 70,000 fans. I think that was evident to anyone that was there or whom was watching at home. I live for this sort of thing after all. However, I will say that I did feed of the energy that was in Lucas Oil Stadium during those two games. There was so much positive directed toward Butler…the kind that makes your hair (or fur) stand up on end. I felt it as soon as we would enter the stadium each day…it swelled my broad chest with pride, perched my ears forward, heightened my tail-end, and gave me a strut that would make George Jefferson blush.


I will say that tend to carry and internalize the collective hopes and energy of the Butler nation. That may sound weird, but I’m a perceptive dog and I know what’s up. I knew what was at stake in Lucas Oil Stadium and I also knew what it meant when my pal Gordon Hayward’s shot didn’t go in at the buzzer. I, like the Butler faithful, was crushed. My dad tried to get a rise out of me moments after the championship game. Usually I’m the one doing the consoling, but this time I could sense the pain, anguish, sorrow and disappointment that saturated the heart. I was stone cold. I wanted that championship. I wanted to be top dawg. After sleeping that night I awoke that Tuesday morning still wishing that the outcome would have been different. I continued to contemplate on it. I even went to the pep rally at Hinkle Fieldhouse later that day. By the time I went to sleep that evening, I realized that I was top dawg after all. The score didn’t matter, Butler has already proved its worth. I’d still like to have that trophy, don’t get me wrong, but I think we may have taken home so much more. There’s never been a better time to be a Butler Bulldog, let alone THE Butler Bulldog.

http://go.butler.edu/blogs/blue2/

Today is the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen (b. 1806)!

Today (April 2) is the birthday of Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen (books by this author), born in 1805 in the town of Odense. He went to work at a young age, supporting himself first as a weaver's apprentice, then a tailor's. At 14, he moved to Copenhagen, hoping to become an actor, and began writing when a theater colleague called him a poet. He published his first story, The Ghost at Palnatoke's Grave, in 1822. He eventually went to college, but he was a mediocre student.


He considered himself a novelist and playwright, and he wrote travelogues, beginning with the conventional framework of description and documentary account but building something unique with his inclusion of musings on larger themes like the role of the author and the nature of fiction. But it's for his three collections of fairy tales that he is best known. Since he never mastered writing in the formal Danish style in school, he wrote in the everyday language of the common Danish people, and he refused to talk down to children or shelter them from the dark and scary. Later translators cut out some of the scarier parts and gave the tales happy endings, and so we often think of them as lighthearted and innocent, but that was not really the case. His fairy tales inspired Charles Dickens, who became his friend, and also Oscar Wilde.

His personal life was a succession of unrequited longings for women, including the singer Jenny Lind, and occasionally men. He never married, but was well aware of how beloved he was by the world's children. Not long before his death, he was conferring with the composer of his funeral march, and told him, 'Most of the people who walk after me will be children, so make the beat keep time with little steps.'

In Andersen's honor, his birthday was declared International Children's Book Day, a day to promote children's literature and foster a love of reading in the world's youth.

from Writer's Almanac (Garrison Keillor posted "calendar" of author/literature/cultural influence anniversaries)