The James Logan Courier

MISCELLANEOUS

Looking for a place to do school work? Need help? There’s a place from 9 to 12 this Saturday, December 10th. Room 77. Please enter by the carpeted hall near the library.

For new volunteer opportunities for December. Check listings on Logan website, or pick up a flyer in the Career Center.

Tropics Senior Mobile Home Park needs 8 volunteers to help with their monthly breakfast on December 10th. For more information, check Logan’s website or pick up a flyer in the Career Center.

By Howard Cohen, McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

"Like smoke, I stick around," Winehouse rasps on a tune of the same name on her first posthumous release since her death in July at age 27.

As a pop culture figure, Winehouse will stick around in people's imaginations for some time. She was a formidable talent and left a huge impression. "Lioness: Hidden Treasures," a collection of odds-'n'-ends recorded from 2002 through this year's duet of "Body and Soul" with Tony Bennett for his standards album, "Duets II" (and repeated here) doesn't make a strong case that she would have outdone her classic 2006 breakthrough "Back to Black."

From wikipedia:
Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South. Whitney's invention made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery in the United States (regardless of whether Whitney intended that or not). Despite the social and economic impact of his invention, Whitney lost many profits in legal battles over patent infringement for the cotton gin. Thereafter, he turned his attention into securing contracts with the government in the manufacture of muskets for the newly formed continental army. He continued making arms and inventing until his death in 1825.

Read a letter from Thomas Jefferson (as Secretary of State) to Eli Whitney, Jr. regarding his patent application for the cotton gin, free from teachingushistory.org.

Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) is among the most eminent American authors. She is known for her depictions of US life in novels like O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Cather was born in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, but her family relocated to Nebraska in 1883 and she spent the rest of her childhood in Red Cloud, Nebraska. She insisted on attending college, so her family borrowed money so she could enroll at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While there, she became a regular contributor to the Nebraska State Journal.

Read One of Ours, Cather's Nobel Prize-winning book, free from Project Gutenberg.