Happy birthday, Orange Branch

It is impos­si­ble to believe, but the Delaware County Dis­trict Library’s Orange Branch cel­e­brated its first birth­day on May 15. We passed that mile­stone with lit­tle fan­fare — sim­ply a “Happy Birth­day Orange Branch” sign in the lobby — but as with all days at the Orange Branch, May 15 was a bustling day for staff and customers.

Since May 2011, more than 175,000 peo­ple have walked through the Orange Branch doors to attend pro­grams, to check out books, DVDs and audio books or to sim­ply enjoy the ambi­ence of this gra­cious and lovely facil­ity. As of this writ­ing, you have checked out 363,815 items from the Orange Branch, and the staff has signed up 10,176 new library cardholders.

Staff have pre­sented pro­grams for chil­dren, teens and adults nearly every week of the past 52, with sev­eral pro­grams offered each week to thou­sands of atten­dees. The com­mu­nity meet­ing room enjoys healthy use from dozens of com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions, and the quiet study rooms almost never go unoccupied.

Thank you, Delaware County, for embrac­ing the library’s newest branch, and for sup­port­ing the levy in 2009 that made its con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion pos­si­ble. We con­tinue to be grate­ful to our com­mu­nity for its unflag­ging patron­age. We take your con­fi­dence very seri­ously, as we con­tinue to be good stew­ards of the funds with which you have entrusted us.

So, happy birth­day, Orange Branch — here’s to many, many more.

As a reminder: The library will be closed on Mon­day for Memo­r­ial Day, but delawarelibrary.org is always open. See you at the parade.

How much does a Super Bowl ring cost and who pays for it?

The NFL cov­ers the cost for up to 150 Super Bowl rings at $5,000 per ring; teams pick up any addi­tional costs. Jostens has worked with team offi­cials to design the major­ity of the Super Bowl rings. While dia­monds remain the most pop­u­lar gem, emer­alds, aqua­marines, rubies and sap­phires have also been used. Rings typ­i­cally fea­ture the Lom­bardi tro­phy and are often engraved with the final score in addi­tion to the player’s name. This infor­ma­tion was found in the Offi­cial NFL Record and Fact Book.

What did Grover Cleve­land do between his terms as president?

Accord­ing to The Com­plete Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents Source Book, Grover Cleve­land was both the 22nd and 24th pres­i­dent of the United States. He was first elected in 1884, and then in 1888, Cleve­land lost re-election to Ben­jamin Har­ri­son. By all accounts, Cleve­land really thought he was done with gov­ern­ment after that. He and his wife moved back to New York City, liv­ing in a hotel while search­ing for the per­fect house and the ex-president con­sid­ered var­i­ous lucra­tive job offers in the pri­vate sec­tor, even­tu­ally accept­ing a posi­tion with a pres­ti­gious law firm that is still around today. Cleve­land was re-elected to the pres­i­dency in 1892, defeat­ing Ben­jamin Harrison.

Where did the expres­sion, “Steal my thun­der” originate?

While we use the term fig­u­ra­tively today, its orig­i­nal usage — by Eng­lish play­wright John Den­nis in the early 1700s — was lit­eral. Live the­ater pro­duc­tions have sound effect tricks, and some of them are cen­turies old. For the per­for­mance of his play Appius and Vir­ginia at a Lon­don the­ater, Den­nis came up with a new thun­der effect, a refined ver­sion of the “mus­tard bowl” that used metal balls in a bowl instead of lead. The play was not well received, but the thun­der was, and after Appius and Vir­ginia was can­celled, the the­ater man­ager con­tin­ued to use Den­nis’ thunder-making method for a pro­duc­tion of Mac­beth. Report­edly, Den­nis was in the audi­ence one night and rec­og­nized the dis­tinct sound of his thun­der effect. Accord­ing to leg­end, he leapt from his seat and shouted, “That’s my thun­der, by God! The vil­lains will not play my play but they steal my thun­der.” Facts on File Ency­clo­pe­dia of Word and Phrase Ori­gins offers some other vari­a­tions on the ori­gin of this phrase, but sub­stan­tially this expla­na­tion is gen­er­ally accepted.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delawarelibrary.org. No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked.

Posted by Mary Santos on May 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.