Library looks to preserve local history by supporting Delaware authors

Sev­eral months ago and with input from many com­mu­nity mem­bers, the Delaware County Dis­trict Library began the devel­op­ment of a revised strate­gic plan. One of the result­ing direc­tives of the plan was to help the com­mu­nity learn about itself and its dif­fer­ence facets.

In work­ing to ful­fill this goal, Adult Ser­vices Man­ager Joe O’Rourke was delighted to dis­cover that dozens of authors reside in Delaware County, and what bet­ter way to intro­duce a com­mu­nity to itself than by learn­ing what its home­town authors have to say.

Local author Toni Leland, a free­lance writer, pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher and nov­el­ist, will present “Ani­mals in Fic­tion,” a dis­cus­sion of the var­i­ous ways fic­tion writ­ers incor­po­rate ani­mals into their sto­ries at 4 p.m. Fri­day at the Delaware Main Library. Leland’s back­ground is in horses, and most of her six pub­lished mys­tery, sus­pense and romance nov­els fea­ture horses. She has a new book called Dou­ble Expo­sure, a mys­tery par­tially set in Delaware County, that was released this month.

At 12:30 p.m. Oct. 28, Delaware res­i­dent Ron Gabriel will dis­cuss and sign his book, Sonny, an enter­tain­ing and amus­ing record­ing of how the world once was in Delaware — before the Inter­net and cell­phones. Ron’s pro­gram will be held in the mez­za­nine at the Delaware Main Library.

If you’re inter­ested in explor­ing the art of writ­ing your­self, plan to join us at 7 p.m. Tues­day at the Orange Branch Library for the “Adult Writ­ers Workshop.”

Pre­serv­ing our local his­tory is a role that the Delaware County Dis­trict Library takes seri­ously, and being able to give local authors an oppor­tu­nity to talk about their books while also encour­ag­ing aspir­ing authors is fun, enlight­en­ing and excit­ing for us — and I hope for you as well.

Is cel­ery really a neg­a­tive calo­rie food?

Some of the energy in every piece of food you eat is con­sid­ered a wash because an equal amount of energy is expended to eat and digest it. But the ther­mic effect of food-diet-induced ther­mo­ge­n­e­sis usu­ally only accounts for around 10 per­cent of your caloric intake. Cel­ery is one of the most touted negative-calorie foods because much of its caloric con­tent is bound up in cel­lu­lose, a fiber that humans can­not digest. The amount of energy we can extract from cel­ery is neg­li­gi­ble, but it only takes a lit­tle more than one half of a calorie’s worth of energy to digest a piece, accord­ing to Of Food and Cook­ing. The bot­tom line is that any kind negative-calorie snack­ing, cel­ery or oth­er­wise, is purely wish­ful thinking.

What is the Fibonacci sequence?

The Fibonacci sequence is named after Leonardo of Pisa, who was known as Fibonacci. Fibonacci’s 1202 book Liber Abaci intro­duced the sequence to West­ern Euro­pean math­e­mat­ics, although the sequence had been described ear­lier in Indian math­e­mat­ics. They are inti­mately con­nected with the golden ratio, and the clos­est ratio­nal approx­i­ma­tions to the ratio are 2/1, 3/2, 5/3, 8/5, … . Appli­ca­tions include com­puter algo­rithms such as the Fibonacci search tech­nique and the Fibonacci heap data struc­ture, and graphs called Fibonacci cubes used for inter­con­nect­ing par­al­lel and dis­trib­uted sys­tems. They also appear in bio­log­i­cal set­tings, such as branch­ing in trees, phyl­lotaxis (the arrange­ment of leaves on a stem), the fruit spouts of a pineap­ple, the flow­er­ing of arti­choke, an uncurl­ing fern and the arrange­ment of a pine cone. A Strange Wilder­ness: The Lives of Great Math­e­mati­cians pro­vides much more in depth infor­ma­tion on the Fibonacci sequence.

I read recently that Win­ston Churchill’s motto was “Fiel pero des­dichado.” What does that mean?

It is Span­ish for “Faith­ful but unfor­tu­nate.” I checked in The Wicked Wit of Win­ston Churchill to find this trans­la­tion. The motto was actu­ally for the Churchill fam­ily, not just Winston.

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 Oct 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.