Borders Group Inc. said it wants to pay key executives as much as $8.3 million in incentives and retention bonuses as it focuses on emerging from bankruptcy by late summer. The Ann Arbor-based bookstore chain said it traditionally compensated employees with incentives and requested a judge's approval of its plan in a filing March 24 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Executives would receive no incentive payments if Borders were liquidated, the company said. They also will not get a bonus for last year "due to the debtors' declining financial performance," Borders said. Borders filed for Chapter 11 protection on Feb. 16 after management changes, job cuts and debt restructuring failed to make up for sagging book sales in the face of competition from Amazon.com Inc., Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The company made an emergency request to close at least 200 stores and said this month it would close at least 26 more. In another move, Borders confirmed Friday that it is reversing a decision to close its Nashville, Tenn., area distribution center and will instead shutter its Carlisle, Pa., site. The move would leave two centers — the Tennessee facility and one in California. http://www.detnews.com/article/20110326/BIZ/103260319/1001

Born on December 15, 1832, in Dijon, France, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel grew up to become an engineer at a time when those in the profession were widely considered uneducated and uncultured. Eiffel, however, did not fit the mold. He was a great admirer of classic literature, with a vast library of leather-bound works by Voltaire, Zola, Hugo, and others. He published 31 books and treatises documenting his numerous projects and experiments during his lifetime. He swam and fenced well into his 80s, and garnered honors and awards from governments around the world. In 1858, at the age of 25, Eiffel got his first big break. He was given the responsibility of overseeing the construction of a 1,600-foot bridge of cast iron, which would span the Garonne River near the city of Bordeaux - and he was to complete the task in just two years. With such a short time to finish the project, Eiffel was inspired to develop the first of many significant engineering innovations: a system of hydraulic presses (machines that were operated by water, steam and compressed air), which enabled the workers to drive the structure's foundation materials into the 80-foot-deep river. One of his first big projects with his own company was the construction of the Sioule Bridge, which stood 262 feet above the Sioule River, making it one of the world's tallest bridges at the time. The project enabled Eiffel to test three important innovations, which he would later implement in the construction of the Eiffel Tower: He used wrought iron rather than the heavy, brittle iron normally used for bridges, as he found it to be stronger, more flexible, and better able to withstand strong winds; he curved the edges of the piers, which were usually square or rectangular, to create a more durable, stable base; and he developed a system known as "launching," which used rockers to more easily move individual pieces of the bridge into place, like a giant seesaw. Eiffel was called upon to assist in the construction of the Statue of Liberty. Eiffel built an iron skeleton frame to which sheets of metal could then be attached, and embedded vertical steel beams in the granite base of the statue to which thin copper sheets were attached. The result was a lighter but stronger statue that was able to bear immense weight and withstand the harsh elements.
http://www.paris-eiffel-tower-news.com/eiffel-tower-stories/paris-story-gustave-eiffel.htm

Created in 1889 for the World's Fair, the Eiffel Tower was intended to be torn down at the closing of the fair. The iron structure, then the world's tallest man-made object, was met with resistance from the citizens of Paris and from fair organizers. It was considered so unattractive that an organization was formed of high-society types bent toward removal of the monstrosity. Luckily, once the world came to gawk at their magnificently tall tower, the Parisians had a change of heart, and the tower was allowed to remain standing and has since become the symbol of Paris and France. In 1893, the Americans sought to outdo the tower for the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago (which was originally intended to open in 1892 to celebrate 400 years after the arrival of Columbus, but things got a tad behind schedule during the construction of the fair, thus the 1893 date). The Expo hired engineer George Ferris to build a response to the Eiffel Tower. Ferris, apparently as modest as his French rival, created a "pleasure wheel" so large and spectacular that it became the darling of the midway, and since, replications of his Ferris Wheel have been created the world over. http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/shawg/idee/images/5.html

as the crow flies In a straight line; by the most direct route. This expression stems from the widely held belief that a crow flies in a straight line from one point to another. Sporting Magazine used the phrase as early as 1810. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/direction
Find the latitude and longitude of two places, and calculate the distance between them (as the crow flies) at: http://www.indo.com/distance/index.html

make a beeline To proceed directly and with dispatch; to hasten, hurry; to rush, race, or make a mad dash toward. It is commonly believed that pollen-carrying bees return to the hive speedily and directly; hence beeline meaning ‘the most direct route.’ The term is believed to be originally American; it appeared in 1848 in The Biglow Papers by James Russell Lowell. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Pace

Quotes
When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) writer and philosopher
If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor of dynamite, who instituted the Nobel Prizes. http://thinkexist.com/quotation/if_i_have_a_thousand_ideas_and_only_one_turns_out/146868.html

William Merwin, 17th U.S. Poet Laureate, and the 83-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Shadow of Sirius" and more than 40 other volumes of poetry, essays, and translations, and his wife, Paula, live in what their friend and neighbor Michelle Sewell calls "a handmade house." It's built in the shape of a rectangle, surrounded by deep porches, or lanais. A few steps lead down to the home's entry lanai, where the Merwins place their shoes, and then directly into a living room that feels like a Polynesian longboat. Wood planks form the peaked ceiling and the floor is made of tightly fitted planks of darkly oiled eucalyptus robusta wood. To enjoy their garden, the Merwins head to their breakfast lanai, overlooking a valley filled with thousands of palms planted from all over the world. He insisted on disturbing the land as little as possible during construction, so no bulldozer was used to prepare the site. To save money, he designed the home based on 8- or 4-foot design modules, keeping costs low by avoiding using custom-made materials. By the time Paula Dunaway, a children's-books editor, joined him in the early 1980s, he'd built the 1,375-square-foot house. The couple later bought two adjacent parcels of land, totaling 15 acres. Mr. Merwin wrote much of "The Folding Cliffs," a novel in verse of 19th-century Hawaii, in his home's west lanai, which overlooks a dense section of the palm forest. One of his best-known poems, titled "Place," begins, "On the last day of the world / I would want to plant a tree."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704604704576220602720997650.html

Read Merwin's poem Place at: http://www.coloradopoetscenter.org/eWords/issue12/irwin.html
At age 18, W.S. Merwin contacted Ezra Pound and asked for advice on what he should do to become a poet. Pound came back with write 75 lines of poetry every day and, oh, by the way, you ought to translate poetry from other languages into English, to learn what a person can do with language
http://crimespace.ning.com/profiles/blogs/meet-our-new-poet-laureate