ABOUT SNAKES  Although they lack eardrums, snakes possess inner ears which are able to pick up not only ground-borne vibrations but low frequency airborne sounds.  They do have difficulty with sounds at a higher pitch.  Snake skin is dry and, depending on the surrounding temperature, can be quite warm and soft.  Technically snakes are venomous, not poisonous.  But not all of them are venomous by any means.  Snake jawbones aren’t fused as ours are.  A highly flexible ligament joins the bones of the lower jaw, which stretch to allow enormous expansion of the mouth.  So the mechanism is not dislocation, just great flexibility.  https://museumsvictoria.com.au/article/8-myths-about-snakes/ 

ABOUT BATS  Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera. With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight.  Bats are more manoeuvrable than birds, flying with their very long spread-out digits covered with a thin membrane or patagium.  The smallest bat, and arguably the smallest extant mammal, is Kitti's hog-nosed bat, which is 29–34 millimetres (1 1⁄8–1 3⁄8 inches) in length, 150 mm (6 in) across the wings and 2–2.6 g (1⁄16–3⁄32 oz) in mass.  The largest bats are the flying foxes and the giant golden-crowned flying fox, Acerodon jubatus, which can weigh 1.6 kg (3 1⁄2 lb) and have a wingspan of 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat 

Lia Russell-Self usually finds time to write in those "in-between moments"—spending 20 minutes in between meetings to compose a poem or 30 minutes in between calls to quickly edit a script.  A narrative collection of poetry, "An Epic of the Unspoken," written during those "in-between moments," has been a work-in-progress for over two years.  In July, 2020 Russell-Self was one of six artists selected to participate in a pilot program Artists At Work, which allows them to make their art while receiving a living wage—about $15,000 over six months—and health insurance benefits, with the possibility to renew for another six months.  The catch?  In addition to producing a work of art that can be shared publicly at the end of the first six months, the participating artists' are working with a cultural institution and social initiative-focused group addressing issues such as substance abuse and poverty, mental health, and food justice.  Artists At Work, the pilot program launched in Western Massachusetts on July 1, is a collaboration of The Office Performing Arts + Film, an independent curator and production company based in New York and London and the FreshGrass Foundation, which produces the annual FreshGrass Festival, as well as national partners, the Sundance Institute, the International Storytelling Center and Theater of War Productions.  It's modeled after the New Deal's Works Progress Administration. During the bleakest years of the Great Depression, the WPA put millions of Americans to work, including more than 40,000 actors, writers, musicians and artists.  Work by those artists, such as Louis Slobodkin, of Albany, N.Y., who was commissioned to create three sculptures for the North Adams Post Office, can still be seen today.  Western Massachusetts was chosen for the pilot program, she said, because the arts play a major role in the region's economy, as well as the fact that it had numerous and diverse cultural organizations to work with.  Mass MoCA, Hancock Shaker Village, Jacob's Pillow, The Mount, Images Cinema and the Institute for the Musical Arts, in Goshen, each selected an artist to work with over the six months.  The artists will participate in online dialogues with artists and advisors at their cultural institutions, while also working with their chosen community outreach initiative.  Stephanie Zollshan  https://www.berkshireeagle.com/arts_and_culture/wpa-inspired-artists-at-work-pilot-program-gives-artists-the-tools-to-survive/article_f9e1f39c-21ce-5c9a-a0fd-9c0e4323c043.html 

October 26, 2020  On a seemingly average day, a couple of individuals walked into Copenhagen’s Bruun Rasmussen to inquire about selling a sofa and two matching chairs.  “They started to describe it, and it became, ‘Oh, yeah, oh, really . . . does it look like this?’” Kjelgaard recalls.  “And they said, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’”  The individuals knew that the pieces in their home were designed by renowned Danish designer Finn Juhl.  What they didn’t know was just how rare those pieces were.  But almost immediately in their conversation, Kjelgaard flashed to an image in his mind’s eye—a famous, but lost, Finn Juhl furniture set exhibited at a 1939 furniture fair.  The pieces, Kjelgaard explains, are included in basically every major book on Danish design.  “It never happens like that,” he says of the serendipitous encounter.  “But it did this time.”  After viewing the designs later that same day, Kjelgaard was able to confirm the authenticity of the pieces.  The owners of the sofa were understandably “quite proud,” Kjelgaard says.  “They didn’t consider it worthless, and they knew it probably had some value.  But they had no idea it was sort of the holy grail of Danish design.”  Now, that sofa is set to be sold by Bruun Rasmussen for the highest estimate ever offered in its history:  $238,000–$317,000.  ( The chairs will be sold as a separate lot, with an estimate of $95,280–$127,040.)  Madeleine Luckel  See picture at https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/lost-holy-grail-of-danish-design-found-after-almost-80-years 

THE LONGEST BOOK SERIES TO GET YOU THROUGH WINTER 2020, AKA THE LONGEST TIME OF ALL OUR LIVES by Emily Wenstrom   While fantasy is notorious for its capacity for long-running series, the Guin Saga is especially impressive.  This series written by Kurimoto and illustrated by Alexander O. Smith was originally planned to run 100 volumes, but grew to a 130+ volume anime comic with an additional 22 novels featuring side stories.  Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, is another often considered among the longest-running series, with 45 novels.  The Destroyer series by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir started in 1971, and hit novel 152 in January 2018 with the release of Continental Divide.  Read more at https://bookriot.com/the-longest-book-series/ 

Thomas Sean Connery was born in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh on 25 August 1930, the son of a Catholic factory worker and a Protestant domestic cleaner.  His father's family had emigrated from Ireland in the 19th Century; his mother traced her line back to Gaelic speakers from the Isle of Skye.  The area had been in decline for years. Young Tommy Connery was brought up in one room of a tenement with a shared toilet and no hot water.  He left school at 13 with no qualifications and delivered milk, polished coffins and laid bricks, before joining the Royal Navy.  The artist Richard Demarco, who as a student often painted Connery, described him as "too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis".  A keen footballer, Connery was good enough to attract the attention of Matt Busby, who offered him a £25-a-week contract at Manchester United.  But, bitten by the acting bug when odd-jobbing at a local theatre, he decided a footballer's career was potentially too short and opted to pursue his luck on the stage.  It was, he later said, "one of my more intelligent moves".  In 1953, he was in London competing in the Mr Universe competition.  He heard that there were parts going in the chorus of a production of the musical South Pacific.  By the following year, he was playing the role of Lieutenant Buzz Adams, made famous on Broadway by Larry Hagman.  American actor Robert Henderson encouraged Connery to educate himself.  Henderson lent him works by Ibsen, Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw, and persuaded Connery to take elocution lessons.  Connery made the first of many appearances as a film extra in the 1954 movie Lilacs in the Spring.  There were minor roles on television too, including a gangster in an episode of the BBC police drama Dixon of Dock Green.  In 1957, he got his first leading role in Blood Money, a BBC reworking of Requiem for a Heavyweight, in which he portrayed a boxer whose career is in decline.  It had been made famous in America by Hollywood legend Jack Palance.  When Palance refused to travel to London, the director's wife suggested Sean.  "The ladies will like him," she said.  A year later, he was alongside Lana Turner in the film Another Time, Another Place.  https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54761824  Sean Connery died October 30, 2020.  

The 32 Most Beautiful Haunted Destinations Around the World by Mitchell Gilburne and Hannah Huber  https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/most-beautiful-haunted-houses-slideshow 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2279  November 2, 2020