5 tips for storing your vehicle this winter  December 24, 2022  

COVER IT UP * TOP OFF YOUR FLUIDS * TEND TO THE BATTERY * PROTECT THE TIRES * KEEP CRITTERS FROM NESTING  https://www.toledoblade.com/business/automotive/2022/12/24/5-tips-for-storing-your-vehicle-this-winter/stories/20221224016   

Kindness is like snow.  It beautifies everything it covers.  Kahlil Gibran https://www.jigidi.com/jigsaw-puzzle/ccvmjaj0/kindness-small/   

Starchitect is a portmanteau used to describe architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into idols of the architecture world and may even have given them some degree of fame among the general public.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starchitect   

What is it about the sea that has made it a literary obsession since The Odyssey?  For me, it’s the mystery, the thrill of adventure, the fear of the horrible beasts lurking under the waves, and the dangerous men lying in wait just over the horizon.  It’s the visceral feel of the wind and the waves, the raw smells of saltwater mixed with fuel and fish and fear, where the weather is a capricious character, and the ships are lonely fortresses against the unknown.  Who doesn’t know their names:  Ulysses, Jason, Ahab, Larsen, Nemo, Queeg, Bligh, Blood, and Aubrey, as well as pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read?  It is probably no coincidence that the sea inspired the first American novel, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot.  It also inspired my debut novel, The Hunt for the Peggy C, a World War II-era historical fiction about an American fugitive who struggles to rescue a Jewish family on his rusty cargo ship, outraging his mutinous crew of misfits and provoking a hair-raising chase by an unstable Nazi U-boat captain bent on revenge.  Find a list of seven books–fiction and non-fiction–that examine the thrill of life at sea, for good and evil.  John Winn Miller https://crimereads.com/thrillers-sea-nautical/   

Charles Simic, one of the most important contemporary poets and essayists, died on January 9, 2023 at the age of 84.  Simic was born as Dusan Simic in 1938 in Belgrade, from where he emigrated to Paris and then to the US in 1953.  The family settled in Chicago, where he changed his name to Charles.  He didn’t write in English until well into his 20s.  For his poetic work, he won numerous international awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, as well as several Serbian and regional literary awards.  He got his Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for a book of prose poems entitled ‘The World Doesn’t End’.  He also served as poet laureate of the United States from 2007 to 2008.  “I am especially touched and honoured to be selected, because I am an immigrant boy who didn’t speak English until I was 15,” Simic said at the time.  Sasa Dragojlo  https://balkaninsight.com/2023/01/10/charles-simic-pulitzer-winning-serbian-born-poet-dies-at-84/   

Read poems by Charles Simic and sign up for Poem-a-Day at https://poets.org/poet/charles-simic#poet__works   

 http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2619  January 11, 2023