From:  Susan Grodsky  Subject:  birds in cages  “When we imprison a bird, or any animal, we have captured its body, but not its essence.”  When I was a child, I loved to visit the zoo to see animals.  Some time in my 20s, I realized that the animals were in prison.  I have friends who insist that zoos educate people and preserve species.  But what if you took the vast sum spent on zoos and aquariums and used it to preserve animals in their own habitats?  Webcams would allow you to see animals in their own environment, teaching far more than you learn from ogling a cage. 

From:  Melodee S. Kornacker  Subject:  pinion 
The word pinion reminded me of my friend who repairs his own vintage cars and once named a pair of pet swans Rack and Pinion.  I forwarded your post to him and asked if he had known about ‘pinion’ referring to birds when he named the swans or was he just thinking automotively.  His response was “Just automotive jargon.  I’ve been found, nouned, and drowned in this English lesson.” 

From:  Mike Simons  Subject:  pinion 
In the Southwestern US the Native Americans have had pine nuts as an important part of their diet for centuries.  They call pine nuts pinion in English.
From:  Kevin Knox  Subject:  piñon  Can’t resist sharing the classic New Mexico dad joke:  “If I have one pine nut and you have two, what we have is a difference of a piñon.”   AWADmail Issue 1079   

A lawyer called upon to salvage the entire social existence of a person formerly held in the highest esteem is like a sorcerer being asked to turn back time.  * Criminal litigation is described as a blood sport.  *  The Last Trial, a novel Alejandro Stern, better known as Sandy, a character who has appeared in every Turow novel.  Turow adores Sandy but has given him only one chance to hold center stage.  That was 30 years ago, in “The Burden of Proof.”  Now it’s time for the curtain call.   

Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle as a surprise for his partner who loves word games.  From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public.  The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography.  It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures.  Kerry Brunskill   https://www.pcgamer.com/wordle-hint-answer-today-635-march-16/   

Darby Conley is an American cartoonist best known for the newspaper comic strip Get Fuzzy.  Conley was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1970, and grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee.  While in high school in 1986, he won a student cartooning competition.  During his Senior Year at Doyle High School (now South-Doyle High School) in Knoxville, Conley was voted 'Most Talented' by his graduating class.  Conley was a member of Amherst College's a cappella group, the Zumbyes.  Conley cited the Tintin books as the strongest visual inspiration for his work.  Comics syndicate United Media agreed in 1999 to publish Conley's new strip Get Fuzzy about an anthropomorphic cat, Bucky, and dog, Satchel, living with their single young-male owner, Rob Wilco, which premiered on September 6, 1999.  The idea for Bucky's character came from a friend's Siamese cat.  Without explanation, Conley stopped drawing daily Get Fuzzy strips in 2013.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darby_Conley   

Get Fuzzy is an American gag-a-day comic strip written and drawn by Darby Conley.  It features advertising executive Rob Wilco and his two anthropomorphic pets, a dog, Satchel Pooch, and a cat, Bucky Katt.  While there have been no new comics produced since 2019, the reruns continue to appear in newspapers.  The strip's humor comes from the conflict between Bucky's and Satchel's personalities, which are extreme stereotypes of cats and dogs.  Sweet, trusting, naïve Satchel is routinely subjected to the exploitation of cruel, self-centered Bucky, who is always torturing the poor canine.  Rob, the middleman, is often frazzled from dealing with them, or more specifically, from dealing with Bucky's destructive nature and overall nastiness.  The three characters live in an apartment on Boston's Longwood Avenue.  The unusual title of the strip comes from a concert poster that Conley once created for his brother's band, the Fuzzy Sprouts.  "Life's too short to be cool," the poster read, "Get Fuzzy."  Get Fuzzy was first published on 6 September 1999, by United Feature Syndicate.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Fuzzy   

March Madness 

When are the NCAA Women's Final Four games?  No. 1 Virginia Tech faces No. 3 LSU at 7 p.m. ET, followed by No. 1 South Carolina vs. No. 2 Iowa at 9 p.m. ET. Both games are Friday, March 31.  Both games can be streamed on Watch ESPN, ESPN+ and the ESPN app.  Ellen J. Horrow  https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaw/2023/03/28/ncaa-womens-basketball-final-four-teams-games-times-tv-streaming/11556181002/

2023 March Madness:  Men's NCAA tournament schedule  Saturday, April 1 (Final Four)  No. 5 San Diego State vs. No. 9 Florida Atlantic | 6:09 p.m. | CBS  No. 4 UConn vs. No. 5 Miami (Fla.) | 8:49 p.m. | CBS

Monday, April 3 (National championship game)  TBD vs. TBD live stream | 9 p.m. ET | CBS  https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2023-03-28/2023-march-madness-mens-ncaa-tournament-schedule-dates-times   

At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. - Eric Idle, comedian, actor, and author (b. 29 Mar 1943)   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2650  March 29, 2023