Deus Ex Machina is Latin for “God from the machine,” and the device has been around since the time of Greek theater.  The ancient  playwright Euripides popularized the technique.  His tragedies placed characters in these confounding situations; they strove to resolve their conflicts only to be saved from defeat at the last moment by an early form of special effect.  This plot device has been used ever since by writers struggling to find an ending to their story.  You might have seen it in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies about children stranded on an island who are rescued by a naval officer who happens to be passing the island.  Charles Dickens used it in Oliver Twist, Tolkien did too in Lord of the Rings.  Even Shakespeare was known to rely on the technique from time to time.  John Larison   https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-deus-ex-machina

Deus Ex Machina pronunciation:  dey-uhs eks-mah-kuh-nuh  https://poemanalysis.com/literary-devic   

Supernumerary  adjective 

1 a: exceeding the usual, stated, or prescribed number  b: not enumerated among the regular components of a group and especially of a military organization

2: exceeding what is necessary, required, or desired

3: more numerous

Supernumerary noun  plural  supernumeraries

1: a supernumerary person or thing

2: an actor employed to play a walk-on   

Supernumerary starts off with the Latin prefix super-, "above".  You may have heard of someone being born with supernumerary teeth, supernumerary fingers, or supernumerary toes.  A supernumerary rainbow may show up as a faint line—red, green, or purple—just touching the main colored arc.  Supernumerary is also a noun:  A supernumerary is usually someone in a crowd scene onstage, otherwise known as an "extra" or a "spear-carrier".  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supernumerary   

On June 1, 1974 – In an informal article in a medical journal, Henry Heimlich introduced the concept of abdominal thrusts, commonly known as the Heimlich maneuver, to treat choking victims.   

Near the end of 2021, Jessica Callahan was living in Columbus, Ohio working as a social science researcher and wondering if there was a better way to support herself.  Her friends Julie Ross and Austin Carter had similar thoughts and a similar solution:  Open a bookstore.  “I think a lot of people re-evaluated what was important to them during the lockdown and we realized the place we were always happy to be at was a bookstore,” says the 30-year-old Ms. Callahan, who with Ms. Ross and Ms. Carter last year founded the Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, Pa., close to Carter’s hometown.  The roughly 1,000-square-foot store is located on the main floor of a Queen Anne style house where Ms. Callahan and Ms. Ross live upstairs.  “We looked at our lives and thought, ‘Why not?’  Nothing else felt guaranteed anymore so why not just try to be happy," she added.  “We’re not getting rich from this, but we’re able to pay our bills and pay ourselves.”  The new direction of the Pocket Books owners helped lead to another year of growth for independent sellers, with membership in the American Booksellers Association reaching its highest levels in more than 20 years.  The ABA added 173 members in 2022, and now has 2,185 bookstore businesses and 2,599 locations.  https://www.toledoblade.com/business/retail/2023/05/27/independent-bookselling-expanded-2022-nationwide/stories/20230527005   

June 1, 2023  The Whitney Museum of American Art has agreed to sell its iconic Breuer Building on Madison Avenue to Sotheby’s, marking a tectonic change of guard in the art world.  The price wasn’t disclosed, but people familiar with the deal said it was just north of $100 million.  The news marks the end of an era and the beginning of another.  Designed by Modernist master Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966, the landmark had been the Whitney’s home until its move to the Meatpacking District in 2015.  Since then it’s been occupied by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, currently, by the Frick Collection, which has a lease that runs until August 2024.  Katya Kazakina  https://news.artnet.com/art-world/sothebys-has-inked-a-deal-to-buy-the-whitney-museums-iconic-breuer-building-for-approximately-100-million-2313175   

Spaghetti  The noun is borrowed from Italian spaghetti, the plural of spaghetto (“dish of spaghetti; (rare) strand of spaghetti”), from spago (“cord, string, twine; thread”) + -etto (diminutive suffix).   Spago is derived from Latin spagus (“twine”), probably from Ancient Greek σφάκος (sphákos, “apple sage (Salvia pomifera)”), probably from Pre-Greek .  The verb is derived from the noun.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spaghetti#English   

June 2 is Festa della Repubblica or Republic Day, Italy’s national day.   

http://librariansmuseblogspot.com  Issue 2678  June 2, 2023