The March for Science has been scheduled for Saturday, April 22 in Washington, D.C.  A growing constellation of marches are also scheduled for that day in cities across the U.S.  What began as a Reddit conversation has grown into a movement of scientists and science lovers standing up for evidenced-based policy making and inclusivity in the science community.  The date of the march isn’t just an average Saturday. April 22 is Earth Day, first celebrated in 1970.  The original Earth Day is seen by many as a turning point in the environmental movement.  The year itself also marks a major turning point for the U.S. government and environmental policy.  In 1970, Richard Nixon signed the Environmental Protection Agency into existence and it began operating that December.  Brian Kahn

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/march-for-science-set-for-earth-day/

The amaranth family (Amaranthaceae) includes the previously separate family of the beets and spinaches, the Chenopodiaceae.  Amaranth is not related to the Graminae, the real grains.  Compared to other grains amaranth seeds have a much higher content of the minerals calcium, magnesium, iron and of the amino acid Lysine.  Amaranth seeds are also high in potassium, zinc, Vitamin B and E and can contain over 20% protein (depending on the variety).  You can find amaranth grain in health food stores in the form of amaranth flour and the popped seeds as amaranth cereal.  http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/amaranth-plant.html  Find a list of vegetable families, including umbellifers, goosefoot/beetroot and poaceae/grasses at

http://www.greatstems.com/images/veggiefamilies.html

A drumlin, from the Irish word droimnín ("littlest ridge"), first recorded in 1833, and in the classical sense is an elongated hill in the shape of an inverted spoon or half-buried egg formed by glacial ice acting on underlying unconsolidated till or ground moraine.  Read more and find examples of drumlins in Europe, North America, Asia, South American and Antarctica at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drumlin  See also http://www.landforms.eu/Lothian/drumlin.htm

Known as the world’s secondhand book capital, Hay-on-Wye is home to over 30 used and antiquarian bookshops as well as the internationally acclaimed Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts.  A medieval market town on the English-Welsh border, Hay-on-Wye lies just north of the Black Mountains on the east bank of the River Wye.  Its literary aspirations began in 1961, when eccentric bookseller Richard Booth opened his first secondhand bookshop in town.  Founded in 1987 and described by former US president Bill Clinton as “the Woodstock of the mind,” the Hay Festival is an annual 10-day literary event with workshops, readings, guest speakers, and book signings.  It’s held from late May to early June.  Read more and see wonderful pictures at http://europeupclose.com/article/browsing-hay-on-wye-wales/

paparazzo (pah-puh-RAHT-so) noun  A photographer who follows famous people to take their pictures for publication.  From Paparazzo, the name of a photographer in Federico Fellini’s 1959 film La Dolce Vita.  Fellini got the name via scriptwriter Ennio Flaiano who picked it from the 1901 travel book By the Ionian Sea.  The book mentions a hotel owner named Coriolano Paparazzo.  Fellini claimed at another time that the name Paparazzo suggested to him “a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging”.  Earliest documented use:  1961.  A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

In the March 2017 edition of BookPage, I saw "Feed your TBR!"  Not knowing what that meant, I did a search on Google, and the featured definition was "To Be Real."  Later I found 56 definitions in an acronym finder, and it's probably the second meaning ("To Be Read") in the list.  Doesn't make much sense, however.  http://www.acronymfinder.com/TBR.html

Other paths to "It's raining cats and dogs"  Il pleut des cordes  Literally “It’s raining ropes,” this way of describing a heavy downpour in French evokes the image of rain pouring from rooftops when it literally forms long “ropes” of raindrops stretching to the ground.  The most common English equivalent is probably “It’s raining cats and dogs.”  Il pleut des hallebardes  This is another expression you’ll hear when it’s pouring rain outside.  The literal meaning is “It’s raining halberds” (a halberd being an ax-like weapon that dates back to the 14th century).  The English equivalent of this expression could be “It’s pouring buckets” or “It’s bucketing down” in UK English.  Also keep in mind that the s in des is silent, since hallebardes starts with an aspirated h.  http://www.fluentu.com/french/blog/french-weather-expressions/  Thank you, Muse reader!

From 1897-1968, the Boston Marathon was held on Patriots' Day, April 19, a holiday commemorating the start of the Revolutionary War and recognized only in Massachusetts and Maine.  If the 19th fell on a Sunday, the race was held on the following day.  Roberta Gibb was the first woman to run the full Boston Marathon in 1966.  She did not run with an official number from 1966-1968.  In 1967, Katherine Switzer, did not clearly identify herself as a female on the race application and was issued a bib number.  Marathon officials tried unsuccessfully to physically remove Switzer from the race.  When women were allowed entry in the fall of 1971, Nina Kuscsik's 1972 victory made her the first official female champion of the Boston Marathon.  http://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon/boston-marathon-history.aspx

April 18, 2017 – Patricia Spears Jones is the eleventh winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize.  Poets & Writers, the New York­­–based service organization for creative writers, annually awards the Jackson Poetry Prize to an American poet of exceptional talent who deserves wider recognition.  The $50,000 prize is among the most substantial given to an American poet and is designed to provide what all poets need:  time and encouragement to write.  Patricia Spears Jones is a Brooklyn-based African American poet.  Her most recent collection of poems, A Lucent  Fire:  New and Selected Poems, published by White Pine Press in 2015, was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s 2016 William Carlos Williams Prize, as well as for the Paterson Poetry Prize.  Her earlier books include Painkiller (Tia Chucha Press, 2010), Femme du Monde (Tia Chucha Press, 2006), and The Weather That Kills (Coffee House Press, 1995).  Previous honors include a 2016 Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and awards from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Goethe-Institut, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the New York Community Trust.  The Jackson Poetry Prize is endowed by a gift from the Liana Foundation and is named for the John and Susan Jackson family.  There is no application process; poets are nominated by a panel of their peers who remain anonymous.  Previous recipients of the Jackson Poetry Prize are Will Alexander (2016), X. J. Kennedy (2015), Claudia Rankine (2014), Arthur Sze (2013), Henri Cole (2012), James Richardson (2011), Harryette Mullen (2010), Linda Gregg (2009), Tony Hoagland (2008), and Elizabeth Alexander (2007).  Read more at https://www.pw.org/about-us/news-releases/patricia_spears_jones_wins_50000_jackson_poetry_prize

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1695  April 19, 2017  On this date in 1986, Zhou Mi, Chinese singer-songwriter and actor, was born.  On this date in 1986,  Candace Parker, American basketball player, was born.  Thought for Today  There is a beauty in discovery.  There is mathematics in music, a kinship of science and poetry in the description of nature, and exquisite form in a molecule. - Glenn T. Seaborg, scientist, Nobel laureate (19 Apr 1912-1999)  Word of the Day  syllabub noun  A drink dating back to the 16th century consisting primarily of milk curdled with an alcoholic beverage or some acid such as lemon juice, which is usually then sweetened and spiced.  Also everlasting syllabub or solid syllabub:  dessert pudding derived from the drink.  (figuratively) Something lacking substance; something frothy, insubstantial, or lightweight.

Q.  What is the origin of the phrase "it’s raining cats and dogs?"   A.  We don’t know.  The phrase might have its roots in Norse mythology, medieval superstitions, the obsolete word catadupe (waterfall), or dead animals in the streets of Britain being picked up by storm waters.  The first recorded use of a phrase similar to “raining cats and dogs” was in the 1651 collection of poems Olor Iscanus. British poet Henry Vaughan referred to a roof that was secure against “dogs and cats rained in shower.”  One year later, Richard Brome, an English playwright, wrote in his comedy City Witt, “It shall rain dogs and polecats.”  (Polecats are related to the weasel and were common in Great Britain through the end of the nineteenth century.)  In 1738, Jonathan Swift published his “Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation,” a satire on the conversations of the upper classes.  One of his characters fears that it will “rain cats and dogs.”   Whether Swift coined the phrase or was using a cliché, his satire was likely the beginning of the phrase’s popularity.   Other British writers have employed less popular phrases, such as “it’s raining pitchforks” or “it’s raining stair-rods,” to describe the shaft-like appearance of heavy rains.  Swift also wrote a poem, “City Shower” (1710), that described floods that occurred after heavy rains.  The floods left dead animals in the streets, and   may have led locals to describe the weather as “raining cats and dogs.”  Read more and see delightful pictures at https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/rainingcats.html

Tarmac (short for tarmacadam) is a type of road surfacing material patented by English inventor Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1902.  The term is also used, with varying degrees of correctness, for a variety of other materials, including tar-grouted macadam, bituminous surface treatments, and modern asphalt concrete.  The term is also often used to describe airport aprons (also referred to as "ramps"), taxiways, and runways regardless of the surface.  While the specific tarmac pavement is not common in some countries today, many people use the word to refer to generic paved areas at airports, especially the apron near airport terminals despite the fact that these areas are often made of concrete.  The Wick Airport at Wick in Caithness, Scotland, is one of the few airports that still have real tarmac runways.  Similarly in the UK the word "tarmac" is much more commonly used by the public when referring to asphalt concrete.  Tarmac is a registered trademark although it is frequently written with a lower-case initial letter.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarmac

CLIPPED WORDS  piano (pianoforte) deli (delicatessen) tux (tuxedo) pants (pantaloons) flu (influenza) exam (examination)  Find dozens of examples of shortened words and link to idioms and games at http://all-things-relevant.blogspot.com/2010/12/word-shorteningclipping.html

At Tree House Brewing, The Line For Beer Can Take Hours by Bob Oakes and Yasmin Amer  Bob Oakes and Yasmin Amer   Craft beer is big business in Massachusetts.  There are at least 143 brewers in the state right now, according to Beer Advocate’s Andy Crouch, who writes for the Boston-based magazine.  That number is up from around 80 five years ago.  There are two main factors behind the craft beer boom:  a growing passion for variety among beer consumers and a low cost-of-entry barrier for brewers.  Crouch says the long beer lines like the one in front of Tree House are a relatively new phenomenon that started at Midwest breweries, when crowds would show up to celebrate the release of a new beer.  The enthusiasm caught on across the country.  http://www.wbur.org/news/2017/03/29/craft-beer-tree-house

Jean Bellette (occasionally Jean Haefliger;1908–1991) was an Australian artist.  Born in Tasmania, she was educated in Hobart and at Julian Ashton's art school in Sydney, where her teachers included Thea Proctor.  In London she studied under painters Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler.  A modernist painter, Bellette was influential in mid-twentieth century Sydney art circles.  She frequently painted scenes influenced by the Greek tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles and the epics of Homer.  The only woman to have won the Sulman Prize more than once, Bellette claimed the accolade in 1942 with For Whom the Bell Tolls, and in 1944 with Iphigenia in Tauris.  She helped found the Blake Prize for Religious Art, and was its inaugural judge.  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Bellette

Q.  Have you heard of the saying you might as well be tried for a lamb rather than a sheep or something like that?  A.  Something like is right.  The standard form is one might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, though you sometimes come across it as one might as well be hanged for a goat as a lamb.  Strictly, it’s a justification or excuse for going on to commit some greater offence once one has perpetrated a minor one.  These days it often suggests that once one has become involved in some affair or incident (not necessarily illegal), one may as well commit oneself entirely.  The origin lies in the brutal history of English law.  At one time, a great many crimes automatically attracted the death penalty: you could be hanged, for example, for stealing goods worth more than a shilling.  Sheep stealing was among these capital crimes.  So if you were going to steal a sheep, you might as well take a full-grown one rather than a lamb, because the penalty was going to be the same either way.  Since the law was reformed in the 1820s to end the death penalty for the crime, the proverb must be older; in fact the earliest example known is from John Ray’s English Proverbs of 1678:  “As good be hang’d for an old sheep as a young lamb”.  http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-one3.htm

Wiktionary:  in for a penny, in for a pound  Etymology:  Originally with reference to the fact that if one owed a penny, one might as well owe a pound, as the penalties for non-payment were virtually identical in severity.  "In for a dime, in for a dollar” is an American version of “in for a penny, in for a pound” (the British pound currency, in a saying that dates to the 1600s).  The saying means that once something has started—even a little—that party is stuck until the end.  The saying was used by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009) to describe the Vietnam War.  “In for a dime, in for a dollar” is cited in print from at least 1956 and has been used in gambling (especially poker).  Read more at http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/in_for_a_dime_in_for_a_dollar

uptalk  verb  (linguistics, intransitive) To speak with a rising intonation at the end of a sentence, as if it were a question; to upspeak.  Wiktionary

The Toledo GROWs program is housed at the Robert J. Anderson Urban Agriculture Center, located at 900 Oneida Street, on a three acre farm in the heart of the city of Toledo.  The site serves as home base for services provided to 125+ community gardens throughout the city and surrounding area.  Services provided to community gardens in the Toledo GROWs network include:  technical expertise in assisting gardeners to plan, build, and maintain their community garden; free seeds and seedlings for each growing season; free loan of tools for large work days at gardens; assistance with recruiting volunteers for large work days; educational opportunities, including workshops and opportunities to learn from the growing efforts at the urban farm; networking with other community gardeners; materials, such as wood, rain barrels, and compost as they become available; and advocating in the community for urban gardening.  The commercial kitchen is steadily taking shape to train youth in preparation and packaging; instruction and certification in safe food handling; and classes for all ages on preparing healthy foods using fresh vegetables grown in the garden.  The kitchen needs $12,000 to get items necessary and get the project through final inspection.  To support these efforts, please contact  Yvonne Dubielak at 419.720.8714 or yvonne.dubielak@toledogarden. org.

Always do your best.  What you plant now, you will harvest later.  Og Mandino, American author (1923-1996)   https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/o/ogmandino164003.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1694  April 18, 2017  On this date in 1906, An earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco, California.  On this date in 1912, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brought 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

"Hard drives are like  piñatas.  Every treasure you ever wanted is stored in there somewhere."  The Neighbor, a novel (Detective D. D. Warren Series #3) by Lisa Gardner

Lisa Gardner is an author of fiction.  She is the author of several thrillers including The Killing Hour and The Next Accident.  She also wrote romance novels using the pseudonym Alicia Scott.  Raised in Hillsboro, Oregon, she graduated from the city's Glencoe High School.  Her novel Gone is set in a fictionalized version of Tillamook, Oregon.  As of 2014, Gardner lives in New England with her family.  Find bibliography at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Gardner

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg  In physics, I learned what happens when light goes through lenses, concave and convex.  It’s the same light but it appears different depending on what lens we have.  In chemistry, I learned what happens when you drop a piece of sodium in water (that experiment wasn’t an official part of the curriculum).  Sodium changes.  Water changes too.  Likewise, when two people meet they should have changed as a result of that meeting.  This week we’ll see words that have meanings specific to chemistry as well as more general meanings.

osmosis  (oz-MOH-sis, os-)  noun  1.  A gradual, unconscious assimilation of information, ideas, etc.  2.  Movement of a solvent through a semipermeable membrane from a lower concentration to higher concentration, thus equalizing concentrations on both sides.  From Greek osmos (a push).  Earliest documented use:  1863.

solvent  (SOL-vuhnt) adjective  1.  Able to pay one’s debts.  2.  Able to dissolve another substance.  noun  1.  Something that dissolves another.  2.  Something that solves a problem.  From Latin solvere (to loosen, to dissolve, to pay).  Earliest documented use:  1653.

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From:  Richard S. Russell  Subject:  osmosis  You wrote:  Likewise, when two people meet they should have changed as a result of that meeting.  The difference between “cut” and “copy” (not original with me, but highly pertinent here):  I had a dollar.  I met a man with a dollar.  We exchanged dollars, and when we parted we each still had only a dollar.  I had an idea.  I met a man with an idea.  We exchanged ideas, and when we parted we each had two ideas. 

From:  Anne Thomas  Subject:  solvent  When told that his owner’s not solvent, unable to pay for his stall rent, Ace Racer cries, “Neigh!  I won yesterday; you’d better explain where it all went!”

The people who live in the Blue Zones—five regions in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the U.S. researchers have identified as having the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world—move their bodies a lot.  They have social circles that reinforce healthy behaviors.  They take time to de-stress.  They're part of communities, often religious ones.  And they're committed to their families.   But what they put in their mouths, how much and when is worth a close look, too.  And that's why Dan Buettner, a National Geographic explorer and author who struck out on a quest in 2000 to find the lifestyle secrets to longevity, has written a follow up to his original book on the subject.  The 2015 book, called The Blue Zones Solution, is aimed at Americans, and is mostly about eating.  A year after that book was published, the team announced they'd narrowed it down to five places that met all their criteria.  They gave them official Blue Zone status:  Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Ogliastra Region, Sardinia; Loma Linda, Calif.; and Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica.  In the new book, which was released April 7, Buettner distills the researchers' findings on what all the Blue Zones share when it comes to their diet.  Here's a taste:  Stop eating when your stomach is 80 percent full to avoid weight gain.  Eat the smallest meal of the day in the late afternoon or evening.  Eat mostly plants, especially beans.  And eat meat rarely, in small portions of 3 to 4 ounces.  Blue Zoners eat portions this size just five times a month, on average.  Drink alcohol moderately and regularly, i.e. 1-2 glasses a day.  Eliza Barclay  Link to recipes and photos at http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/11/398325030/eating-to-break-100-longevity-diet-tips-from-the-blue-zones

The Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC), a project aiming to make citation data free to all, was formally announced April 6, 2017 by six organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, publisher Public Library of Science, and the open-access journal eLife.  So far, the initiative has partnered with 29 journal publishers to enable anyone to access citation data from about 14 million papers indexed by Crossref, a nonprofit collaboration that promotes the sharing of scholarly information.  And more publishers are likely to sign on, says Mark Patterson, executive director of eLife, in Cambridge, U.K.  Conversations about opening up citation data initially took place this past September at the eighth Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing, in response to a report that found that just 3% of almost a thousand publishers depositing data on Crossref were making citation data open.  In practice, that meant that citation data were available for just 1% of the roughly 35 million papers on Crossref, says Dario Taraborelli, head of research at the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, California.  Now, that share has risen to more than 40% of Crossref papers as a result of I4OC’s efforts.  Even some publishers that traditionally charge subscriptions to read their journals, including Taylor & Francis and Wiley-Blackwell, have jumped on board.  Citation data are already available for a fee from other providers, including Clarivate Analytics’s Web of Science and publishing giant Elsevier’s Scopus.  And Google Scholar allows users to see citation data but not reuse them.  In contrast, I4OC will allow users to freely access and reuse citation data under CC0, the most liberal copyright license.  Dalmeet Singh Chawla  http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/now-free-citation-data-14-million-papers-and-more-might-come

Tamil, a language spoken by about 78 million people and recognized as an official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore, is the only classical language that has survived all the way through to the modern world.  Read "The Ten Oldest Languages Still Spoken in the World Today" by Lani Seelinger at https://theculturetrip.com/asia/india/articles/the-10-oldest-languages-still-spoken-in-the-world-today/

because  conjunction  1.  for the reason that  2.  the fact that   

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/because

cause  noun  1.  a reason for an action or condition, something that brings about an effect or a result, a person or thing that is the occasion of an action or state,  sufficient reason   2.  a ground of legal action,  case  3.  a matter or question to be decided  4.  a principle or movement militantly defended or supported,   a charitable undertaking  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cause

April 12, 2017  After a wet winter, the blooms—tidy tips, poppies, lupine, fiddleneck, shooting star, owl’s clover, baby blue eyes and more—have erupted in San Luis Obispo County and across California.  In fact, this year’s show is so remarkable that clusters of the wildflowers can actually be seen from space.  Megan Henney  See satellite images showing a radical difference between the 2017 and 2016 wildflower seasons at Carrizo Plain National Monument at  http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article144285749.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1693  April 17, 2017  On this date in 1397, Geoffrey Chaucer told The Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II.  On this date in 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano reached New York harbor.

EVERYDAY MYSTERIES solved at the Library of Congress  Q.  Does water go down the drain counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere?  A.  It all depends upon how the water was introduced and the geometric structure of the drain.  One can find both counterclockwise and clockwise flowing drains in both hemispheres.  Some people would like you to believe that the Coriolis force affects the flow of water down the drain in sinks, bathtubs, or toilet bowls.  Don’t believe them!  The Coriolis force is simply too weak to affect such small bodies of water.  In his work “Sur les equations du movements relative des systems des corps” (1835) the French engineer Gaspard Gustav de Coriolis (1792-1843) first described this force.  The Coriolis force is caused by the earth’s rotation.  It responsible for air being pulled to the right (counterclockwise) in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left (clockwise) in the Southern Hemisphere.  The Coriolis Effect is the observed curved path of moving objects relative to the surface of the Earth.  Hurricanes are good visual examples.  Hurricane air flow (winds) moves counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere.  This is due to the rotation of the Earth.  The Coriolis force assists in setting the circulation of a hurricane into motion by producing a rightward (clockwise) deflection that sets up a cyclonic (counterclockwise) circulation around the hurricane low pressure.  (For a more in depth discussion on hurricanes see NASA’s Hurricanes: Greatest Storm on Earth.)  What happens at the equator?  The Coriolis force is too weak to operate on the moving air at the equator.  This means that weather phenomena such as hurricanes are not observed at the equator, although they have been observed at 5 degrees above the equator.  In fact, the Coriolis force pulls hurricanes away from the equator.  https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/coriolis.html

Egyptian cotton--extra long staple cotton--comes from a native North American cotton plant; the plant did not originate in Egypt.  But Egypt's climate produces the right conditions to grow the ELS cotton used in luxury products around the world.  Percale represents the weave used to produce sheets, towels and other bedding products.  Each warp thread goes over one weft thread, then under the next warp thread, then over the next weft thread, continuing across the fabric.  This one-over-one under weave produces a strong fabric.  Sateen sheets consist of a weave where several warp threads go over one weft thread at a time.  In the next row, the four threads are offset by one weft thread, creating a weave with a soft finish . Loose threads lay across the surface and create a distinct diagonal pattern when viewed closely.  Because several threads lie on the surface, the fabric appears shinier than fabrics with the threads woven in the typical one-over-one-under weave.  Manufacturers also mix cotton with man-made fibers such as polyester, and weave it into bedding with either the percale or sateen weave.  For example, sheets can be 100 percent Egyptian cotton percale, 100 percent Egyptian cotton sateen, blended cotton percale or sateen, or poly-cotton percale or sateen.  Read more at

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/differences-between-egyptian-cotton-sateen-percale-100534.html

Follow-up to the Michael Bornstein story:  Michael Bornstein was indeed a fortunate lad to survive Auschwitz, but it appears he was rescued by the Soviet Army rather than escaping.  God forbid that I step on my tongue as did Sean Spicer and in any way be considered to diminish the horror of the Nazi concentration camps, but four of us did escape from Dachau in 2003.  We were in Munich on a Monday in late December and decided to visit Dachau.  We parked around the corner and walked to the gate.  Unfortunately, the sign said it was closed on Mondays; however, I noted that the gate was ajar, and there were a couple of cars at the administration building, so we went in.  There was about a foot of snow, and a light snow was falling, blanking out all of the city noises.  It was a very moving experience to see the outline of the foundations of rows and rows of barracks that were long ago destroyed and to walk through the gas chambers, all in perfect silence and without anyone else around.  I took a picture of the snowy grounds through the gate with the legend, “Arbeit Macht Frei”, which was at the far end of the compound from where we came in.  About that time, I noticed that the cars were gone and the gate was closed.  None of us had a cell phone.  We were discussing which of us would be boosted up to try to scale the wall and clear the concertina wire, when we heard the sound of a diesel-engined front-end loader chugging around from behind the administration building.  We hurried up to the operator, and he leaned down and angrily shouted, “Wir sind geschlosst.  (We are closed.)”  Somehow, I was able to call up just what I needed from my college German from about 35 years earlier and responded, “Ja, bestimmt.  (Yes, indeed.)  Wir brauchen eine Schlussel!  (We need a key!)”  The look of disgust on his face was priceless as he realized he was being jollied by an American in his own language.  He growled, “Kommen Sie mit,  (Come with me.)” and set off for the gate with a goodly turn of speed.  We followed at a trot, as I would not be surprised to see him go through the gate and lock it behind him if we were not there.  So that was our escape from Dachau.  Thank you, Muse reader!

The Arbeit Macht Frei slogan was first used at the the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, which was a camp for political prisoners, not a camp for Jews.  According to Rudolf Höss, who was an adjutant at Sachsenhausen before he became the first Commandant of Auschwitz, the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei” means that works liberates one in the spiritual sense.  Sachsenhausen was a Class 1 camp, where prisoners who worked had a good chance of being released.  After World War II, the Sachsenhausen camp was turned into a Communist prison for German citizens.  The Arbeit Macht Frei sign was removed and the prisoners did not work.  https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/rabbi-explains-the-meaning-of-the-arbeit-macht-frei-slogan/

Airlines are allowed to sell more tickets than seats on the plane, and they routinely overbook flights because some people do not show up.  It's not unusual for airlines to offer travel vouchers to encourage people to give up their seats, and there are no rules for the process.  When an airline demands that a passenger give up a seat, the airline is required to pay double the passenger's one-way fare, up to $675 provided the passenger is put on a flight that arrives within one to two hours of the original.  The compensation rises to four times the ticket price, up to $1,350, for longer delays.  When they bump passengers, airlines are required to give those passengers a written description of their compensation rights.  Last year, United forced 3,765 people off oversold flights and another 62,895 United passengers volunteered to give up their seats, probably in exchange for travel vouchers. That's out of more than 86 million people who boarded a United flight in 2016, according to government figures.  United ranks in the middle of U.S. carriers when it comes to bumping passengers.  ExpressJet, which operates flights under the United Express, American Eagle and Delta Connection names, had the highest rate of bumping passengers last year.  Among the largest carriers, Southwest Airlines had the highest rate, followed by JetBlue Airways.  https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2017/04/11/twitter-slogans-late-night-talk-shows-mock-united-overpassenger-dragging-video

United Airlines has released four official statements in response to the backlash against the company since a customer was dragged from an oversold flight April 9, 2017 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.  The first three were from the parent company's CEO, Oscar Munoz.  The fourth was posted on the company's website Thursday after a news conference by the passenger's attorneys.  Find the text of these messages at http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/national-international/article144564399.html

New United Airlines faux slogans proposed in April 2017  "We overbooked but you pay the price," "We Put The Hospital In Hospitality," "We’ll drag you all over the world," "We can re-accommodate you the easy way... or the hard way,"  "Volunteer, or we'll make you volunteer."

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1692  April 14, 2017  On this date in 1912, the British passenger liner RMS Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 23:40 (sank morning of April 15th).  On this date in 1935, a severe dust storm occurred in the Plains States.  It is estimated to have displaced 300 million tons of topsoil from the area.  On this date in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath, by American author John Steinbeck was first published by the Viking Press.  Thought for Today  Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism. - Earl Warren, jurist (1891-1974)

I could have done with my thesaurus because I was beginning to repeat myself . . . The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin, #5 in The Good Thief's Guide series by Chris Ewan

Chris Ewan (born 1976) is a British crime and mystery writer.  He is best known for his "Good Thief" series of travelling adventures featuring Charlie Howard, a thief and author of his own crime series.  Ewan was born in Taunton, Somerset, and lived on the Isle of Man with his family before moving back to Somerset.  Ewan studied American Literature at the University of Nottingham.  His first novel, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam (2007), won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award.  His first and second novels, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam and The Good Thief's Guide to Paris, were shortlisted for the Last Laugh Award for best comic crime fiction.  The audiobook of The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas, read by Simon Vance, was nominated for an Audie Award in 2013.  His latest work in the series is The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin.  The Good Thief's Guides are being developed for TV by 20th Century Fox Studios for ABC.  Ewan's thriller Safe House, set on the Isle of Man, has sold over 500,000 copies  and was shortlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ewan

A ghost village, nestled on the cliffs of Shengshan Island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, sits just 40 miles east of Shanghai, yet seems a world away from the tumult of the planet’s most populous city.  The lush beauty of the abandoned fishing community is almost surreal, as vines conspire to entangle the stone walls of cottages and creep purposefully through open windows.  Shengshan, part of the Shengsi Islands archipelago in Zhejiang province, is now a popular tourist destination and, with its characteristic vernacular architecture, has long been known as a regional fishing hub.  But fishermen and their families are said to have left the ghost village on Shengshan Island in the early 1990s, since access to the larger mainland ports made their livelihood more economical.  The ghostly houses amid this lush, humid landscape are now the preserve of tourists and photographers.  It’s ironic that they may now be visited by more people than ever before, despite the likelihood that their crumbling walls will never again be occupied.  See pictures and link to stories of other abandoned or derelict places at http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015/06/abandoned-fishing-village-shengshan-island-china/

Comedy-mystery is a film genre combining elements of comedy and mystery fiction.  Find a list of comedy-mystery films from 1930 (The Limejuice Mystery or Who Spat in Grandfather's Porridge?) to 2016 (The Nice Guys) at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comedy%E2%80%93mystery_films

Q1:  What is a genre/form term?  How is it different from a subject heading?  A:  Subject headings have traditionally been assigned to describe the content of the work.  Genre/form terms, on the other hand, describe what an item is, not what it is about.  The subject heading Horror films, with appropriate subdivisions, would be assigned to a book about horror films.  A cataloger assigning headings to the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would also use Horror films, but it would be a genre/form term since the movie is a horror film, not a movie about horror films.  Q2:  What is the difference between a form and a genre?  A:  Form is defined as a characteristic of works with a particular format and/or purpose.  A “short” is a particular form, for example, as is “animation.”  Genre refers to categories of works that are characterized by similar plots, themes, settings, situations, and characters.  Examples of genres are westerns and thrillers.  Unlike some other systems, which always make a distinction between genres and forms (e.g., Moving Image Genre/Form Guide (MIGFG)), terms in LCGFT often combine the two.  The terms are based on literary warrant (the existence of a body of works representative of the genres and forms) and standard terminology (the terminology used in literature about the genres and forms).  Read 20-page document from the Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genre_form_faq.pdf

In 1945, Michael Bornstein became one of the youngest prisoners to escape the Auschwitz death camp alive.  It’s a memory he had long tried to forget, and one he refused to speak about for the next 70 years--until now.  But at the urging of his family, Bornstein finally decided to share his story, in a book he and his daughter called “Survivors Club.”  More than one million prisoners died in Auschwitz during World War II, but Bornstein believes he only made it out alive because he was very sick.  Footage taken by Soviet soldiers more than 70 years ago shows Bornstein at just 4 years old as they liberated the camp.  He was carried out by his grandmother and later reunited with surviving members of his family in Poland.  Of the 3,400 Jews living and working in Zarki, Poland before the Holocaust, less than 30 returned, most of them members of Bornstein's family.  http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Holocaust-Survivor-Tells-His-Story-70-Years-Later-416277303.html  See also http://www.slj.com/2017/01/interviews/debbie-bornstein-holinstat-on-survivors-club/  Michael is a graduate of Fordham University in New York and holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics and Analytical Chemistry from the University of Iowa.  http://www.mbornstein.com/about.html

The "Five Eyes" (FVEY) refer to an alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.  These countries are bound by the multilateral UKUSA Agreement for joint cooperation in signals intelligence, military intelligence, and human intelligence.  In recent years, documents of the FVEY have shown that they are intentionally spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on spying.  As the surveillance capabilities of the FVEY continue to increase to keep up to pace with technological advancements, a global surveillance system has been gradually developed to capture the communications of entire populations across national borders.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_under_Five_Eyes_surveillance

From:  Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)  Subject: Write an equation contest  In response to the write-an-equation-contest, readers sent equations for calculating love, peace, wisdom, happiness, health, success, domestic tranquility, and more.  One of the winners: 

Equation for predicting electoral success:

     G x B x A

ES = ---------

       H x I

Where
G = invocations of God
B = current Buzzwords
A = Appeals to worst instincts
H = Hard realities mentioned
I = evidence of Intellect
Note that if either H or I approaches zero, ES becomes infinite. - Richard Kaplan, Farnborough, UK 

2017 Pulitzer Prizes  http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2017

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1691  April 12. 2017  On this date in 1934, Tender Is the Night, a novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, was published.   It was his fourth and final completed novel, and was first published in Scribner's Magazine between January and April 1934 in four issues. The title is taken from the poem "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tender_Is_the_Night  On this date in 1916, children's author Beverly Cleary was born.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Cleary Word of the Day  grandcat noun   (humorous, affectionate)  A cat owned by one's child, having a status comparable to a grandchild. 

A quango or QUANGO, less often QuANGO or QANGO is an abbreviation for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation.  Such terms are used most often in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser degree, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United States, and other English-speaking countries.  As its name suggests, a quango is a hybrid form of organization, with elements of both non-government organizations (NGOs) and public sector bodies.  It is typically an organisation to which a government has devolved power, but which is still partly controlled and/or financed by government bodies.  In the UK, the term quango covers different "arm's-length" government bodies, including "non-departmental public bodies", non-ministerial departments, and executive agencies.  The term "quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation" was created in 1967 by Alan Pifer of the US-based Carnegie Foundation, in an essay on the independence and accountability of public-funded bodies that are incorporated in the private sector.  Pifer's term was shortened to the initialism "QUANGO"--later spelt quango--by Anthony Barker, a British participant during a follow-up conference on the subject.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quango

Selections from "celebrating 20 century, top 100 cartoon list"  90.  Mutt and Jeff by Bud Fisher (1907-1930); the first daily "strip" established the form by running across the page instead of in a box somewhere on the page.  89.  Felix the Cat by Otto Messmer; a visually inventive creation, Felix was the first super star of animation.  85.  Gasoline Alley by Frank King (1918-1946); the characters aged, year by year, and also set the pace for homespun narrative in small town American when small town America was vanishing apace.  84.  Barney Google (July 17, 1922 until DeBeck's death in 1942); one of the first comic strips to extend itself beyond the funnies pages into popular culture at large, inspiring a popular song ("Barney Google with his goo-goo googly eyes") and coining a host of expressions ("sweet mama," "balls afire," "time's a-wastin'," etc.--mostly from the hillbillies).  77.  Caspar Milquetoast by H. T. Webster; one of the first comic strip celebrities to have his name seep into popular culture.  75.  Joe Palooka by Ham Fisher (c. 1935-1950); one of the most popular comic strips in the medium's history, the strip's hero was a role model for young Americans.  55.  Gasoline Alley by Dick Moores (c. 1960-1986); in revitalizing Frank King's classic, Moores proved that a successor can improve upon a creator's achievement.  54.  Li'l Abner by Al Capp (1934-1960); the second strip in the "modern era" (since 1930) to have a political stance, Abner paved the way for all political satire in the last half of the century.  43. Mickey Mouse (comic strip) by Floyd Gottfriedson  (c.1930-c.1950); established the character of The Mouse better than the films.  42.  Dick Tracy by Chester Gould (c. 1930-1953); set the pace for authenticity as well as violence in cops and robbers strips.  41.  Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray (c. 1930-1949); exemplified self-reliance for a Depression-racked country and was perhaps the first nationally distributed strip to overtly assume a "political" stance.  34.  Batman by Bob Kane and Bill Finger; added costumed vigilantism to the comic book canon with the second of the genre's icons.  29. Superman by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster; a creation that was soon so popular that it spawned an entire industry.  17.  Peanuts by Charles Schulz; in visual style, comedic approach, and sheer merchandising, the strip that so changed the face of newspaper comics as to justify our dubbing the last forty years of the comics' first century The Age of Schulz.  16.  Tarzan by Harold Foster; in the Sunday pages particularly, established realistic illustration as a visual standard for serious adventure comics.  10.  Thimble Theatre (Popeye) by E. C. Segar (1929 until Segar's death in 1938); a work of endless comedic invention and visual genius (Popeye's bulging forearms alone convinced us of his fistic prowess).  1.  Pogo by Walt Kelly; at its best, this strip scaled the heights to which the visual-verbal medium of cartooning can aspire by combining vaudevillian comedy and caricature with satirical allegory, creating meaning on two levels at once, each serving the purposes of the other.  http://20centuryicon.blogspot.com/2007/04/celebrating-20-century-top-100-cartoon.html

SELDOM SEEN, SELDOM MENTIONED  Chadwick (Chad) Edison Duncan, "away at college" older brother of high-schooler Jeremy Michael Duncan from Zits comic strip set in central Ohio  http://zitscomics.com/about-the-characters/

Mannerism is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, lasting until about 1580 in Italy, when the Baroque style began to replace it.  Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century.  Stylistically, Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by, and reacting to, the harmonious ideals associated with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and early Michelangelo.  Where High Renaissance art emphasizes proportion, balance, and ideal beauty, Mannerism exaggerates such qualities, often resulting in compositions that are asymmetrical or unnaturally elegant.  The word mannerism derives from the Italian maniera, meaning "style" or "manner".  Read about mannerism in literature, music, architecture and sculpture--plus see many pictures, including The Librarian by Giuseppe Arcimboldo at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerism

Robert Burgess Aldrich (1918–1983) was an American film director, writer and producer.  Aldrich was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, the son of Lora Lawson and newspaper publisher Edward Burgess Aldrich.  He was a grandson of U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and a cousin to Nelson Rockefeller.  He was educated at the Moses Brown School in Providence, and studied economics at the University of Virginia where he also was a letterman on the 1940 football team.  In 1941, he dropped out of college for a minor, $50-a-week clerical job at RKO Radio Pictures.  In doing so, he was also dropped by his family, and lost a potential stake in Chase Bank he would have inherited.  Indeed, it's been said that "No American film director was born as wealthy as Aldrich—and then so thoroughly cut off from family money."  He quickly rose in film production as an assistant director, and worked with Jean Renoir, Abraham Polonsky, Robert Rossen, Joseph Losey and Charlie Chaplin, with the latter as an assistant on Limelight.  He became a television director in the 1950s, directing his first feature film, Big Leaguer, in 1953.  Aldrich soon gained recognition as an auteur filmmaker, depicting his liberal humanist thematic vision in many genres, in films such as Kiss Me Deadly (1955), today a film noir classic, The Big Knife (1955), a cinematic adaptation of Clifford Odets's play about Hollywood as a business, and Attack (1956), a World War II infantry combat film exploring how U.S. Army careerism determined who attacked and who ordered the attack.  During the 1950s, Aldrich directed mostly action stories, including early films like Apache and Vera Cruz; both starred Burt Lancaster, though second-billed to Gary Cooper in Vera Cruz.  In 1959, he was head of the jury at the 9th Berlin International Film Festival.  In the 1960s, he directed several commercially successful films, such as the gothic horror stories What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), featuring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as spiteful sisters and faded child-actresses, the follow-up Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, with Bette Davis as a Southern woman who lives in a mansion and thinks she is going insane (both Joan Crawford and Davis were to appear, but Crawford left the film); The Killing of Sister George (1968); and the hugely popular war film The Dirty Dozen (1967).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aldrich 

More on AUGUSTE ST. GAUDENS $20 1907 HIGH RELIEF $20 MS from a Muse reader:  The link below shows the extremely rare ultra-high relief 1907 coin, which is distinguished by its date being in Roman rather than Arabic numerals.  An absolutely gorgeous coin. 

https://www.ngccoin.com/coin-explorer/st-gaudens-20-1907-1933-pscid-70/1907-high-relief-20-ms-coinid-19135

April 7, 2017  The Little Prince by Antoine Saint Exupéry, originally written in French, has been translated into its 300th language—Hassanya—a North African variant of Arabic, reports Livre Hebdo, citing the Antoine de Saint Exupéry Youth Foundation.  This makes “Le Petit Prince” the world’s most translated book, excluding religious works.  This translation celebrates the 90th anniversary of the aviator and author’s arrival in Cape Juby on the coast of southern Morocco.  Hassanya is the language spoken by Moorish tribes living in Cape Juby, where the author served as an Aéropostale station manager, and where he found great inspiration for his works.  http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/259349/the-little-prince-becomes-worlds-most-translated-book-excluding-religious-works/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 1690  April 10, 2017  On this date in 1872, the first Arbor Day was celebrated in Nebraska.  On this date in 1912, RMS Titanic set sail from Southampton, England on her maiden and only voyage.  Thought for the Day  Joy is the best makeup. - Anne Lamott, writer (b. 10 Apr 1954)