EXAMPLE OF WEBSITE FOR LIBRARY BOOK GROUPS:  County of San Luis Obispo    https://www.slolibrary.org/index.php/adults/book-groups

Esker, also spelled eskar, or eschar, is a long, narrow, winding ridge composed of stratified sand and gravel deposited by a subglacial or englacial meltwater stream.  Eskers may range from 16 to 160 feet (5 to 50 m) in height, from 160 to 1,600 feet (500 m) in width, and a few hundred feet to tens of miles in length.  They may occur unbroken or as detached segments.  Eskers are considered to be channel deposits (left by streams that flowed through tunnels in and below the ice) that were let down onto the ground surface as the glacier retreated.  https://www.britannica.com/science/esker

Why Archaeologists Are Brewing Ancient Beers--scientists are partnering with brewers to taste test ancient recipes and sip a long-lost past by Sara Toth Stub  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/first-beer-in-history 

Michael J. Rosen is the creator of a wide variety of more than 150 books for both adults and young readers.  He is a poet, editor, writer of fiction and non-fiction, humorist, illustrator, ceramic artist, and playwright . . . and companion animal to a cattle dog named Chant.  Rosen’s wide range of books for young readers include A Tale of Rescue, Chanukah Lights, a poetic collaboration with pop-up master Robert Sabuda (Candlewick); Our Farm:  Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family’s Farm (Darby Creek/Lerner), a 144-page oral history of an Ohio farm family that he photo-chronicled and supplemented with sidebars of local- and natural history; and Running with Trains, a novel in poetry and two voices (Wordsong/Boyds Mills), set in 1969 that interweaves the lives of a boy commuting between cities on the B&O Railroad and a farm boy whose land the railroad crosses.  Many of his books engage his degree in zoology and his passion for nature and the creatures who share this world.  For the last 22 years, he’s lived on 100 forested acres in the foothills of the Appalachians, east of Columbus, Ohio, where he spent most of his life.  Workman published three volumes of hefty information: his comprehensive, go-to handbook, My Dog!  A Kids’ Guide to Keeping a Happy, Healthy Dog; his eco-wise guide to freshwater fishing, Kids’ Book of Fishing; and The 60-Second Encyclopedia, a witty fact- and math-packed compendium of minute-measurements that come from nearly every subject area.  Candlewick published four volumes of haiku with natural-history endnotes on birds, on cats, on dogs, and on horses.  Fifteen of his books including SPEAK!, Down to Earth, and The Greatest Table (Harcourt), and Home (HarperCollins) were created with the generosity of hundreds of the country’s best-known illustrators, photographers, authors, and cartoonists as creative philanthropy.  Along with several adult books, profits from these collections benefitted Share Our Strength’s work to end childhood hunger and a granting program Rosen created, The Company of Animals Fund, that awarded over $375,000 to 100 animal-welfare organizations.  Among the many distinguished awards and citations his work has received are:  The Sydney Taylor Book Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries for Chanukah Lights. (Candlewick), the inaugural Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance Once Upon a World Book Award for the best children’s book that promotes diversity and tolerance for A School for Pompey Walker. (Harcourt), and The Ohioana Library Career Citation awarded by the state of Ohio.  Several of his books have been Junior Library Guild featured selections and Scholastic Book Club picks, while others have been featured as “Best Books of the Year” by Kirkus, CCBC, Bank Street Books, Hungry Mind Review, Essence, The Today Show, The Horn Book, Miami Herald, and the ASPCA.  His works have been adapted as a PBS documentary (Our Farm:  Four Seasons with Five Kids on One Family Farm); a family opera (composer Robert Kapilow’s Elijah’s Angel); and a short film (director Christopher Rowley’s The Remembering Movies).  Michael has also actively worked in professional development, writers’ residencies, curriculum development, and creative-writing workshops with readers, writers, and teachers for over 40 years, including 20 years as program director of the Thurber House, a literary center in Columbus, Ohio.  https://michaeljrosen.com/about

Michael Arlen (1895 in Ruse, Bulgaria–1956 in New York City), born Dikran Kouyoumdjian was a British essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter of Armenian origin, who had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England.  Arlen is most famous for his satirical romances set in English smart society, but he also wrote gothic horror and psychological thrillers, for instance "The Gentleman from America", which was filmed in 1956 as a television episode for Alfred Hitchcock's TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  Near the end of his life, Arlen mainly occupied himself with political writing.  Arlen's vivid but colloquial style "with unusual inversions and inflections with a heightened exotic pitch" came to be known as 'Arlenesque'.  His works became an inspiration for famous Hollywood movies such as A Woman of Affairs (1928), starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert; The Golden Arrow (1936), starring Bette Davis; and The Heavenly Body (1944), starring William Powell and Hedy Lamarr.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Arlen

Bog Butter  Unearthed after centuries in peat bogs, these blocks of aged dairy have an incredibly funky flavor.  What exactly is bog butter?  In the majority of cases, it’s exactly what it sounds like:  cow’s milk butter that was buried in the peat bogs of Ireland or Scotland.  It can also describe beef tallow that was buried in a similar manner.  https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/bog-butter-ireland-scotland

As an important American city, New Orleans enjoys some world class museums.  The National World War II Museum is as impressive a venue as you'll find anywhere, and the New Orleans Museum of Art holds its own on a national stage.  This being New Orleans, though, there are some wonderfully quirky options as well.  The Museum of Death and The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum both fit the city's character in their own way, while the Backstreet Cultural Museum celebrates culture that could only have evolved in a city like this.  See descriptions and wonderful pictures at https://www.cntraveler.com/gallery/best-museums-in-new-orleans

Samuel Guy Endore (1901–1970), born Samuel Goldstein and also known as Harry Relis, was an American novelist and screenwriter.  During his career he produced a wide array of novels, screenplays, and pamphlets, both published and unpublished.  A cult favorite of fans of horror, he is best known for his novel The Werewolf of Paris (1933), which occupies a significant position in werewolf literature.  Endore is also known for his left-wing novel of the Haitian Revolution, Babouk: The Story of A Slave.  He was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar for The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), and his novel Methinks the Lady . . . (1946) was the basis for Ben Hecht's screenplay for Whirlpool (1949).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Endore 

Amanda Gordon will be reciting at the Super Bowl pre-show on February  7, 2021 before the Kansas City Chiefs play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  Gorman could reach far more Americans through her appearance at the Super Bowl than she did during Inauguration Day:  viewership for the football game in 2020 peaked at 99.9 million—by contrast, President Biden's inauguration—which was one of the most-watched in American history—drew 33.8 million viewers.  Her new poem will honor three Americans—Los Angeles educator Trimaine Davis, Florida nurse manager Suzie Dorner and Pittsburgh-based James Martin, a Marine veteran who volunteers with the Wounded Warrior Project and who has taken in local kids facing issues at home—for their work during the coronavirus pandemic.  The three have also been named honorary captains for the Super Bowl by the NFL.  She also nabbed a modeling contract with one of the world's top modeling agencies, IMG (as did Vice President Harris' stepdaughter Ella Emhoff).  Anastasia Tsioulcas  https://www.npr.org/2021/01/29/962030186/amanda-gorman-and-poetry-will-be-part-of-super-bowl-lv 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2320  February 1, 2021