Who Moved My Cheese?  An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, published on September 8, 1998, is a motivational business fable.  The text describes change in one's work and life, and four typical reactions to those changes by two mice and two "Littlepeople", during their hunt for cheese.  A New York Times business bestseller upon release, Who Moved My Cheese? remained on the list for almost five years and spent over 200 weeks on Publishers Weekly's hardcover nonfiction list.  It has sold more than 26 million copies worldwide in 37 languages and remains one of the best-selling business books.  Read summary of book at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F

Patrick Spencer Johnson (1938-2017) was an American physician and author, known for the ValueTales series of children's books, and for his 1998 self-help book Who Moved My Cheese?, which recurred on the New York Times Bestseller list, on the Publishers Weekly Hardcover nonfiction list.  Johnson was the chairman of Spencer Johnson Partners.  Johnson also wrote the book "Yes" or "No":  The Guide to Better Decisions (1992).  He co-authored the One Minute Manager series of books with management writer Ken Blanchard, though each author has added their own books to the series.  Johnson's last book, Out of the Maze, is a sequel to Who Moved My Cheese that references Johnson's struggle with cancer (which ultimately ended with his death in 2017) and was published posthumously in 2018.  Johnson's books have been translated into twenty-six languages.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Johnson_(writer) 

Chinese scientists plan to start the commercial production of their highly salt-tolerant “seawater rice” in China after large scale pilot planting achieved a stable and profitable harvest in 2020.  The research team led by the country’s “Father of Hybrid Rice” Yuan Longping declared.  The scientist group has signed deals with various Chinese localities to sow its brine rice over a total area of 6 million mu (400,000 hectares) of saline and alkaline land this year.  The team is set on increasing the area planted with its salty rice to 100 million mu in eight to 10 years to turn vast tracts of wasteland into a breadbasket.  The researchers cultivated 100,000 mu of the sodium-resistant rice in 10 different spots last year and this yielded more than 400 kilograms per mu in its pilot testing.  Outside China, the team has also already successfully planted the new strain of the grain which is a staple for more than half of the world’s population in the UAE capital of Dubai since 2018, boosting food supplies for local residents, as well as improving its arid ecosystem.  Tang Shihua   https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/chinese-scientists-to-mass-plant-seawater-rice 

Grilled cheese sandwich variants:  Add sausage, sauerkraut, bacon, tomato, or fruit. 

In June 1956 that the Library Services Act (LSA) was passed in Congress; the first federal aid program in US history introduced to support library infrastructures.  The LSA was to provide an annual appropriation of up to $7.5 million per year for five years for the introduction, extension and improvement of rural public library services.  Under the State plan, funds could be used for salaries, books and other library materials, library equipment and operating expenses, but not for purchase of land or new library buildings.  Targeted at communities with limited or no library facilities, the LSA, paradoxically, prohibited the creation of the very facilities, where they were needed most.  In its shortcomings, however, the Act inadvertently contributed significantly to the expansion of library networks thanks to the increased use of mobile libraries.  The constraints of the new funds meant that bookmobiles became the key means of book circulation and the most effective way of expanding the libraries’ reach.  By using public highways for transport and public spaces, from town squares to parking lots as their hubs of library activity, the bookmobiles made possible widespread book circulation without extensive and expensive book circulation infrastructures.  Their proliferation was widely supported and received enthusiastically, so much so that one new avid reader described the bookmobile as “the best thing . . . since they paved the roads.”  Kaya Marczewska  Read extensive article at https://www.full-stop.net/2021/03/01/features/essays/kaja-marczewska/here-comes-the-small-press/

A croft is a fenced or enclosed area of land, usually small and arable, and usually, but not always, with a crofter's dwelling thereon.  A crofter is one who has tenure and use of the land, typically as a tenant farmer, especially in rural areas.  See picture of the Shetland Crofthouse Museum at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croft_(land) 

The haibun is the combination of two poems:  a prose poem and haiku.  The form was popularized by the 17th century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho.  Both the prose poem and haiku typically communicate with each other, though poets employ different strategies for this communication—some doing so subtly, while others are more direct.  The prose poem usually describes a scene or moment in an objective manner.  In other words, the pronoun "I" isn't often used—if at all.  Robert Lee Brewer  Find an example of Brewer’s haibun “1985” at https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/haibun-poems-poetic-form  Read about Matsuo Basho (born in 1644) and see examples of haibun at https://ypn.poetrysociety.org.uk/workshop/youve-written-haiku-now-try-haibun/ 

Amigurumi is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small, stuffed yarn creatures.  The word is a compound of the Japanese words 編み ami, meaning "crocheted or knitted", and 包み kurumi, literally "wrapping", as in 縫い包み nuigurumi "(sewn) stuffed doll".  Amigurumi vary in size and there are no restrictions about size or look.  While the art of amigurumi has been known in Japan for several decades, the craft first started appealing to the masses in other countries, especially in the West, in 2003.  According to the Crochet Guild of America (CGOA), there are earlier records of crocheted or knitted dolls made in China.  Find free amigurimi patterns at https://amigurumi.today/page/2/

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.  Words without thoughts never to heaven go. - Shakespeare, poet and dramatist (23 Apr 1564-1616) 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2355  April 23, 2021