Prior to 1864, commercial coffee roasting didn’t really exist in the United States. Households would buy raw beans and roast them at home, most often in a cast-iron skillet on a stovetop or over a fire.  It was a difficult process, and inexperienced roasters would often be left with bitter and scorched coffee to drink.  C.C. Warren of Toledo, Ohio began roasting in a friend’s barn (which at one point caught fire during his experimentation process), and in 1864, he trademarked Lion Coffee, leading him to be one of the first to roast coffee at a commercial level and hold one of the oldest trademarks in the U.S.  Alvin Woolson of the Woolson Spice Company, another local aromatic venture, purchased Lion Coffee in 1872. Originally located on the corner of Jackson and Huron streets, by 1911, the factory had expanded and moved by the river on North Summit Street.  The Woolson Spice Company sold spices and other dried goods, but Lion Coffee quickly became their signature brand.  Woolson was determined to turn Lion Coffee into a household name, and ultimately revolutionized the coffee industry in two ways. First, he introduced the idea of selling roasted coffee in one-pound packages.  This streamlined the purchasing process, as selling already roasted and weighed coffee standardized the quality of coffee that customers would receive.  He also introduced the idea of premiums as an incentive to purchase the coffee.  Each bag of Lion coffee included a picture card, and customers could cut images of the iconic lion’s head from packages and send them back to the company for prizes. Woolson vice president N.L. Schmid remembered, “when the incoming mail was so heavy that we had to send our own truck to the post office to pick it up.” Eventually, the company had to weigh the mail they received, rather than counting each individual lion head, a method that the USPS soon adopted for dealing with bulk mail.”  Lion Coffee was sold all over the country.  For several decades in the early 20th century, Woolson supplied almost all of the coffee consumed in the United States, with its only true competitor being the Arbuckle Company of Pittsburgh.  When Woolson retired in 1897, the building housed 48 roasters and produced almost 454,000 bags annually.  JULIA CONTI and TIFFANY WANG  See pictures at https://www.midstory.org/how-toledo-ohio-revolutionized-the-coffee-industry/   

Lumpia are fried spring rolls that are found in Filipino and Indonesian cuisines. The rolls traditionally feature a thin pastry skin (a.k.a. a lumpia wrapper) and are often stuffed with a savory mixture of ground pork and vegetables.  Make it a meal by pairing your lumpia with Garlic Fried Rice or serving it as an appetizer for a traditional Filipino main dish, such as Caldereta.  Allow the rolls to cool, then transfer the leftovers to an airtight container or wrap them tightly in foil.  Store the lumpia in the refrigerator for up to four days.  It's best to freeze the lumpia before you fry it.  total time:  1 hrs 10 mins  servings:  15  Serve lumpia as a side dish or appetizer with a sweet chili dipping sauce.  LILQTPINAY23  https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/35151/traditional-filipino-lumpia/   

Tiger's eye (also called tiger eye) is a chatoyant gemstone that is usually a metamorphic rock with a golden to red-brown colour and a silky lustre.  As members of the quartz group, tiger's eye and the related blue-coloured mineral hawk's eye gain their silky, lustrous appearance from the parallel intergrowth of quartz crystals and altered amphibole fibres that have mostly turned into limonite.  Tiger iron is mined primarily in South Africa and Western Australia. Serpentine deposits in the US states of Arizona and California can have chatoyant bands of chrysotile, a form of asbestos, fibres.  These have been cut and sold as "Arizona tiger-eye" and "California tiger's eye" gemstones.  Roman soldiers wore engraved tigers eye to protect them in battle.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger%27s_eye   

The Tiger's Eye: A Jungle Fairy Tale is a short story by L. Frank Baum, famous as the creator of the Land of Oz.  The story was unpublished in its own era, but has attracted significant attention since its belated publication in 1962.  Baum wrote the story most likely in 1905, to conclude his series of Animal Fairy Tales.  The nine stories in that collection first appeared in nine consecutive issues of The Delineator, a popular women's magazine of the day, in 1905.  "The Tiger's Eye," however, was not printed in the magazine, "probably because it was considered too frightening for small children."  "Baum indicated in a letter" that the story "was intended to be the tenth of the Animal Fairy Tales in a planned book edition," but such an edition was not published until 1969, five decades after Baum's death.  "The Tiger's Eye" was "Perhaps . . . too strong meat for the taste of its day . . . "  It did not appear in print until it was included in a special L. Frank Baum issue of The American Book Collector.  The story was printed again in The Baum Bugle in 1979.  As one of Baum's "most powerful" short works, "a genuine horror story," the "unrelieved morbid terror" of "The Tiger's Eye" makes it unlike anything else in Baum's literary canon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tiger%27s_Eye

An atmospheric river is a plume of moisture that helps carry saturated air from the tropics to higher latitudes, delivering unrelenting rain or snow.  Think of it as a fire hose that aims at--then drenches--a particular region.  Typically 250 to 375 miles wide, atmospheric rivers can stretch more than a thousand miles long, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says.  In the western US, they account for 30% to 50% of annual precipitation.  While atmospheric rivers are an incredibly important source of rainfall, they can also bring flash flooding, mudslides and landslides, sometimes killing people and destroying property.  Ten or more atmospheric rivers can be happening at once across the globe.  A well-known and strong one is the Pineapple Express, with moisture transported from the tropical Pacific around Hawaii to the US and Canadian West Coasts.  The eastern half of the US also experiences atmospheric rivers, with moisture pulled from the Gulf of Mexico.  “Atmospheric rivers are more frequent on the East Coast than they are on the West Coast,” said Jason Cordeira, associate professor of meteorology at Plymouth State University.  “They’re just not as impactful and don’t usually produce as much rainfall.”  Jennifer Gray  https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/09/weather/what-is-an-atmospheric-river-xpn/index.html    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2651  March 31, 2023 

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 

Sometimes you need gas.  Sometimes you need a dentist.  Sometimes you need to wash your dog.  Sometimes you need a movie theater.  Sometimes you need a haircut.  Sometimes you need a museum.  Rarely do you need all of these things at once.  But in case you ever do, there is a place for one-stop shopping:  the Iowa 80 World’s Largest Truckstop, otherwise known as “Trucker’s Disneyland.”  Perched on a massive expanse of 225 acres about three hours west of Chicago off of Interstate 80—America’s second-longest highway, which extends 2,900 miles from San Francisco to New Jersey—the sheer size of the truck stop is mind-boggling. You could fit 170 football fields within its grounds.  It's currently six times the size of the Pentagon building, and has expanded dozens of times since opening in 1964.  Jay Gentile  https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/iowa-80-truck-stop-truckers-disneyland   

short twentieth century proper noun ( history, specifically) The period between 1914 and 1991, from the beginning of World War I to the fall of the Soviet Union.  short twentieth century noun (history, generally) Any period of years defined by significant historical events falling within the 20th century (1 January 1901 to 31 December 2000).  Wiktionary 

How To Create a Magical Moon Garden in Your Backyard by Sheryl Normandeau   Celebrate moonlit nights by relaxing in your very own Moon Garden, planted specifically to show off the lunar glow!  A Moon Garden is an oasis you create, whose design features plants with white flowers and silver foliage, as well as highly fragrant blossoms, and plants with blooms that open only at night.  Find tips at https://www.farmersalmanac.com/moon-garden

Plantains are a confusing fruit . . . or are they a vegetable?  Well, as Garden Guides reported, this banana look-alike is technically a fruit, but unlike the banana it so closely resembles, the plantain tends to be used in more vegetable-like ways, meaning it is primarily a component of savory dishes.  This is probably because although it looks almost exactly like a banana, the plantain has a very different flavor and isn't nearly as sweet.  Susan Olayinka and Tasting Table staff   cook time 14 minutes, servings 4   https://www.tastingtable.com/658409/easy-fried-plantains-recipe/   

Mar. 4, 2023  Founded in 1838, Green-Wood is the largest and most famous cemetery in Brooklyn.  Its residents include Boss Tweed, Samuel Morse, Leonard Bernstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pop Smoke, and more than half a million others.  An increasing number of Green-Wood’s customers are requesting “green” burials, which use biodegradable caskets, or no caskets at all, and no embalming.  To limit equipment and fertilizer use, and to increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, the staff is allowing nearly fifty acres of Green-Wood to turn to meadow.  Eric Lach  https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/greening-the-burial-of-the-dead-in-brooklyn   

In sports, the terms Cinderella, "Cinderella story", and Cinderella team are used to refer to situations in which competitors achieve far greater success than would reasonably have been best expected.  Cinderella stories tend to gain much media and fan attention as they move closer to the tournament final game. The term comes from the well-known European folk tale of Cinderella, which embodies a myth-element of unjust oppression and triumphant reward, when the title character's life of poverty is suddenly changed to one of remarkable fortune.  In a sporting context the term has been used at least since 1939, but came into widespread usage in 1950, when the Disney movie was released that year, and in reference to City College of New York, the unexpected winners of the NCAA Men's Basketball championship also that year.  The term was used by Bill Murray in the 1980 movie Caddyshack where he pretends as the announcer to his own golf fantasy:  "Cinderella story.  Outta nowhere.  A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion."  Referring somewhat inaccurately to the plot details of the classic Cinderella story, the media will debate whether the given "Cinderella" team or player will "turn into a pumpkin", i.e. fail to win the prize and then return to its former obscurity.  In the fairy tale, it was the carriage that turned into a pumpkin at midnight, not Cinderella herself.  Another popular term is "strike midnight", when a Cinderella team does finally get beaten.  Prior to the widespread use of Cinderella in this way, the more common term for unexpected and dramatic success was Miracle, as in the "Miracle Braves" of 1914, the "Miracle on Grass" in 1950, the "Miracle of Coogan's Bluff" in 1951, the "Miracle Mets" of 1969, and the "Miracle on Ice" in 1980.  Cinderella teams are also referred to as a surprise package or surprise packet, and their success would be termed a fairy-tale run.  A related concept is the giant-killer, which refers to a lesser competitor who defeats a favorite, reflecting the story of David and Goliath.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_(sports)#cite_note-4   

Gordon Earle Moore (1929–March 24, 2023) was an American businessman, engineer, and the co-founder and emeritus chairman of Intel Corporation.  He proposed Moore's law, the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.  In 2009, Moore was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.  He was awarded the 2010 Dan David Prize for his work in the areas of Computers and Telecommunications.  The library at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge is named after him and his wife Betty, as are the Moore Laboratories building (dedicated 1996) at Caltech and the Gordon and Betty Moore Materials Research Building at Stanford.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Moore#Scientific_career

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2649  March 27, 2023

Feb. 27, 2023  A collection of newly rediscovered short stories by Terry Pratchett, originally written under a pseudonym, are to be published later this year.  The 20 tales in A Stroke of the Pen:  The Lost Stories were written by Pratchett in the 1970s and 1980s for a regional newspaper, mostly under the pseudonym Patrick Kearns.  They have never been previously attributed to Pratchett, who died in 2015 aged 66.  The collection was bought by Pratchett’s longtime publisher Transworld for a six-figure sum, and will be published on 5 October, 2023.  Sarah Shaffi   https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/27/rediscovered-terry-pratchett-stories-to-be-published   

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.  J. R. R. Tolkien  https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/gold.html

Invest in our planet and celebrate Earth Day on April 22, 2023.  Find ideas at https://www.earthday.org/earth-day-2023/   

Romanesco broccoli (also known as broccolo romanesco, romanesque cauliflower, romanesco or broccoflower) is an edible flower bud of the species Brassica oleracea, which also includes regular broccoli and cauliflower.  It is chartreuse in color, and has a form naturally approximating a fractal.  Romanesco broccoli has a nutty flavor and a firmer texture than regular broccoli when cooked.  Nutritionally, romanesco is rich in vitamin C, vitamin K, dietary fiber, and carotenoids.   See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanesco_broccoli#Description   

Only the Beginning by William Mangold, M. Masonpierre, and Brendan Gill  May 22, 1953  We present for your edification the history of Scrabble, the biggest thing in games since Monopoly and maybe the biggest thing ever.  We will say no more about the nature of the game than that it is played with a hundred lettered and numbered counters on a small square board and mingles the pleasures of anagrams and crossword puzzles.  It is the brain child of a local architect named Alfred Butts, who told us that he invented the game during the depression, when, being out of work, he was casting about for some way to pick up a dollar.  “I guess I’ll invent a game,” he said to himself, just like that, and he did, only not just like that.  He was back working at architecture before he had the game well roughed out, and it wasn’t until 1935 that it reached something very like its present form.  What it lacked most was a catchy name.  Butts tried to peddle it to various manufacturers and jobbers of games, but without success.  Meanwhile, he made and sold a few sets on his own, and he and his wife and their friends played the game constantly.  The Scrabble boards were made for them by Selchow & Righter, of 200 Fifth Avenue, one of the biggest game manufacturers in the country, whose special pride is Parcheesi, which is probably the oldest trademarked game (1874) in existence.  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1953/05/30/only-the-beginning   

March 2, 2023  Recorded rat sightings in New York are at an all-time high.  In December, 2022, Mayor Eric Adams posted, with great fanfare, a job announcement:  The city was looking for a “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty” candidate to take on the newly restored position of rat czar.  Yet, three months later, the position still hasn’t been filled.  A few weeks ago, the mayor himself had to pay a $300 fine for failing to control rats at a rowhouse he rents out to tenants.  Over the past half century, changes in climate and the way New Yorkers dispose of their trash have given the rat population an unprecedented opportunity to boom, an increase unabated by man and undeterred by politics.  After 1893, when electric trolleys replaced horse-drawn ones, rats had to leave the stables where they’d snacked on grain and turned more often toward human residences.  They eventually flocked to Rikers Island, which the city had begun using as a dump in 1894.  Later, a prison farm opened on the island.  Rats devoured the prison farm’s vegetables, pigs, and other livestock.  At one time, more than 1 million rats were estimated to be living on the island.  By the 1930s, the rats had begun to swim to other parts of New York, including the suburbs of Long Island, and serious exterminating measures were finally undertaken.  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/new-york-city-rat-infestation-politics/673250/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2648  March 24, 2023

 

Gold has many uses in the production of glass.  The most basic use in glassmaking is that of a pigment.  A small amount of gold, if suspended in the glass when it is annealed, will produce a rich ruby color.  Gold is also used when making specialty glass for climate-controlled buildings and cases.  A small amount of gold dispersed within the glass or coated onto the glass surface will reflect solar radiation outward, helping the buildings stay cool in the summer, and reflect internal heat inward, helping them stay warm in winter.  Hobart M. King  https://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml   

ROBERT L. AND POSY HUEBNER COLLECTION by Nancy Eames, Youth Services Coordinator  It’s almost impossible to imagine Dr. Seuss books without the vibrant illustrations, or Frog and Toad’s tales of friendship without Arnold Lobel’s whimsical drawings, or the story of Rosa Parks without Wil Clay’s nuanced paintings.  As a dedicated educator and art aficionado, Rose Ann “Posy” Huebner was so enthusiastic about the role of art in children’s literature that she and her husband co-founded the Robert L. Huebner and Posy Huebner Collection at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library.  Originally unveiled with 13 pieces, the collection has grown to more than 240 significant works of original art by illustrators of children’s literature that celebrate the power of art to connect and engage children with stories.  It is one of the largest collections of original art from children’s books housed in a public library, with the collection rotating between Main Library and 10 (soon to be 12) branch locations and ongoing support from the Library Legacy Foundation.  See pictures including Cat, What is That?, Pleasant Fieldmouse, and Frog and Toad Together at https://www.toledolibrary.org/blog/huebner-collection   Off the Shelf Winter 2023

Wil Clay (1938-2011) illustrated at least 10 books for young people, including A Biography of George Washington Carver, Little John Eight, which received the Coretta Scott King Honor Award, and Tailypo, which received several honors.  The latter two were collaborations with Jan Wahl, a writer of children's books based in the Toledo area.  They met in 1989 when Mr. Wahl proposed they work together.  He introduced Mr. Clay to the world of illustrating children's books.  Mr. Clay "was such an animated and full-of-life author-illustrator-storyteller that he just brought smiles to children's faces through his work," said Benjamin Sapp, director of the Mazza Museum at the University of Findlay, which features art from children's picture books and has Tailypo in its collection.  Mark Zaborney  https://www.toledoblade.com/news/deaths/2011/01/19/wil-clay-1938-2011-painter-sculptor-renowned-as-book-illustrator/stories/201101190037 

Former President Thomas Jefferson considered the proposal “little short of madness.”  The project became known as “Clinton’s Folly”—an embarrassment to the state of New York and its governor, DeWitt Clinton.  Yet shortly after the locks opened in 1825, completing a man-made waterway that connected the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, the critics were silenced, and the Erie Canal, one of the greatest engineering marvels in history, charted America’s course from colonial start-up to global superpower.  Nick Yetto  See pictures at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/brief-history-erie-canal-180981546/ 

Watching thousands of baby puffins being tossed off a cliff is perfectly normal for the people of Iceland's Westman Islands.  This yearly tradition is what's known as "puffling season" and the practice is a crucial, life-saving endeavor.  The chicks of Atlantic puffins, or pufflings, hatch in burrows on high sea cliffs.  When they're ready to fledge, they fly from their colony and spend several years at sea until they return to land to breed, according to Audubon Project Puffin.  Halisia Hubbard  See many pictures at https://www.npr.org/2022/09/26/1124759293/puffling-season-iceland   

On March 24, 1882, Dr. Robert Koch announced the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes tuberculosis (TB).  During this time, TB killed one out of every seven people living in the United States and Europe.  Dr. Koch’s discovery was the most important step taken toward the control and elimination of this deadly disease.  A century later, March 24 was designated World TB Day:  a day to educate the public about the impact of TB around the world.  Johann Schonlein coined the term “tuberculosis” in the 1834, though it is estimated that Mycobacterium tuberculosis may have been around as long as 3 million years!  Tuberculosis (TB) was called “phthisis” in ancient Greece, “tabes” in ancient Rome, and “schachepheth” in ancient Hebrew.  In the 1700s, TB was called “the white plague” due to the paleness of the patients.  TB was commonly called “consumption” in the 1800s even after Schonlein named it tuberculosis.  https://www.cdc.gov/tb/worldtbday/history.htm   See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_plague  

March 22 is designated by the United Nations as World Water Day, which focuses on the importance of fresh water and the sustainable management of freshwater resources.  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2647  March 22, 2023