Wednesday, July 11, 2018


In 1954 the characters of a popular comic strip met up with a "Kansas crittur"--the mythological Jayhawk.  "Pogo" was the name of the critically acclaimed strip, drawn by Walt Kelly since 1948.  This satirical cartoon poked fun at American life and politics.  Set in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, it featured a cast of animals with a peculiarly human outlook.  The lead character was Pogo the Possum, whose optimism was countered by the cynicism of Albert the Alligator.  The strip lasted until 1975, and is perhaps best remembered for the oft-repeated line, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."  https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/pogo-comic-strip/15641  long-running (1948–75, plus a 1989–93 revival) Newspaper Comic starring Pogo Possum, Albert Alligator, Churchy La Femme, Miz Beaver and other talking animals in Georgia's Okeefenokee Swamp.  Early versions of Pogo and Albert (alongside a quickly-phased-out human protagonist named Bumbazine) were regulars in Dell's Animal Comics (1941) starting with the very first issue, but it quickly moved to the newspapers, and became one of the all-time comic strip classics.  Creator Walt Kelly, a former Disney animator, filled his strip with dozens—actually, hundreds—of characters, all with distinct personalities, motivations and goals that would frequently collide.  Kelly's ear for dialect and language, in addition to his skill with nonsense poetry, has been compared to Mark Twain and Ogden Nash.  While superficially a silly comic strip about funny animals, it was also a satire about modern times, and frequently delved into politics—so much so that Pogo often found itself the target of criticism and censorship.  In such cases, Kelly often responded in kind; for instance, by placing a paper bag over the head of a controversial character (based on Senator Joseph McCarthy) when a newspaper said that they would drop the strip if his face ever appeared again.  Later, he would write "fluffy bunny" versions of his Sunday strips, featuring rabbit characters engaging in simple slapstick, whose real purpose was to inform the readers that their local newspaper was censoring its comics page.  Charming, clever, occasionally subversive, and surprisingly warm-hearted even at its most vicious, Pogo was The Office of its day . . . if The Office had a much larger cast, the writers of The Colbert Report, the trenchant wit of H. L. Mencken, and the idealism of Jon Stewart.  Its influence on modern cartooning cannot be overestimated.  Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), Berkeley Breathed (Bloom County), Jeff Smith (Bone), Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows), Dana Simpson (Ozy and Millie), and Bill Holbrook (Kevin and Kell) have all cited it as inspiration, as did the late Jim Henson (The Muppet Show).  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicStrip/Pogo

WORDPLAY  *  the tunnel at the end of the light  *  your command is my wish  *  a solution in search of a problem

A legume is a plant or its fruit or seed in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae).  Legumes are grown agriculturally, primarily for their grain seed called pulse, for livestock forage and silage, and as soil-enhancing green manure.  Well-known legumes include alfalfacloverpeasbeanschickpeaslentilslupin beanmesquitecarobsoybeanspeanuts and tamarind.  A legume fruit is a simple dry fruit that develops from a simple carpel and usually dehisces (opens along a seam) on two sides.  A common name for this type of fruit is a pod, although the term "pod" is also applied to a number of other fruit types, such as that of vanilla (a capsule) and of the radish (a silique).  Legumes are notable in that most of them have symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in structures called root nodules.  For that reason, they play a key role in crop rotation.  The term "pulse", as used by the United NationsFood and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is reserved for crops harvested solely for the dry seed.  This excludes green beans and green peas, which are considered vegetable crops.  Also excluded are seeds that are mainly grown for oil extraction (oilseeds like soybeans and peanuts), and seeds which are used exclusively for sowing forage (cloversalfalfa).  However, in common usage, these distinctions are not always clearly made, and many of the varieties used for dried pulses are also used for green vegetables, with their beans in pods while young.  Some Fabaceae, such as Scotch broom and other Genisteae, are leguminous but are usually not called legumes by farmers, who tend to restrict that term to food crops.  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legume

Legumes:  Beans, Peas, and Lentils  WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?  Beans, peas, and lentils are all seeds that grow in pods.  We can tell the difference by their shape.  · Dry Beans are oval or kidney shaped.  There are two main types of dry beans.   Red beans are used in bean burritos, bean tostadas, nachos frijoles, soups, salad bar choice, marinated salads, and main dishes or side dishes, such as vegetarian beans or baked beans.  Red beans include: • Pinto • Pink beans • Light red kidney • Dark red kidney • Red beans • Pea beans • Black beans   White beans are used in soups, salads, salad bar choice, or served as a vegetable.  White beans include: • Navy • Small white • Great northern • Cannellini (white kidney bean) • Garbanzo (chickpeas)   · Peas are round.  Peas are used in side dishes, salads, casseroles, and soups • Black-eyed peas • Whole peas • Split peas are whole peas split in half  · Lentils are flat disks.  Lentils are used in soups • Green • Red • Yellow • Black  https://www.extension.umn.edu/family/health-and-nutrition/toolkits-and-resources/great-trays/docs/legumes-beans-peas-and-lentils.pdf  © 2011, Regents of the University of Minnesota.  All rights reserved.  This tip sheet was developed in conjunction with the Great TraysTM Partnership.

WIy cha'! HaSta! cha yIghuS! 'eH... baH!"  These are the words you hear at the very beginning of the very first "Star Trek" movie--the one from 1979 with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock that was awkwardly called "Star Trek:  The Motion Picture."  They are commands ("Tactical!  Visual!  Stand by on torpedoes!  Ready . . . Fire!") barked out by a member of an aggressive alien species called Klingons.  They were invented on the set with the goal of sounding otherworldly and menacing, just like the warmongering race they belonged to.  But since then, from just a few words that were little more than gibberish, the Klingon language has become the most widely spoken fictional language in the world, according to the Guinness World Records.  It was developed by Marc Okrand, a linguist hired to invent more Klingon words for "Star Trek 3," which featured the aliens prominently.  "The producers wanted it to sound like a real language, and I thought that to make it sound like a real language, it had to be one," he said in a phone interview.  "But I had never created a language before.  So I went back to the 'Motion Picture' and there were maybe eight lines of Klingon in the whole movie.  I wrote down the words as best I could to make a list of the different sounds and the different syllable types.  That was the start, and I built from that."  "The Klingon Dictionary," was first published in 1985.  The first part explains the grammar, and the second part is a Klingon-English bilingual dictionary.  "That was actually harder than describing the grammar, because I had to decide what words to actually invent.  I decided to not make up any words having anything to do with Klingon geography or Klingon culture.  I know it sounds strange to have a dictionary about Klingon that doesn't deal with that aspect, but the reason is because I'm not a writer, I don't write the stories or the movies and I didn't want to make something up that down the road would turn out wrong because of a TV episode or a movie. So I would let writers make up the culture, and come back afterward to say 'This is how you call it.'  Not the other way around."  Although the book has sold over 250,000 copies since publication, it didn't immediately create a following of Klingon language learners.  That started brewing, Okrand said, in the mid-1990s.  Klingon's popularity is still rising:  It is, after all, "the fastest growing language in the galaxy," according to the KLI's website--and the latest series, "Star Trek:  Discovery," heavily features Klingons, offering long scenes of uninterrupted Klingon dialogue (also available with Klingon subtitles on Netflix outside the US).  Last year, Duolingo, a language learning platform, launched a Klingon course that currently attracts around 100,000 learners.  Today, the Klingon Language Institute has about 5,000 guest (or free) members and about 300 full (or paid) members, and their 25th annual gathering--or qep'a' cha'maH vaghDIch--takes place in Indianapolis on July 19 to 21, 2018.  Jacopo Prisco  Read more, see graphics, and link to videos at https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/star-trek-klingon-marc-okrand/index.html

Pork Schnitzel with Cucumber Salad by The Editors of Food & Wine  serves 4  time  45 minutes total  It takes only five minutes to cook pork cutlets into perfect schnitzel.  With only a handful of ingredients, a crisp and bright salad of cucumbers with dill and yogurt is a simple accompaniment to the meal.  Reprinted with permission from Dinner Special: 185 Recipes for a Great Meal Any Night of the Week by  the editors of Food & Wine.  Copyright 2018 Oxmoor House

The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football franchise based in the Phoenix metropolitan area.  The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West division.  The Cardinals were founded as the Morgan Athletic Club in 1898, and are the oldest continuously run professional football team in the United States.  The Cardinals play their home games at the University of Phoenix Stadium, which is located in the northwestern suburb of Glendale, Arizona.  The team was established in Chicago in 1898 and joined the NFL as a charter member on September 17, 1920.  Along with the Chicago Bears, the club is one of two NFL charter member franchises still in operation since the league's founding.  (The Green Bay Packers were an independent team until they joined the NFL in 1921.)  The club then moved to St. Louis in 1960 and played in that city through 1987 (sometimes referred to as the "Football Cardinals" or the "Big Red" to avoid confusion with the Major League Baseball St. Louis Cardinals.  The franchise has won two NFL championships, both while it was based in Chicago.  The first occurred in 1925, but is the subject of controversy, with supporters of the Pottsville Maroons believing that Pottsville should have won the title.  Their second title, and the first to be won in a championship game, came in 1947, nearly two decades before the first Super Bowl.  They returned to the title game to defend in 1948, but lost the rematch 7–0 in a snowstorm in Philadelphia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Cardinals

IHOP has conceded that its "name change" to IHOb was a marketing ploy "to promote our new burgers."  Over the course of the last month, IHOP changed its Twitter logo, name and other identifying features to "IHOb" to fake out the world that it was dropping the "pancakes" from its name for "burgers."  People on social media ate the June 11 announcement for breakfast, and IHOP managed to keep quiet until confirming the name change was marketing ploy with a July 10, 2018 tweet.  Benjamin Raven  https://www.mlive.com/news/us-world/index.ssf/2018/07/ihop_finally_admits_that_whole.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1917  July 11, 2018  Word of the Day  acquis  noun   Short for acquis communautaire.  The accumulated legislationlegal acts, and court decisions which constitute the total body of European Union law.  The accumulated legislation and decisions of any international community.  The first session of the European Parliament after it became a directly elected body was held on this day in 1979.  The Parliament exercises the lawmaking function of the European Union, and thus contributes towards the EU’s acquis.

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