To build the weekend home of their dreams on their property near Dillsboro, Ind., Jerry Kathman and Liz Grubow turned to unlikely collaborator:  a theater and opera-set designer.  The couple wanted their second home to be a dacha, in homage to Grubow’s Ukrainian and Russian roots.  They were inspired by the intricate dachas designed in Russia’s late imperial period, and more specifically, the abandoned dacha made famous in the 1965 film “Dr. Zhivago.”  They asked their friend, Cincinnati-based theater and stage designer Paul Shortt, to do the design.  It took three years to complete construction of the 4,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, four-bathroom house in 2022, at a cost of $2.9 million—with the help of architect Mark Gunther and local artisans.  “We wanted a place where we could bring 50 to 60 people to listen to music,” says Grubow, who is also chair of the board of trustees at the Cincinnati Opera.  Their primary home, an 1830s townhouse in Covington, Ky., is just across the river from Cincinnati’s downtown and is less than an hour’s drive away from the dacha in Indiana.  The Indiana property has been in their family since 1994, when Kathman paid $60,000 for 80 acres and a modest cabin, but it took more than two decades to make the final call to build.  By that time, the couple had acquired 120 more acres.  Their two children had grown up staying in the family cabin, which is now a separate, renovated guesthouse with an additional bedroom.  The modern home uses geothermal heat to create warmth under the poured-concrete flooring.  The couple also kept the interior décor modern, with a series of interior glass panels, understated furniture and dark stone.  Alina Dizik  https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/what-is-a-dacha-doing-in-rural-indiana-66283486    

DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.  The DASH diet is a healthy-eating plan designed to help prevent or treat high blood pressure, also called hypertension.  It also may help lower cholesterol linked to heart disease, called low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol.  High blood pressure and high LDL cholesterol levels are two major risk factors for heart disease and stroke.  Foods in the DASH diet are rich in the minerals potassium, calcium and magnesium.  The DASH diet focuses on vegetables, fruits and whole grains.  It includes fat-free or low-fat dairy products, fish, poultry, beans and nuts.  The diet limits foods that are high in salt, also called sodium.  It also limits added sugar and saturated fat, such as in fatty meats and full-fat dairy products.  https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/dash-diet/art-20048456#:~:text=The%20DASH%20diet%20focuses%20on,and%20full%2Dfat%20dairy%20products.   

A hex key (also, hex wrench, Allen key and Allen wrench or Inbus) is a simple driver for bolts or screws that have heads with internal hexagonal recesses (sockets).  Hex keys are formed from a single piece of hard hexagonal steel rod, having blunt ends that fit snugly into similarly-shaped screw sockets.  The rods are bent to 90º, forming two arms of unequal length resembling an "L".  The tool is usually held and twisted by its long arm, creating a relatively large torque at the tip of the short arm; it can also be held by its short arm to access screws in difficult-to-reach locations and to turn screws faster at the expense of torque.  Hex keys are designated with a socket size and are manufactured with tight tolerances.  As such, they are commonly sold in kits that include a variety of sizes.  Key length typically increases with size but not necessarily proportionally so.  Variants on this design have the short end inserted in a transverse handle, which may contain multiple keys of varying sizes that can be folded into the handle when not in use.  While often used in generic terms for "hex key", the "Allen" name is a registered trademark (circa 1910) of the Allen Manufacturing Company (now Apex Tool Group) of Hartford, Connecticut; regardless, "Allen key" and "Allen wrench" are often seen as generic trademarks.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_key    

Margery Williams was born in London on July 22, 1881, and died September 4, 1944, in New York City.   Though she published twenty-seven books, including five translations of works from French and Norwegian, and though she won the John Newbery Honor Medal for her novel Winterbound (1936) in 1937, she is primarily known today as the author of The Velveteen Rabbit.   Lisa Rowe Fraustino  https://lithub.com/more-than-a-childrens-story-the-velveteen-rabbit-at-100/   

Edvard Munch:  Trembling Earth (June 10, 2023–October 15, 2023) is the first exhibition in the United States to consider how the noted Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) employed nature to convey meaning in his art.  Munch is regarded primarily as a figure painter, and his most celebrated images (including The Scream) are connected to themes of love, anxiety, longing, and death.  Yet, landscape plays an essential role in a large portion of Munch’s work.  The exhibition is organized thematically to show how Munch used nature to convey human emotions and relationships, celebrate farming practice and garden cultivation, and explore the mysteries of the forest even as his Norwegian homeland faced industrialization.  Trembling Earth features over seventy-five objects, ranging from brilliantly hued landscapes and three stunning self-portraits, to an extensive selection of his innovative prints and drawings, including a lithograph of Munch's most celebrated work, The Scream.  The exhibition includes more than thirty works from the Munchmuseet’s world-renowned collection, major pieces from other museums in the USA and Europe, and nearly forty paintings and prints from private collections, many of which are rarely exhibited.  Find venues and dates at https://www.clarkart.edu/exhibition/detail/edvard-munch-trembling-earth

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (famously written in a single day) is published in The New Yorker (June 26, 1948) • Sylvia Beach hosts a dinner party so that F. Scott Fitzgerald can meet James Joyce (June 27, 1928) • Alice Liddell Hargreaves, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice (in Wonderland), meets Peter Llewelyn Davies, the real-life inspiration for J.M. Barrie’s Peter (Pan), in a London bookshop.  (June 28, 1932) • The Globe Theater burns down during a performance of Henry VIII (June 29, 1613) • Arthur Miller's play All My Sons opens at the Coronet Theatre in New York; it will be his first Broadway success (June 29, 1947) • The first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is published in London (June 30, 1997) • Margaret Mitchell’s classic novel Gone with the Wind is published (June 30, 1936).  Literary Hub  June 25, 2023   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2688  June 26, 2023