William Shatner (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor.  In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, from his 1966 debut as the captain of the starship Enterprise in the second pilot of the first Star Trek television series to his final appearance as Captain Kirk in the seventh Star Trek feature film, Star Trek Generations (1994).  Shatner began his screen acting career in Canadian films and television productions before moving into guest-starring roles in various U.S. television shows.  He appeared as James Kirk in all the episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, 21 of the 22 episodes of Star Trek:  The Animated Series, and the first seven Star Trek movies.  He has written a series of books chronicling his experiences before, during and after his time in a Starfleet uniform.  He has also co-written several novels set in the Star Trek universe and a series of science fiction novels, the TekWar sequence, that were adapted for television.  Outside Star Trek, Shatner played the eponymous veteran police sergeant in T. J. Hooker (1982–1986), hosted the reality-based television series Rescue 911 (1989–1996), guest starred on the detective series Columbo, and acted in the comedy film Miss Congeniality (2000).  In seasons 4 and 5 of the NBC series 3rd Rock from the Sun, he played the alien "Big Giant Head" to which the main characters reported.  From 2004 until 2008, he starred as attorney Denny Crane in the final season of the legal show The Practice and in its spinoff Boston Legal, a role that earned him two Emmy Awards, one for his contribution to each series.  In 2016, 2017 and 2018, he starred in both seasons of NBC's Better Late Than Never, a comical travel series in which a band of elderly celebrities toured east Asia and Europe.  Aside from acting, Shatner has had a career as a recording artist, beginning in 1968 with his album The Transformed Man.  His cover versions of songs are dramatic recitations of their lyrics rather than musical performances:  the most notable are his versions of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", and Elton John's "Rocket Man".  His most successful album was his third, Seeking Major Tom (2011), which includes covers of Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly", David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".    Shatner's television career after his last appearance as Captain Kirk has embraced comedy, drama and reality shows.  In seasons 4 and 5 of the NBC series 3rd Rock from the Sun, he played the alien "Big Giant Head" to which the main characters reported.  From 2004 until 2008, he starred as attorney Denny Crane in the final season of the legal show The Practice and in its spinoff Boston Legal, a role that earned him two Emmy Awards, one for his contribution to each series.  In 2016, 2017 and 2018, he starred in both seasons of NBC's Better Late Than Never, a comical travel series in which a band of elderly celebrities toured east Asia and Europe.  Aside from acting, Shatner has had a career as a recording artist, beginning in 1968 with his album The Transformed Man.  His cover versions of songs are dramatic recitations of their lyrics rather than musical performances:  the most notable are his versions of the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", and Elton John's "Rocket Man".   His most successful album was his third, Seeking Major Tom (2011), which includes covers of Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly", David Bowie's "Space Oddity" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".  Shatner made several guest appearances on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, including in cameos in which he made fun of the Republican politician Sarah Palin.  He opened mock-hostilities on July 27, 2009, with a poetry slam inspired recitation of the speech in which she had resigned the governorship of Alaska.  Two days later, he ridiculed some of the tweets that she and Levi Johnston, the father of her grandchild, had published on Twitter.  On December 11, 2009, he returned to Palin once more to read excerpts from her autobiography, Going Rogue: An American Life, and she, taking his teasing in good part, responded by reciting extracts from his own memoir, Up Till Now.  (Co-written with David Fisher, later to collaborate with Shatner on a book about Leonard Nimoy and Shatner's relationship with him, Up Till Now had been published in 2008.)  Shatner also contributed to O'Brien's recurring "In the Year 3000" feature, which began with Shatner's disembodied head floating in space and delivering the segment's portentous tag line:  "And so we take a cosmic ride into that new millennium; that far off reality that is the year 3000.  It's the future, man".  In May 2012, he was the guest presenter on the British satirical television quiz show Have I Got News for You, earning a footnote in the history of neologisms by melding "pioneer" and "pensioner" into the portmanteau coinage "pensioneer".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shatner    

Pepper Pie

Sprinkle seeded chopped peppers, shredded cheddar cheese, and beaten eggs into well-greased pan.  Cover with cheese.  Bake 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Cool, and cut into squares.    

Hack House on 775 County Street, Milan Michigan   In April 1888, Olive Friend and her young son, William, moved into the house she had just built.  It was a gorgeous "stick style" Victorian house on County Road east of Milan.  Olive had bought 40 acres from her Uncle Henry Hack and his wife, Mary, to use for the house and farm.  When she moved into the house, Olive was a recent widow.  Her husband, Prof. Henry Friend, had died in New York March 10, 1888 just before a terrible snowstorm hit.   Since he was a major figure with the New York Electric Sugar Refining Company, the company kept his death a secret to prevent people from selling their stock.  Olive knew it was a good time to leave New York and come back to her home town of Milan.  She knew that the stock investors in New York and in Europe would find out that their investments in the Electric Sugar Refining Company were worthless.  Olive knew the investors would want to punish Olive and her family for tricking them with their "Electric Sugar Refining Machine."  (There was no such machine.  It was all a fraud.)  Olive lived in her house, and soon afterwards put an addition on the back which more than doubled its size.  Olive's mother, Emily Burnham Howard, had a nearly identical home built on the northeast corner of Arkona and Platt Roads north of Milan.  When Olive moved out of the beautiful house, she sold it to her Uncle Henry Hack.  After Olive left the house, it was owned by James and Daisy Hack, and it was known locally as the "Hack House."    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2819  May 27, 2024 

The watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) is a large, sweet fruit originally from southern Africa.  It’s related to cantaloupe, zucchini, pumpkin, and cucumber.  Watermelon is packed with water and nutrients, contains very few calories, and is exceptionally refreshing.  What’s more, it’s a good dietary source of both citrulline and lycopene, two powerful plant compounds.  This juicy melon may have several health benefits, including lower blood pressure, improved insulin sensitivity, and reduced muscle soreness.  https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/watermelon#bottom-line   

Owens-Illinois bought the Hack House from Jim and Daisy in 1968.  They donated it to the Milan Area Historical Society.  In 1991, the Hack House was honored with a listing in the National Register of Historic Places, building #91000441.  It is listed as the Friend-Hack House with the National Register of Historic Places.  The Hack House museum is open from May to late November, Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 pm.  It is open upon request for special events.  https://www.historicmilan.com/hack.html    

A couple hundred years ago, Europeans and Americans had all sorts of wonderful little sweet baked treats to be eaten out of hand, treats we would call cookies but which they called cakes:  gingerbread, jumbals, Shrewsbury cakes, and endless other variations on the basic combination of flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and spice. Some were soft; some were hard like biscuits. Some had lots of spice; all had at least a little—cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, ginger, allspice, occasionally anise or pepper, even caraway or coriander.  Some added brandy, sweet wine, or rose water or were studded with orange peel or candied citron.  Any of those little cakes might be called the ancestor of the sugar cookie, but none really was.  Sugar cookies, after all, are plain.  They evolved not only from that pack of eighteenth-century small cakes, but, strangely enough, in opposition to them.  The likeliest ancestor was actually the creation of Dutch settlers in New York, a little thing they called a koekje—pronounced “cookie”—which meant simply “small cake.”  They weren’t terribly unlike most English cakes, but the New York Dutch made use of an important innovation:  they used chemical leavening.  The first alkali leavener, pearlash, came into use at the end of the eighteenth century in the area around New York City, and the first published recipe for “cookies,” which appeared there in 1796, called for it.  We take baking soda and baking powder for granted, but without them you can’t attain the crisp-chewy texture that we associate with sugar cookies today.  Eighteenth-century cakes were baked hard like biscuits or were soft and cakey with eggs or, occasionally, twice-baked and crisp, but they didn’t have the chewy quality of a good cookie.  http://www.davidwalbert.com/dw/2012/12/12/a-brief-history-of-the-sugar-cookie/ 

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury.  He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings.  His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, Spain, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.  Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe.  He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter.  An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his Portrait of Madame X, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris but instead resulted in scandal.  During the year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England, where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.  From the beginning, Sargent's work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for its supposed superficiality.  His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism.  In later life, Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air.  Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargent  See https://www.jigidi.com/solve/jia696zw/john-singer-sargent-american-1856-1925-study-for-seated-musicians-for-el-jaleo-ca-1882/   

Author Ilyon Woo has a BA in the Humanities from Yale College and a PhD in English from Columbia University.  Her 2023 book Master Slave Husband Wife, a history of the escape of Ellen and William Craft from slavery, was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2023 by the New York Times and won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyon_Woo

Moong Dal is a type of Indian lentil curry soup that is very aromatic and flavorful. It is not spicy (though you can add cayenne if you want to), and one of the best ways to use moong.  Moong are split mung beans that have been de-skinned.  In the bag, they are a pale yellow, but they melt and soften as they cook.  If you can’t find moong, try using red lentils instead.  https://beanrecipes.com/yellow-moong-dal/   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  2818  May 24, 2024 

That old adage--those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it--falls too often on deaf ears.  The Seventh Plague, a novel by James Rollins  

Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (1803–1847) was a prolific French illustrator and caricaturist who published under the pseudonym of Jean-Jacques Grandville or J. J. Grandville.  He has been described by author Cynthia Rose, writing in The Comics Journal, as "the first star of French caricature's great age". The anthropomorphic vegetables and zoomorphic figures that populated his cartoons anticipated and influenced the work of generations of cartoonists and illustrators from John Tenniel, to Gustave Doré, to Félicien Rops, and Walt Disney.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ignace_Isidore_G%C3%A9rardhttp   

“Instinct is something which transcends knowledge.  We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.”  Nikola Tesla  https://transmitter.ieee.org/quotes-nikola-tesla/  

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist.  He is known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.  Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity following his death, until 1960, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the International System of Units (SI) measurement of magnetic flux density the tesla in his honor.  There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla 

Peanut Butter Frosting Recipe

1/2 cup Butter, Softened

1/2 cup Creamy Peanut Butter

1/4 cup Honey

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

3 tablespoons Milk  Find more at https://www.slurrp.com/recipes/peanut-butter-frosting-without-powdered-sugar-1616654321 

Editor Erin Neil offers a prophecy for April 25, 2024.  The brussels-sprout craze of a few years ago seems to be shifting to another cruciferous vegetable—bigger and, dare I say, better.  Cabbage, misunderstood for far too long, is finally getting its due.  Look at the menus at Superiority Burger, Llama San, Tatiana, and Claud—all featuring cabbage in some creative form.  Like its smaller, cuter cousin, cabbage can be caramelized, braised, and roasted, but it can also be grilled, stuffed, pickled, fermented—seriously, you name it.  It lasts more than a month in the fridge, and costs only a few bucks.  One of my favorite ways to prepare it at home is sautéed in olive oil with lots of salt.  Let it sit in the pan until it’s a bit charred and crispy, and then toss it around in a sweet, mustardy sauce.  I like it with pork sausage, but it compliments any protein.  Literary Hub  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  2817  May 22, 2024 

The Oxford English Dictionary suggests mayhem is a variation of maim.  The first sense, found since at least the 1400s, is defined as, "The infliction of physical injury on a person, so as to impair or destroy that person's capacity for self-defense; an instance of this."  By the 1800s, it had broadened to cover violence in general, but it's not till the twentieth century that the word morphed to cover a chaotic brouhaha.  The original sense of havoc is military in origin.  As the OED dryly defines it:  "orig. to give to an army the order havoc as the signal for the seizure of spoil, and so of general spoliation or pillage."  This term has been often found in phrases such as "make havoc" and "play havoc."  A famous variation appeared in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:  "Cry hauocke, and let slip the Dogges of Warre."  Originally another name for Bethlehem, bedlam took a turn toward chaos when it was used a nickname for The Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem—a home for the mentally ill.  A ruckus can be any noisy, unruly situation.  Brouhaha has reduplication, doubling ha to create a word for a restaurant-quality hubbub (another reduplicative word).  https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wl/havoc-bedlam-mayhem-the-lingo-of-pandemonium/ 

Easy pie crusts:  Mix melted butter with crushed crackers, cookies, wheat germ, or nuts.   

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.  Mark Twain

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.  Winston Churchill  

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.  Willie Nelson

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.  Jackie Robinson
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/francis_bacon_138973   

Penzance is a town, civil parish and port in the Penwith district of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.  It is the most westerly major town in Cornwall and is about 64 miles (103 km) west-southwest of Plymouth and 255 miles (410 km) west-southwest of London.  Granted various royal charters from 1512 onwards and incorporated on 9 May 1614, it has a population of 21,200 (2011 census).  The Admiral Benbow public house (home to a real life 1800s smuggling gang and allegedly the inspiration for Treasure Island's "Admiral Benbow Inn"), the Union Hotel (including a Georgian theatre which is no longer in use), and Branwell House, where the mother and aunt of the famous Brontë sisters once lived. Regency and Georgian terraces and houses are common in some parts of the town. The nearby sub-tropical Morrab Gardens has a large collection of tender trees and shrubs, many of which cannot be grown outdoors anywhere else in the UK.  Also of interest is the seafront with its promenade and the open-air seawater Jubilee Pool (one of the oldest surviving Art Deco swimming baths in the country).  Penzance is the base of the pirates in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. At the time the libretto was written in 1879, Penzance had become popular as a peaceful resort town, so the idea of it being overrun by pirates was amusing to contemporaries.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penzance#   

Flageolet (pronounced "fla-zho-LAY") is a type of common shell bean grown in France and very popular in classic French cuisine.  A pale shade of green, Flageolet beans are sometimes known as the "caviar of beans" because of their subtle flavor and the high esteem in which they are held by food lovers.  Flageolets originated in France and are primarily associated with that cuisine.  These tiny, tender shell beans are a kidney-shaped common bean, harvested from their pods right before they fully ripen.  They are dried in the shade to maintain their light green color.  In the United States, they are grown in California.  https://www.thespruceeats.com/what-are-flageolet-beans-995673   

As Vermont State University Castleton graduates receive their 2024 degrees, so too will a tabby cat.  The cat, named Max, is getting an honorary degree as a "Doctor in Litter-ature."  Once a feral kitten in the town of Fair Haven, Max has lived with his human mom, Ashley Dow, on Seminary Street in Castleton for the past five years.  And for most of those years, he’s been venturing up to the university campus.  Up there, Dow says Max likes to ride around on students’ backpacks, to pose as a subject for the college photography class, and to generally provide campus emotional support.  "At one point, because he stopped going up to campus, they put up a shrine for him," Dow says, laughing.  "It had candles and everything. And the picture of Max that they had printed out and put in a frame."  See pictures at https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-05-15/max-the-cat-honorary-doctorate-vermont-state-university-castleton 

http//librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2816  May 20, 2024 

Tana French (born 10 May 1973) is an American-Irish writer and theatrical actress. She is a longtime resident of Dublin, Ireland.  Her debut novel In the Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for best first novel.  The Independent has referred to her as "the First Lady of Irish Crime".  Tana Elizabeth French was born in Burlington, Vermont, to Elena Hvostoff-Lombardi and David French.  Her father was an economist who worked on resource management for the developing world, and she lived in numerous countries as a child including Ireland, Italy, the United States and Malawi.  French attended Trinity College Dublin, and trained in acting. She settled in Ireland and has lived in Dublin since 1990.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tana_French 

Martha Jane’s Sauerkraut and Spare Rib Casserole  Yield:  4 servings  Total Time: Roughly 4 hours  Serve with pumpernickel bread and butter.  Source:  Martha Jane and Patrick Lahey, adapted by Maddie Coppel  Find recipe and instructions at https://www.toledoblade.com/a-e/food/2024/05/12/motherly-love-local-chefs-share-dishes-from-their-mom-s-kitchen/stories/20240512004  

The depths of the river Thames in London hold many unexpected stories, gleaned from the recovery of prehistoric tools, Roman pottery, medieval jewelry, and much more besides.  Yet the tale of the lost (and since recovered) Doves typeface is surely one of the most peculiar.  A little over a century ago, the printer T.J. Cobden-Sanderson took it upon himself to surreptitiously dump every piece of this carefully honed metal letterpress type into the river.  It was an act of retribution against his business partner, Emery Walker, whom he believed was attempting to swindle him.  With its extra-wide capital letters, diamond shaped punctuation and unique off-kilter dots on the letter “i,” Doves Type became the press’s hallmark, surpassing fussier typographic attempts by their friend and sometime collaborator, William Morris.  The letterforms only existed as a unique 16pt edition, meaning that when Cobden-Sanderson decided to “bequeath” every single piece of molded lead to the Thames, he effectively destroyed any prospect of the typeface ever being printed again.  That might well have been the case, were it not for several individuals and a particularly tenacious graphic designer.  Robert Green first became fascinated with Doves Type in the mid-2000s, scouring printed editions and online facsimiles, to try and faithfully redraw and digitize every line.  In October 2014, he decided to take to the river to see if he could find any of the original pieces.  Using historical accounts and Cobden-Sanderson’s diaries, he pinpointed the exact spot where the printer had offloaded his wares, from a shadowy spot on Hammersmith bridge. “I’d only been down there 20 minutes and I found three pieces,” he said.  “So, I got in touch with the Port of London Authority and they came down to search in a meticulous spiral.”  The team of scuba divers used the rather low-tech tools of a bucket and a sieve to sift through the riverbed.  Green managed to recover a total of 151 sorts (the name for individual pieces of type) out of a possible 500,000.  “It’s a tiny fraction, but when I was down by the river on my own, for one second it all felt very cosmic,” he said.  “It was like Cobden-Sanderson had dropped the type from the bridge and straight into my hands.  Time just collapsed.”  The finds have enabled him to further develop his digitized version and has also connected him with official mudlarks (people who search riverbanks for lost treasures, with special permits issued) who have uncovered even more of the type.  Jason Sandy, an architect, author and member of the Society of Thames Mudlarks, found 12 pieces, which he has donated to Emery Walker’s House at 7 Hammersmith Terrace.  This private museum was once home to both business partners, and retains its stunning domestic Arts and Crafts interior.  See pictures at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/doves-typeface-2454807   Thank you, Muse reader! 

The scup (Stenotomus chrysops) is a fish that occurs primarily in the Atlantic from Massachusetts to South Carolina.  Along with many other fish of the family Sparidae, it is also commonly known as porgy.  Scup grow as large as 18 in (460 mm) and weigh 3–4 lb (1.4–1.8 kg), but they average 0.5–1.0 lb (0.23–0.45 kg).  Scup can live up to 20 years; females can begin to reproduce at the age of two.  Every year female scups lay approximately 7,000 eggs in sand and weed abundant areas.  In the Middle Atlantic Bight, scup spawn along the inner continental shelf.  Their larvae end up in inshore waters, along the coast and in estuarine areas.  At two to three years of age, they mature.  Scup winter along the mid and outer continental shelf.  When the temperature warms in the spring, they migrate inshore.  They are fished for by both commercial and recreational fishermen.  The scup fishery is one of the oldest in the United States, with records dating back to 1800.  Scup was the most abundant fish in colonial times.  Fishermen began using trawls in 1929, which increased catches dramatically.  The species was termed overfished in 1996, and today there is evidence of a rebound. Today, scup are still caught primarily using an otter trawl.  The flesh is "firm and flaky", with a "sweet almost shrimplike flavor".  Many consumers like their light flavor and they are characterized as panfish.  Popular methods of cooking include frying, broiling, and baking.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scup  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2815  May 17, 2024