Indulge in Babycakes

Pam Panettiere, librarian and extraordinary cupcake baker, joined us today to share the history of cupcakes--as well as bringing along a delicious sampling of some of her own creations.

Did you know that we can credit the ancient Egyptians with the first cake-like creation? The earliest cakes used honey as a sweetener instead of sugar. Another important development in the history of cake was the Mayans' use of cacao to make chocolate. And, we have the Americans to thank for cupcakes, which were invented in the late 18th century when they were actually baked in cups. So much has been done with these versatile treats, and Pam has come up with many of her own ingenious recipes. Today she shared four different recipes with a very appreciative LIFE audience!

A Summer Reader's Dream

Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop, came to give us her recommendations for summer reading. Valerie's stories and recommendations had our crowd transfixed. Her list sounds like a super winner so enjoy your summer reading and sign up for the HCPL Adult Summer Reading Program here.  You may even win a coffee cup. Check out Valerie's list of recommended reads below!

• The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
• We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
• Steal the North by Heather Bergstrom
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• The Husband's Secret by Lianne Moriarty
• Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
• After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey
• Here is Where by Andrew Carroll
• Long Man by Amy Greene
• The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
• One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson
• The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
• A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
• Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
• The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Elyse Walton
• We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Codename: Operation Overlord

Photo courtesy of DVIDSHUB at Wikimedia Commons

To commemorate the seventy year anniversary of D-Day when the allied forces invaded Normandy (June 6, 1944), Professor Rob Coyle gave an interesting spin on the day. It was a day of doing all the wrong things for an invasion, but it had to be done. And even some of the right things that went wrong turned out ok. Rob made this abstract day so real and so very brave and brutal. We had replicas of seven days of newspaper front pages donated by LIFEr Gene Chism. Some of the stories were priceless. One English general was demoted when he had loose lips at a cocktail party and almost divulged the secret date of the invasion.