You know how you hold on to some stupid kitchen item for like eight years, then decide that you’ve used it once and donate it to Goodwill? Then the next week, you find yourself in critical need of that garlic press for the first time since the Clinton administration?

Now imagine that garlic press was worth $13,000.

People accidentally give away family heirlooms or other valuables surprisingly often. Here are eight of those stories — some with happy endings, and others where people wish they’d never cleaned out their closets.

1. An 80-year-old Illinois man was getting rid of some clothes and decided a suit was past its prime. After he dropped it and other discarded items off at Goodwill and went home to enjoy his decluttered house, the man realized he had made a $13,000 mistake. Not trusting the banks, he had sewn his entire life savings in the lining of an old suit – the suit he had decided to donate just hours earlier. He immediately returned to the store, but the suit was nowhere to be found. He’s still looking for it, actually. Photo via Goodwill.org.

2. Last summer, a worker at a Goodwill near Chicago was sorting through a bunch of jewelry donations when she found a metal bracelet stamped with “CMS CHARLES D. KING, 25 DEC 68.” Suspecting it might be a POW/MIA bracelet from Vietnam, the worker researched Charles King and discovered he had a sister living in Iowa. When the jewelry was returned to King’s sister, an amazing coincidence was discovered: she also worked at Goodwill.

3. If you’re shopping at a Goodwill in Illinois, be sure to check the pockets of the clothes, because apparently valuables are left at thrift stores in the Land of Lincoln quite often. In 2008, a worker at a store in Glen Carbon discovered $7,500 in cash stashed in a donated shoebox. (more…)

Russian artist Tatiana Plakhova makes music portraits — detailed illustrations based on the mathematical structure of music. Her most interesting visualizations are based on the work of Philip Glass. (If you’re not familiar with Glass, his music tends to have repeated musical phrases, and he does a lot of movie scores. It’s rather mathy minimalist music.) In the videos below, Plakhova sets some of her illustrations to the music they’re based on — creating a distinctly trippy feel. Interested in music, math, music/math-related art, or pretty pictures set to ambient music? You’ll want to check these out. And you’ll definitely want to hit the fullscreen button.

Philip Glass: “Company I”

Philip Glass: “Uakti :: Amazon River”

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The 2003 film Love Actually is, in my humble opinion, one of the best love stories of all time, because it portrays all the nuances of love—not just romantic love, either. How much do you know about the film that swept countless girls off their feet?

Take the Quiz: Love Actually

Each week Miss Kathleen provides links to a variety of stories about libraries, authors, and books. If there’s something noteworthy going on in your local library, leave us a comment!

How am I just hearing about this excellent website? I think the name says it all: Fictional Food. With recipes, oh yes!
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If you ever make it to Beijing, be sure to check out this amazing library on its outskirts. So lovely!
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We keep hearing about how books are passé and libraries will soon be rid of them. But is that really true? (Hint: Do we have paperless offices yet?)
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Got time to read another feel-good article about a librarian making a huge difference? Sure you do!
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He loves audiobooks, she prefers “book books.” Can their marriage ever survive? What about you? Do you have a house divided?
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Yikes! According to Reuters, Americans don’t use the library. But they do like grizzly bears!
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Set your DRVs for “Trek Nation” tonight (November 30, 2011) at 8pm ET/PT on the Science Channel.

If you’re going to watch one documentary about Star Trek, it should be Trekkies. But if you’re going to watch two, the second should be Trek Nation, premiering tonight on the Science Channel. Trek Nation puts Star Trek in context, chronicling the journey of Eugene Wesley “Rod” Roddenberry (Gene’s son) to understand his father, and the show(s) Gene created.

As a documentary film, Trek Nation is a curious blend of well-executed interviews and explanation of the Star Trek phenomenon, mixed with slightly weird monologues and interviews by Rod Roddenberry, who admits he lived most of his life with only the vaguest notion that Star Trek was important. As TV, it’s wonderful — it’s truly well-made, and it manages not to talk down to the viewer (which is exceedingly rare, especially with a topic that could easily be dismissed solely as wacky fan culture). As a longtime Trek fan, I saw lots of new footage here (including footage of the legendary first Trek convention which apparently has never been seen before), and lots of significant interviews with members of the Trek universe. If you like Star Trek and you have cable, this is a no-brainer.

Trek Nation has actually been in production for a long time; the principal photography appears to have been done mostly from 2003-2006, with some new material added in later (including an excellent interview with J.J. Abrams). Because much of it was done so long ago, it’s often confusing — why are we just seeing a premiere now? See, for example, Wil Wheaton’s blog post from 2004 in which he discusses his interview. It’s a good interview, and it’s a good piece of TV, but the film nor the related PR never explains the elephant in the room: why release it so many years after it was shot? Fortunately, Airlock Alpha fills in more of that story, though only hints at the actual reasons it has taken so long for the film to come out. But that aside, let’s talk about what’s in the film: lots and lots of interviews about Star Trek, revelations about Gene Roddenberry, and lots of monologue by Rod Roddenberry.

Interviews About Star Trek

Trek Nation frequently shows Rod Roddenberry interviewing major figures in the science fiction or Star Trek world — he sits down with George Lucas and J.J. Abrams, as well as his own mother, Majel Barrett (she voiced the computer on the Enterprise, and played Nurse Chapel and Lwaxana Troi), and a surprisingly comprehensive roster of Trek writing and acting talent. There are also many interviews apparently conducted by the film’s director, Scott Colthorp. Frankly, Colthorp does a better job. Roddenberry repeatedly admits that he’s not particularly knowledgeable about Star Trek (his story is basically that of wasted youth, at least in part due to an absent celebrity father), and fails to ask substantive questions. In many of the Rod interviews, you can see the interview subject squirm, as if asking, “Is this guy for real? How can he be asking me this?” In the Colthorp interviews, we actually see a detailed understanding of the show and nuanced questions (most notably about how the writing staff was able to deal with Gene’s dictates that in the future, basic elements of the current human condition — like greed — should be absent); Colthorp does a set of terrific interviews with Michael Piller and Ron Moore (both TNG writers; Moore later headed BSG), and they’re worth the price of admission alone.

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• Salmon are anadromous, meaning that they are born in fresh water, spend most of their life in the sea, and return to fresh water to spawn. President Obama made a crossover bureaucracy joke about it in his State of the Union address, saying “The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they’re in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.”

• So how do the salmon manage to find their way back? They use their sensitivity to Earth’s magnetic field to guide them home, which is tied to their olfactory senses. But exactly how that works, scientists still aren’t sure.

• The trip is by no means a lark – males who survive the journey “are often gaunt, with grotesquely humped backs, hooked jaws, and battle-torn fins. The females are swollen with a pound or more of eggs. Both have large white patches of bruised skin on their backs and sides.” The lack of body fat on the way home means that most of the fish will die en route.

• But salmon are a hardy breed! In fact, in what a biologist is calling “a fisheries Jurassic Park,” Alouette River sockeye salmon have returned to spawn nearly 80 years after the original Alouette run became extinct.

• Salmon is an exceptionally healthy fish, packed full with omega-3 fatty acids (that would be the good kind of fat). Unlike tuna and other fish high on the food chain, they aren’t also potentially full of mercury. Wild-caught Pink, Coho and Sockeye are the best varieties (according to this excellent book, which explores in depth many of the environmental issues with fishing).

• From the Department of Do Not Want: Salmon flavored vodka. The mixture is intended to complement Bloody Marys. “‘I think there was some madness and some drunkenness involved, honestly,’ said Toby Foster, an Alaska Distillery partner and the one charged with coming up with new flavors with Alaska themes.” Ya don’t say?
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Saturday Night Live hit the late-evening airwaves in 1975, and since then, dozens of actors have taken the stage as regulars on the show. At various points in the show’s history, the cast has been filled with future stars as often as it’s featured a bunch of nobodies. Today’s Lunchtime Quiz challenges you to pin down the careers of two SNL actors and identify whether or not they appeared together as regulars in at least one season. The quiz contains 10 questions, and a score of 7 or better is considered a win. Go for it!

Take the Quiz: Saturday Night Live Overlaps

Forster Forest / Shutterstock.com

Movember, like many other brilliant ideas, was born of a drunken, meandering conversation in a bar. It was 2003, in a pub in Adelaide, Australia. A couple of friends were talking about the cyclical nature of style and wondered why the mustache hadn’t made its glorious return, Quetzalcoatl-like, to the mainstream.

They decided that the ‘stache, or Mo, as the Aussies call it, deserved revival. They talked to a few more friends and made a plan. Thirty guys would leave their upper lip untamed for one month. They didn’t raise money or have a cause—they just wanted to get a few more Mos out into the wild and see who could grow the nicest one. They started growing November 1st, so a name change for the month seemed obvious and appropriate.

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Steve Murray over at The National Post had fun imagining what Jim Henson’s crew has been up to since the release of the last Muppets film 12 years ago. Turns out, they’ve been busy auditioning for other roles! My favorite of the bunch is Sam The Eagle as Don Draper. What’s yours?

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by Mike Albo

Tonight is the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Here are some essential talking points about the Norway spruce.

© Dima Gavrysh/Reuters/Corbis

1. The first time New Yorkers put up a Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center in 1931, it was like something out of Dickens. The Depression-era workmen building the center were so grateful to have jobs that they decorated a spruce tree with strings of cranberries, paper garlands, and a few tin cans. On December 24, they lined up beneath the tree and received a small Christmas miracle: paychecks. The first official Rockefeller Center Christmas tree went up in 1933.

2. The biggest rock outside 30 Rock is sitting right on top of the tree. (more…)