The Literary Landmarks Association was founded in 1986 by former FOLUSA president Frederick G. Ruffner to encourage the dedication of historic literary sites.  The first dedication was at Slip F18 in Bahia Mar, Florida, the anchorage of the Busted Flush, the houseboat home of novelist John D. MacDonald's protagonist Travis McGee.  In 1989, the Literary Landmark project became an official FOLUSA committee. Literary Landmarks™ continues with United for Libraries, the division of American Library Association created by the joining of FOLUSA and ALTA.  Dedications have included homes of famous writers (Tennessee Williams, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, William Faulkner), libraries and museum collections, literary scenes (such as John's Grill in San Francisco, immortalized by Dashiell Hammett, and Willa Cather's Prairie near Red Cloud, Nebraska), and even "Grip" the Raven, formerly the pet of Charles Dickens and inspiration to Edgar Allan Poe and now presiding (stuffed) at the Rare Books Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia.  Link to Landmarks by State and Landmarks by Author at http://www.ala.org/united/products_services/literarylandmarks  As of this writing, Ohio has five literary landmarks including the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library for Carolyn Keene.  Author and journalist Mildred A. Wirt Benson (known to many by her pen name, Carolyn Keene), moved to Toledo in 1938.  From 1930-1953, she wrote 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew mysteries.

What does it mean to “put on the dog”?  According to my research, the phrase “putting on the dog” began as 19th-century slang among college students.  Specifically, in his 1871 piece Four Years at Yale, author Lyman H. Bagg states that “to put on dog is to make a flashy display.”  One source claims that this may have involved dress shirts that had “dog collars.”  In modern usage, the meaning is basically unchanged, and relates to getting unusually dressed up or wearing fancier clothes than one is accustomed to.  Melvin Peña  https://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/7-more-common-dog-idioms-explained

“Early films of Shakespeare’s plays captured his poetry in images rather than words,” runs the opening caption in the BFI’s new anthology, Play On!  And that process was simpler than it sounds.  Many early Shakespeare films, such as the earliest surviving “adaptation”, a King John from 1899, were recordings of scenes from staged versions of the plays.  So in that film, Herbert Beerbohm Tree reprises the death scenes from his West End production in a studio on the roof of the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company’s office on the Embankment in London.  It’s not an attempt to tell the story of King John, but to give the cinema audience a glimpse of a great Shakespearean in action.  Elsewhere on the disc, you can see John Gielgud as a queasy Romeo in 1924 in a similar style.  A 23-minute condensation of Richard III in 1911 gives a taster of FR Benson’s skills as both actor and director.  And in 1916, the Broadwest Film Company went to the trouble of transporting stage legend Matheson Lang to Italy, to play Shylock with an authentically Venetian backdrop.  The Play On! disc, with a gorgeous score by the musicians of Shakespeare’s Globe, offers a smooth entry into these films, which were for a long time neglected and underappreciated.  Pamela Hutchinson  https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2016/jul/18/the-best-is-silence-why-shakespeare-in-early-film-is-worth-celebrating

One-hundred nineteen U.S. colleges and universities have received the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, an elective designation that indicates institutional commitment to community engagement by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.  A listing of the institutions that currently hold the Classification endorsement can be found here.  https://www.aplu.org/news-and-media/blog/2020-carnegie-community-engagement-classification-recipients-announced  APLU stands for Association of Public & Land-Grant Universities. 

Is there a can of corn in the back of your cupboard . . . anyone?  Well, get ready for a real surprise with Indian-Style Creamed Corn from Tin Can Magic  by Jessica Elliot Dennison.  Canned corn is turned into a kind of dal/curry that will fill your kitchen with the smell of garlic, ground coriander, cumin, and hot chili.  It is really a standout recipe.  If you can find fresh curry leaves definitely add them, but don’t worry if you don’t.  Also, please note, we have not been above adding a teeny drizzle of fresh cream when we have had it on hand.

https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/indian-style-creamed-corn-with-naan-coriander-and-toasted-spices  serves 2

I really want this library to serve the purpose for which it was intended—as a breeding ground for curiosity. * The library taught me that I could ask any questions I wanted and pursue them to their conclusions without judgment or embarrassment.  And it’s where I learned that not all questions have answers. * My parents had a knack for making everything into a game.  Learning was a reward.   When I came home from school, they’d say “What did you ask today?” * In the new school’s library was a virgin landscape of pages and paragraphs that gleamed so brightly under the fluorescent lights that they deserved a choir of singing angels to announce their advent. * A library is a miracle.  A place where you can learn just about anything, for free.  A place where your mind can come alive. *  The World’s Strongest Librarian:  A Book Lover’s Adventures by Josh Hanagarne  See also http://worldsstrongestlibrarian.com/

White City (Chicago), a recreational park in Illinois, 1905–1946 * The White City, an "ideal city" constructed for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois  See other locations named White City in the United States and around the world at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_City  Chicago was referred to as the Black City before the 1893 World’s Fair.  See other uses for the name at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_City

27.5 million people visited the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition during the six months it was open--at a time when the population of America was only 65 million. * On its best day, the fair drew more than 700,000 visitors. * They tasted a new snack called Cracker Jack and a new breakfast food called Shredded Wheat. * The Great Chicago Fire in 1871 took nearly eighteen thousand buildings and left more than a hundred thousand people homeless.  The Devil in the White City:  Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

Historian Jean Bottéro concluded his 2001 article, “The Oldest Cuisine in the World:  Cooking in Mesopotamia,” with an insult of sorts.  “I would not advise trying to incorporate their culinary tradition, just as it stands, into our own,” he wrote, speculating that a modern eater would not enjoy the garlic-heavy, salt-light dishes that people ate nearly 4,000 years ago.  But ever since, chefs around the globe have attempted Mesopotamian recipes, the oldest on record, in their home kitchens.  Nawal Nasrallah, an Iraqi scholar and and cookbook author, has written about adapting the ancient recipes for modern kitchens.  Nearly a decade ago, Laura Kelley, founder of the blog The Silk Road Gourmet, organized an ancient Mesopotamian cooking challenge.  More recently, an interdisciplinary team from Yale and Harvard whipped up a Mesopotamian feast in 2018.  All three endeavors had the same source material:  a set of four ancient clay tablets in the Yale Babylonian collection.   Early scribes impressed wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets with reed styluses.  Applying this method to the recipe tablets, scribes recorded culinary routines using Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language. Scholars estimate that three of the four recipe tablets originated around 1730 BC, and the fourth around 1,000 years later.  Unfortunately, little is known about their origins, except that Yale added them to their collection in 1911, in a purchase of therapeutic and pharmaceutical texts.   To sample flavors from the oldest cuisine in the world, today’s chefs must read between the lines.  The recipe for meat broth doesn’t even specify what meat to use.  However, census records from the time mention fowl, sheep, and cattle.  When it comes to the unknown ingredients, consensus on their translations is rare. In the case of the broth, the jury is out on whether shuhutinnu is an onion, an herb, or a root vegetable.  With all these varying translations, it’s impossible to argue for one interpretation with complete certainty.  Find two recipes including one for 12 mersu balls using just 1 cup dried date, 2 cups pistachios, raw and 1 tbsp butter, melted.  Jess Eng  Thank you, Muse reader!  https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mesopotamian-recipes

WORD OF THE DAY FOR JUNE 22  aphotic adj  Having no light, especially no sunlight; specifically (biology, oceanography) describing that part of deep lakes and oceans where less than one per cent of sunlight penetrates and where photosynthesis is not possible.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aphotic#English

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2288  June 22, 2020