Edgar Allan Poe loved cats.  His beloved tortoiseshell cat, Catterina, is said to have sat on Poe’s shoulder to watch him write and to have slept on his wife’s chest to keep her warm.  In honor of Poe’s love of cats, the Poe Museum cares for two delightful black felines named Edgar and Pluto—the latter named after the cat in Poe’s story “The Black Cat.”  In November 2012, the museum’s gardener found the tiny kittens in the Enchanted Garden, and the museum staff volunteered to care for them, seeing that they receive regular veterinary care, healthy food, and a warm room to call home.  During business hours, Edgar and Pluto enjoy greeting the museum’s visitors in the gift shop and garden.  Find museum location and hours at https://www.poemuseum.org/poe-museum-cats 

A pinafore (colloquially a pinny in British English) is a sleeveless garment worn as an apron.  Pinafores may be worn as a decorative garment and as a protective apron.  A related term is pinafore dress (known as a jumper in American English), i.e. a sleeveless dress intended to be worn over a top or blouse.  A key difference between a pinafore and a jumper dress is that the pinafore is open in the back.  In informal British usage, however, a pinafore dress is sometimes referred to as simply a pinafore, which can lead to confusion.  Nevertheless, this has led some authors to use the term "pinafore apron", although this is redundant as pinafore alone implies an apron.  The name reflects the pinafore having formerly pinned (pin) to the front (afore) of a dress.  The pinafore had no buttons and was simply "pinned on the front".  Pinafores are often confused with smocks.  Some languages do not differentiate between these different garments.  The pinafore differs from a smock in that it does not have sleeves and there is no back to the bodice.  Smocks have both sleeves and a full bodice, both front and back.  H.M.S. Pinafore, a comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, uses the word in its title as a comical name for a warship.  The Observatory Pinafore, a comic opera about the computers at the Harvard Observatory, inspired by the H.M.S. Pinafore, written in 1879 and performed in 1879 (see Transcript).  At the Lowood School in Jane Eyre, the students are forced to make and wear their uniform which includes a pinafore.  Alice, the eponymous heroine of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, wore a white pinafore over a blue dress in John Tenniel's illustrations.  A song and album title by the English art rock group Stackridge is called Pinafore Days.  See pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinafore 

The Emily Dickinson Museum comprises two historic houses in the center of Amherst, Massachusetts associated with the poet Emily Dickinson and members of her family during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  The Homestead was the birthplace and home of the poet Emily Dickinson.  The Evergreens, next door, was home to her brother Austin, his wife Susan, and their three children.  The Emily Dickinson Museum was created on July 1, 2003, when ownership of The Evergreens was transferred by the Martha Dickinson Bianchi Trust to Amherst College.  The merger of the houses and the three acres on which they stand restored the property to the state Dickinson herself had known, furthering the College’s long-standing and complex associations with the Dickinson family and its stewardship of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and other manuscripts.  Find address, contact information and link to other resources at https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/the-museum/our-story/ 

The chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) is a species of goat-antelope native to mountains in Europe, from west to east, including the Cantabrian Mountains, the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Apennines, the Dinarides, the Tatra and the Carpathian Mountains, the Balkan Mountains, the Rila - Rhodope massif, Pindus, the northeastern mountains of Turkey, and the Caucasus.  The chamois has also been introduced to the South Island of New Zealand.  Some subspecies of chamois are strictly protected in the EU under the European Habitats Directive.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamois 

Chamois leather is a type of porous leather, traditionally the skin of the chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra), a type of European mountain goat, but today made almost exclusively from the flesh split of a sheepskin.  In the United States, the term chamois without any qualification is restricted to the flesh split of the sheep or lambskin tanned solely with oils (US Federal Standard CS99-1970).  Chamois leather is often counterfeited with goat or pig skin, the practice of which is a particular profession called by the French chamoiser.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamois_leather 

June 11, 2021  The University of Iowa is known for its prestigious graduate creative writing program, but 19 undergraduates at the school have stepped into the spotlight by selling the film option to their retelling of The Great Gatsby, the Des Moines Register reports.  The undergrads wrote a novel called Gilded in Ash, inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legendary book, in an honors seminar called “The Great Gatsby 2.0.”  Film producer Cary Woods (Scream, Cop Land) heard about the book, and bought the rights to the students’ novel.  The young Hawkeyes’ book departs from the 1925 original in several key ways.  Harry Stecopoulos, who taught the seminar, told The Daily Iowan that the students changed the title character from a white man to “an African American lesbian art forger.”  Michael Schaub  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/student-retelling-of-gatsby-scores-film-deal/  Now students will reimagine Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.  The 1926 novel’s copyright expires at the end of 2021.  

The National Book Foundation has announced the Longlist for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. The Finalists in all five categories will be revealed on October 5.  Find list with descriptions at https://www.nationalbook.org/2021-national-book-awards-longlist-for-fiction/ 

September 21, 2021 by Book Marks  On the occasion of its 84th publication anniversary, a look back at the future Chronicles of Narnia author’s 1937 review of his old friend J.R.R. Tolkien’s unforgettable debut novel (extract).  To define the world of The Hobbit is, of course, impossible, because it is new.  You cannot anticipate it before you go there, as you cannot forget it once you have gone.  The author’s admirable illustrations and maps of Mirkwood and Goblingate and Esgaroth give one an inkling—and so do the names of the dwarf and dragon that catch our eyes as we first ruffle the pages.  But there are dwarfs and dwarfs, and no common recipe for children’s stories will give you creatures so rooted in their own soil and history as those of Professor Tolkien—who obviously knows much more about them than he needs for this tale.  Alice is read gravely by children and with laughter by grown ups; The Hobbit, on the other hand, will be funnier to its youngest readers, and only years later, at a tenth or a twentieth reading, will they begin to realise what deft scholarship and profound reflection have gone to make everything in it so ripe, so friendly, and in its own way so true.  Prediction is dangerous:  but The Hobbit may well prove a classic.”  C.S. Lewis, The Times Literary Supplement, October 2, 1937  https://lithub.com/when-c-s-lewis-reviewed-his-buddys-book-the-hobbit/ 

suburbia  noun  countable and uncountable, plural suburbias)  (originally Britain) The suburbs as a whole and all that characterizes or pertains to them; (derogatory) the suburbs as encapsulated or represented by the typical characteristics or qualities of the people living there, especially complacency, conformity, conservativeness, dullness, etc. [from late 19th c.] quotations ▼ Synonyms:  suburbandom, suburbanhood, suburbanism, suburbanity  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/suburbia#English   The song “Suburbia” by the English synthpop duo the Pet Shop Boys was released as the fourth single from their debut studio album Please on September 22, 1986. 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2426  September 22, 2021