Roald Dahl is remembered for his solitary, kind-hearted child heroes—Charlie, who visited a chocolate factory, and Sophie, who befriended a floppy-eared giant, among them—and their triumphs over bullying adults.  But the beloved British children’s book author was also known for the distinctive language he used to create the vivid, often dark, worlds in which the characters lived.  To honor the centenary of his birth, the Oxford English Dictionary has updated its latest edition September 12, 2016 with six new words connected to Dahl’s writing, and revisions to four other phrases popularized by Dahl’s evocative stories.  In May, the Oxford University Press also published a Roald Dahl Dictionary complete with 8,000 words coined or popularized by the author.  There was linguistic method to Dahl’s mad use of language.  “He was using very linguistic principles,” says Vineeta Gupta, head of children’s dictionaries at Oxford University Press.  Dahl invented words based on old words, rhymes, malapropisms, and spoonerisms (swapping the first letters of words around, such as “catasterous disastrophe” from The BFG).  Dahl also played with sound (“sizzle-pan” to refer to a frying pan in The BFG, for example).  Marta Cooper  Find the new Dahlisms added to the OED, and the revised phrases, with notes on their origins at http://qz.com/779365/six-of-roald-dahls-made-up-words-have-been-added-to-the-oxford-english-dictionary-to-celebrate-his-centenary/

NEW YORK, September 15, 2016—The Museum of Modern Art announces the release of an extensive digital archive accessible to historians, students, artists, and anyone concerned with modern and contemporary art:  a comprehensive account of the Museum's exhibitions from its founding, in 1929, to today.  This new digital archive, which will continue to grow as materials become available, is now accessible on MoMA's website, at moma.org/history.  The exhibition history project was initiated and overseen by Michelle Elligott, Chief of Archives, and Fiona Romeo, Director of Digital Content and Strategy, The Museum of Modern Art.  Over the course of the last two-and-a-half years, three MoMA archivists integrated over 22,000 folders of exhibition records dating from 1929 to 1989 from its registrar and curatorial departments, performed preservation measures, vetted the contents, and created detailed descriptions of the records for each exhibition.  The digital archive can be freely searched, or browsed in a more structured way by time period or exhibition type.  Each entry includes a list of all known artists featured in the exhibition.  Artist pages likewise list all of the exhibitions that have included that artist, along with any of their works in MoMA's collection online.  https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/press/2016/09/moma-launches-online-exhibition-history-beginning-with-its-founding-in-1929.phtml

LEBANON is named for its landmark white, snow-capped mountains.  ALBANIA is similarly mountainous, while ALBION (the oldest name for Briton) might come from Continental  immigrants seeing the white cliffs of Dover.  The ALPS are snowy white, but the Noon/N has melted away.  The ALBINO is thought to have come from the theoretical   Indo-European “root” albho(white) .  Welsh bal (white spot) gives us BALD.  Some whitish foods might actually be tasty, but Bulgarian blanav (tasteless) and BLAND reveals a prejudice against BLANCHED-looking food.   BLANKET is from whiteness, as is CARTE BLANCHE (from French).  http://www.edenics.net/english-word-origins.aspx?word=ALBINO

On January 24, 1791, President George Washington announced the Congressionally-designated permanent location of the national capital, a diamond-shaped ten-mile tract at the confluence of the Potomac and Eastern Branch Rivers.  A survey of the area was undertaken by Andrew Ellicott and Benjamin Banneker.  Forty boundary stones, laid at one-mile intervals, established the boundaries based on celestial calculations by Banneker, a self-taught astronomer of African descent and one of the few free blacks living in the vicinity.  Within this 100 square mile diamond, which would become the District of Columbia, a smaller area was laid out as the city of Washington.  (In 1846, one-third of the District was retroceded by Congressional action to Virginia, thus removing that portion of the original district which lay west of the Potomac River.)  In March 1791,the surveyors' roles were complemented by the employment of Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant to prepare the plan.  Major L'Enfant (1755-1825), a French artist and engineer who had formed a friendship with George Washington while serving in the Revolutionary War, requested the honor of designing a plan for the national capital.  The fact that the area was largely undeveloped gave the city's founders the unique opportunity to create an entirely new capital city.  After surveying the site, L'Enfant developed a Baroque plan that features ceremonial spaces and grand radial avenues, while respecting natural contours of the land.  The result was a system of intersecting diagonal avenues superimposed over a grid system.  The avenues radiated from the two most significant building sites that were to be occupied by houses for Congress and the President.  L'Enfant specified in notes accompanying the plan that these avenues were to be wide, grand, lined with trees, and situated in a manner that would visually connect ideal topographical sites throughout the city, where important structures, monuments, and fountains were to be erected.  On paper, L'Enfant shaded and numbered 15 large open spaces at the intersections of these avenues and indicated that they would be divided among the states.  He specified that each reservation would feature statues and memorials to honor worthy citizens.  The open spaces were as integral to the capital as the buildings to be erected around them.  L'Enfant opposed selling land prematurely, refused to furnish his map to the city commissioners in time for the sale, and was reluctantly relieved of his duties by George Washington.  Ellicott was then engaged to produce a map and reproduced L'Enfant's plan from his memory.  https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/lenfant.htm

Mount Rushmore, located just north of Custer State Park in South Dakota’s Black Hills National Forest, was named for the New York lawyer Charles E. Rushmore, who traveled to the Black Hills in 1884 to inspect mining claims in the region.  When Rushmore asked a local man the name of a nearby mountain, he reportedly replied that it never had a name before, but from now on would be known as Rushmore Peak (later Rushmore Mountain or Mount Rushmore).  Seeking to attract tourism to the Black Hills in the early 1920s, South Dakota’s state historian Doane Robinson came up with the idea to sculpt “the Needles” (several giant natural granite pillars) into the shape of historic heroes of the West.  He suggested Red Cloud, a Sioux chief, as a potential subject.  In August 1924, Robinson contacted Gutzon Borglum, an American sculptor of Danish descent who was then working on carving an image of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee into the face of Georgia’s Stone Mountain.  Luckily for Robinson, the headstrong Borglum was on the outs with the group that had commissioned the Lee sculpture, and would soon abandon the project.  Borglum suggested that the subjects of the South Dakota work be George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, as that would attract more national interest.  He would later add Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt to the list, in recognition of their contributions to the birth of democracy and the growth of the United States.  http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/mount-rushmore

Mount Rushmore in South Dakota is one of the most recognisable landmarks in the United States, featuring in numerous Hollywood films such as Team America:  World Police, National Treasure:  Book of Secrets and North By Northwest.  But it turns out that the sculpture is even more of a mystery than the adventure movies portray it as--behind the chiseled granite showing Abraham Lincoln's head is a hidden room.  When he planned the monument, sculptor Gutzon Borglum had wanted to create a much larger image that included several important moments in America history as well as the images of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.  Unfortunately his plan was too intricate to be completed and Gutzon had to settle for the four presidents, but he was also allowed to start work on a Hall of Records--a hidden room that would tell the story of the US to future generations, including the country's charter documents.  The government approved the idea but asked the sculptor to focus on finishing the presidents' heads before starting work on the Hall of Records.  When Gutzon died before the project was finished, the Hall work ground to a halt for several decades.  Eventually, in the late 1990s the project was revived to an extent and the chamber room was completed.  Caroline McGuire  See pictures at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3639293/It-s-like-real-life-Indiana-Jones-film-secret-room-Abraham-Lincoln-s-face-Mount-Rushmore-revealed.html

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1529  September 21, 2016  On this date in 1897, the "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" editorial, witten by Francis Pharcellus Church, was published in the New York Sun.  On this date in 1937, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was published.  Quote of the Day  Good books don't give up all their secrets at once. - Stephen King, novelist (b. 21 Sep 1947)