The eminently browsable Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has revealed Ovid’s list of the fifty dogs who were once Actaeon’s best friends.  Actaeon, you’ll recall was the grandson of Cadmus, who founded ancient Thebes in Greece and allegedly taught the Phoenician’s’ flexible phonetic alphabet to the Greeks.  Actaeon was young, strong, and an exceptional hunter thanks to his ferocious dog pack, with whom he was very close.  They were named for their hunting traits, ranging from Beastkiller and Voracious, to Zigzag Runner and Spot.  According to Aclassicaday’s online article, it seems one day Actaeon innocently wandered into a sacred grove where the goddesses bathed and saw Diana.  She was goddess of the hunt, “was fiercely chaste,” and consequently, “shock and fury mingled in her immortal form.”  Diana “took up a handful of water and hurled it on Actaeon’s face: ‘Now you may tell the story of seeing Diana named – if storytelling is in your power.’”  Actaeon panicked as “his body convulsed violently … he felt to his horror two stumps growing rapidly out of his head … his neck being to stretch … his once powerful feet harden,” and saw “coarse fur rent its way through his flesh.”  Yep, Diana turned him into a huge stag, and his erstwhile canine pals picked up the scent and tore him to pieces, for as a deer he couldn’t call them off.

            Encountering Actaeon coincided with reading “American Woman Creates Unique Library for Dogs.”   The Economic Times article described a Tennessee dog named Toby, who claimed on Twitter to have established a dog-centric library on a public beach in a crate filled with sticks of various sizes and used dog toys.  He has since added a poop bag dispenser and solar-powered night light.  His patrons usually show their gratitude by leaving aromatic contributions behind.  Smell being such a profound canine sense, Toby’s library is providing entertainment as do human public libraries.  We can all use as much knowledge as possible, and reading’s the best way to get it.  According to “Seven Ways Reading Benefits Your Brain,” an article from Bestbrainpossible.com, “Studies show that staying mentally stimulated can slow the progress of and reduce the risks of Alzheimer’s and dementia. You’ve got a ‘use it or lose it’ brain.”  It cited specific studies that found “reading reduced stress levels by as much as 68 percent, which was more than listening to music, having a cup of tea, playing video games, or going for a walk.”  Reading promotes vocabulary acquisition among the young and leads to higher incomes in adults.  And your memory?  Also, “reading is more neurobiologically demanding than processing images or speech. It’s a neural workout. As you read, disparate parts of your brain — such as vision, language, and associative learning — work together …. mental stimulation like reading ulle)can help protect memory and thinking skills, especially as you age …. In other research, reading has been shown to slow the rate of memory deterioration and the decline of other key mental capacities. This translates indirectly as reading can actually help people live longer.”  Moreover, “becoming engrossed in a novel enhances the brain’s resting-state connectivity and over-all function. Specifically, reading fiction improves the reader’s ability to put themselves in another’s shoes and flex imagination in a way similar to the visualization of a muscle memory in sports.”  The article admonished us to “Pick Up a Real Paper Book for the Most Benefit.”

            Tragically, most of the world’s citizenry can’t read freely.  Many countries’ governments restrict what’s acceptable, and this is often combined with a triple whammy of not having books anywhere nearby, and widespread illiteracy.  Action Education’s online “733 Million People Worldwide Would Not Be Able to Read This Article,” noted that two-thirds of those 733 million are women, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and a “child whose mother can read has a 50% greater chance of surviving beyond age 5.”  Being able to read isn’t the same as reading well.  That takes practice, and there we don’t have much to brag about here at home.  The National Literacy Institute’s 2024-2025 report says “54% of U.S. adults read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, and 64% of our country’s fourth graders do not read proficiently. The International Federation of Library Associations’ “Library Map of the World compares the availability of nations’ libraries.  For example, as of last week, China’s population of 1,415,119,358 has 5,909 total libraries (one national, 2,914 academic, and 2,914 public) while the U.S.’s 347,831,763 citizens have 110,450 libraries (15 national, 4,266 academic, 17,227 public, 82,300 school, and 6,642 special). However, the past few months have seen many of our national libraries shut down, closed to the public and government restrictions on the information they can share.  This trend is extremely frightening, especially since Congress won’t exert any oversight over the desecration.  As Charles de Gaulle said, “The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”