A new exhibition at the New York Public Library opened last week celebrating the 100th anniversary of the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh.
Silly Old Bear! Winnie-the-Pooh at 100 is a special pop-up display at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 42nd Street showcasing the origins of the story by A. A. Milne, running through November 30.
Highlights include:
Visitors to the Library can also see the original stuffed toys that inspired A.A. Milne’s story, Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, and Tigger which were donated to the Library by Dutton Children’s Books, the original U.S. publisher of Winnie-the-Pooh, in 1987. They are on permanent display in the Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures.
Ernest Hemingway’s reading list for a young writer: 1. Stephen Crane – The Blue Hotel – The Open Boat 2. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary 3. James Joyce – Dubliners 4. Stendhal – The Red and the Black 5. Somerset Maugham – Of Human Bondage 6. Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina – War and Peace 7. Thomas Mann – Buddenbrooks 8. George Moore – Hail and Farewell 9. Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov 10. The Oxford Book of English Verse 11. E. E. Cummings – The Enormous Room 12. Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights 13. W. H. Hudson – Far Away and Long Ago 14. Henry James – The American
Colorful Aurora over Icelandic Waterfall
Image Credit & Copyright: Victor Lima
Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)Explanation: What a sight to behold, when a night sky became filled with colors that appeared to rain over the Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland. This image was taken in a single 5 second exposure by the photographer in April 2025. Seeing an aurora is on many people’s bucket lists. But it is not easy. It requires high solar activity, dark and clear skies, and usually a viewing location at high latitude. That makes the northern lights more easily seen than the corresponding southern lights, simply because there is less landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, especially around the Antarctic Circle. Auroras are caused by charged particles from the solar wind that are captured by the Earth’s magnetosphere and guided by the magnetic field to a region close to one of the poles, where they collide with gas particles in the atmosphere. Different colors indicate interactions with different gases at different altitudes, like oxygen (red and green) and nitrogen (blue and pink).
I never considered visiting Kyoto during Japan’s notoriously hot and humid summer until I read about The Shimogamo Nōryō Furuhon Matsuri (下鴨納涼古本まつり) Japan’s largest annual outdoor secondhand book festival. It takes place in the ancient, protected primeval forest of Tadasu no Mori, which is located on the grounds of the UNESCO World Heritage site, Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto.
Held for five days every August, it’s the largest outdoor booksale and literary event in Japan. The Shimogamo Nōryō Furuhon Matsuri offers more than half a million antiquarian and secondhand books across Tadasu no Mori, the ancient grove of Shimogamo Shrine. Edo-period printings sit beside paperbacks and one of the largest children’s sections in Japan; booksellers have gathered there for thirty-nine summers, and the shrine has stood since the sixth century. The city has the same hold on its writers. These books will let you travel there.
“Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody man’s eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.”
Southwest Airlines recently announced the launch of its first airport lounges. Expected to open in the Fall of 2027, the first four lounges will be located in Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Daniel K. Inouye (Honolulu) International Airport and Nashville International Airport. The airline will partner with the financial brand Chase to “create a premium and welcoming airport experience.”
“Our lounges will be a natural extension of that experience, offering customers a place to relax and experience the Southwest brand in a new way,” said Tony Roach, executive vice president, chief customer & brand officer at Southwest Airlines, in the release.
At least seven more lounges are planned to open in the next several years, the airline said.
Flyers can access to the lounges by obtaining a new, premium Southwest Rapid Rewards Credit Card issued by Chase, launching in 2027. Travelers can expect the sort of design, dining, travel benefits and amenities that are currently available in the Chase Sapphire Reserve Lounge Network, the airline said.
As I have gotten older, access to airport lounges has become more of a priority. For a number of years, I had a credit card that offered free use of hundreds of lounges worldwide. But alas that perk disappeared. Since then, I’ve often purchased day passes to airline branded and private lounges with mixed results. Lately, the lounge amenities seem to be thinner, while the lounges are noticeably more crowded.
Three Horses in Landscape with Houses, 1913 // from Franz Marc in Sinseldorf to Paul Klee in Munich, 8 November 1913.
“It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.” Terry Pratchett – The Colour of Magic
Like many booksellers, book collectors, and writers, I’m incensed by reports of AI companies destroying irreplaceable books after scanning them to feed the insatiable AI maw. So I was not surprised to discover that some AI firms are selling the scanned books to be turned into toilet paper.
I recently heard about a bookseller who received an order for a book to be sent to a Trifinity warehouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a common destination for AI company orders. The bookseller put a tracking device in the book and watched as it went to Kenosha, then Las Vegas, and finally to a warehouse in Mexicali, Mexico. The warehouse is part of a large Papel San Francisco paper plant.
The wasteful and disgraceful process by which AI corporations willfully (and now legally) destroy books is done simply to save a few dollars for an industry that is valued in trillions. The most egregious part is AI’s focus on pre-ISBN and pre-1970s books that are more likely to be out of copyright and less likely to attract lawsuits. This is resulting in the destruction of limited editions and irreplaceable books.
The Wall Street Journal [paywalled] has a story today about AI and book scanning which also mentions this tracking device. They call its destination a paper recycling plant, which is true but doesn’t describe what the paper is recycled into.
Travel Between The Pages 
