Renters Beware

Posted on May 28, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Here at Travel Between The Pages World HQ we frequently receive queries from travelers about a wide range of issues. A reader recently asked my advice about renting a car in the U.S. for a road trip around the Southwest which reminded me of a column in the New York Times about flagrant abuse of customers by rental agencies.

From the travel section of the New York Times:

“Last summer, I flew to Geneva, Switzerland, and picked up a rental car from Budget for a two-week vacation in neighboring France. More precisely, I reserved the car for 13 days and four hours, for an estimated 866 Swiss francs, worth about $1,060 at the time. I ended up returning the vehicle not just on time but a little earlier than planned — after 13 days and 30 minutes — so imagine my surprise when the final bill came to 1,545 francs. The lion’s share of the difference was in the base rental rate, so I assume I lost my discount for returning the car early. I’ve heard of car rental companies recalculating rates for returning a weeklong rental a day early, but hours? That is ridiculous.”

The explanation:
The car rental industry is notorious for charging customers for services they do not need or sometimes never agreed to, but collecting what amounts to a $595 fee for bringing back a car a few hours early seems beyond the pale.
Even more astonishingly, perhaps, is that after examining the documentation you sent me and combing through Budget’s policies, I now believe it was not even a question of hours. You could have saved $595 by returning the car just 10 minutes later than you did…
“Because the vehicle was returned earlier than the 14-day period, the rental no longer qualified for the weekly promotional pricing,” Lauren Bristow, the director of marketing communications for Avis Budget Group, wrote in response to my emailed questions. “As a result, the system recalculated the rental at the applicable shorter-term rate.”
And I’ll admit that Budget’s “General Conditions of Rental” (Part 12, if you’re following along) does back her up. “Because special offers and discounts often relate to specific time slots,” it reads, “you may even end up having to pay more if you bring back the vehicle early.”
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“O Canada” this Summer

Posted on May 27, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Free admission to Canadian national parks this summer! “From June 19 to September 7, no fees apply for: admission for all visitors to all national historic sites, national parks, and national marine conservation areas operated by Parks Canada.” Sounds like a plan.

 

 

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Little Free Libraries

Posted on May 26, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

The Little Free Library nonprofit organization has named recipients of its eighth annual Todd H. Bol Awards for Outstanding Achievement, honoring “six exceptional individuals and organizations that exemplify LFL’s mission to build community, inspire readers, and expand book access for all.” The award coincides with Little Free Library Week, which is taking place May 17-23. Check out this year’s winners here.

“Little Free Library stewards give so much more than books–they give their time, care and heart to their communities,” said LFL CEO and executive director Daniel Gumnit. “This year’s Todd H. Bol Award winners each have a unique story, but they share a deep commitment to helping neighbors feel seen, connected and inspired to read. Their generosity reflects the very best of the Little Free Library network, and we are honored to celebrate the difference they make every day.”

The Todd H. Bol Awards for Outstanding Achievement are named for LFL’s founder, Todd Bol, who created the first Little Free Library book-sharing box in 2009 in Hudson, Wis. Before he died in 2018, Bol said, “I really believe in a Little Free Library on every block and a book in every hand. I believe people can fix their neighborhoods, fix their communities, develop systems of sharing, learn from each other, and see that they have a better place on this planet to live.”

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We’ll always have Paris

Posted on May 25, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

I am genuinely ambivalent about AI applications. But occasionally I have run across some AI-generated content that seems to deserve our attention. One of these sources is Majestic Studios, which recreates daily life iconic cities as seen through time. The video below offers an intriguing and entertaining look at Paris from its beginnings in just 37 minutes.

Majestic Studios traces the evolution of Paris from a small Celtic settlement to a modern metropolis. Experience centuries of transformation through artificial intelligence that brings historical engravings and photographs to life. Witness how kings, revolutionaries, and artists shaped the city’s streets, monuments, and enduring spirit.

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Homer (not Simpson) in Egypt

Posted on May 24, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Researchers discovered the mummy at a funerary complex located south of Cairo, in Al Bahnasa, the modern-day location of the ancient Greco-Roman city of Oxyrhynchus, during an excavation in late 2025. Upon examination, the team revealed a sheet of papyrus inside the mummy’s abdomen that contained text from the Iliad, the ancient Greek poet Homer’s epic account of the siege of Troy.
The passage is from Book II of the epic poem, in which Homer cataloged the Greek ships that came to do battle with Troy after Helen, the queen of Sparta and a daughter of Zeus, was taken there by Paris, the son of the king of Troy.
The researchers previously found scrolls in some of the other mummies interred inside three limestone chambers at Al Bahnasa, all of which date to the era of Roman rule over Egypt, which began in 30 B.C.E. and ended around C.E. 640. The newly examined mummy’s tomb dates to about 1,600 years ago, according to the researchers. None of the scrolls discovered inside other mummies at the site, however, contained any references to the Iliad, which would have already been considered a literary classic at that time.
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Image and text excerpt from Scientific American.
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someone giving someone comfort

Posted on May 23, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

In the Union Square subway station nearly fifteen
years ago now, the L train came clanking by
where someone had fat-Sharpied a black heart
on the yellow pillar you leaned on during a bleak day
(brittle and no notes from anyone you crushed upon).
Above ground, the spring was the saddest one
(doing work, but also none). What were you wearing?
Something hopeful to show the world you hoped?
A tall man was learning from a vendor how to pronounce
churro. High in the sticky clouds of time, he kept
repeating churro while eating a churro. How to say
this made you want to live? No hand to hold
still there it was: someone giving someone comfort
and someone memorizing hard how to ask for it again.

—”While Everything Else Was Falling Apart,” Ada Limón

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Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation

Posted on May 22, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.

~Anne Lamott

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Remember when books used to be fun

Posted on May 21, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

 

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Are We Having Fun Yet

Posted on May 20, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Birthday colour fun. A creative person in Japan made a tool that generates a unique color associated with your birth date, along with its name and meaning. (You’ll need Google translate for the meaning)

The AI Writing Witchhunt Is Pointless. “You can’t read a paragraph and reliably, with a human life on the line (because that’s the stakes, when you destroy a writer’s career and a writer’s reputation) tell beyond any reasonable doubt, whether a human or a machine produced it,” writes Joan Westenberg. As a result, the culture of suspicion we live in disproportionately harms writers, especially newer, ESL, or neurodivergent writers.

Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the United States, Time asked 25 literary luminaries to each pick one book that they believe reflects where American life is headed or speaks to the present in a meaningful way. Their answers bring together poetry, nonfiction, and fiction from across the nation’s history, within and beyond its borders. Here are their responses—a reading list to match this moment.

25 Books That Capture This American Moment. They include Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Make the Impossible Possible by Bill Strickland, and Rabbit Redux by John Updike.

You know that I love these weird internet radio thingies: An old-timey radio dial for the internet

Some cities in the Netherlands will call a poet for funerals that would have no one coming to them, the poet will create a poem from what is known about the person.

“Every funeral is sad. But these lonely funerals are the saddest. The city of Amsterdam tries to make the burial less tragic by sending a city official to the place where the dead person was found. The official carefully examines the possessions to figure out some basic information, like the name of someone to contact, or the bills that have to be paid. The official also searches through the possessions to figure out the person’s taste in music.”

I recently had the odd experience of becoming a “Facebook Millionaire.” No, Meta didn’t pay-off bigtime, but I had a month (28 days) where my FB page had more than one million views, 1,005,636 to be precise. What is even stranger is that this occurred while my FB account was restricted after I reposted some horribly bigoted comments that folks (and likely bots) had peppered my posts and images with. I don’t suppose this will ever be repeated, but who knows maybe I’m turning into an influencer. LOL

 

 

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The Last Library

Posted on May 19, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

I recently stumbled across an intriguing new exhibition at the St. Petersburg Fine Art Museum in St. Pete Florida. The task of creating thousands of crazy, fake dust jackets and cultural maps must have been Herculean. It’s political, philosophical, and funny .Here is the museum’s blog post about the clever show:

The Last Library IV: Written in Water is an installation by artists Ward Shelley (American, b. 1950) and Douglas Paulson (American, b. 1980). It invites us to think about how we understand truth, evidence, responsibility, and the uncertain state of the world. The installation features dangerously tilted shelves filled with banned books, controversial publications, made-up files, state documents, secret plans, and lost records. This clever fake library honors the written word, a tool that has helped drive many of history’s great advances, such as the rise of representative government and the importance of human rights. At the same time, The Last Library IV examines how the reliability of the written word is fading in a world of alternative facts, censored documents, and language shaped by artificial intelligence.

For more than five thousand years, the written word has helped build fairer societies. As the modern era began, writing became a key part of democracy, creating shared understanding, common laws, and the ideas that support strong institutions. Without writing, words like evidence, authority, and the rule of law lose their meaning, even though written documents shape our beliefs, hopes, and expectations. For centuries, people trusted words to establish facts. But in today’s post-Truth Era, it is harder to tell fact from deception or fiction from fantasy, especially when words appear on both paper and screens. The Last Library IV’s crowded shelves, hidden documents, twisted viewpoints, and slanted floors challenge us to find the truth among many confusing and often controversial sources. In this installation, Shelley and Paulson place political propaganda, misleading ads, fake archives, and corporate interests alongside the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Human Rights.

The Last Library IV is mostly made from plain corrugated cardboard, a material that is strong but doesn’t last, symbolizing how our world can seem solid but is actually fragile. Shelley and Paulson’s detailed mix of fake books, real titles, confusing diagrams, and questionable documents encourages us to think about how much we can trust the written word, and even makes us wonder about the future of democracy.

 

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