le retour des libraires

Posted on November 5, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

In 18th century Paris the Palais Royal housed booksellers in the galleries under the arcades and a new exhibition next month hosted by Les Enluminures will celebrate this heritage.

Le Retour des libraries au Palais-Royal will run at the Les Enluminures‘s new location at 21-22 Galerie de Montpensier in the Jardin du Palais Royal from November 26 through January 6, 2027. It will feature Parisian antiquarian booksellers Librairie Chamonal, Librarie Paul Jammes, Librairie Patrice Rossignol, and Librairie Clavreuil as well as the Librairie Alain de Grolée-Virville which was for many years located in Galerie de Montpensier. Each will present one book representative of their specialisms.

 

Accompanying them will be the Librairie Delamain, the oldest existing bookstore in Paris and also once housed in the Palais Royal, which will present historic archival material relevant to the Palais Royal. Engravings of the Palais Royal in the “age of the booksellers” will be displayed in the exhibition space.

Items on show will include:

  • Girolamo Aliotti’s Gratulatio ad Pium II pro foelici ac secondo ex Mantuana peregrinatione reditu, Dialogus de optimo vitae genere deligendo, and De monachis erudiendis (Florence, 1460) from Les Enluminures
  • Atlas Geographique Statistique, Historique et Chronologique des Deux Ameriques et des îles adjacentes  (Paris, J. Carez, Verdière, Bossange, 1825) from Librairie Chamonal
  • Hieronymous Tochtermann’s Schriften Buch (Augsbourg, 1744-1747) from Librarie Paul Jammes
  • Etrennes Mignonnes curieuses et utiles, with several additions and corrections, a set of five volumes (Paris, Veuve Durand, 1760-1773) from Librairie Patrice Rossignol
  • Jean-François Blondel’s Fête publique presented by the City of Paris on the  occasion of the marriage of His Royal Highness the Dauphin, on the 13th of February MDCCXLVII (Paris(?), 1747) from Librairie Clavreuil
  • Le Breton (Hector, seigneur de la Doinmeterie), heraldic manuscript on paper (France, 1621(?)) from Librairie Alain de Grolée-Virville
Posted in Architecture, Books, Europe, History, Tourism | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Our lives really do seem strange and mysterious

Posted on November 4, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Our lives really do seem strange and mysterious when you look back on them. Filled with unbelievably bizarre coincidences and unpredictable, zigzagging developments. While they are unfolding, it’s hard to see anything weird about them, no matter how closely you pay attention to your surroundings. In the midst of the everyday, these things may strike you as simply ordinary things, a matter of course. They might not be logical, but time has to pass before you can see if something is logical.

Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Does the book end happily ?

Posted on November 3, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

tale of the hapless adventurer

Posted on November 2, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

This week Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift turned 300. Published on the 28th of October 1726, the tale of the hapless adventurer, Lemuel Gulliver, and his travels among the lands of giants, floating islands, and talking horses have entertained audiences for centuries.

 The University of Liverpool has launched a digital exhibition, Gulliver’s Travels: Before and Beyond, to mark the book’s tercentenary. The exhibition uses items from the University’s Special Collections and Archives and was curated by a team of colleagues across the Department of English and the Cultural Heritage Service.

The exhibition places the book within an expansive timeline split into three sections that draw out its rich history and enduring legacy. The first section explores the literary and scientific texts that came to influence Swift’s unique vision, from Homer’s giants in the Odyssey to the tiny world opened up by the invention of the microscope in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665). The second section examines the immediate historical and political environment that Swift satirised in Gulliver’s Travels. The third section looks at the productive influence of Gulliver’s Travels on the development of the wonderful worlds of science fiction.

You can explore the exhibition here: Gulliver’s Travels: Before and Beyond – University of Liverpool Digital Heritage Lab

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)

Posted on November 1, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

“Up in Illinois, we’ve forgotten what it’s all about. I mean the dead, up in our town, tonight, heck, they’re forgotten. Nobody goes to sit and talk to them. Boy, that’s lonely. That’s really sad. But here– why, shucks. It’s both happy and sad. It’s all firecrackers and skeleton toys down here in the plaza and up in that graveyard now are all the Mexican dead folks with the families visiting and flowers and candles and singing and candy. I mean it’s almost like Thanksgiving, huh? And everyone set down to dinner, but only half the people able to eat, but that’s no mind, they’re THERE. It’s like holding hands at a séance with your friends, but some of the friends gone.”

― Ray Bradbury

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Where Halloween and Hanukah Intersect

Posted on October 31, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

You will probably be surprised to discover an unlikely connection between the popular Pagan holiday celebration of Halloween and the ancient Jewish Festival of Hanukah. The improbable link connecting the two holidays stems from a word often associated with Halloween that has linguistic etymology stretching across millennia and continents.

Throughout the Halloween season one frequently encounters stories that incorporate the term macabre  which can mean “focused on death”, “evoking horror”, “gruesome,” or “ghoulish”. But macabre, a loanword from French, is not related to any word, French or otherwise, that means “death” or “horror” or “gruesomeness.”

Before macabre was macabre, it was Macabré, a Middle French word that, according to the OED, first appeared in Jean le Fèvre’s Respit de la Mort (1376), where the author says “Je fis de Macabré la dance” — apparently his claim to have written a work called la danse Macabré. There is some dispute about the origin of Macabré, but Merriam-Webster considers it settled:

We trace the origins of macabre to the name of the Book of Maccabees, which is included in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox canons of the Old Testament and in the Protestant Apocrypha. Sections of this biblical text address both the deaths of faithful people asked to renounce their religion, and the manner in which the dead should be properly commemorated. In medieval France, representations of these passages were performed as a procession or dance which became known as the “dance of death” or “dance Maccabee”; the latter was spelled in several different ways, including danse de Macabré. In English, macabre was originally used in reference to this “dance of death” but then gradually broadened in use to describe anything grim or horrific.
R
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Visit Estonia

Posted on October 30, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Visit Tallinn has given a new spin on Estonian cultural heritage, with a tourism video pairing traditional folk dance with hip-hop to bring the country’s identity to a new audience.

Born From Culture features Tallinn University’s folk dance ensemble Soveldaja performing to American rapper Future’s ‘Mask Off’, alongside Estonian accordion music played by Ernst Valdmaa.

The ad offers a surprising mash-up, with traditional choreography set against a contemporary soundtrack to reframe folk dance for audiences who might otherwise scroll past it. Accompanying the film is the message: “Times can change. The Estonian spirit does not. Some things just run in our blood.”

The tourist campaign also taps into a broader shift towards tourism advertising that sells destinations through their distinctive personalities and cultural quirks. For Estonia, the juxtaposition of folk dance and hip-hop offers a way to communicate the country’s enduring cultural identity without presenting tradition as something frozen in time. Instead, the video positions heritage as something that can evolve alongside contemporary culture, with local performers and musicians remaining central to the story.

NB: if the video fails to open in your browser, please click HERE

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Starry Night

Posted on October 29, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

I have seen Van Gogh’s The Starry Night dozens of times at MOMA in New York City, but never once stopped to question its provenance. Every aspect of the iconic painting has been written about and evaluated for decades. But do we really know when it was created ?

What date did Vincent van Gogh paint his 1889 masterpiece The Starry Night? Earlier studies had placed the creation in mid-June of that year, based on a letter the artist had written to his brother Theo around June 18. But Kyung Hee University doctoral candidate Elijah Jeong-hyun Kim noted that an observer in that period should have seen a waning gibbous moon, not the crescent seen in the painting.

Intrigued, he began to compare astronomical simulations, weather records, and van Gogh’s other writings. A better estimate of the scene’s creation, he says, is dawn on July 22, 1889. On that date the crescent moon, Venus, and the Hyades star cluster in the constellation Taurus would have been visible from van Gogh’s window in southern France, and the recorded hot weather would have inspired the cicadas the artist mentions in a letter.

Kim’s article appears in the journal Scientific Reports. “Our conversation with Van Gogh’s other skies is still ongoing,” he told Popular Science. “We plan to tell those stories one by one.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

the day is yet one more yellow leaf

Posted on October 28, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Kafka’s Metro

Posted on October 27, 2026 by Brian D. Butler

Kafka’s Metro is a real clickbait title since Prague’s Metro, or more precisely Metroskop, wasn’t even opened until 1974, which was 50 years after Franz Kafka’s death. But since you’re reading the post the title worked.

If you’ve ever been to Prague, or long to visit, you may want to explore the Prague subway system, rendered in color and 3d. The site “Metroskop “ shows the Prague metro as it really is underground: the depth of all 61 stations, escalators, stairs, vestibules and tunnels at true heights above lidar terrain. Plus station ridership, surroundings and the story of its construction from the first concepts in 1898 until today. You can even follow a train along its route to experience a strangely-meditative journey through the tunnels under the Czech capital while soothing music plays,

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment