I don’t know who created the wonderful website Reading Maps, but I’d love to buy them a cup of coffee. Reading Maps is a very simple, but wildly diverting, project that takes fictional journeys and plots them on a world map. The site offers four optional mapping versions—Aquarelle, Topo, Satellite, and Dark—to see a visualization of a book or film plot in action. It’s great fun.
Travelers on Philippines Airlines learn essential safety procedures through a dramatic storyline featuring cabin crew and passengers. The guide covers cabin preparation, seat belt usage, emergency exits, and water landing protocols while highlighting the importance of care in every journey. Who doesn’t love a clever, attention grabbing inflight safety video, or an over the top telenovela.
NB: if the video above fails to open in your browser or email, please click on this link.
“Rachel Cleveland dealt with challenging health issues for a number of years. After overcoming those challenges, she chose to share her love of books and reading while giving back to the Twin Cities. With a master in public policy and background in nonprofit work and development, the idea for Little Charity Book Truck was born.
By not having a brick and mortar storefront, Little Charity Book Truck has very few administrative and overhead costs. Similarly, all individuals involved with the book truck are volunteers, so every dollar made through book purchases goes directly back into the community. It’s truly a passion project. Reading books while helping others, what could be better?
Sometimes the best stories aren’t just found between the pages, they’re written by communities coming together, one book at a time.”
INSOMNIA
All over the world people can’t sleep.
In different times zones they’re lying awake
Bodies still, minds trudging along like child laborers.
They worry about bills, they worry whether the shoes they just bought are really too small.
One’s husband’s died, her son left for college
and she doesn’t know how to program the VCR.
Another was beaten by her husband
One is planning a getaway
One holding stolen goods.
One’s on the plaid couch in ICU.
His daughter, it turned out
Actually goes have a tumour
Even though the doctor said they’d do the MRI just to rule it out.
The woman on the other couch is snoring
which is strangely soothing
Evidence that people do sleep.
Some are lying on
Charisma sheets
Some in hammocks
Some in jail
Some under bridges
One is at the north pole studying the impact of pollution
A man in Massachusetts thinks about a lover he once had in Dar es Salaam and the jasmine
blossoms she strung along the shaft of a silver pin fastened in her hair at night.
Coincidentally, the lover, now in Rome, remembers looking out the window over the sink
where she was washing dishes
And seeing him reading in the lawn chair
and she thought how perhaps for the first time she wasn’t lonely. They’re all up.
some are too cold,
some too hot.
some hungry,
some in pain
Some are in hotels listening to people having sex in the next room Some are crying
One the cat woke up and now she’s worried about the rash she noticed in the evening and
wonders if her daughter who’s afraid to swim should be pushed
Some get up
Others stay in bed
They eat oreos, or drink wine
Or both
Many read
A few make Hallowe’en costumes
Some check their email
They try sleep tapes, hypnosis, drugs
They listen to their clocks tick
Smartly, as a woman in high heels
Those who can, cling to their mates
An ear pressed to those neighboring lungs
Like a stethoscope hoping to catch a ride on the steady sleep breath of the other
to be carried like a seed on the body of one who is able.
Right now in Japan dawn is coming, and everyone who’s been up all night is relieved;
they can stop trying
In Guatemala though the insomniacs are just getting started
and have the whole night ahead of them.
It’s like a wave at the baseball stadium,
hands around the world.
So here’s a prayer for the wakeful
The souls who can’t rest as you lie with your eyes open or closed May something comfort you—a mockingbird, a breeze,
the smell of crushed mint rain on the roof,
Chopin’s Nocturnes your child’s birth a kiss, or even me—in my chilly kitchen with my coat on—thinking of you
~Ellen Bass
Image: “Insomnia II” and was created by American surrealist painter Jeffrey G. Batchelor.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver’s life and career are explored in the new documentary Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, directed by Sasha Waters. Deadline reported that the film has opened at IFC Center in New York City and will debut today at Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles before expanding to select theaters nationwide.
“She’s a poet for people who love poetry, but she’s also a poet for people who might think they don’t really like poetry or might not really know about poetry or might feel intimidated or bored by poetry,” Waters said. “She invites people into the work at every level, and she’s not interested in playing with language for the sake of playing with language…. I think she’s interested in asking the viewer to share an experience or to reflect on their own experience.”
Noting that there is “pressure, I think, to put celebrities in documentaries,” Waters observed: “So, for me, it was really important that if we were going to do that, there needed to be a real connection, like why are they in the film? Helena Bonham Carter, there’s a TikTok of her reading a Mary Oliver poem. So that’s how I found out she was a Mary Oliver fan. Stephen Colbert told a guest on his show that he sent the poem ‘The Summer Day’ to his children on the first day of summer every year.”
I am terrible at learning languages. Over the years, I’ve struggled to get by with high school French and the bits and pieces of Spanish that I picked up living in South Florida. Before trips, I have crammed traveler’s Greek, Italian, Russian, and even Japanese, but I have never gotten beyond basics. Needless to say, I am in awe of folks who are bilingual or even multilingual. But how do they do it.
Now science may be providing some answers. The article “How do bilingual brains navigate between languages? Scientists discover ‘geometric neural map.’” describes new research just published in Cell, and it begins with the below paragraph:
“Anyone who speaks more than one language knows the feeling of expressing the same thought through entirely different linguistic lenses. A new study by researchers at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine reveals that the key to this translation ability is a shared geometric map of neural responses in the hippocampus.”
It also discusses how neuroscience and AI may be converging on similar conclusions or underlying principles. This is fascinating research. However, the research was based on only four speakers of English and Spanish. Still, it leaves many questions to consider.
– Does the conceptual map somehow exist independent of language, or is it created with the learning of your first language? I would bet on the latter.
– English and Spanish share Indo-European structure and Latin-alphabet orthography. Does the mapping differ if you have completely different phonetics (e.g., Chinese) or very different grammar (e.g., Japanese)? Only one or the other? Both? If so, is there a threshold for “different”?
– One of the study’s senior authors described the brain as “keeping languages distinct enough to avoid interference.” But that refers to the proposed neural geometry of meaning, not necessarily to every retrieval slip we make while speaking—and multilingual people do mix things up.
Fairy tales are about trouble, about getting into it and out of it, and trouble seems to be a necessary stage on the route of becoming. All the magic and glass mountains and pearls the size of houses and princesses beautiful as the day and talking birds and part-time serpents are distractions from the tough core of most of the stories, the struggle to survive against adversaries, to find your place in your world, and to come into your own. Difficulty is always a school, though learning is optional. Fairy tales are almost always the stories of the powerless, of youngest sons, abandoned children, orphans, of humans transformed into birds and beasts or otherwise enchanted away from their own selves and lives. Even princesses are chattels to be disowned or sold by fathers, punished by stepmothers, or claimed by princes, though they often assert themselves in between and are rarely as passive as the cartoon versions. Fairy tales are children’s stories not in who they were made for but in their focus on the early stages of life, when others have power over you and you have power over no one.
The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
When I was in the 7th grade, my wonderful English teacher—shout out to Mrs. Fine—introduced me to the poetry of Langston Hughes. I was immediately hooked. Somehow I never knew until recently about his marvelous introduction to jazz that he wrote for children.
Prolific poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist Langston Hughes is considered one of the fathers of jazz poetry, a literary art form that emerged in the 1920s and eventually became the foundation for modern hip-hop.
In 1954, the 52-year-old Hughes decided to channel his love of jazz into a sort-of-children’s book that educated young readers about the culture he so loved. The First Book of Jazz was born, taking on the ambitious task of being the first-ever children’s book to review American music, and to this day arguably the best. Hughes covered every notable aspect of jazz, from the evolution of its eras to its most celebrated icons to its geography and sub-genres, and made a special point of highlighting the essential role of African-American musicians in the genre’s coming of age. Hughes even covered the technicalities of jazz — rhythm, percussion, improvisation, syncopation, blue notes, harmony — with remarkable eloquence that, rather than overwhelming the young reader, exudes the genuine joy of playing.
Alongside the book, Hughes released a companion record, The Story of Jazz, featuring Hughes’ lively, vivid narration of jazz history in three tracks, each focusing on a distinct element of the genre. You can hear them here.
Travel Between The Pages 