Summer Sunday Sundries

Posted on July 2, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

“In its June 26, 1948, issue, The New Yorker published Shirley Jackson’s unsettling story “The Lottery,” and it’s not an overstatement to say that readers freaked out. They wrote letters in droves, angry or unsure about what this slowly unfolding portrait of small-town mob violence was doing in a literary-minded magazine. Now considered an American classic, the story went on to become a classroom mainstay.”  Haven’t read it yet? Here you go.

Archaeologists at the Pompeii ruins have discovered a still-life fresco of a Mediterranean meal that looks ready to eat even after 2,000 or so years. To many viewers, it appears to contain a pizza. But pizzas as we know them today, with tomato and mozzarella, weren’t baked in Italy until the 1800s. Instead, it’s more likely that the fresco  features a focaccia — food that was commonly eaten in the city before it was destroyed in the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The Archaeological Park of Pompeii unveiled the small fresco on June 27. The image was found during recent excavations in Regio IX, a section of the ancient town that contained a mix of residential houses and commercial structures, such as a laundry and a bakery, as well as the skeletal remains of at least three people.

I am a regular follower of the wonderful Japanese arts and culture blog Spoon & Tamago. The site recently featured a story about Yoko Tada who began painting in her 80s. At 100 she’s publishing her first book. There’s hope for late bloomers everywhere.

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

– Wendell Berry

 

Posted in Art, Asia, Books, Europe, History, Museums, Restaurants, Tourism, USA, Writing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A problem involving Don Quixote

Posted on July 1, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

“A Problem”

by Jorge Luis Borges

Translated by Andrew Hurley

Let us imagine that a piece of paper with a text in Arabic on it is discovered in Toledo, and that paleographers declare the text to have been written by that same Cede Hamete Benengeli from whom Cervantes derived Don Quixote. In it, we read that the hero (who, as everyone knows, wandered the roads of Spain armed with a lance and sword, challenging anyone for any reason) discovers, after one of his many combats, that he has killed a man. At that point the fragment breaks off; the problem is to guess, or hypothesize, how don Quixote reacts.

So far as I can see, there are three possibilities. The first is a negative one: Nothing
in particular happens, because in the hallucinatory world of don Quixote, death is no
more uncommon than magic, and there is no reason that killing a mere man should disturb one who does battle, or thinks he does battle, with fabled beasts and sorcerers. The second is pathetic: Don Quixote never truly managed to forget that he was a creation, a projection, of Alonso Quijano, reader of fabulous tales. The sight of death, the realization that a delusion has led him to commit the sin of Cain, awakens him from his willful madness, perhaps forever. The third is perhaps the most plausible: Having
killed the man, don Quixote cannot allow himself to think that the terrible act is the work
of a delirium; the reality of the effect makes him assume a like reality of cause, and don Quixote never emerges from his madness.

But there is yet another hypothesis, which is alien to the Spanish mind (even to the Western mind) and which requires a more ancient, more complex, and more timeworn setting. Don Quixote—who is no longer don Quixote but a king of the cycles of Hindustan—senses, as he stands before the body of his enemy, that killing and engendering are acts of God or of magic, which everyone knows transcend the human condition. He knows that death is illusory, as are the bloody sword that lies heavy in his hand, he himself and his entire past life, and the vast gods and the universe.

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Beach Reads

Posted on June 30, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

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Down a research rabbit hole

Posted on June 29, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

The free new research tool from Yale University called Lux is a fascinating opportunity to be led down a rabbit hole of infinite connections for any subject of interest.  The digital tool works by building relationships between objects users look up, uncovering how it relates to other items within the university’s storied collection no matter how distant it may seem. Lux users are able to dive into the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Peabody Museum, and Yale University Library, which includes the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Lewis Walpole Library.

Lux  works in some ways like a search engine. However, search engines tend to return hits that then offer you links to travel onwards to a new site. LUX builds relationships between the object you’re searching for and other related objects in the collection. It goes beyond the objects themselves and finds obscure connections. For example, if you were searching for a piece of writing, it would identify other works from the same author, as well as other art created around the same time or in the same location. Or, if you were to search for dinosaus, it would pull up images of actual dinosaurs from the university’s museums, as well as art and books about dinosaurs. Previously you would have to go to different places—a natural history museum for the dinosaurs, and a library for books—or Google separate entries and piece together these different resources.

“Lux is designed to open the breadth of Yale’s cultural and natural history collections, connecting our wide range of extraordinary objects, specimens, and works,” said Susan Gibbons, Vice Provost for Collections and Scholarly Communications.

The core of LUX is a backend data model called a knowledge graph. They are composed of datasets from different sources and are a way of organizing that information into a network of relationships. It’s like the evidence pin-up-board used to visualize the connections between people, objects, places, and events.

 

 

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Books on Maps

Posted on June 28, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

If you stop by TBTP regularly, you probably know how I feel about maps and literary websites that manage to combine books AND maps. Books On Maps: is a new project that is mashing up cartography and novels. You don’t need to understand Italian to get the most out of the website – the account posts shots of pages in books referring to a particular place, alongside shots of that place on a map. This comes from Pietro Minto’s weekly newsletter, which is in Italian but which is easily translatable and is always full of interesting stuff.

 

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Rules for Writers

Posted on June 27, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Raymond Chandler’s 10 rules for writing a detective novel:

  1. It must be credibly motivated, both as to the original situation and the dénouement.
  2. It must be technically sound as to the methods of murder and detection.
  3. It must be realistic in character, setting and atmosphere. It must be about real people in a real world.
  4. It must have a sound story value apart from the mystery element: i.e., the investigation itself must be an adventure worth reading.
  5. It must have enough essential simplicity to be explained easily when the time comes.
  6. It must baffle a reasonably intelligent reader.
  7. The solution must seem inevitable once revealed.
  8. It must not try to do everything at once. If it is a puzzle story operating in a rather cool, reasonable atmosphere, it cannot also be a violent adventure or a passionate romance.
  9. It must punish the criminal in one way or another, not necessarily by operation of the law. … If the detective fails to resolve the consequences of the crime, the story is an unresolved chord and leaves irritation behind it.
  10. It must be honest with the reader.
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Bookstore Mapping

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

The Pandemic had a devastating effect on the book trade in Philadelphia. Over the last two years, the city has lost some of its oldest and most beloved bookshops. I was heartened however to discover that the city’s surviving booksellers have created an excellent map to many of Philly’s most interesting bookstores.

“The Philadelphia Bookstore Map is a collective effort of booksellers, booklovers, and The City of Philadelphia to spread the word about our abundance of bookstores.

50,000 paper maps have been printed to be distributed free in bookstores, cafes, libraries, visitors’ centers and other hubs around the city.

We hope you keep this map tucked away in your personal library or hang it on your wall, both as reference and to celebrate our 46 bricks-and-mortar shops. Please support those who’ve created space for readers to browse, chat, and buy books in the real world!

All of our artwork was created by Henry Crane. Henry Crane is an artist, illustrator, fabricator living in Philadelphia. He has worked under renowned muralists and installation artists and has done freelance display fabrication for high-end retail stores. In addition, he has created a wide range of illustrations for graphic novels, concert posters, and album covers. To see more of his work, click here!”

 

 

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Roman ruin that’s not just for cats anymore

Posted on June 25, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Invariably when I visit Rome I always seem to wander by the Largo Argentina to gape at the inaccessable Area Sacra where Brutus stabbed Caesar on the Ides of March in the year 44 B.C.E. Until just recently, the site was only open to a protected colony of feral cats, but that has all changed. One of the most important locations in Roman history, the site of the assassination of Julius Caesar, has just opened to tourists.

Known today as the Area Sacra, or Sacred Area, the site includes the remains of four ancient Roman temples, as well as what archeologists have identified as the Curia of Pompey.The Italian luxury brand Bulgari has helped fund walkways through the site, portions of which date back to the third century B.C.E. The project was first announced in 2019, and also includes an elevator connecting the sunken plaza to the street level, and nighttime illumination of the ruins.

Since the site was first uncovered in the 1920s, amid demolitions ordered by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, its ancient buildings have only been visible to tourists looking down from the sidewalk above. Over the past 2,000 years, the street level has risen thanks to layers of new construction.

Since the 1990s, the Area Sacra has also been home to the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary. It’s run by volunteers known as gattare, or “cat ladies.” The historical site’s feline residents will certainly be part of the attraction for tourists visiting the site, which costs just €5 ($5.44) to enter.

 

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Living in the Real World

Posted on June 24, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Most reasonably educated adults—other than flatearth nincompoops—are well aware that the way we map our planet distorts the actual size of countries and continents. For centuries, we have generally ignored the wildly misleading maps that are used in most publications. I recently stumbled upon an enlightening article titled “Maps Distort How We See the World” by Tomas Pueyo. His collection of maps and graphics offers a sobering examination of the ways in which we misunderstand our planet and the imapcts on policies and politics that result.

Brazil is the most short-changed country, as it’s right on the equator and huge. Here it is compared to Europe.

The Panama Canal runs north-south, and ships enter in the west and leave in the east

 

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Five for Friday

Posted on June 23, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Hermann Hesse // “This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today…You must play your part and sing a song, one of your best.”

 

 

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