If you stop by TBTP regularly, you are likely aware that I am a sucker for clever interactive map projects. Musical Explorers Around the World Map from Carnegie Hall lets you discover and listen to folk music from around the globe. Click on the map and listen to bluegrass music from the Appalachians, mbira music from Zimbabwe, calypso from Trinidad & Tabago, folk from Sicily and lots of other great traditional folk music from countries around the world.
In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.
And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke.
Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God.“Certainly,” said man.“Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God.
And He went away.
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963)
DEAD STARS
by Ada Limón
Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.
I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.
We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.
It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.
And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.
But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising —
to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.
Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What
would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?
What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.
Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?
What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain
for the safety of others, for earth,
if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,
if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,
rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?
U.S Poet Laureate Ada Limón channels cosmic destiny in her moving poem “Dead Stars,” found in her collection The Carrying .
Even with the widespread acceptance of the Euro, these days there are still about thirty currencies in use among the fifty countries of Europe. In the 17th century, things were much more complicated for travelers. This Dutch book offered a catalog of woodcuts of 1,685 coins (many scaled to actual size). European cities, principalities, kingdoms, dioceses, and other localized governing bodies issued their own unique sets of coinage.
This handy pocket-sized book was printed in 1633 by Hieronymus Verdussen of the Verdussen publishing dynasty in Antwerp. At this time, the Netherlands dominated international trade. During the “Dutch Golden Age,” the Netherlands was enriched by the establishment of the Dutch East Trading Company in 1602 and the Dutch West Trading Company in 1621. A pocket book such as would have been popular with Dutch merchants needing a handy reference work to distinguish the hundreds of different coins in circulation and travelers, as well.
This volume would have been a “pocket” book . The unusual dimensions of this volume (31 x 10.5 cm) fit very well in the pockets of the early 17th century (abt. 40 x 30 cm).
Images from: Ordonnancie ende instructie naer de welcke voort-aen hen moeten reguleren die ghesworen wisselaers ofte collecteurs vande goude ende silver penningen. Antwerp: Hieronymous Verdussen, 1633.
The U.S. city of Boston is making borrowing reading material on-the-go more accessible through a pilot program that will offer public transit users access digital content from books and periodicals to audiobooks and newspapers at 20 bus stops across the city – no library card required.
The project – called “Browse, Borrow, Board” – gives riders access to e-books, audiobooks and other material through QR code links. The program doesn’t require an app, according to a news release from the mayor’s office.
“This pilot program builds on our efforts to make public transportation more enjoyable, while also connecting our residents to the resources the Boston Public Library already offers,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in the news release.
Colorful decals with QR codes are conveniently placed on sidewalks at bus stops as well as on bus paths owned by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority throughout the city. The QR codes send users to a Boston Public Library website. The city has also released a map of where they’re located.
“Browse, Borrow, Board” was developed after the city conducted a survey about public transit last year and found that bus riders expressed high interested in accessing the Boston Public Library digitally on commutes, according to Maddie Webster, a program manager at the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics.
Five titles may be checked out at a time for a two-week period. After two weeks, patrons can rescan the QR code to register again and checkout more materials.
“We share in the value that knowledge and transportation could both be ‘Free to All.’ This opportunity connects public library and public transit offerings around learning and movement in our city,” said David Leonard, Boston Public Library president.
There isn’t a better time to release a collectible edition of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy than on Towel Day May 25th. The Folio Society is releasing a special edition of Adams’ trilogy in five parts, featuring “70 illustrations by Jonathan Burton, 35 unique to these new volumes, and an exclusive preface by inspirational physicist Carol Rovelli.”There are just 750 of these sets being created; they’ll be hand-numbered and signed by the illustrator “on a limitation tip shining with holographic silver.” The binding designs, also created by Burton, are similarly lavish, “blocked in an eye-catching rainbow of foils and, arranged next to each other, they create a pleasing single image. The five volumes are presented in a display box fit for the President of the Galaxy himself, part-bound in glittering blue cloth with an explosion of silver stars on the interior. A transparent window—with DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters—allows a peek at the foil-blocked spines. Signed by the artist, this splendid edition is completed with a unique print of the Guide itself.”
Recently a friend asked me to suggest a good place to get churros in Madrid. I offered a few suggestions, but insisted that she first try the best churros con chocolate Madrid has to offer at Chocolat in the Huertas district. I can’t think of a better breakfast, treat, or late night snack than crispy, fried-to-perfection churros lightly dusted with sugar and dipped in piping hot, delicious thick hot chocolate. The charming video below, which profiles Charo Salguero Venegason, fondly known as “Grandmother of Churros,” is a real treat too. She’s a living legend from the small town of El Puerto de Santa María, Spain. Charo’s churreria isn’t just a business—it’s her life.
If the video doesn’t open, please click here.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s The First Folio. The collection of 36 plays by William Shakespeare that was published in London in 1623. Considered to be one of the most influential books ever published, only about 230 copies of an original printing of 750 copies are known to have survived. The Victoria and Albert Museum has three copies, and in the video below, they lead the viewer on a tour through one of them. In this video, Elizabeth James, senior librarian at the National Art Library in London, and Harriet Reed, curator of contemporary performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, open and explore this fascinating 400-year-old document, detailing its creation, content and enduring influence.
if the video fails to launch, please click here.
Travel Between The Pages 