It’s been a minute since I visited San Francisco, but like ever other tourist I made a pilgrimage to see the famous row of “painted ladies” at Alamo Square Park. Architectural Digest produced the fascinating video (below) about these gems. The famous attractions are featured in nearly every travel piece about the city, but few people have ever been inside any of the houses.
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Back in 2019 I shared a heartwarming story about Ohio teacher Melanie Moore’s Book Bus mobile children’s book store that raised funds for literacy projects. On November 12th, a ribbon-cutting and grand opening celebration took place for the Book Bus Depot in Sharonville, Ohio. Moore, who in 2019 launched the Book Bus (built out of a 1962 VW Transporter truck) now has a bricks-and-mortar location that will serve as “an event space that houses a bookstore featuring both new and used books and more importantly, it will house the Book Bus truck.”
In a Facebook post Saturday, Moore noted: “What an outpouring of love and support today! I had folks drive in from Tennessee and Cleveland. Those who couldn’t make it had flowers delivered, one sent from California. Many of you brought special notes or gifts. Becca, a beloved customer, gifted me a mint condition copy of Parnassus on Wheels (the inspiration for The Book Bus). And the books bought! I have a big day of ordering on Monday to fill these shelves back up. It was lovely chatting books with everyone inside as we watched the snow fall down outside which was a perfect example of why we need The Depot. I told someone today that if you ever doubt there is love in the world, come talk to me. I can share a hundred stories just about this Book Bus community. There are so many kind, generous people! My heart is full!”
I recently stumbled on the interesting video below on the history of tunnel books. Over the years, I’ve owned and sold a number of travel related 19th century tunnel books and have long been fascinated by this blend of art and printing. A few years ago, I was fortunate to discover some fabulous contemporary tunnel books by the immensely talented Laura Davidson. I was able to share some battered copies of old travel guidebooks with her, which she transformed into book art. The images below are from her Travel Guide series.
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This week marked the 100th anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut’s birth. To celebrate the occasion graphic designer Alicia Raitt has re-imagined 14 of Vonnegut’s book covers. Inspired by 1960s bookcover design, Raitt utilizes the Marber grid, leaving the illustrations to set the scene. While each of the designs aims to capture the iconic author’s dark humor.
Retired Montana schoolteacher Rita has been spreading her love of reading across the U.S. for the last eight years by traveling coast-to-coast in her van-turned-mobile bookstore! Rita shares what inspired her to make a mobile bookstore, and explains how she is using the business to encourage kids to read.
If the video does not launch, please visit our homepage.
Utilizing a network of illuminated drones, Dutch artist duo DRIFT (aka Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta) completes or restores famous international architectural landmarks such as Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia and Rome’s Colosseum.
A large building can change the landscape of a city dramatically. We can help visualize how a new structure can enrich a cityscape. It can help to show a local community how their city will look. These human achievements, built over generations with forgotten crafts, deserve all the attention they can get. They teach us a patience we desperately need to rediscover as a society,” said Ralph Nauta, Founder of Studio DRIFT.
“These human achievements, built over generations with forgotten crafts, deserve all the attention they can get. They teach us a patience we desperately need to rediscover as a society,” Nauta said. “To finish them with light emphasizes the potential positive power of our hi-tech developments in relation to the slow but beautiful building methods of the past.”
For the past two years, DRIFT has worked with its team of 64 multi-disciplinary specialists, including those from Drone Stories and Nova Skystories, to develop sophisticated software capable of producing a series of impressive aerial sculptures, installations, and performances intended to be enjoyed in outdoor and public spaces.
Regular visitors to Travel Between The Pages know that I appreciate a well done tourism campaign. However, I was perplexed when my favorite blog follower shared the newest tourism video from the Vienna Tourist Board. I’ve been a huge fan of Austria’s grand capital since I first visited more than 40 years ago and have always been an ardent evangelist for Wien tourism, but this new campaign is a bit baffling. Take a look at the brief video below and let me know what you think about this unusually approach.
A six-book shortlist has been released for the Bookseller Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. The award was conceived in 1978 by Trevor Bounford and Bruce Robertson, co-founders of publishing solutions firm the Diagram Group, as a way to avoid boredom at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The winning title will be chosen by members of the public via an online vote, and a winner announced December 2. This year’s shortlisted titles are:
Frankenstein Was a Vegetarian: Essays on Food Choice, Identity and Symbolism by Michael Owen Jones
The Many Lives of Scary Clowns: Essays on Pennywise, Twisty, the Joker, Krusty and More by Ron Riekki
Jane Austen and the Buddha: Teachers of Enlightenment by Kathryn Duncan
RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning With RuPaul’s Drag Race by Lindsay Bryde & Tommy Mayberry
Smuggling Jesus Back into the Church by Andrew Fellows
What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada by Mary-Ann Shantz
THE FALL OF VARIA
D. Nurkse
The tanks from the Past rolled in this morning.
Our neighbors crowded the curbs to cheer
though only yesterday, they were snitching:
A has prior tendencies, B has backward dreams…
Already the old flag flies over the armory,
the cathedral, the courthouse, Mercy,
Parliament, Beaux Arts, a kindergarten.
Already we tell ourselves, “The Past rules,
but if we hold our breath we’ll emerge
safe in the present, vindicated, knowing
we’re steadfast, we passed the test of our lives.”
Troops file by, numberless as ears of wheat,
gray with ash, so tired they give off light,
eyes locked, forward, forward, never a glance
for our linden-shaded side streets; and we watch,
we force ourselves to peek, or not peek,
we part the curtain a hand’s breadth, a thumbnail.
At nightfall, gunshots in a distant suburb,
dry, faint, adamant as a cat’s cough.
For every twelve firing squad volunteers,
rumor claims, one is issued blank ammo:
so even in the Past, there must be shame.
Nothing happens fast. Rain of decrees.
But you can still get salt and whiskey
if you pay with a necklace, a deed, or boots.
Butter is rationed, then shoelaces, then spoons.
Lice return, roaches and rats: raccoons
rummage unchecked in a brimming dumpster.
We tell ourselves, “Vermin: this story is familiar.”
When the snow falls in its own silence,
spilling forwards, like blood in bath water,
and there is no heating oil, we think “childhood.”
Alone in the privacy of our triple-bolted room
we open our fingers and peek: yes, yes, the soldiers,
still advancing, bowlegged mountain boys
bearing the insignia of the Interior, tranced in cadence:
sometimes one stumbles, careens, topples forward,
but the boots march over him, the drum never pauses.
When the knock comes, it will be long ago.
Travel Between The Pages 