I recently discovered a wonderful series of Youtube videos that were filmed for the Favorite Poem Project. The collection of 50 short video documentaries showcases individual Americans reading and speaking personally about poems they love. During the one-year open call for submissions, 18,000 Americans wrote to the project volunteering to share their favorite poems — Americans from ages 5 to 97, from every state, representing a range of occupations, kinds of education, and backgrounds. The video below features one of my favorite poems written by W.H. Auden. You can discover more about the project here.
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
NB: If the video does not play in your email version of TBTP, please click on the link for our home page here.
After a vote at their 26th general conference on August 24th, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has refined their official definition of the term “museum,” that they previously established nearly half a century ago. The updated definition—which now incorporates the terms diversity, sustainability and accessibility—was finalized after 18 months of commentary and four rounds of consultation. 487 members were in agreement, while 23 voted against it and 17 abstained. ICOM’s president, Alberto Garlandi, notes that it’s a “great step forward,” though recognizes that it’s not perfect. Here’s the new definition:
“A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”
It seems to me that many institutions will have to make serious efforts to live up to this definition of what it means to be a museum. These days so many museums have priced their admission fees so that the average visitor can not afford the cost.
Regular visitors to Travel Between The Pages are well aware of my fascination with public transit systems and their maps. So it will come as little surprise that I am mildly obsessed with the hypnotic website Ubähnchen which is a terrific new transit map that simulates the movement of trains on the Berlin underground train network based on the scheduled timetable.
Ubähnchen also offers an option to switch to a more geographically accurate map. This map also allows you to view S-Bahn trains in real-time.
The Ubähnchen Statistics section, which includes lots of data from the Berlin subway network, including the avarage daily train activity per line and the number of daily stops at each station on the network.
“Great poets feel into the future with most sensitive antennas, and live out ahead of us, a piece of future development, and yet unrealized potential. Poets and philosophers, if they do not sell out to please, but have the courage to be themselves, represent the most precious and dangerous models a culture can have. They don’t supply a ready-made set of duties and doctrines to be followed, but they show and teach the opposite: the path to individuality and personal conscience.” Hermann Hesse
I never had the opportunity to fly on the supersonic Concorde airliner, but I’m hoping to get a chance to travel on Boom Supersonic’s new Overture jet when the plane begins carrying passengers in a few years. While it’s not the “90 minutes from New York to Paris” that the band Steely Dan envisioned in the 70s, the supersonic airliner promises to cut transatlantic travel time by half. The airplane is able to travel at Mach 1.7, which is two times the speed of today’s fastest aircraft. It also has a nonstop range of 4,250 nautical miles and a cruising altitude of 60,000 feet.
This will make it possible to jet between New York City and London in 3.5 hours, in comparison to its current 5.5-hour flight. Alternatively, it could get between Seattle and Tokyo in 4.5 hours instead of eight-and-a-half hours.
Boom Supersonic’s Overture will use 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Its aerodynamic design of a tapered front that spans out towards its rear allows it to reduce drag and fuel consumption. It will also incorporate four wing-mounted engines that will essentially drastically reduce noise for passengers onboard flights.
A number of airlines, including United, have already placed orders for the supersonic jets which will hopefully be in service within six years.
I recently had the opportunity to road trip along the Mid-Atlantic coast of the U.S. in the states of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. The highlight was a visit to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, on Assateague Island, which has stunning beaches, wildlife trails, and the famouswild Chincoteague ponies. These ponies and the annual Pony Penning Day are the subject of Marguerite Henry’s 1947 children’s book Misty of Chincoteague, which was made into the 1961 family film Misty, filmed on location. Legend has it that the feral ponies on Assateague are descendants of survivors of a Spanish galleon that sank on its way to Spain during a storm in 1750 off the east coast, but the likelihood is that they are actually descended from domesticated stock, brought to the island by Eastern Shore farmers in the 17th century to avoid fencing requirements and taxation.[
The area is stunningly beautiful, but the threats from the climate crisis and sea level rise are always present. I recently stumbled upon the haunting video below titled The Ballad of Holland Island House. The captivating animation chronicles the tragedy tell the true story of the last house standing on a sinking island in the Chesapeake Bay, the northern part of which is within Maryland, the southern portion within Virginia. Animator Lynn Tomlinson uses an intriguing animation technique using just a thin layer of oil-based clay.
The music is by Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle – a perfect companion to the animation which produces a soulful and haunting view of the impact of sea-level rise. The words are told from the perspective of the house.
The Library of Short Stories is a website which compiles and share sout-of-copyright fiction for anyone to peruse. The site collects all types of short stories across various genres – you have your classic Conan Doyle, Dickens, Chekov, Hemingway and Poe. You can read stories on the website or download for free in various formats to save for later. It’s well worth a look.
For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not – and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified – have tortured – have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror – to many they will seem less terrible than barroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place – some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
River Roads by Carl Sandburg
Let the crows go by hawking their caw and caw.
They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere.
Let ’em hawk their caw and caw.
Let the woodpecker drum and drum on a hickory stump.
He has been swimming in red and blue pools somewhere hundreds of years
And the blue has gone to his wings and the red has gone to his head.
Let his red head drum and drum.
Let the dark pools hold the birds in a looking-glass.
And if the pool wishes, let it shiver to the blur of many wings, old swimmers from old places.
Let the redwing streak a line of vermillion on the green wood lines.
And the mist along the river fix its purple in lines of a woman’s shawl on lazy shoulders.
Travel Between The Pages 