The Complete Short Stories of JG Ballard contains a treasure trove for fans of the English novelist, short story writer, satirist, and essayist known for provocative works of fiction which explore the relationships between human psychology, technology, sex, and mass media. Few of this short stories have been adapted into other media. The Drowned Giant is an exception, the intriguing animated short was directed by Tim Miller.
After a wonderful but all to brief road trip and light news diet, I spent some time catching up on world events. Sadly, the news of the day reminded me of the powerful Thomas Lux poem “The People of the Other Village” below.
The Author Clock by Mechanical Design Labs is a novel digital clock that uses quotes from well known books to tell the time. The clever timepiece lifts passages from hundreds of years of literature to provide quotes that refer to the exact time of day. Framed in wood, the clock offers customizable fonts, is rechargable, and has a zero blue light emitting screen. According to Mechanical Design Labs, the “Author Clock transforms checking the time into a whimsical event, transporting you into key moments in literature and writing history. Containing thousands of quotes from a diverse range of authors, Author Clock is a creative and inspiring way to tell time. If you love a good book and great story, this is the clock for you.”
Mechanical Labs is raising funds through Indegogo to bring The Author Clock to a wider market. The current asking price is a bit steep, but hopefully the crowdfunding campaign will bring it down soon.
Travel writer Miriam Porter recently reported on a very disappointing meal experience while flying Air Canada from Frankfurt to Toronto. Although she had pre-ordered vegan meals for the 10 hour flight a month in advance, when meal time came she was offered a bottle of water, a napkin, and a half-assed apology.
Eventually, a flight attendant managed to put together a “meal” of fruit and crackers for Porter, but couldn’t manage anything else. Air Canada has acknowledged the screw-up but hasn’t offered any compensation.
As a life-long vegetarian, I’ve had similar experiences flying for decades. Although I learned early on to pack my own food “just in case” they forgot the vegetarian or vegan meals, it’s frustrating to be on a a long haul flight and watch everyone else getting multiple hot meals all the same.
The renowned Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has created a wall from 2,000 life jackets that were discarded by Syrian refugees while attempting to escape the war in their homeland by crossing the Aegean Sea as part of an installation in Quebec City, Canada.
The Life Jackets installation consists of floatation devices found on the shores of the Greek island of Lesbos. These were hung on to a 17th-century stone fortification in Quebec City for Passages Insolites, an annual public art festival held in the historic city.
This dramatic installtion, which will be up until October, is designed to represent the borders that block refugees as they actively try to flee the ongoing civil war in Syria in the hope of finding refuge in Europe.
I’ve just returned from a short road trip that took me to barrier island towns on the Atlantic coast from Delaware to Virginia. While I was staying in the lovely town of Fenwick Island in Delaware, I noticed the same older man doing yoga on the beach each morning before going for a swim in the ocean. It reminded me of this charming short film about Walter Strohmeyer who has been swimming in the waters of his local beach in New York’s Long Island for nearly nine decades.
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Salman Rushdie // “But human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death.”
Hidden within an iconic New York City bodega in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood you can find the newly launched Burnt Books. No secret passwords or handshakes are required to browse their stock of secondhand and collectible books; you just need find the bodega with the sign for the Green Discount Corp.. The speakeasy bookshop was opened in late July by Jason Mojica who owns the nearby comic book store Hey Kids Comics!.
You can check out Burnt Books by heading to the storefront bodega, Green Discount Corp., at 1014 Manhattan Avenue near Green Street. The bodega and the bookstore are open seven days a week from 8:30AM to 9PM.
Here at Travel Between The Pages world headquarters we’re always up for a clever city map generator. So, here’s the Pretty Mapp App which is a fun way to create colorful local maps of your home town or anyplace that you visit. The palette and themes are fully customisable as well as the zoom and detail specifications for whipping up some quick and attractive cartographical renders with a birds-eye view.
As we face an existential crisis which challenges whether the United States will remain a democracy or sink into a cesspit of neo-Fascist, Christian White Nationalist repression, it is worth remembering our history and examining how close we came in the past.
“In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism – an event largely forgotten from American history. A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN, made entirely from archival footage filmed that night, transports audiences to this chilling gathering and shines a light on the power of demagoguery and anti-Semitism in the United States.
A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN was directed and edited by Marshall Curry and was supported and released by Field of Vision. The film was nominated for a 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short; it was also an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival and was part of a special screening and panel discussion at the New York Film Festival. It was released on 22 Alamo Theater screens across the country and at The IFC Center in NYC.”
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