Test Your Artistic Acumen

Posted on May 28, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

If you have been swept up in the Wordle craze, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has created Artle, an art-guessing game for those who want to test their artistic acumen. Like Wordle, Artle offers up just one puzzle a day. The goal is to identify the artist of the day—with nothing more than four artworks, unveiled gradually, to guide your decision.

To play the game you enter an answer by typing into a dropdown menu, which will generate the name you were thinking of. The artists’ names will appear last name first in the menu.

Artle is definitely more challenging than Wordle, given that there are 155,000 artworks by 15,000 artists in the gallery’s collection utilized in the game.

 

Posted in Art, Museums, USA | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Banned But Unburnable

Posted on May 27, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

To protest widespread book bans in the U.S., Canadian author Margaret Atwood has collaborated with her publishers on a fireproof edition of her most famous—and often banned—novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. 

The unique issue was produced by Rethink, an independent creative agency, and made in Toronto by the bookbinding studio The Gas Company Inc.. It was produced with a black cinefoil dust jacket, white heat shield foil pages hand-sewn with nickel wire, phenolic hard cover, stainless steel head and tail bands, and Kapton high temperature adhesive.

The short promotional video below shows Atwood wielding a flamethrower at this very special, noncombustible copy.

“I never thought I’d be trying to burn one of my own books… and failing,” she commented in a press release. “The Handmaid’s Tale has been banned many times—sometimes by whole countries, such as Portugal and Spain in the days of Salazar and the Francoists, sometimes by school boards, sometimes by libraries. Let’s hope we don’t reach the stage of wholesale book burnings, as in Fahrenheit 451. But if we do, let’s hope some books will prove unburnable—that they will travel underground, as prohibited books did in the Soviet Union.”

Margaret Atwood Uses a Flamethrower on the ‘Unburnable’ Edition of The Handmaid’s Tale in Protest of Book Burning Across the U.S.
https://app.asana.com/0/1135954362417873/1202331640263586/f
Credit: Penguin Random House

The proceeds from the book’s sale will go to PEN America, the mighty anti-censorship organization.

Posted in Books, Canada, Freedom of Speech, USA, Writing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Life Is An Open Book

Posted on May 26, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

The art of brick sculpture goes back to ancient Babylonia. It has fallen out of favor in modern days, but the work “Life Is An Open Book” by the American sculptor Brad Spenser is a wonderful example of the form. Situated in a public park called The Green in Charlotte, North Carolina, the piece a just one example of literary themed art works in the square.

 

Posted in Art, Books, Middle East, USA | Tagged , | 1 Comment

A Really Long Walk

Posted on May 25, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Coldingham Bay, Scotland

Long term readers of Travel Between The Pages are likely aware that I am unabashedly a Britophile. So, of course I was gobsmacked when I stumbled upon “The Perimeter” which is a photography project by Quintin Lake based on walking 11,000km around the coast of Britain in sections. The journey started on April 17, 2015 and was completed on September 15, 2020.  Lake took hundreds of stunning photographs along the way. He is still working on the project and plans on having all of the photos edited by the end of 2022. The long walk is complete, but photographs from Lake’s journey are now being uploaded to the website. This wonderful set of images truly captures the diverse beauty of Britain’s coastal communities and the breadth of landscape they contain.

St Monans Auls Kirk, Fife, Scotland

Take a look at The Perimeter and consider supporting the project by purchasing a print or two.

Museum of Transport, Glasgow

 

Posted in Europe, Photography, Public Transport, Tourism | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

A Human Being Is A Moment

Posted on May 24, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Existential Comics is a webcomic about philosophy created by Corey Mohler, a software engineer in Portland, Oregon. Mohler created the comic in December 2013 in an attempt to help popularize philosophy through comedy. 

You can help support Corey at Patreon.

Posted in Art, Books | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Yet Another Iceland Story

Posted on May 23, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

If you are a regular visitor to Travel Between The Pages, you are well aware of my 40+ year love affair with Iceland. So here’s yet another post about Icelandic tourism. OutHorse Your Email is a very clever tourism campaign by Iceland that recruits their beautiful horses to respond to work emails so visitors can relax, disconnect, and enjoy all the incredible sights that the country has to offer. Tourists can even choose one of three horses to answer their email. Litla Stjarna Frá Hvítarholti is a chestnut colored horse who “types fast but might take a nap”; Hrímnir Frá Hvammi is a white horse who is “assertive. efficient.” and has “shiny hair”; Hekla Frá Þorkellshóli is a brown horse who is “friendly” and “trained in corporate buzzwords”.

NB: If the video above does not appear in your email, please visit our home page directly.

Posted in Europe, Tech, Tourism | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

What Kind of Days Are These

Posted on May 22, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

WHAT KIND OF DAYS ARE THESE

Adrienne Rich

There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.
Posted in Books, Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment

A Memorial Centennial

Posted on May 21, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Way back in the antedeluvian days of the last century, I spent quite a bit of time in Washington D.C.. So much so that I eventually wrote a travel guidebook for budget travelers to the U.S. capital. During my book research I survey DC visitors and discovered that a clear majority of them named the Lincoln Memorial as their favorite historical site. Personally, I have always felt that the memorial to America’s greatest President is extraordinarily moving. This month the United States marks the centennial of the Lincoln Memorial. This monument to our 16th President was dedicated on Memorial Day (then Decoration Day) in 1922 and its one hundred year birthday falls on Memorial Day this year. The Lincoln Memorial is visited by millions every year in Washington, D.C., and has been the site for many memorable speeches and events over time.

On May 30, 1922, approximately 50,000 people gathered around the base of the memorial and some along the Reflecting Pool. Three main speakers addressed the crowd, and were broadcast to as many as 2 million over the radio: Chief Justice William Howard Taft, President Warren G. Harding and Dr. Robert Russa Moton, principal of the Tuskegee Institute. Dr. Moton delivered the keynote address for the dedication. Ironically they spoke to a segregated crowd about the discrimination African Americans continued to face.

In attendance that day amongst the crowds were veterans of the U. S. Civil War from the North and the South, as well as Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln. For this month’s celebration the National Park Service, will hold a ceremony “Building on Lincoln’s Vision of Unity and Equality” at the Lincoln Memorial to highlight the full range of meaning behind the Lincoln Memorial, from its original meaning as a memorial to Lincoln’s life and contribution as savior of the Union to becoming a symbol of civil rights. Participants will include Lincoln historian Harold Holzer; Dr. Edna Greene Medford, noted Lincoln scholar from Howard University; Dr. Charlotte Morris, president of Tuskegee University; and actor Steven Lang of Avatar, Gettysburg and Gods and Generals fame. The ceremony will also include musical accompaniment from the United States Marine Quintet and singer/actress Felicia Curry, who recently played Marian Anderson at the Ford’s Theatre production of My Lord, What a Night.

 

Posted in Architecture, Art, History, Tourism, Travel Writing, Uncategorized, USA | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Feline Friday

Posted on May 20, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

 

Posted in Art, Books, Bookstore Tourism | Tagged | Leave a comment

Behind The Scenes

Posted on May 19, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

The exterior of the Thomas Fisher Library offers little clue to the extraordinary treasures inside. Now we can take a ten-minute, behind-the-scenes tour through the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto, Canada, where we can discover a First Folio, the first handwritten draft of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, rare manuscripts, Leonard Cohen’s notebooks, and items from its extensive Alice in Wonderland collection. NB: If the video below fails to launch, please visit out home page.

 

Posted in Architecture, Books, Canada, History, Libraries | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment