Books Are The Muse

Posted on February 12, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Over the years, I’ve been intrigued by the renowned photographer Mary Ellen Bartley’s use of books and libraries in her work. Bartley is known for her photographs exploring the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book, and its potential for abstraction. By emphasizing the materiality of printed matter, Bartley’s work offers an exploration of textural and tactile properties. The other day I stumbled on a fascinating video of a project of her’s that focused on the household library and book collections at the famous Grey Gardens estate in New York. Check out the short film below.

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Mapping The Way

Posted on February 11, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Waymap:  Is an exciting concept for hyperlocal mapping software that can turn most smartphones into personalized guidance devices. Originally designed for people with visual disabilities, the app can provide local navigation directions for anyone in unfamiliar territory.

“With Waymap, anyone can explore anywhere – simply, quickly and independently. Waymap, the world’s only navigation app that guides you both indoors and outdoors. Accurate up to 1m, with no signals required. With our app on your phone, you can explore the city, catch your bus, or go right to the aisle you want at the store. Installed across a city’s transport network, streets and major buildings, our app gives step-by-step guidance as soon as you step out your door. It works anywhere we have a map.”

The app uses step data to track your position within space, meaning it can operate signal-free using only on-device processing – obviously it requires a degree of coordination between the tech and the space owners to set up, but the theory here is hugely interesting from an accessibility and mobility point of view.

Check out the short descriptive video below and I think that you will be intrigued too.

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Library Lovers’ Month

Posted on February 10, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Innerpeffray Library, Innerpeffray, Perthshire, Scotland is the oldest lending library in the nation, founded in 1680 by David Drummond, 3rd Lord Madertie. The original library collection was only 400 books, but eventually grew to over 5,000, including rarities, first editions, early atlases and Bibles, and miniature books. The library stopped lending in 1968, but is still open to the public. One of the highlights of the collection is Henry the VIII’s personal Bible.

 

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Evil Books

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

 

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February Is Library Lovers’ Month

Posted on February 8, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Here at Travel Between The Pages World HQ we are big time library supporters, so we are all in on Library Lovers’ Month. This February we will be randomly posting on some beautiful institutions that don’t get the attention that they deserve. First up is the Library of Parliament or Bibliothèque du Parlement which is the main information repository and research resource for the Parliament of Canada. The main branch of the library sits at the rear of the Centre Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, and is the last untouched part of that larger building’s original incarnation after it burned down in 1916. The library has been augmented and renovated a number of times since its construction in 1876, the last between 2002 and 2006, though the form and decor remain essentially authentic. The building today serves as a Canadian icon, and appears on the obverse of the Canadian ten-dollar bill.

This short video below offers a wonderful overview:

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Life Lingers On Blank Pages

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Regular visitors to TBTP know that I am a huge admirer of the Spanish street art collective known as Luz Interruptus. They recently completed this extraordinary installation for the first International Festival of Light at the beautiful Plaza Mayor in the heart of Madrid.

La Vida Continua Entre Hojas Blancas is centered on 4,000 notebooks, 2,000 of the notebooks were distributed among Municipal Senior Centers in the city so that senior citizens could express on the pages their hopes, fears, and reflections during the lockdown. The remaining 2,000 blank notebooks were added to the display for visitors at the Festival Internacional de Luz de Madrid to add their own thoughts and feelings.

Here’s what Luz Interruptus had to say about the project:

“They told us their stories with uncanny detail and others drew as well, in some cases showing great talent. With their letters, poems, accounts, words, images, and scribbles, a large panel of lighted memory was erected. Writing sessions were organized which turned into a time of reunion. Therapists, instructors, technicians and directors were also present to help materialize their accounts. People with disabilities and their caregivers participated as well.”

The results are probably moving, possibly mundane, and at some point, profoundly moist – thanks to a surprise rainstorm of intensity and duration that transformed many of the pages into objects far less geometric than the crisp flurry of quadrilateral finesse they began as. “The pages had acquired a more sculptural compact appearance,” on artist tells us, “so that the wind could not do its job and the sound of the pages could not be heard.”

 

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This is the feeling I get before I take a plane

Posted on February 6, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

HOW TO WRITE

Anne Waldman

Perhaps I’m kidding myself about
the life I lead

Sometimes I feel I’m dying
like a lot of things I see around me

Then I turn on the TV and understand
that everything must still be moving

Music, for example, and I rush outside
around the corner to a concert

It’s so easy

Everything accessible from where I
happen to live at the moment

Things like rock concerts not too many trees on 2nd Avenue

Once, on the Sixth Avenue bus
I got a sudden sensation
I had been alive before

That I was a man at some other time
Traveling

You would think this strange if you were a woman

If I were a man right now I’d be getting out of the draft
but I think I’d want to be a poet too

Which simply means alive, awake and digging everything

Even that which makes me sick and want to die

I don’t really, you know

I just don’t want to be conscious sometimes
because when you’re conscious in the ordinary way
you have to think about yourself a lot

Dull thoughts like what am I doing?

Uptown in a large crowd I want to sit down and cry
because everything is simple and complicated
all at once

Everyone has this feeling

Even people downtown

It is very basic to the way we are
which is why I can say “we”

A lot of drugs can change you if you want
because you too are made of what drugs are made of

In fact you are just a bundle of drugs
when you come right down to it

I don’t want to go into it
but you’ll see what I mean when you catch on

That’s not meant to sound snotty
I’m open to whatever comes along

This is the feeling I get before I take a plane

Then everything’s the same afterward anyway

All into one space and here I am again
alive still, same worries on my mind

The thing is don’t worry!
You are doing what you have to what you can

You hear from your friends
They let you know what’s happening in California, Iowa
Vermont and other places about the globe

They take you out of your little room
just like the newspapers or the news
or the man you live with

and put you in a much larger room
one in which you are in constant motion around the clock

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Literacy and Justice

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

It seems that every day brings another story of book banning or book burning in the United States. Anyone who believes in protecting freedom of the press should be terrified by the assaults on liberty from the Christo-Fascist rightwing mobs and Magamorons funded by dark money.

Once again, booksellers are stepping up to confront the tyranny of Fascism. The Left Bank Books Foundation, the 501(c)(3) arm of Left Bank Books in St. Louis, Mo., has launched the Literacy & Justice Project, aimed at providing banned and challenged books to people who lack access to them. For a donation of $20, Left Bank Books will send a copy of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Maus by Art Spiegelman, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George Matthew Johnson, Heavy by Kiese Laymon or Fun Home by Alison Bechdel to someone who has registered for a free copy.

Left Bank Books store owner Kris Kleindienst raised concern that The Bluest Eye, All Boys Aren’t Blue, Heavy and Fun Home were removed from Wentzville, Mo., School District libraries in January, while Maus was banned last month in Tennessee.

In an open letter, she wrote, “Race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, and apparently even history are taboo subjects in the eyes of an extreme minority. While the efforts to resist the rightward turn away from the democratic principle of free expression is multi-faceted and ongoing, we thought we would try to make a difference in real time for folks who lack access to the material being challenged.”

Folks concerned by the rampant assaults on free speech can make donations or register for free copies of banned books on the foundation’s website.

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A National Icon

Posted on February 4, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Regular visitors to TBTP know that I am very serious about coffee. I am so commited to drinking good coffee that I actually roast my own green coffee beans. When I travel, the first thing that I research after  accommodations is the location of coffee bars. So I fully understand why Italy is submitting a bid to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to add espresso to its Intangible Heritage List, claiming that “coffee is much more than a simple drink: it is an authentic ritual.”

According to Italy’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture, “It is an integral part of our national identity and an expression of our social relationships that distinguishes us around the world.”

It’s such a ubiquitous part of Italian culture that the Italian Espresso Institute reported more than 90% of the country’s citizens drink at least a cup of espresso a day. It’s not the first food item from Italy to seek UNESCO status. In 2017, the art of Neapolitan pizza-making was recognized as one of the country’s cultural symbols.

The Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry green-lighted the application for espresso last week, with the bid now seeking approval from the Italian National UNSECO Commission. If it’s given the go-ahead, the bid will then be officially submitted to the UNESCO headquarters.

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Down and Out in Paris

Posted on February 3, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

In 1928, a former Colonial police officer and aspiring author named Eric Arthur Blair moved from his London home to Paris in order to buckle down and launch his writing career. The move didn’t work out so well, but it provided the writer we now know as George Orwell with a wealth of material for his first book Down and Out In Paris and London. Although he managed to scrounge-up some freelance gigs, Blair eventually was forced to work menial jobs in order to survive. When even that didn’t cut it, in December 1929, after a year and a half in Paris, Blair returned to England.

Now, Orwell’s months in Paris have now been pinned to a Google Map by Paris-based writer Duncan Roberts and Orwell expert Darcy Moore. Duncan Roberts  has written a book titled Orwell and the Russian Captain which focuses on the real people and locations in Orwell’s first book. Darcy Moore  is currently working on a book called Orwell in Paris: The Making of a Writer.

Their Google map is an excellent guide for exploring Paris through the eyes of the struggling author. The location pins aprovide an opportunity for users to follow the writer’s footsteps, as he made his life in Paris. For more on Orwell in Paris, check out the websites of Duncan Roberts and Darcy Moore. Check out their map in more detail here.

Posted in Europe, History, Maps, Tourism, Writing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment