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.

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The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

Posted on February 2, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

John Steinbeck took the title of his 1937 novel “Of Mice and Men” from a line contained in the penultimate stanza of ” To a Mouse”, On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785. by Robert Burns .

To a Mouse

BY ROBERT BURNS

 

On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.

 

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
          Wi’ bickerin brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
          Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
          Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
          An’ fellow-mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
          ’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
          An’ never miss ’t!
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
          O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
          Baith snell an’ keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
          Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
          Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
          But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
          An’ cranreuch cauld!
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
          Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
          For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
          On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
          I guess an’ fear!

 

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Covers and Sleeves

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Over the years, I have shared some posts about the mesmerizing animations from German graphic designer Henning M. Lederer. I recently stumbled upon this fabulous video of his work titled “Books & Sleeves.” The intriguing film is a  compilation of mainly academic bookcovers from vintage titles and album covers that have been set in motion through clever animation.

 

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The Possibility of Evil (and much more)

Posted on January 31, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

I recently discovered a terrific Audiobooks on YouTube playlist of free audiobook readings with more than 130 different titles, each of which is a full book or short story, read in its entirety and available to listen for free at your leisure. This is YouTube and so the quality is inevitably…variable, but the person who’s pulled this together seems to have done a reasonable job of ensuring that the base standard is reasonably high, and there’s a really wide-ranging selection including Christie, Conan-Doyle, Chekhov, Wells, Jackson, and the like.

 

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Please Close The Door

Posted on January 30, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

I always enjoy a good Mark Twain anecdote and this one tickled my fancy. In 1908 burglars surreptiously entered his Hartford mansion and stole a set of silverware from the sideboard. In response, he posted this notice on the front door:

 

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If you see one coming, you should run

Posted on January 29, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Aa a child I was fascinated by the old European Jewish tales of the Golem. When I visited Prague just after the Velvet Revolution, I had the opportunity to walk the streets of the ancient Ghetto and see the places where the creature in human form and made from clay stalked the enemies of city’s Jews.

I recently ran across Gustav Meyrink’s bestselling 1915 novel Der Golem with fantastic Expressionist illustrations by Hugo Steiner-Prag.  The golem character, typically an unformed animated creature made from mud or clay, stems from Jewish folklore: legend says Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of Prague created a golem  (גולם) to protect Jews in medieval Prague from danger. Meyrink’s story detailed a golem that is the personification of the inhabitants of Jews in a Prague ghetto, and Steiner-Prag brought the golem to life on paper with twenty-five lithographs, considered perhaps his career masterpieces.

Meyrink’s novel originally was published as a serial during 1914 in German periodical Die Weißen Blätter.  When Der Golem was then published in book form it was a huge success, selling over 200,000 copies in its first year alone. Before writing Der Golem, Meyerink was a banker, but he was also an occultist, student of Asia philosophies, yoga practioner, and a dabbler in the Kabbala and Jewish mysticism.

 

 

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I have passport envy

Posted on January 28, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

Yesterday, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sophie Wilmès launched the new Belgian passport. A document that is even more secure thanks to new security and personalization techniques. The new Belgian passport will also be recognizable thanks to its original design, which honors one of the jewels of pop culture: the heroines and heroes of comic strips. Why can’t the U.S. passport look like this ?

 

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Books of the Year

Posted on January 27, 2022 by Brian D. Butler

 

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