Set in 1912 Ireland, “Uisce Beatha” (Gaelic for Water of Life) is based on the true tale of a feckless young Irishman who leaves his rural home with hopes of finding his fortune in America. Irish director Shaun O. Connor wrote, cast, shot and edited the award-winning short film in one month and on a budget of less than €300.
Today, the premier issue of the new Lonely Planet magazine hits the newsstands in the United States. You may be saying to yourself: “but I’ve seen copies of the Lonely Planet magazine all over the world for years”—and you would be correct. The travel guide series stalwart already publishes eleven other versions of the magazine in various international markets, but this is the first time that an edition designed for the U.S. market will be published.
From what I’ve seen, the new quarterly will offer Lonely Planet’s idiosyncratic perspective and a mildly adventurous take on travel. The new American publisher promises to include stories on travel technology and gear, tips and advice, culture and history, and great photography.
The Winter 2015/2016 issue has features on Rome, Nashville, and Cuba. Cover price for each issue is $5.99, with discounts for both print and digital subscriptions available.
Between July 1968 and March 1969, Jimi Hendrix shared a third floor flat in London’s Mayfair neighborhood with his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham. For years, the apartment has been used as office space and storage for the Handel House Trust, which runs the next door George Frideric Handel museum dedicated to the 18th century composer . Now music fans of all stripes will be able to visit a newly revamped Handel Hendrix museum.
The exhibition space will continue to offer the fans of Messiah composer Handel an in depth examination of his life and work, while opening the Hendrix flat, which has been restored to its 1968 state. There are also displays of Hendrix clothing, guitars and memorabilia, along with a small onsite music and theater venue.
Tickets for the museum go on sale today, but the site won’t open to the general public until February 10, 2016.
If you have ever wandered around London as a tourist, I’m sure that at some point you noticed the ubiquitous blue ceramic plaques around the city noting where famous historical figures lived or worked. The iconic plaques commemorating figures as diverse as Jimi Hendrix and Karl Marx or Keith Moon and Sigmund Freud are administered by the English Heritage organization.
I was surprised to discover that each plaque has been produced by the same family since 1984. The charming little film below, directed by Cat McShane, explores the process behind the creation of the blue plaques. You can find ever single blue disc at the Open Plaques website.
Happy Halloween
Lambertville, New Jersey resident Dolores Dragan works for months each year creating an otherworldly Halloween display in front of her beautiful Victorian house. Local photographer/videographer Bob Krist captured the ethereal installation in the wonderful little film below. I’m fortunate because I live just a short drive from the lovely riverside town of Lambertville and I can see it in real life.
Between 1936 and 1966, an unconventional travel guidebook series was published specifically for African-American motorists. The Negro Travelers’ Green Book was sadly necessary to provide Black motorists and travelers with scrupulously accurate information on accommodations, restaurants and auto services during an era when racial segregation was the norm in wide areas of the United States and Jim Crow laws in southern states restricted individual behavior. The Green Book offered motorists a sense of personal safety when they traveled the American roadways.
This unusual travel series was created by Victor H. Green, a New York City postal worker, who frequently traveled to visit family in southern states after a Jewish friend showed him a guidebook used by American Jews to find hotels and restaurants that did not restrict them. Green then developed a network of sympathetic postal workers to help research the new travel guide series for African-Americans.
The Green Book series even presaged the Airbnb and couch-surfing phenomenon, with Black families listing overnight room rentals in homes that welcomed travelers. The guidebook series also included travel advice, photos, advertising by businesses friendly to Blacks, and travel essays.
Victor Green died in 1960, but his annual guide continued to be published until 1966 when anti-discrimination laws limited the need for the series. But over the thirty years of publication, the Green Book grew to cover every region of the United States, parts of Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, European cities, and even areas in Africa.
Now thanks to the New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture we can see digitized versions of the rare Green Book collection.
Last year the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei created a compelling installation of portraits of 175 political dissidents at Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco. Ai used thousands of tiny Lego bricks to make each picture.
The artist planned to do a similar installation at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne Australia, but the Danish Lego manufacturer refused to fill his order. Ai said that the company informed the National Gallery that its products could not be used for “any political, religious, racist, obscene or defaming statements”.
Ai has pointed out that the company is involved in a project to build a new LEGOLAND in Shanghai China. And we all know just how popular Ai is with the Chinese government.
In response, Ai Weiwei Studio has announced that Lego collection points will be set up in various cities to allow the public to donate bricks for the project in Melbourne. So, be on the lookout for collection spots in your city, if you’d like to contribute to the installation and stand up to big Lego.
I have discovered all manner of ephemera in old books—everything from 19th century hotel bills to bawdy letters—but nothing as special as a rare map of Middle Earth. Blackwell’s Rare Books in Oxford, UK, where J.R.R. Tolkien once taught, has found a unique map annotated by the author himself in pencil and green ink. The loosely folded map was uncovered in a copy of Lord of the Rings that had once belonged to the late English artist and illustrator Pauline Baynes. The favorite illustrator of both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis placed the map in the book when she worked on a similar example for a 1970 edition of LOTR.
The map’s annotations suggest that Tolkien used the Italian city of Ravenna as inspiration for the fictional Minas Tirith and that the Shire’s Hobbiton “is assumed to be approx. at latitude of Oxford”.
Blackwell’s is currently exhibiting the map at its Oxford shop, with plans to offer it for sale at just £60,000.
images courtesy Blackwell’s
Brazilian writer Tiago Abreu and artist Linus Oura have created the People Are Equal project to confront the rampant bias, prejudice, and racial stereotyping that they see all over the world. Using Google’s auto-correct feature, they searched various nationalities and discovered that most of the results were negative. They then combined the comments with photo portraits of people of different nationalities to encourage viewers to confront ignorance, hatred, and negativity. Check-out the website to follow and contribute to the project.
Travel Between The Pages 