The Poetry Pharmacy is a new London bookshop, on Oxford Street, offering tonics for all sorts of emotional ailments. Calm, comfort, inspiration: whatever you’re searching for, there’s a book of poetry, philosophy or psychology to help you find it.

“…because the traveler’s past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

– Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“Waymap”, like Google Maps but for the blind. “Why are smartphone navigation apps not accurate enough to show us which way to turn when getting off a bus, or leaving the train or Tube?

Despite their vast wealth and technical resources, Apple and Google leave users to pace back and forth until the blue locator dot on the phone gives a clue by moving decisively one way or the other.

It has taken a blind entrepreneur, Tom Pey, 71, to take the challenge seriously.

His service, an app called Waymap, tells users which way to turn, gives step-by-step directions, and is accurate to the nearest metre, even when there is no phone signal. It works underground and in crowds, when conventional services are notoriously unreliable, and even indoors.”

This snowman never melts. This is the story of the art world’s most famous snowman. It all started with copper and Peter Fischli and David Weiss, the famed multimedia artist duo from Switzerland. In 1987, when the Römerbrücke thermal power station in Saarbrücken, Germany, commissioned them to create a never-melting snowman inside a refrigerator, which was powered by excess energy syphoned from the plant. Rather than building the snowman from scratch using actual snow, Fischli and Weiss made a copper skeleton which, once placed inside the refrigerator, would slowly be coated by the machine’s icy ventilation.

“Your Name In Landsat” does exactly what the name promises — you type in your name, and it finds a satellite picture of the earth where the landscape makes the shape of each letter. That’s my name above!

The Dying Man:
The Far East. The Great North. The Wild West. The Great Bear Lake. Tristan da Cunha. The Mississippi Delta. Stromboli. The old houses of Charlottenburg. Albert Camus. The morning light. The child’s eyes. The swim in the waterfall. The spots of the first drops of rain. The sun. The bread and wine. Hopping. Easter. The veins of leaves. The blowing grass. The color of stones. The pebbles on the stream’s bed. The white tablecloth outdoors. The dream of the house in the house. The dear one asleep in the next room. The peaceful Sundays. The horizon. The light from the room in the garden. The night flight. Riding a bicycle with no hands. The beautiful stranger. My father. My mother. My wife. My child.

The Name of Things You Probably Didn’t Know

“Geoffrey Chaucer, celebrated as the father of English literature, greatly influenced the English language with his works like The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer’s innovative expressions have stood the test of time. In this article, we explore 35 medieval phrases invented by Chaucer, including many that are still used today. Discover the origins and lasting impact of these expressions, showcasing Chaucer’s enduring literary legacy.”

Through Thick and Thin

Found in The Canterbury Tales: “And forth with wehee, thurgh thikke and thurgh thenne.”

To Wet One’s Whistle

Found in The Canterbury Tales: “So was hir joly whistle wel ywet.”

Piping Hot

Found in The Canterbury Tales: “And wafres, pipyng hot out of the gleede.”

To Hang in the Balance

Found in the short poem Womanly Noblesse: “Considryng eke how I hange in balaunce.”

The Olive (Branch) of Peace

Found in The Parliament of Fowls: “The olyve of pes.”

Better Hold One’s Tongue than Speak

Found in The Parliament of Fowls: “But bet is that a wyghtes tonge reste, Than entermeten hym of such doinge. Of which he neyther rede can ne synge.”

Go check out the rest; fun stuff!

After security at Milwaukee airport there is a ‘Recombobulation Area’ for people who have been discombobulated by the security experience. [Molly Snyder ]