You talkin’ to me ?

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Brian D. Butler

This terrific video is a cinematic love letter to America’s greatest city and America’s greatest filmmaker. Robert Kolodny took clips from 14 of Martin Scorsese’s films—After Hours, Bring Out the Dead, Gangs of New York, Goodfellas, King of Comedy, Mean Streets, New York,New York, New York Stories, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Who’s Knocking at My Door, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

The gorgeous music is the Intermezzo from Pietro Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria Rusticana, which Scorsese used in Raging Bull.

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Beautiful Poland

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Brian D. Butler

H/T to our old friend Ula Wolodkowicz for this wonderful aerial tour of beautiful Poland. If you’ve had doubts about ever visiting Poland, this should be the tipping point. The video—via Nokia air copter—is by Artur Gajdzinski of ArtCamBiz.

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This Is Not A Map

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Brian D. Butler

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Poetry Wanted is a tiny Paris-based publisher with a somewhat incongruous focus on photography. Last year the company founder, photographer Rémi Noël launched a project called “This Is Not A Map”, which produces a publication that looks like a map and folds like a map, but is in reality a collection of geographically specific photographs. The first two “maps” covered Texas and Las Vegas, with Scotland and Japan soon to follow.

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It’s a fool who does not read

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Brian D. Butler

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Antonio La Cava taught elementary school students in the little mountain town of Ferrandina outside of Matera, Italy for 42 years. After retiring from teaching, he transformed a trusty  Ape mini-truck into a tiny bookmobile, which he calls thebibliomotocarro-320x191 “bibliomotocarro”. Since 2003, La Cava has travel 500 kilometers every month visiting eight rural Basilicata villages to spread the joy of reading and the love of books to kids and adults alike. With the motto “It’s a fool who does not read” and an itinerant lending library of 1200 books, the retired educator shares the magic of reading with all comers.

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Better Than Groundhog Day

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Brian D. Butler

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La Chandeleur, or Candlemas day, is a traditional French holiday celebrated on February 2nd each year. It’s customary for families to gather together to eat crepes, and if the cook can successfully flip a crepe with one hand while holding a coin in their dominant hand the family will have a prosperous year. Another common notion is that a triumphant flip will predict a early end to winter.

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Like all traditional holidays, La Chandeleur comes with folk proverbs:

Á la Chandeleur, l’hiver cesse ou reprend vigeur. On Candelmas, winter ends or strengthens.

Soleil de la Chandeleur, annonce hiver et Malheur. A sunny Candelmas brings winter and misfortune.

Which ever way the flip goes, I’d love to be spending this Chandeleur at my favorite Paris creperie, the Breizh Café on rue Vielle Temple in the Marais.

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Things a traveler needs to know

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Brian D. Butler

Even if you are a seasoned international traveler, there are certainly times when you are at loss when away from home. This interesting infographic/quiz from the British travel agency Travelbag covers “50 things a traveler should know”. What kind of traveler are you? Tepid or Super Nomad?

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One Minute in Mexico

Posted on January 30, 2014 by Brian D. Butler

It’s been a few years since I’ve been to Mexico, but it’s a rare week when I don’t have Mexican food. I challenge you to watch this terrific video and not crave Mexican food for dinner. The video is from the folks at the Perennial Plate. Visit their website to see more of the same. (The music is by MC, producer and activist Olmeca)

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The Allure of Old Books ( & maps )

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Brian D. Butler
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Painting courtesy of Bonnie Butler @ http://www.bonniebutlerart.com

The Peculiar Underworld of Rare-Book Thieves

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The Allure of the Map

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What is the oldest book in the world?

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The Library of Congress by the numbers.

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What happens when Oxford’s Bodleian Library and the Biblioteca Vaticana collude?

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Craving Cartographic Clarity

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Brian D. Butler

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designing metropolitan subway system maps to make them easily understood for both locals and visitors is a challenge for any graphic designer or cartographer. It’s equally challenging to create city transit maps that reflect a municipal identity.

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Zero Per Zero, a Seoul, Korea-based graphic design studio has launched a project to incorporate symbolic elements of cities into transit maps while attempting to preserve cartographic clarity. Each of their maps starts with a symbol for the city—a tulip for Amsterdam, a heart for NYC, the Eiffel Tower for Paris.

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If you want to see more maps, or buy maps or prints, visit the Zero Per Zero website.

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Sarajevo: Rescue and Revival

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Brian D. Butler

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On January 15th in Sarajevo, a new library opened to the public :  the reborn Gazi Husrev Bey Library which is home to a priceless collection of rare books and manuscripts dating from 1106. The original library was established in 1537 by an Ottoman governor in Bosnia.

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Over the centuries, the library grew to house a remarkable collection, including some of the first printed Islamic books, masterpieces of calligraphy and texts in Persian, Turkish, Arabic and Bosnian. During the Bosnian war in the early 1990s, as Sarajevo was under siege, a team of incredibly dedicated volunteers led by the library’s curator Mustafa Jahic smuggled tens of thousands of volumes from the collection to safe houses.

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Now two decades later the historic collection has been brought back together for the first time in a new  Gazi Husrev Bey Library, which was built with funding from the government of Qatar.

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photos © Islamic Arts Magazine

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