October 15: Unite For Global Change

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Tomorrow October 15, 2011 is the day to unite for global change.

“On October 15th people from all over the world will take to the streets and squares.

From America to Asia, from Africa to Europe, people are rising up to claim their rights and demand a true democracy. Now it is time for all of us to join in a global non violent protest.

The ruling powers work for the benefit of just a few, ignoring the will of the vast majority and the human and environmental price we all have to pay. This intolerable situation must end.

United in one voice, we will let politicians, and the financial elites they serve, know it is up to us, the people, to decide our future. We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers who do not represent us.

On October 15th, we will meet on the streets to initiate the global change we want. We will peacefully demonstrate, talk and organize until we make it happen.

It’s time for us to unite. It’s time for them to listen.

People of the world, rise up on October 15th!”

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Greetings From Asbury Park

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Last week celebrated artist Shepard Fairey left his calling card on the walls of Asbury Park, New Jersey. The mural, titled “The Rebel Waltz”, was part of the “All Tomorrow’s parties” music festival.

The mural project, which depicts punk rock icons, was created in conjunction with Fairey’s new galley show, “Revolution: The Album Cover Art of Shepard Fairey”.

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London Indies

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

London’s independent bookshops have joined forces to publish a map of the city’s bookshops.The London Bookshop Map features 87 indies from across the city including ones selling new, antiquarian, specialist and second-hand titles. The map is free and is available in bookshops and galleries. It features a text work from the artist David Batchelor, who is best known for his 35 foot installation called “Big Rock Candy Fountain” at Archway tube stattion. The map will be updated every six months and rereleased with a new text artwork.

Among the bookshops which have donated money to fund its publication are Housman’s Bookshop in Kings Cross, Quinto in Charing Cross, Woolfson and Tay in Bermondsey and the Atlantis Bookshop in Bloomsbury.

The map’s editor, Louise O’Hare, said: “At their best independent bookshops can offer individual selection rather than market-driven choices of books to customers, sustaining and developing local interests and communities and offering alternative ways for audiences to participate in a range of cultural activities. Such bookshops are crucial platforms for independent publishing culture, and culture in general, and these are the ones I was keen to promote.”

A guide to independent bookshops in the UK was given away in last Saturday’s Guardian newspaper, with more than 350 indies included.The Independent Bookshops Directory is a 74-page guide, with bookshops picked by the Guardian and the Observer. The directory also features an introduction from author Sarah Hall.

Each regional section also has a foreword by an author. Among those contributing are Sarah Waters introducing London; Peter James writing the foreword for south east England; Patrick McGuinness penning the introduction for Wales; and Neil Rollinson writing for the north west England section.

The guide accompanies the launch of Love Your Indie, the Independent Alliance’s nationwide loyalty card scheme for indie bookshops, with more than half a million blank cards also being distributed with the Guardian . Both initiatives form part of the newspapers’ Books Season.

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Globe Master

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Established in 2008, Bellerby Globes resurrected the moribund art of globe making. When designer Peter Bellerby couldn’t find a new quality globe for his father’s birthday, he decided to make his own.

This month, the London-based studio will begin offering limited-edition small versions of his desk globes. The beautiful globes are being released in limited editions of 250. They’re a bit pricey, but they’re marvelous.

Here’s a quick peak.

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On The Road (inspired)

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Two years ago, inspired by Jack Kerouac’s iconic novel, On the Road, Benjamin Oliver Jenks left his job at a school for at-risk teens and set off on a 14,000 mile hitchhiking trip around the United States. Using more than three thousand photographs from his adventure, Jenks created an amazing stop-motion video of his trip with help from 930 random strangers. The humorous and touching short film manages to incorporate iconic locales around America as background for Jenks’ social experiment.

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French Wines by Metro

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

I may not be an oenophile, in fact I don’t know a quality Beaujolais from Thunderbird, but I do know a cool map when I see one.

Designed by David Gissen, the Metro Wine Map harkens back to Harry Beck‘s iconic  London Underground Map from 1931. Traditional wine maps have typically been boring affairs, confusing to non-experts and definitely not fun. Gissen’s brilliant schematic map manages to help clarify the relationship between region and appellation.

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Power To The People

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Jamaican-born, Brooklyn-based Sean Stewart once owned the brilliant bookstore/gallery/performance space called Babylon Falling in Nob Hill, San Francisco. Now he has edited the soon to be released exciting book on the underground press in the U.S. during the 60s called On the Ground: An Anecdotal History of the Sixties Underground Press in the U.S. .

Sean also curates an engaging blog on underground publications and counter-culture media from the 60s through the 90s called Babylon Falling.

Here’s a sample of the ironically still relevant posters, comics and ads from the blog:

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Occupy Wall Street

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

As the Occupy Wall Street protests continue to to grow and spread, in their down-time hundreds of demostrators are reading books donated to the protest’s official outdoor library.

If you’d like to donate reading material to the library, here’s the mailing address:

Occupy Wall Street Library

c/o UPS Store

118A Fulton Street, #205

NY, NY 10038

Along with union members from the AFL-CIO, UAW, CWA, TWU and the United Federation of Teachers, the Writers Guild of America East has joined the demonstration.

 

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MetaMaus

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

This week Art Spiegelman released a new multimedia publication, MetaMaus, which explores the legacy of his groundbreaking, Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust. The following is a press release from the publisher’s website:

“In the pages of MetaMaus: A Look Inside A Modern Classic, Maus (going onsale October 4), Art Spiegelman re-enters the Pulitzer prize–winning Maus, the modern classic that has altered how we see literature, comics, and the Holocaust ever since it was first published 25 years ago.

In MetaMaus, Spiegelman probes the questions that Maus most often evokes—Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process.

MetaMaus includes a bonus DVD that provides a digitized reference copy of The Complete Maus linked to a deep archive of audio interviews with his survivor father, historical documents, and a wealth of Spiegelman’s private notebooks and sketches.”

 ‘METAMAUS: A Look Inside A Modern Classic, Maus, Art Spiegelman’

You can find out more about  MetaMaus  at the Random House website.

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Arthur Conan Doyle Mystery

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Brian D. Butler

Lost or unknown manuscripts seem to be turning up at a surprising pace these days. In September, the publication of a long lost book by James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, etc.) was announced by publisher Charles Ardai. Cain’s novel, The Cocktail Waitress, will be released by Hard Case Crime in September 2012.

Now, it appears that Arthur Conan Doyle’s long lost first novel, The Narrative of John Smith, has been published in the UK. Conan Doyle wrote the book when he was a young doctor working in Portsmouth, England. On his first attempt to get the book published, the Royal Postal Service managed to lose the manuscript.

He eventually rewrote the book from memory, but mysteriously never bothered to publish it. The manuscript turned up more than a century later at a Sotheby’s auction in 2004. Earlier this month, the British Library, which purchased the Conan Doyle collection at auction, released the novel. A US edition is due in November. Meanwhile, the British Library is displaying the manuscript and other Conan Doyle works at the Library’s Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery.

What’s next, a missing Twain ? Or maybe a lost Dickens novel for his 200th birthday.

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