On The Beach

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I was surprised to stumble on the complete version of the Stanley Kramer film On The Beach posted on YouTube. The 1959 American post-apocalyptic science fiction drama had an enormous impact on me when I first saw the movie on television when I was a young teenager. The film is based on Nevil Shute’s powerful 1957 novel of the same name. The story is set in a world devastated by nuclear war, and it explores the lives of a group of people in Australia as they await the inevitable arrival of deadly radiation that will reach them soon. The film features an ensemble cast led by Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins. As the characters face their impending doom, they grapple with the existential questions of life, love, and the consequences of human actions. “On the Beach” is known for its poignant portrayal of the impact of nuclear war and the inevitability of the end of humanity. The movie received critical acclaim for its powerful performances and thought-provoking themes. It remains a significant work in the genre of post-apocalyptic cinema.

Although it views the world through the lens of the 1950s U.S., it’s well worth a watch if you have two hours to spare.

 

 

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Penguins

Posted on August 15, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Any self-respecting book cover geek needs to take a gander at this website dedicated to the cover art of Penguin paperbacks, curated by Australian design instructor  Greg Neville .

“Penguin Books has had numerous categories in its long history: fiction, crime, sci-fi, poetry, theatre, classics, non-fiction, education etc. Alongside these broad categories more specific printings have been made with particular themes. For example, an edition of a particular author’s works, a specially priced series, a focus on regional authors, or series based on food, travel or romance. These editions of related books, where the art direction and design is co-ordinated in a single aesthetic with variations on a theme, is the subject of this site.” As you’d expect there is some gorgeous cover design on display here.

 

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Definitely Not Hoarding

Posted on August 14, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

 

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Walk This Way

Posted on August 13, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

The ancient Roman Appian Way road network has become Italy’s newest UNESCO World Heritage Site. The  Via Appia Antica, or Appian Way,  the oldest and most significant road built by the ancient Romans, has been named a Unesco world heritage site, making Italy the nation with the world’s highest number of locations on the list at sixty sites.

Sometimes called the Regina Viarum, or Queen of Roads, it connected Rome with the port of Brindisi in the south and marked a revolution in the construction of roads.

The first section of highway was built in 312BC by the Roman statesman Appius Claudius Caecus and served as a strategic corridor for military purposes. Until then, the only roads outside ancient Rome were Etruscan and went towards Etruria in central Italy.

The first 17km (10 miles) of the cobblestone path remains and is preserved within the Appia Antica archeological park in the south of Rome. Popular with history buffs, walkers and cyclists, the perfectly intact road is flanked by what remains of ancient Roman aqueducts and villas. Beneath the path is a sprawling network of catacombs where Christian converts were buried.

I’ll never forget my first wander on the Appia Antica more than four decades ago. Visiting the catacombs and sites such as the Tomb of St. Cecilia at the catacomb of St. Callixtus really brought ancient Rome to life for me.

 

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Literary London

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

As a great international capital, once at the hub of an enormous colonial Empire, London has long attracted visits by writers, artists and intellectuals from around the world. University College London is curating how London has been seen through the eyes of Europe’s cultural luminaries by mapping some of these observations of the city.

‘Lost & Found: A European Literary Map of London’ is peppered with a series of colorful markers, each bearing the name of a European writer, artist or intellectual who has visited the city. Click on a marker and you can read an excerpt from the named cultural icon describing their impressions of London. The excerpts are taken from novels, letters and biographies, so contain a mix of fictional and non-fictional descriptions of the capital.
The map’s curators acknowledge that at the moment there is “an over-representation of white, male writers” on the map – so they welcome ideas for new passages which can be added to the map, particularly from under-represented groups. You can submit “descriptions of different sites/encounters with London, written in European languages beyond English” by completing a short form.
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We are all wingnuts to somebody and other trivia

Posted on August 11, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Berkeley, CA now has a Wingnut Museum. “The wingnut was invented in the first half of the 19th century and quickly became an indispensable piece of hardware. It lets users fasten bolts by hand, without tools, using little wings jutting out from the nut. Over time the term became slang, applied pejoratively to mentally unsound people, to political extremists, to freaks, eccentrics and weirdos. But in the Bay Area especially, it’s come to take on a more positive connotation, describing a certain type of creative tinkerer with a DIY, outsider ethos. The wingnut, in all its many guises, is being celebrated at the Wingnut Museum, which opened in July at Grand Opening, the art salon in Berkeley’s Gilman District that is also home to the Illusion Room. ”

A weird, whimsical game is hiding in the bookshelves at Los Angeles Public Library LA Times: “Imagine that your local public library is inhabited by an undiscovered race of tiny people. They’ve hidden themselves in the racks, tucked behind books and magazines, amidst history and fiction, new media and old.”

Utagawa Kuniyoshi Princess Tamatori Escaping From the Dragon God. 1853. Woodcut print.

Photo © Richard Kalvar, 1969. This was in my family’s neighborhood in Brooklyn. I can guarantee that it was completely ignored.

Joanna Karpowicz — Antiquary Bookstore (acrylic on canvas, 2024)

The governor’s little, free symbol foreshadowed a big, free policy change. In May, Walz signed a Minnesota law “banning K-12 schools, colleges, and public libraries from complying with [book] removal requests… based solely on the viewpoint, content, message, idea, or opinion conveyed.” The act meaningfully protects LGBTQ+ books from the crosshairs of conservative censors.

While unveiling the Little Free Library, Walz affirmed his commitment to free reading. “In Minnesota, we are focused on investing in education, our future, and children and families across the state. We’re not in the business of taking books away from kids and schools and we certainly don’t believe in banning books that tell our history,” he told reporters.

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In my writing I am acting as a mapmaker

Posted on August 10, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas… a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.

William S. Burroughs

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there really is nothing left to write about

Posted on August 9, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

LATE ECHO

John Ashbery

Alone with our madness and favorite flower
We see that there really is nothing left to write about.
Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things
In the same way, repeating the same things over and over
For love to continue and be gradually different.
Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally
And the color of the day put in
Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter
For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic
Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.
Only then can the chronic inattention
Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory
And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows
That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge
Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.
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in Vienna

Posted on August 8, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Now in Vienna there’s ten pretty women
There’s a shoulder where death comes to cry
There’s a lobby with nine hundred windows
There’s a tree where the doves go to die
There’s a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in theGallery of Frost

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

 

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallway where love’s never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and death
Dragging its tail in the sea

 

There’s a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There’s a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They’ve been sentenced to death by the blues
But who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it’s been dying for years

 

There’s an attic where children are playing
Where I’ve got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I’ll see what you’ve chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its, I’ll never forget you, you know
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and death
Dragging its tail in the sea

 

And I’ll dance with you in Vienna
I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you’ll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
Oh my love, oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It’s yours now, it’s all that there is
Aey, aey, aey, aey

 

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Too Literary

Posted on August 7, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

 

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