Poe’s Summer Vacation

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Ali Fitzgerald, an artist and a writer. Her most recent book is “Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and Other Stories from a New Europe.”

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Staying Awake

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I have been an enormous fan of the work of novelist/poet/essayist Ursula K. Le Guin for many decades. Recently, I stumbled on this quote from her titled “Staying Awake”.

“Besides, readers aren’t viewers; they recognize their pleasure as different from that of being entertained. Once you’ve pressed the on button, the TV goes on, and on, and on, and all you have to do is sit and stare. But reading is active, an act of attention, of absorbed alertness—not all that different from hunting, in fact, or from gathering. In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can’t lull you with surging music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks or fire gunshots in your living room; you have to listen to it in your head. A book won’t move your eyes for you the way images on a screen do. It won’t move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it. It won’t do the work for you. To read a story well is to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it—everything short of writing it, in fact. Reading is not “interactive” with a set of rules or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the writer’s mind. No wonder not everybody is up to it.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, “Staying Awake”

 

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Banishing Evil

Posted on June 29, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

This short New Yorker documentary about a Bulgarian tradition of dancing evil spirits away reminds us of the traditional rituals that are slowly disappearing, of the ways people develop coping mechanisms and lasting community. It’s a moving portrayal and a reminder that humans are capable of coming together to confront collective fears.

 

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Disappearing Bags

Posted on June 28, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

I try to avoid checking baggage when I fly, but some times it’s necessary to take that leap of faith and hope that luggage actually arrives. In the video below Sam Denby of Half as Interesting explains what goes on behind the scenes when luggage is checked in by an airline using two animated bags. The purple bag belonging to Carrie was carried onto the plane, while the yellow bag belonging to Chad made its way through the checked luggage system.

 

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The Lottery

Posted on June 27, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

In 1960, five years before her death, Shirley Jackson recorded readings of “The Lottery” and “The Daemon Lover” for an outfit called Folkways Records—the only time we know of that she ever recorded performances of her own work.”

Set on a beautiful Summer day in a rural farming community as villagers gather to observe an annual ritual in the town square, The Lottery portrays most townsfolk as demonstrating a mob mentality who abandon all reason. Written immediately after World War II, Shirley Jackson’s story is a cautionary tale, depicting the dangers of following traditions without thinking of the consequences, and the dark side of human nature.

Upon its publication, The New Yorker received more mail over Jackson’s chilling tale than any work of fiction they had ever published. Readers cancelled their subscriptions, citing the story as too “gruesome,” “perverted,” and “outrageous.”

 

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Is It Even A City

Posted on June 26, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

The simple creativity in the new video below for VisitOslo is rare in tourism ads these days, most of which blend into each other. This is different, a typical understated Norse dry sense of humor. 

 

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I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote

Posted on June 25, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Regular visitors to Travel Between The Pages are aware that I am both a Sci-Fi and space exploration geek. So it will come as no surprise that I am sharing the marvelous short film below. Wanderers is made even better by its narration by the great philosopher/scientist Carl Sagan. Here’s what the filmmaker Erik Wernquist had to say about his project:

Wanderers is a vision of humanity’s expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available. Without any apparent story, other than what you may fill in by yourself, the idea of the film is primarily to show a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds – and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there. As some may notice I have borrowed ideas and concepts from science fiction authors such as Kim Stanley Robinson and Arthur C. Clarke, just to name a few. And visually, I of course owe many tips of my hat to painter Chesley Bonestell – the legendary master of space art. More directly, with kind permission from Ann Druyan I have also borrowed the voice of astronomer and author Carl Sagan to narrate the film. The audio I used are excerpts from his own reading of his book ‘Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space’ (1994, Random House, http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/boo…) – needless to say, a huge inspiration for this film.

 

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it’s closer than you think

Posted on June 24, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

CLOSE is a very neat visualization project that shows where to locate in city neighborhoods essential amenities within a short distance of travel. “Proximity governs how we live, work, and socialize. Close is an interactive travel time map for people who want to be near the amenities that matter most to them.”

This can be a very handy tool for travelers who often have no clue how to access local sites when visiting a new city. Currently only focused on U.S. cities, but hopefully, the creators will be expanding to Europe and beyond really soon.

 

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Bookstore Tourism: Il mio tipo di posto

Posted on June 23, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

It’s been more than a decade since I’ve visited Florence, so you will have to forgive that I missed the grand opening to the amazing Libreria Giunti Odeon. This fabulous mash-up of a cinema, bookstore and cafe premiered in November 2023 after years of renovation. The restore 1922 Art Nouveau movie theater/bookshop is housed in the historic Palazzo dello Strozzino. Built around 1457, and designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, the palazzo was owned by the Strozzino family until the 19th century. In 1904, it was bought by the Chiari family who eventually decided to build an elegant cinema.

After alternating periods as theatre and then cinema, in 2023 the Odeon, which still retained splendid Art Nouveau style, was renovated and reopened as the Giunti Odeon. Bookshop and Cinema. 

Open seven days a week, from 8.30 in the morning to the end of each night’s film, Giunti Odeon, or GO, as it is known to the locals, maintains its mission as a cinema. One screen guarantees nightly film screenings in their original languages, while a LED wall projects daytime entertainment in Italian and English. Throughout the theater are the bookshelves lined with 25,000-plus titles occupying the entire ground floor, including the foyer.

 

 

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London For Free

Posted on June 22, 2024 by Brian D. Butler

Some of the vintage oldtimers who have been following Travel Between The Pages for many eons may recall that during the last century I made a dubious living writing travel guidebooks and newsletters. One of my better selling books was titled London For Free. It was also my most plagiarized books. In fact, knock-off versions were published in more than one country that simply lifted the text word for word and republished with a different cover. Que sera sera.

Any way, I am always on the look out for similar titles now that London For Free is long out of print. I recently ran across the guide Free London from Hoxton Mini Press of London and was happy to discover that they have issued a very extensive catalog of London travel guidebooks including the aforementioned title on no cost sites.

The range of titles is impressive and I will certainly pick up a few the next time that I visit London. Have any of you purchased or read books from the series ? What did you think ?

 

 

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