It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Tears and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
I don’t know how I missed the amazing site vici.org which offers an excellent interactive map of archeological sites. It’s easy to spend hours down the rabbit hole exploring the thousands of locations with significant ancient buildings or ruins. Most of the historically important sites on the map are in Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East.
One of the places that I discovered on vici.org was a Roman Museum near Lausanne, Switzerland. Many decades ago, I was staying in a hostel near Lausanne and literally stumbled on the Roman ruins in a field long before the museum was built.
“Vici.org is the archaeological atlas of classical antiquity. It is a community driven archaeological map, inspired by and modelled after Wikipedia.
The first version of Vici.org went online in May 2012. It was preceded by a sister website Omnesviae.org, a roman routeplanner based on the Peutinger map. Since its start, Vici.org has grown a lot. At the time to this writing, over 140 contributors have added nearly 20,000 locations, approximately 1,000 line tracings and over 3,000 images.
Similar to Wikipedia, all written content is available for reuse using the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-license. Metadata is available using the CC0 / Public Domain dedication. Images or line tracings may be available under other licenses. Vici.org invites everyone to participate and share their knowledge of classical antiquity. Vici.org does provide various services to reuse this shared knowledge, through various dataservices or by using the Vici widget.”
I know very little about manga culture, but I was suitably impressed by this 19-minute live-action masterpiece, titled Midnight, which is based on a 1986 manga series by Osamu Tezuka, affectionately known as the Godfather of Manga. The entire project was captured using the iPhone 15 Pro, touting the device’s advanced capabilities in capturing the essence of Tokyo’s nocturnal landscape.
The story follows a late-night taxi driver encountering a series of strange passengers. In Apple’s adaptation, the driver becomes entangled in the fate of Kaede, a female truck driver, as he helps her escape a relentless hitman.
Stockholm-based artist Tomas Mayer has been hard at work creating a wonderful miniature library. His “Handmade Miniature Library” is a marvelously detailed scene packed with hundreds of books, scrolls, and shelves.
Each bookshelf is filled with tiny volumes and scrolls. The combined grouping of shelves creates the illusion of a dusty, historic library in an ancient university or palace.
You follow Mayer’s progress on the project at Behance and Instagram for updates t which the artist plans to use as the backdrop for a movie.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t miss my old typewriters at all. Still, I was intrigued by this video typewriter-centric performance. The Boston Typewriter Orchestra is a nostalgic combo that engages in rhythmic typewriter manipulation combined with elements of performance, comedy and satire. “Selectric Funeral” is their entry for this year’s NPR Tiny Desk Contest and their first piece to include an electric typewriter. It’s catchy, but I won’t be downloading the entire album.
I want to get up early one more morning, before sunrise. Before the birds, even. I want to throw cold water on my face and be at my work table when the sky lightens and smoke begins to rise from the chimneys of the other houses. I want to see the waves break on this rocky beach, not just hear them break as I did all night in my sleep. I want to see again the ships that pass through the Strait from every seafaring country in the world— old, dirty freighters just barely moving along, and the swift new cargo vessels painted every color under the sun that cut the water as they pass. I want to keep an eye out for them. And for the little boat that plies the water between the ships and the pilot station near the lighthouse. I want to see them take a man off the ship and put another up on board. I want to spend the day watching this happen and reach my own conclusions. I hate to seem greedy—I have so much to be thankful for already. But I want to get up early one more morning, at least. And go to my place with some coffee and wait. Just wait, to see what’s going to happen. from Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (Vintage, 1985)
Perelandra Bookshop, Fort Collins, Colo., is offering a reader-in-residence program that, unlike more traditional artist-in-residence or writer-in-residence programs, does not require anything “except show up to the bookstore a couple of times per week and read,” the Coloradoan reported.
“I think the residence paralleled my own personal concerns about the extent to which we focus ourselves on production,” said Joe Braun, principal book buyer and creator of the position. “In focusing on production, foregrounding content creation, what we do is necessarily create a consumer in the process. The idea is: produce, consume, produce, consume.
“Having gone through undergrad and grad school–even though they were great experiences–there was that constant drive to show that you understand. To make something of your understanding. I’m like, you know what, we kind of just need understanding. We don’t always need proof of it.”
The reader-in-residence gets a small stipend for their three-month stint–$50 per month for books, and another $50 per month for coffee. They also have access to Perelandra’s wholesale book catalog. The Coloradoan noted that the “overt goal of the residency is to foster a space for people to experience literature more thoughtfully. The underlying goal is to make them want to smash their phones with a sledgehammer.”
“We do so much reading now, but it’s mostly reading for information at best. At best. At worst it’s like a pure little shot of dopamine before moving to the next post,” said Steven Shafer, Perelandra’s current reader-in-residence. “It is almost the exact opposite of what I’ve gotten to experience here.”
I never thought that the English novelist Jane Austen was a revolutionary, but what do I know. In the video below, Evan Puschak explains, with examples, what free indirect speech is, why Austen employed it, and why it was so revolutionary and influential when wielded by Austen.
To understand why Austen’s narration is so distinct, the method and style of narration in which she wrote must be understood. Austen wrote in a little-known and not-often-used method of third-person narration called free indirect speech. Free Indirect Speech (FIS) is a distinct kind of third-person narration which seamlessly slips in and out of a character’s consciousness while still being presented by the third-person narrator.
The famous Parisian department store Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche is hosting two gigantic figures that celebrate the joy of reading and books. The celebrated editor Sarah Andelman, of Just an Idea Books, and artist Jean Jullien teamed up to create the cheeky booklovers. Mise En Page is a lighthearted literary exhibition and pop-up shop that sees Jullien’s Paper People series spring to life. The two enormous figures preside over the multi-story department store on Paris’s left bank, reminding shoppers of the joy of reading.
Mise En Page includes a library of the artist’s monographs designed in his singular two-dimensional style, alongside kiosks from reader-favorite bookstores like The Strand and Pillow-Cat Books in New York City, and Book/Shop in Oakland.
Travel Between The Pages 