Jar Jar Binks Fan Club
#extradirty
Color Me Curious
KIROKAZE
todays bird
noise dept.
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Monterey Bay Aquarium
oozey mess
YOU ARE THE REASON
Product Placement
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
official daine visual archive
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Cookie Run:Kingdom Official!
Sade Olutola
if i look back, i am lost
EXPECTATIONS
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Origami Around
seen from United States
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seen from Pakistan
seen from Brazil
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@guardiancats-blog
In 1847, Charles Dickens founded a house for homeless women in the Shepherd’s Bush neighborhood of London. After setting up the center’s amenities, he publicized the house using leaflets and, upon hearing that London society was shocked that the center had a piano, spread a rumor that the center boasted a piano for every resident. At The Guardian, a look at a letter Dickens wrote to the matron of the house, to be sold at Christie’s in May. (h/t The Paris Review)
Growing trend: warehoused libraries
Read my latest blog post about the warehousing of college libraries.
http://librariesincrisis.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/growing-trend-warehoused-libraries/
Young Girl Writing
Christen Dalsgaard (1824-1907)
Are libraries trying to hard to cater? Students, what do you think of these nap stations?
The Smallest English Dictionary in the World has been discovered by West Country book shop owner Graham York. Although only 1x3/4inch the tiny book’s 384 pages contain thousands of words, and even comes with a lens in its case for surreptitious study when challenged by a lack of diction.
Printed by David Bryce & Sons in Glasgow in 1890 it’s thought only a handful of the mini books were made to show the printer’s skills. Graham said, ‘it would have been the perfect tool for a Victorian quiz or Scrabble night, just like a smart phone is today. Although you would have to be blessed with 20/20 vision to use it.’ Graham is now taking his miniature discovery to the Chelsea Book Fair in November where the tiny book is expected to generate huge interest.
SO MANY AWESOME BOOK POSTS TODAY AAAAH!
uispeccoll, thought this might interest you :)
Similar, 1896. http://uispeccoll.tumblr.com/post/84124665399/good-morning-and-welcome-to-miniature-monday-i
The NYPL has an incredible branch system around the boroughs, but it’s only a part of New York City’s literary resources. From private clubs, to nonprofit societies, to pop up places right out in the streets, here are some of our favorite secret libraries of the city.
Tumblarians, are you coming to BEA? Be sure to check out some of Gotham’s secret libraries. I have the Hispanic Society of America on my must-see list.
my Coffee Pot series.
An excerpt from “Where Will All the Stories Go?” conversation between Laurens van der Post and one of the founding editors of Parabola Magazine, Pamela L. Travers that took place in 1982:
P.L. TRAVERS
As a child in Australia, the stars seemed so close. I used to think I could hear them humming. I never told anyone, they would have laughed.
LAURENS VAN DER POST
But you do. You do hear them hum. “Listen,” my Bushmen would say, “they are hunting.” But to get back to the story of the woman with the basket; it carries an immense mythological charge. The man, after feeling somehow that something was being stolen from him, saw one night a group of beautiful girls coming down from the sky on a cord. Each carried a little tightly woven basket. And one of them he caught. “Yes,” she said, “I will live with you, on condition that you never look inside my basket without my permission.” He agreed, but, inevitably, he said “What the hell!” or the Stone Age equivalent of the phrase. And one day, when he was alone, he opened the basket, peeped inside and roared with laughter. “You have looked into the basket!” she accused him, when she returned. “Yes, you silly woman, why make such a secret of it when there is nothing in it? The basket’s empty.” “You saw nothing?” She gave him a tragic look, turned her back and disappeared into the sunset. And the Bushman who told me the story said to me, “it wasn’t the looking but the fact that he could not perceive in the basket all the wonders she had brought him from the stars.” And that, for me, in a sense, is one of the images that the story is to the human spirit. The basket brings us its star-stuff and the pundits–the intellectuals and the critics–look into it and say it’s all rubbish and superstition, and that there’s nothing in it.
P.L. TRAVERS
Would you accept a carpetbag coming from the stars? I had never read your story, but when Mary Poppins arrived, the children looked into her carpetbag and, like your Bushman, found it empty. And yet out of it came all her mundane daily possessions, including a camp bed! Did all that come from the stars? We do not know. Emptiness is fullness.
From Parabola, “Dreams and Seeing,” Volume VII, Number 2.
Read the entire conversation here.
via: parabola-magazine.
Malala says kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls are her ‘sisters’
(Photo: NBC News)
Education activist Malala Yousafzai sat down with NBC News to discuss the abduction of Nigerian schoolgirls by Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
Continue reading
News from distant worlds
Drinking coffee, waiting for the courier. Two owls hoot love messages to each other in Morse code. Or maybe they’re saying ‘good day’. It’s hard to tell with owls.
Hummingbirds buzz at the feeder. In between sips of sugar water they fret about their babies.
My cat rolls over and stretches like a piece of elongated orange taffy.
That’s the news from close up. I have to wait for bulletins from more distant worlds. The courier is lazy. No FedEx-to- my-door deliveries from this character. He tosses reports out his window on scraps of torn paper. They float down around me like confetti.
A current of warm air, like a sigh nudges an old photograph in my direction, sepia toned and faded. The edges zig-zag, as though cut with pinking shears. Within its borders, a solid, 50-ish woman braids the hair of a young girl. Both wear vintage plaid dresses. The shot, taken from the side and a little behind, is intimate and tender. A private moment and a casual photograph in a time where most subjects were front facing and grim.
I pin the picture to my bulletin board.
Read more 'News from distant worlds' at Mystic Coffee
Why all this talk of the Beloved, Music and dancing, And liquid ruby-light we can lift in a cup? Because it is low tide, A very low tide in this age and around most hearts. We are exquisite coral reefs, Dying when exposed to strange elements. God is the wine-ocean we crave--We miss Flowing in and out of our pores.
The Subject Tonight is Love, 60 Wild and Sweet poems of Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky.
Book art
Book lovers discovery of the day
The Book Thing. Located in Baltimore, it's mission is to put unwanted books into the hands of those who want them. They accept all book donations and you can take as many books as you want. FREE.
A 2002 article in the Chicago Tribune states that "The Book Thing has the funky look and feel of a modest, well-organized neighborhood used bookstore.
The bookshelves, categorized by subject, are jammed but not chaotic. There's room to move around, but no space for a coffee bar. And the titles are an eclectic mix, ranging in fiction, for example, from Danielle Steel to Tom Clancy, and from Jane Hamilton to Thomas Wolfe.
The Book Thing -- motto: "Be greedy!" -- is only open on Saturdays and Sundays, and visitors leave with some 10,000 books a weekend."
There's only one rule at The Book Thing: On any given day, no person can take from The Book Thing more than 150,000 volumes.
Although there's thousands of newer books, there's a slideshow on their website with oddities such as these.
:
Listening to virtual rain
The sound of water helps me write. What a great discovery when I found virtual rain from RainyMood.com @rainymood
Now that All your worry Has proved such an Unlucrative business, Why not find A better job.
Hafiz, 13th c. sufi master, The Gift, translations by Daniel Ladinsky
[Follow up note to this post: What kind of grant stipulates libraries must trash massive amounts of existing books? I am curious to know about other libraries affected by the ‘half empty shelves’ syndrome and the driving force behind it. I would love to hear from people whose libraries have...
