Nepenthe

New York City is the greatest public works project in the USA . It is a city of tubes, grids, circuits and networks. We are organised by numbered floors and numbered streets and numbered apartments, fed and watered through great pipes and tunnels and bridges, shuttled to and fro in shifts along lines. On  Monday  night the magnificent machines were revealed to us, as they failed one by one. American newscasters hyperventilate about everything, and foam at the mouth when the subject is weather systems over the Northeastern United States, so there seemed no special reason to pay them any urgent attention in the days leading up to Sandy. The storm only became real when the governor announced the closure of the subway system on Sunday  morning. The process takes eight hours. Employees moved train cars, removed tracks that might be damaged by salt water, primed pumps, cleaned drains, evacuated stations and cleared rail yards prone to flooding. That night, the Metr...

His children are falling from the sky. He watches from horse-back, acres of England stretching behind him; they drop, gilt-winged, each with a blood-filled gaze. Grace Cromwell hovers in thin air. She is silent when she takes her prey, silent as she glides to his fist. But the sounds she makes then, the rustle of feathers and the creak, the sigh and riffle of pinion, the small cluck-cluck from her throat, these are sounds of recognition, intimate, daughterly, almost disapproving. Her breast is gore-streaked and flesh clings to her claws. Later, Henry will say, 'Your girls flew well today'. The hawk Anne Cromwell bounces on the glove of Rafe Sadler, who rides by the king in easy conversation. They are tired; the sun is declining, and they ride back to  Wolf Hall  with the reins slack on the necks of their mounts. Tomorrow his wife and two sisters will go out. These dead women, their bones long sunk in London clay, are now transmigrated. Weightless, they glide on the u...

thank you, The Guardian  DataBlog :) Münster: Ortelius: Blaeu: Moll: Hase: Clouet: Cary: Tallis: Levasseur: Andriveau-Goujon: (idem)

The Art of Grant Snider , who tells us: In my exhaustive research for today's comic, I read that John Steinbeck often signed his books with a drawing of the Pigasus, a mythical flying pig. He also included the Latin motto  "Ad astra per alas porci": "To the stars on the wings of a pig."

Here

A first look review from The Guardian : In his gently astonishing new film,  Life of Pi , adapted from Yann Martel's 2001 bestseller, director  Ang Lee  melds so many disparate elements – Aesopian fable and cutting-edge  3D  technology, east and west, young and old – that he may have just succeeded in rebranding himself as the Obama of world cinema. The fiercely urgent candidate of 2008, of course, not the stealth version currently working the stump. The sheer number of world religions given a shout-out in the film – Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist – is enough to send Donald Trump's comb-over scampering up the nearest tree trunk, looking for cover. The film takes a while to get going, like someone roused from their morning meditation, with lots of flowers and candles and people wearing kindly, fixed smiles suggesting enlightenment, or as if they had been hit around the head with a brass pot. In French India, the young son of a zoo owner collec...

International Music Day or World Music Day is a concept too good to believe and the best part is that it actually exists. Yes, International Music day or the IMD was initiated on the 1st of October in 1975 by Lord Yehudi Menuhin. It was first organized by the International Music Council on 1st of October, 1975, in accordance with the resolution taken at the 15th General Assembly in Lausanne in 1973. The International Music Council (IMC) or the guardian of the IMD was founded by UNESCO in 1949. The IMC is the world's largest network of organizations, institutions and individuals functioning in the field of music. The International Music Council encourages and fosters musical diversity, access to culture for everyone and unites organizations in some 150 countries worldwide in building peace and understanding among people cutting across class, culture and heritage. The IMC in its bid to establish a global harmony through the music, celebrates the International Music Day and ...