ByGD
I am slowly working my way through countries that start with A in the Read the World (or Reading Around the World, depending where you look) Challenge. That means that after reading Transparent City from Angola, the next destination was Antigua and Barbuda. It’s another country I knew next to nothing about, so my homebound hide was excited to visit, even if it was only between the pages of a book.
ByGD
Many years ago, I traveled around northern Japan with friends, exploring the hot springs resorts. At one isolated spot in the mountains, which we called “the grandma onsen” both for its clientele and old fashioned decor, I experienced a bout of insomnia. After hours of failing to fall asleep, I got up and finished my book. Then, since it was closer to sunrise than midnight, I gave up and went outside. I stationed myself on a little platform above a lake, and was soon joined by a grandma. We stood together in silence as the outline of the mountains across from us gradually became visible and the hillside brightened from grayscale to color. It was kind of cloudy, and I never actually felt a moment of “sunrise.” I was a little disappointed. But at some point, the grandma next me concluded the show was over. She let out a little “Ha!” of satisfaction, clapped her hands together, and bowed once at the mountain before smiling at me and wordlessly walking away.
Years later I read about an art project called Applause Encouraged.
…Scott Poblano’s Applause Encouraged, which happened at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego in 2015. On a cliff overlooking the sea, forty-five minutes before the sunset, a greeter checked guests in to an area of fold-out seats cordoned off with red rope. They were ushered to their seats and reminded not to take photos. They watched the sunset, and when it finished, they applauded. Refreshments were served afterward.
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, p. 6
The old lady in Japan already understood that kind of art and made it part of her daily life. I didn’t quite get it then, but I’d like to live more that way now.
ByGD
There is a war museum on the island of Terceira in the Azores. It seems a little strange for such a peaceful-feeling island to have a war museum. But Portugal was once an empire and the Azores are strategically located. The museum was interesting and tasteful – relating the facts without glamorizing them. Except for this office. I don’t remember what information it was supposed to relate. But the display gave me a sort of Hogwarts feeling. I want an office filled with floating books like this.
ByGD
The graphic novel series Saga by Brian K. Vaughan doesn’t need me to promote it. But reading the first volume of the hardback collection I couldn’t help but pause at this frame. That, as the kids say, is a mood.
ByGD
After decades in Seattle, I realized I had never been to the suburban “city” of Lake Forest Park. All I knew about it was that it had the famous Third Place Books bookstore. The name references a theory that people need a place to live, a place to work, and a third place to gather and form a community. As far as I can tell, the bookstore is the only third place in that small bedroom community. So one day we drove out there, and it was everything we could have hoped for. But it was still all the way out in LFP. Later, they opened a new store in Ravenna, a neighborhood that I could walk to. (I would never walk to the bookstore, though, because books are heavy and I’d never make it home.) We were thrilled, and it has since become our favorite bookstore. This photo is our haul from our first visit to the Third Place in Ravenna.