The world’s first phone box called Fernsprechkiosk, was opened on January 12, 1881 at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, while credit for the telephone’s invention is disputed by more people, including Antonio Meucci. Today most phone booths have been abandoned for mobile phones and eventually transformed into other public street services like lending libraries or free book exchanges in the form of shelves of donated books (such as the one pictured above). |
EVERY DAY
Every day there is the time to wake up Every day there is the time to get up Every day there is the time to go Every day there is the time to look Every day there is the time to say Every day there is the time to do Every day there is the time to listen Every day there is the time to help Every day there is the time to smile Every day there is the time to love Every day there is the time to pray Every day there is the time to thank. Times passes quickly You cannot buy it You cannot gift it You cannot create it Every day If there is no time You can only die.
Maria Bigazzi, 2013 – Life day by day.
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I knew Maria Bigazzi casually in one of the Internet kiosks where I’m used to play hide-and-seek with my “cosmopolitan fans”. One day she gave me a boero as a gift and we started to talk. She too has her own personal story and her own problems, and, unlike me, she likes to tell about herself. After telling me of her suffering through many misfortunes, however, Maria finally revealed me the secret of her light heart and kind attitude: art! Art saved her life and every day, thru her watercolours, poems and pictures, she succeeds in forgetting the burden of her sorrows. She put together most of her artworks in a self-printed book (“Poesie dipinte” idem to say “Painted poetry”) which one day she gifted me. I promised her to publish here one of her poems a couple of months ago, but in apologizing to her for my lateness, I hope she may understand that I waited so long for a good reason. From among many Maria’s poems, I choose the above one, because she is very religious and I’m not, but, even though I do not pray, I know I will see her again every day at the same time.
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Accessoriesy For 20 years, artist Patty Carroll has turned women into part of the furniture for her series “Anonymous Women”, which has just been collected in a new book, published by Daylight Books. Photo: Patty Carroll. |
Ukrainian publishers have reacted angrily to their government’s ban on importing books from Russia, claiming it will create a black market and damage the domestic industry.
The ban, passed by Ukraine’s parliament, is the latest front in the battle between Kiev and Moscow that has been running since Russia annexed Crimea and pro-Russian forces seized power in parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Books from Russia account for up to 60% of all titles sold in Ukraine and are estimated to make up 100,000 sales a year. [Read more]. |
The Florentine newspaper La Nazione published today an one-page article on the book “La classe non è acqua” (“Class will out”), devoted to 1966 flood of the Arno, which was written by a fourth-grade classroom of the Elementary and Primary School “Armando Diaz” in Ponte a Mensola, Florence. With the help of their teachers Laura Martini and Fiorenza Pancini, the young students narrated the 1966 flood of the Arno through their imagination and senses. Among the authors we recognize (pictured standing in the first row, fifth from left) a young Étoile of Associazione Culturale “Il Delta della Luna”, 9-year-old Diana Wilson. “At first I didn’t believe it could ever happen. But when I interviewed people who witnessed the flood, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was there”, Diana wrote. Congratulations, Miss Wilson: you did it!
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But from a human point of view there always can happen an even more disastrous kind of disaster, that’s when Salieri wants to author Mozart’s music.
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Quem recitas meus est, o Fidentine, libellus:
sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus. The book that you recite from, Fidentinus, is my own. But when you read it badly, it belongs to you alone. I versi che tu reciti, o Fidentino, son miei; ma siccome li reciti male, ecco diventano tuoi. |
Cats teach dance instruction and are especially talented in the hula, the hambo and the hornpipe. Illustration: Emma Block.
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