Images from the Past

08/30/2024

As a publisher, I always think deeply about what the author's message is and who (all) we want to get it. That has driven Images from the Past's Author/Editor/Designer/Publisher team's decision about the title and the cover art. Many publishers (including self publishers) hand that decision over to a Marketing Department or its equivalent. Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" (Viking Press, 1957) has had many different covers over the years. This prepublication proposal gives us a picture of what Kerouac thought his message was!

This falls under the category, “If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.' In 1950, when Jack Kerouac released his first novel, The Town and the City, he was less than impressed by the book cover produced by his publisher, Harcourt Brace.

08/23/2024

Words fail ..

Artist Edgar Reich’s romance with the writer’s mother didn’t survive the Holocaust, but remarkably, his drawings and watercolors of their relationship did.

08/23/2024

Some delightful non-political entertainment!

Think back, if you will, to the climactic scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which take place in the hidden temple that contains the Holy Grail.

08/20/2024

As my final (unsolicited) Call to Action: The Sept 21st 7 pm showing of the film "Vanish" is now on the Latchis Theatre website. "'Jim Westphalen’s visually stunning film, Vanish, is a eulogy for a rural way of life that is disappearing, but it also serves as a clarion call for all of us to preserve what’s left and what matters,” said Ben Doyle, President of the Preservation Trust of Vermont." To see the film and a Q&A with the Photographer/Filmmaker Jim Westphalen, "Be there or be square" 🙂 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/a-brief-but-spectacular-take-on-rural-americas-vanishing-structures https://latchis.com/event/vanish-disappearing-icons-of-rural-american-sept-21/

For more than two decades, Vermont-based photographer Jim Westphalen has documented old farmhouses, barns, churches and homes that have fallen into disrepair — he calls it “finding beauty in decay.” His works are collected in a book and film, both titled “Vanish: Disappearing Icons of a Rura...

08/16/2024

With my publisher/editor hat on ... Even if you don't use them, they'll remind you of those feelings! 🙂

The Snark Mark will really come in handy.

08/09/2024

The second in today's double feature about messages and media (and images from the past!)

Comics Code Authority. I remember seeing it stamped onto the upper-right corner of issues of titles from The Amazing Spider-Man to reprints of Carl Barks' Scrooge McDuck stories to Jughead Double Digest, but I can't say I paid it much mind at the time.

06/19/2024

Some inspiring history for Juneteenth! "In 1925, the New York Public Library system established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials at its 135th Street branch in Harlem, now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture" but ... "In the 1920 census, only 69 of the 15,297 Americans who listed their profession as librarian were Black." https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/arts/harlem-renaissance-librarians-libraries-books-literature.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20240619&instance_id=126632&nl=the-morning®i_id=85589915&segment_id=169968&te=1&user_id=6af573bceda5e2543e1e6c28c891d911

06/18/2024

Miss Opal Lee on Juneteenth (2:31) "It's about freedom for everyone!"

06/16/2024

FYI This summer's Living Room Theatre production in the Park McCullough House pool is "Amor and Psyche: a Mythological Comedy" July 24 - Aug 4th Wednesday- Sunday at 6:30 pm. Reservations at: [email protected], or by phone: 802-442-5322. It's going to be another success! 🤝

06/01/2024

Join me in pondering this from NYT's Melissa Kirsch in today's The Morning. " It’s June again, whether you’re apt to rejoice or just surrender. It’s June and “The green will never / again be so green, so purely and lushly / new,” as the poet Marge Piercy put it. That alone, the brand-newness of the month and the season, the brand-newness of who you or I might be this time around, might not be enough to make you love this time of year, but perhaps it’s enough to make you curious, to consider how you might be different, to consider whom or what you might, this year, admit into your summer plans.

05/31/2024

"20 Brilliant Anglo-Saxon words" Not for everyday conversational use, but wonderful ways to time and culture travel, because of what was important enough to have words for it!

Old English had a rich array of inventive and intriguing words, many of which have either long since dropped out of use or were replaced.

05/29/2024

I hardly dare say it but ... after a couple of days of multiple "Remove posts like this" as Irrelevant, and repeated "No more posts from this source" (or whatever the wording is) I MAY have taught the Facebook algorithm not to think I need to know about events and organizations far far away that in no way match my interests or match my Facebook interactions - or MAYBE they've adjusted their algorithm. I'll consider it a Work in Progress on both our parts! 🙏

05/27/2024

A good historical story with pictures and a sound track (at least in our minds!)

BY JOSHUA FAGANUniversity of Washington Graduations throughout the Uni

05/27/2024

The fascinating story of how a patriotic military march became a commencement standard!

BY JOSHUA FAGANUniversity of Washington Graduations throughout the Uni

04/26/2024

Do others also find this a splendid and helpful article? Whether we're publishers, writers, readers, or consumers looking for information, AI is an increasing part of our lives!

A great public resource is at risk of being destroyed.

04/19/2024

Great Fun! The routes to our names in English but also to those in other languages!

The sun, the moon, four gods, and a goddess.

04/13/2024

An astonishing application of Artificial Intelligence In Mali, where 80% can communicate in Bambara, but 70% have never learned to read or write. A many layered story in the Washington Post! Thank you Rachel Chason

As the popularity of French wanes, RobotsMali is using AI to create books in Bambara.

04/12/2024

I learned today from The Franco-American Centre in Manchester NH that French is the 5th most spoken language worldwide, which sent me to find out about the others. I found Berlitz's list of 1-20! Hindi is #3 "along with English, one of the 22 official languages of India" of which Marathi is #15, Telugu is #16, and Tamil is #18!

More than half of the world's population speaks only 23 out of 7000 existing languages. Keen to know which are the most spoken languages ​​in the world?

04/12/2024

Much more than I ever knew or even suspected about The Story of Man's Search for Spiritual Unity! You can Zoom in to read the fine print! Seeing Judaism, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism as colored paths is enlightening in itself, and then the many other beliefs as charted in 1943!

For many, even most of us moderns, the central religious choice is a simple one: adhere to the belief system in which you grew up, or stop adhering to it.

04/08/2024

... and now for something completely different (from me) but appropriate for Eclipse Day!

A representation of Rahu, a snake demon in Hindu mythology who caused solar and lunar eclipses, from the 18th-century temple Wat Pong Sanuk Tai in Lampang, Thailand.

04/04/2024

This 1:40 book trailer contains stills and footage of the dynamic group which Petie Palmer, because of her personal connections, brought to Bennington very early in their career, while I was the first director of the Park McCullough House.

PILOBOLUS is the dynamic history of an innovative, beloved, and critically acclaimed dance theatre company. Learn more: https://upf.com/book.asp?id=978081308...

04/01/2024

OH MY! "Protesters Disrupt Silent Book Club Meeting in Georgia!" "Those people in the bookstore right now could be reading anything. "

A group of protestors gathered Thursday night outside Blue Sparrow Books in Riverton, Ga., to demonstrate against the monthly meeting of the bookshop's Silent Book Club. Carrying signs with messages like "What Are You Reading?!!" and "Stop Hiding Behind Your Books," the protesters, who numbered between 8-12 people at various times, could be heard chanting: "Be Proud, Read Aloud!"

Shelly Banks, who organized the rally, said they had been inspired by the Moms for Liberty's efforts to ban numerous books in school libraries nationwide, as well as protests against Drag Queen story times in bookstores. While neither of these issues had come up yet in Riverton, the group had heard about Silent Book Club and decided to take a stand.

"We just want to do our part to make sure our communities maintain standards of decency," said Banks. "It's a slippery slope. Those people in the bookstore right now could be reading anything. What they read in the privacy of their homes is their business for now, but if they think they can just parade around in public reading any old book they want to, they have another think coming."

Blue Sparrow Books owner Shelby Franks said she did not recognize any of the protesters and that the Silent Book Club meeting had proceeded as usual. No changes will be made to future meetings" by Robert Gray (Shelf Awareness)

03/22/2024

a 1.4 million year old artifact - now that's history! Thank you archeologists!

"Hominins – the group that includes humans, extinct human relatives and our direct ancestors – are believed to have made it into Eurasia [from Africa] 1 to 2 million years ago."

The oldest firmly dated evidence of human ancestors in Europe has been found at a 1.4-million-year-old site in Ukraine.

03/22/2024

BANNED IN THE US (1934-1964) "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller (and his other books!)

"Anaïs Nin helped to edit the book and Obelisk Press published it with financial backing from Nin, herself, in 1934 in Paris, France. The book’s jacket was wrapped with a warning that read, “NOT TO BE IMPORTED INTO THE UNITED STATES OR GREAT BRITAIN.” Even in liberal Paris, bookstores sold the novel under the counter; but as word spread, copies were bought by American tourists and smuggled home disguised under dust jackets from other books.

The government of the United States made it national policy to ban Tropic of Cancer from being sold or imported into the country arguing, “[it] dealt too explicitly with his sexual adventures and challenged models of sexual morality.” To push their agenda, the government went on to ban all of Miller’s works from entering the United States, regardless of its content or subject. ...

The long, twisted road of censorship in the decades to follow is quite sordid.

Banned Books Awareness: “Tropic of Cancer” May 18, 2014 R. Wolf Baldassarro Social Change 7 Henry Miller is one of the most important literary figures in American history, but most people don’t even know his name. His was a true underdog story: a creative and challenging author who influenced ...

03/18/2024

The Place we're in and who's with us. Words and who says them for some clue to what they mean. As we do our best together IRL! 🙏🤝

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

and from 2017I - "I've posted this elsewhere in a comment, but I think it's worth sharing more widely!
Clearly we are in Wonderland! “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.”
(Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 6) and here are more clues:

Discover Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland': background info, pictures, full texts, story origins, literary analyses, webshop, and more.

03/16/2024

A gift of some site-specific pub history (in Ireland and the US) on this St. Patrick's Day ... and Slåinte!

"An 1872 law required all pubs to display the owner’s name above the door ... to regulate alcohol sellers and make it easier to collect taxes while Ireland was under British control." (per Elizabeth Stack, the executive director of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City in the Washington Post)

Like a Celtic font, a Guinness-branded umbrella or a four-leaf clover design, the name on a pub’s facade can instantly mark it as Irish. But are Irish pub names in America as repetitive as they seem?

02/29/2024

In whatever form of publication, let us remember and honor the designers - and the archival images that illustrate current words!

"PS. Today’s print front page is the last to be drawn by Tom Bodkin, The [New York] Times’s chief creative officer, who is retiring after 46 years. Tom has regularly designed the paper’s front page over the decades, always by hand, using pencil on green paper. Here is today’s version:

02/26/2024

What will we be able to say after 20 years in publishing, and what will be said about us?

"What a privilege and honor it has been for me to lead Yale University Press for more than two decades. I am most grateful for my colleagues' professionalism and excellence; we have fulfilled our primary mission of publishing rigorous and challenging books that display not only scholarly rigor and financial sustainability but that shine with a certain luster, attract critical attention, win prestigious prizes, are talked about and loved, and, as things of beauty, sell prominently. I've always believed that books are a form of activism as well as a kind of charm; each has the power to change the world one mind at a time. I feel so proud and lucky to have been at the helm of Yale Press, taking up that charge every day, and leaving a legacy of publications that matter." (John Donatich on his June 30, 2025 retirement as quoted in Shelf Awareness)

02/25/2024

Whether you're a children's bookstore owner, a children's book publisher, children's book author (or illustrator or designer), a children's book reader - now or years ago. or one for whom any well-told history is irresistible .. this one's for you! Thanks Anita Silvey (and Shelf Awareness and friend and fellow publisher Pamela J. Fenner)

As the wearer of three of these hats, I enthusiastically share this!

Among the many contributors to Among Friends: An Illustrated Oral History of American Book Publishing & Bookselling in the 20th Century,

02/16/2024

Celebrating publishing (and the writing, for there to be something to publish); historic preservation; and historical interpretation. KUDOS to all for the achievement, and for a future for The Evergreens.

https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine-books-news/emily-dickinson-museum-announces-reopening-evergreens-after-years-preservation-work?fbclid=IwAR3K3DhXOcI7DpDCTK8Y4BQ0_BIIbF2YT8UNWrcAkucjW_uG58SxVk9GUjY

Closed since 2019, the Emily Dickinson Museum has now completed a multi-year preservation effort at The Evergreens, aimed at improving environmental conditions for objects in its recently documented collection, and reducing energy consumption.