Wednesday 31 July 2019

The one and only master of train station packing-tape calligraphy (2016)



The tale of the Japanese underground rail employee, Mr Shuetso Sato, who is an expert at creating beautifully finished signs for use in the train stations using as his major material a range of packing tapes of different colours (HERE).

Monday 29 July 2019

African Shores (2019)


The latest album from the 70 year old Jamaican trombonist Vin Gordon is out now (HERE).

Sunday 28 July 2019

Ease and Cheer (1927)


I have been reading A Primer for Forgetting by Lewis Hyde. It is superb. It is structured in four Notebooks, each of which is a collection of pieces by others that Hyde has found, or autobiographical sequences, or connecting prose. Here, is one of them:

"EASE AND CHEER." Emanuel Lasker was one of the greatest chess players of all time, holding the world championship for a full twenty-eight years beginning in 1894. His classic Manual of Chess, published in 1927, ends with some "final reflections on education in chess" that include this remark: "Chess must not be memorized. ... Memory is too valuable to be stocked with trifles. Of my fifty-seven years I have applied at least thirty to forgetting most of what I have learned or read, and since I succeeded in this I have acquired a certain ease and cheer which I should never again like to be without."

Copyright Lewis Hyde 2019.

Friday 26 July 2019

10 Reading Revolutions (2010)


A superb piece by Tim Carmody in The Atlantic on 10 reading revolutions, covering the evolution of the alphabet, the Codex, moveable type and computers (HERE).