Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simić
Paradais by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes
Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, translated by Jo Heinrich
Em by Kim Thúy, translated by Sheila Fischman
The Dublin Literary Award is presented annually for a novel written or translated into English. Books are nominated for the award by invited public libraries in cities throughout the world, making the award unique in its coverage of international fiction.
The Independent (March 28, 2023) – The tiny Pacific island state of Vanuatu was hit by two category-four cyclones and two earthquakes over three days this month, in a devastating onslaught that destroyed homes, cut power, and impacted 80 per cent of the population.
Scientists say global heating is already making major tropical cyclones like those that hit Vanuatu more frequent. Under moderate and worst-case climate scenarios, the country is expected to lose around 20-25 per cent of its GDP from natural disasters each year, according to a recent UN report. Later this month Vanuatu’s proposal for a top international court to clarify the obligations of states to tackle climate change and the consequences of not doing so under international law will be put to a vote at the United Nations.
Vanuatu is a South Pacific Ocean nation made up of roughly 80 islands that stretch 1,300 kilometers. The islands offer scuba diving at coral reefs, underwater caverns and wrecks such as the WWII-era troopship SS President Coolidge. Harborside Port Vila, the nation’s capital and economic center, is on the island of Efate. The city is home to the Vanuatu National Museum, which explores the nation’s Melanesian culture.
Victoria and Albert Museum (March 28, 2023) – Inspired by traditional oil paintings, sculptor Elliot Walker works with molten glass at exceptionally high temperatures and speed to create unique 3D still life sculptures. Step inside his studio to see each stage of this extremely challenging process, as he creates a new work made up of three-dimensional sliced fish, in response to a tiny fragment of a Middle Eastern glass beaker in our collection.
Video timeline:00:00 In the studio 01:10 Elliot’s still life series 01:45 Design inspiration from the V&A collection 03:03 Hot workshop: gathering molten glass with a blowpipe 03:30 Building up layers of clear and coloured glass 03:56 Spiralling the coloured glass 04:15 Shaping the glass with different tools 04:50 ‘Swedish’ or bubble overlay technique 05:57 Creating the fish shape 06:41 Adding surface texture, fins and a metallic finish 08:14 Cold workshop: cutting and polishing 09:17 The finished piece
Left to right: Gerald Cassidy, Cui Bono?, about 1911. Collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art: Gift of Gerald Cassidy, 1915 (282.23P). Gerald Cassidy, Midday Sun, North Africa, 1920s.
Denver Art Museum (March 27, 2023): Artworks in Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism(through May 29)present a range of representations from sympathetic to stereotyped. Indeed, racialized stereotypes such as the “Noble Savage” and odalisque (a woman in a female-only domestic space, or harem, who is often overly sexualized in European art) circulated throughout French Orientalism and western American art.
Acknowledging the ongoing harm of such representations, we knew that we needed to make space for diverse perspectives: essentially, to make room for the voices too often repressed or ignored in the artwork.
Uploaded on March 28, 2023: Chania is a city on the northwest coast of the Greek island of Crete. It’s known for its 14th-century Venetian harbor, narrow streets and waterfront restaurants. At the harbor entrance is a 16th-century lighthouse with Venetian, Egyptian and Ottoman influences.
Opposite, the Nautical Museum has model ships, naval objects and photographs. The former monastery of St. Francis houses the Archaeological Museum of Chania.
Nature on PBS (March 27, 2023) – No bigger than a human thumb, the volcano hummingbird exists only in the Talamancas.
The volcano hummingbird (Selasphorus flammula ) is a very small hummingbird, native to the Talamancan montane forests of Costa Rica and western Panama.
This tiny endemic bird inhabits open brushy areas, paramo, and edges of elfin forest at altitudes from 1850 m to the highest peaks. It is only 7.5 cm long. The male weighs 2.5 g and the female 2.8 g. The black bill is short and straight.
The adult male volcano hummingbird has bronze-green upperparts and rufous-edged black outer tail feathers. The throat is grey-purple in the Talamanca range, red in the Poas-Barva mountains and pink-purple in the Irazú-Turrialba area, the rest of the underparts being white. The female is similar, but her throat is white with dusky spots. Young birds resemble the female but have buff fringes to the upperpart plumage.
The female volcano hummingbird is entirely responsible for nest building and incubation. She lays two white eggs in her tiny plant-down cup nest 1–5 m high in a scrub or on a root below a south or east facing bank. Incubation takes 15–19 days, and fledging another 20–26.
Omni Foundation (March 26, 2023) – The Omni Foundation presents 4 rising young stars of the guitar in concert for its 2nd edition to the Young Virtuosos Live from St. Mark’s series.
Uploaded March 26, 2023 – A walking tour in Jamilah market in Aleppo, the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, on Thursday, March 23, 2023.
Aleppo, Arabic Ḥalab, Turkish Halep, principal city of northern Syria. It is situated in the northwestern part of the country, about 30 miles (50 km) south of the Turkish border. Aleppo is located at the crossroads of great commercial routes and lies some 60 miles (100 km) from both the Mediterranean Sea (west) and the Euphrates River (east).
CBS Sunday Morning (March 26, 2023) – To photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, the rapidly vanishing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America were works of art. The German couple’s documentary images of transmission towers, gas tanks, blast furnaces and smokestacks – structures that signified the end of an industrial era – are being celebrated in a comprehensive retrospective now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lee Cowan offers us a tour.
The renowned German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher (1931–2007; 1934–2015) changed the course of late twentieth-century photography. Working as a rare artist couple, they focused on a single subject: the disappearing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America that fueled the modern era.
Their seemingly objective style recalled nineteenth- and early twentieth-century precedents but also resonated with the serial approach of contemporary Minimalism and Conceptual art. Equally significant, it challenged the perceived gap between documentary and fine art photography.
BBC News (March 26, 2023) – In the 1700s, geologist James Hutton discovered a rock formation in Scotland that transformed how we think about time. Through studying the rocky headland of Siccar Point, Hutton identified the existence of ‘deep time’ – proving that Earth is millions, not thousands, of years old.
James Hutton (1726–1797), a Scottish farmer and naturalist, is known as the founder of modern geology. He was a great observer of the world around him. More importantly, he made carefully reasoned geological arguments. Hutton came to believe that the Earth was perpetually being formed; for example, molten material is forced up into mountains, eroded, and then eroded sediments are washed away.
He recognized that the history of the Earth could be determined by understanding how processes such as erosion and sedimentation work in the present day. His ideas and approach to studying the Earth established geology as a proper science.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
CBS Sunday Morning (March 26, 2023) – To photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, the rapidly vanishing industrial architecture of Western Europe and North America were works of art. The German couple’s documentary images of transmission towers, gas tanks, blast furnaces and smokestacks – structures that signified the end of an industrial era – are being celebrated in a comprehensive retrospective now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lee Cowan offers us a tour.
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