Compulsively Aimless

                  Plato at the Rave Welcome to the rage cave both old and odd Dark Rebellion In front of the crowd he threw the detached claw into the maw and turned his back   on stone monkey gods with flames for eyes Ouch Ready for bed gashed my head filled with dread Furniture and Nothingness What’s good for the discount furniture store is good for the nihilist Everything Must Go! Throw in Bad Alliteration I destroyed the dessert for the deserving desert party At dawn it was desultory Fade to Black You’ll know it’s the end when light sneaks away   leaving    the space  vacant for darkness. Let’s Have Halloween License Plates Slogan: First in Fright! Perverse Boast He sang My spinster sister the sinister usurper Mark Your Calendars On Opposite Day I’ll watch my basement TV in the attic. Could it be a Song? His brain was original His heart was not like all the others it was broken. Cut Grass Sounds of the lawnmower...

  Artist Unknown   Second Story Mystery I remember living on the second floor the one you see from a passing car on an urban highway and wonder who lives up there with the light on so late at night well it's me watching the cars go by until one night driving home from my shift at the liquor store I run out of gas on some other urban highway and there it is above the rusting guardrail a square of light from the second story window and me wondering who is up there so late at night with the light on.                          Gray and Gold , John Rogers Cox, Cleveland Museum of Art   Without Schedule I want enough time to find a vantage point to view armadas of thunderheads crawl the western plains on tentacles of lighting and see the bruised sky after the storm at sunset. I want more time to understand the prevailing wind and observe patterns of crows and hawks and sit out on the land long enough to be watched by n...

Continuing on the theme of vintage travel guides, today's post offers two more contrasts: Britain and Greece. Seaside resorts in Britain, British Travel and Holidays Association (1955) .  Printed 10 years after the end of World War II, the cover features very clever and colorful artwork. Inside is a series of summaries on British seaside towns from Lands End to the Orkney Islands and everything in between with black and white photos of towns landmarks and vacationers. Curiously, there's a stamp on the back, "Your vacation in France begins in New York when you travel France afloat go buy French line." Bought used at the State Department bookstore. Greece, Mimic Cranaki (1960). "$1.25" Part of a travel series by Vista Books, a small imprint of Viking Press that published a series of 12 books, mostly European. Grease. The guide is an unorthodox approach with a series of essays about Greek history and culture. Definitely strong commentary that you won...

 CONTRASTS Part 4 of Vintage Travel Guides. There’s nothing like contrasts and travel between your home and the place you’re exploring. Here I’m adding two completely unrelated vintage travel guides one for Iceland and one for Tanzania.         1.  My east African safari, Keith Gatling (1971). A small booklet provided by African tours and hotels limited. Guide has drawings of animals and map inserts to help visitors identify different African wildlife on their Tanzanian safari. it even includes an animal checklist at the back. This one was owned by "E. Beaman", dated January 24, 1975. They’re checked off animals includes a Colobus, an Elephant, Warthog a Bungo, a Bush Buck, a Buffalo, and a Water Buck .    2. Handy facts on Iceland (1972).  A pocket size guide that provides summaries of the country the population and social affairs.    3. Nagel's Encyclapedia Guide - Iceland. (1968). Part of a series of pocket sized g...

    S witzerland, Dore Ogrizek and J.G. Rufenacht (1949). This seemingly benign book on Switzerland has some darker associations. The book was created and distributed by the Switzerland Cheese Association and the Swiss Cheese Union. The cheese groups essentially created an iron clad cartel controlling production of Swiss cheese (Foundue Conspiracy ).  Independent cheese makers tried to introduce new types of cheeses without success and were excluded from the group. The association created huge subsidies of Swiss taxpayer money that even exceeded the cost of the entire army of Switzerland. By the 1990s, after corruption charges were leveled at the Swiss cheese magnates , the association disbanded but the subsidies continue.    The book also contains special book plate complements of Switzerland Cheese Association and Swiss Cheese Union's New York offices at 105 Hudson Street. I imagine cheese executives in their stylish Tribeca offices in the 1950s, 60s, ...

  Sharing three vintage travel guides from This Beautiful World Series, a series of compact books with over 100 high quality color pictures published in the 1960s and 70s. The series started with titles focused on Asia and expanded to cover a wide range of surprising locations from Katmandu to St. Louis.  Their logo is a stylized representation of a Chinese character for beauty.  I have three of their books and added another book on Rajasthan that is not part of the series but seemed to fit in to the group to give the picture symmetry.  Most of the guides were sold in country. All purchased second hand at the AFSA book store on one of the many lunch hour visits I made to the store. Kashmir, Shinay Fuiwara (1978). The Himalayas: A Journey to Nepal, Takehide Kazami (1968). Once owned by "ME Lee".  With a blue circular ink stamp "Colorama - 21 "[~K?] Price"  Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ages, Masatoshi Konishi (1969). Blue rectangle stamp inside, London Book...

VINTAGE TRAVEL: Part II - Iron Curtain Edition  I have only a smattering of miscellaneous guides from before the fall of the Soviet Union. The guides are in English and in were published by published by state owned presses or ministries of tourism. I try to imagine their owners. What motivated them to travel to the restricted areas of former Yugoslavia, Romania, and the U.S.S.R. An English speaking traveler would have been under scrutiny of both sides for making a visit to these destinations behind the iron curtain during the cold war. One of the most daring was Fitzroy Maclean (described in an earlier blog: Diplomat, Adventurer, Soldier, Author) , a British diplomat who, while in Russia in the 1930s during the height of Stalin's show trials,  continually exhausted his minders by traveling into the forbidden areas of Soviet Central Asia. Maclean had been described as the original British Action Hero and had enough adventures for ten lifetimes.   These guide books are...