Hemingway’s papers come to JFK Library

Despite the strained relations between the countries, the curators of the Kennedy library and the Castro regime have over the years found common ground, enough that the library announced this week that Cuba has shared copies of 3,000 letters and documents from the Hemingway archives at the country’s Ministry of Culture. The material fills a hole in the library’s collection, which purports to have the most comprehensive body of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s writings.

The documents include an alternate ending to For Whom the Bell Tolls, as well as correspondence with the likes of Robert Capa, Sinclair Lewis and Ingrid Bergman.

10.30.2009Tagged with:    

Internet Addresses Can Use New Scripts

The board of ICANN has voted to allow non-Latin characters in web addresses. For many web surfers, this is a great leap forward in accessibility.

This change only affects domain names — anything that comes after the dot, such as .com, .cn or .jp. Until now, they could only be in 37 characters — 26 Latin letters, 10 digits or a dash. But starting next year, domain names can be the characters of any language.

And:

This is a boon especially for users who find it cumbersome to type in Latin characters to access Web pages. Of the 1.6 billion Internet users today worldwide, more than half use languages that have scripts that are not based on the Latin alphabet.

10.30.2009Tagged with:    

Phillies Hope To End 364-Day World Series Drought

A lot has happened since Philadelphia last won the Series.

“The bottom line is we’re a pretty inexperienced team, and for many of these young players, this will be the first time they’ve been to the World Series in a year.” Manuel said. “A lot has changed in that time. If you would have told me last October that this country would elect a black president before the Philadelphia Phillies made it back to the World Series, I would have laughed in your face.”

(via df)

10.29.2009Tagged with:    

Living on $500,000 a Year

A study of the tax returns of F. Scott Fitzgerald provides a snapshot of his lifestyle in the first half of the 20th century.

Over Fitzgerald’s working life, he reported a total of $449,713 in gross income, and he paid $24,666 in taxes—thus the effective tax rate of 5.5 percent. Most of his earnings came from the short stories and, later, the movies. His best novels, The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934), did not produce much income. Royalties from The Great Gatsby totaled only $8,397 during Fitzgerald’s lifetime. Today Gatsby is read in nearly every high school and college and regularly produces $500,000 a year in Scottie’s trust for her children.

(via kottke)

10.29.2009Tagged with:    

Manhood for Amateurs

Michael Chabon’s new book is out. It’s a collection of personal essays exploring, among other things, parenting and what it means to be a man.

What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children’s imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it—nowhere that I was willing to let her go.

There is an excerpt over at The New York Review of Books.

10.29.2009Tagged with:    

It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers.

Ah, Autumn.

When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

(via roger ebert)

10.28.2009Tagged with:    

Redesign!

Today I’m finally launching the newest version of this site, and I couldn’t be happier. The redesign has been a long time in the making, and, frankly, I’m ready to spend some time thinking about something else. I’ve been working at it, whenever I could spare the time, for the better part of the year, all the while taking a break from publishing anything at all. I’m actually a bit awestruck that it is somehow October (and almost Halloween!) and I’m just getting to write this now. October? Really?

I’m excited about the changes, both the ones you can see and the ones you cannot. Most notably, after hand-rolling everything up to this point, I’ve taken the plunge into blogging software. Most everyone I know who has used WordPress has a good word for it, and it has certainly proven to be flexible and easy to use so far.

I’ve also reorganized how the content is presented, which was the driving force behind the project. I believe this format will serve me much better, plus make the site easier to read. And hopefully the new design will allow the content to take center stage, let the visual elements recede, and still give the reader that sense of place.

After the dust settles a bit and I get back into the business of maintaining content, I’ll begin adding new features and filling out the site. There’s lots more to come.

10.28.2009Tagged with: