Festivals and Culture
The Wonder of Will; 400 Years of Shakespeare From the Folger Library
How do we know Shakespeare's plays? For many of them, the answer is one book: the 1623 First Folio. Without it, 18 plays, including Macbeth and The Tempest, could have been lost. In 2016, First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare brings the First Folio to 50 states, Washington, and Puerto Rico. Just like with his birthday, Shakespeare's exact date of death is a mystery. It is commonly said that he died on April 23, 1616, but no record of his death exists, only a record of his funeral on April 25, 1616. more »
Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity
The Late Antique textile owners, in choosing from a vast repertory of motifs, represented the prosperity and well-being of their households. The owners represented themselves through the distinctively gendered imagery of manly and womanly virtues in mythological and Christian subjects so that in these textiles, we see distinctly personal manifestations of the religious transformation of the Roman Empire into a Christian Empire. more »
Quiet, Please! Will Someone Please Turn Down the Volume on the Planet!
Rose Madeine Mula writes: If the hullabaloo continues to escalate, the next generation of toddlers will be wearing hearing aids to pre-school where they will learn sign language. Talking will become obsolete since we won't be able to hear what anyone says, music will just be something people will read about in history books, and silent movies will make a big comeback. There will be no need to buy costly quadraphonic sound systems, and cars will be less expensive because they won't have radios or horns. more »
New Year's Peeve; Forgetting Self-Improvement Vows
Rose Madeline Mula writes: Am I glad I didn't live in Babylonia 4,000 years ago; the New Year celebration lasted eleven days. By the eleventh day, the Babylonians must have had prodigious hangovers. They probably weren't even fully conscious for the first month of the new year. That's not for me. It would mean missing all those great post-holiday sales. more »