Babel

The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas. There's a heaven above you, baby.

Babel

Archives for December, 2010

Bira-bira Kanzashi

Posted by  on Saturday, December 25th 2010     

Bira-bira kanzashi is a type of traditional Japanese hair ornament worn nowadays mostly by maiko (apprentice geisha), oiran and tayuu impersonators and other women embracing the traditional ways and have hair long enough to pin the bira-bira, or just a smaller one for short hair. Bira-bira can be stylish (and dangling) addition to your outfit, [...]

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Help Rebuild the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo

Posted by  on Thursday, December 23rd 2010     

Bosnia’s National Library was destroyed, thus amputating a crucial component of Sarajevo‘s (and not only!) cultural life. Books for Vijecnica is a site dedicated to the rebuilding of the library by collecting books (as donations) from all over the world. I think donating even a book or two to mend this real tragedy could be [...]

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Epistolary Polemics: Petsko, Zola, Toussaint

Posted by  on Wednesday, December 22nd 2010     

In case you haven’t read Gregory Petsko’s amazing, stirring, inspiring letter to the President of SUNY-Albany taking him to task for his “deactivation” of the Departments of French, Russian, Italian, and Theater, you can read it here and should do so. I recently wrote to the Great Man to thank him for his intervention on [...]

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Cuban memories alive

Posted by  on Thursday, December 16th 2010     

Dos patrias tengo yo, Cuba y la noche. ¿O una son las dos? (I have two countries: Cuba and the night. Or are they one? (Poem by José Marti, Cuban poet and revolutionary. We’re talking about the revolution against Spain, not Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution.) I was in Miami, Florida last week promoting my book, [...]

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