There’s a brick wall on the side of the Children’s Museum in Boston that has “Atlas Stores” installed in brick.
What was Atlas Stores? What did they sell? How did their warehouse, once prosperous enough to have its name engraved in the side of their building, transform into today’s Children’s Museum?
I walk past this wall a few times a month. It’s an interesting reminder of a bygone era, in which companies left a permanent sign on the city.
Nowadays the small companies, dotcoms and accounting companies come and move over the decades, leaving no trace that they had been. I used to work in one of these warehouses – who knows what the space will be in 5, 10, or 20 years. Odd to think that the room I sat in for 7 years may one day hold a boxful of Legos for children to explore.
http://www.themoviespoiler.com/Spoilers/piratescredits.html shows a clip that appears after the final credits. In the clip, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) sails back to Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and a green flash appears on the horizon. Apparently, this shows that after being faithful for 10 years, Will and Elizabeth have broken Calypso’s curse and can now live happily ever after.
Apparently the explanation for this fact was edited out of the movie, though about 1000 pages of expository dialogue about completely irrelevant plot points were left in.
CNN (among others) reports on a used bookstore owner who’s burning his inventory:
Tom Wayne has amassed thousands of books in a warehouse during the 10 years he has run his used book store, Prospero’s Books. …when he wanted to thin out the collection, he found he couldn’t even give away books to libraries or thrift shops; they said they were full.
So on Sunday, Wayne began burning his books in protest of what he sees as society’s diminishing support for the printed word.
“This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.
Sounds more like a publicity stunt than a protest, but whatever. Seems like he has the same bitterness of other used bookstore owners, such as the now-defunct Avenue Victor Hugo in Boston.
It’s interesting to see Fahrenheit 451 coming to reality, not due to overt censorship, but due to the fact that there are so many used books that you literally can’t give them away. I’d also add that if Prospero’s Books had a glut of old cookbooks or poorly written novels, losing them may not be a great loss.
Okay, so I’ve let the blog posting slide a little bit. Looking back over last month’s posts I see a bunch of short posts with links and quick, easy posts – AAAAARGH. I should be writing about so much more than the new Transformers movie and the Thomson merger.
In my defense, there’s a lot of stuff going on in my life right now, all of it good. I’m loving my job and its creative challenges, I’m reading some fascinating books, I have some fun trips planned, and the summer movie season is upon us.
I’ve also had some good ideas for blog posts, but my ideas often strike me on the T or walking around Boston, rather than when I’m in front of a computer. I suppose that’s the difference between real writers and wannabes – wannabes think “This would be a great piece of writing” while writers go home, pull out their writing instruments, and write it down.
In any case, I’m taking the long weekend to catch up on personal stuff, so I’ll be filling in the gaps of previous posts. On to the writing!
