Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

A mix today: art, the Universe, literature, business cards, poetry, and a forum where women discuss critical and cultural perceptions of their work.

✭ You might not have heard: Google has launched Google Art Project, a collaboration with 17 art museums worldwide that enables highly detailed close-ups of selections from participating museums' collections — from the Google "street view" taken inside the museums to Google's gigapixel images. Go here to learn more about what you'll see and how. Among the museums currently part of the project are Tate Britain, Uffizi Gallery, Van Gogh Museum, Freer Gallery of Art/Smithsonian, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Palace of Versailles, and State Hermitage Museum. If you're so inclined, you may even create and share your own mashed-up collection.

Examining Artworks Online (New York Times Article)

Roberta Smith, "The Work of Art in the Age of Google" (New York Times Article)

✭ All I want to say about Jonathan Harris' extraordinary Universe: Revealing Our Modern Mythology is this: start here to get your bearings, then set yourself free to look around and, as you do, click on each of the nine "stages" in the Universe — stars, shapes, secrets, stories, statements, snapshots, superstars, settings, and time. Finally, to see just how connected everything is, "type your curiosity and press enter" on the homepage.

✭ Have you been laid off or experienced some other kind of potential life change? Are you also one of those "glass half-full" people? If you are, the site Cards of Change wants your business card and your story, which will be used to connect you with new opportunities and people who "make the effort to look on the bright side of life". Directions on how to upload your card are here. The site's registrants can search by industry, location, date, and keyword and also network via FaceBook and Twitter.

✭ The University of Rochester launched Three Percent, a resource for international literature, in 2007. Its name stands for the approximately 3 percent of all books published in the United States that are works in translation. You'll find on the site reviews of current books in translation, excerpts from books in translation (and not yet translated), and a selection of relevant articles, plus links to blogs, literary organizations, publishers, cultural institutions (for example, Czech Literature Portal, Finnish Literature Exchange, Polish Book Institute), magazines, and authors. 

Three Percent/Open Letter on FaceBook

✭ Critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women are the focus of the grassroots VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, founded in 2009. The genres of writing explored encompass children's literature, creative nonfiction, fiction, playwriting, and poetry. In addition to serving as a forum in which all women writers may participate, VIDA has its own blog, too.

VIDA on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Nonfiction writer, poetry retreat facilitator, and poet Richard Osler spent time in war-torn Northern Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo. He created out of his visits a poetry chapbook, Again No More, which includes a CD of Osler reading his work. Proceeds from sales of the chapbook go to Souls in Stride, a Vancouver, Canada-based charity that works with and supports Heal Africa in Goma, Congo. Souls in Stride seeks to promote awareness of the plight of vulnerable women and girls in Africa. Go here to read the text of several poems in the collection and to listen to several poems both with and without music.

✭ And if you'll allow me to share, this is a video of the title poem from Neruda's Memoirs: Poems produced by my friend Diane Walker. Diane is the narrator and also created all the artwork. The poetry collection is available in both print and e-book versions.