It’s hotter’n hell in New York, but before the heat wave struck Sunday, I went for a holiday hike near the Monksville Reservoir in Ringwood, New Jersey.

First, we saw a wild turkey running hard in the opposite direction. Then we saw a pile of dung on the trail. Finally, we spotted this beautiful black bear eating blueberries from a nearby patch. She (or he, not that I could tell the difference) didn’t seem to mind being photographed, so I took a couple shots to document the experience.

Afterwards, we even managed to pick a few berries for ourselves… at a safe distance, of course.

With all our recent talk of writing boxes and file boxes, I thought I’d share this photograph I took on a recent trip to Philip Johnson’s Glass House… Sitting on his immaculate, leather-topped desk (designed by Mies van der Rohe, we were told) was this pretty wooden box; apparently, it was something he’d owned since his childhood in Ohio:

The Glass House served as Johnson’s weekend retreat — during the week, he lived in an apartment above New York’s Museum of Modern Art — and according to our tour guide, when he arrived, he would empty the contents of his pockets into the box so as not to lose track of anything.

Bloomsday is a commemoration observed annually on June 16th in Dublin and elsewhere to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and relive the events in his novel, Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The name “Bloomsday” derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses.

The novel recounts the hour-by-hour events of one day in Dublin–June 16, 1904.  Dubliner Leopold Bloom wends his way through the urban landscape, the odyssey of a modern-day Ulysses.

The special significance of June 16, 1904 was on that day Joyce had his first date with his future wife, Nora Barancle, a 20-year-old chambermaid. They walked to the Dublin urban village of Ringsend.

Davy Byrne’s Pub on 21 Duke Street was made famous in the novel. Leopold Bloom stopped there for a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy wine.

Within hours of landing in Dublin two years ago, a group of us trooped off to Davy Byrne’s Pub.  Since it was early in the morning the pub was still closed–they were sweeping ,vacuuming and polishing the bar–but the owner invited us inside and gave us a tour of the pub and some good stories about Joyce. We later went back for lunch. Our group was split between Guinness and burgundy wine!

This year illustrator Robert Berry is releasing Ulysses Seen, is a comic book adaptation of the novel.  The first chapter can be seen at http://ulyssesseen.com with an accompanying readers’ guide, and as a free app for the iPad.

The idea, born on a prior Bloomsday, was fueled, Mr. Berry explained, “by a few pints of Guiness and a bet.”

Has anyone followed in the steps of Leopold Bloom? Participating in a Bloomsday event?

From calligraphy artist Lorna Mulligan comes word of a new exhibit in Montreal’s Ame-Art gallery called Fibres, poils, cailloux. Featuring pieces by Mulligan and other members of the Les Calmars group, it’s on display through June 20.

For those of you who can’t make it to the show, we’re lucky enough to have pictures of two pieces that are on display (both are by Lorna). The first, Beaudelaire, started with small landscape segments done in J. Herbin’s Lie de Thé and Bleu Myosotis. After that, Lorna added the text from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal in black ink with a pointed pen and brush.

The second piece includes an image transfer of an old map of Montreal that shows Lorna’s neighborhood beside the park. Beside this she created a moody background with a mix of earthy inks (Ambre de Birmanie, Lie de Thé, and Vert Olive). The words talk about different ways of walking: And so I must be going… sauntering, wandering, meandering, and so on.

See more of Lorna’s artwork on her website.

Vienna is still filled with small, specialty shops, and one of things I remember best about living here is just how long you can spend running errands — getting coffee from the coffee store, veggies from the market, bread from the bakery, and so on. There are supermarkets, of course, but you can’t even count on finding light bulbs in them; for that it’s best to head to the electrical appliances store. There are stores that sell gloves and umbrellas. Stores that sell scissors and knives. It’s not very time-efficient, but it does help you appreciate the craft that goes into these everyday products.

And it’s a stationery addict’s paradise, because there are also plenty of stores that specialize in writing supplies, and the proprietors are always happy to give you advice and chat about this or that item. The store in the picture above is called Mastnak, and it’s something of a local chain; the slogan means “We are paper.” This one is located near my old apartment in the 7th district, and it’s got three floors that are filled with pens, paper, notebooks, art supplies, office supplies, and more.

Here’s a smaller, more upscale store in the city center, founded in 1838:

And here, not 4 doors away from it, is a newer one!

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t resist making a few purchases, which I’ll blog about in the next few days.

I didn’t have time to take any pictures in France, but at the moment I’m settled in Vienna — where I lived 9 years ago, and where I’m back to visit friends and hang out — and I’m doing a much better job of whipping out my little point-and-shoot whenever I’m inspired.

The city, as my mother once remarked, looks like the top of a wedding cake; the buildings are big and baroque and there are lots of random statues of illustrious men on horses. Which is fine, and impressive, but after a while all those marble pillars and delicate gilded carvings start to look the same to my eye. I prefer to seek out the few remaining traces of medieval Vienna, like the ivy covered Ruprechtskirche, which is one of the earliest churches ever built in the city and is of refreshingly humble stature, both inside and out.

It’s not like medieval architecture can’t be frilly, bombastic, or repetitive, but isn’t this just lovely, with the stones and the vines and the moss growing over the statue?

Chet Chin, whose awesome DIY Habana planner we blogged about back in January, recently traveled to the Bifengxia Panda Base in China’s Sichuan province for an annual volunteer trip. While there, she snapped this picture of her planner from her hotel room in Ya’an City.

“The impressive lighted roof in the background houses a historical looking building that’s actually a shopping mall with quaint little shops selling local stuff, including Chinese tea,” she writes. You can see a photo of the same view in daylight on her blog, and a bunch of great panda pics on Flickr.

We talk a lot about writing on this blog, and inspiration and creativity. But I’m wondering: what are you reading?

I just finished Janet Malcolm’s awesome work on the relationship between authors and their subjects, The Journalist and the Murderer, whose smart analysis of the story behind Fatal Vision is relevant to both fiction and non-fiction writers. Before that, Rebecca Goldstein’s Mind-Body Problem. I’m not sure what I’ll read next.

What about you?

Image by Wonderlane.

NY Times writer Patricia Cohen had a fascinating article in the Arts section on February 11, 2010. It was titled” “Where Faulkner Found His People: Characters’ Names Are Inside a Plantation Diary the Writer Knew Well.”

“The climactic moment,” the article begins, “in William Faulkner’s 1942 novel “Go Down, Moses” comes when Isaac McCaslin finally decides to open his grandfather’s leather farm ledgers with their ’scarred and cracked backs’ and ‘yellow pages scrawled in fading ink’ –proof of his family’s slave-0wning past.”

The diary that was a source for Faulkner for names, incidents and details was penned in the mid-1800s by Francis Terry Leak, a wealthy plantation owner in Mississippi.  His great-grandson, Edgar Wiggin Francisco, Jr., was a friend of Faulkner’s since childhood. Mr. Francisco’s son, now 79, recalled the writer’s frequent visits throughout the 1930s, and said Faulkner was fascinated with the diary’s  several volumes.  Mr. Francisco said he saw them in Faulkner’s hands and recalled that he “was always taking copious notes.”

Sally Wolff-King, a scholar in Southern literature at Emory University who discovered the connection between Faulkner and the journals, called it “a once-in-a-lifetime literary find.” A short preview of her findings was available in the fall 2009 issue of The Southern Literary Journal; her book “Ledgers of History: William Faulkner, an Almost Forgotten Friendship, and an Antebellum Diary,” is due out in June from Louisiana State University Press.

Has a chance find of a diary in a friend’s house, a yard sale, flea market, antique store or junk shop given you a character or inspired a story?

We have a sighting! Neither Karen nor I has made it to the theaters to see It’s Complicated, the romantic comedy starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin. But several friends and readers have, and they’ve been able to confirm that one of our planners does indeed make an appearance. Writes a friend:

“The funny thing about Meryl Streep’s character (in the movie) is that she forgets appointments and meetings. Steve Martin’s character gives her the gift of the leather bound Quo Vadis planner to help her remember her appointments with him. When she opens the gift, the back of the planner is face up. The imprinted Quo Vadis label is displayed before she turns the planner over.”

Note that we did *not* pay for product placement, which is part of the reason we’re so excited about this! Director Nancy Meyers is apparently just a fan of Quo Vadis — as is Meryl Streep.