M.J. Rose

We love the Voynich manuscript mystery so much that we cannot resist posting about it again this month!

This is a very detailed and well done documentary from National Geo about the mysterious Voynich manuscript – a beautiful handmade book that continues to befuddle all experts who attempt to understand it. What IS known is that the manuscript is not a forgery — it is very old. It was also created using the very best parchment and paints possible at the time.

Someone was highly motivated to create this book. But why?

 The Book That Can’t Be Read

Quantum mechanics (the very small) and general relativity (the very large and the very fast) are the two grand theories that science uses to explain the universe – however, these two theories are totally incompatible with each other. What does this mean? Certainly it implies that nature is smarter than we are, and also, that our theories to date are only mere sketches of what we need to truly understand reality…

Is the fact that our theories contradict each other proof that there is a god, or that science is wrong? What do you think?

So many stories to imagine of so many lost lives – this is a journey into the minds of other people…

Abandoned Suitcases Reveal Private Lives of Insane Asylum Patients

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford

“If you were committed to a psychiatric institution, unsure if you’d ever return to the life you knew before, what would you take with you? That sobering question hovers like an apparition over each of the Willard Asylum suitcases. From the 1910s through the 1960s, many patients at the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane left suitcases behind when they passed away, with nobody to claim them. Upon the center’s closure in 1995, employees found hundreds of these time capsules stored in a locked attic. Working with the New York State Museum, former Willard staffers were able to preserve the hidden cache of luggage as part of the museum’s permanent collection.

“There were many patients in these asylums who were probably not unlike friends you and I have now.”

Photographer Jon Crispin has long been drawn to the ghostly remains of abandoned psychiatric institutions. After learning of the Willard suitcases, Crispin sought the museum’s permission to document each case and its contents. In 2011, Crispin completed a successful Kickstarter campaign to help fund the first phase of the project, which he recently finished. Next spring, a selection of his photos will accompany the inaugural exhibit at the San Francisco Exploratorium’s new location…”

For the complete article click here to go to Collector’s Weekly.