July 1964. And 50 years ago a bus - a 1939 school bus, furnished with bunk beds, basic kitchen facilities and wired-up audio equipment - sets out from a house 15 miles from the Californian town of Palo Alto to journey across America. Painted in bright psychedelic colors with the destination sign of `Further` at the front and the words `Caution: Weird Load` at the rear, and carrying on board ten or so 60s` drop-outs from various walks of life, the bus makes its erratic way towards Route 60 and the road to New York. 

These achievements would be more than enough to put Ferlinghetti on the map of American scholarship, but his legacy as a free speech supporter, champion of original writing, and proponent of radical political thought have spread his influence beyond the beat poets that he nurtured. Christopher Felver’s Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder is a jazzy tapestry of a documentary, tracing the man’s life from his chaotic beginnings to his World War II experiences to his patronage of the counterculture and beyond. 

There have been many failed attempts to bring On the Road to the silver screen by U.S. filmmakers. Francis Ford Coppola, who purchased the rights to the screenplay in 1979, tried several times to adapt the work into film, but his efforts never materialized. “I never knew how to do it,” he remarked when Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles accepted the cumbersome task of filming the unfilmable. It was Salles (best known for the Motorcycle Diaries, another road film) that Coppola finally trusted to make On the Road a reality, with a screenplay developed by José Rivera. 

While other independent bookstores have closed their doors in recent years, and even as big chain stores have gone under (i.e., Borders) and continue to downsize (i.e., Barnes & Noble), City Lights has remained (not without some difficulties – at times the bookstore has borrowed from the publishing company, and vice versa, to ensure sustainability and the company bounced back from near financial ruin in 1984) and has even expanded several times over the years. 

Throughout the works of Russian writers, like Tolstoy and Chekhov, the characters drink vodka like there is no tomorrow, and also wine, as in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Mead, the delicious honey wine first created by the ancients, played a significant role in Beowulf, with Beowulf, the hero, defending the king’s mead hall against the terrifying beast, Grendel. In works like Steinbeck’s classic moral tale, The Pearl, the featured drink of choice is pulque, a beverage made from the maguey plant’s fermented sap.