A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard



1660

First Portuguese Wine Shipped to Brazil in Glass Bottles

What happened

In the mid-17th century, with the improvements in glass bottle technology, the first significant shipments of Portuguese wine in glass bottles began to arrive in Brazil, then a Portuguese colony. This marked a shift from the bulk transport of wine in barrels to a more refined, bottled product, which better preserved the wine's quality during the long transatlantic voyage. The development of this trade route helped to establish a taste for European wine in the New World and demonstrated the growing sophistication of global food transport networks.

Literary impact

The trade in bottled wine to Brazil connects the history of food transport to the literary culture of the Portuguese-speaking world. The wine that arrived in bottles in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro became part of the social rituals celebrated in Brazilian poetry and song. While the specific event is a logistical milestone, it represents the broader globalization of wine culture, which would be a theme for poets from the Portuguese colonies and beyond, who would write of the luxury and nostalgia associated with imported European goods.

Source: Wikipedia

Poets alive in 1660

35 poets

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