Hello all! Today’s motivation post is more a collection of how–to’s. There’s always more to learn, right? Brainstorming, writing, character development, erasing, writing more, edi…
Ever since first mentioned by Jon Michell in a letter to the Royal Society in 1783, black holes have captured the imagination of scientists, writers, filmmakers and other artists.
Scientists want to test the theories of black-hole physics by attempting to take the first ever image of the point at which theory predicts nothing can escape.
Южная Африка: Национально-освободительное движение СВАПО и его борьба с колониализмом в Намибии Подборка плакатов 1970-х - 80-х годов СВАПО: Покончить с апартеидом - это есть самый важный вопрос Проблема борьбы с колониализмом являлась одной из самых острых и болезненных для всего мира в 60-е -…
Letter-writing is one of my favorite modes of correspondence. It’s not the most convenient way of telling something to someone - it’s just above telegrams and smoke signals. I daresay most people believe it to be outmoded, old-fashioned, and altogether obsolete. I disagree! I think it’s one of the best ways to communicate - and here’s why I love it.
William Acton, the artist and brother of the famous aesthete, Harold Acton was a close friend of Diana Mitford. He sketched a lovely portrait of her. Her mother saw it and was so smitten, she commissioned Acton to draw the five remaining "Mitford Girls." I have never seen these drawing identified, so I am not real sure which is which. I believe, because of the difference in shading, the first is Diana. Acton did a famous painting of Diana and this looks like the sketch of that painting. Jessica is next and quite discernible. After that I am frankly lost. Let's play "Pin The Name On The Mitfords." Please join in and let us know if you have ideas. In 1985, only four of the "Mitford Girls" remained. Three of the sisters posed for portraits. Pamela Diana Deborah
A collection of postcards from famous writers including Jack Kerouac and Kurt Vonnegut - BY: JESSICA BEUKER Truman Capote to English professor Boris Groudinko (1960s) Dear Boris - Have settled on this beautiful island for the summer. Wish you
We are honored to hold over 100 issues of The Black Panther, instrument for social justice and vehicle for the revolutionary art of Emory Douglas.
Dindga McCannon remembers the meeting well. It took place in early 1971 in her studio, a decrepit fifth-floor walkup on 2nd Street just off Avenue B. “I was shocked that people came up the stairs,” McCannon says. “I had one of those walkthrough apartments with the tub in the kitchen. The lights were out […]
*i'm pretty excited to have discovered a fabulous blog whilst searching for these images...check out brain pickings {Dear readers, I am technically a Townie. Although for many years I lived in a cute Kent village surrounded by green meadows and fields, my heart belonged to the hustle and bustle of coastal Deal and the creative buzz of Medieval Sandwich (anyone reading this from those places might chuckle right now). Our village had a corner shop; the towns had boutiques! Card shops! Antique shops! However I married a country-man and I have been reminded many-a-time how I really should know that rumination is not just a CBT term (and a helpful one at that!) but in fact something a cow does; hay is not just a friendly American greeting but in fact can be used to sleep on; I could go on, but instead I insist that you buy this book which I pre-ordered, such was my excitement at finding a book about the countryside that was practical and really beautiful. I unpacked it at the weekend and it hasn't left my side since.}
Margaret E. Dickens, Age 76
GUEST POST: BREE DESPAIN- ON THE SUBJECT OF 10 THINGS I WISH I KNEW ABOUT BEING AN AUTHOR THAT I DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE As many of you already know, Colleen recently started her very own Houck Book Club, a place where we could virtually meet to read a featured book each month and then discuss it together on Goodreads. Since then, Colleen has decided to offer her fans something more! She recently started a writer’s club last month called THE MODERN INK SOCIETY! This is the second edition of THE MODERN INK SOCIETY and we couldn’t be more excited! Here’s …
Loïs Mailou Jones painting in her studio in Paris Originally, this was supposed to be a pretty straight-forward piece on an American ex-pat artist whose enchanting paintings of 1930s Paris I'd recently had the fortune of stumbling across via the internet. She was a young woman who had moved to Fr
It’s Emily Brontë’s birthday, and wouldn’t you know it—of her famously scarce surviving documents, several are letters written on and about the anniversary of her birth. Imagine! Rare glimpses into the thoughts of the most inscrutable Brontë sister! As Robert Morss Lovett wrote in The New Republic in 1928, Emily “was the household drudge … […]
1969 One of the unique aspects of the Black Panthers as a political project was their emphasis on the cultural component of revolutionary work. In addition to community-based education and social programs for both children and adults, the Panthers had a house band (The Lumpen—check them out), and a Minister of Culture, the groundbreaking Emory Douglas, whose art for The Black Panther newspaper created a visual context for black liberation. Douglas’ political art came honest. His own impoverished childhood in the Bay Area was interrupted by a spell in a juvenile detention center, where he found a niche in the prison print shop. He later studied commercial art at San Francisco City College, which is where he joined the Black Students Union before being appointed Minister of Culture. Douglas’ work is incredibly distinctive, often produced with very little budget or time. He favored bold, organic lines, thoughtful collage-work and saturated colors, creating imagery of both dignified black people and cartoonish political antagonists (often soldiers, cops or politicians depicted as rats or pigs). You’ll notice a lot of weapons—remember, the original name was “The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense,” and much of the original intent was protecting black...
We need more of these today! The summertime is the perfect season for a summer vacation, with families around the country flocking to their nearest beaches, mountains, and resorts. Unfortunately, there was a time when Black people were left out of these places, blocked from enjoying the luxury and fun that comes with resort communities […]
February is Black History Month — but it's also a month to celebrate the lost art of letter writing. K. Tempest Bradford examines the overlap, and recommends some good historical letter collections.
Summer is here and I love that things are green and growing. This week, The Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is For the Love of Plants. Funky plants are my favorites and the leaves in the Altenew Stamped Floral Set inspired me to reach out and share the love with this Triptych Folder Pen Pal Letter. Everyone loves getting fun mail. Isn't it more fun to find surprises inside? This letter is designed to hold a card, and a postcard, as well as embellishments and little pockets full of both old and new goodies. This is the best part...It all folds up to fit in a business size envelope! Show us your plants!! Link your project to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog and your project could win a $50 gift voucher to Simon Says Stamp. We draw a new winner each week. Your project could also be chosen to be featured in our weekly designer spotlight. InLinkz.com
Violence begets violence; oppress someone long enough and they will rebel. / PD LOC LC-USZC4-2523 Over at Present in the Past, Michael Lynch recently posted a provocative question and accompanying video about slave revolt. It got the wheels in my head turning. It also helped that Monday night was my first lecture scheduled on my course syllabus to dig into the "political war." My mind's been swimming with concepts of violence and resistance, freedom and slavery. So what was the largest slave rebellion in U.S. History? That requires a key definition: what is a slave rebellion? Toussaint-Louverture and his fellow revolutionaries in the Saint-Domingue rebellion, one of the first truly successful slave revolutions in world history, certainly throw light on one necessary ingredient: blood. The Haitian Revolution's iteration of slave rebellion was truly violent work, undertaken by one race of men against another race in response to their subjugation in spite of the master class espousing the tenants of freedom. For Toussaint-Louverture, that master race were the French. Violence was the first national language of Haiti. Prosser's slave Gabriel, planning his revolution at the turn of the 19th century amid the growing state capital at Richmond, likewise chose violence as his language. But Gabriel more than likely had fewer than 30 allies. On Bastille Day, 1822, Denmark Vesey planned to rise up with a few more than a hundred slaves to strike Charleston, South Carolina. The plan leaked and it went no where. Just shy of a decade later, down the road in Southampton County, Nat Turner likewise echoed the idea of violence in service of freedom. Nat Turner's rebellion saw an army of as many as 200 slaves rising up to kill over 50 local whites. The LearnLiberty.org link Michael posted on his blog points to the Black Seminole revolt, claiming that John Horse and his fellows, "led the largest slave revolt in U.S. history." But I'm not so sure that's true. The largest slave revolt in U.S. history involved nearly 5,000 slaves from Alabama, rising up to strike a blow against their masters. Over 5,000 more joined in from South Carolina. Mississippi saw over 17,000 black folks seize arms and draw a bead on the master class. Nearly 25,000 men from Louisiana joid the fight to secure freedom. All told, nearly 100,000 black men from across the South rose up in this slave rebellion, carried guns and killed those who would see them manacled and sold to the highest bidder. With them were nearly 80,000 black allies from the North, joining the fight alongside their enslaved brethren. This mass of men, in open and hostile rebellion against a government and economic system which would see them reduced to chattel, blows any other slave rebellion out of the water in a test of scale. Never since the world began was a better chance offered to a long enslaved and oppressed people. The opportunity is given us to be men. With one courageous resolution we may blot out the hand-writing of ages against us." The American Civil War could be seen, after the Emancipation Proclamation offered black men throughout the United States the opportunity to, "be received into the armed service of the United States," as the greatest slave rebellion in U.S. history. Much like the wildest dreams of John Brown, Nat Turner or Gabriel Prosser, black men were now marching across the South, physically destroying the institution with every bullet they fired and forward step they took. They were grasping manhood, proving their mettle and speaking a language of rebellion. Striking a blow for freedom. / PD LOC LC-USZC4-2519 The hour has arrived, and your place is in the Union army. Remember that the musket – the United States musket with its bayonet of steel – is better than all mere parchment guarantees of liberty. In your hands that musket means liberty...." -Frederick Douglass, 1863 What happens when we, for a moment, think of the Civil War as the largest American slave rebellion? It's a familiar, simple game of language, I will admit. These games, though, are instructive. They throw a new perspectives onto the war, forcing us to see the war through fundamentally different eyes and from radically different perspectives. Was that thrilling emotion felt by a USCT soldier donning his uniform and firing his gun for the first time really all that different than the emotion felt as Nat Turner's men swung axes against their masters' skulls? Both times, men were simply responding to a violent system with the only language that system would understand: violence.
