Thoughts of traveling

"

http://tropdamour.co.za/tag/travelling-dreams/

A part of me LOVES traveling. LOVES it.

And then there's the other part.

"It’s not for the fainthearted. It’s for the Joan of Arcs, the warrior goddesses, the Valkyries."

"Of course, I’ve had my share of danger, of close calls, of almosts, while traveling solo. There was time I was locked in a Honduran border patrol office and the official took off his clothes, telling me that he was going to rape me. And the time I was on a crowded Calcutta street and a group of men groped me. And the time a Colombian taxi driver refused to let me out of his cab and drove me around for hours, talking dirty to me. And the time I discovered my hotel room in Bangladesh was full of peepholes and I had been watched for months. And the time an Englishman, the husband of a dear friend, offered to take me on a day tour of London and instead took me to a hotel and held my wrists so tight he bruised..."

http://www.alternet.org/gender/after-i-was-raped-i-couldnt-even-leave-house-now-i-travel-world-solo


The part that says, maybe one of the privileges of being an anxiety-riddled poor who doesn't travel much is that you don't have to live up to certain  "bravery" stories.

~~~~

Another fun activity is slightly changing the words to the The All By Myself  in Las Vegas Airport video:

All by myself
just wanna be
all by myself...

~~~~

But that aside...

"Only about half the country takes as much as one flight a year; I’m willing to bet that virtually every U.S. citizen gets in a passenger car at least once per annum. And while most of those car trips are the business of everyday life -- getting to work, procuring food, etc. -- most of those flights are either vacations, or elite workers flitting to conferences and business meetings.

Those trips are simultaneously less necessary and more carbon intensive; almost eight times as many passenger miles are traveled by car as by plane, but passenger car travel only accounts for 3 to 4 times as much greenhouse gas emission. Moreover, while we may eventually wean cars off of gasoline, air travel will, I’m told, pretty much always require hydrocarbons; nothing else can contain so much energy in so little weight, which means they’re the only way to get the plane off the ground. Air travel is not only bad for the environment now, but also will be bad for the environment 30 years from now."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/air-travel-is-worse-than-a-hummer-with-wings.html

The beauty of tonight

NO MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES  & WHO IS THE CUTEST IN THIS

She's crafty...

Some close-up shots of whatever she was doing with her hands would have improved this tutorial, but A for Amusement...



3:25: "If you've never used it before, it works wonders. And if you've never smelled it before, it smells like my Dad's cirrhosis psoriasis medication."

E~musique

First and last from Room Noises.

It will be difficult to top this

for Father's Day

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/george-rr-martin-michigan-based-ceo-upcoming-game/story?id=24125027

Such

Anticipation

Violet heart

(Have ordered The Chronicles...)

Old book cover

http://www.aartichapati.com/2011/08/tss-musings-tree-grows-in-brooklyn.html

~~~~

(And introduction to the book)

There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly…survives without sun, water, and seemingly earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.

-A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Introduction

 http://www.brokencitylab.org/blog/a-tree-grows-in-detroit/

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tree%20of%20heaven

From Lynn Beisner (pseudonym)

"Contrary to Will’s assertions, I have never encountered a trigger warning in a college classroom, but I’m sure they must be present in some. I’m sure it must be a horrible inconvenience for a professor who has to insert a boilerplate line into a syllabus, and it must be annoying to read such a warning if you, as a student, have no such triggers. Surely that pain and annoyance outweighs the risk of a PTSD relapse for students who have been assaulted."


 http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/06/10/privileges-ive-experienced-survivor-sexual-assault/


*****

"For more than a decade, I have been working or studying on college campuses. And I can say that, as George Will asserts, sexual assault victims who report being victimized get all sorts of privileges. They get special tutors who sit with them during tests. Their papers are practically written for them, and they barely have to show up to class.

Wait, sorry, those are athletes I’m thinking of.

I remember one class where we were discussing an issue related to sexual assault, and a woman was so rattled by the discussion that she confessed to having been the victim of a recent sexual assault. Let me tell you how many people lined up to escort her to a counselor, to make sure the assault was reported to campus police.

Nobody. That’s how many people did that.

But there must have been a huge payoff in the status she was afforded. Who doesn’t want to be known as a 'crazy bomb' that could go off at any second?"

 http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/06/10/privileges-ive-experienced-survivor-sexual-assault/


*****


"A few years ago, I received a rape and death threat against my daughter so gruesome and personal that I have felt obligated to write under a pseudonym since.

The truth is that George Will is lying. There is no privilege or status granted to those who have been sexually assaulted. We are counted as liars or trouble-makers. We become the objects of gossip, attacks, and other people’s projected shame."


 http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/06/10/privileges-ive-experienced-survivor-sexual-assault/

A blue hand

By Sharon Walker  http://intimesoftrouble.com/cover-art/#novel

O

http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics332.html

Why do I get the feeling

That David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Alex Graves, et al. would have gotten along really well with Christopher Columbus?

"How innocent it looks now, the controversial Jaime-Cersei scene, with its single demure assault of a grieving woman by her brother beside the poisoned corpse of their incestuously-begotten son. The next episode gifted us with a whole flotilla of angry cocks as - in another departure from George R.R. Martin's source books - the Night's Watch assaulted en masse the already serially abused daughter-wives of Craster. It made for grim viewing. Watch the scene for long enough and the Cersei-Jaime-corpse caper takes on the fond, sepia edges of an Edwardian picnic. Ah, for the rapes of yesteryear."

http://jezebel.com/game-of-thrones-sex-and-hbo-where-did-tvs-sexual-pion-1586508636

Real-life Leslie Knope???

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679180/meet-the-man-behind-parks-rec-paintings-forks-in-twilight

"...whose gregarious personality and penchant for perfectionism propelled her extensive career in community service..."

~ Emily Ishigaki obituary

Cheery Rosemary

Edison Lighthouse song:

Men in skirts

Yesterday, two young man were discussing whether it's okay or not okay to follow a girl around if you are interested in her. Near them was a bunch of literature about "rape culture." (Coincidence?) 1st one: I don't know about following someone around, man, how can that be consensual? 2nd one: Well, I am very open-minded. Things are different in other countries. Me: But a lot of women have had at least one encounter with a guy where they felt unsafe...it's a gray area and people don't always agree. 2nd one: stares at me coldly until I look away/walk away and starts talking about the artistic merits of Japanese pornography. Later I ask the 1st one how they got on the topic. I was wondering if it had anything to do with the literature nearby. 1st one: He said he wants me to harass him. Me: What?! 1st one: He wants to wear a skirt and then he wants me follow him around and harass him. (Okay dude...if you think that putting on a skirt and picking out a guy you have pre-selected to follow you around and "harass" you will help you figure out some things...)

http://www.godammit.com/2010/09/12/gratuitous-cute-guy-post-iii/

Fantasy

From http://www.katieheaney.com/post/86753385834

"Something I fantasize about a lot is threatening my friends’ rapists. In college, the morning after one of the times it happened, we ate breakfast in the cafeteria and tried to negotiate our continued existence in the same confined space as them (because, though the school would find out, they would not be expelled), and I saw them joking about it. My school was small and you either ate on one side of the cafeteria or the other, and their side was the same as ours, and so I saw them. They had taken turns raping my friend and filming it on one of their phones. At breakfast I saw them mimicking the act of filming with an old-timey camera, like you do when you play Charades. They laughed and so did all the guys sitting with them. They were popular..."

Candy wrapper collage

Pamela Anderson Portrait, seatonbrownfineart.com

http://idratherbemakingart.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/art-re-imagined-thinking-outside-of-the-brush/

The certain conversation

Today I overheard two young women talking about going out to clubs and the possibility of getting drinks laced with drugs.  It went something like this:

Young Woman  #1:

What I hate about going out to clubs and dancing is how some guy is always coming up and grinding on you. Some of my friends, I call them my "slutty-ho" friends, say, "Lets go dance by the table!" so they can get guys to buy them drinks. I did it once. I didn't feel the same after. You have to have a certain mindset. One of my friends, she's so dumb, she gets roofie'd all the time. It's happened to her, like, 6 times.  She'll  get some guy to buy her a drink, get drunk way faster than anyone else, and we're be like, "You got roofie'd again!"

Young Woman  #2:

So what happens to her? She gets roofie'd and some guy takes her home and...has his way with her?

Young Woman  #1:

No, she just goes home alone and wakes up with a splitting headache. God, she's so dumb.

Internet, after a certain conversation

"We are not the lovable nerdy protagonist who’s lovable because he’s the protagonist. We’re not guaranteed to get laid by the hot chick of our dreams as long as we work hard enough at it. There isn’t a team of writers or a studio audience pulling for us to triumph by 'getting the girl' in the end. And when our clever ruses and schemes to 'get girls' fail, it’s not because the girls are too stupid or too bitchy or too shallow to play by those unwritten rules we’ve absorbed."


From:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/your-princess-is-in-another-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds.html


~~~~~

https://medium.com/the-nib/3527fca60e90

"after"

walk in the heat at the hottest point of day to get sunglasses repaired
find a euphorbia milii
briefly talk about the heat with folks in lawn chairs drinking beer
move arms as if you're swimming and think about pools

The Pool
Zero Point

now you can be inside
now you can work

Dancers 1

Taken on World Bellydance Day 2014

Dancers 2

Taken on World Bellydance Day 2014

Roze Bloemen

Bedding Begonias

weird technology dream

A toaster oven that transmits messages.

http://www.lauriegmiller.com/2014/01/30-paintings-in-30-days-day-16-toaster.html

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2011/04/history-of-dots-in-the-first-pictorial-image-printed-in-america-1670.html

(If you dream that a guy telegraphs a message via a kitchen appliance that he'll do his best to take care of his kid, it's probably a good sign...)

underwater

useful to read... http://time.com/114043/yesallwomen-hashtag-santa-barbara-shooting/

but then I felt like looking at an image of a woman diving into deep water and found

http://gettyimages.tumblr.com/post/29052511976/underwater-dive-hyang-kim-un-of-korea-competes

By Scott Cuomo

I see the sunflower thing I learned a long time ago...

Winter ~ Tori Amos

mi corazon, mi esperanza

for good news soon and in the morning

http://tania-wildheart.blogspot.com/2011/04/friday-freebie-bunny-pillow-box.html

Song commute / baby wait

"Schoolyard Maypole Dance," May 4, 1946 by Doris Lee

My mind might be confused. My friend is in labor. I was playing around with the radio on the way home & heard the old 1960s "If you're going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair..." song. Then it faded out and got replaced with

Baby, baby, baby
I got a good reason
for you to come around...


And then the San Francisco song came back.
As soon as I came home, I looked up the lyric.

It's  from The Babies ~ Baby.

Then I looked up the show. (The Vegetable Garden, with The Gardener)

It said:

5:55pm

The Babies “Get Lost”
And before that 

5:54pm

Foxygen “SAN FRANCISCO”


Those are different songs! But maybe I heard them too?




and I am so much older now
my brother is a soldier now
I can't see him anyhow on hilltops in the wind

The last person I spoke with before my commute was a young man who just couldn't concentrate on his writing assignment about bullying and said he needed to call the VA...I was driving down the highway listening to something instrumental at around 5:30....

was it

Turn on the Sunlight






(Who you are? "I think you're bi-straight" said my Ukrainian friend. Actually, she's American, but her parents are from the Ukraine. What she said made sense to a voice in my head...reasoning: when you're little, you like girls. You get the feeling you're supposed to. You have your closest friendships with girls. You see that boys try to belittle girls. You want to stick up for girls. Girls are the best. Then...years and changes....You see another friend, your most conservative close friend, kiss a girl. "STRAIGHT GIRLS!" they say in the club about you and your other friend. NOT her.  But now, your friend who kissed a girl is in labor. She is giving birth to a girl. "I think you're bi-straight,"said my Ukrainian-born-in-America friend. It may be so.)



Fading light and crickets.

Ay, defective DVD

Will have to postpone watching the rest of Bad Teacher until another evening...

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bad_teacher/pictures/#13

O ailing academia

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2014/5/19/why-college-rapevictimsdonatgotothepolice.html

Making a rape victim's friend write an essay from the perspective of the man who raped her is a new low...I guess that's one way to not feel too sad you didn't go to a pretty school.

This gave me flashbacks from when I worked in a restaurant with a woman who was training to be a police officer. She actually told me she didn't feel sorry for rape victims, because what did they expect when they went out at night dressed as sluts....

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2014/5/19/why-college-rapevictimsdonatgotothepolice.html

At least the restaurant co-worker said "Well, I'm not sure if I agree with me either," when I told her that I didn't agree with her.

Progress in baby steps.

Body & voice

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2014/05/19/of-critics-weight-and-standards/

"The Old Guard – those white European males we love to hate – was certainly in evidence in the British reviews of Glyndebourne’s new 'Der Rosenkavalier.' Five of them designated Tara Erraught’s Octavian as a problem with the show, more or less explicitly, based entirely on her looks."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2014/05/19/of-critics-weight-and-standards/

http://whro.org/music/9-music/3867-in-2014-the-classical-world-still-can-t-stop-fat-shaming-women

Crumbly

http://whro.org/lifestyle/10-lifestyle/2921-bake-bread-like-a-pioneer-in-appalachia-with-no-yeast

I really feel like I've eaten this before (I can practically taste the crumbles in my mouth) but for the life of me, I do not know when.

Mexican circus music!

http://www.npr.org/2014/05/11/310121445/first-listen-pasatono-orquesta-maroma

"Yo soy maramero"
I am a one-man circus.
(Or perhaps, I am a fan of one-man circuses.)

http://whro.org/music/9-music/3569-first-listen-pasatono-orquesta-maroma

Floral components

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/03/29/van-goghs-sunflowers-were-genetic-mutants/

http://www.everydaygourmetbakery.com/the-benefits-of-sunflower-lecithin/

http://cakechooser.com

little dilemmas

NOT SO DISTANT PAST

Nice young man: I've underlined stuff in my book about Jennie's abusive upbringing, but like a fly attracted to sticky paper, my main interest is in talking about how she's a temptress who manipulates men.

At the end of our conversation: Coughing, apologizing, loosing my ability to speak.

Nice young man (in a reassuring tone): It's okay.

MORE RECENTLY

Young women: We thought about focusing on rape culture, but we went with police brutality instead.

A thought: I would like to show them the Rape Joke poem? Maybe?

Cyclamen

A flower I never used to notice and have a growing affection for...

http://www.cyclamen.org/graecum_set.html

From http://www.cyclamen.com/en/consumer/find-out-about-cyclamen/cyclamen-stories/flower-of-love-flower-of-art

 

"Rich stories about cyclamen

Did you know that the cyclamen was, with the columbine, one of the flowers of choice for Leonardo Da Vinci at the beginning of the 16th century, and he covered the margins of his manuscripts with it.

The 17th century Flemish painters scattered cyclamens on the meadows where Jesus had just picked some flowers under the watchful eye of the angels."

*****

"Jean-Jacques Rousseau spoke in his Promenades of the wild cyclamens he discovered in the Alps.

After obscurity in the 18th century, the cyclamen came back in fashion in the 19th century, when gardeners cultivated it in Grenelle, near Paris. Emile Gallé and the artists of the Nancy School made it one of their models for their prints and paintings."

*****

"And Robert Desnos sung about it too: 

'The cyclamen of Clamecy,
Who regrets Savoy so much,
Proclaim here, proclaim there,
At the top of his voice.
But he is on the right track,
The cyclamen will return to Savoy.'"

http://www.creativejewishmom.com/2011/03/gorgeous-signs-of-spring-in-the-galil-israel.html

Qualities to cherish in an individual

Pays attention to your interests.

Example:

Ella: I found this feminist spoken word poem online and I really want to show it to you, you have to watch it!
El: Okay...(watches poem)

(After)
El: So...why did you feel the need to show me that poem?
Ella: Well, as soon as I saw this feminist poem, I just immediately thought I should show it to you. You like to read and write. I thought you liked poetry!
El: Actually...I've never really been a poetry sort of guy.
Ella: But you were the one that introduced me to that one poem!
El: What poem?
Ella: The Rape Joke poem.
El: Oh. I didn't show you that because I'm really into poetry...I showed you that because it was about rape.

See???

And MORE

From: http://christiethinks.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/thinking-about-adoption/

"It’s interesting being me, and subsequently being on the margins. Among married friends with babies, among single friends with confusion; I’m not easily categorized into a common denominator. When it comes to babies (and besides the general terror I feel regarding expelling a child from my womb), things are fuzzy. And, aside from stolen, when a baby is to be mine, I don’t particularly care where it comes from.

I am adopted. This is a fundamental component of my identity. And, as such, I’m feeling pretty prescribed to someday be the adopter; to overflow my adopted blessings into the life of another. As it were, November happens to be Adoption Awareness Month in Canada, so prepare to be made aware."

*****

"And, if these sorts of thoughts have never crossed your mind, do take a moment to read this blog post: http://deeperstory.com/tread-softly-on-my-adoption/ Whether it is intentional or no, some of us are sensitive about how we got to our families."

Awake but want to sleep

Read some more of Otherhood before I went to sleep last night and woke up too early. Otherhood really bothers me. On one hand, I find some interesting critiques of assumptions about women "of a certain age" who haven't become mothers yet. (And I just said "yet!" Is that telling?) But, huge swathes of the book seem to be dedicated to chronicling some upper class women's incredibly vapid conversations about dating. I am about halfway through it.  I will continue reading it, but I am less than captivated by most of the dating stories...Oh, good grief.

From a far more articulate review:

"I think that Otherhood would greatly benefit from a lot more psychological content in place of the innumerable girls’ night out rants with Notkin’s glamorous, successful friends."

http://christiethinks.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/otherhood-melanie-notkin/

loopingloopingloopingonSunday

brain is jacked up on learning how to use Scribus and the old jingle of a breakfast drink commercial...

ow

_  _  _  _  _

you will eat a sandwich after you finish this layout
sourdough
avocado
tomato
salt
basil
balsamic
spinach

MOTIVATION

flowers/dreams/reality/moon

http://melanienotkin.com/2014/02/28/otherhood-meaning-behind-the-cover/

The Otherhood book with the interesting floral cover was sitting on the "New Book" shelf at the library the other day, so I've looked through some of it...it's a little bit relatable, and a little bit not. It's like peering into another world. The world of people who are strangely good at making money. 12k to freeze your eggs.

A friend of mine is going to have a baby girl, like, any second now. I dreamt last night that my mother was about to have a baby. Odd...

This month's full moon was "Flower Moon" or "Mother Moon."

cameraderie

...spent several hours this morning taking pictures of plants and flowers and trying to figure out how to work with the mysterious camera-phone, which i still haven't quite figured out, and it was fun but at the end my brain was a little exhausted with the attention to light and shadow and detail and color and i was just thinking "whew, i'm glad i don't have to do that anymore," when i walked by three very dark-skinned, black-haired men and two very light-skinned blond-haired women laughing and playing with little a black and white dog in the sunshine and my little overworked mind nearly exploded and was like, break out the Pantone, the yin and yang of the human race has arrived, and then i turned away from the park and there was a little grayish/blackish and white cat trotting across the street...no pictures...no pictures...speaking of Pantone...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/05/09/a_gorgeous_one_of_a_kind_dutch_watercolor_mixing_manual_that_puts_the_pantone.html

Poesia visual

AA (About ADD):

The People in My Head


For distant relatives who consensually torment others for a living:

Painting with Shock Collar

Folksongs

After a power outage.

Sam the Whaler

Goodnight, Irene

One Grain of Sand

Desserts

"Satan, get thee behind me."

Chocolate Whiskey Cake

The Way We Eat: Building a Modern, Multistoried Dessert

"Satan, present thyself directly."

~~~

Things your mom might say.

Puzzle #3

http://www.unclesgames.com/product_info.php/products_id/14621

"Country Spring"

autre temple

Recently watched the Temple Grandin movie in two takes. (It was jarring!)

~~~

And then a talk....T.G. said that she has a "specialist" mind.

http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds

~~~

I seem to have a mind that likes to jump around a lot...

http://www.fuse.tv/videos/2014/04/premiere-andrew-jackson-jihad-temple-grandin-video 

http://www.drownedinsound.com/releases/18238/reviews/4147764?ticker

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2629676/SCIENCE-Beautiful-minds-need-rose-tinted-spectacles.html

A place

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pruitt-Igoe-corridor-conception.png

http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/
http://www.city-journal.org/2012/bc0217hh.html
http://film-forward.com/star-reviews/the-pruitt-igoe-myth-an-urban-myth
http://archrecord.construction.com/news/2012/01/Pruitt-Igoe-public-housing-development.asp

Conversationlets

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-let

I've never read anything by Vonnegut. The other day, a 4 year old presented me with an old paperback copy of Jailbird. 
Kid: "You should read this!"
Me: "Why?"
Kid: "Because it's hard!"

Later, he asked me what my name was. I told him and asked him if he liked it. He made a face, as if he couldn't decide.
Me: "You don't like my name?"
Kid: "I won't throw that name away."

Sunhat trigger

 Hobo Kelly




Apparently, a staple of television watchers growing up in California in the 60s/70s...

hot day

Sesame Street : Agua

laboring outdoors at temps over 100 (up to 106) /
strong impressions of heat-induced dementia...

Looks good

http://tastefoodblog.com/2013/02/18/lemon-thyme-pots-de-creme/

Found at: Lemon Makes The Best Cakes, Pies, and Tarts

How to name animals in German

http://www.kiraka.de/spielen-und-hoeren/alle-spiele/visualisierung-detail/v/wer-ist-wirklich-ein-schwein/

http://www.kiraka.de/spielen-und-hoeren/alle-spiele/visualisierung-detail/v/wer-ist-wirklich-ein-schwein/

~~~~~

How to name animals in German

Cherrytable Confusianism

http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/p/keep-calm-and-drink-shirley-temples/

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/about-cherry-2012

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/rape-happens-here-swarthmore-college-sexual-assaults/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/10/is-sex-assault-a-crime-in-the-ivy-league.html

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2010/10/10/cherry_was_labor_of_brotherly_love/

Mixing inappropriately.

A Mathematician and his Mom

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2012/06/the-kepler-defense.html

Mother/son movie idea...

"Kepler's mother was taken away in the middle of the night in a laundry chest. It took Kepler six years of unremitting effort to save her life."

"Part of the basis of the charge of witchcraft was that, in his Dream, Kepler uses mother's spells to leave the earth..."

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xerz75_carl-sagan-videos-johannes-kepler-p_tech

http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/1268227

"Summoned by his frantic sister, Kepler rushed back to Leonberg to find his mother lying in chains...They gave him six weeks and (pointing out her advanced age) wondered whether one guard wouldn't do instead of two, and whether the court might not help the defense pay, if not the guards' whole keep, at least for part of the huge stacks of firewood they consumed to keep warm. The judges' discomfort at this onslaught was recorded by a tiny slip of the clerk's pen preserving for posterity one off-the-record word: 'The accused appeared in court, accompanied, alas, by her son, Johannes Kepler, mathematician.' (Caspar, quoted by Arthur Koestler p 386)

She was charged with 49 counts of witchcraft, not counting numerous 'supplementary' charges. Item: 'The accused has failed the 'weeping test;' didn't even shed a tear when read admonitory texts from Holy Scripture' (a sure sign of a hard-headed, unrepentant, devil-possessed witch). To this Katharina burst out: 'My life has been so full of tears, I have none left to shed.'"

~ The Witch Trial of Ma Kepler

"Mrs. Kepler wasn’t the first member of the family to run into trouble with the witch-hunting authorities. She had been raised by an aunt who had herself been burned at the stake, and she dabbled in herbal concoctions she believed to be magical. Nor was she particularly well-liked (her own son described her as “small, thin, swarthy, gossiping and quarrelsome, of a bad disposition”). In 1615, one of Mrs. Kepler’s customers – a nasty piece of work named Ursula Reinbold, who’d fallen out with the Kepler family over a series of business transactions – accused the old lady of having poisoned her with a witch’s brew. Mrs. Kepler had had enough. She not only denied the charges (even when Mrs. Reinbold’s brother pressed a sword to her throat and demanded that she produce an antidote), she filed a libel suit against her accuser.

Mrs. Kepler was not the only woman accused of witchcraft in Leonberg (Lutherus Einhorn, who served as Vogt – something like a town bailiff – from 1613-1629, had 15 women arrested for witchcraft, and eight of them were executed for it), but she was the only one whose son was Imperial Mathematician to Rudolph II."

http://www.popbunker.net/2010/08/week-odd-history-keplers-mother-arrested-witchcraft-august-7-1620/

"Commuting back and forth from his work in Linz (showing an admirable capacity for keeping his head while others about him were in danger of losing theirs, Kepler discovered his third law of planetary motion in 1618; apparently he also read Galileo’s father on one of the trips between Linz and Leonberg), he organized his mother’s defense and wrote her briefs in his own hand.

It finally paid off."

http://www.executedtoday.com/2008/10/04/1621-not-katharina-kepler-johannes-kepler/

Today's great assumption

I'm going to assume that these cats are happily employed and I want to see this some day.

http://www.vice.com/read/i-went-to-the-cat-circus

Bahamut

By Hazmat Modine, whose music was in Windfall.

Futile Ramblings?

From: http://navigating-fairyland.blogspot.com/2014/05/youth-legislature-rant.html

"It was all fairly subtle, and it might just be me looking too far into things, but I noticed the differences between the way guys were treated compared to us.

For one thing, they would get called on before any of us girls to speak in the House, and were often the ones making all the arguments. Thankfully, our Speaker of the House was a good friend of mine (and my sister's boyfriend), and he called on me frequently."

~~~~

"A girl from my school spoke almost as much as me, and I heard comments about how she is a 'bitch' and apparently 'really annoying' for expressing her opinions so much.

At the same time, the Republican minority leader (a guy) spoke far more than we both did and was commended for his opinions."

~~~~

"Another thing that I noticed was the way the guys ruled the political parties and made all the choices (just like in real politics) while the girls just let them figure it out. Some of the girls in my committee didn't say a thing, and opted instead to run errands.

Talking to them afterwards, they voiced some good opinions about the bills, and I asked why they didn't say them. They said they didn't know."

~~~~~

"Men aren't ruling our country because they took it- they're ruling because we gave it to them."

http://navigating-fairyland.blogspot.com/2014/05/youth-legislature-rant.html

Friday finding

I do not know much about Dylan Thomas & only read/listened to Fern Hill earlier this week. I didn't even know that he was Welsh, at first. I was merely trying to find out more about the hangman who incarcerated his daughter on Fern Hill and then committed suicide when she escaped. I found out that much is being made of this poet in the UK because it would be his hundredth birthday...

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/dylanthomas/townhill#heading-welsh-language-version :

Benjamin Zephaniah, Writer and Dub-Poet:
Benjamin Zephaniah, Awdur a Bardd Dub:

I thought of this title before I wrote a word of this piece. Some time ago I just threw Dylan Thomas in with all the other dead, white, male poets that grown-ups tried to force us to like. There’s nothing wrong with being dead, male or white, the problem was that when you’re an angry young black kid, seeking justice, and trying to find art that expresses your struggles and your pain, you just get angrier when you’re told to go away and read a poem about daffodils. I have nothing against daffodils. Some of my best friends are daffodils, but it was about priorities. My contemporaries and me went off and created Dub-Poetry, a modern form of performance poetry, and we were happy not to be associated with those dead guys. 

Ond wedyn, fe ddigwyddodd dau beth i fi. Darllenodd ffrind y gerdd Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night i fi, a rhoi cefndir y gerdd. Wedyn, clywais berthynas i Dylan Thomas yn dweud yr arferai fod â sied ysgrifennu ac y byddai’n ei glywed yn aml yn darllen ei farddoniaeth yn uchel.

Felly, meddwn i, roedd Dylan Thomas yn ddyn go iawn, nid yn elitydd, roedd ganddo gariad ac angerdd. Dyna pam yr ysgrifennodd Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night ac roedd yn fardd perfformio. Roedd yn ysgrifennu â’r llais mewn golwg. Yn sicr nid yw’n fardd gwrywaidd, gwyn, marw. Mae’n fyw. Mae gen i brawf. Bu’n ysbrydoliaeth i fi.

Mother's Day Flowers

http://www.vice.com/read/the-human-cost-of-your-mothers-day-flowers

"The National Retail Federation estimates that this Mother’s Day weekend, Americans will purchase more than $2 billion worth of flowers. Almost 80 percent of those flowers come from Colombia, where impoverished mothers like Lorena toil long hours to produce tokens of affection for more fortunate mothers elsewhere. While the provenance of the peonies we buy last minute at gas stations, supermarkets, and corner store bodegas remains a mystery for most Americans, for the women that produce these bouquets the cut-flower industry is a harrowing reality, and Mother’s Day is a cruel joke."

From "The Human Cost of your Mother's Day Flowers" by Michael Zelenko

http://www.vice.com/read/the-human-cost-of-your-mothers-day-flowers

West / East

http://www.vice.com/read/homelessness-photo-series-John-Kilar

"Ray, 18. Skid Row resident for two months. 'I do gospel rap. My possessions are like life to me. Always keep your possessions on you 'cause you never know what life has got in store for you.'"

~~~~~

Windfall:

http://vimeo.com/22307040

http://www.treehugger.com/culture/windfall-anti-wind-documentary-looks-way-overblown-video.html

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/02/146099048/when-a-windfall-isnt-quite-what-it-seems

Student self awareness

There's brotherly love in this story:

http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20140507_Students_rally_at_WCU_against_response_to_sexual_assaults.html

"'As men, we are the ones mostly committing this violence,' said 21-year-old Malik Muhammad, a member of Men in Action, a campus group that urges men to take an active role in ending sexual assault. 'Why are we continuously telling women to do all of these different things to protect themselves instead of approaching men and trying to teach them how to respect women?'"

Life's a ferny thing sometimes...

From fiddleheadferntherapy.com

Fern Hill

LAIFS ~ Fern Basics

Between Two Ferns

thefern.org

Twilight topics

Australian Tree Fern
Tasmanian Tree Fern
Rabbit's Foot Fern (unexpectedly acquired a small one yesterday!)
Japanese Lace Fern
Hare's Foot Fern
Mother Fern
Bird's Nest Fern
Holly Fern
Southern Sword Fern
Boston Fern
Staghorn Fern
Maidenhair Fern
Lace Fern
Dwarf Tree Fern
Leatherleaf Fern
Table Fern
Tales from a South Central LA High School.
Peacock Fern not on the list.

Tea

All day.

At home cinema

Slept through most of The Conspirator but was mesmerized by Incendies.

all about eucalyptus

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2011/10/rainbow-eucalyptusthe-most-colorful.html

http://pebelle.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-rainbow-tree.html

das throat

feels like it's been screaming all day.
oh cold.
I don't hate you.

It's RAINING COLLEGES

http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp/tp140501a_cultural_shift_on_

http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-releases-list-higher-education-institutions-open-title-i

Surprise and curiousity

Wonder what the big leaf on the fence is in this photo...

https://homes.yahoo.com/photos/america-s-healthiest-cities-1398877476-slideshow/

1. Holland-Grand Haven, Mich.
> Physical Health Index: 80.9
> Obesity rate: 23.4% (44th lowest)
> Blood pressure: 23.9% (17th lowest)
> Poverty rate: 11.3% (37th lowest)

From America's Healthiest Cities...

Why

Question: 

Why is it that at night...

"Elephants Are Important For Biodiversity answered 10 months ago:
 

They are busy at home or they would be sleeping."

Jealousy III

You sit in a workshop, pour your heart out on paper, and it doesn't get as good of a reaction as you'd hoped. Meanwhile, the girl who sits in front of you writes something brilliant and painful and moving and the class universally reacts to her talents, including you. You might feel a little twinge, but it's okay. You can be inspired to be a better writer. Maybe cut out 90% of what you wrote, or start over. You can appreciate her talent and how it ultimately inspires you to become better.

Jealousy II

Aspiring artists share story ideas with one another. You don't really have a great idea at the moment, but you do think the older woman sitting in the corner has a really good one, and so does a young man who sits in the middle. Watch the male leading the group all but ignore her and completely fawn over the young man. Here's a free copy of my book! He's a genius! No one in this room has an original idea except for him! I see a bright promising future for you, young man! (What about that woman in the corner whose idea was just as good? Wtf is going on here?)

Jealousy I

It's so old and way back in the past, but you still remember when you liked XXX because he was smart even though he was also a raging alcoholic. Sadly, you ignored several warning signs. That waitress at the bar? She knew this would come to no good. What happens after, you will secretly refer to as "the stabbing." XXX was probably too soused to remember. You're like, don't worry, XXX, I know you've had rotten luck. At least you've shown that you have some talent at making friends with the right people. And your lack of empathy for that girl who was assaulted on your block was understandable! How can you fall all over yourself for someone like her when you have so many of your own problems? I apologize for not feeling more congratulatory. I will work through these jealousy-problems of mine with another social worker who knows how rough it is for you.