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July 15, 2011
“One of the most poignant days of the year was when Ruby Bridges visited the White House. Ruby is the girl portrayed in Norman Rockwell’s famous painting, “The Problem We All Live With,” which depicts Ruby as she is escorted to school on the court-ordered first day of integrated schools in New Orleans in 1960. When the Norman Rockwell Museum loaned the painting to the White House for a short period of time, the President invited Ruby to view the painting while it was on display outside the Oval Office.”
(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) (by The White House)
Amazing. The path from that painting to this photo… *tears*
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On January 26, 1901, Beatrix Potter’s beloved Peter Rabbit passed away.
Potter’s touching epitaph:In affectionate remembrance of poor old Peter Rabbit, who died on the 26th of January 1901 at the end of his 9th year … whatever the limitations of his intellect or outward shortcomings of his fur, and his ears and toes, his disposition was uniformly amiable and his temper unfailingly sweet. An affectionate companion and a quiet friend.
You can see this and other Beatrix Potter picture letters in the Morgan Library and Museum’s Beatrix Potter exhibition in November. (via The Morgan Library and Museum Wall Photos)
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The scientists analyzed billions of words from Twitter, a half-century of music lyrics, 20 years of The New York Times, and millions of books going back to 1520. After finding the 10,222 most frequently used English words from these four sources, they asked a group of volunteers to rate the emotional temperature of these words… There was an overwhelming preponderance of happier words among the top 5,000 words in each of the sources."
Scientists find English is an overwhelmingly positive language. Further reading: Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. (via curiositycounts)(via curiositycounts)
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A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. (via ‘Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth’ « Flickr Blog)
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There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions
From “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions” by Audre Lorde
I was born Black, and a woman. I am trying to become the strongest person I can become to live the life I have been given and to help effect change toward a liveable future for this earth and for my children. As a Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, poet, mother of two including one boy and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself part of some group in which the majority defines me as deviant, difficult, inferior or just plain “wrong.”
From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sexes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression. I have learned that sexism and heterosexism both arise from the same source as racism.
“Oh,” says a voice from the Black community, “but being Black is NORMAL!” Well, I and many Black people of my age can remember grimly the days when it didn’t used to be!
I simply do not believe that one aspect of myself can possibly profit from the oppression of any other part of my identity. I know that my people cannot possibly profit from the oppression of any other group which seeks the right to peaceful existence. Rather, we diminish ourselves by denying to others what we have shed blood to obtain for our children. And those children need to learn that they do not have to become like each other in order to work together for a future they will all share.
Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.
I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you
Playing it to the balcony.
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Stroboscopic multiple exposure of Alfred Hitchcock teaching Teresa Wright how to struggle during filming of Shadow of a Doubt, 1942. Photo by Gjon Mili.
(Source: frenchtwist, via bbook)
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This is what Flaubert looked like? I had no idea. A favorite quote: “One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.” (via Gustave Flaubert - ID: 1158364 - NYPL Digital Gallery)
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My shift lasted from 6 p.m. to midnight. Sylvia warned me that George often came down in the evening, after she’d gone home, to engage in sabotage. Father and daughter were embroiled in a simmering conflict over “improvements.” Telephone, or cash register, or books organized by genre – George was revolted by the idea. A few weeks earlier, under orders from the French authorities, the famously-treacherous staircase, described by Anaïs Nin as “unbelievable,” was taken down and replaced by a wider, sturdier, more conventional thing. Enraged, George attacked it with a hammer. The night of my first shift, I sat at the register, nervous that he would renew his assault."
James Gregor remembers George Whitman, of Shakespeare and Company. (via millionsmillions)(via millionsmillions)
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Freedom is █████ ███████████ █████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██ ████ ██ ████████ ██ ███ oppressed."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Stop SOPA and PIPA. (via ckck)
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The Oatmeal blacked out in protest of SOPA / PIPA
Well done explainer right there.
(via swirlspice)
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Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”
