If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night) (by soulcommontuga). Meshell Ndegeocello [who’s touring a tiny bit in south USA + Frace atm]
I love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences, it is a strangely alive silence, like a trap open over a well, from which one can hear the secret murmur of the earth itself.
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| — | Anaïs Nin, Under a Glass Bell (via heymorticia) |
![REVOLUTIONARY WOMAN OF THE DAY: Lucy Parsons (circa 1853 – March 7, 1942) was a labor organizer, socialist, and legendary orator. Lucy was of Native American, Black, and Mexican ancestry, born in Texas as a slave. She moved to Chicago where she was a key organizer in the labor movement and also participated in revolutionary activism on behalf of political prisoners, people of color, the homeless, and women. She said, “We [women] are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men.” We salute Lucy Parsons, known by the Chicago Police Department as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters”. Know your revolutionary women’s history.
via REVOLUTIONARY WOMAN OF THE DAY: Lucy Parsons | AF3IRM](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxxyy74paW1qzoz4do1_400.jpg)
REVOLUTIONARY WOMAN OF THE DAY: Lucy Parsons (circa 1853 – March 7, 1942) was a labor organizer, socialist, and legendary orator. Lucy was of Native American, Black, and Mexican ancestry, born in Texas as a slave. She moved to Chicago where she was a key organizer in the labor movement and also participated in revolutionary activism on behalf of political prisoners, people of color, the homeless, and women. She said, “We [women] are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men.” We salute Lucy Parsons, known by the Chicago Police Department as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters”. Know your revolutionary women’s history.
(via Flavorwire » 100-Year-Old Color Photos from the Russian Empire)
Peasant girls with berries, around 1909-12. Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii
An interview I did with a group of some of the women involved with the Justseeds artists co-operative, back in 2010, has just been published online at the (new) Aorta blog. It can be found here: www.aortamagazine.com/blog/women-of-justseeds
Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists based in Canada, the US and Mexico who have banded together to collaborate with and support each other and social movements.
Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. …
In addition to continued reports of CCD — a still somewhat mysterious phenomenon in which entire bee colonies literally disappear, alien-abduction style, leaving not even their dead bodies behind — bee populations are suffering poor health in general, and experiencing shorter life spans and diminished vitality. And while parasites, pathogens, and habitat loss can deal blows to bee health, research increasingly points to pesticides as the primary culprit.
“alien abduction style”?! had to reblog for this ingenious new angle: are the CIA abducting the bees, to pollinate new plant cities on the moon, in readiness of Newt’s space colony? Like that Dr. Who episode?
OTTAWA — The federal government is distancing itself from its own lobbying and public relations campaign to polish the image of Alberta’s oilsands, following revelations that an internal strategy document labelled First Nations and environmentalists as “adversaries,” while describing the National Energy Board, an independent industry regulator, as an “ally.” The descriptions were highlighted in a March 2011 document from the government’s “pan-European oilsands advocacy strategy,” released through access to information legislation.
Mithridatism is the practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts. The word derives from Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus, who so feared being poisoned that he regularly ingested small doses, aiming to develop immunity. Having been defeated by Pompey, legend has it that Mithridates tried to commit suicide using poison but failed because of his immunity and so had to resort to having a mercenary run him through with his sword.
(via Vice Style » News » New African Fashion)
Duro Olowu by John-Paul Pietrus.
VICE: Hey Helen, why did you decide to put the book together?
Helen Jennings: Well, I think in the last few years African fashion has done kind of what Japanese fashion did in the late 80s and just shot up really fast. I did a bit of research and saw there was no book on the subject. Well, whatever was already there was hopelessly out of date.Why has it suddenly flourished like that? You say in the introduction about it just being a source of inspiration before, but it’s clearly far more than that now.
You know, the place is growing economically and in terms of infrastructure. As is the art scene, interior design, and fashion. You name it, it’s all part of a rapidly growing creative industry. Obviously, it’s also fueled by the internet, blogs, and social media, just like it is anywhere else. Another thing, actually, is that the creative industry’s being seen as an OK thing to do. You know, here it’s encouraged, but there, if you come from a wealthy background, you’re expected go into law, or business, or medicine, or whatever, and I think being an artist was seen as, like, a bum thing to do. Now, things are changing, you’re getting more upper-middle class people being allowed to go and do art and fashion degrees, so it’s all expanding really fast.
i’m not a fan of Vice, but it’s an interesting interview with Helen Jennings of Arise Magazine here.
(via ADVANCED STYLE)
It is the opinion of some that as we age, we should become more conservative and not express ourselves in the same ways. I once had a woman email me to say that her grandchildren didn’t want her to dress colorfully any more.They thought that she was too old to wear clothing that would make her stand out in anyway.The problem with this is that the longing for personal expression, and the need to be creative don’t end at a certain age. 91 year old Ilona Royce Smithkin will tell you that she still feels young inside. It is only when she feels a slight pain, that she is reminded of her age.
On Loving the Body.
The importance of the body in this equation cannot be overlooked. The body shows me decay (or growth) where I most fear it. Ultimately, my body is simply a map of where I’ve come from. Quite literally, it is the trail of my electrons coursing, racing, and whirling through space - what my eyes see is the trace of where they’ve been. I ran ten miles; I ate wheat; I skinned my knees, and experienced pleasure, pain, love, and birth. My body remembers all of these things, even when I am not reflecting on them. The body remembers experiences once endured and actions once taken, things I am capable of because I have once done them.
This is why recognizing ourselves as beautiful is in some ways more powerful than recognizing that we can be “good”. To love my body is to reconcile with where I have been and thus what I am capable of. By appreciating myself, and what I capable of, and hence knowing the roads I don’t take in spite of that capability, only then does my current action became a choice. Only then may it be called good or bad. Without choice, judgement has no value. It is meaningless to call something “good” or “bad” that simply is. Only that which is chosen can be said to be chosen out of compassion or cruelty.
Thus,recognizing that our bodies are beautiful becomes a powerfully political act, a celebration of compassion directed toward the self. And this is what is behind the Black woman’s love of her body, which is so present in the ethos of contemporary Black culture. It is imperative that we love our own bodies *and* that we love other’s bodies in their diversity. Ultimately, loving people for who they are should never be about disregarding the body - but about embracing it.
Journey Toward Compassionate Choice: Intergrating Vegan and Sistah Experience.
By Tara Sophia Bahna-James in the Sistah Vegan anthology by Breeze Harper.
(via Koi Story: Floral printed romper on a rainy day)
more florals + ppl. looking good despite weather
