Now when Bobby Shaftoe had gone through high school, he’d been slotted into a vocational track and ended up taking a lot of shop classes. A certain amount of his time was therefore, naturally, devoted to sawing large pieces of wood or metal into smaller pieces. Numerous saws were available in the shop for that purpose, some better than others. A sawing job that would be just ridiculously hard and lengthy using a hand saw would be accomplished with a power saw. Likewise, certain cuts and materials would cause the smaller power saws to overheat or seize up altogether and therefore called for larger power saws. But even with the biggest power saw in the shop, Bobby Shaftoe always got the sense that he was imposing some kind of stress on the machine. It would slow down when the blade contacted the material, it would vibrate, it would heat up, and if you pushed the material through too fast it would threaten to jam.
But then one summer he worked in a mill where they had a bandsaw.
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Departures, Cont.
More.The people I grew up around never looked at the color of my skin and thought “You’re not good enough.” If anything they looked at me and thought “Why aren’t you better?”
This sense of rejection powers most of my New York friends. They come to the city fleeing home, looking for some place that will accept them in all their weird ways. I don’t know how this happend, but in Baltimore I felt both weird and accepted and so I missed the wisdom that comes with being outcast, with having a burning need to strike out. And so I came to New York uncivilized, with my wife seeing things which I could not, and me falling in love with things which she’d discovered at half my age.
She went to Paris in 2006. I had no interest. Why? More strange people. More strange words. But she came back with these pictures. The pictures were of great doors wooden doors, painted green, blue and brown. Their sheer size made you wonder what was inside.
I thought of her sitting her while sitting in the pâtisserie, at the corner at the corner of Boulevard Raspail, wondering how she felt here, watching the knowing people come and go.
“You will love it,” she told me. “Because you love old things.”
The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff — for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.
Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion — and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.
—Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad (1880)
The Lion of Lucerne is a memorial to the Swiss Guards who were massacred on August 10, 1792 as they defended the king’s palace during the French Revolution.
(Photo credit: Godot13)
I like this.
I like this, too.
Wonderful. I want to memorize this.
This is amazing.
(Source: finnualabutler)
Ron is racist - and that's great
Ron Weasley’s character is consciously written as somewhat racist. Not as racist as Malfoy, of course - he doesn’t scoff at mudbloods and halfbloods, and he doesn’t see himself as superior at all. Still, he unquestionably accepts the inferior position of house elves (they love serving), when he finds out that Lupin’s werewolf his reaction is not only scared but also disgusted (Don’t touch me!) and he is clearly very uncomfortable finding out that Hagrid is half-giant (giants are wild and savage).
And this is brilliant. Because it demonstrates that racism isn’t only present in clearly malicious and evil people, in the Malfoys and Blacks - it’s also there in warm, kind, funny people who just happened to learn some pretty toxic things growing up in a pretty toxic society. And they can unlearn them too, with some time and effort. Ron eventually accepts Hagrid’s parentage, lets Lupin bandage his leg and in the final battle, he worries about the safety of the house elves.
Some people are prejudiced because they are evil, and some people are prejudiced because they don’t know better yet. And those people can learn better, and become better people. And that’s an important lesson. The lesson taught about discrimination shouldn’t be “only evil people do it”, because then all readers will assume it doesn’t apply to them. Instead old JK teaches us “you too are probably doing it, and you should do stop ASAP”.
According to designer Elizabeth Perez, “The book’s spine is screen-printed with a matchbook striking paper surface, so the book itself can be burned.”
Not that you’d ever want to, of course.
Via BuzzFeed.
Via Joanne ManasterVery cool strand of DNA made from humans to recognize the 60th anniversary of the discovery of DNA!
Marina Abramovic meets Ulay
“Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again. at her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing it and this is what happened.”
Fic: Letter to a G.I. (6/6 - Complete!)
Cast opposite the successful actor and performer Blaine Anderson as a romantic lead in a historic drama Kurt, a relative newcomer to the screen, has to learn to navigate his relationship with his character – and with his co-star.
NC-17, 7,300 words this part (60,000 overall.)
Warning for death as a thematic literary element, if that’s a thing? See here for more.
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