In fact, my personal Who’s Who of Rock and Roll is stacked with bomb Black women. Betty Davis. Grace Jones. Tina Turner. Aretha Franklin. Nona Hendryx. Poly Styrene. Joan Armatrading. Joyce Kennedy… and that’s just 1976-77.
So why do so many people go out of their way to marginalize or flat-out disregard Black women as both pioneers and torchbearers of rock? Why are we so indifferent to the fact that more than a few African-American women strapped an instrument to their back and helped carry the genre from the fields to the church to the juke joint to the charts to a multimillion-dollar industry?
Probably because someone told us it wasn’t ours and we chose to believe it. They said it was devil’s music, so we cast it out. We let it go because someone gave it white skin, a penis, and the green light to cross boundaries that Black people couldn’t. And in so doing, they convinced the world that our pioneers didn’t deserve equal recognition, equal exposure or equal ownership.
Damn shame."
Black Women In Rock: If Sister Rosetta Tharpe is too old school for you, then maybe Santigold flips your wig. Either way, sisters have been part of rock music for as long as guitar feedback’s been loud (via blackrockandrollmusic)
LOVE Aretha Franklin. Been listening to her since the 70’s.
(via revlovejoy)
We ate at Olive Garden tonight. My daughter and I. Girls night out. I’m a people watcher. Two African American women sat a few booths away. Our service was great, as it was at the other nearby tables. Except theirs. They got menus and then got ignored. Finally, they got up and left. On the way out, I asked the hostess. She was very quick with an answer. Too quick. Oh, they didn’t see anything on the menu they liked. I questioned that. It seemed like they didn’t get any service. No, they didn’t like the menu. Yeah right. I looked at her for a moment. Then we left.
I’m sure they lost the business of those other two women on a girls night out. They lost ours too.
Despite its name, the maned wolf is not a wolf at all, nor is it a fox, coyote, or dog. It is the only member of the Chrysocyon genus, making it a truly unique animal, not closely related to any other living canid. One hypothesis for this is that the maned wolf is the last surviving species of the Pleistocene Extinction, which wiped out all other large canids from the continent.
(via anndruyan)
Sir Ken Robinson, on education and great teachers (via hithertokt)
Ah yes. But there are forces trying to shove us into delivery systems. Some are allowing themselves to be shoved. Others are kicking and screaming. Some of us, though, smile, say that’s nice, and go back to our classrooms and teach. Just teach. Have fun. Don’t turn into cybermen robot teachers.
(via insideateachersmind)
Each time I’m asked to tell about myself, I find myself starting the same way: “My name is Kelsey and I’m nineteen..”
but what I’d really like to say is:
“My name means island of the ships but once
I found a translation that said I’m a burning shipwreck-
not a burning ship but a ship that has caught fire
after the wreckage and well, I’d say that’s more fitting.”
I’ve learned that people don’t have time for about me’s.
They need two things: a name and an indication you’re someone special.
The doctors, they want facts not details.
“I broke my leg when I was three, it’s a funny story actually-“
The right or the left?
Conversation over.
The teachers, they want interests, hobbies.
You’re sad, yes, but what do you like to do?
The adults are a spew of questions.
What school do you go to? What classes are you taking?
What do you plan on becoming? Got a boyfriend?
No, stop.
People my own age are the worst.
“I’m planning on an English degree with a concentration in creative writing.”
Yeah, aren’t we all. So how many times have you, you know,
done it?
I’m pulled apart, my interests travelling highway 2
my goals at a stop light at traffic hour,
my medical history on a billboard for the world to see.
But what about me?
Where’s the chance to say,
“I hang on to fistfuls of poetry like loose change in my pockets,
and I keep waiting for the day that the world turns upside down
so I can swim with the stars.
I’m not afraid of darkness, it’s a loneliness I can empathize with it.
It’s the blackholes like cigarette burns inside of me that get troublesome.
I walk through graveyards and read the dashes between years,
each a story I’ll never know. Sometimes I create my own.”
No wonder none of us know who we are anymore.
"(via seabluecranes)
Hey, bro, cool story.
So that’s another way of doing it.
Also I hate your jeans.
John Green, everybody.
There is an assumption in this that “cool” and “good looking” are synonymous. Many cool people are not magazine-model types. Many model-type good looking people are assholes. They are elevating the high school jock clique to a marketing status.
Actually, the cool people I know don’t spend a whole lot of time worrying this much about how they look, or whether or not others admire their coolness. Guess we don’t agree on what “cool” means.
This is my final art A2 piece, responding to the theme ‘Storyteller’.
I decided to tell my own story of self harm/food problems through visual means: a self portrait/collage in which I am trying to show that I have now recovered and moved on from what was a really horrible time in my life.
I think I took a risk by including torn-out diary pages from my second relapse in 2010, as a lot of people at school (and now the internet) will see this, and after all it is a very personal thing, when I wrote this I never intended it to be read by anyone other than myself. I decided to include the pages because it is my own way of coming to terms with the fact that this is how I once felt, despite being so far from those feelings now. I think it is better for me to face up to these pages, rather than pretending these feelings never existed. The diary in which they were stored was still sat in the box by my bed, and these words were lying stagnant in the air in my room, and I decided it was time to put them to use or at least get them out of my room as they are no longer relevant of helpful to me in any way. It was very satisfying, almost therapeutic, to tear them to pieces, I felt as though I was killing those thoughts so that they could never return. I stared at them in disbelief as I stuck them down - I can’t believe it was my hand that wrote these words, they seem alien to me now.
The collage coming from my mouth - the story - might not be as aesthetically pleasing or as nicely arranged as I had hoped it would be, but for the first time ever I realised I cared more about the message and meaning in my piece than how it was visually presented or how ‘pretty’ it looked. I hoped that it wouldn’t look too contrived, but I just wanted to portray self injury through small objects and items, where before long butterflies - hope, recovery, redemption, safety - start to emerge, and then take over. I wanted it to represent how I was once so caught up in self hatred and self denial that I thought I would never recover or never even want to recover, but then after much time I did see the light and everything started to fall into place, and I got my life back. Today as I assembled the piece, I realised the last time I had opened a box of razors had been in 2010, and the fact that I have come so far made me feel proud. I included such graphic items and horrible words because they are still a part of me and my story, but I have since risen above that and since realised that I am better than that.
I don’t know if anyone will have read this long description, but if you have done and you are also struggling with self-harm or an eating disorder or know someone who is, know that there is still hope yet. For years I was so low and so hopeless and remember thinking that I would never get better so I might as well take my own life. I am so glad I didn’t. I am admitting all this now because I have transformed and now see all the beauty in life and I am truly, truly happy. When I was 13 I didn’t see how I could ever not want to hurt myself, and at the age of 17 I know that recovery is possible, and recovery is beautiful. I don’t know exactly how to go about recovering, but I do know there is always the possibility of finding a way out. You just have to find it.
“Storyteller: Recovery” by Kate Powell
Amazing.
(via teachingliteracy)
Now that the numbers are in on same-sex marriage, many Republicans are falling like dominos all over themselves to express their support for something that only a few months ago they steadfastly claimed to stand against. They’ll probably soon claim that this is how they felt all along, and they were simply too hamstrung by politics to be able to say what they really meant. Well, okay. In the spirit of openheartedness and what life is really all about, I’ll go so far as to say that the fear of others may mask some deep-seated desire to understand, and maybe even to love. Because really, what is there to be afraid of?For Mother’s Day, the New Yorker celebrates marriage equality with this heart-warming cover of a two-mom family by cartoonist extraordinaire Chris Ware.
(Source: , via teachingliteracy)
Underwater sculpture, in Grenada, in honor of our African ancestors thrown overboard.
I couldnt not reblog this, it’s so powerful to me.
oh my god.
I want to see this
trIpPy
This is so powerful. It made me cry.
(Source: elegantly-tasteless, via seabluecranes)
We talked about frets on a guitar and how when you push the string into the fret board it raises the pitch on the note by changing the length of the standing wave on the string. Another interesting thing you can do is this: after plucking the open string, just lightly touch the string with your finger at the 12th fret. A sound like a bell or flute will result, as you create the second harmonic of the original standing wave.
Here’s what happens: by touching the string lightly while it’s vibrating, you cause it to come to rest at that point you’re touching. This results in another node, as shown above with the second harmonic. Touching the string at the 7th or 5th fret can make the third and fourth harmonics, with higher numbers of nodes.
But if you touch the string someplace that does not result in equal segments between nodes, no harmonic is produced and the string stops. This is simply math. Guitar players can tell you all the spots where harmonics can be produced, even if they don’t care too much about the math and physics behind it. (Some of them care though!)
Fun Fact: If you’re in tune, hitting the 5th fret harmonic on a lower string will produce the same note as the 7th fret harmonic on the next higher string. The only exception to this is with the G and B strings because they’re not separated by a perfect fourth. Still, it’s a cool trick that looks impressive to your non-musically-inclined friends.
Reblogging for Andrew. Cool.
(via understandingtheuniverse)
