Jenny Wren Frankenstein

Jenny Wren is a doll clothes maker in Our Mutual Friend. You know Frankenstein: another eccentric who was good at sewing things together.

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James Mason and his cat, 1948

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 A bunch has been going on in Richmond, Virginia, regarding the city’s many memorials and symbols honoring the Confederacy. This has always been a conflict here, but the national conversation in the wake of the racially-motivated Charleston mass shooting has had it at the forefront of everyone’s minds. 

Additionally, RVA News published an excellent piece titled “De-Venerating Richmond’s Confederate Symbols,” by Susan Howson and Ross Catrow, which includes an inventory of all of the things and places in Richmond which were named in honor of Confederate figures. They also announced a new RVA News policy: they will no longer accept Picture of the Day submissions which include items honoring Confederates. 

More below the cut, but first, an excerpt from the RVA News story: “These aren’t just meaningless names of schools or streets. Nobody shrugged their shoulders and said “Semmes, that sounds like a cool name.” No, they said “We should honor Raphael Semmes, Confederate naval superstar, by naming this street after him.” These were conscious decisions, often made in other times of troubling racial tension, to make statements.”

Keep reading

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Sylvia Plath feeding a deer, Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada, July 1959 

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So brave

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Christopher Lee, 1949

Rest in peace….

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Kashmir photographed for Condé Nast Traveler.

Top photo: Mr. Ali Mohammad Beigh, perhaps the most renowned Kashmiri craftsman in fine needlework / embroidery called “sozni.” He works with silk threads on pashmina shawls. Each sozni will take him almost 3 years to finish (!!) and they are very highly valued.

I spent a morning in Mr. Beigh’s studio, photographing him and watching his work. He described it as a meditation. He sits and embroiders the sozni for 8 hours every day - amazing.

Below that: an embroidered sozni from Beigh’s workshop; silk threads in the workshop; brushes in the workshop of Mr. Maqbool, a local paper maché artisan; painted walls (locally referred to as “Naquashi”) in a 17th century shrine in Srinagar. 

All photos: Brian Ferry

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You save your money. You fly to Madrid, you stay in a shithole. I don't care how tired you are. Then you go to the Prado. The Prado will erase everything you know, it will rejigger you, and it is hot. It is hot. It is the most intense encounter with paintings to be had anywhere in the west.

Jerry Saltz  http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/04/introducing-ny-magazines-sex-lives-podcast.html

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The Greatest Fisher-Price Little People Playsets Of Your Childhood

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Holy nostalgia, Batman!

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Treats in the Streets: Artist Jim Bachor Fills Potholes with Ice Cream Mosaics

[mayadathinks-deactivated2017042]

Snowden helped turn the Magna Carta's Wikipedia page into an embroidery

The embroidery work of the Magna Carta was led by Cornelia Parker to make a "portrait of our age" and will be displayed at the British Library in London.

It’s hard to visualise Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno and Jimmy Wales doing a spot of embroidery, but they all got a needle and some thread out to help a British artist make a 13-metre-long (42 feet) tapestry of Magna Carta’s Wikipedia page.

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This is completely fabulous and I hope you all read the article about it.

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Artist unknown. (via Street Art Germany)

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Rainbow in church hill on Flickr.

Rainbow in church hill

[theatlantic]

We are all, basically, Jerry. We are all flawed and farty and meek. Our faces will all, at some point, be symbols of failure. They will all, at some point, be covered in pie. But Jerry also embodies something very fitting to the spirt of Pawnee: We are all, he reminds us, better and deeper and greater than we seem. We all walk around bearing hidden skills and secrets and heartaches and joys. We all appreciate the practicality of a good pair of socks. And we will all, at some point, be loved—both despite, and because of, who we really are.

The Downtrodden Jerry Gergich Is the True Hero of ‘Parks and Recreation’ (via theatlantic)

[fdrlibrary]

Day 26: Eleanor Roosevelt in India

In 1952 Eleanor made a significant trip to Asia – a month of which was spent in India. Having been invited by Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Eleanor chronicled her trip through her “My Day” columns and later in her book India and the Awakening East. Through her writings she worked on educating Americans on what was a little-known country at the time.

Her “My Day” column from March 3, 1952 talks about her excitement at finally visiting India:

It is very exciting to be in India after reading my father’s letters of many years ago, which told of his trip under very different circumstances 89 years ago. Meeting people from here and reading books about it are not quite the same as seeing with one’s own eyes. It is really a joy to feel that I have accomplished something I have talked about and hoped for, but really did not ever expect to see. My impressions are becoming very well crystallized in my mind as I go forward on this trip, and it is certainly most interesting to see the difference that a landscape takes on when it is peopled by so many more inhabitants than one would see at home in the same area of space.