Zazie Beetz for Essence

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@peacocksandsunflowers
Zazie Beetz for Essence
Oshun by André Hora
Never posted this on here! But I drew this Vishnu for my mom a while back
pretty
Nyakim Gatwech at the 2018 Emmys
Designer: laviebyck
now wait just a goddamn minute. THIS is real and I’m honestly dying
HOW A CHILD SLAVE CREATED A BILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS
How a Child Slave Created a Billion-Dollar Business
In the Indian Ocean, fifteen hundred miles east of Africa and four thousand miles west of Australia, lies an island that the Portuguese knew as Santa Apolónia, the British as Bourbon, and the French, for a time, as Île Bonaparte. Today it is called Réunion. A bronze statue stands in Sainte-Suzanne, one of Réunion’s oldest towns. It shows an African boy in 1841, dressed as if for church, in a single-breasted jacket, bow tie, and flat-front pants that gather on the ground. He wears no shoes. He holds out his right hand, not in greeting but with his thumb and fingers coiled against his palm, perhaps about to flip a coin. He is twelve years old, an orphan and a slave, and his name is Edmond.
The world has few statues of Africa’s enslaved children. To understand why Edmond stands here, on this lonely ocean speck, his hand held just so, we must travel west and back, thousands of miles and hundreds of years. On Mexico’s Gulf Coast, the people of Papantla have dried the fruit of a vinelike orchid and used it as a spice for more millennia than they remember. In 1400, the Aztecs took it as tax and called it “black flower.” In 1519, the Spanish introduced it to Europe and called it “little pod,” or vainilla. In 1703, French botanist Charles Plumier renamed it “vanilla.”
Vanilla is hard to farm. Vanilla orchids are great creeping plants, not at all like the Phalaenopsis flowers we put in our homes. They can live for centuries and grow large, sometimes covering thousands of square feet or climbing five stories high. It has been said that lady’s slippers are the tallest orchids and tigers the most massive, but vanilla dwarfs them both. For thousands of years, its flower was a secret known only to the people who grew it. It is not black, as the Aztecs were led to believe, but a pale tube that blooms once a year and dies in a morning. If a flower is pollinated, it produces a long, green, beanlike capsule that takes nine months to ripen. It must be picked at precisely the right time. Too soon and it will be too small; too late and it will split and spoil. Picked beans are left in the sun for days, until they stop ripening. They do not smell of vanilla yet. That aroma develops during curing: two weeks on wool blankets outdoors each day before being wrapped to sweat each night. Then the beans are dried for four months and finished by hand with straightening and massage. The result is oily black lashes worth their weight in silver or gold.
Vanilla captivated the Europeans. Anne of Austria, daughter of Spain’s King Philip III, drank it in hot chocolate. Queen Elizabeth I of England ate it in puddings. King Henry IV of France made adulterating it a criminal offense punishable by a beating. Thomas Jefferson discovered it in Paris and wrote America’s first recipe for vanilla ice cream.
But no one outside Mexico could make it grow. For three hundred years, vines transported to Europe would not flower. It was only in 1806 that vanilla first bloomed in a London greenhouse and three more decades before a plant in Belgium bore Europe’s first fruit.
The missing ingredient was whatever pollinated the orchid in the wild. The flower in London was a chance occurrence. The fruit in Belgium came from complicated artificial pollination. It was not until late in the nineteenth century that Charles Darwin inferred that a Mexican insect must be vanilla’s pollinator, and not until late in the twentieth century that the insect was identified as a glossy green bee called Euglossa viridissima. Without the pollinator, Europe had a problem. Demand for vanilla was increasing, but Mexico was producing only one or two tons a year. The Europeans needed another source of supply. The Spanish hoped vanilla would thrive in the Philippines. The Dutch planted it in Java. The British sent it to India. All attempts failed.
This is where Edmond enters. He was born in Sainte-Suzanne in 1829. At that time Réunion was called Bourbon. His mother, Mélise, died in childbirth. He did not know his father. Slaves did not have last names – he was simply “Edmond.” When Edmond was a few years old, his owner, Elvire Bellier-Beaumont, gave him to her brother Ferréol in nearby Belle-Vue. Ferréol owned a plantation. Edmond grew up following Ferréol Bellier-Beaumont around the estate, learning about its fruits, vegetables, and flowers, including one of its oddities – a vanilla vine Ferréol had kept alive since 1822.
Like all the vanilla on Réunion, Ferréol’s vine was sterile. French colonists had been trying to grow the plant on the island since 1819. After a few false starts – some orchids were the wrong species, some soon died – they eventually had a hundred live vines. But Réunion saw no more success with vanilla than Europe’s other colonies had. The orchids seldom flowered and never bore fruit.
Then, one morning late in 1841, as the spring of the Southern Hemisphere came to the island, Ferréol took his customary walk with Edmond and was surprised to find two green capsules hanging from the vine. His orchid, barren for twenty years, had fruit. What came next surprised him even more. Twelve-year-old Edmond said he had pollinated the plant himself.
To this day there are people in Réunion who do not believe it. It seems impossible to them that a child, a slave, and, above all, an African, could have solved the problem that beat Europe for hundreds of years. They say it was an accident – that he was trying to damage the flowers after an argument with Ferréol or he was busy seducing a girl in the gardens when it happened.
Ferréol did not believe the boy at first. But when more fruit appeared, days later, he asked for a demonstration. Edmond pulled back the lip of a vanilla flower and, using a toothpick-sized piece of bamboo to lift the part that prevents self-fertilization, he gently pinched its pollen-bearing anther and pollen-receiving stigma together. Today the French call this le geste d’Edmond – Edmond’s gesture. Ferréol called the other plantation owners together, and soon Edmond was traveling the island teaching other slaves how to pollinate vanilla orchids. After seven years, Réunion’s annual production was a hundred pounds of dried vanilla pods. After ten years, it was two tons. By the end of the century, it was two hundred tons and had surpassed the output of Mexico.
Ferréol freed Edmond in June 1848, six months before most of Réunion’s other slaves. Edmond was given the last name Albius, the Latin word for “whiter.” Some suspect this was a compliment in racially charged Réunion. Others think it was an insult from the naming registry. Whatever the intention, things went badly. Edmond left the plantation for the city and was imprisoned for theft. Ferréol was unable to prevent the incarceration but succeeded in getting Edmond released after three years instead of five. Edmond died in 1880, at the age of fifty-one. A small story in a Réunion newspaper, Le Moniteur, described it as a “destitute and miserable end.”
Edmond’s innovation spread to Mauritius, the Seychelles, and the huge island to Réunion’s west, Madagascar. Madagascar has a perfect environment for vanilla. By the twentieth century, it was producing most of the world’s vanilla, with a crop that in some years was worth more than $100 million.
The demand for vanilla increased with the supply. Today it is the world’s most popular spice and, after saffron, the second most expensive. It has become an ingredient in thousands of things, some obvious, some not. Over a third of the world’s ice cream is Jefferson’s original flavor, vanilla. Vanilla is the principal flavoring in Coke, and the Coca-Cola Company is said to be the world’s largest vanilla buyer. The fine fragrances Chanel No. 5, Opium, and Angel use the world’s most expensive vanilla, worth $10,000 a pound. Most chocolate contains vanilla. So do many cleaning products, beauty products, and candles. In 1841, on the day of Edmond’s demonstration to Ferréol, the world produced fewer than two thousand vanilla beans, all in Mexico, all the result of pollination by bees. On the same day in 2010, the world produced more than five million vanilla beans, in countries including Indonesia, China, and Kenya, almost all of them – including the ones grown in Mexico – the result of le geste d’Edmond. SHARE THIS: 1K+Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)1K+Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
ABOUT KEVIN ASHTONABOUT HOW TO FLY A HORSECONTACT KEVIN ASHTON © 2015-2018 KEVIN ASHTON
A lifestyle. A MOOD
This why it take 9 years at the drive thru.
WHEN THE ICE CREAM MACHINE HITTIN
Spring Gif! Experimenting with making gifs on Photoshop. :)
‘The Female Gaze’ Xin Xe and Maria Borges by Pari Dukovic for Harper’s Bazaar US September 2018
neptunian feelings
Neptune in the 1st: your personality feels fickle, unstable, you don’t know who you are, relying on multiple personas to hide your insecurities and fears. you tend to pick up traits from the people you’re closest with. Neptune in the 2nd: in your mind, you never have too much. you believe money can buy you a ticket out of unhappiness. luxury is a fantasy. feels like your belongings can save your life, so you cherish them with heart and soul Neptune in the 3rd: fiction is always better than the real deal. your thinking process is frequently clouded with distractions, daydreaming is part of your nature. you’re easily hypnotized by whatever seems divine at the moment Neptune in the 4th: you seek protection in places you won’t find it. your childhood left a void in you so you try to fill it by creating illusions of a perfect home in your mind, and trying to recreate your definition of a perfect family Neptune in the 5th: over dramatization of love. you’re either in cloud nine, or extremely heart-broken. you idealize romance and daydream about intense affairs. glamour & art attract you for giving you a sense of pleasured escapism Neptune in the 6th: marked by hypersensitivity and avoidance of rules, schedules, plans and routines. easily bored by daily activities, and generally comfortable among messes/disorganized spaces. work has to be inspirational. Neptune in the 7th: codependent and easily attached, more to the ideas you fabricate about people than to them. you mirror the behaviors of others. You glamorize romantic relationships, often ignoring flaws. you want to save, or be saved by your lover.
Neptune in the 8th: overwhelming desire to understand death, the human mind and everything that is inexplicably complex. emotional wounds are very heavy on you & you dwell on them. self-destruction tendencies are familiar. Neptune in the 9th: hopeless and delusional optimism, incessant quest to find “heaven” on earth not through physical pleasure but through existential fulfillment. you’re lured in by promises of transcending the mundane Neptune in the 10th: you’re confused about your place in the world and can’t seem to find a purpose in life. marked by an obsession with reputation and your position in society. impressionable and unsure about career options
Neptune in the 11th: easily influenced by friends, often unable to realize malice and evil intentions behind people’s actions. enchanted by the possibility of saving the world, but also emptied out by it.
Neptune in the 12th: you feel fragile and over-exposed so you seclude yourself, and then feel lonely. permanently unsatisfied with what life gives you, so usually feeling hopeless and lost. fantasy is better than reality.
by crystal melbourne | within the zodiac
Pluto is a complex little big planet with many facets. One being obsessions: which can also bring about great transformation
**Transformations can come from letting go of what you obsess over or try to control. Generally the need to control comes from a fear. And that fear can end up controlling you. Acknowledgment of this and Realizing you need a balance and letting go is what will set you free.
•Pluto in 1st house• Obsessed with identity, body issues, attached to power issues. Transformed by letting go.
•Pluto in 2nd house• Obsessed with what you are able to acquire in a attempt to overcome the fear of never having enough. Transformed by possessions/finances(loss or gain or both).
•Pluto in 3rd house• Obsessed with being a seeker and finding the answers you seek. Also obsess over finding things that are hidden. Transformed by the mind, communications, siblings or maybe neighborhood.
•Pluto in 4th house• Obsession might come in form of using control and power to get their way. Comes on from having a possible turbulent childhood. Transformed by home environment, maybe by letting go of control of home environment.
•Pluto in 5th house• Obsessing could come in form of love relationships or lovers being obsessed with you. If you have children could obsess over them. Transformed by love, children, romance and gaming.
•Pluto in 6th house• Obsessed with perfection, hard work, routine, exercise and health. Need to relax. Transformed by allowing change and or breaking routines.
•Pluto in the 7th house• Obsessed with partnerships and can be very demanding or controlling of them or them of you. Transformation through close relationships.
•Pluto in 8th house• Obsessed with secrets, taboo and sex. Attracted to darker things. Use your knowledge of understanding people’s psychology to better people. Transformation through extreme childhood experiences.
•Pluto in 9th house• Obsessed with higher learning, your beliefs, possibly your religion. Careful in foreign places. By not get fixated on your ideas, Transformed by new adventures.
•Pluto in 10th house• Obsessed with drive to succeed. Transformed through workplace or with general public somehow.
•Pluto in 11th house• Obsessed with change in a larger group setting. Maybe some friends lost to death, creates more awareness for how to live. Transformation comes from friendships.
•Pluto in 12th house• Obsessed with helping humanity. Have the power to do so. Strong psychic tendency to the hidden lives of others and yourself.
Via Zahara star for insp
Young Aretha Franklin by kalinatoneva
RIP
Your music will live forever!
Artist Maurad Chaaba
@skromney
Cute
Bad Neptune
Deception, deceit, and disintegrated boundaries. May I present to you the negative aspects of Neptune in the houses:
1st House: total loss of self, with no definition of who or what you know yourself to be; the identity is uncertain and unstable, which leads to deceptive and duplicitous personas; the person is impressionable, unclear about how they are received.
2nd House: extremes of wealth and poverty; money is an elusive commodity – either it is abundant and divine or scant and unreachable; wasteful and frivolous spending; financial fraud and self-deception; delusions about being saved by money, or saving people with money.
3rd House: a scattered mind and lack of concentration leads to daydreams that distract and deaden awareness of reality; easily hypnotized, lulled by self-concocted fictitious imaginings; shallow mentality with a devotion to useless, esoteric studies.
4th House: early roots are in disarray leading to heavy confusion about one’s own family and upbringing; deep, unshakeable longing to remain protected and safe by parents or parental figures; enmeshment; discontent at home and let down by the reality of the family; unrealistic expectation from domestic life.
5th House: deception in love affairs, which leads to scorned romances and paramours; often aligns with underdogs; over dramatizes life and love, and loses self to glamour due to substantial quixotism; using fantasy, entertainment, and artsy pleasure are used in excess to escape the self.
6th House: ungrounded and untidy, with great difficulty being practical as it pertains to daily-to-dos, which leads to harmful avoidance of work and routine; disorganized living; swamped by health concerns and details; hypersensitive hypochondriac.
7th House: projections and disordered reflections of self; unreal relationship ideals and expectations; tends to glamorize relationships, making one blind to potentially fatal flaws of the partner, leading to codependency; wants to rescue and save spouses and lovers.
8th House: obsession with death, sex and confuse, sometimes scare causing overwhelming emotional wounds, which lead to destructive avoidance and damaging habits; the identity disintegrates into a cesspool of possessive manipulation.
9th House: optimism, though abundant, is unrealistic and hopeless; restless and fervent yearning for some type of ecstasy and/or heaven; personal beliefs can lead to increased vulnerability to religious misleading and philosophical misperception.
10th House: the career and one’s calling is in a constant state confusion, which causes hallucinations about one’s true purpose in life; difficulty finding position in society, and establishing a reputation that is separate from the identity; bewitched by achievements and success.
11th House: finds society deeply unsatisfying and wants to wash away the pains of the world, but cannot separate fact from fiction; strange altruism; continually let down, influenced, and enchanted by unreliable, careless friends and associates; acquaintances drift away and apart.
12th House: the ego is overwhelmed, feeling helpless and vulnerable, protected by nothing and no one; an aversion to the mundane causes a comatose existence riddled with seclusion, self-containment, and make-believe; feelings of isolation and victimization are byproducts of inner loneliness.
Rest is revolutionary | cocoon heart 🦋