Tiniest Fragments

"Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted." -Marchetta

[ceevee5]

[tiniestfragments]

‘Cause sometimes a year has been utter shite but the next year isn’t exactly going to be a fresh start, my petunia petals.

[toujoursdramatique]

a diva is a female version of a hustler (at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

[sosuperawesome]

Wooden Watches by Valerii Danevych

The marquetry technique is used to create pictures from tiny wood veneer pieces for Tiger, Ship, Alps and Chillon Castle, while Nostalgia includes a 3mm mother-of-pearl statuette inside a flying tourbillon skeleton watch.

Find them in Valerii’s Etsy shop

[deepinthesewoods-deactivated201]

♪ We’re clearly soldiers in petticoats ♪ …Happy 131st birthday, Alice Paul! You rock.

[kameliendame]

Jerome Robbins, Afternoon of a Faun

Allegra Kent and Jacques d’Amboise

ph. Martha Swope

[the-bookshop]

[museum-of-artifacts]

Thracian Bronze Head of Seuthes III, Late 4th-Early 3rd Century BC

Found in the Golyamata Kosmatka mound, a little over a half a mile south of the town of Shipka, Bulgaria.

[sakrogoat]

Alphonse Mucha - A Winter Tale

[expressions-of-nature]

by Alex Harley

[lecataste]

[lecataste]

Douglas Preston | The Monster of Florence | 2008

[expressions-of-nature]

by Olivia Mathies

[faerypotter]

Chateau de la Mothe-Chandeniers by Infraredd

More beautiful photos at the link.

[nevahosking]

morning sketches

(snaps to everyone who has the same ikea sheets)

[death-by-elocution]

[luxe-pauvre]

by Jenny Brough for L’Officiel Ukraine

[observando]

[msavignon]

Hashtag for the faculty lockout at Long Island University-Brooklyn

I haven’t seen this reported too much outside of New York so here’s a good summary from The Atlantic: 

Locking out a university’s faculty right before the start of classes seems like a drastic step, but that is just what Long Island University (LIU) did this weekend, when it barred all 400 members of its faculty union from its Brooklyn campus, cut off their email accounts and health insurance, and told them they would be replaced. The move came three days after the union’s contract expired. Now, the faculty is furious, and planning rallies and pickets with support from the American Federation of Teachers. On Tuesday, faculty voted 226 to 10 to reject a proposed contract from LIU, and the faculty senate voiced their support for a vote of no-confidence in the university’s president Kimberly Cline, 135 to 10. Faculty rallied outside the university’s Brooklyn campus Wednesday with a giant inflatable rat as classes began, taught by non-union members.

This is an absurd and unprecedented move by LIU’s administration: classes are in session and the faculty - WHO IS NOT ON STRIKE, btw - has been locked out of the university buildings and cut off from their health insurance. 

You know what the real danger is to higher education? It sure as shit isn’t trigger warnings or the creation of safe spaces. Yet the media’s and the general public’s obsessive focus on trigger warnings (rarely used), safe spaces (again, not that common), and rage about useless humanities majors is all smoke and mirrors to obscure the increasingly terrible conditions for educators and the subsequent impact on individual students and classrooms to university cultures and the college experience at large. 

Higher ed’s #1 threat is the abhorrent treatment of faculty, particularly adjuncts who now make up the majority of faculty in the U.S. Universities blame cuts in funding, legislators blame administrative bloat, and students and faculty get shit, and shit on, in the process. Here are some tweets from #LIUlockout that demonstrate how LIU’s shitty treatment of their employees has affected LIU students. Many students have been awesome in their solidarity for their faculty while getting less-than-awesome experiences after paying tuition: 

The rest of this (rant-y, disorganized) post is going under a cut.

Please consider supporting LIU’s faculty (and the strength of unions in general) by donating to  AFT’s LIU Lockout Solidarity Fund.

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