The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
New Age Thought And a New Me "But a lot of folks carry too many other people’s opinions and thoughts in THEIR own heads."
— Ebony SkyTalker (@sfreynolds) June 6, 2014 One of the joys of therapy is having tiny revelations. After experiencing a tacit rejection from a crush, and realizing a not-so-cute somebody had a crush on me, I started to unravel a bit. My mind began racing, bouncing between the various spiritual ideas that I’d absorbed over the years. Immediately I began to wonder if I was attracting losers because I was a loser. My whole life, only less than desirable individuals had ever expressed interested in me. And although these experiences areyears apart, the theme remains the same: Why do these non-awesome people keep liking me? And why do the people I like—and think are awesome—keep rejecting me? Naturally my therapist asked me why I thought this way, so I explained my understanding of the Law of Attraction, a cornerstone of New Age thought: This idea that the people in our lives are there for a reason, that they’re an embodiment of something we need to deal with or a reflection of the energy we’re putting out into the Universe, or that the interactions we have with people are teachable moments for us [from God] and that we can learn something from every encounter. New Age thought is also impressively individualistic. This idea that we have complete control over our environment (and the people in it) and that we can enact great change by doing something as simple as changing our minds. One of my criticisms of New Age spirituality is its preoccupation with how much the Collective can benefit the Self by turning everyone into a secret message from God (that you now have to both decipher and integrate into your Being). It’s not selfishness per se, but it’s a very myopic way of looking at your life while also burdening yourself with all the responsibility of everything that [ever] happens to you. Suddenly, things don’t happen because the world is chaotic and humans are exercising their free will. Things are happening because you called them into Being and now you have to take responsibility “for what you’ve created." The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Why Are There Two Carolinas and Two Dakotas? Ever wonder why we have two Carolinas and two Dakotas? Did the state name-creators simply run out of ideas? Nope. Turns out in both cases the territories split due to riotous behavior, incompetent governance and a touch of bureaucratic jockeying. A Tale of Two CarolinasEarly French settlers to the Carolina territory were immediately driven out by Native American tribes. The English swooped in, but faired not better: the area was subject to open rebellion, corrupt officials, malaria and smallpox epidemics, and the despicable pirate Blackbeard, who prowled up and down the coast tormenting the landlubbers. (Incidentally, his ship was recently discovered off the coast of North Carolina.) After some failed attempts by British aristocratic family to get the colony under control, King Charles II passed the land off to a different, and equally ineffectual, club of British aristocracy—the Lords Proprietors—who ruled from 1663 to 1729. The Lords Club fought constantly and were unable to make coherent decisions ranging from the role of church, to dealing with the two Indian tribes not keen on British encroachment. The governors they appointed were either deposed by locals, or banished from the territory for alleged crimes. It was a gritty time in the heart of the South. Finally, to make the unruly territory more manageable, the Proprietors focused on governing the northern section—dubbed North Carolina. The two regions were officially recognized as separate colonies in 1729, from which point there was smoother sailing. A Tale of Two DakotasThe bitter winter cold and gruesome violence between White settlers and Sioux Indians made the Dakota territory an unappealing area before the 1874 discovery of gold. At this point, prospectors started pouring in—creating squalid camps, decimating the Black Hills for mining, and escalating hostilities with the Sioux. Railroad construction quickly followed, encouraging a surge of new settlers in the northern part of the territory. Problem: the capital of the time—Yankton—was in the south. Sh*t was getting real in the north, the remote capital was unable to govern effectively, and so northerners declared their own capital—Bismark. Congress capitulated, but still wanted to recognize the authority of the south. So they cut a line dividing the territory into two. But there’s a twist! Newly-minted president and republican, Benjamin Harrison, helped sway Congress to allow the split. Why? To create not one . . . but two Republican majority states. So many historians feel the real reason Congress accepted a division of the Dakotas was for redistricting (still an issue constantly at play today). Because what’s a good story of intrigue without an element of political numerical maneuvering? Image: ThinkStock #Real #Ravishly #HighOnHistory #States #Carolina #Dakota Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Visnu's Dream Machine I hereby solemnly swear this is not another essay about body image and self-esteem. It’s more of an existential crisis and I definitely talk about death. Lately, my eyes somewhat glaze over when I see memes about “real” bodies, Photoshop, and beauty. Not because it’s not a thing, so much, as I think it just misses my real question about bodies, which is: What the *#!@ is this whole body thing all about, anyway? What is going on with bodies? Why do I have one? What is it? Whaaat? The writer's self-portrait. Am I seriously the only adult that thinks it’s bizarre that we have bodies? I know babies know what I am talking about. Watching them constantly re-discovering things like fingers and faces is hilarious. Babies clearly don’t expect to encounter them, bodies: still getting used to them. Bodies baffle babies, and me along with them.
Somewhere after that stage of life, though, people seem to stop questioning the body thing. Well, I haven’t stopped. Kids for example definitely seem more accepting of bodies than babies. Sure, everybody poops, they say, I have a book about it. What’s the big deal? That’s just the way it works. And I am the weirdo grown-up left alone going, yeah, but whaaat? How weird is that, that everybody poops? Everybody?! Everybody POOPS! That’s so weird! We ALL do the SAME poop thing together, ONE BIG HUMAN POOP FAMILY! It’s bizarre to me that human beings, for all our questions and art forms and inventions and winter Olympics and religions and dreams, boil down to creatures of bodies. As a friend recently put it, we just eat, poop, copulate, and die. For some (I’m looking at you, religion and popular culture and longing), this is a problem. The body thing isn’t enough the way it is, or it’s simply bad. Bodies become the obstacle between us and purity/eternity/beauty/glory/whatever-we-think-is-better, an obstacle between us and the way we think it ought to be. And yet we have to have a body because, well, we just do. So our relationship with our body becomes complicated. We have to fix it. Discipline it. Starve its appetites, sometimes, or fence them in safely. But, dear god, we must control and dominate it lest it dominate us. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Cottage Full of Wicca By Sarah Schwister QuailBellMagazine.com Last May, I ran through the fog and storms of the Dartmoor of Britain, barefoot. I studying abroad through a two-week program my school offered, and this book geek took a trip that led through her through a world of fairy tales, literature, and wonder. Like any good story, the trip brought its own shock and astonishment in unlikely places, such as Bocastle, Cornwall’s very own Museum of Witchcraft, which boasts the world’s largest selection of witchcraft relics and artifacts in the world.
Rain flickered against our red floral umbrella as we walked through Bocastle, a beautiful town nestled between jarring mountains covered in garish grass. The creek muttered in the freezing rain, and my group was shivering from our wet trekking of Tintagel. Despite previewing every trip location in class the previous semester, the white cottage tucked outside of town made our jaws drop. It was, of course, the Museum of Witchcraft. A rather distant woman halfheartedly welcomed us in, as some of the other students cautiously wandered in. Discomfort floated around the group as some students were just plain not okay with this portion of our trip. The museum itself was stuffed as thick as the text in a dictionary. The first thin hallway that led us into the bowels of the house almost seemed self-mocking. It was full of kitschy Halloween decorations, medieval depictions of witches, and more than one nod to the witches of Macbeth. The museum's founder, Cecil Williamson, had met his fair share of witch skeptics, and tried to coax an open mind out of every visitor the moment they step into his museum. Starting off with the familiar helped accomplish that. Though the museum opened in 1959, the year the ban on the practice of witchcraft was lifted (before later moving to its current location in 1960), it wasn’t Williamson's first attempt at curating a collection and telling the story of witchcraft. Initially, he tried to open a museum in 1947 in Stratford-Upon-Avon (the birthplace of William Shakespeare) but was met with local opposition and was forced to abandon those plans. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Oscarbation By Zack Budryk QuailBellMagazine.com There’s a scene in the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder where Robert Downey Jr.’s character, an acclaimed, award-winning “serious” actor, talks to Ben Stiller’s character, a past-his-prime action star, about Stiller’s attempt to break into prestige pictures, a critical and commercial flop called Simple Jack in which Stiller’s character plays a cognitively-disabled farmhand.
“Everybody knows you never go full retard,” Downey Jr. says, comparing Oscar-winning performances like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man to Sean Penn’s unrewarded turn in I Am Sam. The scene was met with outcry from disability advocacy groups, but in context it’s making a very important point: to the Hollywood powers-that-be, the disabled are often thought of as people second and opportunities to demonstrate their range first. Over the years, in addition to the performances mentioned, we’ve seen able-bodied Daniel Day-Lewis playing a man with cerebral palsy in My Left Foot, the sighted Ben Affleck playing a blind man in Daredevil and the neurotypical Hugh Dancy playing autistic in both Adam and the NBC series Hannibal. This year alone we’ll also get Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and Steve Carrell as schizophrenic millionaire John DuPont. And then there’s Hollywood’s other favorite form of disabled erasure, the “metaphor” route: characters like the Incredible Hulk, Elsa from Frozen and Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph all have conditions that are pretty obviously analogous to real-life disabilities or chronic illnesses, but because they aren’t real conditions, the narrative doesn’t assume any of the risk of discussing those conditions. Similarly, the producers of the TV series Bones and The Big Bang Theory have acknowledged that their main characters display symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome, but said they are unwilling to assume the responsibility of accurately writing an explicitly autistic character. Comparatively, Diane Kruger, who plays an autistic detective on FX’s The Bridge, has consulted extensively with actual autistic people (we can, in fact, speak your human tongue) to improve her performance. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Pro-Beatles, Anti-Boys, and Utterly Insane I have been homeschooled all my life, so I know nothing of the horror and trauma of public middle school. I honestly do not have any moments where I was really embarrassed (though I did go through a phase where I got embarrassed whenever my dad talked about his imaginary “corn cob jacket” in public). I do, however, have my own tales of middle-school-age strangeness.
When I was eleven and twelve, I was a judgmental and slightly insane girl. I had a close-knit group of friends, and I was strongly opposed to building new friendships. I was anti-boy and anti-“girly." This meant, to me, wearing T-shirts and jeans all the time, being extremely opposed to the color pink, and making fun of all the boys I knew. I always appeared to be very, very set in my opinions. To be honest, though, my opinions could be changed by one word from someone I admired. I did what I thought was cool, or what I thought would make me fit into my group of friends more. I didn’t realize that I already fit in without even trying—I thought that I had to work to maintain an aura of coolness. I would imitate what any person I looked up to did. I would wear the same clothes as she did, I would listen to the same music, get excited for the same movies, and be interested in the same subjects. I think that all of my friends did that, too, and since we all imitated each other, it meant we were all very alike. We were, in a way, vaguely annoying pre-teen clones. There were four of us, with a fluctuating fifth, and we all had the same style: Beatles shirts, jeans, Converse, headbands, and ratty friendship bracelets. We each had a pair of jeans that we had all of our acquaintances sign in black Sharpie. Mine were bedazzled, thanks to my mother and father. We had imaginary cats. They lived in imaginary houses on top of our heads, and they had copious numbers of kittens which we shipped off to Australia directly from the Interstate. We loved Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, and were obsessed with the Percy Jackson and Fablehaven books. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Devils Deux If I had to guess what is one of the most common subjects people choose to make movies about, it's murder. It's not as common as love, purpose, change, and other similar topics about life, but murder is one that comes up regularly. There's a fascination in watching people die on film, whether it be teenagers getting killed by monsters, soldiers dying in the heat of battle, or revenge killing. Some films choose to detail the process of killing an individual, showing all the complications that can occur from killing the person and what happens to the killer afterwards. This is something that goes back much further than Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and is the basis of films like Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
Diabolique, or Les Diaboliques as it was originally titled, is a French psychological thriller from 1955, and shows what happens when two women plot a murder. Christina (Véra Clouzot) runs a boarding school with her awful husband Michel (Paul Meurisse). Christina and Nicole (Simone Signoret), Michel's mistress and a teacher at the school, decide to rid themselves of the abusive jerk by plotting a murder. They prey upon Michel's chauvinism and manage to concoct what they believe is a perfect murder, one where the two of them will have an alibi and that will most likely rule his death as an accident. Of course, something goes wrong. Diabolique was definitely a film of its time and resembles many similar films of the era. It's very much Hitchcockian in its use of shadows, crime, and duality to create a story, but is still very much a French film. The main trio do represent a lot of what was going on in the changing attitudes of the time. Christina, being raised in a convent, is the more traditional woman, one who wears her hair in braids and is always thinking about what her actions will do to her soul. Michel is the pompous chauvinist who thinks his word is law and tries to control women. Nicole is a more modern woman, one who chooses to take charge and do things that go against the system. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Joy of Home By Kate Hickey QuailBellMagazine.com Photo by Kate Hickey London doesn’t have much of a skyline, but I could just see the Shard from my window.
I’ve always been a bit of an amateur adventurer, a toned down adrenaline junkie. I like thrill rides and taking some risks. I was lucky as a kid; my parents took me all sorts of places. I went to Europe first when I was twelve. I think that might have been where I really got the bug for moving around. I’d been to a few places around the States before that: Florida to visit grandparents, Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks in North Carolina. I’d been to the West Coast, to San Francisco and Phoenix, Arizona. I actually don’t remember the first time I rode a plane. But when we went to Europe, I really began to understand what traveling is all about. Funnily enough, everyone speaks German in Germany. We visited my sister in Berlin, stopped off in London to see a West End show, and were home in under two weeks. I vividly remember ambling along a street in London, looking at storefronts. Looking back, I now know that it was Regent Street near Oxford Street, down a bit towards Piccadilly Circus. In high school, I did travelled fairly often. My sister (same one) moved to New York City, so I visited her there a good amount. My other sister moved to Colorado, so I got to spend some time there as well. I traveled with my high school’s marching band, as well. And barely two weeks after I graduated high school, I was on another international flight, this time to Austria and, again, Germany with my German teacher. I saw old, beautiful architecture and old, beautiful objects. Everywhere you look in Europe, the buildings and the culture and even the streets you walk on have a story to tell. It’s ancient in a way we don’t understand in the United States. I ate real schnitzel in Vienna. I walked up an unbelievably steep hill and looked out over Salzburg. I experienced the Germany/England World Cup soccer game in Munich. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Girls Gone Green! Remember that Victorian illness “hysteria” and how it could only be cured by the vibrator-wielding skills of a trained Victorian medical professional? I mean, I guess I can sort of see what they were getting at since the curative powers of orgasms have been well-documented by science. What I don’t understand about that extinct diagnosis is why they thought it was caused by a “wandering womb," implying that all it needed was an orgasm to be put in its place. Just think, an orgasm a day could keep the doctor and the blues away! (So long as she didn’t do it herself, that is.)
According to the Victorians, orgasms not only kept the blues away, but they also kept the greens away. Women with green-tinged skin and a fiesty attitude were actually in dire need of relieving themselves of the excess “female sperm” building up inside of them. The Victorians thought that overwhelmed "blue" ovaries caused green skin in women. The blockage caused fatigue, a lack of menstruation, increased appetite, indigestion, headaches, and all of the other symptoms that are caused by hypochromic anemia. Oh, and let’s of course not forget insanity, the very same thing that the medical world said comorbidly occurred with regular menstruation as well. The Victorian definition of female “insanity” included being disagreeable, outspoken, rude, alcoholic, senile, highly emotional, or any other behavior that deviated from how they thought women “should” act. Even today, a lot of mental illness is culturally defined in this manner. When a woman “went green,” medical professionals claimed that it was caused by celibacy that would normally be relieved by a lawfully wedded husband. Thus, the treatment options were marriage, prescribed masturbation, pelvic massages, or clitoral surgery that the family kept under wraps to protect the young woman’s reputation and chances of getting married. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Ashley in Brooklyn Ashley and I reconnected in Brooklyn years after we studied with Jim Scherzi, a photographer up in Syracuse, New York. We blended clothing pieces into the patterns of the street and shared a similar eye for color and punk fashion. #Real #Fashion #Photography #Model #Ashely #Brooklyn #Tattoos #TonyWashington
Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Return Somewhere up the ridge, the homestead's 46 acres melt into forest overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. Dirt roads veer at a lung-burning angle toward the crest, carving ochre scars through the madrone and chinkapin. I climb upward alone, through the June heat, hearing nothing but the occasional insect whirring in the grass and the gusting afternoon wind.
The homestead is called Gypsy Cafe, home to Barb and Susie, a couple in their forties. I am here through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, an organization that connects farms all over the world with volunteers, who work and learn in exchange for room and board. I came to WWOOFing (as it is called) through word-of-mouth. Burnt-out on city life, aching for connection to land, I dropped $30 on a year-long membership and browsed the online directory, searching not for traditional commercial farms but for intentional communities: queer, feminist, cooperative. I had my ideals; I wanted to see how they played out in real life. Barb, with her previous partner Tina, bought the land in 2008, joining the network of lesbian-owned land in the valleys of southern Oregon. This was a new world I stepped into, a world of which I knew nothing beyond a vague mention of lesbian separatism in my college women-in-politics classes. The women I met in southern Oregon outstripped me in both age and knowledge—of themselves, of their history, of the land. I came out as bisexual when I was fifteen; I'd known I was different since the age of eight, looking at a Star Wars picture book after school in Boys and Girls Club. Leia. The gold bikini. Possibly the most cliché way my previously unknown sexuality could have announced itself. I had a mad crush on a classmate, made moony eyes at him during crossing guard duty outside our elementary school, but suddenly I knew my interest in boys was not the end of it. But even after coming out in high school, after countless mad crushes directed at both boys and girls, I dated only men, with varying degrees of interest and success. I struggled with my sense of identity, with feeling like a fraud, or a traitor—to whom, I wasn't sure. My queerness was a history I could not excavate, an archaeological mystery without a carbon date. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Unrequited Vintage Love Dear ModCloth, I have a confession to make: I don't like you or even like like you. I love you. I know, I'm sick. But isn't it your fault? "Unique and cute"—that's how you brand yourself. I prefer "addictive" and "diabolical." The devil's perfectly flounced darling. You cast a spell on me or maybe you forced some pill down my throat while diverting me with a colorful scarf that reminded me of picnics in Paris, I'm not sure, but suddenly I have no impulse control and my cart is full because you have "frocks in every color for every occasion." You even have a frock for hugging your cat while it dies a poetic death on the porch one July afternoon. I know it because you told me so, because your names are divinely descriptive. The average department store tag describes a dress as "dark blue," but you'll call the same one something like "Midnight Star Party" or "Dusk in Florence." Who can resist a star party or a Florence evening? That's what makes you so perfect: Your clever/sexy, sexy/clever word play. Dare I say...your marketing. But that's really not all. There has to be more. I can't admit that it was your marketing alone that grabbed me. After all, I'm an independent thinker, a free spirit. That's why I shop at ModCloth and not the same big box retailers as everyone else. I go to warehouse parties in Brooklyn and do everything with so much ironic flourish it's batty. There's a ukulele in my closet, I swear. I almost took it out and wrote you a love song, but I thought I'd write you a letter instead. Oh, wow. This love letter has become a stream of consciousness, hasn't it? I'm some fancy fool at my desk, scribbling away about my ModCloth passion while wearing a Peter Pan collar. I'm even doing it with a plume. A real plume. Like the one printed on my dress. The dress I bought on ModCloth. I have to keep punctuating these realizations because they are just that life-changing. This letter has allowed me to understand so many things about myself, just the way my plume-printed dress has made me realize who I am. It's shown me my soul. That's what a real dress does. ModCloth, I know you understand. You more than understand. You taught me the way to dress, the way to think, the way to be. You are my fashion guru, ModCloth, and my greatest love. But I know I am just one of many admirers. You cannot possibly see in me what I see in you. I am but a flawed indie butterfly girl and you...you are ModCloth, a vision, a muse, a goddess. May you reign forever. I shall watch you with bated breath from afar, afar, afar. Adieu, adieu, adieu. Overflowing with love but not money, Your Faithful Shopper Disclaimer: The writer has actually never bought anything from ModCloth.com but fights the urge to do so on a regular basis. #Real #ModCloth #VintageShopping #VintageFashion #VintageClothing #VintageStyle #OnlineShopping #BadHabits Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Talking to an Octopus I never felt invincible. I knew life was too unpredictable to think otherwise. Even in my youth, I could only see my body as a magnet for disaster, particularly when gravity was concerned. At three years of age, I jumped into the deep end of a pool by accident. Instead of floating, I sank. Fortunately, another body noticed me and pulled me up from the water. At the age of four, I lost my footing in a shower and split the top of my head open. A man in a Delaware clinic had to stich the skin back up. Two years later, I ran across a quilt spread out on a hardwood floor and fell. When I got up, I had cut the other end of my head. It is amazing how much blood the chin holds. By the time I needed to take my first Holy Communion, my body intruded again and spiritual concerns had to compromise with it. A few weeks prior I had broken my arm playing kickball.
Along with many other nicks, sprains, scrapes, and cuts, these countless ills might have pushed me to seek something within myself which was invincible, or at least was whole and could not be broken. I remember sitting on the bed in the guestroom and staring at the mirror across from me. I might have been in the room for punishment, or I might have been bored. My childhood was filled with boredom. The mirror was a large, antique monstrosity, like a rhinoceros made of wood and glass. Looking at my brown eyes, I reflected on my reflection and thought about what I was looking at. At that moment, I had a “meta” experience. I was feeling beyond my senses, observing myself not in my body but somehow apart from it, like a puppeteer under the skin and bone. The one pulling the strings was the real me. Everything else was just an appearance given to fluctuation, chaos, and decay. Before I could become completely lost in the soul, puberty pulled me back into the body. I had to acknowledge its presence because so much was changing inside and outside of me. The constant assemblage of organs and sinew I had grown accustomed to was gone. Without my consent, the body went ahead and turned me into an adult. My voice grew deeper, hair started sprouting in new places, and I added a few inches to my height. Certain involuntary petrifications and emissions also took place and were noted. Of all these developments, Hair was the most striking. Where there was once smooth skin, now there were dark curls and stubble. If it was on my face, it had to be cut. While I was used to haircuts, these only took place on a seasonal basis. Shaving required constant vigilance and took place in increasing intervals, moving from a bi-weekly, to a weekly, and finally daily ritual. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
America's Most Womanizing PresidentIf asked to conjure the image of a lustful U.S. president, most of us would probably picture one William Jefferson Clinton. But soon-to-be-released letters remind us that Slick Willie is practically a monk compared to our 29th president, Warren G. Harding. He died in office in 1923, after serving just over two years in the office. But Harding seems to have made the most of his short time—at least in terms of presidential hanky panky. A Sordid Presidency Harding was no stranger to scandal. Having won the 1920 presidential race with the largest popular vote margin in presidential history—based on a Republican platform of moderation and independence from European affairs (which didn’t pan out for too long)—Harding wasted no time getting embroiled in controversy. His repertoire includes a number of high-profile cases of corruption and bribery. When not involved in sketchy political scenarios, Harding was apparently busy accruing a long list of mistresses. About a thousand pages of love letters from Harding to one of his lovers will be released next month by the Library of Congress (got to give it to him, that’s some serious extra-marital dedication). The library received the letters from the president’s nephew, who insisted on a 50-year period of secrecy that has finally expired. A String of Women Harding’s affair with the letter’s recipient (and friend of Harding’s wife), Claire Phillips, began in 1905 and endured through the next 15 years of his time in politics. Though the relationship reportedly ended just before Harding’s ascension to the presidency, he was back to his old tricks once in the Oval Office. A former campaign director for Harding alleged they got it on in a variety of patriotic places, including a White House coat closet. And Harding is thought to have had at least two other long-term mistresses, as well as “assorted other flings” including a newspaper employee, chorus girls, and “a string of ‘New York Women.’” How did he find enough hours in the day? As for the object of those (hopefully) juicy letters? Phillips made out alright in the aftermath of the affair, successfully blackmailing the Republican Party and winning a monthly stipend and jobs for relatives. Which makes her decidedly savvier—if also more depraved—than poor Monica Lewinsky. ***This piece first appeared in Ravishly and was republished here with permission. *** #Real #Ravishly #HighOnHistory #History #Feminism #President #Harding #Clinton Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Make it happen, shutterbugs and cinéastes! #Real #FilmFestival #FilmCompetition #DocumentaryFilm #ShortFilms #ExperimentalFilms #AnimatedFilms #RVA #Arts Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
It's not the merkin that's evil; it's how you use it. Ah, the days of Queen Victoria…the pre-Romantic era romanticized through the lens of modernity, shrouded in its own mystique of a signature culture so different from our own. The most radical contrasts between then and now lies within the realm of beauty ideals and sexuality, namely female sexuality. Rumors about the Victorians' paradoxical prudishness still abound: Society at large condemned masturbation as unhealthy and sinful unless performed by a trained professional, someone who knew how to properly operate a vibrator.
Still, despite publicly stigmatizing female sexuality, the Victorians also secretly reveled in it and regularly produced porn extreme even by today's standards. While I believe in the healing power of orgasms, the Victorians probably would’ve been better off doing the job themselves instead of forcing their genitals into contraptions that would qualify as torture devices today. Embracing DIY masturbation might have rescued them from the perils of turning to one of the most flourishing industries of that day: prostitution, the kind of sex work that flourished outside of a medical office with a dildo-wielding doctor and regularly returned people to it. Although the media glamorizes Victorian women as though they were animated versions of the sophisticated portraits of their time, the reality was quite different. Most women didn’t resemble the elegant subjects of oil paintings. Women didn’t tend to wear much makeup. Shaving wasn’t much of a part of their beauty norms. If you were a woman, your pubic garden was free to blossom. That is, if you weren’t a sex worker. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Teenage Love, Universal Fears, and Wonderwall Here’s a show that’s been flying under the radar: My Mad Fat Diary. Starring Sharon Rooney and featuring Ian Hart, this show chronicles the small-town misadventures of a gang of English teenagers in the 1990s. It has everything you’d expect from a show driven by teen hormones: first love, social standing, schoolwork, fear, sex, drinking, and laughing until your sides hurt. But the dark underbelly of this show, the real thing that hooks you and keeps you watching, is the knowledge that the main character has just spent four months in a psychiatric hospital.
Frankly, I can’t quite understand why this show hasn’t become wildly popular in a similar fashion to Orange is the New Black, as these two shows unashamedly take on difficult topics and dig their teeth in the complexities of the people who live within those narratives. Both of them remain relatively upbeat and undeniably charming; both are equally difficult to categorize as a drama or a comedy based on how similar they are to real life, which (as I’m sure you’ve noticed) is never always a drama or always a comedy. And they’re both based on the real lives of real women who wrote real books: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman and My Mad, Fat Teenage Diary by Rae Earl. This show opens a dialogue about body image and body confidence alongside discussions about mental illness and eating disorders while still maintaining a youthful, fun, reckless feel. Rae experiences problems with boys, her best friend Chloe, and her mother at the same time she deals with binge eating, her friend’s anorexia, and the excruciating pain of facing all of her fears about herself in therapy. The integration of the two extremes of light-hearted and serious topics remind us of the feeling that all of those things seem equally important and can stop the earth turning. Along with the hard-hitting issues of mental and physical wellness that this show discusses, My Mad Fat Diary goes into the complexities of sexuality and all that entails: questioning, coming out, homophobia, both personal and inter-personal acceptance, and pride. It touches on the topics of abortion, a parent remarrying, sexual independence, unhealthy relationships, and self-esteem. And it delves into the intricate issue of how young girls relate to each other, how gender and gender performance affect how adolescent girls interact with each other. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Watching Casablanca for the Third Time Casablanca is one of the greatest movies ever made and anyone interested in cinema should watch it. It's strange to come out and say something so authoritative in a review, but it's a genuine response to be had with Michael Curtiz's 1941 masterpiece. It's a film that remains in the public conscious over seventy years after it was released. So many images, lines, plot points, and people involved in the film have survived the test of time. It's truly an amazing film and one of the most important ones to come out ever.
I guess I should explain why I'm so drawn to this film. I mentioned in my review of "Singin' in the Rain" that the summer film series hosted by Virginian-Pilot film critic Mal Vincent at the Naro Cinemas in Norfolk, Virginia was an annual event I tried to attend every year. This year's series began with Casablanca as the opening film. At the event, Vincent admitted to being surprised by the turn out (the theater sold out of seats), and was even impressed that there would be a lot of young people at the show. To him, such an obvious and classic film seemed like such a strange choice that no one would be interested in seeing. To his credit, it's a fair assumption to make, but why wouldn't people want to see Casablanca in theaters? This is a movie that everyone knows about. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and has been featured on numerous lists of the best American films and the best films ever made. Wearing a fedora and a trench coat equates having an air of Humphrey Bogart coolness. Saying farewell to a lover while standing near an airplane is considered one of the saddest departures a couple can have. A toast is preceded by the phrase “Here's looking at you, kid.” It's simply one of the most memorable films ever. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Rock Your Socks By Deniz Zeynep QuailBellMagazine.com Aside from writing, wearing textiles is my manner of interpreting the world around me. Cut. Fabric. Fit. I am at my most comfortable when I am sitting on my bed, Rumi snoring next to me (my pup partner in crime), while words flow out of me like a Georgette skirt that billows over my ankles every time I step (courtesy of my fashion-muse mother). I seem to have inherited Mom's penchant for light fabrics and neutral tones. Classic. Timeless. Being able to find new ways to describe the world around me seeps from the page and into the breezy silk trousers I have acquired for the summer. There are countless blogs, television shows, magazines, and overall commentary on how to be. They range from shamelessly commercial to vehicles for artistic expression. In regards to the commercial interpretation of how—what's in, what's not—it's easy to forget that they are just opinions. Following a trend, whether it be a train of thought or those low-crotch, baggy pants (still don't get it), is mindless. Droning. Bzzz. What's most important is acknowledging these new ideas. Do they fit? Maybe not and somehow the terms "unique" and "weird" and "quirky" seem to be used. Boring. If they fit? Well, homeslice, you just found a great piece to add to your bumpin' style-collage. Style pervades everything—how you speak, stroll, scribble, sneeze—how you BE(E), basically. Bzzz. Too often we are afraid to be who we are. We're only humans. Fallible earthlings with enough intelligence, ego, and passion to both save or destroy ourselves. It starts from youth—you're integrated into a micro-cosmic bubble of bureaucracies with your peers and the person with the strongest opinion (right or wrong, it doesn't matter) sets the tone for how things should be. What to say. When to say it. We end up squeezing ourselves into a mold the way Cinderella's step-sisters are squeezing their feet into a slipper that only hugs their toe. Before you know it, you're cutting off toes and heels just to fit. Good luck walking. This isn't so much a rant as it is a drop of encouragement for all you Fledglings to rock the style you were born with and that you create as you go. There is no right way to live. No right way to dress. No right way to think, create, or feel. As long as you feel like the 100% version of you, who is to say it's wrong? (Well, aside from crossing over to the realm of evil). And think about it, the more comfortable you feel with yourself, the further you'll go. The easier you will find your calling ::cue Dr. Seuss' Oh, the Places You'll Go!:: I saw a quote somewhere that said "You are your home." So dress up your drapes, water your plants, paint your shutters—be the most bitchin' house on the block. Boom, boom. #Real #Authenticity #RealSelf #WearWhatYouWant #AntiFashionSlaves #RealFashionAdvice #YouDoYou #Life Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Invaders and Wild Neighbors
By RayRiggs
QuailBellMagazine.com
Illustration by Garrett Riggs.
I grew up in a bird sanctuary town on Florida’s Gulf Coast. All sorts of bird species lived there from the tiny hummingbirds and sandpipers to songbirds and the mighty birds of prey. Many other birds followed the pattern of the humans who simply wintered there. Human “Snowbirds” and Canada geese could be spotted arriving at about the same time each year.
My own family started out as Snowbirds before becoming transplants from the Midwest. My grandparents led the permanent migration in the mid-1960s. They bought a modest concrete block home that was a mid-century modern classic with terrazzo floors, a low-slung roof, and simple clean lines. They even had the avocado recliners and a deep gold couch that would make Don Draper weep. That utilitarian house could have been anywhere in America were it not for the sculpted seahorse on the front and the tall palm tree in the yard that practically screamed, “Hello! This is the subtropics!” Henry was my grandmother's first neighbor in sunny Florida. Henry visited with her every day—always in the mornings and sometimes again in the evening if his day's fishing had not gone well. Henry arrived at the back door every morning, and if he didn't find my grandmother on the porch, he would go from window to window, peeking in and looking for her. If she was in the kitchen or living room and looked up to see Henry gazing in, my grandmother would laugh. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Becoming a Ghost By Jon Bolduc QuailBellMagazine.com It is a summer morning. We are cooking breakfast. I get lost in my own kitchen on a regular basis. In my own domestic kingdom,I have trouble finding the right spatula, or the vinegar, or the baking soda. Helping you cook inevitably becomes “watching you cook.” “Hey Jon, can you get me the butter?” Yes, I believe that I can. But I am overconfident in my ability to navigate the interior of your fridge. I am lost. Milk in the front high shelf, soda on the sides, leftovers in the middle—but where is the butter? I ask you.
“Next to the milk.” I’m still not seeing it. You come over, reach around me, and grab it without even looking. For you, it's muscle memory. “Oh,” I say. “That’s where the eggs were.” I close the door of the fridge. I glance at the cold white front. The front of a fridge tells a story, in patchwork. A frayed picture of your sister on the tee-ball team. Your brother smiling for his seventh grade school picture. A bill for an oil change. A chemo appointment reminder. An invoice, bold, red, blaring. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Sundays Sundays are for sleeping in until you've avoided the sun long enough. Sundays are for snuggling with whomever shares your bed, even if (or especially if) that is a dog or teddy bear. Sundays are for putting on the soft, the faded, and the comfortable. Sundays are for taking a shower if you feel like it, but probably taking a bath instead and in the evening, too. Sundays are for bursting into the kitchen with an appetite and cooking exactly what you want to eat. Sundays are for staring out the window and watching the birds peck at worms or seeds. Sundays are for taking a walk with no destination and certainly no pedometer. Sundays are for reading on the porch while you drink your favorite drink. Sundays are for watching the movies and TV shows you don't care if anyone else is watching. Sundays are for calling faraway friends and telling stories and listening to theirs. Sundays are for writing letters and postcards and thank you cards. Sundays are for thinking and dreaming and not having to be anywhere. #Real #Sundays #PassingTheTime #DoWhatYouWant #LazyDays #PerfectDays #WeekendFun #WeekendPower #Weekends Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Fixing a Safe Plate By Gillan Ludlow QuailBellMagazine.com Over the last two years, I have encountered a variety of reactions from strangers, co-workers and friends involving my constantly-evolving diet.
At the age of 21, I was diagnosed with food allergies. Now let's shutdown a common misconception. You CAN develop food allergies at any age—you don't have to be a kid. You are more likely to grow out of your food allergies if you are born with them, however, it's not like food allergies are restricted to a certain age. I am not a leper. I am not in any way, shape or form considered contagious. You will not die if you touch me. So please spare me your looks of pity and sympathy and certainly don't offer me condolenscences for my restricted list of foods. Intrigued yet? Almost three years ago, I tested positive for corn, egg, cantaloupe, and banana. I dismissed banana and cantaloupe because I didn't really like those foods to begin with. I was neutral about eggs because I could make subsitutions for those especially when baking. But corn? I was heart-broken because I loved corn. Fresh air-popped popcorn, homemade creamed corn, corn on the cob, grits. You name it. Most people think that when I say I am allergic to corn, that it's really JUST corn. But let's set the record straight. I am allergic to high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, maize, malodextrin. Basically any food, spice, baking necessity, additive, preserative, and anything else you can think of that derives from corn, I am allergic to. Eating large consumptions of corn products lead to asthma attacks, which are usually non-responsive to asthma medication. So I either have to go to the emergency room or ride out the asthma attack and hope for the best. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Tale of The Ugliest Vase and Why It MattersBy Ghia Vitale QuailBellMagazine.com Once upon a time, one of my aunt’s pupils presented her with a gift. Since the carefully-wrapped package contained some token of appreciation, she was all the more ready to curl her lips into a smile and coo some expression of gratitude. After all, it was the very last day of school and this student cared enough to buy a gift for her, the elementary school teacher who had mentored him for a whole school year. The timing itself indicated that there was no undertone of obligation, nor was the child brown-nosing his way into a better grade.
Despite her readiness to rejoice at the sight of the gift, my aunt was stunned by what she saw. It took every morsel of will to keep her face from contorting in disgust and feign admiration for an item that would become iconic in our family: The Ugliest Vase. It wasn’t just any ordinary vase, either. It was, in my aunt’s own words, “The ugliest vase to ever have the nerve to exist." My aunt, with all her infinite grace, was most likely able to swallow the vomit crawling up her throat, but that didn’t change the fact that she now possessed the most grotesque ceramic vessel in the entirety of existence. That unseemly day revolutionized Christmas gift-giving in a way that my other aunts and grandparents had never anticipated. Alongside some fake moldy peaches, The Ugliest Vase would remain clandestine among an assortment of other wrapped boxes and stuffed bags until its predestined recipient finally uncovered it. For the record, my aunt is highly allergic to peaches. It remained in the same box in which she had received it, the same one in which it was purchased. The black box read “VASE” across the front of the box, as though the pictures of it on the front were not obvious enough to convey its “species” to prospective customers. On the side of the box, the words “HIGH QUALITY” and “HAND PAINTED” were printed in a fashion so conspicuous, it was as though the manufacturer was aware of its aesthetic deficiency and trying to will potential buyers into thinking otherwise. Somehow, The Ugliest Vase was lost for a short time, but my cousins and I knew what it was when the heirloom reappeared and elicited a cacophony of ecstatic yowls from our elders. By looking at the next photo, you relieve me of all rights and responsibility for your health in the aftermath of your speculation. Beware and behold the abomination that has haunted the outskirts of my family's Christmas trees for decades: The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Washington WowGuilty pleasures are a must and mine inhabit the realm of fabulous fashion blogs. Fashion blogs let me dream about something other than travel and world peace because, hey, everyone needs variety. One blogger I've recently been stalking is the elusive E of District of Chic. Based in Washington, D.C., E photographs and writes about her eclectic-beach-resort-but-still-somehow-bohemian wardrobe and—bonus!—food, too. So if you ever doubted D.C.'s fashion and culinary prowess, watch E in action. I emailed her a few questions on my mind and she took it from there: • How does Prince inspire you to dress everyday?
The question is "How does he not?" Jk, I just love Prince. Social norms really don't apply to him. I aspire to be such a deity. • OK, seriously. How did you come up with your blog's name? And what about the quirky illustration? Is that yours or did someone else do it? Well, when I started the blog over 5 years ago, D.C. wasn't really thought of as a particularly chic place, but it is! It's so much more than stuffy politicians and Capitol Hill. It's very culturally diverse and stylish and I wanted to reflect that in my blog title. The quirky illustration is mine actually! I like doing weird 2D landscapes with weird little things flying around the background. • What's your grand philosophy on shopping and dining? Try a bit of everything and never be afraid venture out of your comfort zone! • Could you give our readers one fashion tip and one cooking tip? For fashion, I would always encourage you to buy what you love, not what's trendy. The pieces I get the most wear out of, year after year, are unusual and not necessarily what everyone else was buying at the time. And this might go against the D.C. grain, but many of my favorite pieces are not the most practical. Don't shy away from unusual prints and colors if you think they're beautiful! For cooking, it's cliché, but you really can't go wrong with buying fresh and local. And get The Victory Garden Cookbook. It's the best reference guide to growing, buying, and cooking fresh produce. |
|