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Beau of the Week: September 24th By Tykeya O'Neil & Sidney Shuman QuailBellMagazine.com Please cast your vote by Friday at midnight. The winner will be announced Saturday and also featured in an original Quail Bell Photo Tale! Click to set custom HTML The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Belle of the Week: September 24th By Tykeya O'Neil & Lindsey Story QuailBellMagazine.com Please cast your vote by Friday at midnight EST. The winner will be announced Saturday and also featured in an original Quail Bell Photo Tale! The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Newsboys in Richmond, VirginiaBy QB Archivist QuailBellMagazine.com Little cuties on the corner, selling newspapers to ensure their families have enough pork and grits that week. Aren't you glad you didn't have to work so hard, so young? The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
3 Grad Programs for the Renaissance WomanBy Christine Stoddard QuailBellMagazine.com Having a STEM career does not necessarily mean wearing a hard hat or handling test tubes on a daily basis. It could mean launching products like Gurl.com or even interactive art for theatre and film. According to an August USA Today article, several colleges have recently made efforts to encourage women to pursue STEM careers. These efforts range from lunch-and-listen seminars to scholarship awards to girls-only retreats. American Enterprise Institute scholar, Christina Hoff Sommers, was quoted for saying, “There may be something about [certain math-and science-related] fields that are just less interesting to most women. No one is saying they're not as talented, but they have different aspirations.” Some professors suggest ushering young women into STEM majors by providing them with social opportunities for their projects. Ran Libeskind-Hadas, chair of the Computer Science department at Harvey Mudd College in California, was quoted as saying, “[for women] seeing the applications of computing to society is really important, and seeing applications of computing to things they use in their day-to-day lives is important.” This urge to connect coincides with Baron-Cohen's idea that women possess empathizing tendencies. On that note, the solution to attracting more women to STEM fields may therefore lie in giving academic programs more creative, humanitarian slants. In other words, catering to the Renaissance woman: one who excels in both the sciences and the arts.
Only a handful of universities offer graduate programs that combine STEM fields with artistic disciplines. Three stand-outs include NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, MIT's Media Lab, and the newer VCU da Vinci Center for Product Innovation. All three programs foster students in their efforts to be inventive and socially-minded with their interactive media projects that range from mobile apps to light installations. Yet each program is unique in its approach to supporting imaginative technology: The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
We're taking subscriptions in just a wee bit...Quail Bell Express #2, our print 'zine, comes out in October! Stay tuned for details, darling fledglings. Click to set custom HTML The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Morning GloriesBy The Picture Pharmacist QuailBellMagazine.com Dear fledglings, Cross-brand mash-ups are clever...sometimes. Other times, they're just...weird. Here's a current example of the latter: Dunkin' Donuts now carries Quaker Oats. Blink and they might start offering Kashi, too. Dunkin' Donuts is known for selling coffee under $2 and doughnuts with names like Cocoa Confetti and Jelly Stick. DD is a beacon for the cheap, easy, and fattening. It's not exactly dietician recommended. That being said, you know what you want to do. Download this vintage Quaker Oats man and Photoshop a couple of doughnuts flying into his mouth or floating in his belly. Don't forget to add the extra sprinkles. Hmmm... When you're done, maybe reward yourself with a piece of round, fried dough. Yours truly, The Picture Pharmacist
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More than a Refreshing Soft DrinkBy QB News Service QuailBellMagazine.com What do you get when you mix iced tea and lemonade? A Congressional Gold Medal. Golf superstar, Arnold Palmer, was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal yesterday for his achievements in golf and philanthropy. We're grateful for Palmer's advocacy on behalf of women's and children's health. But we're also grateful for all of the photos of young Palmer that are resurfacing online. Now we're going to go grab a half & half to celebrate. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Are you already planning for Halloween? The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Tip #4: How to Make Love to a CentaurBy Paisley Hibou QuailBellMagazine.com Stroke all four of your centaur lover's legs--and don't complain about them being a little furry. You'll kill the mood. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Rotonda de los Jaliscienses IlustresBy QB Camera Eye QuailBellMagazine.com Those of you who may have snoozed a bit in History class might look at the above photo and think, "Eh, that's somewhere in Greece, ain't it?" Well, no. Try North America. Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres is a monument located in Guadalajara, Mexico. It commemorates--here's a literally translation--the illustrious people of Jalisco, the state commonly associated with hot peppers and Speedy Gonzales. The monument features 98 urns, each one containing the remains of its respective famous artist, writer, scientist, or thinker from the region. Perhaps one of the best-known figures in the United States is José Clemente Orozco, a Mexican muralist. Click to set custom HTML The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Sweetheart of the Rodeo SpeaksBy Christine Stoddard QuailBellMagazine.com A flock of emails haunts my inbox everyday, each message tweeting like an eerie ghost bird until I finally give it notice. These emails often come from people wanting Quail Bell's attention. Other times books, letters, drawings, and other goodies squawk from my P.O. box. They, too, come from people wanting Quail Bell's attention. As much as I enjoy sifting through all of this story fodder, I usually want to do my own research and make my own discoveries. One recent discovery of mine was Dakota, the blogger behind Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Somehow I stumbled across her blog and found a fellow fledgling in spirit. An Art History major studying in Vermont, Dakota fancies the past just as any good Quail Bell(e) would. She's particularly enamored of Victorian Goth and the 1930s/40s. Her blog regularly features her beautiful outfits, but also showcases her interest in art and culture from the past. (Including her love of Loretta Lynn and other classic country singers!) I contacted Dakota with a few questions, curious how she would answer them. In case you were wondering, too, these are her responses: "No modern frock can compare to the feeling of connection to the past and aged patina vintage textiles convey; it's a bit hard to articulate, but I bet you fellow vintage lovers know what I'm talking about." You have such a gorgeous look. Can you cite any specific vintage influences of yours? Oh, thank you!! I am heavily inspired by the landscape and culture of rural America, particularly my corner of Northern New England. I've grown up in a funny little old-fashioned village in Vermont; think Ethan Frome meets "Twin Peaks"! Time is a little stagnant, a little ambiguous…like you go into these old farmhouses that have been in the same families for generations, and it’s this complete chronology of changing tastes: ornate Victorian moldings, faded floral wallpaper, an Art Deco dresser here, a midcentury-modern kitchenette there. A rusted (but running) [John] Deere tractor in the stark Puritan barn. But it’s no museum: we use these old things every day. I am very inspired by that notion of moving forward, sure, but always engaging with the past. There are many artists and musicians who inspire me, as well: American regionalist painters like George Ault and Andrew Wyeth, photographers Clarence John Laughlin and Walker Evans, Southern gothic writers like Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers, and early country singers like the Carter Family, Loretta Lynn, Dock Boggs, and Hank Williams (to name but a few). What attracts you to vintage fashion? When did you first discover your love for it?
I started seeking out vintage pieces from the thrift store when I was 14, but didn’t get into the head-to-toe look ‘til I was 16. But ever since I was a little girl I was hopelessly nostalgic; in elementary school I had this obsession with seeking out and reading the oldest, mustiest books in the library, and I collected these vintage model horses (I was kinda weird). The past was like a beautiful golden realm, and it both pained and intrigued me...painful because it's over and gone forever, but so intriguing to find these little vestiges of it. It was a natural progression to dressing the part, I suppose. As a kid, I spent many happy hours exploring abandoned farmhouses, too. There is a strange sort of magic in those gently decaying shells of homes; stepping into them feels like entering another dimension, where time is frozen. But they are also melancholy places, entirely alone and forgotten; stark reminders of our own impermanence. I used to dream about running away and living in one particular abandoned farm, the Ashworth Farm. The vivid flowered wallpaper and big empty rooms incited all sorts of romantic daydreams in my mind, and I felt an acute longing to visit the home in its heyday, when the halls rang with human voices, and the pastures were full of cows and corn. I couldn't travel back in time, sadly, so I did the next best thing, and surrounded myself with vintage clothing and ephemera. And of course, the right vintage dress is just a sublime aesthetic experience. There’s really nothing comparable to the glamour and charm of a beautiful midcentury frock! The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Hey, we didn't forget!Dear fledglings,
We didn't forget to post the results of Bell(e) and Beau of the Week. We also didn't forget to do our Photo Tale. However, some mysterious force had its way. We'll be posting the results and the Photo Tale at the end of the week. Thank you for your patience! And a special thanks to all who voted! Feathery hugs, The QB Crew The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
English or Englishes?By QB Provocateur QuailBellMagazine.com "Is there, or should there be, a "standard English"? Should it be defined as the idiom of the educated, the sound of the city-dweller, the style of the business letter? As early as the tenth century, teachers in the monastic schools of Anglo-Saxon England asked this question. Some claimed there should be rules for spelling, speech, and usage. Such rules were grounded in a particular dialect of Old English--the one that was geographically central to the region of the king's court and the church's administration. Similar attentions to the dialect and standards were the subject of debates throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Was there, asked teachers and students alike , a particular regional form of English that should form a national standard? Should we write the way we speak? Should speech display one's education (and thus something that could be learned) or should it reveal one's class and region (and thus something that reflected birth)?" Excerpt from Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language by Seth Lerer
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Let's see what the Aggre-gator's burped up...By QB Aggre-gator QuailBellMagazine.com Quail Bell's Aggre-gator, Gerald, has burped up the following links from August and September 2012. He wants to keep you abreast of global news and views that are imaginary, nostalgic, and otherworldly: • Paul Frank Industries Will Take Major Steps to Reconcile with Native Americans • Squatters reopen a shuttered London library • Fifty Years After "Silent Spring," Let's Not Roll Back Environmental Protections • Mysterious Book Sculpture from an Unknown Artist Left Around Edinburgh • Woman Discovers Creepy Ex-Boyfriend Living in Her Attic: A Journey in Gifs • How about a date with a good book? Check out these vintage library ads! • Forgoing College to Pursue Dreams • Women: Take Pleasure in Obeying Your Husbands • Are new raft of fairy tale films and TV shows fair to their female characters? • 26 Beatnik Slang Words and Phrases We Should All Start Using • Forklore: Thistle be good • When a Dress Can Be a Magical Thing • World Oral Literature Project, Open Book Publishers and UnGlue.It Release New, Open Edition of Oral Literature in Africa • The Reversa Bra The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Welcome! Here's a tangy fruit--and its origin.By Starling Root QuailBellMagazine.com Illustration by Laura Bramble After suffering the perils of ship life and seeing little else but the sea for weeks, you and your men have finally spotted land. Where there is land, there are likely people. And where there are people, there is bounty. You came to pirate and pirate you shall. It is between the late 15th and 17th centuries, and you are a European sailor, likely English, Dutch, French, or Spanish. Your ship has reached the West Indies, a region known for its precious minerals and diverse flora and fauna. We'll gloss over the gruesome details but it suffices to say that you and your crew were successful in your pirating. Your ship now brims with many necessities, a few rarities, and perhaps even one or two priceless treasures. It is time to return home to your wife and family. Once you arrive at your village, you and your crew unload the ship, carting your loot to your abode. To inform your neighbors of your return, you place a pineapple outside of your front door. Now they know to come to your home for the inevitable feast the women folk shall prepare in the coming days. Your more business savvy neighbors may also approach you to strike a barter deal. You probably have spices, meats, and fabrics that they and their families want. Whatever the case may be, by putting that pineapple outside of your home, your neighbors know that they're welcome to visit. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Rumors Has It! By Julie DiNisio QuailBellMagazine.com Despite the fact that Rumors has recently moved, the clothing store has changed very little. Music still pumps from the small building, now located at 723 W. Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia. Their gently used “preloved” clothes and accessories are still stylish yet affordable. What started out as just another Richmond consignment shop has turned into a local legend, due in part to owners Casey and Marshe's dynamic personalities and involvement in the Richmond community. Best of all, they have generously agreed to lend clothing for Once Upon a Time II: Forgotten Folklore, our fashion show on October 4th. So show them some love and check out their blog/online store.
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Lights--Not the last thing on your mindBy Ani Mikaelian QuailBellMagazine.com Editor's Note: This interview was first published in QuailBellMagazine.com when the website was still a little hobby blog run by Christine Stoddard. Since we liked the interview so much and never migrated it to our new website, we're reviving it from its original 2010 form. With mainstream music, everything seems to be all too predictable. However, when you bring in Canadian singer and songwriter Lights equipped with her own genre of electro music, the sky is the limit. Hailing from Ontario, Canada, this particular [25-year-old] was under the US’s radar for quite some time.
In 2008, that all changed when she released a digital self-titled EP. If you shop at Old Navy, you might just be familiar with her hit “The Last Thing on Your Mind” that sold 12,000 copies all on its own. Having come a long way in only a couple of years, Lights has toured with the likes of Owl City, Keane and Copeland, has released a debut record entitled The Listening, as well as putting out a handful of music videos to keep fans satisfied. On top of being a dedicated songwriter, she is an avid fan of fantasy and the realm, considering her song “Lions!” was first and foremost inspired by playing the phenomenal game World of Warcraft. She has a couple tattoos to show her devotions, just in case you needed any more of a justification. [At the time of this 2010 interview], her “Lights. Acoustic Tour” just came to an end with its six-day take starting at the east coast and ending on the west. Through the midst of busy schedules and preparations, I was able to catch up with Lights on the phone to find out how the tour has been treating her and just what we can expect out of her in the near future. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Among Our Fellow Fairy PunksBy QB Camera Eye QuailBellMagazine.com Yesterday, Associate Editor Julie DiNisio and Executive Editor Christine Stoddard tabled at the DIY Fest at St. John's in Baltimore. They mostly tabled copies of Quail Bell Express: Issue 1 and Comicality Magazine. Here are some visual tidbits from their adventure to the city of The Ravens and snowballs: The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
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Book-binding with a Pittsburgh BookbinderBy Connor Sites-Bowen QuailBellMagazine.com I sat down with book binder Kayte Rose of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania recently and asked her a few questions about book binding. When did you become interested in books? Not just binding, but books themselves? I've been reading since I was 2 and a half, according to my mother. I used to sneak books into bed and hope my parents wouldn't sit down, because the bed would be COATED in books under the covers- and they'd bribe me with books to behave when I was getting shots at the doctors. I've always loved reading- but the object of a book, with pages and a cover and the smell and heft has always been one of my favorite things. It speaks of wisdom, of an item refined over thousands of years that doesn't need electricity or winding or anything else to be entrancing. A book can sit somewhere for a hundred years (or more), and as long as the language is still around and hasn't been destroyed, it can be read and shared. It is a vessel for knowledge and ideas, and that is as close as I can imagine an object being to the true definition of awesome- inspiring awe. How did you become interested in book binding? Well, I'd been meaning to learn it- I like to learn older crafts and hobbies like tatting, weaving, etc- and some time in April or May 2011, I read something by Gaiman about books (which I forget right now) and Doctorow's short story "The Right Book" (which is about a corner store that also sells books people bind) and decided that I was just going to try it. I read all the websites, started getting all the books out of the library and buying them from Half-Price Books. Not long after that, my AmeriCorps term ended, and I went out and bought a bunch of supplies to try to sell them. I found employment before I could really spawn my business, but I'm still trying, just slowly. I also give them to people as gifts and just enjoy making them for myself. Is there a full-blown book binding subculture? There is a culture around it, and it is getting more popular, but I am not really immersed in it. Bookbinding is a legitimate activity and pursuit in BIG cities (NYC, Philly) and atypical cities (Iowa City is the best example), but there isn't a strong presence here from what I've seen. There is a Guild of Book Workers, several masters' degree programs around the country, and discussion over whether we should focus on making grand, time consuming, intense books or quick but well made and stately books or artists' books, but I haven't had enough experience in artists' books yet, and I am not fast enough to try for the second and not patient enough to try for the first, so I'm kind of in the middle of all three! I can't imagine there would be drama, the closest I can think of is the discussion inspired by the Kindle/Nook/other e-readers that leads people to discuss and ruminate upon the role of the physical book in today's culture. Where did you learn how to bind books? When did you start? I taught myself, using books, websites, and videos, starting in Spring 2011. Are there masters in the field? A resounding yes. My books look like child's play (and kind of are) compared to the works of truly amazing binders. For examples of a wide variety of books, check outhttp://www.philobiblon.com/bindorama10/index.html . If you want to look up binders who consistently impress me with the work they do, look up Bill Minter, Peter Verheyen, William Anthony, Keith A. Smith, and Dennis Yuen. I know that there are commercial processes, and time consuming by-hand processes. Is there a modern in-between? A style of binding for small independent runs?
Not all by-hand process are time consuming. If someone wanted to print something less than 100 pages or so, there are ways to bind up several books rather quickly. I bound up a book that was around 140 pages in an hour with poor tools on a carpet floor once, and it turned out pretty well and I just was told that word of mouth has spread about that book (A 9th edition NERO rulebook) and that at least one person wants to get a few copies like that. Almost every hand binding is also going to be a better quality than something you get off of a print-on-demand shop like Lulu or a generic cheap paperback you buy in Walmart, because hand bindings sew the papers together, whereas print-on-demand and cheap books are "perfect bound," which means glued together. The glue will eventually crack or spread too far, the pages will fall out, and your cheap paper pages will disintegrate. However, if you're concerned about cost and time and want to get a book printed, Lulu and other print on demand shops are the place to start looking. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Beau of the Week: September 10thBy Tykeya O'Neil & Sidney Shuman QuailBellMagazine.com Please cast your vote by Friday at midnight. The winner will be announced Saturday and also featured in an original Quail Bell Photo Tale! The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Bell(e) of the Week: September 10thBy Tykeya O'Neil & Lindsey Story QuailBellMagazine.com Editor's Note: Now that school's back in swing at the ever-creative Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, our popular Bell(e) of the Week feature is back. Pardon the hiatus! Please cast your vote by Friday at midnight. Find out the winner on Saturday and check for the accompanying Photo Tale in The Unreal next week. Also keep an eye out for our new Beau of the Week feature. We'll be posting that next! -C.S. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
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The Poisoned Pussycat at the PartyBy Stan Balducci QuailBellMagazine.com A woman was having a buffet dinner in her elegant home. The centerpiece was a large baked salmon. The woman turned away for a moment, then looked back and saw her cat nibble at the salmon. She put the cat out the back door and placed parsley over the bite marks. The party was a big success. The maid opened the back door to let in some air and discovered the dead cat on the back porch. The hostess had to tell her guests the cat was dead, presumably from food poisoning from eating some of the salmon. All the party rushed to the local hospital to have their stomachs pumped. The next day the woman’s neighbor came over to offer her apologies. She said that during the party last night she had unknowingly backed her car over the cat, killing it. She had left the dead cat on the back porch so not to spoil the woman’s party. This urban legend has been around since about 1939. It has been in joke books, newspaper columns, and oral tradition. An example of the poisoned-pet legend is the 1989 film “Her Alibi," in which the cat is thought to have died from eating contaminated stew. |
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