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A Brief Account of My Time in India By Gypsy Mack QuailBellMagazine.com I love to travel. It is what I’m best at. When I travel, I never stubbornly stick to previously made plans. I am open to new situations, I am eager and curious, and I always try to fully experience my surroundings. I observe the people who live in places that I am just an outsider to, and I take note of how they walk, talk, eat, and interact. I try to copy those people, and fully integrate myself into places so very different from my own home. I love to travel because I fall in love with every single place I go. Oftentimes, I take mental pictures of my surroundings, so that I can see those places forever. I try to capture sounds and smells and sensations in my memory, because I love it all so much that I never want to forget. I went to India last December. I was gone for two months. I got back just three days before my fifteenth birthday. That was nearly eight months ago, but it feels so recent that sometimes I still accidentally say, “I just got back from India." Before that, about a year and a half ago, I went to the UK and Ireland with my best friend. And before that, I was seven, hiking the base of a volcano, surrounded by the sound of howler monkeys. I didn't know it then, but I had made the best and worst mistake of my life: traveling. It became an addiction, but I never, ever want to stop. Almost one year ago, my mom and my six-year-old sister River and I went along with my ten-year-old sister Phoenix’s homeschool co-op for a field trip. The co-op, called the Bhakti School, is run by a family that my own family has known for years. We were going to the UVA Lawn for a guided meditation with Deepak Chopra. Since then, I have never seen so many fancy white people interested in yoga at one time! Afterwards, my mom asked me if I wanted to go to India. It was completely spur of the moment. It felt so random, yet perfect. I said yes, but I was nervous. I hardly knew anything about India outside of the small bit of knowledge that I gleaned from geography in seventh grade, and I wasn’t even particularly interested in India. But I wanted to travel, and I was very curious. I was going to go with the Bhakti School family, and be the au pair for the two boys, who were nine and eleven at the time. Back then, I had known the family for a while, but hadn’t really seen them regularly since I was a small kid and did homeschool co-ops. Now, it’s kind of funny to think that I didn’t really know them, because they’re kind of like my second family. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Things You Must Start Doing By Your First Period Catch your first crimson wave? It’s time to put your grandma panties on and grow the fetch up. If you haven’t already accomplished these things, your life is basically over and no one will ever love you, except that mangy cat no one else would adopt and that girl at Sephora who’s paid to feed on your insecurities. (Seriously, someone tell me. Is my skin really beautiful or do I need primer? I’m so confused, Sephora girl.)
• Stop wearing full-coverage grandma panties, even on your period. You’re a total dirty slut if someone sees your panties on your period, but everyone can tell. It’s panty science. “Laundry day” isn’t real. Erase these words from your vocabulary or no one will ever love you. • Find a fattening ingredient to be allergic to. Gluten is a little passé, but like I said, you should’ve done this by now. If you admit you’re on a diet, no one will ever love you. • Look like you woke up airbrushed without makeup and shame everyone else for not being “natural.” Extra points if you post a #nomakeup selfie to IntaFaceTwit #innerbeauty #nofilter #flawless #boyslikeitnatural #Idontneedadermatologist #toobadifyoudontlooklikethis #insertcomplimentsandotherthingshere #TELLMEIMBEAUTIFUL #IknowImhot. If you act like you care about your appearance, no one will ever love you. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Fairies? Aliens? Who knows! It ain’t easy being green, especially when the strange villagers who find you find you next to a pit once used to trap animals. They look at your weird clothes (perhaps fashioned out of leaves and meadowgrass) and hear a foreign language completely different from their provincial English. Coupled with your green skin and general bewilderment, there's little chance that they would take you for a human creature.
In the 12th century, the legendary Green Children of Woolpit found themselves in that same predicament when they were discovered on the outskirts of Woolpit in Suffolk, England. The folklore surrounding the Green Children of Woolpit began either during the reign of King Stephen or Henry II. The town's modern name derives from a linguistic corruption of the original name (“Wolfpittes”), stemming from the ancient pits that people used to capture wolves when they still inhabited England. The two unusual children (one girl and one boy) were disoriented and crying from starvation and confusion. Fortunately, Sir Richard de Caine of Wilkes gave them a home. Despite being famished, the children refused to eat anything the adults tried to feed them. As options dwindled, Sir Richard's servants presented the children with freshly-reaped beanstalks. The children instantly brightened and lived off of beans from thereon. The girl eventually welcomed the foreign foods the adults introduced into her diet and lost her green skin. But her brother couldn’t diversify his diet and retained his green complexion. He grew more melancholic and depressed with each passing day until he died. Yet his sister lived on to learn English and assumed the name “Agnes Barre." She also married a royal ambassador and lived with him in Norfolk. Rumor has it that their neighbors thought that Agnes Barre’s behavior was "wanton." The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
¡A celebrar!It's National Hispanic Heritage Month, a time to recognize the achievements of Hispanic leaders and communities across the United States. We're kicking it off with this original illustration: #Real #NationalHispanicHeritageMonth #HispanicHeritage #HispanicPride #HispanicCulture #Latinos #Diversity #Fall 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.
Crisp Air and Turning Leaves Ah Fall, the crisp morning air, the sweet breeze whisking away our humid Summer travels, the anticipation of color, of transformation, of newness. Autumn brings learning and leaving and loving, and bright trees full of Fruity Pebble colored leaves. Even if you aren’t headed back to school, the feeling of anticipation as the air changes sways you to new discoveries. With that change comes possibility, reformation, education, death and glorious rebirth.
Fall is the most wonderful time of year! The relief as days head from hot-and-hotter to cool-and-cleaner is palpable. We open our windows, put away the AC units and feel freshness renew our insides and out. The world is full of magic this time of year! As we move toward the Equinox on September 22, we breathe in the magic of the coming season. We might want to borrow from the Hebrew and celebrate the Jewish New Year, September 26, and dip our apples into honey wishing for a sweeter future. We can atone, and fast if we feel the need, and as we move forward into the magical season we prepare our spells and cast them when we’re ready. Candles burn brighter, pumpkins and spice make the air sweet and savory and we become tighter and smoother as we shed our open toes and pull on our walking boots. To help with finding your magical reality in this changing season, I’ve compiled an eclectic list of books filled with wonder, poetry, spells, and haunted places. Enjoy! The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Jazz Manouche at L’Atelier Charonne …But now, I am where I dreamed I would be: L’atelier Charonne. Tonight is Jazz Manouche Piano and I have a glass of red wine that I am too stupid to spell…The band reminds me that I know nothing—it sounds like they’re unraveling melodies like biologists unravel DNA.
Writing may not always be stable or always pay the bills, but if you’re doing it right, it can bring you to beautiful places for “research.” I realized early on that I ought to write about what I care about, and consequently my novel is about a half-Romani (Gypsy) dancer and fortune teller working at a Parisian circus and her strange journey to Nazi hunting. It’s mostly set in the 1940’s and 1920’s, and while I can’t go back in time, I can absolutely go to Paris. I had just finished a very gratifying Writing and Yoga Retreat, as both a participant and a visiting professor, with the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop at the Château de Verderonne in Picardy, France. My brain was ticking over with ideas for the novel, and Geoffrey, the cab driver with the long blond ponytail and a penchant for dance music, was bringing me to Paris for five days of research. I had only one plan: going to the same bar single every night, L’atelier Charonne, where there’s Jazz Manouche at 9 p.m. every evening. Manouche is the name of a Gypsy clan prominent in France, and the French Jazz movement was spearheaded by revolutionary Manouche musician Django Reinhardt, whose black and white portrait hangs on L’atelier Charonne’s wall. And this is where I would write, every night, lit by candles, music, and the ridiculously beautiful bar staff. Writing about my Romani heritage is both an act of pleasure and an act of necessity. Honoring and rediscovering my culture’s beliefs, history, music, food, dance, art, and fashion (and fashion politics) feels like self-love. But there is also the nervous need to explain—not just to explain myself or this part of my family’s culture, but to explain the current human rights crisis. Expressing this pain feels like life or death. The Romani people are an ethnic group originating in India around the 11th century C.E., and since the early Roma left home, they have endured persecution so severe that it gave rise to Roma’s traditional nomadism. All over the world (including the U.S.A.), Roma are illegally deported, forced into camps with poor sanitation and shoddy shelters, segregated in schools, forcibly sterilized, banned from shops and places of work, targeted by hate crimes, human trafficking, and slavery. And this violent prejudice and persecution has been raging for centuries, many people only know of Roma through stereotypes or misrepresentations (like reality TV). The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Gorgeous Minds and Bodies of Hindu Goddesses By Gypsy Mack QuailBellMagazine.com I have always had difficulty with finding ideals of beauty. I suppose that I do not need to have a beauty ideal, but it is actually a nice thing to have someone that I find beautiful, someone I look up to, and someone I aspire to be like.
I went to India last winter, and I experienced very different ideas of beauty. Where I was living for two months, in Karnataka, I was told that if a woman was plump, her size was a sign of wealth, and comfort, and that her plumpness was considered attractive. This intrigued me because I had always been so used to the idea that being thin was the most widely accepted idea of beauty. I also noticed that, at least where I was living, women had a different way of carrying themselves. I can’t quite explain it, but it seemed that they had more confidence. I thought that this confidence was a very nice thing to see, so I took note of the way the women around me walked. I tried my best to imitate the way them—not only because I wanted to look like them because they were beautiful, but because I also wished to fit in, so that I could observe a different culture without being immediately perceived as a foreigner. While in India, I became very interested in Hinduism. I began to feel a sort of connection to the beliefs, the rituals, and the deities. I realized that the different forms of the divine feminine in Hinduism were fast becoming beauty ideals for me. I found that each and every one was a different sort of perfection, and not just physically. The Hindu goddesses displayed strength and power both in spirit and mind. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Bunk Bed Bonding For three years in my twenties I shared a bunk bed with my polar opposite.
Tiffany was a cheerleader in high school; I read Wuthering Heights and climbed trees by myself. She had never been kissed and still slept with stuffed animals; I was moving into our bunk bed specifically to break my habit of sleeping with men, as part of my intentional two-year dating sabbatical (but that’s another story). Whenever I think about us sharing a bunk bed it makes me laugh, because we were truly and deeply the Odd Couple. She was a dancer and morning person who for the three years we lived together never once raised her voice, lost her temper, swore, or cried in front of anyone in the apartment—a real, classy, sweet-hearted lady. I was a cranky waitress who ranted about everything from theology to art, nailed blankets around my bottom bunk to create a dark cave to shut out light and human contact. I was famous among the roommates for my moody wine-and-foreign-film nights for one. She was known for her permanent smile, her love of coloring books and baking fat-free, home-baked muffins. I usually shut people out; she usually hugged anyone that would hold still long enough. Our being bedfellows shouldn’t have worked. But not only did it work, it changed my perspective on community, intimacy, and family. Our whole apartment did, really, but Tiffany was the keystone. Family is rather a fluid, theoretical concept for me. See, I am the black-sheep wandering child of two black-sheep wanderer children. My immediate family and I moved seven times before I was ten, and we were not in the military. I have a brother and sister I haven’t met. My parents divorced and my Dad moved to Thailand for a while, going on to live in four states and three countries. My brother graduated high school and moved across the state. When I went to college, I moved cross-country. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
10 Fun Idioms en Español By Colleen Foster QuailBellMagazine.com Language plops down at the playful intersection of art and science. Whether it’s English or German or Mandarin, it’s ever-evolving: Slang emerges and fades out and comes back around again as retro, certain syntax becomes obsolete via repeated error or sometimes just sheer laziness, and creative turns of phrase become norms. Oh, plus regional differences. (Are those “sprinkles” or “jimmies” on your cupcake?) All this is why you are never “done” learning a language per se.
As I’ve told my Spanish tutorees, there is no fluency fairy who comes down and taps you with her magic wand so you can finally kick back and breathe in the golden dust of Being Fluent. There is no finish line, nor a time where you quit botching a language on a daily basis. I have well over two decades as a native speaker of English and it is a given that every single day I will a) encounter a new word or phrase and b) say something that makes it sound like it’s my twentieth language and I learned it locked in solitary confinement watching Teletubbies. (Just watch, undoubtedly there will be something along those lines in this article.) But the never-ending aspect of learning to speak, read, write, and listen in a language is what makes it such a rush. And one of the highlights is the quirky idioms, or commonly used figurative phrases. Here’s some goodies from the idioma (a Spanish word meaning "language," not "idiom": HA, false cognate!) of Spanish. 1. Con las manos en la masa Most angloparlantes--that’s you, gringo--would say something along the lines of “caught red-handed.” Not surprisingly, this conjures up images of Lady Macbeth scrubbing her hands raw post-murder. Or maybe with her hand in the cookie jar. But when an hispanohablante is caught doing something against the rules or downright illegal, they’ve been discovered con las manos en la masa, or “with their hands in the dough.” Interfering with the bread before it makes its way to the oven. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The University That Ate Richmond By Christopher Sloce QuailBellMagazine.com DISCLAIMER: The writer of this piece wants to make very certain that no one takes this essay as a political as a well-oiled, statistics-minded argument against Wal-Mart. I am not an economics major and have no interest in political journalism. All I can speak to is the personal love of tacos and egg-headed diversions into a Michel De Certeau essay I like quite a bit. It’s more of a break-up song with a case. Last week my alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU to the world at large), announced they were putting a Wal-Mart on campus. The Wal-Mart will be a To Go convenience store, 4,000 square feet large compared to the mammoth Wal-Mart Supercenter you may be picture. Small or not, Richmonders and even VCU alumni no longer living in Richmond were incensed, myself included. Death knells rang, obituaries were drafted, and all I could think about was the Little Mexico restaurant that used to sit across from Empire, a bar best known for its music.
If you never had the joy of eating at Little Mexico on Laurel Street, here’s what you missed: There were bars with window seating and a glass lunch counter next to a well-stocked tequila bar I never saw a bartender or a drinker populating. The bar tops were glass, with pictures slid underneath. The lighting was low and the place was clean. But the lunch counter mattered the most because underneath, there were heaps of barbacoa, carnitas, shredded beef, carne asada steak, chicken and potatoes. It’s the tacos that matter here. Little Mexico sold three tacos for $7. That may sound like a rip-off, but that ignores two facts. One is that the tacos had the filling of your choice for all three tacos; it wasn’t an issue to get a carnitas, a beef, and a potato taco, or two of one and one of another. Choice in these matters is often rare. The other thing is, they were the best meal I had eaten up to that point in my life. The pork belly from Husk in Charleston I lucked into would have eventually trumped them, but the tacos were for every day and still win for efficiency. They got me through weekends, when the cafeteria food took a noticeable dip in quality; both a highlight and a consistency. I took the tacos to go sometimes, but usually I ate them inside, in the lowlight ambience, where it felt like another universe entirely—something more fitting more in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye than Richmond. Then someone said they wanted shriveled chicken tenders and mediocre breakfast foods, all in one Formica tiled way-station nightmare. Somebody turned the Little Mexico into a frozen yogurt joint that never opened. And that was the first sign. At least now the food was university sanctioned and consistent, week or weekend. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Witch's Tit Isn't As Cold As You'd Think Nipples are related to genitals. Genitals are kind of important when it comes to sex. Over time, humankind has become gradually more enlightened about how our sex organs function. We no longer accuse wombs of wandering or believe that testicles are connected to the vocal chords, causing the voice to deepen when they descend.
What’s colder than a witch’s tit? Before today, I would say an Arctic blizzard or the bottle of whiskey waiting in the fridge. Now, I’d have to say that the blood of accused witches and people who thought it was kill someone because they had a third nipple. Witch-hunters in medieval Scotland and England believed that witches received a complimentary nipple at their first meeting with Satan. From then on, the little devil-dandy or imp (known as a “familiar” or assigned magical helper) can get icy blood on tap for nourishment. If the imp wanted something warmer, they’d just go suck some boring milk-bearing nipples. “Witch-prickers” specialized in examining these alleged witch tits. Their professional consultations included fool-proof testing methods. If the accused party felt pain or drew blood when witch-pricker jabbed the supernumerary nipple, then their chances of surviving the trial increased. In the witch-pricker's expert opinion, both bleeding and crying out were symptoms of innocence. I guess they figured that if the accused was actually using the nipple to suckle an impish attendant from hell, it would be probably be dried out and numb from incessant gnawing. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Monsters At The Foot Of My Bed The reasons why I've been so successful in influencing people's beliefs about faeries include my knowledge, personal experiences, and evidence of other witness accounts, as well as coincidences too uncanny to be sheer coincidence. The encounter I'm about to address has to do with Kappas, a type of nature spirit that highly acknowledged by Shintoism. When I first started "intentionally" practicing witchcraft, I had many of the magical mishaps that most budding occultists experience, including the accidental summoning of malevolent beings or entities I hadn't intended to draw forth. I learned how to perform successful banishments this way and a lot about spirits in general, but since I had just began to work with faeries, I often attracted something more peculiar than a vagrant human spirit. At the time, my reading material was mostly confined to the realm of Celtic Paganism, folklore, and folk magic. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hot and Heavy in 19th-century England Victorian slang is, even by today's standards, versatile, colorful, and covert. Sexual slang was especially clandestine so that gentlemen could discuss taboo matters without drawing undue attention. Since sex in general was a touchy subject, Victorian people got quite creative when devising these terms. Some of those very words still linger in our vernacular today.
So just how much did Victorians beat around the bush? Keep in mind that these were the people who arranged a nuanced form of communication based on flowers. They used “floriography” in order to express feelings that they would have otherwise hidden from society. These are the people who referred to lady parts as the “fruitful vine” because supposedly, they both fruited every nine months and “flowered” on a monthly basis. The only “flowers” I think of in reference to a vagina are orchids (for obvious reasons). I got a whole bouquet of them from my relatives when I got my first period. The world of Victorian prostitutes was a generous segment of the population and therefore ripe with slang. An estimated one out of every twelve women was directly involved in prostitution, a statistic that only applies to unmarried, pubescent women. Much like today, prostitution was multi-leveled. There were the common punks who walked the streets and rich courtesans alike. If a rich man wanted to have sex with a woman who wasn’t his “lawful blanket”(legal wife), he would pursue sexual asylum in a “wife in water colors” or mistress, a “prostitute” whom only serviced one man. If the man was rich enough, he could provide her with housing, mostly for his own convenience. Why was a mistress painted in water colors? Because their “engagements easily dissolved” like water paint. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
What exactly are children's museums curating?I spend a lot of time with kids under the age of 10. I don't have any of my own, but I think kids are fantastic, and babysit them frequently. The way that kids explore the world is a beautiful thing. They usually engage in a more open and honest manner than adults. All kids really need is information, then they've got the lockdown on asking questions. I think it is only when kids are not given all the information, or the context around information, that we shortchange them and set them up for ignorance or failure down the line.
Assuming one doesn't come from a Creationist point of view, one might be inclined to think that places such as the Children's Museum of Richmond and the Science Museum of Virginia would be ideologically safe places to take your kids. From my experiences taking various kids to both of these museums, I would say that, for the most part, they are indeed lovely places for children to grow and explore. Recently, though, I saw something at both museums that put a bad taste in my mouth. At the Children's Museum of Richmond's craft area, they had a "Make a Dream Catcher" table. The table and description had no context for what a dream catcher was, where it comes from, and more importantly WHO it comes from. Dream catchers are a traditional creation of many indigenous groups in North America, including the Cree, Ojibwe, and Sioux. I know, I know, I'm being a fun-killing politically correct cop here. Let the children make their dream catchers in peace, you might say. Maybe in your mind's hierarchy of cultural appropriation, making a dream catcher is a smaller offense than wearing a headdress. And let's not forget that children are still taught to wear headdresses and similarly problematic attire in offensive and inaccurate plays in elementary schools all over this country. But it is worse than just an offense to certain cultures; this omission is shortchanging all kids who see it. Without the context for the dream catcher, kids coming to the Children's Museum are missing out on a lot. Without the history, understanding, and respect for the culture and traditions from which it came, why even call it a dream catcher? It's some tangle strings! Call it a spider web! The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Rebirth of My IdentityIt was my first day of elementary school in the U.S. My lunchbox was full of grapes and carrots and my stomach was full of butterflies. As I walked up to the group of kids lining up outside the school, I turned to look at my mother. I wanted to be brave but I didn’t want her to leave. She signaled which line I belonged in, hugged me goodbye, and left. I walked over to the line, stood behind a girl with straight blond hair and waited to see what would happen next.
Everyone around me was chatting and laughing. I looked around and wondered how many of these kids previously knew each other and how many were just meeting for the first time. Soon various women and a man came out and began to take us all inside. I followed the crowd into the first grade area and proceeded to go into the same classroom as the blond girl in front of me had gone into. Everyone began looking for their corresponding desk. I joined in, found my desk, and sat down. The enthusiastic man from that morning went to the front of the room and began saying speaking very quickly. That’s when it hit me—my teacher was going to teach the class in English, a language I did not speak. It was September 1997 in Arlington, Virginia, and although I had been born there, I had moved to Guatemala and fully developed my Spanish and forgot any English that I had known beforehand. We had moved back to Arlington a month before school started, leaving me very little time to learn any English at all. I knew the basics like 'hello' and 'thank you' but nowhere near enough to gain anything from my classes at school. It felt like I had been thrown into the deep end for the first time and had to either sink or swim. I went from class to class mimicking my peers and hoping that I didn’t take a misstep. After lunch, I was instructed to go to a room. I wasn’t sure what I had done but followed instructions and walked on over. I sat down at my desk and scanned the room. It was the first time that day that I was in a room of other students that also spoke no English. Excited at the possibility of making friends, I asked around if anyone spoke Spanish. No luck. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The SOBs that have haunted me "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." -H.P. Lovecraft Like a lot of people from Boston, my grandmother has a story about notorious gangster James "Whitey" Bulger. Bulger, her story goes, was doing some shopping in a Somerville liquor store where her brother-in-law William worked. Bulger and William chatted for a bit, and the topic eventually turned to the pending indictment against Bulger. "They say you killed 27 guys," said William. "That's bullshit," Bulger responded. "I ain't killed any more than 18 guys."
Throughout my life, there have been three different people, one at a time, who I've considered the most evil, frightening, depraved SOB imaginable. From around the ages of five to 12, it was Adolf Hitler; from 12 to 16, it was Osama bin Laden; since then, it's been Whitey Bulger. There have been minor auxiliaries (Slobadan Milosevic, the Beltway Sniper, a couple of really mean girls from high school), but those guys were always the big three. Obviously Hitler's position in the queue didn't derive from any relevance he had to my life. He's just a universal, enduring symbol of out-of-control evil (that's why everyone on the other side of the political spectrum from you is just like him, doncha know) who died nearly fifty years before I was born. Bin Laden and Bulger, on the other hand, are spiritual cousins in this for two reasons: One, they did what they did within my lifetime, and two, more disturbingly, both vanished without a trace. Both of their respective threats have been neutralized now. Bin Laden was of course killed in a military raid in 2011, and later that summer, Bulger was captured in Santa Monica by the FBI after 15 years in the wind. Last year, after a trial such as only Boston could produce, he was sentenced to two life terms in prison plus five years. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
We named him Lincoln. While the other girls wrote about princesses and high school Queen Bees, Emily* wrote about Harriet Tubman. Her first piece in the week-long creative writing workshop began as an academic essay, but ended up being creative non-fiction. The piece, originally titled “Cold, Dark, and Dirty,” opened in one of the slave ships of yore, eventually transitioning to the wide, open cotton plantations of Maryland, then onto the trials of slavery, and lastly to our heroine, Harriet Tubman, and her plight. Tubman wasn't just a textbook character; in Emily's piece, Tubman became human. Emily detailed everything from Tubman's potato sack bed to her meals of her master's leftovers to her longing to free her parents from slavery. Our setting was a church basement in Northwest Washington, D.C. Children from across the metropolitan area come to this parish for lessons in penning fiction, poetry, plays, songs, and graphic novels. They read their finished pieces at local bookstores, enter national competitions, and even have their work published in print and online children's literary journals. The writers range from ages 8 to 18 and all of the instructors are published authors or produced playwrights. The instructors are contractors, teaching one to two workshops a week and spending the rest of their time engrossed in their artistic and professional projects. The children learn from teaching artists in an environment free of judgment and censorship. Unlike in school, there are no prompts, no grades, and no hard deadlines, though the children are placed in workshops by age group, much like in a traditional classroom. Emily was white and hailed from Chevy Chase, Maryland, one of the richest towns in America, and had just completed third grade. Her background was very similar to that of the other children in my workshop. The difference was her content. In between working on her Harriet Tubman piece, Emily started a short story set in the Jim Crow South. Her protagonist is a white girl much like herself who decides to go against convention and befriend a black girl. I sat by Emily as she dictated her story, typing furiously to keep up with her fast thoughts. When she took a breath, I asked her questions to encourage her to clarify and elaborate. At some point while describing the black children's classroom, Emily broke from her narration and stared directly at me. “Did you know that black people couldn't do the same stuff as white people back then?” She furrowed her little brow, looking sincerely distressed. I nodded and said, “Yeah, that was a horrible time in American history. And, you know, some people are still mean like that today. There might not be the same laws, but some people are mean, anyway.” Emily dropped her gaze and mumbled, “I know. It's not fair that some people are so mean.” Then she told me that that's why she wanted to be a civil rights activist when she grew up. I told her that was one of the best jobs I could imagine. Later on in the week, Emily wanted to work on an essay about how she first learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. in kindergarden, which seemed in line with everything she had written thus far. But her next idea surprised me: “I want to write about how I got my puppy.” “OK, sure.” It was certainly a more typical piece for someone her age. Then her little face broke out into a grin. “We named him Lincoln, you know, after Abraham Lincoln. My dad wanted to call him Gandhi, but my brother and I liked Lincoln better.” Aha. *Name has been changed for the sake of privacy. #Real #CivilRightsActivist #HarrietTubman #TeachingArtists #ChildrensEducation #CreativeWritingForKids 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.
Gypsy's First CaravanMy grandmother is a Gypsy but neither of us had ever been inside a caravan. There is a history-rich reason for this, appropriate for Roma & Traveller History Month, but I will get to that later. This status changed for me when my husband and I went back to Europe to visit friends and family, and enjoy the most gorgeous and love-filled wedding we’ve ever been to. One of the options for accommodation at our dear friends’ wonder-wedding was The Gypsy Retreat: two caravans, one for sleeping and one for living quarters, originally owned by a Romani family in Britain, restored and moved to the island that hosted the wedding. My friend, the beautiful genius bride, emailed me right away and asked if we wanted her to dog-ear the site for us. YES, PLEASE, YES. Photos courtesy of Jessica Reidy. Gallery follows story. Without doing any research whatsoever, I imagined a bow-top wooden vardo (caravan), typical of the Romanichal clan so wide-spread in Britain. I wondered how it might compare to my ancestors’ vardo. I racked my brain, trying to remember if we had any pictures of my grandmother’s ancestors’ homes. I remembered her telling me that, long before WWII, when her ancestors were nomadic, they travelled up and down the Danube from Germany to Hungary and back again with the seasons. I always thought they travelled by barges, since she called them “river Gypsies,” but maybe not. The women in her family happened to be very pretty, so many were successful dancers. Some told fortunes too, but fortune telling is a trade of desperation, a kind of casual therapy that Roma perform for gadjé (non-Roma) for money in hard times, and not some mystical ritual that we really believe in. Some of the women were advisors, a kind of healer, and that trade based on a very spiritual magic but it’s only for other Roma. My childhood memory is swirly at best and these details are from her childhood memory, too, from stories she heard set before she was born. And the stories were far and few between. She doesn’t remember what the men did—she thinks some must have been musicians since the women were dancers, but she remembers no music during the war. She was born in Germany, 1936, into one of the most horrific genocides the Romani people have suffered. The Nazis persecuted the Romani people alongside the Jews, the LGBTQ community, the mentally ill, communists, Catholics, and others. Half of Europe’s Gypsies were murdered and there was nowhere left to run.
I love Europe, but I admit, when I go back, I’m often enraged. America is bad enough with its Romani racial profiling, cultural appropriation, history of slavery, shockingly current forced sterilizations, and removing Romani kids from their parents and sticking them in orphanages where their culture is beaten out of them. But Europe makes Gypsy-hating a public blood-sport. I see “Kill Roma” scrawled on the wall of public toilets and “No Roma” in shop windows. People who know my heritage still don’t think twice about telling me that they hate Travellers, another nomadic ethnic group separate from Roma with their roots in Ireland who suffer the same stigma and oppression as Roma. Even though I don’t dress traditionally or talk much about my heritage in Europe, I feel unsafe. Even though my DNA is more Caucasian than Romani, in Europe people scream “Darky!” at me in the street, or “Pocahontas! You’re the last of the Mohicans! Be my Mohican bride!” Or, “I want to fuck you, little Indian girl.” Sometimes they get it right and say, “Go to hell, gyppo.” Depends on the racist. When this happens, sometimes well-meaning people “reassure” me: “Don’t worry, you don’t look Indian,” or “Don’t worry, you look white to me!” They don’t realize how hurtful and discriminatory it is to say such a thing. I’m OK with how I look. My ethnicity and appearance is not the problem, here, and damn, it shouldn’t matter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Cursed AttractionBy Kontra QuailBellMagazine.com I arrived at the ghost town of Two Guns just a few minutes before sundown. This, for some reason, seemed appropriate. At first, the forgotton city appears to be just another abandoned gas station area; there is a disused silo, a ruined convenience store, another small, gutted building of indeterminate purpose. But nearby are the almost century-old brick ruins that rest along the rim of Diablo Canyon, marking what might be the most cursed area in all of Arizona.
In 1969 a book called The View Over Atlantis popularized the New Age idea of “ley lines," invisible strands of energy that criss-cross the globe. The intersection points of these lines are supposedly points of great magical importance—places where strange things happen. Neil Gaiman, in his Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel American Gods, proposed that the unusual energy at these ley lines convergences often influences people to build strange roadside attractions. If such places exist, one of them almost certainly lies about 30 miles east of Flagstaff in the area of Diablo Canyon. It is here that the roadside attraction of Two Guns was erected in the 1920s, literally atop a massacre. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Beyond the Classroom and Any Arbitrary GradeBy Garrett Riggs QuailBellMagazine.com When I explain that my children go to a school that does not issue grades or have required classes, people look at me like I am crazy. “Well, how do they learn anything?” is usually the follow-up question. It takes a giant leap of faith to trust that your children will learn on their own. That humans are naturally curious should be rather self-evident to anyone who has a child or who has ever been a child (and, yes, there are people out there who are suspect in that latter category). Curiosity is what helped human beings figure out everything from rubbing two sticks together to make fire to putting people into orbit. Since the advent of standardized education, though, it has been easy to forget that humans are built to explore and learn. Many of us simply expect our children to have the same experience with school that we did—maybe you went to public school and turned out just fine; maybe private school or boarding school was your experience with the world of formal learning. Or, maybe, you were a secret autodidact, staying home with vague complaints of stomachaches or headaches, and catching up on learning by reading all the books at the local library (or if you’re a digital era baby, using the Internet as a tutor). I fit into that last group. For me, school was “day prison” and it was full of bullies and disruptive kids who kept everyone off track. I had little patience with busywork and cared even less about the social aspect of school. If I could have been locked in the library and left to my own devices, that would have been more productive. I might have found a reason math was valuable if I had stumbled onto it through a side door, such as reading Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, which has a young heroine pursuing quantum mathematics as a central thread, or through studying about architecture and seeing how, yes, geometry does have its practical uses. Holes in the railing created by carpenter bees. Despite my disdain for the traditional classroom, when my own first-born was about to turn five, I enrolled him in our district elementary school. Academically, this was a deterrent to learning; sadly, it turned out that he was one of a handful of kids who had been read to or taught about things like colors, the basics of time (minutes, hours, days, weeks, months), or encouraged to figure out how things in the world around us are grouped and classified (e.g., animals > mammals > felines > big cats [lions, tigers, etc.] > house cats [grandpa’s cat, our cat, Hemingway’s six-toed cats). Because the teacher didn’t have to spend time teaching him these things, he was enlisted at the ripe old age of five to be a teaching assistant. He tutored his pint-sized colleagues on the names of the colors in the rainbow. He helped them learn sight words. And so on. He hated this. For him, school was not about discovery; rather, it became about being a combination lab rat and taskmaster. While he enjoys doling out chores to his younger sibling, he did not like being partially responsible for his peers’ successes and failures. Emotionally, this was a bad experience as well. He was expected to be a leader in the classroom, yet he still couldn’t tie his own shoes. When he got left on the playground the first week of school, he lost his trust in the adults’ ability to take care of him and his needs. He had been “rewarded” with outside time with another class since he was doing so well; his peers stayed inside at recess to work more on learning names of colors and practicing paste-eating abstinence. There was a parent-teacher conference just before the winter break and I confessed that we were considering moving our son out of the school for the next academic year. “Don’t wait until then,” the teacher said. She fixed me with an exhausted stare and said, “If you have any other option—even if you can homeschool—take him out now.” We didn’t think we had other options. Even with scholarships and sliding scale tuitions, we couldn’t afford the private schools in our area. Homeschooling, while appealing, was out because of the parental schedules. Just as we were resigned to leaving him in the district school, we heard about Grassroots Free School. |
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