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4eternal-life · 3 years ago

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MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM /The Futurist Manifesto

by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, february 20th, 1909

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.

The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.

Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.

We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.

The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.

Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.

We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.

We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.

We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.

We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds

We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.

Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.

Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.

Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.

"Come, my friends!" I said. "Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness."

We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel — a guillotine knife — which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. "Smell," I exclaimed, "smell is good enough for wild beasts!"

And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.

And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!

We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.

Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.

"Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"

As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself — vlan! — head over heels in a ditch.

Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!

As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.

We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.

Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.

It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?

To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?

Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.

For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!

Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!

The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.

But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.

They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.

The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.

Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!

Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: "We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors," it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!

Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

#futurist manifesto #italian art #manifesto #italian futurism #filippo marinetti #art #futurism #filippo tommaso marinetti #mu art #mu

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m8nhr · 5 years ago

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미래주의 선언(1909)

전체 내용에 다 동의하지는 않지만, 어릴 적 나에게 많은 영감을 주었던 마리네티의 미래주의 선언 ;)

The Futurist Manifesto _ F. T. Marinetti, 1909

And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.

We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.

Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.

Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!

We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?

Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

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historybehindassassinscreed · 7 years ago

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In Game:

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer, and innovator who was credited with inventing the first practical telephone. He was on friendly terms with Henry Green, who nicknamed him, "Aleck".

In 1868, Green introduced the twin Assassins Jacob and Evie Frye to Bell, who brought to him a broken grappling hook pistol acquired from Rexford Kaylock. Bell modified the mechanism so it could be attached to the Assassin Gauntlet as a rope launcher. In return, Evie volunteered to assist Bell in mending broken fuses atop the Elizabeth Tower for the telegraph line being set up against the Starrick Telegraph Company. While traveling to the Palace of Westminster, she also suggested to Bell that the phonetic telegraph he desired to invent could be renamed as the telephone. After the new fuses were installed, Bell created a formula for smoke bombs to be used by the Assassins. Returning to his workshop, Bell showed Jacob the first messages of his invention and was able to procure a second rope launcher for him.

Much later, Bell installed a dart mechanism in Jacob and Evie's gauntlets, allowing them to fire darts containing a hallucinogenic serum, which would turn into gas form upon contact with heat. The twins further assisted him by recovering cable lines taken by the Blighters in the College Wharf and informed him of a poison shipment from Starrick.

Starrick then offered Bell a huge amount of money to coax him to his side. Bell inadvertently refused; aware of what the Blighters were capable of, he created voltaic bombs, should he use it to stun assailants if the need arose. He offered prototypes and protective insulators to the Frye twins, hoping that they would test it for him to get the right formula. The opportunity came as the infuriated Blighters arrived. As Bell delayed the enemy gang with his talk, the twins tested the voltaic bombs on them.

Together with the twins, they headed to the telegraph station to prevent Starrick from spreading false information to the city and show them the truth regarding the Templars' operations. Bell destroyed three telegraph machines to cripple Starrick's plans.

In Real Life:

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3rd, 1847 to Professor Alexander Melville Bell, a phonetician Eliza Grace (née Symonds). He had two brothers: Melville James Bell and Edward Charles Bell, both of whom would die of tuberculosis.

As a child, Bell displayed a natural curiosity about his world, resulting in gathering botanical specimens as well as experimenting even at an early age. He also showed a sensitive nature and a talent for art, poetry, and music that was encouraged by his mother. His best friend was Ben Herdman, a neighbor whose family operated a flour mill, the scene of many forays. Young Bell asked what needed to be done at the mill. He was told wheat had to be dehusked through a laborious process and at the age of 12, Bell built a homemade device that combined rotating paddles with sets of nail brushes, creating a simple dehusking machine that was put into operation and used steadily for a number of years. In return, Ben's father John Herdman gave both boys the run of a small workshop in which to "invent".

As a young child, Bell, like his brothers, received his early schooling at home from his father. At an early age, he was enrolled at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, Scotland, which he left at the age of 15, having completed only the first four forms. His school record was undistinguished, marked by absenteeism and lackluster grades. His main interest remained in the sciences, especially biology. He attended the University of Edinburgh around age eighteen or nineteen; joining his older brother Melville who had enrolled there the previous year. In 1868, not long before he departed for Canada with his family, Bell completed his matriculation exams and was accepted for admission to University College London.

(Image Source)

It was around this time that he started to experiment with sound, particularly with speech. He helped his father in Visible Speech demonstrations and lectures, which brought Bell to Susanna E. Hull's private school for the deaf in South Kensington, London. His first two pupils were deaf-mute girls who made remarkable progress under his tutelage.

After the death of one of his brothers, the Bell family moved to Canada, where he set up a workshop and continued his experiments with sound and electricity. He also modified a melodeon (a type of pump organ) so that it could transmit its music electrically over a distance.

Bell's father was invited by Sarah Fuller, principal of the Boston School for Deaf Mutes (which continues today as the public Horace Mann School for the Deaf), in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to introduce the Visible Speech System by providing training for Fuller's instructors, but he declined the post in favor of his son. Travelling to Boston in April 1871, Bell proved successful in training the school's instructors. He was subsequently asked to repeat the program at the American Asylum for Deaf-mutes in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Several influential people of the time, including Bell, viewed deafness as something that should be eradicated, and also believed that with resources and effort, they could teach the deaf to speak and avoid the use of sign language, thus enabling their integration within the wider society from which many were often being excluded. Owing to his efforts to suppress the teaching of sign language, Bell is often viewed negatively by those embracing Deaf culture.

Bell became professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston University School of Oratory. During this period, he alternated between Boston and Brantford, spending summers in his Canadian home. At Boston University, Bell was "swept up" by the excitement engendered by the many scientists and inventors residing in the city. He continued his research in sound and endeavored to find a way to transmit musical notes and articulate speech, but although absorbed by his experiments, he found it difficult to devote enough time to experimentation. Deciding to give up his lucrative private Boston practice, Bell retained only two students, six-year-old "Georgie" Sanders, deaf from birth, and 15-year-old Mabel Hubbard.

By 1874, Bell's initial work on the harmonic telegraph had entered a formative stage, with progress made both at his new Boston "laboratory" (a rented facility) and at his family home in Canada a big success. While working that summer in Brantford, Bell experimented with a "phonautograph", a pen-like machine that could draw shapes of sound waves on smoked glass by tracing their vibrations. Bell thought it might be possible to generate undulating electrical currents that corresponded to sound waves.

In 1875, Bell developed an acoustic telegraph and drew up a patent application for it. Since he had agreed to share U.S. profits with his investors Gardiner Hubbard and Thomas Sanders, Bell requested that an associate in Ontario, George Brown, attempt to patent it in Britain, instructing his lawyers to apply for a patent in the U.S. only after they received word from Britain (Britain would issue patents only for discoveries not previously patented elsewhere).

Meanwhile, Elisha Gray was also experimenting with acoustic telegraphy and thought of a way to transmit speech using a water transmitter. On February 14, 1876, Gray filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office for a telephone design that used a water transmitter. That same morning, Bell's lawyer filed Bell's application with the patent office. There is considerable debate about who arrived first and Gray later challenged the primacy of Bell's patent. Bell was in Boston on February 14th and did not arrive in Washington until February 26th.

Bell's patent 174,465, was issued to Bell on March 7, 1876, by the U.S. Patent Office. Bell returned to Boston the same day and the next day resumed work, drawing in his notebook a diagram similar to that in Gray's patent caveat.

On March 10th, 1876, three days after his patent was issued, Bell succeeded in getting his telephone to work, using a liquid transmitter similar to Gray's design. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water, varying the electrical resistance in the circuit.

(Image Source)

Although Bell was, and still is, accused of stealing the telephone from Gray, Bell used Gray's water transmitter design only after Bell's patent had been granted, and only as a proof of concept scientific experiment, to prove to his own satisfaction that intelligible "articulate speech" (Bell's words) could be electrically transmitted. After March 1876, Bell focused on improving the electromagnetic telephone and never used Gray's liquid transmitter in public demonstrations or commercial use.

After the invention of the telephone, Bell also invented the photophone (which he believed to be his greatest achievement), an early version of a metal detector, and made contributions to hydrofoils and aeronautics.

Bell died of complications arising from diabetes on August 2nd, 1922, at his private estate in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, at age 75. He was buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain, on his estate where he had resided increasingly for the last 35 years of his life, overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. He was survived by his wife Mabel (his former student), his two daughters, Elsie May and Marian, and nine of his grandchildren.

Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/transistor/album1/addlbios/bellag.html

https://www.biography.com/people/alexander-graham-bell-9205497

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Graham-Bell

http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/alexander-graham-bell

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/handbook-of-social-justice-in-education-william-ayers/1101520561/2677219688381?st=PLA&sid=BNB_DRS_Marketplace+Shopping+Textbooks_00000000&2sid=Google_&sourceId=PLGoP20452&k_clickid=3x20452

Drunk History, if you can believe it ;)

#Assassin's Creed #AC S #People

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abujaihs-blog · 6 years ago

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Chicago Finds a Way to Improve Public Housing: Libraries

CHICAGO — Cabrini-Green, the Robert Taylor Homes: demolished years ago, Chicago’s most notorious projects continue to haunt the city, conjuring up the troubled legacy of postwar public housing in America. By the 1970s, Washington wanted out of the public housing business, politicians blaming the system’s ills on poor residents and tower-in-the-park-style architecture, channeling tax breaks toward white flight and suburban sprawl. Now the nation’s richest cities invent all sorts of new ways not to solve the affordable housing crisis. I recently visited three sites that the Chicago Housing Authority has just or nearly completed. These small, community-enhancing, public-private ventures, built swiftly and well, are the opposite of Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor. With a few dozen apartments each, they’re costlier per unit than the typical public housing developments, and they’re not going to make a big dent in a city with a dwindling population but a growing gap between the number of affordable apartments and the demand for them.

That said, they’re instructive. As Cabrini-Green and other isolated, troubled old mega-sites proved, bigger isn’t necessarily better. These are integrated works of bespoke architecture, their exceptional design central to their social and civic agenda. And they share another distinctive feature, too: each project includes a new branch library (“co-location” is the term of art). The libraries are devised as outward-facing hubs for the surrounding neighborhoods, already attracting a mix of toddlers, retirees, after-school teens, job-seekers, not to mention the traditional readers, nappers and borrowers of DVDs. Co-location is of course not a new idea. Other cities today link subsidized housing developments with libraries, New York included, but Chicago’s outgoing mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has made a point of touting the concept, and seeing it through in ways other mayors haven’t. He leaves office next week with his reputation still tainted by the uproar several years ago following the release of the video of the police shooting of Laquan McDonald. The city’s downtown glistens but poorer residents south and west of downtown struggle with shuttered schools and unending gang violence. These three new housing projects, on the city’s north and west sides, are clearly part of what Mr. Emanuel hopes will be his ultimate legacy. The projects mix public housing units with heavily-subsidized apartments and, in one case, market-rate ones. Mr. Emanuel talked often as mayor about the value of public space and good design. People don’t only need affordable apartments, as he has said. Healthy neighborhoods are not simply collections of houses. They also require things like decent transit, parks, stores, playgrounds and libraries. Mr. Emanuel extended the city’s subway system, network of bike lanes and popular Riverwalk. He completed the elevated, long-discussed 606, Chicago’s version of New York’s High Line; brought marquee stores like Whole Foods and Mariano’s to grocery-starved neighborhoods like Englewood, and parks like La Villita, replacing a former Superfund site, to communities like Little Village. He also commissioned leading local architects to design a string of small, civic gems, including two boathouses by Studio Gang and a new branch library in Chinatown by Brian Lee, from the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which I have stopped into on a couple of occasions. It’s a neighborhood linchpin and landmark. Mr. Emanuel’s predecessor, Richard M. Daley, who tore down what remained of Cabrini and began to replace old, debased developments with New Urbanist-style mixed-income ones, gave Chicago Millennium Park and loads of planted flowers. He built cookie-cutter library branches, police and fire stations. I toured the Edgewater library one morning, a two-story, brick-and-concrete box, about as inviting from the outside as a motor vehicle bureau office and ostensibly indistinguishable from one. The cookie-cutter model was conceived to lower building costs and insure a kind of architectural equivalence across diverse neighborhoods. Library officials tell me the one-size-fits-all design invariably needed some tweaking, from site to site, so it didn’t turn out to be especially economical. And the common denominator obviously did nothing to beautify Chicago or celebrate communities with distinct personalities and desires. Mr. Emanuel adopted a different model. Capitalizing on the city’s architectural heritage, he touted striking new civic architecture as an advertisement for the city and a source of community pride. Distinguished civic buildings in underserved neighborhoods constituted their own brand of equity. Good architecture costs more but it pays a dividend over time. The three new housing projects partner the Chicago Housing Authority with the Chicago Public Library system and two private developers, Evergreen Real Estate Group and Related Companies. Working with Eugene E. Jones, Jr., who runs the Housing Authority, Mr. Emanuel persuaded federal officials that public libraries could be co-located with public housing projects without putting federal housing subsidies at risk. That freed up streams of money for the co-location idea, which was partly strategic: the library helped sway community groups resistant to public housing in their neighborhoods. But co-location was also just plain good urban planning. In cities across the country, branch libraries, which futurologists not long ago predicted would be made obsolete by technology, have instead morphed into indispensable and bustling neighborhood centers and cultural incubators, offering music lessons, employment advice, citizenship training, entrepreneurship classes and English-as-a-second-language instruction. They are places with computers and free broadband access. (One in three Chicagoans lacks ready access to high-speed internet.) For longtime neighborhood residents and tenants of the new housing projects, the branches at the same time provide common ground in a city siloed by race and class. A city-run architecture competition in 2016 attracted submissions from 32 local firms. The winners were John Ronan, the architect who did the beautiful Poetry Foundation headquarters in downtown Chicago; Mr. Lee from Skidmore; and Ralph Johnson, who also designed the O’Hare international terminal, from the local office of Perkins + Will. The libraries share real estate with the apartments but maintain separate entrances. The apartment blocks are designed to command views from a distance; the glassed-in libraries, to command the street. Mr. Johnson’s project, the $34 million Northtown Affordable Apartments and Public Library, near Warren Park, is a four-story snaking structure, shaped like a twisty garden hose, trimmed in fluorescent green, backing onto a historic bungalow district, along a stretch of avenue that features a Jiffy Lube and Mobil station. It’s meant to be, and is, a beacon and an eye-catcher. The building’s upper floors include 44 one-bedroom apartments for seniors. They perch atop a bright, glazed, double-height, 16,000 square foot library, which curves around an interior, teardrop-shaped garden, the library’s roof doubling as a terrace for the housing tenants. The apartments I saw looked great, with floor-to-ceiling windows. A community garden in the back helps negotiate the tricky transition between the bungalows and the busy avenue. Mr. Ronan’s Independence Library and Apartments, in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood, a $33.4 million project, tells a similar story. Evergreen is again the developer. The apartments, one- and two-bedrooms, as at Northtown, are all subsidized for 44 seniors and the library occupies the ground floor. The six-story apartment block is a vivid, snowy white tower with rounded corners, clad in corrugated metal, punctuated by multicolored balconies. The library juts toward the street. It’s a soaring, two-level affair, with a music studio and makers’ workshop tucked into a corner, towering concrete columns, bleacher seats and a mezzanine facing a big, teak-lined roof deck that is accessible from the apartments. The place is welcoming and richly detailed. Light pours in from three directions. Patterned wallpapers, among other touches of color, soften a vocabulary of exposed and striated concrete, with the corrugated metal on the outside serving as radiant paneling for distributing heat inside. Mr. Lee’s project, the Taylor Street Apartments and Little Italy Branch Library, encountered the fiercest community resistance. The blowback ended up reducing the size of the apartment tower and stepping its mass back from the street.

The $41 million project includes 73 apartments, seven of them market-rate. Related is the developer. At seven stories, clad in Aztec-brick and chestnut-colored panels, the building at once stands out from but also echoes aspects of the neighborhood. There are two floors with glassed-in, single-loaded corridors, the sort of perk you mostly find in high-end residential developments. A double-height library, with a curtain wall and bright orange acoustic baffles, anchors the street. When I stopped by, moms clustered with toddlers in a bright corner of the library. The place was quiet, dignified and cheerful. Upstairs, views onto empty lots suggested more development coming. The area is gentrifying. Like the other two, the project seemed both bulwark and boon. This may not be the only way to solve America’s affordable housing problem, but it’s a start. By Michael Kimmelman Read the full article

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glittership · 8 years ago

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Episode #36 — "How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War" by R.B. Lemberg

Download this episode (right click and save)

And here’s the RSS feed: http://glittership.podbean.com/feed/

How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War

by R.B. Lemberg

for Bogi Takács

At the budget committee meeting this morning, the pen in my hand turns into the remote control of a subsonic detonator. It is familiar—heavy, smooth, the metal warm to the touch. The pain of recognition cruises through my fingers and up my arm, engorges my veins with unbearable sweetness. The detonator is gunmetal gray. My finger twitches, poised on the button.

I shake my head, and it is gone. Only it is still here, the taste of blood in my mouth, and underneath it, unnamed acidic bitterness. Around the conference table, the faces of faculty and staff darken in my vision. I see them—aging hippies polished by their long academic careers into a reluctant kind of respectability; accountants neat in bargain-bin clothes for office professionals; the dean, overdressed but defiant in his suit and dark blue tie with a class pin. They’ve traveled, I am sure, and some had protested on the streets back in the day and thought themselves radicals, but there’s none here who would not recoil in horror if I confessed my visions.

[Full transcript after the cut]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 36 for April 13, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story for you. Today we have a return of R.B. Lemberg, whose story “Stalemate” was published in episode 7. This is the last story for the Winter 2017 issue, and Spring 2017 is right around the corner! We also have a guest reader, Rose Fox, for this episode.

R.B. Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe and Israel. R.B.’s work has appeared in Lightspeed’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Unlikely Story, Uncanny, and other venues. Their Birdverse novelette “Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” has been nominated for the Nebula Award, and longlisted for the Hugo Award and the Tiptree Award. R.B.’s debut poetry collection, Marginalia to Stone Bird, is available from Aqueduct Press (2016). R.B. can be found on Twitter as @RB_Lemberg, on Patreon at http://patreon.com/rblemberg, and on http://roselemberg.net.

Rose Fox is a senior reviews editor at Publishers Weekly and the co-editor (with Daniel José Older) of Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. They also write Story Hospital, a compassionate, practical weekly advice column about writing, and run occasional workshops for blocked and struggling writers. In their copious free time, they write fanfic and queer romance novels. They live in Brooklyn with two partners, three cats, the world’s most adorable baby, and a great many books.

How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War

by R.B. Lemberg

for Bogi Takács

I do not twitch. I want to run away from the uncomplicated, slightly puffy expressions of those people who’d never faced the battlefield, never felt the ground shake, never screamed tumbling facedown into the dirt. But I have more self-control than to flee. When it comes my time to report, I am steady. I concentrate on the numbers. The numbers have never betrayed me.

At five PM sharp I am out of the office. The airy old space is supposed to delight, with its tall cased windows and the afternoon sun streaming through the redwoods, but there’s nothing here I want to see. I walk briskly to the Downtown Berkeley BART station, and catch a train to the city. The train rattles underground, all stale air and musty seats. The people studiously look aside, giving each other the safety of not-noticing, bubbles of imaginary emptiness in the crowd. The mild heat of bodies and the artificially illuminated darkness of the tunnel take the edge off.

When I disembark at Montgomery, the sky is already beginning to darken, the edges of pink and orange drawn in by the night. I could have gotten off at Embarcadero, but every time I decide against it—the walk down Market Street towards the ocean gives me a formality of approach which I crave without understanding why. My good gray jacket protects against the chill coming up from the water. The people on the street—the executives and the baristas, the shoppers and the bankers—all stare past me with unseeing eyes.

They shipped us here, I remember. Damaged goods, just like other states shipped their mentally ill to Berkeley on Greyhound buses: a one-way ticket to nowhere, to a place that is said to be restful and warm in the shadow of the buildings, under the bridges, camouflaged from this life by smells of pot and piss. I am luckier than most. Numbers come easy to me, and I look grave and presentable in my heavy jackets that are not armor. Their long sleeves hide the self-inflicted scars.

I remember little. Slivers. But I still bind my chest and use the pronoun they, and I wear a tight metal bracelet on my left arm. It makes me feel secure, if not safe. It’s only a ploy, this bracelet I have found, a fool’s game at hope. The band is base metal, but without any markings, lights, or familiar pinpricks of the signal. Nothing flows. No way for Tedtemár to call, if ever Tedtemár could come here.

Northern California is where they ship the damaged ones, yes, even interstellars.

Nights are hard. I go out to the back yard, barren from my attempts at do-it-yourself landscaping. Only the redwood tree remains, and at the very edge, a stray rose bush that blooms each spring in spite of my efforts. I smoke because I need it, to invoke and hold at bay the only full memory left to me: the battlefield, earth ravished by heaving and metal, the screech and whoosh of detonations overhead. In front of me I see the short, broad figure of my commanding officer. Tedtemár turns around. In dreams their visor is lifted, and I see their face laughing with the sounds of explosions around us. Tedtemár’s arms are weapons, white and broad and spewing fire. I cannot hear anything for the wailing, but in dreams, Tedtemár’s lips form my name as the ground heaves.

I have broken every wall in my house, put my fist through the thinness of them as if they’re nothing. I could have lived closer to work, but in this El Cerrito neighborhood nobody asks any questions, and the backyard is mine to ravage. I break the walls, then half-heartedly repair them over weekends only to break them again. At work I am composed and civil and do not break anything, though it is a struggle. The beautiful old plaster of the office walls goes gritty gray like barracks, and the overhead lights turn into alarms. Under the table I interlace my fingers into bird’s wings, my unit’s recognition sign, as my eyes focus resolutely on spreadsheets. At home I repair the useless walls and apply popcorn texture, then paint the whole thing bog gray in a shade I mix myself. It is too ugly even for my mood, even though I’ve been told that gray is all the rage with interior designers these days.

I put my fist through the first wall before the paint dries.

Today, there is music on Embarcadero. People in black and colorful clothing whirl around, some skillfully, some with a good-natured clumsiness. Others are there simply to watch. It’s some kind of a celebration, but I have nothing to celebrate and nothing to hope for, except for the music to shriek like a siren. I buy a plate of deep-fried cheese balls and swallow them, taste buds disbelieving the input, eyes disbelieving the revelry even though I know the names of the emotions expressed here. Joy. Pleasure. Anticipation. At the edge of the piers, men cast small nets for crabs to sell to sushi bars, and in the nearby restaurants diners sip wine and shiver surreptitiously with the chill. I went out to dates with women and men and with genderfluid folks, but they have all avoided me after a single meeting. They are afraid to say it to my face, but I can see. Too gloomy. Too intense. Too quiet. Won’t smile or laugh.

There is a person I notice among the revelers. I see them from the back—stooped, aloof. Like me. I don’t know what makes me single them out of the crowd, the shape of the shoulders perhaps. The stranger does not dance, does not move; just stands there. I begin to approach, then veer abruptly away. No sense in bothering a stranger with—with what exactly? Memories?

I cannot remember anything useful.

I wish they’d done a clean job, taken all my memories away so I could start fresh. I wish they’d taken nothing, left my head to rot. I wish they’d shot me. Wish I’d shoot myself, and have no idea why I don’t, what compels me to continue in the conference rooms and in the overly pleasant office and in my now fashionably gray house. Joy or pleasure are words I cannot visualize. But I do want—something. Something.

Wanting itself at least was not taken from me, and numbers still keep me safe. Lucky bastard.

I see the stranger again at night, standing in the corner of my backyard where the redwood used to be. The person has no face, just an empty black oval filled with explosives. Their white artificial arms form an alphabet of deafening fire around my head.

The next day I see them in the shape of the trees outside my office window, feel their movement in the bubbling of Strawberry Creek when I take an unusual lunch walk. I want, I want, I want, I want. The wanting is a gray bog beast that swallows me awake into the world devoid of noise. The suffocating safe coziness of my present environment rattles me, the planes and angles of the day too soft for comfort. I press the metal of my bracelet, but it is not enough. I cut my arms with a knife and hide the scars old and new under sleeves. I break the walls again and repaint them with leftover bog gray, which I dilute with an even uglier army green.

Over and over again I take the BART to Embarcadero, but the person I seek is not there, not there when it’s nearly empty and when it’s full of stalls for the arts and crafts fair. The person I seek might never have existed, an interplay of shadows over plastered walls. A co-worker calls to introduce me to someone; I cut her off, sick of myself and my well-wishers, always taunting me in my mind. In an hour I repent and reconsider, and later spend an evening of coffee and music with someone kind who speaks fast and does not seem to mind my gloom. Under the table, my fingers lace into bird’s wings.

I remember next to nothing, but I know this: I do not want to go back to the old war. I just want—want—

I see the person again at Montgomery, in a long corridor leading from the train to the surface. I recognize the stooped shoulders and run forward, but the cry falls dead on my lips.

It is not Tedtemár. Their face, downturned and worn, betrays no shiver of laughter. They smell unwashed and stale and their arms do not end in metal. The person does not move or react, like the others perhaps-of-ours I’ve seen here over the years, and their lips move, saying nothing. I remember the date from the other day, cheery in the face of my silence. But I know I have nothing to lose. So I cough and I ask.

They say nothing.

I turn away to leave, when out of the corner of my eyes I see their fingers interlock to form the wings of a bird.

Imprudent and invasive for this world, I lay my hand on their shoulder and lead them back underground. I buy them a BART ticket, watch over them as even the resolutely anonymous riders edge away from the smell. I take them to my home in El Cerrito, where broken walls need repair, and where a chipped cup of tea is made to the soundtrack of sirens heard only in my head. The person holds the cup between clenched fists and sips, eyes closed. I cannot dissuade them when they stand in the corner to sleep, silent and unmoving like an empty battle suit.

At night I dream of Tedtemár crying. Rockets fall out of their eyes to splash against my hands and burst there into seeds. I do not understand. I wake to the stranger huddled to sleep in a corner. Stray moonrays whiten their arms to metal.

In the morning I beg my guest to take sustenance, or a bath, but they do not react. I leave them there for work, where the light again makes mockery of everything. Around my wrist the fake bracelet comes to life, blinking, blinking, blinking in a code I cannot decipher, calling to me in a voice that could not quite be Tedtemár’s. It is only a trick of the light.

At home I am again improper. The stranger does not protest or recoil when I peel their dirty clothes away, lead them into the bath. They are listless, moving their limbs along with my motions. The sudsy water covers everything—that which I could safely look at and that which I shouldn’t have seen. I will not switch the pronouns. When names and memories go, these bits of language, translated inadequately into the local vernacular, remain to us. They are slivers, always jagged slivers of us, where lives we lived used to be.

I remember Tedtemár’s hands, dragging me away. The wail of a falling rocket. Their arms around my torso, pressing me back into myself.

I wash my guest’s back. They have a mark above their left shoulder, as if from a once-embedded device. I do not recognize it as my unit’s custom, or as anything.

I wanted so much—I wanted—but all that wanting will not bring the memories back, will not return my life. I do not want it to return, that life that always stings and smarts and smolders at the edge of my consciousness, not enough to hold on to, more than enough to hurt—but there’s an emptiness in me where people have been once, even the ones I don’t remember. Was this stranger a friend? Their arms feel stiff to my touch. For all their fingers interlaced into wings at Montgomery station, since then I had only seen them hold their hands in fists.

Perhaps I’d only imagined the wings.

I wail on my way to work, silent with mouth pressed closed so nobody will notice. In the office I wail, open-mouthed and silent, against the moving shades of redwoods in the window.

For once I don’t want takeaway or minute-meals. I brew strong black tea, and cook stewed red lentils over rice in a newly purchased pot. I repair the broken walls and watch Tedtemár-who-is-not-quite-Tedtemár as they lean against the doorway, eyes vacant. I take them to sleep in my bed, then perch on the very edge of it, wary and waiting. At night they cry out once, their voice undulating with the sirens in my mind. Hope awakens in me with that sound, but then my guest falls silent again.

An older neighbor comes by in the morning and chats at my guest, not caring that they do not answer—like the date whose name I have forgotten. I don’t know if I’d recognize Tedtemár if I met them here. My guest could be anyone, from my unit or another, or a veteran of an entirely different war shipped to Northern California by people I can’t know, because they always ship us here, from everywhere, and do not tell us why.

Work’s lost all taste and color, what of it there ever was. Even numbers feel numb and bland under my tongue. I make mistakes in my spreadsheets and am reprimanded.

At night I perch again in bed beside my guest. I hope for a scream, for anything; fall asleep in the silent darkness, crouched uncomfortably with one leg dangling off to the floor.

I wake up with their fist against my arm. Rigid fingers press and withdraw to the frequency of an old alarm code that hovers on the edge of my remembrance. In darkness I can feel their eyes on me, but am afraid to speak, afraid to move. In less than a minute, when the pressing motion ceases and I no longer feel their gaze, I cannot tell if this has been a dream.

I have taken two vacation days at work. I need the rest, but dread returning home, dread it in all the different ways from before. I have not broken a wall since I brought my guest home.

Once back, I do not find them in any of their usual spots. I think to look out of the kitchen window at last. I see my stranger, Tedtemár, or the person who could be Tedtemár—someone unknown to me, from a different unit, a different culture, a different war. My commanding officer. They are in the back yard, on their knees. There’s a basket by their side, brought perhaps by the neighbor.

For many long minutes I watch them plant crocuses into the ravaged earth of my yard. They are digging with their fists. Their arms, tight and rigid as always, seem to caress this ground into which we’ve been discarded, cast aside when we became too damaged to be needed in the old war. Explosives streak past my eyelids and sink, swallowed by the clumps of the soil around their fists.

I do not know this person. I do not know myself.

This moment is all I can have.

I open the kitchen door, my fingers unwieldy, and step out to join Tedtemár.

END

“How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War” was originally published in Lightspeed’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction issue in June 2015.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back on April 18th with a GlitterShip original and our Spring 2017 issue!

Episode #36 — “How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War” by R.B. Lemberg was originally published on GlitterShip

#GlitterShip #lgbtq fiction #queer fiction #short stories #science fiction and fantasy #podcast

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brasenosearts · 8 years ago

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Hilary Term, Week 3

Hello and welcome to third week! 3 weeks in! 3! 3333333333!! 333333333333333333333333333333333333333333

I would like to begin by quickly distancing myself from the terrible pun in the subject of Phoebe’s latest email and say that “third-sy” is truly terrible and she has saved you because if I had written this email sooner I definitely would have used it myself in a formulation somehow worse than implying you were “thirsty for tours”

I have drawn up a fun week planner below for you to organise your artistic commitments. I’m going to aim to do this weekly so if you are involved in anything please email me with the subject line “ARTS NOTICE” and I will put it in next week’s and highlight it with your name in lights (/bold).

The main thing this week is obviously ARTS AND SOCIETIES DINNER on Wednesday - I hope you're all excited. otherwise take a look below for fun things to get involved in.

P.S.

in typing all those 3s I someone broke my “3” key on my computer and it no longer turns into a pound sign when I press enter. If anyone can assist me pls help. Apologies if you receive any emails about arts funding that seem to change font midway because I have to copy and paste the pound symbol from a google search.

firstly a message from a BNC HCR member:

Seeking Director for Edinburgh Fringe 2017 I'm an MSt student in Creative Writing currently working on a play about sex education, and looking for a Director to be involved in taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe for a week this summer. If you're interested please email Cressida at

[email protected]

with a note about any experience you might have.

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May 3rd, 2017

Tuesday 31st

https://www.facebook.com/events/101085160404389/ - Oxford Revue Audrey #1, 7.30pm - Old Fire Station

Tickets: https://oldfirestation.ticketsolve.com/#/shows/873569932

https://www.facebook.com/events/352431468488984/ - Tour of Modern Art Oxford's Lubaina Himid Exhibition, 4:30pm, Modern Art Oxford

https://www.facebook.com/events/1263705713675835/ - Another Gaze presents: O Fantasma, 8pm, Somerville College

https://www.facebook.com/events/1769965539995725/ - Gin & Phonics: Rhythm 'N' Booze Festival, 9pm, The Varsity Club

Wednesday 1st

Arts and Societies Dinner!

https://www.facebook.com/events/177107256102762/ The Oxford Writers Circle: Taboos and Transgressions: Sex & Eroticism in Literature, 7pm, The Albion Beatnik

Thursday 2nd

https://www.facebook.com/events/599811626884714/ - Oxford Writers’ House, Open Mic Night In Partnership With Oxford Poetry Society, 7pm, The King's Arms

Friday 3rd

https://www.facebook.com/events/178996299250082/ - Ruskin Screenings: Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011), 6pm, Ruskin School of Art

Saturday 4th

https://www.facebook.com/events/648933328648071/ - OUDS Workshops: Playing the Globe, 11am-1pm, LMH Old Library

https://www.facebook.com/events/385278328500994/ - Oxford Book Club Presents: Blind Date with a Book, 12-5pm, Big Society (Cowley)

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gessvhowarth · 6 years ago

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Free And Cheap London Events: 27 February-5 March 2017

Isabella Palumbo at MostArt Centre All week CUBAN PHOTOGRAPHY: Isabella Palumbo spent two months in Cuban taking pictures of locals and listening to their stories. She discovered a beautiful country full of potential, blocked by the myth of revolution. MostArt Centre, free, just turn up, 10am-11pm DIFFERENCE FESTIVAL: The University of Westminster is the most internationally diverse university in the UK and they're throwing a festival to celebrate that. There'll be demonstrations, lectures and discussions. University of Westminster, free, book ahead, various times 100 YEARS OF ROALD DAHL: In honour of Roald Dahl's 100th birthday, illustrator Sir Quentin Blake has drawn special portraits of Dahl's most famous characters. Celebrate this phizz-whizzing anniversary at the British Library with Quentin Blake: The Roald Dahl Centenary Portraits. Free, just turn up, until 21 May HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURE: This small two room exhibition at John Soane's Museum looks at the life of Robert Adam — an architect who designed stately homes across the UK, including Osterley Park in London. John Soane's Museum, free, just turn up, until 11 March Monday 27 February YOUTH MUSIC: Rock, Pop and Urban Regional Festival gives musicians aged 21 and under, the chance to perform in a professional setting. See the next wave of great British talent. Rich Mix, free, book ahead, 1pm and 6pm TOWN HALL TALKS: Come to a town hall talk that examines the very nature of people congregating in large groups for talks. So meta. Battersea Arts Centre, free, book ahead, 6pm-7pm ROOFTOP STORYTELLING: Head up to the Viking bar atop the Queen of Hoxton and join award winning storyteller Giles Abbott, as he weaves a tale of betrayal and loss. Queen of Hoxton, free, just turn up, 7pm-8pm Beth Vyse at Oh Boy, Comedy! Tuesday 28 February FILM QUIZ: Calling all cinephiles: the Hackney Attic's film quiz is for you. One of the few places in life you can actually be rewarded for your couch potato lifestyle. Hackney Attic, £5, book ahead, 6.30pm SMILEY CULTURE: Join MC Asher Senator, who launches his new book Smiley and Me. It looks at the birth of the British MC. Senator reads anecdotes from his book and gives a little live performance to boot. Rye Wax, free, just turn up, 7.30pm-9pm COMEDY: Oh Boy, Comedy! host their 1st birthday with a bumper line-up. It's headlined by Beth Vyse, described as 'the biggest idiot on the fringe... with a wicked imagination.' The Rose & Crown, pay what you want, just turn up, 7.30pm Wednesday 1 March PUB SCIENCE: There are so many animals on Earth — but how much do we really know about them and how they live? Dr Ross Piper investigates this... in a pub. Old King's Head, donation recommended, just turn up, 6pm COMEDY SHORTS: Come along and watch some comedy short films (and meet their creators) at The Book Club. The event is deaf and hard-of-hearing friendly. The Book Club, £3, book ahead, 7pm-11pm DIGGING FIRE: The Great Fire Of London was a while ago — but we can still learn a lot about it through archaeology. Gustav Milne talks about his experiences and insights from fire digs. Museum of London, free, book ahead, 3pm Thursday 2 March WHALES: Ever wondered what's it like to be a whale? This talk goes inside the world's largest mammal's mind to try and explain how they think. It's probably more accurate than lying submerged in your bath after a particularly large dinner. London School of Economics, free, just turn up, 6.30pm-8.30pm KEATS NIGHT: The National Theatre presents a night dedicated to one of the greatest romantic poets, John Keats. Leading poetry and prose performer Ruth Rosen, reads some of the great odes and poems written by Keats. National Theatre, £5/£4, book ahead, 6.30pm-7.30pm A Very Secret War: Bugging The Nazis In WWII Friday 3 March BUGGING NAZIS: During the second world war, British intelligence bugged the conversations of German prisoners of war for an upper hand. Dr Helen Fry examines this deceptive act. Bentley Priory Museum, £3, just turn up, 11am-noon GYM THEATRE: "Will has one true love but is it Bec or the gym?" Head to Pleasance Theatre for a semi-staged performance of A Gym Thing. Pleasance Theatre, £5, book ahead, 7.45pm KARAOKE: Bethnal Green Working Men's Club are keeping it simple with a karaoke night — time to show that you were always meant for superstardom. Free shots for people with the nerve to get up on stage. Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, free, just turn up, 8pm-1am Peckham Salvage Yard Saturday 4 March PECKHAM SALVAGE YARD: This is south London's go-to destination for vintage gems, featuring over 50 hand-picked traders. Copeland Gallery, free, just turn up, 11pm-6pm WANDER TOOTING: Join Saira for a wander around Tooting. Visit Tooting Markets and the historic Streatham Cemetery before ending up at the magical Sewing Machine Museum. Tooting Broadway station, suggested £4 donation, just turn up, noon REFASHIONING DENIM: London Fashion Week is amazing, but for the everyday consumer, most of what's on show just isn't affordable. This workshop teaches you how to work your denim into something completely unique. Barnardo's Shop, free, book ahead, noon-3pm Sunday 5 March THE GOOD LIFE: We live in a consumerist society — something The Good Life intends to investigate through talks, art and film screenings. Market Peckham, free, just turn up, 10am-3pm ACOUSTIC SUNDAY: Cosy up in The Crypt in Dalston for a festive Acoustic Sunday, presented by Sound Advice UK. Things will kick off with an open mic session, before whittling through a selection of east London's finest acoustic musicians. The Crypt, free, just turn up, 2.30pm-8pm Funzing Fun things to do with our friends and sponsor Funzing. LDN Talks @ Night |Neuroscience of Powerful Habits Every January you do the same thing. You make a New Year's resolution to lose weight, be thriftier, quit smoking or possibly even to start exercising. Yet how many of us find ourselves in the exact spot we started in once the month is up? This talk by Dr Gabija Toleikyte, explains why the brain resists changing habits of a lifetime. She'll also explain how to create long lasting change, by working with your brain rather than against it. Get tickets London Talks @ Night || The Science of Psychedelics Scientific research is resuming on how psychedelics affect the weirder aspects of human consciousness. This talk from Dr David Luke engages in current study into pyschedelics and their historical use in shamanic rituals. Be prepared, you might leave with more questions than answers. Get tickets BucketList Talks - How to follow your dreams Hear crazy true stories from the people who've probably done everything on your bucket list. Be inspired by tales of marathon running, exploring the Arctic at 16 and driving to Mongolia. Get tickets

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/londonist/sBMe/~3/ioX2AGjLAt8/free-and-cheap-london-events-27-february-5-march-2017

#London #Free & Cheap #FREE AND CHEAP LISTINGS #free and cheap #free and cheap listing

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christinarobinsongoldartsaw-blog · 7 years ago

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Unit 1 Part B - Opportunities To Participate In The Arts

Hammer and Tongue

Hammer & Tongue's first branch was founded in 2003 by Steve Larkin and Jim Thomas on Oxford's legendary Cowley Road. In 2011, we moved to The Old Fire Station, in the heart of the city. To boldly go to the edge of the poetical universe, bring the finest spoken word artists to Oxford, and nurture promising talent through poetry slams, and creative workshops in schools and the community.

Other branches are available in Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, London, and Southampton.

http://www.hammerandtongue.com

The Catweazle Club

Completely Unplugged, Utterly Magical. An intimate and magical space for musicians, singers, poets, storytellers and performance artists of every imaginable hue, who grace the stage every week. A chance to sit, to listen, to connect, to inspire and to be inspired … no PA, anything goes, turn up by 7.30 to book a slot. OXFORD - THURSDAYS 8PM, EAST OXFORD COMMUNITY CENTRE, PRINCES STREET, OX4 1HU £6/£5 Performers FREE

"BRITAIN'S MOST INTIMATE PERFORMANCE SPACE" - THE TIMES

http://catweazleclub.com

The two voluntary opportunities I have labelled above I heard about from Zahra at Young Women’s Music Project. I have emailed Steve from Hammer and Tongue about a volunteering slot and I got a reply but then it was never taken forward. I believe the reason for this was because I couldn’t help him on day of Cowley Road Carnival, due to other commitments.

The reason why I didn’t attend these events was because I had so many other opportunities throughout the year that I couldn’t find the time. When I finish this project I do plan on attending to see what these events are like and hope to participate.

#unit1partb

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7-generation · 8 years ago

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Bocas from my view (A synopsis of my experiences at the event) #Bocas2017

Bocas is an event that has grown into something that has become very close to heart because of its alignment with my aspirations as a writer. However it has proven to me over the years to be more than a space for budding writers but a place where any ordinary citizen can expand their knowledge and awareness of Caribbean Literature, Art and Cultural expression. The event was first introduced to me by my current practicum teacher in 2015 and although teaching was not the initial career path I would have chosen for myself it is on this path that I have discovered a space that is now playing a major role in shaping my views as Caribbean person.

What I learned and discovered is that Bocas is the place that any budding or aspiring writer, artist, poet, practicing teacher, and any Caribbean citizen with a thirst for knowledge of self needs to be. Unfortunately like many great spaces for social and intellectual growth in Trinidad and Tobago Bocas finds itself mostly under the radar. It is not an event that is heavily supported or promoted by government bodies or major media houses but with the rate at which it is growing I see this changing very soon.

One of the major lessons I have learnt in my life is that people are people. All types of media whether social, televised, printed on paper or broadcasted over the radio may sometimes present a certain image of particular individuals holding positions deemed as respectable by those in society. This may cause the viewer or listener to get a one dimensional perspective and form conclusions on what they may have seen or heard. By meeting a person on a one on one basis we may soon discover that they are people just like us facing real and personal issues and trying to make sense of what life is presenting to them at the moment. During the event I had the opportunity to sit in on a one on one discussion with the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Dr Keith Rowley at the Old Fire Station. The interviewer called him Prime Minister but he simply replied by saying “I am not a prime minister I am a geologist” to which the audience responded with laughter. On television and social media the Prime Minister may be compared to a raging Pit-bull but the person I saw seemed quite timid, soft spoken and charismatic. I am aware that there are many pressing issues in the country at the moment but sometimes we tend to forget that the people who are selected to solve the problems are only human. I also discovered that just like me the Prime Minister is a developing writer. We all have different reasons for writing, Keith Rowley knew very little about writing a book but he wrote his memoirs so that people most importantly his children could know who he was before his career as a minister.

Drawing from the events that I was selected to attend I would say that the high points for me were the CLR James film, The CODE Burt’s Award Winner’s Showcase and The Writer’s Lab. The CLR James film was an eye opener for me because I was able to learn that a writer’s career can stretch beyond pen and paper and that a writer can influence and help change a society for the better. The discussion with the winners of the CODE Burt’s Awards helped me to understand that creativity can be a challenge for even the most experienced individuals and that creating content for young adults is no easy task. At The writer’s Lab participants had the opportunity to workshop their writings under the supervision of a published author. My only criticism of the events is that they could have been done on a larger scale but as I said in my earlier blog posts it is a start and I great start indeed.

When it comes to Caribbean Literature, Art and Cultural Expression Bocas is the place to be however the festival I would say is still very much hidden in plain sight. None the less being a part of it especially as a blogger this time around is confirmation for me that a future in writing is a strong possibility and that there are people in places that are willing and capable of helping individuals gain a better understanding of the society in which they live whether this be through a piece of poetry, published novel or work of art.

#bocas2017

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jasonwentcrazy · 8 years ago

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The Futurist Manifesto

By F. T. Marinetti, 1909