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lambourngb · 4 years ago

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“It was supposed to be a regular, boring morning shower”

First line tag

A million years ago, an anon sent me this ask for the first line meme. I woke up possessed and wrote “stuck in gravity, clawing for some bravery” in 10 days. This story is complete, 23,000 words. I put the first two chapters up on AO3 early in honor of the news of our show coming back. The rest goes up tomorrow.

beta thanks to the wonderful @tasyfa

Pairing: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Alex Manes/Forrest Long, Michael Guerin/Maria Deluca (past) Kyle Valenti/Maria Deluca (implied/mentioned)

Tags: Starts Forlex ends in Malex, Getting back together, Nebulous Season 3, Angst, Pining, Alien Soulmate Bullshit, Emotional Infidelity, Communication, Emotional Hurt/Comforot, Explicit Sexual Content, Dirty Talk , Telepathy, Handprint Sex

Summary: A year after Crashcon, Michael knows three things for certain.

1. He loves Alex and he probably definitely always will.

2. Having Alex as his best friend makes everything in his life better.

3. Knowing, thanks to his bullshit alien biology, that Alex still fantasizes about his body regularly while dating someone else for a year, well, that is a little more difficult to navigate.

It’s fine. It is all just fine.

Author Notes: This content is probably not appropriate for review by a college writing class on tumblr, just saying but you’re welcome to leave a kudo if you like it.

*****

It was supposed to be a regular, boring morning shower for Michael.

His first Sunday off in over three months deserved a little self-care, he had decided. The summer had brought an abrupt uptick in work at the garage with increased summertime driving leading to more careless accidents and stranded motorists to tow to safety. While Walt would deny it to the end, Michael couldn’t help but notice the old man had slowed down in his work. Between doing his best to keep Sanders’ in business and taking shifts at the Crashdown to fill in for the still-absent Liz so Arturo and Rosa could have their own break, taking the time for more than a perfunctory late night wash down felt luxurious to Michael.

There was a point to staying busy, with filling every hour inside an engine or on a different project around the junkyard with his trailer and that point was distraction. Distraction from the awareness that everyone was thriving. Max and his new-found ‘cousin’ Jones were reconstructing the history of their people’s language and literature together. Isobel had recently celebrated her three-month anniversary with Monica, an artist who shared the same studio space as Rosa. Maria had made exploring her alien-rooted abilities the focus of her life outside of the bar, combining her knowledge of yoga and meditation to crack the ability of moving forward in time. With that success, she had managed to bring back the answer to saving her brain from damage from the future. Her work with Kyle in developing the treatment for her and Mimi had led a new romance there. Then there was Alex, the true focus of Michael’s need for distraction, marking a one-year anniversary with Forrest.

It was fine. All Michael had ever wanted was for Alex to be happy. The distractions he had filled his life with helped soothe the edges of knowing who was at the root of Alex’s new-found peace.

In the last year, Michael had built a permanent wooden deck out in front of his Airstream, transforming his fire pit into an outdoor brick barbecue oven, before moving on to recycle discarded auto glass into window panes for a small greenhouse complete with a rainwater cistern off the rear of the trailer. The actual interior boasted its own changes, an expanded shower stall and more of a kitchen set up than a hotplate and kettle with a small split-level stove and expanded countertop. The next task was building a canopy to shield the deck from the elements. At some point, Michael had acknowledged to himself that each piece he had worked on had turned his portable, transient can-go-anywhere Airstream into a stable fixture at Sanders’.

A home with roots.

A home without Alex and he had accepted that, respecting Alex’s choice of partner. They were the right people for each other, but were always meeting at the wrong time. For a while, he had waited patiently for things to end with Forrest. He had been happy enough to work on being Alex’s friend in the meantime. Then, once they were truly friends sharing every stupid moment of their days via a text message or over a beer at his trailer, he had felt the betrayal of his selfish thoughts keenly. What kind of friend would root for a break-up? What kind of friend would wish heartbreak on the other?

The asshole kind, he had concluded.

As the hot water from the shower head poured over his head though, the acceptance he had about Alex moving on was just a little farther from his reach because Alex was currently thinking about him. They weren’t platonic friend-thoughts either.

A ghost sensation of a hand skirted down Michael’s body, lingering over his chest hair, and fuck, Alex had really loved to card his fingers through it. His mind was awash with impulses not his own, hot anticipation and the thrill of pleasure dropped down his body like the free-falling crest of a rollercoaster. Michael closed his eyes, soaking in the feelings. A gasp escaped his mouth, heard by no one in his trailer. Good God, Alex was really ready, waking with morning wood or to someone — Wrapping his own hand around his hardening cock, Michael stroked himself in time with Alex’s thoughts, pushing aside his own. It was best to just give into temptation and enjoy the moment.

It was something he had learned to embrace with varying degrees of eagerness over the last few years.

The connection with Alex had formed apparently sometime after the shed, but it had taken him over ten years and Alex moving back to Roswell to realize what was going on between them. The summer they had turned eighteen, they had barely been able to keep their hands off each other in the desert, and when Michael was alone, all he could think about back then, was Alex. His head had been a complex swirl of emotion, slingshotting him from the highs of seeing Alex to the lows of facing his own aborted future. There was the longing for Alex, the sadness that he knew their time was limited because Alex was going to go places, and he was stuck in Roswell watching over Isobel, but in the background, of what he thought was a relic from Jesse’s attack, was always a sense of sick fear, of being caught. Again.

Then over the last ten years, Michael would experience this awareness, and suddenly all he could think about was Alex. How it felt to touch him, the wickedness of his mouth, the burn and the stretch to accept Alex’s cock as he took him inside with a bitten lip- Michael thought it was just his mind, giving him a touchstone to happiness and the remembrance of being loved briefly by Alex. Nostalgia. Afterwards as he caught his breath, with his chest splattered with come, the sadness would seep in again, stealing whatever light that was made by those memories.

It wasn’t until after the drive-in, when Alex had spent almost two months avoiding him in person, that Michael had realized that those moments, late at night or early in the morning, were tied to Alex. It took falling into his bed one night, after visiting Isobel in her pod to finally piece it together. His face had hurt from crying on the drive home and the urge to sleep and never wake up again had been so incredibly strong that it took a moment for him to realize he was thinking about Alex. His cock hadn’t even been on his radar, but suddenly all he could think about was getting sucked off.

Fuck, he hadn’t wanted it then, too sad and scared about Isobel to feel much connection to his body for the purposes of pleasure, but the sensations and feelings that had overtaken Michael were too intense to fight that night. Later as he panted, open-mouthed and staring at the ceiling of his Airstream with distant thoughts of cleaning up, his phone rang once. Only the once. Then a ding of a text.

Alex -is home: Sorry pocket dialed.

The rush of self-loathing that hit Michael as he read the message had been so strong he had dropped the phone on the floor of the trailer. That’s when he knew it wasn’t his feelings in his head because in all the years of knowing Alex, of loving Alex, he had never once felt disgust toward himself for his feelings for Alex. From the moment across a borrowed guitar, Michael had accepted the tilt of his axis toward Alex Manes as a fundamental fact, like force equalling mass times acceleration.

Alex hadn’t shared that comfort, and the more Michael tuned into what was going on in Alex’s head, the more his heart broke. Two things became clear to Michael over time; the occurrences were sporadic enough for him to know that he only felt them when Alex was specifically thinking about Michael when he jerked off, and the post-orgasm feelings of disgust and self-loathing were not isolated incidents for Alex to feel afterwards.

“Sometimes things end in a whimper, Guerin-” and Michael had numbly accepted that as proof that while Alex might enjoy thinking about his body, about the ways he had pleasured Alex in the past, Alex had no desire for anything more from Michael. The sex was epic, fodder for a late night fantasy, but Michael himself? He was not someone that Alex wanted to want.

He had changed Alex’s name in his phone from “Alex -is home” to “Alex -is a bad idea” after that and then cursed himself for the trick of alien biology, doomed to be forever aware that he was an example of backsliding to Alex. When Maria had reached for him that night in Texas, he had welcomed her because she seemed at least self-aware of the fact she didn’t want to want him. There was zero chance of a misunderstanding between them that night, even as he kicked himself for still following after people who swore to him that it would never happen again.

For a long time after Caulfield, he had thought perhaps the grief of losing his mother had broken the link with Alex, setting them both free in the wreckage and dust of the prison. The dying psychic screams of his people had rolled over him, scorching his thoughts into cinders as that last connection to love and hope burned out in his mind, his mother’s life extinguishing under the thunder of Semtex and C-4. Then one night shortly after moving his trailer to the Wild Pony, it had happened again. The same overwhelming feeling of need, of longing, but this time the self-loathing afterwards had been accompanied by a crippling feeling of guilt. He had laid there in the twilight of the Wild Pony’s loft, having silently come into his palm while the sound of Maria’s breathing brushed against his ear. For the first time, he had joined Alex in that feeling of self-hatred.

It was past the time for him to flip the switch from ‘tortured lust’ to some semblance of friendship with Alex, if he could and so tentatively, he agreed to work on uncovering his mother’s past together with him. He updated his phone again with that decision in mind to “Alex -sup bro”.

After Maria had learned the truth about Rosa and sent him away with betrayed eyes, he experienced a moment of weakness for Alex after the visit they had made to the Long Farm. There had been a lightness in how Alex had moved that day, his steps had been considered but committed as they had explored the last place his mother had felt at home on earth. Inside of Michael’s heart, he had been able to feel the pieces moving together while he had stood in a place where Nora had had a family, next to a man who had always represented that promise to Michael. The openness of Alex’s smile as they had waited for Forrest Long to reappear had had Michael thinking dangerous thoughts again about a future with him.

What if. What if Alex were ready to take a step toward him without the weight of the past?

That tenuous hope had lasted until the night after Alex had given him the piece of the ship’s console. Standing in his bunker near two am, he had been examining the new piece of his ship, of his past, puzzling over why it wasn’t bonding with the rest of the console when he had felt the awareness of Alex creep into his cells, into his DNA. Eagerly he had opened his jeans with both hands and had fisted his cock, letting himself go with the pull of Alex’s desire. In the aftermath, he had found himself on the floor of the bunker, with come dripping off a fallen drawing of a ship’s engine, but near tears with the knowledge that nothing had changed for Alex. It had still been the same fear flooding his veins, still the same anchor of tortured longing and deep shame weighing his limbs down even as he had been left wrecked by how good his body had felt.

It had been madness for Michael the next few months as he had fallen in deeper with Maria, while the connection with Alex had kept tugging at his soul. There had been little rhyme or reason to when it had happened. Weeks would pass where he apparently hadn’t crossed Alex’s mind once, and then there had been a week when every night Michael had been hit with the same mix of love, lust and bottomless need. Thankfully it had matched with the week-long retreat Maria and Mimi had taken together, saving Michael the work of explaining to her why he was wearing out the washing machines at the Fluff N Fold with his dirty sheets.

The self-torment Alex had felt about him had slowly lifted, to the point when Michael had found out the truth about Walt Sanders, he had called Alex without hesitation. The contact in his phone had changed to ‘Alex- best bro’. If he had finally become a measure of comfort for Alex to remember in his most personal moments, then perhaps Alex could also become a comfort to him, without the mire of their trauma holding them frozen in place.

He had been fooling himself completely in the aftermath of Alex’s abduction that friendship would ever be enough for him. The wounds from his breakup with Maria had still been bleeding below his skin when he had stepped into the Wild Pony to hear Alex singing about him. About them. Then he had been hit with the connection, blossoming open for the first time ever in Alex’s actual presence under the spell of his song.

There had still been a ghost of darkness in Alex’s feelings for him, as he had sung about fighting battles but for the first time in a long time, Michael had felt that there was hope that Alex was finally finding peace with Jesse dead. Despite Isobel’s prodding him to stay and make a move, he had known that it wasn’t their time yet. There had been too much grief and regret swirling in his head, and not just from Alex, but he could be patient for them both for the right moment. The connection had never felt more alive between them that night on the promise of a future.

At least that was what he had thought, until time had kept passing yet here he was, standing in his shower with his hand on his dick a year later, while Alex was across town in someone else’s bed but clearly thinking about him.

Michael watched as his seed dripped down the fiberglass walls, the shower spray sending it down the drain in an eddy of his own frustrated longing. His body was calm, at least, and his mind was buzzing with happiness from Alex. He concentrated on the euphoria floating between them in particular. Alex had soaked up pleasure this morning, pursuing it with a greed that Michael couldn’t help but admire, and then he had let himself go without any hint of shame. God, it felt good to know that Alex had finally found that comfort with himself.

He breathed in and out, counting the seconds down until the connection faded. Once it was over, he gave himself five more minutes under the hot spray, letting whatever was welling in his eyes, slip unseen down his face. He cursed his stupid alien biology in the same breath that he clung to it for giving him Alex again, if only briefly.

After he was dressed for his brunch plans with everyone, he checked his phone before he left, to find a text from Alex. The contact had been updated one more time, six months after the Crashcon, from “Alex -best bro” to “Alex -bf”. Isobel had been way too excited to see that notation, until Michael had patiently explained it had stood for ‘best friend’. Maybe in another universe it was ‘boyfriend’, just not this one.

This wasn’t crumbs, he had argued to her, Alex was still a feast for him in whatever way he could have him. He read the text with his mind still working to box up the feelings that lingered for Alex, “Tell everyone we will be late- overslept”. The ‘we’ was what puzzled Michael the most about the whole situation over the last year. Why was Alex still thinking about Michael the way he did while he was with someone else?

AO3 link for more

#malex #malex fic #roswell new mexico #getting back together #season 3 #set a year after the crashcon 2x13 #not forrest long friendly #alien soulmate bullshit #publishing this ask and posting a link is self-indugent but wanted nonnie to see it #Anonymous #alien soulmate shenanigans #cosmic soulmates

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dreamofawonderfullife · 7 years ago

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Virtue and Moir's post-Olympic party still going strong

Eight years ago, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir's first Olympic gold medal was celebrated with a parade through Ilderton.

This time, the ice dance stars are flipping the script.

“It’s our turn to say thank you to everyone,” Virtue said this week from Halifax, where the cross-Canada Stars on Ice tour launches Friday.

The skaters are going to throw a bash for fans. The early target is the August long weekend in Ilderton, by the arena, right near the Moir clan’s backyard.

“Alma and Joe’s house, it’s a pretty good green room for a party,” Scott said, referring to his parents’ place. “I want to get some good people in there, some bands, and we want to give back and raise some money for charity. We’ve been so blessed. The London and Ilderton community has always given us such great support.”

They have been in demand these past two months since their PyeongChang return. Their winning appeal — and the fascination over their relationship status — landed them on Ellen’s talk show, giving the Canadians some well-earned publicity in the massive, yet hard-to-crack, American market.

“It was a lot of fun. There was so much energy, and we can always frame that in the context of what it means to the sport,” the 29-year-old Virtue said. “It’s good for ice dance and figure skating any time we have the chance to broaden that audience. We’re thrilled to do that. By no means was that ever a goal of ours. We just wanted to win the Olympics. The added benefits of whatever happened afterward, that’s just icing on the cake.”

Lately, the questions naturally have turned toward their future. What’s next?

Virtue is becoming a budding businessperson. She is the face of Nivea’s skin care line in Canada and has a keen eye for endorsement opportunities. When she’s not taking over TV networks for a day, she’s on the cover of another magazine.

She works hard to build strong relationships with companies and media partners.

Moir, who comes from a highly-regarded family of figure skating coaches, is helping out at the Ilderton club. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him eventually reach Brian Orser-like status, overseeing some of the best skaters in the world.

“I think the neat thing about our partnership is we’re so connected in what we do and the majority of our career has been intertwined,” Virtue said. “That’s been so incredibly special and we’ve talked at length about what that means to us. We’re also such different people pursuing such different things off the ice and it’s been nice to dive into various business opportunities while watching Scott passionately delve into the sport and setting up a competitive school. I’m so proud of him, much the same way I get support from him.”

“We still have that touchstone together always with skating. That will and always be the No. 1 priority.”

The tour — which arrives in London Sunday, May 6 — is booming. Ticket sale are “pretty insane”, according to Moir, and they’re preparing to perform in front of packed houses.

The skater, who famously skipped mandatory practice for the Olympic closing gala, couldn’t wait to start working on their show programs (which include Michael Jackson’s You Rock My World and, of course, the full four-minute Moulin Rouge free dance that clinched gold in South Korea).

“I was excited to come on tour. I never felt that way my whole career, and I love to skate,” the 30-year-old Moir said. “It usually kicks in a couple of days later, once you get rolling, but something stirred with us. It’s the cast we have here. There’s a great energy, and we’re seeing the impact of what the Canadian team accomplished in February. Back home, the numbers at the club are good. We have six dance teams and I’m proud to say we have eight boys skating at Ilderton.”

“I want to help them. I miss home when I’m gone. I miss being a contributing member of my family. That’s important to me. I do have a ton of projects, but I want to be involved in the lives of my nieces and nephews. I need to get back to that a little bit.”

He plans to visit schools, inspire young people and become a mentor, on and off the ice.

“I’ll focus on that the next couple of years, while I can, before people forget my name,” he said. “We’ve been lucky to be successful and have a bit of a platform. I think it’s my job and our duty to make sure we’re good role models, talk to kids and help them shape their lives through sport and extracurricular activities.”

“To me, that’s what being Canadian is all about.”

It’s not about the Internet meme that followed Moir since Games end of him standing up at the women’s gold medal hockey game, beer in hand and complaining to the referees.

“If there’s one athlete that doesn’t want that viral attention, it’s Scott,” Virtue said with a laugh.

Moir remembered talking to Olympic skeleton champ Jon Montgomery, still famous for chugging from a pitcher of beer on the streets of Whistler after his victory in 2010.

“He couldn’t shake that,” Moir said. “His corporate relationships, they just saw him as a beer-drinking party animal when that’s not really Jon at all. He’s a great athlete and person. I like to have a beer, but I also have to be mindful of what 13-year-olds see when they watch the Olympics. I want them to see sport moments. I try to stay away from that other stuff and I have Molson Canadian sending me fridges.”

“I don’t need to be on TV reacting to every single event. After that game, I did kind of shut it down. At the curling game, I was sitting between my parents being very well-behaved.”

Virtue and Moir were an important part of Canada’s Olympic viewing experience. It felt like they were on TV continuously, from the CBC documentary and commercials they did as lead-in, to carrying the flag at the opening ceremonies, through their performances and right until the end.

“Starting the Games by carrying the flag, that was an Olympic moment by itself right on par with competing,” Virtue said. “And then you go right through to the exhibition gala on the closing day.”

“We got a lot of Olympic time, which is awesome.”

They don’t get enough credit for their leadership in bringing together the Canadian figure skating team to deliver that first team gold — the one that made Patrick Chan an Olympic champ.

“I didn’t necessarily take that lead in Sochi (2014) and I regretted it,” Moir said. “After that Olympics, I talked with Meagan (Duhamel) and Eric (Radford, the pairs skaters who retired from competition Wednesday) and they were in the same boat. We felt we weren’t aggressive enough in our approach to the team event.”

“This time, we were. We talked about it a lot, sent emails. I’m pretty outspoken and maybe the guy branded as the captain because of it, but it was a complete team effort. Meagan drove the gold-or-nothing train. Because of Stars on Ice, we’ve travelled and lived together, grew up together and that was a special team feeling no other country had.”

“We relied on building each other up instead of cutting each other down, and we never let up.”

It turned into an old-fashioned blowout. By the time Virtue and Moir got on the bus to go perform their free dance, they found out the Canadians already had clinched gold.

“That was a different feeling,” Moir said. “Here you are, nervous and getting ready, and you look at your phone and find out you’re Olympic champion.”

But there was still extra motivation.

“For me, with all the Russian doping allegations, I wanted to crush them,” Moir said. “I didn’t want the Russian team to be able to say, ‘Well, oh, one of our pairs teams wasn’t here, so we lost (a nail-biter)’. We wanted to say back to them, ‘Yeah, are they going to skate seven times, because we beat you by eight points.’

“That whole event reminded us of how great Canada is. We do sport for the right reason. That win-at-all-cost mentality really brings us down. It was a tough year for amateur sport that way and we needed that at those Games.”

“I’m very passionate about that because that’s something we have to protect, clean sport.”

When controversy overtakes the Games, it ruins the stories the athletes want to tell. Virtue and Moir were able to make theirs shine through on their biggest stage.

“Tessa was really mindful of that,” Moir said. “She had that vision. It didn’t feel forced. Maybe when you’re younger, you’re playing the Olympian card, trying to prove yourself and it feels like you have four minutes on the ice to prove it.”

“We didn’t feel like we had to do that this time. We just knew that here it is, this is Tessa and Scott, we love what we do, we love each other and it’s a really authentic story.”

“People grabbed onto it and that has been fun for us.”

The partnership — and party planning — rolls on.

RYAN PYETTE

#article #very very very interesting article

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Mary Catherine Bateson Dies at 82; Anthropologist on Lives of Girls Mary Catherine Bateson, a cultural anthropologist who was the creator of quietly groundbreaking books on ladies’s lives — and who as the one little one of Margaret Mead had as soon as been one of the crucial well-known infants in America — died on Jan. 2 in Dartmouth, N.H. She was 81. Her husband, J. Barkev Kassarjian, confirmed the dying, at a hospice facility. He didn’t specify the trigger however mentioned she had suffered a fall earlier that week and skilled mind harm. Dr. Bateson’s mother and father, Dr. Mead and Gregory Bateson, an Englishman, had been celebrated anthropologists who fell in love in New Guinea whereas each had been finding out the cultures there. (Dr. Mead was married to another person on the time.) They handled their daughter’s arrival nearly as extra subject work, documenting her delivery on movie — not a typical apply in 1939 — and persevering with to report her early childhood with the intention of utilizing the footage not simply as residence films but additionally as academic materials. (Dr. Bateson’s first reminiscence of her father was with a Leica digicam hanging from his neck.) Benjamin Spock was her pediatrician — she was Dr. Spock’s first child, it was typically mentioned — and his celebrated books on little one care drew from classes discovered by Dr. Mead. Nonetheless, it wasn’t her babyhood, her lineage or her scholarship — an knowledgeable on classical Arabic poetry, she was as polymathic as her mom — that introduced Dr. Bateson renown; it was her 1989 e-book “Composing a Life,” an examination of the stop-and-start nature of ladies’s lives and their adaptive responses — “life as an improvisatory artwork,” as she wrote. Within the e-book, Dr. Bateson used her personal historical past and people of 4 mates as examples of formidable ladies at midlife. (She was 50 on the time of its publication.) All 5 had lived lengthy sufficient to have skilled loss, the strains of motherhood, sexism, racism, profession setbacks and betrayals. In Dr. Bateson’s case, she had been ousted as dean of college at Amherst School in Massachusetts in an obvious back-room deal orchestrated by male colleagues. It left her harm at first; her anger would take years to blossom. Jane Fonda hailed Dr. Bateson’s 1989 e-book as an inspiration, as did Hillary Clinton, who as first woman invited Dr. Bateson to advise her. Written with wry compassion and a behavorial scientist’s sharp eye, the e-book grew to become in its manner an unassumimg blockbuster and a touchstone for feminists. Jane Fonda hailed it as an inspiration, as did Hillary Clinton, who as first woman invited Dr. Bateson to advise her. “Studying ‘Composing a Life’ made me gnash my enamel and weep,” the creator and Ms. journal co-founder Jane O’Reilly wrote in The New York Instances E book Overview in 1989. “I scribbled all around the margins, turned down each different web page nook and underlined passages with such ferocity that my desk was flecked with broken-off pencil factors.” The insights within the e-book, Dr. Bateson wrote, “began from a disgruntled reflection alone life as a kind of determined improvisation by which I used to be always making an attempt to make one thing coherent from conflicting components to suit quickly altering settings,” as if she had been rummaging frantically within the fridge to make a meal for sudden company. dMary Catherine Bateson was born on Dec. 8, 1939, in New York Metropolis. Her father was in England on the time; an avowed atheist, he despatched his spouse a congratulatory telegram instructing, “Do Not Christen.” Mary Catherine was reared in line with the rituals and practices her mother and father had noticed of their fieldwork, together with being breastfed on demand; her mom would seek the advice of with Dr. Spock. So dedicated was Dr. Mead to record-keeping that when Mary Catherine was in school and wished to throw out her childhood art work, her mom declared that she had no proper to take action. Mary Catherine grew up in Manhattan, largely within the floor ground residences of two townhouses in Greenwich Village that Dr. Mead shared in succession with mates who lived on the higher flooring. As Dr. Mead was typically away from residence for work — or, when at residence, working full-time — it was a handy dwelling association: Mary Catherine may very well be sorted when vital by a full bench of unofficial siblings and their mother and father, in addition to an English nanny and her adolescent daughter. Dr. Mead’s housekeeping strategies had been additionally novel: When residence, she cooked and ate dinner together with her daughter however eschewed dishwashing, in order to not waste time that may very well be higher spent with Mary Catherine or on her work. Day after day, dishes piled up in dizzying verticals “like a Chinese language puzzle,” awaiting a maid who would arrive on Mondays, as Dr. Bateson recalled in an earlier e-book, “With a Daughter’s Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson” (1984). The memoir is an affectionate but sober portrait of two very difficult individuals. “One of many premises of the family by which I grew up,” Dr. Bateson wrote diplomatically, “was that there was no clear line between objectivity and subjectivity, that remark doesn’t preclude involvement.” In his evaluate of the e-book in The Instances, Anatole Broyard famous that Dr. Bateson had introduced “nearly as a lot sophistication to bear on the image of her childhood and her mother and father as they did on her.” “We’re used to novelists and poets giving us their extremely coloured or hyperbolic variations of their fathers and moms,” he went on, “however Miss Bateson, who was born in 1939, is a behavioral scientist in addition to a author with appreciable literary ability.” Her mother and father had been married for 14 years earlier than divorcing. Dr. Mead died in 1978 at 76. Gregory Batesman died in 1980 at 76. Mary Catherine attended the personal Brearley Faculty in Manhattan. At 16, after accompanying her mom on a visit to Israel for considered one of Dr. Mead’s lectures, she stayed behind and spent a part of that yr on a kibbutz, the place she discovered Hebrew. Through the years she would additionally be taught classical Arabic, Armenian, Turkish, Tagalog, Farsi and Georgian, the latter as a result of she thought it might be enjoyable. She entered Radcliffe at 17, studied Semitic languages and historical past, and graduated in two and a half years. She had already met Dr. Kassarjian, a Harvard graduate pupil on the time, however promised her mom that she wouldn’t marry till she completed school. She earned her Ph.D. in linguistics and Center Jap languages at Harvard in 1963; her husband earned his there in enterprise administration. Early of their marriage, she and Dr. Kassarjian lived within the Philippines after which Iran, following his profession operating Harvard-related graduate institutes in these nations. Dr. Bateson discovered work as a tutorial and an anthropologist, studying Tagalog within the Philippines and Farsi in Iran to take action. They lived in Iran for seven years, till they had been pressured out within the late Nineteen Seventies by the revolution there, having to go away most of their possessions behind. Dr. Bateson taught at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how, Brandeis College and Spelman School in Atlanta, amongst different establishments. At her dying, she was professor emerita of anthropology and English at George Mason College in Virginia and a visiting scholar on the Heart on Growing older & Work at Boston School. Her husband is a professor emeritus of administration at Babson School in Wellesley, Mass., and professor emeritus of technique and group on the Worldwide Institute for Administration Improvement in Lausanne, Switzerland. Dr. Bateson printed quite a lot of books on human improvement, creativity and spirituality, together with “Composing a Additional Life: The Age of Energetic Knowledge” (2010). Along with her husband, she is survived by their daughter, Sevanne Kassarjian; her half sister, Nora Bateson; and two grandsons. At her dying, Dr. Bateson was engaged on a e-book titled “Love Throughout Distinction,” about how range of all stripes — gender, tradition and nationality — is usually a supply of perception, collaboration and creativity. Supply hyperlink #Anthropologist #Bateson #Catherine #Dies #Lives #Mary #Women

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micaramel · 5 years ago

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The 15th Annual Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest may have just crowned its winner, but every design from the 12 finalists is truly jaw-dropping.

Each year, Charm Weddings and Quilted Northern team up to present the annual competition in which designers from across the country create custom toilet paper wedding dresses.

The designs were judged by a panel of guest celebrity judges including Monte Durham of "Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta," Jeremiah Brent of "Nate & Jeremiah by Design," and Zanna Roberts Rassi, a fashion editor for Marie Claire.

The winning designer received a $10,000 prize, while the second-place winner received a check for $5,000, and the third-place winner received $2,500.

Here are the 12 exquisite designs from the finalists.

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You've heard about blushing brides, but how about flushing brides?

The 15th Annual Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest just crowned its winner, Mimoza Haska of Surfside Beach, South Carolina.

Read more: This male beauty pageant has a national costume competition just like Miss Universe. Here are the wildest outfits.

What started as a $500 contest inspired by a popular wedding shower game has evolved into something of a phenomenon. The contest received more than 1,500 entries this year, and they were narrowed down to a mere 12 finalists.

Contestants were tasked with creating custom wedding dresses using only Quilted Northern toilet paper, tape, glue, and a needle and thread — and the results are breathtaking.

The designs were critiqued by a panel of celebrity judges including Laura Gawne and Susan Bain, co-creators of the contest and owners of Charm Weddings, and Charles Ekenga, senior brand manager for the Quilted Northern team.

They were also joined by Monte Durham of "Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta," Jeremiah Brent of "Nate & Jeremiah by Design," and Zanna Roberts Rassi, a fashion editor for Marie Claire.

Here are the jaw-dropping designs from the 12 finalists.

SEE ALSO: Queer style kicks off NY Fashion Week with inclusive show

Mimoza Haska came in first place for her unique, crocheted toilet paper gown. She won $10,000.

"The fact that [Mimoza Haska] could twist the toilet paper into yarn and crochet it is amazing," Laura Gawne, co-creator of the contest, told Insider.

"From day one, we've judged each design on beauty, originality, creativity, workmanship, and the use of toilet paper," Susan Bain, the other co-creator and co-owner of Charm Weddings, said.

Both Bain and Gawne commented on the incredible craftsmanship of the winning gown.

"A lot of the dresses we see look great in photos, on the dress form, and on the model, but these designs also have to be taken on and off ... [the winning design] was incredibly well-made," Gawne said.

Mimoza Haska won the Grand Prize of $10,000. The second-place winner received a check for $5,000 and the third-place contestant received $2,500.

Donna Vincler came in second for her romantic, vintage-inspired gown, accessorized with a floral headpiece.

The long train is certainly something to behold, not to mention the intricate floral details.

For the first time, the 12 toilet paper dress finalists were broken up by category. Dresses were categorized as "traditional," "modern," or "cultural."

Susan Nicholson came in third place for her "cultural" gown, complete with an elegant top hat, lace-like detailing, and full mermaid skirt.

Even though not every designer went home with a top prize, each dress deserves recognition.

"Not only are these designers so talented — if the gowns were being made out of real fabric, they would still be beautiful — but the fact that they can do this with toilet paper, which is difficult to work with, is so incredible," Gawne said. "People get that, and that's part of why [the contest] continues to be so popular. It really is an amazing feat."

Many designers like Carol Touchstone, who designed this eye-catching, textured ballgown, have been a part of the contest in previous years.

"On our 10th anniversary, we decided to choose 10 contestants to compete in a runway show and we will give the grand prize winner $10,000, for our 10th anniversary," Gawne told Insider. "It's been a natural progression over the years."

Ashley Ulicni's feminine and elegant dress looks like it's straight off the runway. While the "fabric" choice may not work for your beach wedding, it's certainly beautiful to look at.

The back detail truly brings the whole look together.

This ballgown, made by Lindsay Hinz, is finished off with tons of ruffles and a toilet paper bouquet.

The avant-garde back detail of this gown adds some edge to an otherwise traditional silhouette.

Star-shaped appliques are a massive trend in bridal fashion right now, and this runway-ready gown by Van Tran takes them to the next level.

It's hard to believe the designer used toilet paper for this beautiful corset back detail.

This whimsical toilet paper gown would be at home in the pages of a fairytale. The designer, Gale Mathis, also gets bonus points for the toilet paper owl and wings.

The gorgeous train and feather-like detailing make this toilet paper wedding gown completely one of a kind.

This white-and-blue ombré gown designed by Leonor Calderon is a true work of art.

Though the contest was originally inspired by the popular wedding shower game, these toilet paper gowns certainly take design and creativity to the next level.

This voluminous ballgown is opulent enough to make any bride green with envy.

While this gown's deep V-neck silhouette and modern skirt could be on a number of bride's wish lists.

"It's truly painstaking to make these designs," said Gawne.

Susan Bain remarked how, now that contestants are allowed to use a needle and thread to help create their designs, many contestants have reportedly jammed their sewing machines with the dust and fibers emitted from the toilet paper.

When asked about the future of the toilet paper wedding dress contest, both Laura Gawne and Susan Bain were excited for what's to come after the 15-year mark.

"We hope that more contestants will enter and go on to have careers in the design industry. We also hope more and more people will tune in to this exciting event, because it's fascinating," Bain said.

"It's changed in such a cool way, and I think it will continue to evolve. This could definitely go on to be televised in a bigger way," Gawne said.

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biofunmy · 5 years ago

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Social Climbing Has a Whole New Meaning

On a Friday evening last spring, Zack Woodruff picked up two college friends and drove seven hours down Interstate 65: through Indianapolis, bourbon country and the rolling hills of Appalachia.

In the middle of the night, they arrived at Miguel’s Pizza in Slade, Ky., and pitched tents in the backyard, near a gear shop that sells rock-climbing equipment. They were destined for the nearby Red River Gorge, a dramatic rocky cliff that Mr. Woodruff has explored eight or nine times.

But Mr. Woodruff, 28, a Ph.D. candidate in robotics at Northwestern University, lives in Chicago, so most of the time, he climbs at First Ascent, an indoor climbing gym with four locations in the city, where, he said, “a lot of grad students climb after work.”

Over the past five years, rock climbing has become a popular activity among young professionals and families, documented on social media and in films like “The Dawn Wall,” “Valley Uprising” and “Free Solo,” an Oscar winner that chronicled Alex Honnold’s ropeless ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

In 2016, rock climbing was added to the 2020 Olympics. New climbing gyms are mushrooming like cycling studios before them, and U.S.A. Climbing, the competition circuit, signed a multiyear broadcast deal with ESPN in January.

Popular street wear brands have been mining “old-school climbing stuff” from North Face, Patagonia, Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean for inspiration, according to Matthew Schonfeld, 27, a climber who lives in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn and does marketing for Rowing Blazers.

“It’s a moment, you know?” said Jimmy Chin, 46, who directed “Free Solo” with his wife, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. “These moments happen when a bunch of different variables all line up.”

According to Climbing Business Journal, which tracks gym openings nationally, the commercial climbing gym industry grew at a rate of 6.9 percent in 2016, 10 percent in 2017 and 11.8 percent in 2018.

“It does seem like the growth of the gym industry is continuing to trend upward,” said John Burgman, 38, a journalist who writes Climbing Business Journal’s annual report and coaches a youth climbing team in Carmel, Ind.

Most rock gyms look equal parts Flintstone and Jetson; visiting one feels like landing on a Technicolor planet, or exploring a cave bedecked with Fruity Pebbles.

There are two types of indoor climbing walls: bouldering walls, which are low enough that climbers can leap (or tumble) onto the mats without getting hurt; and rope-climbing walls, which tower over the bouldering walls and require harnesses and rope. In the most well-known form of rope-climbing, “top-roping,” partners on the ground “belay,” or gather the slack as you climb higher, so you won’t fall too far if you slip. The sport has its own arcane terminology, with difficulty ratings like V5.

Young professionals flock to these playgrounds after work because the exercise is intense, unstructured and sociable; the gyms may be one of the last urban locales where talking to strangers is encouraged.

Engineers in particular seem to be attracted to the sport, because each “boulder problem” of holds is a three-dimensional puzzle, and gyms reset them monthly to keep things spicy. (As part of its corporate wellness program, Google installed a rock wall in its New York offices in Chelsea, in 2013. Its Bay Area and Los Angeles offices have rock walls, too.)

And for parents, climbing is part of the so-called free-range-kids movement — with proper supervision, of course, the antithesis of the dreaded screens.

“If you walked in and saw my itty-bitty 5-year-old, you’d be like, Oh my gosh! She goes high. She goes to the top, and she’ll rappel,” said Megan Novotney, 36, a yoga teacher whose 6-year-old triplets also partake, sometimes rappelling down together while holding hands.

“When they’re bouldering, they don’t climb anything higher than what they know they’re capable of getting down from, and that was really awesome because it translated over to the park too” Ms. Novotney said. “I trust them, and they trust their bodies.”

Rock Steady, Baby

Adults, of course, are also relishing the chance to unplug themselves, and those not partial to yoga’s chants and group movement may find a more individualist escape on the wall.

“It’s active, it’s good for you, you have to try hard, it makes you feel very present in the moment,” Mr. Chin said of yoga, “and I think climbing does a lot of those things. It’s one of those activities where you do actually need to put your phone down and you do actually have to be engaged, and for some reason it’s easy to have conversations and talk to people you don’t know when you’re climbing.”

“When you’re climbing,” he said, “there’s also a certain level of vulnerability, because you’re scared and you’re all having a shared experience, especially if you’re trying the same climb.”

Growing up in Mankato, Minn., he didn’t know climbing existed. When he started, 25 years ago, “climbing was a pretty fringe activity,” he said, “and it was usually kind of like the misfits, who couldn’t play ball sports, or weren’t great at team sports.”

These days, there is a climbing gym in nearly every major city. Corporations like Touchstone Climbing, El Cap, First Ascent and Brooklyn Boulders have plans to build more.

Sasha DiGiulian, 27, is a three-time United States National Champion climber who helped design a climber emoji and now hosts high-end climbing wellness retreats in Kalymnos, Greece.

There, groups of 16 to 20 — often millennials from Silicon Valley, San Francisco and New York City — shell out $3,500 for luxury accommodations, four days of climbing with Ms. DiGiulian and three guides, dinners of freshly caught fish and ouzo, and a rest day swimming with wild dolphins.

Her clients are “young professionals looking for an experience,” she said, and since it is tough to switch from gym climbing to outdoor climbing, she created the retreat to “facilitate people’s transition.”

Ms. DiGiulian believes that the climbing industry is expanding in tandem with boutique fitness, citing Brooklyn Boulders’ boutique fitness branch in Boston, BKBX, which combines rock climbing with high-intensity interval training (HIIT).

“They’re opening these boutique studios that are dedicated to optimizing your fitness in order to ‘train for your next adventure,’ is their slogan,” she said. “They’re not even the traditional sense of climbing, it’s climbing broken down into a fitness class. That definitely didn’t exist even five years ago.”

Harley Pasternak, who trains celebrities including Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian West and Gwyneth Paltrow, isn’t a fan of rock climbing. None of his clients do it, though climbing makes a few appearances in Goop.com’s travel pages.

“It’s really not a full-body workout,” Mr. Pasternak said, though many climbers argue otherwise. “Most of the muscles that people really need to strength-train — hamstrings, glutes, lower back, rhomboids, triceps — are not really worked during rock climbing. Rock climbing is mainly lats, forearms, quads and calves, so these are not going to contribute to better posture.”

Not to mention, he said, most people aren’t strong enough to hoist themselves up a wall without getting hurt.

“Keeping in mind the average American is significantly overweight, I would talk everyone I could out of rock climbing unless you are incredibly light, agile, fit and functional,” said Mr. Pasternak, 45. “There is a very small minority of this country that should be rock climbing.”

He pointed out that the British Journal of Sports Medicine tracked a 36 percent increase in rock climbing injuries from 2006 to 2015, 12 percent of which required hospitalization. Young men were most frequently injured.

Mr. Pasternak also pointed out the absurdity of humans constructing elaborate sheltered courses to challenge themselves

“That’s connecting with nature the same way that spinning in a room is connecting with nature,” he said. “They’re both contrived, artificial versions of the real thing without any connection to nature or the outdoors.”

Indoor climbing gyms can be expensive, especially in cities like New York and San Francisco. “Unless the commercial real-estate landscape changes, you can’t offer membership for less than $90” per month, said Michael Cesari, 39, the owner of Steep Rock Bouldering in New York. “It’s a bummer because when you go elsewhere, it’s not the case with indoor climbing.”

In other parts of the country, climbing has become so accessible that there are places that allow climbers to volunteer at the gym if they can’t afford a membership, like Memphis Rox in Tennessee, or YMCAs that offer it for free.

Polishing the Face

At Brooklyn Boulders, near one of the slanted bouldering walls — the shorter walls without ropes — a diverse group of young people were sitting on the mats and catching up on a recent Saturday while two dogs frolicked in the waiting area.

“We barely climb,” said Aaron Stack, a 30-year-old software engineer. “No one here actually likes climbing, we all just come here to hang out. The climbing is ancillary.” (He was joking: They’ve all been climbing for years, and have a weekly brunch after their workout.)

Unexpectedly, Saturday mornings are pretty quiet at Brooklyn Boulders and other gyms. Peak hours are weeknights after work, and the really serious climbers go in the morning before work.

Waiting patiently and considering courses has long been part of the indoor-climbing culture, and yet. “There’s always certain times when it’s crowded, but those crowded times have gotten more crowded,” said Michael Poyatt, 25, a software engineer in San Diego who started climbing after seeing “The Dawn Wall.”

Dan Bartz, 36, a founder of First Ascent in Chicago, said his company is trying to avoid crowding issues by opening new locations and requiring new members to attend orientation classes.

“I think there is the risk that you can have the longtime, established climbers and the newer climbers and there can be a tension between those two groups because the experienced climbers know how to behave in a climbing gym,” Mr. Bartz said. “They know where to stand, and they know how to share resources like routes or boulder problems.”

The majority of new climbers follow the rules, but some don’t. Mr. Stack witnessed an incident firsthand.

“One time, I saw these two people climbing, and it was their first time climbing, and it was on the overhung wall, and the one person fell and swung and knocked over the person belaying,” he said. “The one belaying stopped, took both of her hands off the rope, picked up her camera, and took a picture of her friend. There’s just been a huge influx of people with no clue what they’re doing.”

As a result, gyms have had to add extra safety programming; nearly all require climbers to sign a waiver and take a class before they can climb on their own.

In order to compete with the Equinoxes of the world, many climbing gyms offer weight rooms, cardio machines, yoga classes and Wi-Fi. Some are now also installing cafes and co-working spaces.

“Starbucks always talks about being people’s third place, and that’s really our goal too,” Mr. Bartz said. “People have home and they have work and we want to be that third place they go to and spend time connecting with people.”

Mr. Cesari likened the sport to snowboarding, whose addition to the Olympics, he pointed out, did not cause a lasting surge in popularity.

“For how many people will climbing be a lifelong sport, which they will then pass down to their kids? That’s the big question,” he said. “Of course people are going to change gyms, they’re going to move, but are they going to join another one? Or is it something that’s more of a temporary hobby?”

There is also a stereotype of the “boulder bro,” perhaps intermittently fasting to improve his agility, showing off his calluses, rocksplaining.

“If you want to climb really hard, you have to take your shirt off, and you have to wear a beanie,” Mr. Stack joked. “You also need a really big chalk bag, like twice this size, you leave it on the ground below you, preferably under where you’re climbing, so when you fall on it, it goes ‘poof!’ for dramatic effect.”

But in fact climbing is more diverse than ever. Brooke Raboutou, 18, made headlines earlier this year when she became the first American to qualify for the Olympics. “I would say that the climbing ratio of men to women is still about 60 percent to 40 percent,” Ms. DiGiulian said. “There are far more professional male climbers then there are professional female climbers, and I think the way climbing is changing, you are seeing a lot of people from different backgrounds getting into the sport and excelling.”

Though the sport is still overwhelmingly white, organizations like Brown Girls Climb, Melanin Base Camp, Brothers of Climbing and Color the Crag help climbers of color connect with one another.

Anna Marie Jennings, 23, met her closest friends in New York through Climb Like a Girl classes at Brooklyn Boulders. “Finding a group of women to climb with was really great because the gym is intimidating as it is, whether there’s all men around or all women around or whatever, just the nature of it can be overwhelming if you’re new,” she said. “It is very physical and people watch you, so that’s intimidating no matter who you’re around.”

“There are still times where I walk in and you’ll see, for lack of a better term, the bro-y guys muscle their way up a really hard boulder problem, and I may not be able to do it from strength,” she said. “But I might have more flexibility or balance.”

Ms. DiGiulian has been a pioneer for women in the sport, and grew up climbing the Red River Gorge, where Mr. Woodruff and his friends camped in Kentucky. A high point of her career was achieving a climb there called Pure Imagination, one of the hardest to be finished by a woman.

This “used to be one of the poorest districts within Kentucky, and now it’s blooming with business,” she said. “When I started going to Miguel’s, it used to be a little ice cream stand. Now I’ll be in countries like France and Spain and see someone wearing a Miguel’s Pizza Shop T-shirt.”

Dario Ventura, 35, the co-owner and manager of Miguel’s, said that since his father Miguel went into business 35 years ago, foot traffic has grown “exponentially.”

To adapt, Miguel’s Pizza renovated its kitchen and country-store restaurant, tripled the size of its campsite, and now employs a staff of 42 mostly transient climbers, many of whom live out of vans, like Alex Honnold in “Free Solo.”

The local community in Slade has also adapted. Nowadays, Mr. Ventura said, there are three search-and-rescue teams that respond to calls in the Red River Gorge, where previously, there weren’t any. “The whole area has grown too, there’s a ton of restaurants now, there’s a ton of campsites to compete, and we’re all full every weekend,” he said. “It’s a really healthy environment.”

However, the gorge has been subject to littering and crag erosion from the crowds. There have been efforts by the Access Fund, a nonprofit climbing organization, to maintain the bolts in the rocks so they don’t wear down from overuse and pop out dangerously while climbers are on the rocks.

Mr. Ventura marveled at all this activity. “For so many years, you got into rock climbing because you had some crazy uncle that took you out, but with climbing gyms being so accessible and everywhere now, there’s this giant funnel of people that are getting into climbing in urban areas and come here on the weekends,” he said.

And yet “I’ve heard some numbers where something like 10 percent of all people that climb in a climbing gym actually go climbing outside. Which is mind-boggling to me.”

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gocacolospgs · 6 years ago

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Sharing Spaces, Building Dreams: how one commune inspired another (and another) by Erin Elder

It was a time of great upheaval. The world was at war with itself and the earth cried out. Capitalism had made slaves of people, systematizing a messy codependence between its winners and its losers. The young people were horrified, insulted, angry, cynical, indifferent, immobilized, mobilized, naive, wistful, hopeless, and also sometimes hopeful. They believed that, using the refuse of a wasteful society, they could build a new world. They left the cities in droves, took to the nation’s highways, and began to look for land on which to live together differently.

Drop City emerged from such a mire as a vibrantly cobbled-together community on the outskirts of Trinidad, Colorado. It was 1965, and although communes have existed since the beginning of time, it was the first of its kind and set the standard for the two thousand plus that appeared in its wake. On six acres of goat pasture, a small group of artists made a constellation of buildings from junked car roofs and stolen railroad timbers, bottle tops, and whatever they could salvage. These domed structures, or “zomes,” became the crystalline vernacular of a growing counterculture. Drop City was more than “a society built from scratch,” and more than a giant sculpture; it was a total artwork, an opportunity for these artists to betheir art, working with lifestyle as their primary medium. Word of Drop City spread, and it quickly became a way station for other artists and counterculturalists who vagabonded from one coast to the other in search of alternatives.

Linda Fleming spent time at Drop City. She lived relatively nearby often sought camaraderie at the commune. As a sculptor, she marveled at the innovative architecture emerging there; she was far less interested in the steady stream of random visitors, the bevy of hangers-on, and the shared closet of clothes. When she and her then husband, Dean, set out to build a place of their own, they carried with them a hand-drawn plan for a geodesic dome and the desire for more personal space. They had met as artists in New York and were serious about their work. While they were invested in alternative lifestyles, their primary concern was for studio space.

By 1968, hippies, Buddhists, hermits, artists, and other new age pioneers were pouring into the American Southwest, where experimentation and spiritual mysticism met with cheap land and grand vistas. Linda, Dean, a man named Peter Rabbit and his wife Judy had heard about a man who had purchased land for a commune in New Mexico, and they went in search of him after locating an available 360-acre parcel in Colorado. The man agreed to buy the land, no strings attached, and with this grand gesture he imbued the fledgling commune with its landmark generous spirit.

Libre grew quickly but intentionally. Groups of friends and newcomers arrived to the dry, sloping hills to gaze out on the Huerfano Valley. Members had to be unanimously voted in, and everyone was expected to build their own homes in an agreed-upon location, out of view of the others. The homes ranged from domes to jewel-shaped inverted A-frames, from barn-style houses to Gaudiesque compilations, each born from rawness; in the beginning there was no electricity, running water, or even roads. Communes appeared throughout the valley, which held them in its bowl-like topography. Despite the magnetic culture emerging in the area, Linda and Dean spent most of their time in New York or San Francisco. Libre was a node on their migration: a seasonal refuge, a place to return to, a space to make art. For Linda, Libre became a touchstone for the passage of time and for so many dear friendships; much more than her mountainside studio, it became her heart’s true home.

I visited Libre for the first time ten years ago, for the commune’s fortieth birthday. Linda had invited me to help her plan a “brainstorm” to anchor the revelry in some guided thoughtfulness around the commune’s legacy and future. We invited a multigenerational group to take part in sharing circles and diagrammed conversation over the course of the celebration weekend. The Gen X folks talked about debt, jobs, the life of cities, while the original communards discussed their hopes and fears about sharing the place they most loved. We batted around the idea of a residency program as a way to bring young people in for distinct periods of time. But for all the community-mindedness, there was no consensus.

While Libre’s future remained undefined, my own had begun. Out of this visit and the many that followed, I developed a do-it-yourself spiritedness, a deep longing to build a place, and the moral support of my chosen Libre family to help make it happen. In fact, after a 2009 visit, during which my sister and I helped Linda and her current husband, Michael, construct a small building, we traveled south to Taos, where we spontaneously purchased a tiny piece of land. Within a few months, PLAND emerged.

PLAND was nothing like Libre. Given its small size and our commitment to building with cast-off materials, it might have had at least some resemblance to Drop City. But PLAND was its own kind of place, born out of its own unique circumstances. Short for “Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation,” PLAND was a residency program that supported experimental and research-based projects in the context of the Taos mesa. Residence was core to our mission, as we aimed to “make a place by living in it.” Over four seasons, fourteen residents came from all over the world to have a direct experience of life without electricity or running water or a cell phone signal, in one of the most wild and beautiful corners of the West. PLAND residents built rainwater filtration systems, a staircase, a wood-burning sauna, and an outhouse. They researched the history of our land and witched for water. Some artists made poetic sculptures in the landscape, while others turned bathing into a ritual performance. One artist even made a urine-powered battery.

After four years, PLAND had run its course. We had hosted school groups and annual work parties, spoken at national conferences, published papers, and been finalists for a Creative Capital grant. Over time we became consumed by grant reports, program administration, IRS regulations, and increasing concerns over liability, and so we decided to document everything on a website, sell the land, and wrap things up.

I learned a lot about endings through observing communes, most of which were never meant to be full-time, forever kinds of places. Drop City was an experimental artwork that lasted a vibrant seven years before it returned to the trash heap from which it came. Though Libre has endured, nearly all the other regional communes quietly disbanded, were evicted, or fell to ruin. Many have sold their land or no longer own it in common. And though most of the communes no longer exist, they gave rise to things that do. Libreans and their kin kept the Gardner School alive when it was threatened with closure; they started a local radio station, small businesses, bakeries, music festivals, and much, much more. Communes are incubators for alternative living experiments, lifelong relationships, and so many big ideas.

In studying communes, failure is always a prevailing question. If it didn’t last forever, was it worthwhile? Did it fail? Artists deeply understand the importance of experimentation, of the improvisational experience, of simply trying things out. Artists learn by doing; they adapt and change things and when necessary, they move on. In this way, failure doesn’t exist. For those who create temporary, arising, DIY places and projects, beginnings and endings are often life-changing encounters with what is possible. And in this time of great upheaval, when the earth cries out, we need transformative experiences more than ever.

Would PLAND have happened without our visit to Libre? It’s hard to know. Would Libre have happened without Linda’s direct experience of Drop City? Impossible to say. Are residency programs the new communes? Perhaps. What I do know is that experiences give rise to other experiences because it’s people and places that impact us most. In its vibrant fifty years, Libre has been a cherished place and a beloved community that has inspired countless people to do and dream. Happy birthday, Libre! Cheers to all that’s yet to come.

Image courtesy Roberta Price, from Counter Culture Photos: Tony and Marilyn’s Dome (early), Huerfano Valley, Colorado, Summer 1968.

Image courtesy Roberta Price, from Counter Culture Photos: Libre Birthday Jam, Huerfano Valley, Colorado, circa summer 1970.

Image courtesy Roberta Price, from Counter Culture Photos: Ranes Adobe and Chimes, Huerfano Valley, Colorado, Winter 1970.

Image courtesy Roberta Price, from Counter Culture Photos: Linda Fleming, Huerfano Valley, Colorado, c. 1970.

Image courtesy Roberta Price, from Counter Culture Photos: Dean Fleming, Huerfano Valley, Colorado, c. 1970.

Above (3 images): PLAND: Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation, an experimental off-the-grid residency program founded by Erin Elder, Nina Elder, and Nina Zastudil. PLAND existed from 2009-2014 on 1.25 acres near Tres Piedras, NM. An archive of the project can be found at itspland.wordpress.com. All photos courtesy Erin Elder.

Erin Elder’s essay commissioned and published as part of “Radical: 50 Years of Libre Intentional Artist Community” exhibition, on view at University of Colorado Colorado Springs Galleries of Contemporary Art through November 3, 2018.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years ago

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Hyperallergic: Required Reading

Andy Warhol’s first photo booth self-portrait, “Self-Portrait” (1963–64), is going to auction at Sotheby’s London. Priscilla Frank writes: “Sotheby’s describes the piece as a ‘turning point,’ as it’s the first time Warhol incorporated his own image into his work.” (via Huffington Post)

Carolina Miranda of the LA Times scored an important interview. She talks to Sam Durant about his “Scaffold” project that was dismantled at Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center. He reasserts that he doesn’t feel censored:

Censorship is when a more powerful group or individual removes speech or images from a less powerful party. That wasn’t the case. The Dakota are certainly not more powerful, in political terms, or in terms of the international art world. I could have said at any point, “No, I want the work to stay up as it is, end of story. Walker, you deal with it.”

But I chose to do what I did freely. For me, it was that the work no longer fulfilled my intentions. I always hope my work would be in support of Native American struggle and justice. To hear that it was harming them, I felt terrible. I had to change it.

When [the mediation session] ended, the mood was good. From my perspective, I was like, “Oh, wow, I just did something that has never been done. And what does this mean? I hope I made the right decision.” I had those kinds of feelings. But as time went on, I know I did the right thing.

On the morning of April 24, Delhi’s architecture community was shocked that, in the middle of the night, the city’s Hall of Nations and the four Halls of Industries had been demolished. The Hall of Nations was the world’s first and largest-span space-frame structure built in reinforced concrete. It also holds special significance in India’s postcolonial history — it was inaugurated in 1972 to commemorate 25 years of the country’s independence. Here are some thoughts on the tragic history of architectural preservation in India (images below):

The demolition was met with widespread condemnation by architects and historians alike, not just because of the loss of an important piece of Delhi’s heritage, but also for the clandestine manner in which the demolition was conducted.

… There are two significant questions that beg to be asked at this point. First, how in a city with several heritage preservation agencies does a situation arise where the judiciary is left to make calls on the fate of structures widely viewed as having heritage value? Second, what exactly constitutes the architectural heritage of a city with a history spanning more than two millennia?

‘Tearing down an icon’ Hall of nations was one of the most iconic buildings of Indian modernism and engineering skill. ‘It represented a young nation’s optimism and belief in progress through science and innovation.’ The idea of a national building was achieved here by sheer architectural and engineering merit being the first concrete space frame in India and probably one of its kind in the world. Title and Excerpt-Indian Express At Pragati Maidan With @dhwani_._ @shahkunth Picture courtesy – @shahkunth @s__nilay #delhidiaries #capital #monochromeemotions #concrete #iconic #hallofnations #leewardists #indiapictures #_soi #tearingdown #deathofmordernism #engineering #marvel #indiantravelsquad #incredibleindia

A post shared by nilay (@s__nilay) on May 17, 2017 at 11:45am PDT

Theodore Kerr writes about the six New York activists who changed the face of LGBTQ and AIDS activism with their “Silence = Death” slogan:

The origins of Silence = Death, which stands alongside We Shall Overcome, Sí Se Puede, We Are the 99%, and #blacklivesmatter as a touchstone of social justice movements, can be traced to a New York diner in 1985. Nights earlier, Socarrás recalls, he was “walking down Broadway towards Astor Place and having this irresistible impulse to throw myself on the sidewalk and pound my fists on the ground. I had to stop myself. I wanted to wail to heaven.” Over the previous few years he had lost so many men he loved that he stopped writing down their names after his list reached 100. That night, he remembers, he “watched that potential scenario [play out in my mind] and thought, ‘I can either do that or I can try to do something with this energy.’ ”

He reached out to Finkelstein, whose boyfriend had recently died, in hopes of connecting with someone who could empathize. They made a plan to meet, and Socarrás invited his friend Johnston to tag along. The three bonded over how their straight friends, as caring as some could be, had no comprehension of what gay men were going through during the epidemic. “It felt like we were in a movie,” Finkelstein remembers. “The depth of field shifted and everything went out of focus, because I felt so engaged by being able to talk publicly about something that no one else talked about publicly.”

Now you know what filter to use when you visit Joshua Tree — Gingham (enjoy):

Not everyone knows this, but the park was named after the cover of a 1987 U2 album that featured a shaggy Yucca brevifolia. None of the band members are wearing sunglasses in the cover photo, and they all look a bit grumpy, like someone wasn’t paying attention and they missed the exit for In-N-Out. Today, they would be hungry for something more vegetarian. Joshua trees have a shallow root system, not unlike the travellers blown here by wanderlust, and can be found scattered across the desert floor. Bono can be found—I don’t know. Davos, maybe?

Please go ahead and take a free foldout map of the park. These circles denote areas where you might like to park your Gulf Stream, climb on the roof, and extend your arms to the heavens, backlit by a solar flare. These circles are toilets.

English novelist Zadie Smith has written a controversial essay on the question of “who owns black pain?” It discusses the Schutz controversy at the Whitney Biennial extensively:

But there is an important difference between the invented “nigger” of 1963 and the invented African American of 2017: The disgust has mostly fallen away. We were declared beautiful back in the Sixties, but it has only recently been discovered that we are so. In the liberal circles depicted in Get Out, everything that was once reviled—our eyes, our skin, our backsides, our noses, our arms, our legs, our breasts, and of course our hair—is now openly envied and celebrated and aestheticized and deployed in secondary images to sell stuff. As one character tells Chris, “black is in fashion now.”

To be clear, the life of the black citizen in America is no more envied or desired today than it was back in 1963. Her schools are still avoided and her housing still substandard and her neighborhood still feared and her personal and professional outcomes disproportionately linked to her zip code. But her physical self is no longer reviled. If she is a child and comes up for adoption, many a white family will be delighted to have her, and if she is in your social class and social circle, she is very welcome to come to the party; indeed, it’s not really a party unless she does come. No one will call her the n-word on national television, least of all a black intellectual. (The Baldwin quote is from a television interview.) For liberals the word is interdicted and unsayable.

The editor of one of the only newspapers to endorse Trump for president writes about what people in his city think about the new occupant of the White House. They appear to still like him:

Last weekend I covered the opening of an exhibit at our historical society that pays tribute to a school desegregation saga that unfolded here in the 1950s; the event honored surviving members of the African American community who lived through a chapter in local history too long ignored. A big crowd, white and black, was on hand. Steps toward racial harmony happen even in Trump country.

While Trump carried Highland County heavily, there are people here who did not vote for him and who do not care for him. But overall, despite the avalanche of negative news stories, Trump’s support remains firm. Hillsboro’s mayor mentioned recently that he has noticed Trump yard signs popping up again, either in a show of support or a sign of defiance.

Mattel released the new “diverse” Ken dolls this week, and everyone is having a blast with them. My two favorite reactions:

“75 Lesbian Ken Dolls, Ranked By Lesbianism” (Autostraddle)

“Mattel Just Released a New Line of Ken Dolls and They’re All Fuckboys” (Betches)

Surprise, surprise … war profiteers are also refugee profiteers:

“I believe the influence of the military and security industry on the shaping of the [EU’s] border security policy is quite big, especially on the securitization and militarization of these and on the expanding use of surveillance technology and data exchange,” Stop Wapenhandel’s Mark Akkerman told Common Dreams. “Industry efforts include regular interactions with EU’s border institutions (including high ranking officials and politicians), where ideas are discussed that later turn up in new EU policy documents.”

“For example, the industry has been pushing for years to upgrade [EU border agency] Frontex to a cross-European border security agency,” Akkerman added. “The new European Border and Coast Guard Agency the European Commission has proposed, which has a lot more powers (has its own equipment, direct interventions in member states, binding decisions forcing member states to strengthen border security capacities) than Frontex has now, is exactly that.”

“If the establishment of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency proceeds,” the report notes, “this would mean a fundamental shift to an EU-controlled system of border security, with the possibility of bypassing the member states and forcing them to strengthen controls and purchase or upgrade equipment.”

“It is not hard to predict that this will lead refugees to use increasingly dangerous routes, strengthening the business case for traffickers. For the military and security industry, however it means the prospect of more orders from the agency itself and from member states,” the report continues.

The protests against what people are calling Trumpcare started this week, by ADAPT and other important activist groups. This image of Dawn Russell in DC has already come to represent the spirit of the protests:

Dawn Russell being loaded onto police bus for processing with her fist raised in POWER! #ADAPTandRESIST #SaveMedicaid #FreeOurPeople http://pic.twitter.com/HY7TTMLrhd

— DC Metro ADAPT (@DCAdapt) June 22, 2017

What’s next for New York’s High Line, and how has it influenced other park designs?

The 19 projects in the High Line Network represent a number of different adaptive reuse projects in various stages of progress, including Rail Park, a plan to turn three miles of disused railway in Philadelphia into a linear park; the Bentway, a proposal for a cultural hub beneath an expressway in Toronto; the 11th Street Bridge Park, a pedestrian walkway that will span the Anacostia River in southeastern Washington, D.C.; and Buffalo Bayou Park, a Houston initiative to make the city’s waterways accessible to the public. The inaugural group of members joined by invitation, based on some of the relationships the High Line had formed over the years.

While the projects vary in type, scope, and location, what unites them is an attempt to remake heavy-duty infrastructure into public space. Cities no longer have swathes of open space to build parks from scratch as they did 100 years ago, and the very definition of a park has changed. Cities now have to be more clever about where they find opportunities for public space. Because public space is in short supply–and real estate is expensive–these spaces have to pull double and triple duty to serve their communities. Meanwhile, cities have whittled their parks’ budgets down to virtually nothing, so securing development and long-term maintenance financing becomes a challenge.

This is depressing — “Women owe two-thirds of student loan debt“:

Women’s debt inequity is compounded by the gender pay gap; college-educated women working full-time earn 26% less than their male peers – and the gap widens over time.

The reasons for the income inequality vary, from job discrimination, to interrupting work due to childbirth. Whatever the cause, as the researchers explain: “When you combine higher debt with lower incomes after graduation, you get a recipe for financial hardship.”

Even with a degree, the debt burden can make it impossibly hard to navigate other challenges, from pursuing further graduate education, start saving for a future home or your own business, or leave an abusive relationship.

It’s Pride Day! Read about the “unsung history” of gay male circuit parties:

By the early 90s, some cities were having a “circuit party” every weekend, in places like the Roxy in New York, Probe in Los Angeles, clubs in San Francisco. Then it began expanding abroad, in places like Montreal and Europe, with the opening of megaclubs like Heaven in London.

By 1992, the Miami White Party had become famous because celebrities discovered South Beach. This is where the Latin influence came in as well. In 1996, arch-conservative Representative Bob Dornan, a Republican from California, condemned on the floor of Congress a party held at a federally-owned ballroom for the main event of the annual Cherry Party.

No question, the 90s were halcyon days for the circuit. Parties spread to mid-sized cities, like Cleveland’s Dancing in the Streets; Detroit’s Motorball; Louisville’s Crystal Ball. Most couldn’t sustain themselves. The circuit had reached saturation. People wanted to save up for the really big events—like White Party Palm Springs and the Black Party in New York—that were spectacular. The other parties would come and go.

And this went viral this week:

Quite possibly the best pair of T-Shirts i have ever seen http://pic.twitter.com/40R3K6DmjA

— Brad (@MovesLikeZagger) June 22, 2017

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

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We Need All the Poetry We Can Get & Newsweek Features the Green Book #JACBA Newsletter 31Mar2017

April 28th: Video announcement and press release made public Watch this space for a special announcement regarding the announcement of this year's Jane Addams Children's Book Award Winners and Honorees!

Word Around Town Combines Public Art With Poetry

The temporary public art project, Word Around Town, consists of two arrow-shaped signs rimmed in flashing lights and lit from within, situated in the yards of two corner houses facing North Flores Street. Rather than selling hamburgers or tires, each side features a tiny poem, almost a haiku, by distinguished local poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Jenny Browne, current poet laureate of San Antonio.

"We need jokes," Nye said. "Call them anything - medicine, aphorism, jokes, horoscopes...feel free, people."

'Out Of Wonder' Aims To Inspire A New Generation Of Poets

Kwame Alexander on his poem celebrating Naomi Shihab Nye, "How to Write a Poem": 'she writes such accessible, such wise, such warm words ... and that's what most of us feel when we're trying to ask the questions about our lives - I think poetry is a way of helping us at least begin to understand ourselves better, and eventually, each other.'

Habibi written by Naomi Shihab Nye 1998 Awardee

HOW THE 'GREEN BOOK' SAVED BLACK LIVES ON THE ROAD

What began in 1936 as a barebones aggregation of New York-area advertisements would eventually create what the historian Jennifer Reut calls an "invisible map" of America. The guide's creator, Victor Hugo Green, had recognized that such a map was necessary. But he also hoped that his work would eventually be obviated by social progress.

In 2010, as the brief post-racial moment waned, Calvin Alexander Ramsey published Ruth and the Green Book, a children's book about an African-American girl who travels with her parents from Chicago into the segregated South.

While the Green Book highlights the struggles of African-Americans, it is also evidence of a broader integration of American society. The African-Americans who intrepidly set out with Green Book in glove compartment "laid the groundwork" for interracial couples, ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians who wanted the freedom already enjoyed by whites.

Belle, the Last Mule at Gee's Bend written by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud, illustrated by John Holyfield 2012 Awardee

Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey with Gwen Strauss and illustrated by Floyd Cooper 2011 Awardee

Lynda Blackmon Lowery visits NYC students

Lynda Blackmon Lowery did two assemblies for the students of PS/IS 30 Mary White Ovington. Students presented their works to her in the Library. Students had created posters, and a variety of writing pieces, plays, and comic strips. They did a project on Activism rising from her book.

Brooklyn News Channel 12 coverage

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March by Lynda Blackmon Lowery 2016 Awardee

37 Beloved Children's Books That'll Leave You Feeling Nostalgic

HarperCollins Publishers is celebrating 200 years of great books in 2017. Check out our anniversary website to journey through the history of HarperCollins, explore significant moments in our past, take a look into the archives, browse a collection of 200 iconic titles from across the globe, and check out what your favorite authors have to say about why they read.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson This Newbery Medal-winning modern classic is a tale of friendship and loss. It was also named an American Library Association Notable Children's Book and has become a touchstone of children's literature.

Journey to Jo'burg by Beverley Naidoo, illustrated by Eric Velasquez

Banned by the apartheid government in South Africa, this is the story of two children's courage and determination to find their mother and bring her home.

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

Winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award and a Coretta Scott King Award, and finalist for a National Book Award. A provocative coming-of-age story about Steve Harmon, a teenager facing prosecution for armed robbery and murder.

The Same Stuff as Stars by Katherine Paterson 2003 Awardee

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson 1979 Awardee

Out of Bounds: Seven Stories of Conflict and Hope, written by Beverley Naidoo 2004 Awardee

The Other Side of Truth written by Beverley Naidoo 2002 Awardee

Now Is Your Time! The African-American Struggle for Freedom written by Walter Dean Myers 1992 Awardee

Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam written by Walter Dean Myers 2003 Awardee

Sprague School Celebrates Reading with the aCATemy Awards

On March 3, Sprague School held its 10th annual aCATemy Awards ceremony to celebrate both Dr. Seuss's March 2 birthday and reading. Students, teachers, and staff dressed up to honor books in categories chosen by librarians Sara Jauniskis and Sammy Gradwohl.

The assembly included a presentation of the "Hat's Off" award to local author Elizabeth Suneby. "I write to share things that are important to me," she said, "so they will be important to others." Suneby noted that 69 million children, mostly girls, around the world, don't get to go to school. Her book "Razia's Ray of Hope" is based on a true story that recounts a girl in Afghanistan who convinces her family she should be allowed to attend school. The Zabuli Education Center for Girls outside of Kabul was founded by Razia Jan, a CNN hero, who is in the story. Suneby showed a video made by students of the school, giving a virtual tour.

Razia's Ray of Hope: One Girl's Dream of an Education written by Elizabeth Suneby and illustrated by Suana Verelst 2014 Awardee

Author And Illustrator Lita Judge Visits Sandy Hook Elementary School

Sandy Hook Elementary School students gathered in the school's library in groups on Friday, March 3, to hear author and illustrator Lita Judge share information about her books and her life.

Her mother gave her blank books to draw in while her parents would be quietly waiting to take pictures of wildlife. She shared some of her drawings and writings from one of the books with the students. Journals, she said, are a place for artists and writers to develop their skills. She encouraged the students to keep their own.

One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II written and illustrated by Lita Judge 2008 Awardee

Minneapolis writer Louise Erdrich wins NBCC award for fiction

Minnesota writer Louise Erdrich was visibly moved Thursday night when her name was announced as the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction for her novel, "LaRose," the final book in her justice trilogy.

Erdrich said, "We are all in this together. It is so important right now, as truth is being assaulted not just in this country, but all over the world. Let us dig into the truth. Let us be fierce and dangerous about the truth. Let us find in that truth the strength to demand that truth from our government."

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich 2000 Awardee

Award-winning author gives presentation to Austintown audience

Ninety-five students from Austintown Intermediate School were selected to come watch Andrea Davis Pinkney's presentation at the library. Some students were selected based on their good behavior, others were selected as a reward for working hard and some were selected based on an essay they wrote.

Pinkney talked to the students and other guests at the library about how she became an author, her family and her books. She created a slide show that contained a few pages from some of her books. The artwork in her books is created by her husband, Brian Pinkney.

Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney 2011 Awardee

Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride, by Andrea Davis Pinkney & Brian Pinkney 2010 Awardee

4 Questions for National Book Award Winner Jacqueline Woodson at Drew

Renowned author Jacqueline Woodson read from her books and answered questions about writing at Drew University.

You interviewed several family members when you were writing Brown Girl Dreaming. Does a consistent family history exist? "The thing about a memoir is, it's your memory of the thing. This is my memory of the stories my relatives told me. This is my memory of what I experienced as a child. I have two brothers and a sister. They'll all have a different story, and of course they will, because they're different ages. What I remember at 5, they remember differently at 10 because they had a different context."

Each Kindness written by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by E.B. Lewis 2013 Awardee

From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun by Jacqueline Woodson 1996 Awardee

I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson 1995 Awardee

Top 15 Children's Books for Black History Month

With books about everything from jazz and Jackie Robinson to slavery and segregation, there are many rich biographies and themes to explore with children during Black History Month (February) or any time of year.

Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad By Ellen Levine Recommended ages: 6 and up This is the incredible story of Henry "Box" Brown escaping slavery by shipping himself to the north in a wooden crate. We learn that as a boy, Henry doesn't know his age because nobody keeps records of slaves' birthdays. As an adult working in a warehouse, he decides to take a major risk and mail himself in a box - to a world where he can have a "birthday" (his first day of freedom).

Follow the Drinking Gourd By Jeanette Winter Recommended ages: 5 and up This is a folktale about a white sailor named "Peg Leg Joe" teaching a group of slaves a song to "follow the drinking gourd" (the Big Dipper) north to escape slavery. The rhythmic story and colorful paintings help show children the importance of the Underground Railroad - the secret path to freedom for thousands of African-Americans.

The Other Side By Jacqueline Woodson Recommended ages: 5 and up The fence behind Clover's house marks the town line that separates black people from white people. Clover's mother warns her that it isn't safe to cross the fence, but Clover is curious to meet Anna, the white girl who lives on the other side. The two girls work around the rules of segregation and form an unlikely friendship by sitting together on top of the fence.

Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. By Doreen Rappaport Recommended ages: 5 and up The author weaves immortal quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.'s writings and speeches into this award-winning biography for kids. The multimedia illustrations carry readers from King's youth - when he first noticed "Whites Only" signs - through his remarkable life as a leader of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement

Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom By Carole Boston Weatherford Recommended ages: 5 and up Introduce children to Harriet Tubman, the champion of the Underground Railroad who earned the nickname "Moses" for leading hundreds of slaves to freedom. Spirited text and paintings portray how Tubman's compassion, courage, and deep religious faith helped her lead 19 trips from the south to the north in order to help fellow African-Americans.

Tar Beach By Faith Ringgold Recommended ages: 5 and up It's 1939, and young Cassie Louise Lightfoot is picnicking with her family and friends on "tar beach" - the hot, black rooftop of her family's Harlem apartment. Cassie lays down and dreams that she is soaring above New York City - finding beauty in the views of the George Washington Bridge (which her father helped build) while also noting the signs of social injustice in the crowded city below.

Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African-Americans By Kadir Nelson Recommended ages: 8 and up This richly illustrated 108-page book chronicles the immense challenges and important societal contributions of African-Americans throughout history. It's told from the unique perspective of a wise, old African-American "Everywoman" narrator whose ancestors arrived on slave ships and who lives to proudly cast a vote for the nation's first black president.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 By Christopher Paul Curtis Recommended ages: 8 and up This middle-grade novel is narrated by 9-year-old Kenny - the younger brother in a middle-class African-American family from Michigan. Kenny's older brother, Byron, is a juvenile delinquent who could use some stern discipline from their no-nonsense grandmother, who lives in Alabama. When the family heads south to bring Byron to Grandma's house, unthinkable events happen and shape the family's life forever.

Roundup of children's books

Caroline's Comets: A True Story By Emily Arnold McCully (ages 6-10) Continue the celebration of Women's History Month beyond March with this inspiring picture biography of an 18th century astronomer and innovator. The German-born Caroline Herschel becomes the first woman to discover a comet and be paid for scientific work. Hers is an unlikely story, captured in clear prose and charming watercolors. Suffering typhus and smallpox as a child, Caroline is small and scarred. Only brother William sees her potential and brings her to England, where together they perfect "the best telescope in the world" and make remarkable discoveries - Uranus, new nebulae and galaxies and comets galore. Kids know unfairness when they see it. Caroline is expected to cook, clean, keep the books, collaborate and count objects in the heavens too. A stellar woman! Here, thankfully, a Caldecott-winning author-illustrator further pursues her career-long interest in "girl" power.

The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet By Carmen Agra Deedy; illustrated by Eugene Yelchin (Scholastic; ages 4-8) In sunny La Paz, villagers are happy but for constant noise. Dogs bark, engines hum, and people sing in the shower. What to do? Fire the mayor. What ensues? Absolute quiet, imposed by a new mayor. Thus, this rollicking original tale develops themes of oppressive governance and squelched identity within a fanciful scenario that unfolds seven years hence when a rooster shows up, full of joyful song and righteous indignation. Turns out civil disobedience is also his thing. Art, both folkloric and quirky, captures details of life with and without music. Further, caricature nails the tyrant at the top, an archetypal bully. Author Deedy is Cuban American, and illustrator Yelchin a Russian émigré. Perhaps drawing from personal experiences with dictatorship, they relay a pleasant yarn with greater purpose - to honor freedom and inspire us to resist being censored and silenced.

The Escape of Oney Judge: Martha Washington's Slave Finds Freedom written and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully 2008 Awardee

The Yellow Star: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark written by Carmen Agra Deedy 2001 Awardee

An Eclectic Assortment of Collages, Cut from Context and Pasted Together

The show, entitled Collage: Made in America, does not try to be an exhaustive or even chronological survey of the genre. Since there is no press release or curatorial statement, the title of the exhibition serves as the only its description and indication of the show's organizational umbrella.

In the rear of the gallery, one entire wall is filled by the monumental "Circle (The Bicentennial Series)" (1973) by Benny Andrews, a huge, searing indictment of racism in America. Twelve canvases hung together depict the crucifixion of a man on an old-fashioned iron bed. A surrealist mechanical "creature" has pulled his heart out - but his heart is a watermelon. Made of collaged and painted elements, he is several colors, a metaphoric depiction of all who are oppressed in America. The bed, off-centered in the gigantic installation, is surrounded by people in various states of reaction to the ghastly act they are witnessing. Some are passive, some agitated. It's an overtly angry and political work of art, one that has continuing resonance today.

Delivering Justice: W. W. Law and the Fight for Civil Rights, written by Jim Haskins, illustrated by Benny Andrews 2006 Awardee

Raising funds for clean water wells

After being inspired by the novel, "A Long Walk to Water," by Linda Sue Park, seventh grade students at Stephen Decatur Middle School decided raising funds to help build clean water wells in South Sudan was the right thing to do.

From 7:45 a.m. until school came to a close on Monday, 320 teenagers walked in shifts carrying the flag of South Sudan, awareness signs and large jugs of water to bring awareness and show empathy for the struggles people face in South Sudan every day.

"When they carry the jugs of water, we are teaching the kids empathy," Hammond said. "It is so motivating. If we raise the most money, we are hoping to earn a visit to our school from Salva Dut, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan."

A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story by Linda Sue Park 2011 Awardee

When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park 2003 Awardee

Imaginative Books About Art For Kids

Radiant Child by Javaka Steptoe focuses on Basquiat's desire to be an artist from a young age. His mother was an artist and encouraged her son, taking him to museums all over the world. Deep down, he wanted to be a famous artist with his art on the walls of museums he visited. Steptoe gathers the essential details of Basquiat's childhood and creates resplendent illustrations, paying homage to his subject. Painting on discarded wood, photos, toys, and other objects, Steptoe expands the writing way beyond the bounds of the "story." He creates a mood, examines culture, and shows how life inspires art.

Hot Day on Abbott Avenue by Karen English, with collage art of Javaka Steptoe 2005 Awardee

Where Fiction and Reality Collide: Books and Black Lives Matter

Below are six books for young readers that address police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement.

'Ghost Boys,' by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Jewell Parker Rhodes, an award-winning children's book author, has never shied away from emotionally challenging subjects. Her previous novels have addressed national tragedies like Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Her next novel, "Ghost Boys," which Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will publish next spring, is a surreal tale that tackles recent police shootings and the country's long history of racially motivated crimes.

The narrative unfolds from the point of view of a ghost - a young black boy who is shot by a white police officer and observes what happens after his death. In the afterlife, the boy meets the ghosts of other black boys, including the spirit of Emmett Till. Because of the book's violent premise and its proximity to real events, the novel is being recommended for slightly older middle-grade readers, ages 10 and up.

"Children and teens are reading and hearing about this in the news all the time, and fiction gives them an entry point to understanding it better and helping them to empathize with all sides," said Alvina Ling, the vice president and editor in chief of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Sugar by Jewell Parker Rhodes 2014 Awardee

The Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes 2011 Awardee

Looking to teach kids about tolerance? There's a book for that

To help promote the ideas of tolerance and peace, a former librarian from Yucaipa has created a bibliography of works directed at young children.

Joan Clark's "Children's Books Promoting Peace" list is a response to anti-Muslim chatter following the Dec. 2, 2015, terrorist attack in San Bernardino and the current division the nation is experiencing, she said. And she hopes the list will start conversations between adults and children about differences and similarities people share.

Engle, Margarita. "Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir" In this poetic memoir, which won the Pura Belpré Author Award, was a YALSA Nonfiction Finalist, and was named a Walter Dean Myers Award Honoree, acclaimed author Margarita Engle tells of growing up as a child of two cultures during the Cold War. Margarita is a girl from two worlds. Her heart lies in Cuba, her mother's tropical island country, a place so lush with vibrant life that it seems like a fairy tale kingdom. But most of the time she lives in Los Angeles, lonely in the noisy city and dreaming of the summers when she can take a plane through the enchanted air to her beloved island. Words and images are her constant companions, friendly and comforting when the children at school are not. Then a revolution breaks out in Cuba. Margarita fears for her far-away family. When the hostility between Cuba and the United States erupts at the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Margarita's worlds collide in the worst way possible. How can the two countries she loves hate each other so much? And will she ever get to visit her beautiful island again? Antheneum, 2015. (ages 12 and up)

Ringgold, Faith. "We Came to America" From the Native Americans who first called this land their home, to the millions of people who have flocked to its shores ever since, America is a country rich in diversity. Some of our ancestors were driven by dreams and hope. Others came in chains, or were escaping poverty or persecution. No matter what brought them here, each person embodied a unique gift-their art and music, their determination and grit, their stories and their culture. And together they forever shaped the country we all call home. Vividly expressed in Faith Ringgold's sumptuous colors and patterns, We Came to America is an ode to every American who came before us, and a tribute to each child who will carry its proud message of diversity into our nation's future. Knopf, 2016. (ages 4-8)

Winter, Jeanette. "Wangari's Trees of Peace" As a young girl growing up in Kenya, Wangari was surrounded by trees. But years later when she returns home, she is shocked to see whole forests being cut down, and she knows that soon all the trees will be destroyed. So Wangari decides to do something-and starts by planting nine seedlings in her own backyard. And as they grow, so do her plans. This true story of Wangari Maathai, environmentalist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is a shining example of how one woman's passion, vision, and determination inspired great change. Harcourt, 2008. (ages 4-8)

Woodson, Jacqueline. "Brown Girl Dreaming" Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child's soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson's eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become. Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014. (ages 10 and up)

Woodson, Jacqueline. "Each Kindness" Each kindness makes the world a little better. Chloe and her friends won't play with the new girl, Maya. Every time Maya tries to join Chloe and her friends, they reject her. Eventually Maya stops coming to school. When Chloe's teacher gives a lesson about how even small acts of kindness can change the world, Chloe is stung by the lost opportunity for friendship, and thinks about how much better it could have been if she'd shown a little kindness toward Maya. Winner of the Jane Addams Peace Award. Penguin, 2012 (ages 4-10)

Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal by Margarita Engle 2015 Awardee

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom, written by Margarita Engle 2009 Awardee

Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky by Faith Ringgold 1993 Awardee

Nasreen's Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter 2010 Awardee

10 books for women's history month

Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn Woodson's first novel for adults is a short but powerful story about female friendship, memory and growing up.

Faith Ringgold, Tar Beach "Tar Beach" is based on a quilt series by artist, political activist and writer Ringgold that is currently featured in the Guggenheim Museum. The book's main character lives in Harlem, and its story simply but lyrically weaves in African-American folk lore aimed at younger readers.

Meet Faith Ringgold: A Woman Who Impacted the World With Her Art

What is so phenomenal about her quilts is that Ringgold didn't stop once she made them. She tried her hand at publishing and has written children's books based off of her quilts such as Tar Beach, which was based on the narrative quilt of the same name.

So, really, what hasn't Ringgold done? She's spent her life pursuing all of her dreams, never taking "no" for answer, teaching us that there is always a solution and truly giving meaning to the phrase "where there's a will there's a way." Ringgold wanted to share her art and her story with the world and at 86 years old, with over 25 awards in the arts and many of her works displayed in noteworthy establishments, we would say she certainly did.

Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the Sky by Faith Ringgold 1993 Awardee

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Since 1953, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award annually acknowledges books published in the U.S. during the previous year. Books commended by the Award address themes of topics that engage children in thinking about peace, justice, world community and/or equality of the sexes and all races. The books also must meet conventional standards of literacy and artistic excellence.

A national committee chooses winners and honor books for younger and older children.