#i read this when i was about to start working on one of ohr own fics

[seth-shitposts]

Hey yall should go read this right now by the lovely @never-ending-fanfic because the Hera & Kallus dynamic is amazing and absolutely magnificent and if you've already read it, I think you should read it again.

[marcholasmoth]

OSRR: 2143

today was odd for me. i woke up at the stabdaed "don't wake me up" 7:something am and then 11, and then, deciding i was still too tired to get up, went back to sleep. i woke up at about 12:30 when my mom called for my help and i reluctantly got up. she said it was outside and i didn't want to do outside, but i try to be a good daughter so i got up and went outside.

the other day when i was asked to do outside stuff, it was moving a few bundles of weekday and branches to the back corner, but today it was cleaning out the garden by the barn. it was a beautiful day out, but just a little too hot to make working in the sun comfortable. for me, if it's not comfortable, it's unbearably hot. as a walking furnace, i reserve the right to be way too hot at any given point, unless it's 2am and the window is open and cold air is pouring in from the outside because it's suddenly less than 50 degrees.

anyway. i hacked and chopped and raked the garden by the barn with my mom until about 4:30. it was satisfying, getting it all done and cleaned out, but if it were up to me to design the gardens when we first moved into the house, i never would made the gardens like that. but i was only 4 when we moved in, so i had no input. i was just happy about the rock in the back yard. (it's actually part of the hilltop that we live on; it's an outcropping and part of the whole thing is pushing our driveway to shit and another part is in a neighbor's yard three lots over. it's huge. we can't get rid of the bumps in ohr driveway because it's all connected and it would literally destroy the entire hilltop.) (new hampshire is weird. hills are weird.)

but yeah. four or something hours to clear out a garden and chop back the bushes with only a hand pruner and one lady with broken limbs proved to be interesting, to say the least. but it was satisfying work. every time i go outside to do something, i'm always reluctant, but after doing it for a little bit i get invested and like to see it through. (if anyone is looking for an escape, i wholeheartedly recommend gardening. it's a little too late to start a vegetable garden, but flowers are always in season. it gets your mind off of the insanity of the world and onto the world at your fingertips, the beauty of nature, and the complete satisfaction of destroying the weeds that have been choking out your beloved black iris.) but i chopped down the bushes by hand and we pulled weeds and raked out leaves - a herculean effort because the last time we worked on the garden was before chelsea and james for married FIVE years ago - but in the end it was worth it because the tree at the end is free, the bushes will be able to focus on growing instead of all of the leaves it needed to make to cover itself, and my mom can now see her irises that were given to her more than thirty years ago and that have moved with her and us from home to apartment to home. it was nice to do something outside. i saw a robin land by the house and i saw a blue jay in the woods! my mom also managed to anger a wasp but then absolutely DESTROY it with her shoe once she got it on the ground. (james is afraid of bees so she put on her big boy pants and took care of it. i didn't even see it until it was pointed out to me, and then i blinked and my mom smacked it with an old broom head, knocking it to the ground and crushing it underfoot. i get my reckless bravery from her, i guess.)

anyway, i wound up plastering myself to the floor under the ceiling fan with the air conditioner on once we got back inside, and after i had sufficiently cooled off my mom and i talked to the relief society president in her ward. i have been unceremoniously included, despite my internal wishes to not be, but i can't say no. emily is a nice lady and i was feeling magnanimous today, so i didn't pitch a fit and it was actually rather pleasant. having stepped away from the church for a while has allowed me the freedom to make my own choices that aren't dictated by what other people want me to do. i like that. but my inability to say no to people really bites me in the ass when i get to a place where i feel obligated to help, like with church. like, of course i'm gonna help someone. if i'm asked, of course i will go out of my way to do something for you. i will do so happily, even. sometimes. but usually only if i was going to do something anyway, which i usually am. but if i really don't wanna do it, and it's not something i like to do, i probably won't. that's my problem with callings at church - i can't say no to it in the first place, and then i wind up being the go-to person for family history or music and i don't want to be that person. i'm over my family history phase and i'm over the phase of wanting to be a music teacher. i've been over it for like three years now. family history for much longer. just don't ask me to do that. i'm more than happy to shop for someone or to bring them a plate of cookies or bring them needed things, or drive places, but please got the love of the almighty god do not ask me to tell you how to do family history. don't ask me to pick music for something, don't ask me to teach people, and definitely don't ask me to teach music to people. i get really frustrated at people because they don't think the same way as i do and don't think nearly as quickly as i do, and i don't understand how other people function because my brain is on a complete tangent to how other people function, so working with other people is a big no. i will gladly do stuff if it means i get to be by myself, or if i'm doing something for someone who needs something. i'm beginning to accept that i'm really just a very selfish person, only wanting to do things for others if it's something i'm okay with doing, and if it allows me time for myself and/or enables me to be safe. my first instinct is to help someone who's pulled over on the side of the road, day or night. but i can't, because i'm afraid for my safety. my first instinct is to help someone grab something if they're too short to grab it, but they usually have it covered. i also don't want to be overbearing, but at the same time i'm an absolute mess to be around so combining that with second-guessing what my first instinct is to do, i wind up not doing a lot of things for fear of overbearing, annoying, or irritating others, or of getting myself hurt and/or killed in the process. like as much as i wish for death, i don't like pain. this is just a lot of rambling and i have no idea where this is even going but if you've read this far thank you for reading, and please help me figure out my head.

anyway, after the zoom call with emily we had dinner and i took a shower, finally washing off the dirt and grime from today's outdoor adventures. i sat and did nothing for a while, but eventually i did my prob and stats homework for the week.

and then i consumed my weight in miraculous ladybug fan content. i have a problem. it's fine.

now my tummy is grumbling again. rad. can it leave me alone for a hot minute?

also today was one of those days where i didn't hear from joel. i'm sure he was hanging out with his friends online and just chillin out. he's relaxed. i was gonna ask about his interview from the last week to see if he heard anything back from them, but it slipped my mind in time to text him so i am now here at 3 in the morning wishing i texted him because hearing from him always brightens my day. he makes me happy. the ridiculous goober.

[just-a-gay-toku-girl]

Dash! (Away from) Ohranger

Well another sentai finished and another review post to be made. Now it may seem like it took me a while to finish Ohranger, it didn't. I think I finished prolly half a year ago. What took me so long is finding the energy to write this post. Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: Chouriki Sentai Ohranger is a bad show, as such i got super bored of thinking about it whenever I tried to write this. Hell the only reason i even sat down to finally finish this was because i’m almost done with my next sentai. And because of this I decided not to put the same kind of effort into this that I did with the Shinkenger post. I doubt it’s the worst sentai out there but at this moment it's easily the worst sentai I’ve watched from beginning to end. And its a shame since I absolutely adore the Ohranger suits, A simple solid color with a white collar lined with a gold circuitry pattern really simple and visually appealing. I have no idea why their visors look like something you’d give to a toddler to teach them shapes but it’s unique and cool to look at.So what to start talking about in particular? Let’s start with what I liked the most and work our way down

Opening

I didn’t really go into the opening of shinkenger last time mainly because I didn’t think I needed to. Shinkenger had an amazing theme that i feel most, if not all, sentai fans have heard at least once. However I don’t think ohranger’s theme is quite as popular so let me give my piece on it.The theme is…. Good? I personally wasn’t super into it, it’s catchy and the lyrics are good. But the chorus sounds a bit weird in the beginning and it loses its charm after a couple of episodes. I didn’t mind listening to it every episode but at the same time I never felt like I would miss much by skipping it. After listening to other openings a bit more I think Ohranger’s problem is it just lacks the oomph and epicness that it needs to get you excited for the show. It fits better for an anime about a dancing contest than  it does a show about saving the earth. I did say I liked this part of the show right?

Characters

I don’t really have a lot to say about the villains this time around so I’ll just give quick words about each major villain before moving onto the rangers. Bachus Wrath was probably the worst villain just because of how uninteresting he was, Bomber the great was the best for pretty much the opposite reason he was rude mean and you loved to hate him, and Kaiser Buldont and Multiwa were incestious robots so I don’t think I need to say more than that. Now to the rangers, who are kinda hard to talk about. I’ll get more into this later but a major problem with Ohranger as a whole is that the actual Ohrangers are barely characters in their own show. They were given very little, if any, characterization  and they tended to take a backseat to the one off characters in most episodes. Because of this I don’t really wanna talk about the as individuals but rather in 3 categories that I’ve placed each character into 

Category 1: Oh yeah, they exist

As much as sentai in general will try to preach about teamwork and try to focus on each member of the team equally it’s hard to deny that most seasons of sentai have a “Main character” of sorts that gets more focus than the rest. Most of the time the main character is the red ranger with few exceptions. Ohranger being one of those exceptions because absolutely no focus was ever put on Ohred. Looking back I can’t recall a single episode where he was the main focus. He was certainly there throughout the show but after watching all 48 episodes I don’t think he ever did anything too important other than choose the other 4 to become Ohrangers and that was it. It feels like they were writing this character, put “TBD” under his personality, and just forgot to determine one for him. The most interesting thing about Ohred is that his actor now owns a Sentai themed bar in japan

At the very least Red was there from episode one, unlike kingranger who made his debut about halfway into the series and had very sporadic appearances throughout the rest of the show. More often than not he would only appear close to the end of an episode to help finish off the monster and then disappear until the next episode, and most of those appearances he was morphed the whole time. I’m not kidding when I say there were certain episodes where I flat out forgot Riki existed until his appearance in that episode. Even now I honestly can’t even remember anything about him or his backstory just because of how little he was actually in the show.

Category 2: a product of the time

From what I’ve read ohranger was meant to be the 19th anniversary of super sentai and as such they brought in many old writers to work on ohranger and that definitely shows in how they wrote the two females of the show. We never really saw much character for either Juuri or Momo, and when we did it always felt kinda…. Primitive I wanna say. What we do know about them feel more like female character stereotypes than actual character traits, like Momo is good with kids, Juuri is good at cooking, Momo was a wimp as a kid, Juuri is on a diet despite already being stick thin, that kind of stuff. I wanna say that’s just how female characters were in the 90’s, but Jetman several years earlier had much better written females in my opinion so I don’t think that’s the case. Momo is really the character that we know the most about only because we get an episode featuring her aunt who gives a small bit of exposition about Momo as a child (Who is also the only family member we meet for any of the ohrangers) but it really isn’t much. I feel like they could’ve been good characters had they been given time to shine, but we’ll get to that later.

Category 3: so close yet so far

And finally we have the two rangers who are closest to me calling good characters; Shouhei (Ohgreen) and Yuuji (Ohblue). What puts them up in likability for me is that despite the fact they got as little character development as the rest,is that not only did they get the most focus episodes but typically episodes focused on them tended to be some of the better episodes in the show. Sure I still know barely anything about them, Shouhei is a boxer, and Yuuji is a bit of a hotshot, but their episodes were at least more fun than the rest. In particular episode 15: “O Friend!! Sleep Hotly!!” A Ohblue focused episode, is by far my favorite episode in the whole show. Even then it's a bittersweet love because I think if more episodes had been written that way Ohranger could’ve been a great show.

Final thoughts

While I don’t want to be too hard on Ohranger since a lot of it’s problems likely extend from having to be rewritten due to unfortunate circumstances, it is very difficult to say anything positive about it. This was one of the most boring shows I’ve ever sat through, and its a shame that it turned out this way. The first 15 or so episodes showed real promise, the premise was a great hook, and the suit and mech designs were top notch. What kills it is just the fact so many episodes decided to put their focus on random one off child characters rather than the main characters. Now I personally don’t mind child characters in sentai in general, and in shows like Carranger and Goseiger I actually like the kid characters since they are recurring consistent characters. But in Ohranger its a new kid every episode and they’re never seen afterwards unless its a two part episode. When other sentais have one off kids in episodes they’re usually used as the driving force that motivates whatever ranger the episode focuses on, but in Ohranger they’re the ones being focused on.

I’d say a good 30 episodes of the show have this problem and it gets so boring after a while since they aren’t even well written, just thinking about the show bores me so much it took me months after finishing the show to finish writing this review. Even the show's finale and the two movies share this issue. One of said movies was the start of the now annual sentai team ups and it gives more screen time to a group of kids than it does the returning Kakurangers. It baffles me why they decided to write it like this because I can’t imagine anyone else found this show interesting. This show has so much wasted potential it saddens me, not much more to say.

This time around it wasn’t hard for me to pick my next sentai watchthrough since I really wanted to watch a better crossover movie. So buckle your seatbelts and look both ways when crossing the road because next time we learn the rules of the road with Gekisou Sentai Carranger.

[tenderlypalecoffee]

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[simpleweddingdresses]

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[bibliophileaddict]

Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring

By Jan Greenberg

Illustrated by Brian Floca

 Bibliography

Greenberg, Jan. Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring. Illustrated by Brian Floca. Roaring Book Press, New York, 2010. ISBN 978-1-59643-338-0

Plot Summary

A Choreographer, Composer and an Artist come together to make Appalachian Spring, a beloved ballet that first debuted in 1944 but is still loved even today. This is the story of how the that ballet came to be.

Critical Analysis

Collaboration isn’t something that gets credited a lot despite many things being the products of multiple people. However, it is refreshing that Jan Greenberg and Bria Floca have put together a story about collaboration when they themselves had to collaborate on this. Greenburg’s writing is simplistic when Floca’s pictures are vivid and mesmerizing and when Floca’s illustrations are simplistic is when Greenburg’s writing tells more.

The story of Martha Graham, Aaron Copland and Isamu Noguchi is not one that many people know or probably want to know, but for those who are interested in dance, music or art will understand and appreciate that the story doesn’t just credit one of them for Appalachian Spring. Greenburg tells the story of each artist in a timeline, starting with Martha’s idea, Aaron working through the music, Isamu creating a set simplistic enough for the dancing to tell the story, leading up to the final product is an amazing use of not only time but of each of their hard work.

Having watched Appalachian Spring on YouTube (because of this book) it only makes those who have seen it apricate Brian Floca’s illustrations even more. There is a lot of passion in Floca’s designs, accompanied by Greenburg’s words the images seem to spring to life without moving.

“The Bride rocks an imaginary baby.” With a small illustration that seems to move back and forth on a rocking chair.

“The music turns fierce. The Preacher delivers his fiery sermon. Towering, glowering, leaping like cat. His long arms point toward the young couple.” Illustrations of the preacher leaping and being fierce cover, the page and I can hear the music swell and change as the Preacher moves across the page (and the stage).

In addition, the story takes place in the 1940s and the character’s clothes reflect that, this may not seem like a huge detail but as it tells a true story, readers should understand that everything was different. That the clothes were different, the technology was different and for Martha Graham, her style of dancing was different.

Overall, this book was wonderfully put together, a collaboration just as great as the Appalachian Spring ballet itself.

Review Excerpts

·         From The New York Times “It touches on concepts of mid­century Ameri­can dance, design and classical music, and has a virtuous lesson in mind: “Ultimately,” the jacket copy says, “this is a book about collaboration.”

·         From School Library Journal “Just as the original ballet was a collaboration between three people, so too is this book. Two authors plus one illustrator equals a way of telling a story that is too often ignored. Practical applications for collaborating with others based on real world events in a picture book form? Rare. Books that read and look this good together? Rarer still. A book that works as both a practical object and a beautiful text. Sometimes we just need stories that show us how to make things.”

·         From Publisher’s Weekly “Capturing the drama of dance, music, and stage design in a two-dimensional format is no easy feat, but this team does it with a noteworthy grace of their own.”

Connections

Other books by Jan Greenburg and Sandra Jordan:

·         Two Brothers, Four Hands: The Artists Alberto and Diego Giacometti

·         The Mad Potter: George E. Ohr, Eccentric Genius

·         Andy Warhol: Prince of Pop

·         Runaway Girl: The Artist Louise Bourgeois

·         Vincent Can Gogh: Portrait of an Artist

[thisdaynews]

Roger Stone found guilty of lying to Congress, witness tampering

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/roger-stone-found-guilty-of-lying-to-congress-witness-tampering/

Roger Stone found guilty of lying to Congress, witness tampering

Stone stood and braced himself with his fingers on the counsel table as the seven guilty verdicts were read. He showed no visible reaction, but he put on his glasses to look at the jurors as the nine women and three men were then polled individually at the defense’s request to confirm their agreement with the verdicts.

After the string of guilty verdicts, the prosecution urged U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to have Stone, who has been free on bail, immediately taken into custody. Jackson, looking somewhat surprised, turned down the request. But she did take the unusual step of keeping Stone under the prohibitive restrictions in force for months, including a gag order that restricts him from speaking publicly or using social media to discuss his case.

As jurors filed out of the courtroom, the rest of those present stood, but Stone was slow to rise from his seat. Nearby, longtime Stone ally Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign aide, sat pat in his seat, prompting a stir in the courtroom. When court officials finally told Caputo to get up, he turned his back on the jury as it left. A security officer quickly escorted Caputo out of the courtroom as the session continued.

“All the way out,” the officer said.

Security was tight in the courtroom as the verdict came in, with at least half a dozen deputy marshals and other officers on hand to maintain order, protect the jurors and take custody of Stone if the judge ordered that.

As Stone emerged from the courtroom, he raised his eyebrows and flashed a half-smile at reporters waiting for him in the hallway. A few minutes later, before leaving the courthouse in a black Honda SUV with a ride-share driver who appeared baffled by the swarm of TV cameras and reporters, Stone was asked whether had had any comment on the verdicts.

“None whatsoever,” he replied.

As the proceedings concluded, Stone’s daughter, Adria, fought back tears, embracing Stone’s wife, Nydia, in the first row of the spectator section. “He’s going to be alright,” Nydia Stone said.

Friday’s guilty verdicts represent the biggest victory for prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe since former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted on eight felony charges at a trial in Northern Virginia over a year ago. In the courtroom for Stone’s trial, there were ample signs of the case’s origins.

Two of the government prosecutors, Aaron Zelinsky and Adam Jed, previously served on Mueller’s staff. Several Mueller team veterans seemed keenly interested in the case, popping up in the courtroom gallery as spectators during opening and closing statements.

Stone’s fate now rests in part with Trump, who has the power to issue an election-season pardon or commutation to spare one of his longest-running political advisers any jail time. While the president has danced around the question for months, he tweeted about the verdict within minutes of it being read in open court.

“So they now convict Roger Stone of lying and want to jail him for many years to come. Well, what about Crooked Hillary, Comey, Strzok, Page, McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, Shifty Schiff, Ohr & Nellie, Steele & all of the others, including even Mueller himself? Didn’t they lie?” the president wrote, referencing a number of his longtime adversaries.

Before Stone’s verdict, a White House official said Trump had not been following the case because of the all-consuming impeachment inquiry in Congress.

“He’s preoccupied with his own fate,” the official said. The White House official also predicted that Trump would be unlikely to offer any relief for Stone until after the 2020 election to avoid any potential political damage from such a move.

Asked after the verdict whether Trump is considering a Stone pardon, White House deputy press secretary Steven Groves replied, “Not that I’m aware of.”

The fact that Stone was not immediately jailed makes a Trump decision on a potential pardon less urgent, with Stone not likely to be sent to prison until February or later.

Still, pressure on Trump is likely to increase as that date nears.

The president’s media boosters have been stumping for a pardon. On Fox News, Tucker Carlson recently encouraged Trump to pardon Stone, a plea that has echoed around the far-right mediasphere. Alex Jones, the conspiracy-minded host of InfoWars,saidon his Thursday program that he’d gotten a note from Stone predicting his conviction and appealing to the president for a reprieve.

Jones’ proclamation prompted a brief exchange in court about whether the Stone outreach violated his gag order, which included a prohibition from making comments to the media about the case.

The judge seemed to struggle with whether or not to describe Jones, known for his overheated rants peddling debunked theories, as a member of the press. She eventually settled on “media figure.”

The charges against Stone carry a maximum potential prison term of 50 years, but he’s likely to be sentenced in accordance with federal guidelines that typically call for a much more lenient sentence for first-time offenders. Those guidelines are expected to call for Stone to spend a couple of years in prison, if convicted, legal experts said.

While Trump was quiet about Stone’s case as the trial played out, he was a bombastic commentator in the early days after the indictment. The presidentquestionedin one tweet why the special counsel had targeted his longtime associate and not Clinton or the Russia investigators themselves.

Then headded, “Roger Stone didn’t even work for me anywhere near the Election!”

Stone holds a unique position in Trump world.

The two men have known each other since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. Over the ensuing decades, Stone counseled Trump on four potential White House runs and represented him as a lobbyist for his gambling, airline and hotel businesses.

Stone wrote in one of his recent books that he knew about Trump’s 2016 intentions on New Year’s Day 2013, more than two years before the official announcement.

But the two have had their tumultuous moments. While Stone had a spot on Trump’s campaign at its start, they ended up parting ways in a “you’re fired-I quit” dispute that never quite reached a clear public resolution.

Despite the division, they remained in touch. Trump told Mueller’s investigators they spoke from “time to time during the campaign.” Prosecutorsintroduced evidencecollected from phone records during Stone’s trial showing about 60 separate communications between the two men from February to November 2016.

In the Stone trial, prosecutors were unabashed about linking the defendant’s actions — both in 2016 and after — to Trump and the Trump campaign. Prosecutors eveninvokedTrump’s namedozens of times during the trial, an act Trump might view as insubordinate.

Stone’s trial also produced severalnotable revelationsabout Trump’s campaign and WikiLeaks.

Many of the disclosures came from Rick Gates, the former Trump deputy campaign chairman who testified that he discussed forthcoming WikiLeaks disclosures with Stone in April 2016, earlier than the timeline laid out in the public portions of theMueller report.

Gates recounted Stone’s request in June for Jared Kushner’s contact information so he could “debrief” the Trump son-in-law about WikiLeaks. And he detailed a July strategy meeting to go over a WikiLeaks response plan with campaign CEO Paul Manafort and senior aides Jason Miller and Stephen Miller.

Trump also got pulled into the mix. In a late July telephone conversation, the GOP nominee spoke to Stone about WikiLeaks. Gates, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and false statement charges brought by Mueller, said he overheard Trump talking with Stone. After the phone call, Gates testified that Trump predicted more WikiLeaks releases.

“He indicated that more information would be coming out,” Gates said.

That was one of three conversations prosecutors raised involving Stone and Trump in which the topic appeared to center around WikiLeaks, highlighting an apparent contradiction in the president’s written response to Mueller on the same topic.

“I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with [Stone], nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign,” Trump wrote the special counsel’s office.

Stone’s guilty verdict rippled across the political spectrum on Friday, with even some Trump allies basking in the outcome.

“Reunited and it feels so go[sic]. Stone and Manafort to re-open new ‘consulting’ firm behind bars,” Corey Lewandowski, the first Trump 2016 campaign manager, wrote on Twitter.

But it was Clinton’s 2016 campaign alumni, whose stolen emails were splashed across WikiLeaks, who seemed to truly rejoice.

“I was a victim of wikileaks and I am happy that there is some justice today,” wrote Neera Tanden, a former Clinton campaign policy adviser.

John Podesta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff,accusedStone in October 2016 with having “advance knowledge” of what WikiLeaks was doing. More than three years later, he welcomed Stone’s conviction with a quick social media post.

“Just about to take off on a long transatlantic flight in a middle coast seat. I think I will just sit back, relax, and enjoy it,” he wrote.

Gabby Orr contributed to this report.

Read More

[trunewsofficial]

Democrats Outraged by Barr’s No-Show

Attorney General William Barr was a no-show for what would have been his second congressional testimony in as many days. He skipped out on an expected grilling from the House Judiciary Committee, and it seems for good reason. He refused to be interviewed by staff lawyers for the panel as opposed to the lawmakers themselves, a format pushed by Chairman Jerry Nadler. The chairman railed against the AG’s decision: “Attorney General Barr has informed us that he will not appear today, although he worked to accommodate his concerns he objects to the prospect of answering questions by staff counsel and to the possibility that we may go into executive session to discuss certain sensitive topics. Given the attorney general’s lack of candor before other congressional committees, I believe my colleagues and I were right to insist on the extended questioning. To my knowledge, not even the ranking member was opposed to the idea of moving into closed session, if necessary. But even if Democrats and Republicans disagree on the format of this hearing, we must come together to protect the integrity of this chamber. The administration may not dictate the terms of a hearing in this hearing room. The challenge we face is bigger than a single witness.” Nadler and House Democrats claim Barr lied during his testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he’s not buying it; rather, Democrats are moving the goalposts: “I do not believe Attorney General Barr lied. I believe he's been very transparent in all of this. I think if there — if people are looking at who has lied in the process, simply look at chairman Nadler. Chairman Nadler asked the Attorney General to come and he said yes. After the Attorney General said he would come to the committee to speak to every member, they moved to change the rules. Even CNN cannot find any history of that happening before. The only time an individual as staffer questioned somebody was during Watergate. Nadler has been wanting to impeach the day after the election. He can't have the facts to prove of why he should, but he will not stop. This is what the American public is frustrated by, the politics of attacking individuals. When you look at the Democratic Party, they now want to weaponize the IRS. They want to go after — continue to go after the President, to try to go after his family. This has got to stop. The American public wants us to move forward and solve the problems.” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said he’s heard enough after Wednesday’s hearing. In an interview this morning, he encouraged the president to keep fighting against the Democrats: “I don’t think this is oversight. I think this is trying to destroy him and his family. Oversight is to hold the executive branch accountable, not to retry the election. Trump won. This is more about destroying Trump than it is trying to oversee the executive branch in my view. Mueller was a different story. He's a man of the law who's allowed to do his job. And so if I were to president I would not give into these demands about everything I’ve done because I think they’re politically motivated.” Tangentially to the Mueller Report, Rep. Jim Jordan has told The Hill TV that Nellie Ohr, wife of former Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, may soon face a criminal referral over her role in the Fusion GPS smear campaign against the president. He said he believes Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows is now “working to finalize” the criminal referral. The Mueller Report notes that Nellie Ohr exchanged 339 emails with Justice Department officials, including her husband, and met with prosecutors investigating the Russia-collusion hoax, all while working for Fusion GPS. This is in direct contradiction with her sworn testimony before Congress. Democrats and liberals are still losing their minds over the fact that Special Counsel found no evidence of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump 2016 campaign. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is among those still bitter over her loss in the 2016 election. In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, she’s still blaming Russia rather than her own campaign’s ineptitude for her loss two and a half years ago: “On Election Day in 2018, we know that our government used cyber tools to shut down a lot of the sites that they feared could be interfering. So number one, that tells us they know they’re out there. And number two, they took action to stop them. I think that’s just literally the tip of the spear, though. I think there is so much more that could and should be done. And, you know, there are a lot of people. You can read them online. You can read their academic work. They have all kinds of ideas about what to do to protect our systems. The Republicans in the Senate wouldn’t at all go forward with some of the bipartisan legislation that was meant to secure our elections under orders from the White House. Now, why is that? Well, because they think it helped them. And the Republicans look at the Trump White House and say well, you know, the Russians probably did help them, you know, just whatever extent we may not yet know, so we’re not going to go there. We’re going to do what they tell us. Imagine, Rachel, that you had one of the Democratic nominees for 2020 on your show, and that person said, you know, the only other adversary of ours who is anywhere near as good as the Russians is China. So why should Russia have all the fun? And since Russia is clearly backing Republicans, why don’t we ask China to back us.’ Clinton then had the audacity to ask China to not only steal the president’s tax returns, but to help Democrats win election in 2021: “And not only that, China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns. I’m sure our media would richly reward you. Now according to the Mueller report, that is not conspiracy because it’s done right out in the open. So if after this hypothetical Democratic candidate says this on your show, within hours, all of a sudden, the IRS offices are bombarded with incredibly sophisticated cyber tools looking for Trump’s tax returns, and then extracts and them and then passes them to whatever the new Wikileaks happens to be and they start being unraveled and disclosed, nothing wrong with that.” (Photo Credit: House Judiciary Committee) source https://trunews.com/stream/democrats-outraged-by-barrs-no-show

[cryptswahili]

Bitcoin Rabbi: Following Jewish Law Similar to Running a Full Node (Interview)

Bitcoinist spoke with Michael Caras who calls himself the ‘Bitcoin Rabbi.’ Caras explains how Bitcoin fits in with the Jewish religion and how his new children’s book ‘Bitcoin Money’ introduces kids to the concept of hard money.

Bitcoin Rabbi: Limited Supply Is the Most Important Thing to Explain to People

Bitcoinist: Are you a real Rabbi?

Bitcoin Rabbi: I am an Orthodox Rabbi. I studied in Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim in Kfar Chabad, Israel and received my Rabbincal ordination. I am not a pulpit rabbi with a community. I am a teacher; I teach Jewish subjects in a Jewish day school, I’m on the board of a synagogue and I organize many of our community services and events.

How and when did you get introduced to Bitcoin?

I was always interested in Austrian economics and libertarian philosophy. In mid-2017 my brother told me that he had bought some bitcoin and that the price was rising quickly, so I started looking into it. I watched several hours of Andreas Antonopoulos videos and did some other reading online and quickly became very excited about Bitcoin and decided to buy some.

Is Bitcoin kosher?

Kosher means “permissible” or “acceptable”. Bitcoin is a tool, and with all tools, it can be used for good or bad. It depends who is using it and what they are using it for.

If you use Bitcoin without any form of theft or harm to others then Bitcoin is kosher.

Jewish law also requires that we follow the laws of the land, so to be kosher, a person should use Bitcoin in accordance with the laws of their state and country, including paying taxes.

How does Bitcoin fit in with the Jewish religion, ethics, and customs?

Judaism considers money to be extremely important, compared to one’s very life. We are commanded to protect our money and do no harm to anyone else’s. That being the case, having hard stable money is a desirable thing. In Jewish history and tradition, money was always gold and silver. There are even several rituals that we do to this day specifically with silver coins and gold.

There are many Jewish legal questions about the process of Bitcoin transactions, mining, etc. rabbinic leaders will be addressing more of these questions as digital currency becomes more prevalent and widespread.

You’ve also drawn parallels between Judaism and Bitcoin saying “Judaism insists that all members become full nodes” and that Rabbi’s are like ‘miners.’ Can you talk a little bit more about this?

Judaism is based on the Torah as well as several books of commentary and Jewish law, such as the Talmud. In Judaism, each person is required not just to blindly follow the instructions of the leaders, but rather to purchase their own copies of the books and study them constantly to become knowledgable in all aspects of Jewish law and history. This allows a person to follow Jewish law in every situation of their life because they have the knowledge themselves.

This is similar to running a full node, which archives the entire history of the blockchain and verifies every transaction and block.

I compare the great rabbis, the rabbinic leaders of each generation to miners because they are the greatest experts in all of previous Jewish history and law and they address new situations and write new books which link the past to the present and future.

Each generation is a new block that is produced by the rabbis/miners and then validated and accepted by the entire community as part of the same tradition and following the rules of Judaism going back to Moses.

Why did you decide to release a children’s book called Bitcoin Money? How did you get the idea?

I have young children and I talk to them a lot about Bitcoin. I try to explain both the technical and economic ideas in simple terms. I also have a presentation called “Bitcoin & Judaism” in which I explore the history of money.

I took those ideas and condensed them down and simplified them into a book which is not only for children, but explains the simple economic idea of Bitcoin as hard money to both children and adults. The book and my ideas are heavily influenced by The Bitcoin Standard, by Saifedean Ammous.

I want people to give this book as a gift to friends as an introduction explainer about “why Bitcoin?”

How does it explain Bitcoin to kids? Can you provide some examples from the book?

The story of “Bitcoin Money” is about a little town called Bitville, where the children start their own businesses offering goods and services to each other. First, they start with barter, then explore different types of money, and eventually get stuck with fiat paper money and inflation.

One day a new boy moved to Bitville. He called himself Satoshi, but nobody knew much else about him. Satoshi noticed that the kids in Bitville were not happy about more and more paper money being printed each day.

Satoshi thought to himself, “What if we could make a new kind of money that is limited in supply like metal money, but it isn’t heavy so everyone can carry it around for themselves without having to trust anybody to keep it in a safe for them?”

You also note that children can understand the concept of hard digital money better than adults who used fiat their whole lives. Can you elaborate on this?

Older people who have been using fiat money their entire lives may find it scary to store their wealth in something that is only digital and not government backed. They want something that they are familiar with and feels secure, especially in the United States where the currency is fairly stable compared to the rest of the world.

Young people, in general, are used to doing their banking and spending in digital format just because they are more comfortable with the technology. Growing up with everything digital and electronic also makes it easier to rely on digital currency.

From an economic perspective, when you explain to a kid that fiat money is just paper that can be printed infinitely, they realize that there isn’t something valuable there.

The limited number of 21 million bitcoin is a powerful concept that even a kid can understand.

The economic concepts of Bitcoin of good hard money are really simple even for a kid to understand: scarcity, supply, and demand.

What is your favorite way to explain Bitcoin to new people? Have you had many ‘converts’?

I think that the limited supply is the most important thing to explain to people. I also explain the idea that when you own Bitcoin, it is truly yours, as opposed to all other forms of digital money. I talk to everybody I know about Bitcoin, most are still skeptics, but a few have shown interest. I haven’t gotten any of my friends to run a full node though yet, so there’s a lot more work to do.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Twitter (@thebitcoinrabbi )

The post Bitcoin Rabbi: Following Jewish Law Similar to Running a Full Node (Interview) appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

[cryptobrief]

Bitcoinist spoke with Michael Caras who calls himself the ‘Bitcoin Rabbi.’ Caras explains how Bitcoin fits in with the Jewish religion and how his new children’s book ‘Bitcoin Money’ introduces kids to the concept of hard money.

Bitcoin Rabbi: Limited Supply Is the Most Important Thing to Explain to People

Bitcoinist: Are you a real Rabbi?

Bitcoin Rabbi: I am an Orthodox Rabbi. I studied in Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim in Kfar Chabad, Israel and received my Rabbincal ordination. I am not a pulpit rabbi with a community. I am a teacher; I teach Jewish subjects in a Jewish day school, I’m on the board of a synagogue and I organize many of our community services and events.

How and when did you get introduced to Bitcoin?

I was always interested in Austrian economics and libertarian philosophy. In mid-2017 my brother told me that he had bought some bitcoin and that the price was rising quickly, so I started looking into it. I watched several hours of Andreas Antonopoulos videos and did some other reading online and quickly became very excited about Bitcoin and decided to buy some.

Is Bitcoin kosher?

Kosher means “permissible” or “acceptable”. Bitcoin is a tool, and with all tools, it can be used for good or bad. It depends who is using it and what they are using it for.

If you use Bitcoin without any form of theft or harm to others then Bitcoin is kosher.

Jewish law also requires that we follow the laws of the land, so to be kosher, a person should use Bitcoin in accordance with the laws of their state and country, including paying taxes.

How does Bitcoin fit in with the Jewish religion, ethics, and customs?

Judaism considers money to be extremely important, compared to one’s very life. We are commanded to protect our money and do no harm to anyone else’s. That being the case, having hard stable money is a desirable thing. In Jewish history and tradition, money was always gold and silver. There are even several rituals that we do to this day specifically with silver coins and gold.

There are many Jewish legal questions about the process of Bitcoin transactions, mining, etc. rabbinic leaders will be addressing more of these questions as digital currency becomes more prevalent and widespread.

You’ve also drawn parallels between Judaism and Bitcoin saying “Judaism insists that all members become full nodes” and that Rabbi’s are like ‘miners.’ Can you talk a little bit more about this?

Judaism is based on the Torah as well as several books of commentary and Jewish law, such as the Talmud. In Judaism, each person is required not just to blindly follow the instructions of the leaders, but rather to purchase their own copies of the books and study them constantly to become knowledgable in all aspects of Jewish law and history. This allows a person to follow Jewish law in every situation of their life because they have the knowledge themselves.

This is similar to running a full node, which archives the entire history of the blockchain and verifies every transaction and block.

I compare the great rabbis, the rabbinic leaders of each generation to miners because they are the greatest experts in all of previous Jewish history and law and they address new situations and write new books which link the past to the present and future.

Each generation is a new block that is produced by the rabbis/miners and then validated and accepted by the entire community as part of the same tradition and following the rules of Judaism going back to Moses.

Why did you decide to release a children’s book called Bitcoin Money? How did you get the idea?

I have young children and I talk to them a lot about Bitcoin. I try to explain both the technical and economic ideas in simple terms. I also have a presentation called “Bitcoin & Judaism” in which I explore the history of money.

I took those ideas and condensed them down and simplified them into a book which is not only for children, but explains the simple economic idea of Bitcoin as hard money to both children and adults. The book and my ideas are heavily influenced by The Bitcoin Standard, by Saifedean Ammous.

I want people to give this book as a gift to friends as an introduction explainer about “why Bitcoin?”

How does it explain Bitcoin to kids? Can you provide some examples from the book?

The story of “Bitcoin Money” is about a little town called Bitville, where the children start their own businesses offering goods and services to each other. First, they start with barter, then explore different types of money, and eventually get stuck with fiat paper money and inflation.

One day a new boy moved to Bitville. He called himself Satoshi, but nobody knew much else about him. Satoshi noticed that the kids in Bitville were not happy about more and more paper money being printed each day.

Satoshi thought to himself, “What if we could make a new kind of money that is limited in supply like metal money, but it isn’t heavy so everyone can carry it around for themselves without having to trust anybody to keep it in a safe for them?”

You also note that children can understand the concept of hard digital money better than adults who used fiat their whole lives. Can you elaborate on this?

Older people who have been using fiat money their entire lives may find it scary to store their wealth in something that is only digital and not government backed. They want something that they are familiar with and feels secure, especially in the United States where the currency is fairly stable compared to the rest of the world.

Young people, in general, are used to doing their banking and spending in digital format just because they are more comfortable with the technology. Growing up with everything digital and electronic also makes it easier to rely on digital currency.

From an economic perspective, when you explain to a kid that fiat money is just paper that can be printed infinitely, they realize that there isn’t something valuable there.

The limited number of 21 million bitcoin is a powerful concept that even a kid can understand.

The economic concepts of Bitcoin of good hard money are really simple even for a kid to understand: scarcity, supply, and demand.

What is your favorite way to explain Bitcoin to new people? Have you had many ‘converts’?

I think that the limited supply is the most important thing to explain to people. I also explain the idea that when you own Bitcoin, it is truly yours, as opposed to all other forms of digital money. I talk to everybody I know about Bitcoin, most are still skeptics, but a few have shown interest. I haven’t gotten any of my friends to run a full node though yet, so there’s a lot more work to do.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Twitter (@thebitcoinrabbi )

The post Bitcoin Rabbi: Following Jewish Law Similar to Running a Full Node (Interview) appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

[thewebofslime]

Department of Justice senior official Bruce Ohr’s testimony contradicts testimony given by other senior government officials and key witnesses who testified before Congress regarding the FBI’s investigation into President Trump’s 2016 campaign and alleged collusion with the Russian government, according to the full transcripts released Friday. Ohr’s 268-page testimony, released by Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, reveals inconsistency and contradiction in testimony given by Glenn Simpson, founder of embattled research firm Fusion GPS and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is set to leave his post sometime this month. It also reveals that many questions are still left unanswered. The Contradictions and The Revelations 1. Glenn Simpson suggests in his testimony to the Senate that he never spoke to anyone at the FBI about Christopher Steele, the former British spy he hired to investigate the Trump campaign during the election. However, Ohr suggests otherwise telling former Rep.Trey Gowdy under questioning “As I recall, and this is after checking with my notes, Mr. Simpson and I spoke in August of 2016. I met with him, and he provided some information on possible intermediaries between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.” 2. In another instance, Simpson’s testimony also contradicts notes taken by Ohr after a meeting they had in December, 2016. Unverified allegations were decimated among the media that the Trump campaign had a computer server that was linked to a Russian bank in Moscow: Alpha Bank. Simpson suggested to the Senate that he knew very little about the Trump -Alpha Bank server story and couldn’t provide information. But Bruce Ohr’s own handwritten notes state that when he met with Simpson in December 2016, Simpson was concerned over the Alpha Bank story in the New York Times. “The New York Times story on Oct. 31 downplaying the connection between Alfa servers and the Trump campaign was incorrect. There was communication and it wasn’t spam,” stated Ohr’s notes. This suggests that Simpson was well aware of the story, which was believed by congressional investigators to have started from his research firm. 3. Ohr testified to lawmakers that Simpson provided information to federal officials that was false regarding Cleta Mitchell, a well-known Republican campaign finance lawyer, and information regarding the National Rifle Association. Sean Davis, with the Federalist pointed this out in a tweet today. Read one of those stories here. 4. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would not answer questions to lawmakers during testimony about when he learned that Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, was working for Fusion GPS. Just check this out from Rep. Matt Gaetz’s interview with Judge Jeanine on Fox News. “Rod Rosenstein won’t tell us when he first learned that Nellie Ohr was working for Fusion GPS,” said Gaetz, in August, 2018. “So I want to know from Bruce Ohr, when did he tell his colleagues at the Department of Justice that in violation of law that required him to disclose his wife’s occupation his sources of income. He did not do that. So when did all of the other people at the Department of Justice find this out because Rod Rosenstein, I’ve asked him twice in open hearing and he will not give an answer. I think there’s a real smoking gun there.” However, in Ohr’s testimony he says he told the FBI about his wife’s role at Fusion GPS but only divulged his role to one person at the DOJ: Rosenstein. At the time, Rosenstein was overseeing the Trump-Russia probe, and had taken the information from Ohr and gave it to the FBI. Just read The Hill’s John Solomon full story here for the full background on Ohr’s testimony. I highlighted an important date below: remember Rosenstein wouldn’t answer lawmakers questions as to when he knew about Nellie Ohr. It also appears he failed to tell lawmakers about the information he delivered to the FBI. Ohr stated in his testimony: “What I had said, I think, to Mr. Rosenstein in October of 2017 was that my wife was working for Fusion GPS… The dossier, as I understand it, is the collection of reports that Chris Steele has prepared for Fusion GPS.” Ohr added: “My wife had separately done research on certain Russian people and companies or whatever that she had provided to Fusion GPS…But I don’t believe her information is reflected in the Chris Steele reports. They were two different chunks of information heading into Fusion GPS.” 5. Ohr also told lawmakers in his testimony that the former British spy, Christopher Steele was being paid by the FBI at the same time he was getting paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. However, there was another player paying Steele and it was a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska, a tycoon connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin, had well known animus toward his former friend Paul Manafort. Rep. Mark Meadows asked Ohr during testimony “Did Chris Steele get paid by the Department of Justice? Ohr’s response: “My understanding is that for a time he was a source for the FBI, a paid source. In the testimony Ohr also revealed that Steele had told him details about his work with Deripaska saying Deripaska’s attorney Paul Hauser “had information about Paul Manafort, that Paul Manafort had entered into some kind of business deal with” Deripaska. Ohr said Manafort “had stolen a large amount of money from” the Russian Oligarch and that Hauser was “trying to gather information that would show that.”

[michaelfallcon]

The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics

I hesitated in writing this guide. The world of teaware is vast and intimidating, and can be a money pit of fakes and forgeries. It is also where so much of the joy in loving tea can be derived. Ultimately our team felt Tea Week would be incomplete without some sort of feature on teaware. My very best attempt at this here in 2019 is what follows.

For coffee lovers, you might think of teaware as like the espresso machine of the tea world. To casual drinkers or the untrained eye, it just looks like a nice object that makes the thing you drink—and nothing more. But for those who obsess it can become an endless quest of sourcing and seeking, of pride and cost. A life’s pursuit, even. There is no small amount of money to be spent at the top end of teaware buying—may I call your attention to the infamous Chengua-era “chicken cup,” which sold for $35 million at Sotheby’s in 2014. For our purposes this guide caps objects at the $500 range, with prices average considerably less for most of the offerings.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Note that this guide only barely touches on the world of Yixing, the traditional tea pottery of Jiangsu, made using porous clay in a style dating back to the 10th century. This is its own whole world, a vast guide I don’t feel prepared to lead at this time—perhaps in a few more years.

For now, these wholesalers and makers are more than enough to get you started and find new favorites. The guide below is hopelessly biased towards my own personal taste but hey—teaware is supposed to be personal. That’s part of the fun, and it’s something I hope you are inspired to explore further with support from this guide

  A Solid Foundation

Photo courtesy of Rishi Tea.

Rishi Tea

Rishi is a truly solid place to get started with home teawares, offering for example this workhorse starter gaiwan for $12, and this cute little basic tea tray for $25. They’ve also got a lovely collection of flex items, like this stunning blue studio-made celadon “fairness pitcher” from Taiwan, or this rustic clay and mineral cup. Rishi ships free domestic at $25, which is plenty to get started making gong fu cha—pair that $12 gaiwan with, say, a couple of oolong samples (we like Rishi’s Iron Goddess of Mercy and Phoenix Dancong) and you are off to the races.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Breville

Breville is the presenting sponsor of Tea Week on Sprudge—for which we thank them!—but they also produce a range of tea-focused hot water boilers and teamakers we have no lie legit been happily using in Sprudge Studios for the last few years, long before this content package was a twinkle in the editorial eye. The Breville Tea Maker Compact‘s tech allows you to set up brew parameters for whatever kind of tea you’re into; the machine’s automated basket then plunges your brew into water heated to your temp of choice. When the cycle is done, the basket lifts out of the water, ensuring you won’t oversteep. I’d liken this machine to something like a nice home batch brewer, a simplifier that’s perfect for tea making on a busy morning or for large groups (for which the classic Tea Maker is a bigger, better fit).

Another option is the Breville Smart Tea Infuser, which we especially dig these Tea Makers for their handiness with single-steep tisanes, like those from Smith Tea, Song Tea, and Tea Dealers featured in our tisane spotlight. We also really like their IQ Kettle Pure (pictured above) for heating water consistently and at scale—you can transfer from there into a ceramic kettle for service, or pour directly from the Breville IQ.

If you are looking for a fusion of tea, taste and tech, this is the gear for you.

Photo courtesy of Manual.

Manual Tea Maker No1

Chicago tinkerer Creighton Barman puts out new stuff each year, typically pre-funded on Kickstarter, but we’re still in love with this 2016 release, the Tea Maker No1, a modernist reinterpretation of the gaiwan built for ease of brewing. Double-walled glass is the hook here, which keeps the Tea Maker cool to the touch throughout the brewing process, and also gives you peek-a-boo viewing at all that beautiful steeping action. I think these gaiwans offer a rare degree of utility no matter where you are in terms of tea knowledge and experience—they are rad and very forgiving for beginners who are still mastering the whole gaiwan thing, but also fun for experts who want to incorporate western and modern influences into their teaware collection.

  Let’s Geek Out

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Bitterleaf 

With full respect to Bitterleaf’s collection of teas for drinking (featured in our buying guide), the site’s assortment of teawares, tea tools, tea pets, and assorted Chinese tea ephemera is truly deep and excellent.

From beautiful little studio tea cups (starting around $8) to Chaozhou teapots in a range of classic styles (more like $80) to really cute hand-painted animal vessels ($35) to all manner of entry-level trays and supports (prices vary) and much more, there are hundreds of pieces of tea kit to shop from and swoon over at Bitterleaf. I especially like their selection of “tea pets,” little clay figurines typically depicting children or animals, incorporated into tea service as a symbol of good luck. You “feed” the tea pet with excess water or tea throughout the teamaking process, with the clay left to develop a lovely luster over repeat feedings. (It’s fun. Don’t @ me.)

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Song Tea

Song Tea are also featured in our tea buying guide for their literally life-changing (as in it changed my life) compendium of meticulously curated tea offerings. But the ceramics offered by Song are on another level. Founder Peter Luong has an eye for relatively young and emerging artists, making commissions across his travels to Taiwan. Works by artists like Zhang Yun Chen (Nantou), Qiu Qing Yun (Meinong), and Hu Tie Ha (Jiefen) evoke what’s possible at the blurred edge of collectible art and practical working pottery. I cannot realistically see myself being someone who collects art to hang on the wall, but the idea of owning this Husk #2 tea bowl by Zhang Yun Chen gives me heart palpitations. If you are, say, truly enjoying tea week and would like to, you know, say thank you as a grateful reader or whatever, please buy this for me. DMs are open.

Photo courtesy of Pu.Erh.Sk

Pu-Erh.Sk

Based in Slovakia, Pu-Erh.sk is an online webshop shipping worldwide, focused on sheng and shou Pu’er teas from Yunnan. Their tea sourcing is concise and well-considered—the gushu heads love ‘em—but for me the site’s focus on Eastern European ceramicists and teaware artisans has been a revelation. Czech artists like Jiří Duchek and Jura Lang are building truly compelling, one-of-a-kind teawares that fuse traditional regional clays with far-flung design influences from the east and west. Pieces like this gorgeous Jura Lang shiboridashi (a kind of Japanese easy gaiwan) are handmade, wood-fired, visually stunning, and sure to grow in beauty over repeated use. For beginning collectors and enthusiasts to be able to get in the door with an artist-specific work like this at just €65 is really special. Elsewhere on the site, Swedish artist Stefan Andersson makes a range of gorgeous wares, while Norwegian brand Ad.Infinitum offers bespoke and vintage tea ceremony linens. All of these makers are brands with followings in their own right, collected by Pu-Erh.sk for easy ordering and global shipping.

Everybody’s taste is different, and a lot of tea ceramics collections start and end in Asia, with no deviation. But I really grok the vibe of this stuff coming out of Eastern Europe. To get in at the cutting edge of small maker European ceramics artistry, go here.

Ceramicists To Watch—And Collect 

*A note: While I am personally passionate about ceramics and hopelessly biased towards its validity and urgency as an art form, I also think you—whomever you are reading this—might really dig works from the artists below. The idea of placing a commission with an individual artist might seem intimidating or overly expensive, but we’re not talking George Ohr here; works from these artists don’t typically cost more than $100 for a single piece of teaware, and more like $30-$50 for a handmade cup or set of cups. For less cost than a single dinner at a fancy restaurant you can own and put into daily use your own personal work from a talented artist. It will make your tea taste better, your kitchen look cuter, and who knows—in 50 years you might get a segment on the Antiques Roadshow.

Here are a few talented and emerging ceramicists to follow.

Photo via Song Tea.

Lilith Rockett

Portland ceramicist Lilith Rockett works across a range of expressions for home pottery, including plates, lighting, vases, and abstract decorative objects. Her style—lustrous soft milky white porcelain, entirely handmade—translates well into tea, especially the stunning wheel-thrown porcelain gaiwan. A significant amount of tea consumed for the purposes of Tea Week on Sprudge was steeped in just such a piece. Rockett has a webshop, and also accepts limited commissions. You can find her work at some of the best restaurants in the United States, including The French Laundry (Napa), Smyth (Chicago), Saison (San Francisco), and Nodoguro (Portland).

Follow Lilith Rockett on Instagram.

Photo via Carole Neilson.

Carole Neilson

Buzzy San Francisco-based artist Carole Neilson fuses the rural pottery traditions of her native Alsace with an irresistible contemporary immediacy. Her eye-catching signature glazes evoke smoke fumes and clouds of dust, making for pottery with an earth-dappled glow. Neilson’s range of works include original sculpture pieces and stunning bowl and plate sets, but for tea (and coffee!) drinkers her small cups and pitchers make a lively addition to any collection. Neilson’s work is blowing up, with a growing list of stockists, gallery exhibitions at spaces like Hugomento, pop-up dinners around the country (including a recent dinner at Omaha’s Archetype Coffee), and a successful recent series of artist grants. She is truly an artist to watch. Neilson has a webshop and accepts limited commissions.

Follow Carole Neilson Ceramics on Instagram.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Qi Pottery

Kim Whyee Kee of Qi Pottery first learned his art behind bars. After serving time in the Singaporean corrections system for gang-related crimes, Kee graduated from an arts college, helped co-found a variety of initiatives working with at-risk youth, and launched Qi Pottery in 2016. His style echoes ancient tea traditions, but does so through a burst of heart-stopping colors that demand attention. Vivid pinks, deep blues, mesmerizing blacks, coral reds—Easter egg pastels that fuse the practical nature of teaware with the elegance of a home statement piece. But this is no gimmick maker—Qi Pottery’s mastery extends to more simple forms, like these beautiful rusted large format cups.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

It’s simply some of the most beautiful ceramics work I’ve ever seen, and for an artist with just a few public showings so far, you can certainly expect these pieces to become more and more sought after and valuable over the years. Qi Pottery has a website, but no webstore. If you’re interested in purchasing an existing piece or making a commission, please contact the artist directly via email or Instagram.

Follow Kim Whye Kee of Qi Pottery on Instagram. 

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Arturo Alvarez

A full-time artist dedicated to original teawares, Arturo Alvarez is based in Olympia, Washington, and crafts art in a range of styles and expressions. We commissioned Alvarez for our office tea set at Sprudge Studios (we’ll be serving tea there this week as part of the Tea Week fun), and follow his regular updates on Instagram, where his account @your_pencil is part of a thriving Instagram ceramics community. Perhaps his most distinctive pieces involve incorporating found materials, including driftwood handles made from wood found across Puget Sound beaches, but this is an artist growing and advancing his craft before our very eyes, letting it all play out online. Follow him and watch along—it feels like he’s debuting new pieces almost every day.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Arturo Alvarez sells a limited number of teawares online via Etsy. Contact the artist directly via Instagram for commissions or to purchase pieces featured on his account.

Follow Arturo Alvarez on Instagram.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Andrzej Bero

A teaware potter out of Warsaw, Andrzej Bero specializes in the shiboridashi—a gaiwan variant that’s easy to use and, in the right hands, a piece of working art. Bero’s shibos are made from clay that feels coarse and tactile to the touch, in a range of dark reds, greens, and blues. This style translates especially well to larger pieces, like his 300ml teapots, which are hotly in demand for tea services around the world. Andrzej Bero has a website but no webstore; a limited number of his works are available for purchase via the aforementioned Pu-Erh.sk. Contact the artist directly for commissions and availability.

Follow Andrzej Bero on Instagram.

Jordan Michelman is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.

Editor: Scott Norton.

Top photo by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace). 

Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.

The post The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics appeared first on Sprudge.

The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

[epchapman89]

The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics

I hesitated in writing this guide. The world of teaware is vast and intimidating, and can be a money pit of fakes and forgeries. It is also where so much of the joy in loving tea can be derived. Ultimately our team felt Tea Week would be incomplete without some sort of feature on teaware. My very best attempt at this here in 2019 is what follows.

For coffee lovers, you might think of teaware as like the espresso machine of the tea world. To casual drinkers or the untrained eye, it just looks like a nice object that makes the thing you drink—and nothing more. But for those who obsess it can become an endless quest of sourcing and seeking, of pride and cost. A life’s pursuit, even. There is no small amount of money to be spent at the top end of teaware buying—may I call your attention to the infamous Chengua-era “chicken cup,” which sold for $35 million at Sotheby’s in 2014. For our purposes this guide caps objects at the $500 range, with prices average considerably less for most of the offerings.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Note that this guide only barely touches on the world of Yixing, the traditional tea pottery of Jiangsu, made using porous clay in a style dating back to the 10th century. This is its own whole world, a vast guide I don’t feel prepared to lead at this time—perhaps in a few more years.

For now, these wholesalers and makers are more than enough to get you started and find new favorites. The guide below is hopelessly biased towards my own personal taste but hey—teaware is supposed to be personal. That’s part of the fun, and it’s something I hope you are inspired to explore further with support from this guide

 A Solid Foundation

Photo courtesy of Rishi Tea.

Rishi Tea

Rishi is a truly solid place to get started with home teawares, offering for example this workhorse starter gaiwan for $12, and this cute little basic tea tray for $25. They’ve also got a lovely collection of flex items, like this stunning blue studio-made celadon “fairness pitcher” from Taiwan, or this rustic clay and mineral cup. Rishi ships free domestic at $25, which is plenty to get started making gong fu cha—pair that $12 gaiwan with, say, a couple of oolong samples (we like Rishi’s Iron Goddess of Mercy and Phoenix Dancong) and you are off to the races.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Breville

Breville is the presenting sponsor of Tea Week on Sprudge—for which we thank them!—but they also produce a range of tea-focused hot water boilers and teamakers we have no lie legit been happily using in Sprudge Studios for the last few years, long before this content package was a twinkle in the editorial eye. The Breville Tea Maker Compact‘s tech allows you to set up brew parameters for whatever kind of tea you’re into; the machine’s automated basket then plunges your brew into water heated to your temp of choice. When the cycle is done, the basket lifts out of the water, ensuring you won’t oversteep. I’d liken this machine to something like a nice home batch brewer, a simplifier that’s perfect for tea making on a busy morning or for large groups (for which the classic Tea Maker is a bigger, better fit).

Another option is the Breville Smart Tea Infuser, which we especially dig these Tea Makers for their handiness with single-steep tisanes, like those from Smith Tea, Song Tea, and Tea Dealers featured in our tisane spotlight. We also really like their IQ Kettle Pure (pictured above) for heating water consistently and at scale—you can transfer from there into a ceramic kettle for service, or pour directly from the Breville IQ.

If you are looking for a fusion of tea, taste and tech, this is the gear for you.

Photo courtesy of Manual.

Manual Tea Maker No1

Chicago tinkerer Creighton Barman puts out new stuff each year, typically pre-funded on Kickstarter, but we’re still in love with this 2016 release, the Tea Maker No1, a modernist reinterpretation of the gaiwan built for ease of brewing. Double-walled glass is the hook here, which keeps the Tea Maker cool to the touch throughout the brewing process, and also gives you peek-a-boo viewing at all that beautiful steeping action. I think these gaiwans offer a rare degree of utility no matter where you are in terms of tea knowledge and experience—they are rad and very forgiving for beginners who are still mastering the whole gaiwan thing, but also fun for experts who want to incorporate western and modern influences into their teaware collection.

 Let’s Geek Out

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Bitterleaf 

With full respect to Bitterleaf’s collection of teas for drinking (featured in our buying guide), the site’s assortment of teawares, tea tools, tea pets, and assorted Chinese tea ephemera is truly deep and excellent.

From beautiful little studio tea cups (starting around $8) to Chaozhou teapots in a range of classic styles (more like $80) to really cute hand-painted animal vessels ($35) to all manner of entry-level trays and supports (prices vary) and much more, there are hundreds of pieces of tea kit to shop from and swoon over at Bitterleaf. I especially like their selection of “tea pets,” little clay figurines typically depicting children or animals, incorporated into tea service as a symbol of good luck. You “feed” the tea pet with excess water or tea throughout the teamaking process, with the clay left to develop a lovely luster over repeat feedings. (It’s fun. Don’t @ me.)

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Song Tea

Song Tea are also featured in our tea buying guide for their literally life-changing (as in it changed my life) compendium of meticulously curated tea offerings. But the ceramics offered by Song are on another level. Founder Peter Luong has an eye for relatively young and emerging artists, making commissions across his travels to Taiwan. Works by artists like Zhang Yun Chen (Nantou), Qiu Qing Yun (Meinong), and Hu Tie Ha (Jiefen) evoke what’s possible at the blurred edge of collectible art and practical working pottery. I cannot realistically see myself being someone who collects art to hang on the wall, but the idea of owning this Husk #2 tea bowl by Zhang Yun Chen gives me heart palpitations. If you are, say, truly enjoying tea week and would like to, you know, say thank you as a grateful reader or whatever, please buy this for me. DMs are open.

Photo courtesy of Pu.Erh.Sk

Pu-Erh.Sk

Based in Slovakia, Pu-Erh.sk is an online webshop shipping worldwide, focused on sheng and shou Pu’er teas from Yunnan. Their tea sourcing is concise and well-considered—the gushu heads love ‘em—but for me the site’s focus on Eastern European ceramicists and teaware artisans has been a revelation. Czech artists like Jiří Duchek and Jura Lang are building truly compelling, one-of-a-kind teawares that fuse traditional regional clays with far-flung design influences from the east and west. Pieces like this gorgeous Jura Lang shiboridashi (a kind of Japanese easy gaiwan) are handmade, wood-fired, visually stunning, and sure to grow in beauty over repeated use. For beginning collectors and enthusiasts to be able to get in the door with an artist-specific work like this at just €65 is really special. Elsewhere on the site, Swedish artist Stefan Andersson makes a range of gorgeous wares, while Norwegian brand Ad.Infinitum offers bespoke and vintage tea ceremony linens. All of these makers are brands with followings in their own right, collected by Pu-Erh.sk for easy ordering and global shipping.

Everybody’s taste is different, and a lot of tea ceramics collections start and end in Asia, with no deviation. But I really grok the vibe of this stuff coming out of Eastern Europe. To get in at the cutting edge of small maker European ceramics artistry, go here.

Ceramicists To Watch—And Collect 

*A note: While I am personally passionate about ceramics and hopelessly biased towards its validity and urgency as an art form, I also think you—whomever you are reading this—might really dig works from the artists below. The idea of placing a commission with an individual artist might seem intimidating or overly expensive, but we’re not talking George Ohr here; works from these artists don’t typically cost more than $100 for a single piece of teaware, and more like $30-$50 for a handmade cup or set of cups. For less cost than a single dinner at a fancy restaurant you can own and put into daily use your own personal work from a talented artist. It will make your tea taste better, your kitchen look cuter, and who knows—in 50 years you might get a segment on the Antiques Roadshow.

Here are a few talented and emerging ceramicists to follow.

Photo via Song Tea.

Lilith Rockett

Portland ceramicist Lilith Rockett works across a range of expressions for home pottery, including plates, lighting, vases, and abstract decorative objects. Her style—lustrous soft milky white porcelain, entirely handmade—translates well into tea, especially the stunning wheel-thrown porcelain gaiwan. A significant amount of tea consumed for the purposes of Tea Week on Sprudge was steeped in just such a piece. Rockett has a webshop, and also accepts limited commissions. You can find her work at some of the best restaurants in the United States, including The French Laundry (Napa), Smyth (Chicago), Saison (San Francisco), and Nodoguro (Portland).

Follow Lilith Rockett on Instagram.

Photo via Carole Neilson.

Carole Neilson

Buzzy San Francisco-based artist Carole Neilson fuses the rural pottery traditions of her native Alsace with an irresistible contemporary immediacy. Her eye-catching signature glazes evoke smoke fumes and clouds of dust, making for pottery with an earth-dappled glow. Neilson’s range of works include original sculpture pieces and stunning bowl and plate sets, but for tea (and coffee!) drinkers her small cups and pitchers make a lively addition to any collection. Neilson’s work is blowing up, with a growing list of stockists, gallery exhibitions at spaces like Hugomento, pop-up dinners around the country (including a recent dinner at Omaha’s Archetype Coffee), and a successful recent series of artist grants. She is truly an artist to watch. Neilson has a webshop and accepts limited commissions.

Follow Carole Neilson Ceramics on Instagram.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Qi Pottery

Kim Whyee Kee of Qi Pottery first learned his art behind bars. After serving time in the Singaporean corrections system for gang-related crimes, Kee graduated from an arts college, helped co-found a variety of initiatives working with at-risk youth, and launched Qi Pottery in 2016. His style echoes ancient tea traditions, but does so through a burst of heart-stopping colors that demand attention. Vivid pinks, deep blues, mesmerizing blacks, coral reds—Easter egg pastels that fuse the practical nature of teaware with the elegance of a home statement piece. But this is no gimmick maker—Qi Pottery’s mastery extends to more simple forms, like these beautiful rusted large format cups.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

It’s simply some of the most beautiful ceramics work I’ve ever seen, and for an artist with just a few public showings so far, you can certainly expect these pieces to become more and more sought after and valuable over the years. Qi Pottery has a website, but no webstore. If you’re interested in purchasing an existing piece or making a commission, please contact the artist directly via email or Instagram.

Follow Kim Whye Kee of Qi Pottery on Instagram. 

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Arturo Alvarez

A full-time artist dedicated to original teawares, Arturo Alvarez is based in Olympia, Washington, and crafts art in a range of styles and expressions. We commissioned Alvarez for our office tea set at Sprudge Studios (we’ll be serving tea there this week as part of the Tea Week fun), and follow his regular updates on Instagram, where his account @your_pencil is part of a thriving Instagram ceramics community. Perhaps his most distinctive pieces involve incorporating found materials, including driftwood handles made from wood found across Puget Sound beaches, but this is an artist growing and advancing his craft before our very eyes, letting it all play out online. Follow him and watch along—it feels like he’s debuting new pieces almost every day.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Arturo Alvarez sells a limited number of teawares online via Etsy. Contact the artist directly via Instagram for commissions or to purchase pieces featured on his account.

Follow Arturo Alvarez on Instagram.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Andrzej Bero

A teaware potter out of Warsaw, Andrzej Bero specializes in the shiboridashi—a gaiwan variant that’s easy to use and, in the right hands, a piece of working art. Bero’s shibos are made from clay that feels coarse and tactile to the touch, in a range of dark reds, greens, and blues. This style translates especially well to larger pieces, like his 300ml teapots, which are hotly in demand for tea services around the world. Andrzej Bero has a website but no webstore; a limited number of his works are available for purchase via the aforementioned Pu-Erh.sk. Contact the artist directly for commissions and availability.

Follow Andrzej Bero on Instagram.

Jordan Michelman is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.

Editor: Scott Norton.

Top photo by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace). 

Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.

The post The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics appeared first on Sprudge.

seen 1st on http://sprudge.com

[mrwilliamcharley]

The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics

I hesitated in writing this guide. The world of teaware is vast and intimidating, and can be a money pit of fakes and forgeries. It is also where so much of the joy in loving tea can be derived. Ultimately our team felt Tea Week would be incomplete without some sort of feature on teaware. My very best attempt at this here in 2019 is what follows.

For coffee lovers, you might think of teaware as like the espresso machine of the tea world. To casual drinkers or the untrained eye, it just looks like a nice object that makes the thing you drink—and nothing more. But for those who obsess it can become an endless quest of sourcing and seeking, of pride and cost. A life’s pursuit, even. There is no small amount of money to be spent at the top end of teaware buying—may I call your attention to the infamous Chengua-era “chicken cup,” which sold for $35 million at Sotheby’s in 2014. For our purposes this guide caps objects at the $500 range, with prices average considerably less for most of the offerings.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Note that this guide only barely touches on the world of Yixing, the traditional tea pottery of Jiangsu, made using porous clay in a style dating back to the 10th century. This is its own whole world, a vast guide I don’t feel prepared to lead at this time—perhaps in a few more years.

For now, these wholesalers and makers are more than enough to get you started and find new favorites. The guide below is hopelessly biased towards my own personal taste but hey—teaware is supposed to be personal. That’s part of the fun, and it’s something I hope you are inspired to explore further with support from this guide

  A Solid Foundation

Photo courtesy of Rishi Tea.

Rishi Tea

Rishi is a truly solid place to get started with home teawares, offering for example this workhorse starter gaiwan for $12, and this cute little basic tea tray for $25. They’ve also got a lovely collection of flex items, like this stunning blue studio-made celadon “fairness pitcher” from Taiwan, or this rustic clay and mineral cup. Rishi ships free domestic at $25, which is plenty to get started making gong fu cha—pair that $12 gaiwan with, say, a couple of oolong samples (we like Rishi’s Iron Goddess of Mercy and Phoenix Dancong) and you are off to the races.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Breville

Breville is the presenting sponsor of Tea Week on Sprudge—for which we thank them!—but they also produce a range of tea-focused hot water boilers and teamakers we have no lie legit been happily using in Sprudge Studios for the last few years, long before this content package was a twinkle in the editorial eye. The Breville Tea Maker Compact‘s tech allows you to set up brew parameters for whatever kind of tea you’re into; the machine’s automated basket then plunges your brew into water heated to your temp of choice. When the cycle is done, the basket lifts out of the water, ensuring you won’t oversteep. I’d liken this machine to something like a nice home batch brewer, a simplifier that’s perfect for tea making on a busy morning or for large groups (for which the classic Tea Maker is a bigger, better fit).

Another option is the Breville Smart Tea Infuser, which we especially dig these Tea Makers for their handiness with single-steep tisanes, like those from Smith Tea, Song Tea, and Tea Dealers featured in our tisane spotlight. We also really like their IQ Kettle Pure (pictured above) for heating water consistently and at scale—you can transfer from there into a ceramic kettle for service, or pour directly from the Breville IQ.

If you are looking for a fusion of tea, taste and tech, this is the gear for you.

Photo courtesy of Manual.

Manual Tea Maker No1

Chicago tinkerer Creighton Barman puts out new stuff each year, typically pre-funded on Kickstarter, but we’re still in love with this 2016 release, the Tea Maker No1, a modernist reinterpretation of the gaiwan built for ease of brewing. Double-walled glass is the hook here, which keeps the Tea Maker cool to the touch throughout the brewing process, and also gives you peek-a-boo viewing at all that beautiful steeping action. I think these gaiwans offer a rare degree of utility no matter where you are in terms of tea knowledge and experience—they are rad and very forgiving for beginners who are still mastering the whole gaiwan thing, but also fun for experts who want to incorporate western and modern influences into their teaware collection.

  Let’s Geek Out

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Bitterleaf 

With full respect to Bitterleaf’s collection of teas for drinking (featured in our buying guide), the site’s assortment of teawares, tea tools, tea pets, and assorted Chinese tea ephemera is truly deep and excellent.

From beautiful little studio tea cups (starting around $8) to Chaozhou teapots in a range of classic styles (more like $80) to really cute hand-painted animal vessels ($35) to all manner of entry-level trays and supports (prices vary) and much more, there are hundreds of pieces of tea kit to shop from and swoon over at Bitterleaf. I especially like their selection of “tea pets,” little clay figurines typically depicting children or animals, incorporated into tea service as a symbol of good luck. You “feed” the tea pet with excess water or tea throughout the teamaking process, with the clay left to develop a lovely luster over repeat feedings. (It’s fun. Don’t @ me.)

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Song Tea

Song Tea are also featured in our tea buying guide for their literally life-changing (as in it changed my life) compendium of meticulously curated tea offerings. But the ceramics offered by Song are on another level. Founder Peter Luong has an eye for relatively young and emerging artists, making commissions across his travels to Taiwan. Works by artists like Zhang Yun Chen (Nantou), Qiu Qing Yun (Meinong), and Hu Tie Ha (Jiefen) evoke what’s possible at the blurred edge of collectible art and practical working pottery. I cannot realistically see myself being someone who collects art to hang on the wall, but the idea of owning this Husk #2 tea bowl by Zhang Yun Chen gives me heart palpitations. If you are, say, truly enjoying tea week and would like to, you know, say thank you as a grateful reader or whatever, please buy this for me. DMs are open.

Photo courtesy of Pu.Erh.Sk

Pu-Erh.Sk

Based in Slovakia, Pu-Erh.sk is an online webshop shipping worldwide, focused on sheng and shou Pu’er teas from Yunnan. Their tea sourcing is concise and well-considered—the gushu heads love ‘em—but for me the site’s focus on Eastern European ceramicists and teaware artisans has been a revelation. Czech artists like Jiří Duchek and Jura Lang are building truly compelling, one-of-a-kind teawares that fuse traditional regional clays with far-flung design influences from the east and west. Pieces like this gorgeous Jura Lang shiboridashi (a kind of Japanese easy gaiwan) are handmade, wood-fired, visually stunning, and sure to grow in beauty over repeated use. For beginning collectors and enthusiasts to be able to get in the door with an artist-specific work like this at just €65 is really special. Elsewhere on the site, Swedish artist Stefan Andersson makes a range of gorgeous wares, while Norwegian brand Ad.Infinitum offers bespoke and vintage tea ceremony linens. All of these makers are brands with followings in their own right, collected by Pu-Erh.sk for easy ordering and global shipping.

Everybody’s taste is different, and a lot of tea ceramics collections start and end in Asia, with no deviation. But I really grok the vibe of this stuff coming out of Eastern Europe. To get in at the cutting edge of small maker European ceramics artistry, go here.

Ceramicists To Watch—And Collect 

*A note: While I am personally passionate about ceramics and hopelessly biased towards its validity and urgency as an art form, I also think you—whomever you are reading this—might really dig works from the artists below. The idea of placing a commission with an individual artist might seem intimidating or overly expensive, but we’re not talking George Ohr here; works from these artists don’t typically cost more than $100 for a single piece of teaware, and more like $30-$50 for a handmade cup or set of cups. For less cost than a single dinner at a fancy restaurant you can own and put into daily use your own personal work from a talented artist. It will make your tea taste better, your kitchen look cuter, and who knows—in 50 years you might get a segment on the Antiques Roadshow.

Here are a few talented and emerging ceramicists to follow.

Photo via Song Tea.

Lilith Rockett

Portland ceramicist Lilith Rockett works across a range of expressions for home pottery, including plates, lighting, vases, and abstract decorative objects. Her style—lustrous soft milky white porcelain, entirely handmade—translates well into tea, especially the stunning wheel-thrown porcelain gaiwan. A significant amount of tea consumed for the purposes of Tea Week on Sprudge was steeped in just such a piece. Rockett has a webshop, and also accepts limited commissions. You can find her work at some of the best restaurants in the United States, including The French Laundry (Napa), Smyth (Chicago), Saison (San Francisco), and Nodoguro (Portland).

Follow Lilith Rockett on Instagram.

Photo via Carole Neilson.

Carole Neilson

Buzzy San Francisco-based artist Carole Neilson fuses the rural pottery traditions of her native Alsace with an irresistible contemporary immediacy. Her eye-catching signature glazes evoke smoke fumes and clouds of dust, making for pottery with an earth-dappled glow. Neilson’s range of works include original sculpture pieces and stunning bowl and plate sets, but for tea (and coffee!) drinkers her small cups and pitchers make a lively addition to any collection. Neilson’s work is blowing up, with a growing list of stockists, gallery exhibitions at spaces like Hugomento, pop-up dinners around the country (including a recent dinner at Omaha’s Archetype Coffee), and a successful recent series of artist grants. She is truly an artist to watch. Neilson has a webshop and accepts limited commissions.

Follow Carole Neilson Ceramics on Instagram.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Qi Pottery

Kim Whyee Kee of Qi Pottery first learned his art behind bars. After serving time in the Singaporean corrections system for gang-related crimes, Kee graduated from an arts college, helped co-found a variety of initiatives working with at-risk youth, and launched Qi Pottery in 2016. His style echoes ancient tea traditions, but does so through a burst of heart-stopping colors that demand attention. Vivid pinks, deep blues, mesmerizing blacks, coral reds—Easter egg pastels that fuse the practical nature of teaware with the elegance of a home statement piece. But this is no gimmick maker—Qi Pottery’s mastery extends to more simple forms, like these beautiful rusted large format cups.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

It’s simply some of the most beautiful ceramics work I’ve ever seen, and for an artist with just a few public showings so far, you can certainly expect these pieces to become more and more sought after and valuable over the years. Qi Pottery has a website, but no webstore. If you’re interested in purchasing an existing piece or making a commission, please contact the artist directly via email or Instagram.

Follow Kim Whye Kee of Qi Pottery on Instagram. 

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Arturo Alvarez

A full-time artist dedicated to original teawares, Arturo Alvarez is based in Olympia, Washington, and crafts art in a range of styles and expressions. We commissioned Alvarez for our office tea set at Sprudge Studios (we’ll be serving tea there this week as part of the Tea Week fun), and follow his regular updates on Instagram, where his account @your_pencil is part of a thriving Instagram ceramics community. Perhaps his most distinctive pieces involve incorporating found materials, including driftwood handles made from wood found across Puget Sound beaches, but this is an artist growing and advancing his craft before our very eyes, letting it all play out online. Follow him and watch along—it feels like he’s debuting new pieces almost every day.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Arturo Alvarez sells a limited number of teawares online via Etsy. Contact the artist directly via Instagram for commissions or to purchase pieces featured on his account.

Follow Arturo Alvarez on Instagram.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Andrzej Bero

A teaware potter out of Warsaw, Andrzej Bero specializes in the shiboridashi—a gaiwan variant that’s easy to use and, in the right hands, a piece of working art. Bero’s shibos are made from clay that feels coarse and tactile to the touch, in a range of dark reds, greens, and blues. This style translates especially well to larger pieces, like his 300ml teapots, which are hotly in demand for tea services around the world. Andrzej Bero has a website but no webstore; a limited number of his works are available for purchase via the aforementioned Pu-Erh.sk. Contact the artist directly for commissions and availability.

Follow Andrzej Bero on Instagram.

Jordan Michelman is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.

Editor: Scott Norton.

Top photo by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace). 

Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.

The post The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics appeared first on Sprudge.

from Sprudge https://ift.tt/2TkAiuQ

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New world news from Time: A New Netflix Series Tells the Story of the Philippines’ Drug War. But Its Critics Are Condemning Amo as Propaganda

A week after it premiered, few of the extras that feature in Netflix’s first ever Philippine series had seen the show. Outside the barbecue stand she runs in the Manila neighborhood where Cannes award-winning director Brillante Mendoza shot Amo (pronounced “am-ohr,” it means boss), Nerisa Perez recalled acting in one of its scenes. A fictional SWAT team had raided a nearby shanty, killing her fictional brother, and Perez had to sink to her knees and lament his death. “What did my brother do?” was her line. None of the dozen or so people outside Perez’s stall — some of whom also appear in Amo — had caught their neighbor’s big moment. Still, their memories of the shoot were vivid: “It felt so real. We were afraid,” one said.

Only about 50,000 of Netflix’s 125 million subscribers, or about 0.04%, live in the Philippines. Nevertheless, Amo has proved controversial. The series is set against the backdrop of President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war and follows a high-school student entangled in the drug trade. But unlike the directors of Netflix’s other long-running drug war series, Narcos, Mendoza, 57, is an unapologetic advocate of the brutal suppression of pushers and users. The Philippines’ most famous director has said Duterte’s campaign is “necessary” for his own and “other countries afflicted with the drug problem,” according to Agence France-Presse. He has filmed and telecast both of the president’s State of the Nation Addresses, and previously worked on government anti-drug films.

Mendoza’s apparent closeness to Duterte has prompted allegations that his series is propaganda for the bloody campaign. Officially, more than 4,000 people have been killed in police anti-drug operations since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016. However an opposition senator has alleged that as many as 20,000 people may have been killed on Duterte’s watch, citing a further 16,355 homicide cases classified as deaths “under investigation” from July 1, 2016 to Sept. 30, 2017.

Read more: The Mutineer: How Antonio Trillanes Came to Lead the Fight Against Rodrigo Duterte

While Mendoza is not the first Filipino filmmaker to address the drug war, his international reputation and Netflix’s backing lend Amo a profile far beyond previous pro-drug war movies like Double Barrel and Kamandag Ng Droga. Criticism has followed. A petition that asks Netflix to cancel the show, started by a Filipino mother whose disabled son was murdered in the drug war, has gathered more than 10,000 signatures. A group of 13 human rights groups recently called on Netflix to cancel the series they claim “aims to justify extrajudicial killings,” according to CNN.

“Anyone familiar with the Duterte drug war will find little in Amo’s 13 episodes that corresponds to the reality of the state-backed campaign of unlawful killings that has killed more than 12,000 Filipinos since July 2016,” Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phelim Kine tells TIME by email. He adds: “Several sequences in Amo appear to be deliberate efforts to reinforce the government’s willfully deceptive counter-narrative to scrupulously documented human rights abuses linked to the anti-drug campaign.”

In response to the criticism, Netflix told TIME via email that the service “offers a diverse choice for consumers to decide on what, where and when they want to watch. We understand that viewers may have opposing opinions but leave it to them to decide.”

The controversy over Amo comes amid a broader debate on how the Philippine drug war is presented to the world. In February, the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched a preliminary examination into allegations of crimes committed by the state. Duterte continues to direct expletive-laden tirades at the European Union and U.S. State Department, U.N. special rapporteur Agnes Callamard (whom he threatened to slap “because you are insulting me… You are f–king me and I do not want it”) and ICC investigators, whom he says he will have arrested. Meanwhile Foreign Secretary Alan Cayetano claims Human Rights Watch is “misrepresenting” the drug war, portraying “an unfair and unjust image of our country.”

Noel Celis—AFP/Getty Images Analyn Roxas, 26, mourns with her sister after her partner, Valien Mendoza, a suspected drug dealer, was gunned down by unidentified assailants in Manila, March 7, 2017.

‘There is no investigation’

On a corner table in the house Luzviminda Siapo shares with her mother and surviving daughter is a shrine to her dead son, Raymart. A vase of flowers, and offerings of cookies decorate the table in front of a framed photograph of the smiling 19-year-old. There’s also a motorcycle helmet, keeping faith with a promise Siapo had made to buy her son a motorcycle.

Speaking with TIME in Cavite, an hour’s drive south of Manila, Siapo says she was working as a domestic helper in Kuwait when relatives informed her of Raymart’s death. A neighbor had formally accused Raymart of selling marijuana after an argument. The following day, 14 masked men arrived on motorbikes looking for her son. The men abducted Raymart, who is disabled, took him to a parking lot, and shot him twice in the head.

Although witnesses told Siapo the group that abducted Raymart included police, his death is not counted in the more than 4,000 killings that the Philippine National Police (PNP) say have occurred when suspects fought back during “legitimate police operations.” Instead, it is classified as a death “under investigation.” That term is a misnomer.

“They haven’t closed the case but nobody is investigating,” Siapo says. “There is no investigation.”

Research by human rights groups and journalists has tied police, or mercenaries acting at the behest of the police, to deaths “under investigation.” Last year, two senior police officers told Reuters that members of the PNP planted evidence at crime scenes, carried out most of the killings blamed on vigilantes and received financial rewards for street executions.

There is scant hope of justice for the victims of extrajudicial killing — so common in the Philippines that many refer to it by the initials EJK — even in what appear to be slam-dunk cases. The police officers who kidnapped, ransomed and killed Korean businessman Jee Ick Joo at the police headquarters Camp Crane in October 2016 have yet to be sentenced. Officers at the National Bureau of Investigation determined to have murdered a former mayor in his jail cell have been reinstated to active duty following the president’s intervention.

Mendoza’s series, Siapo says, does not show the stark reality of the war on drugs, “If you see EJK victims, if you see Kian [Loyd delos Santos],” referring to a 17-year-old boy who was fatally shot by plainclothes police and abandoned next to a pigsty in a case that galvanized what was previously scant opposition to the drug war, “they were killed; the police killed them.”

Noel Celis—AFP/Getty Images Relatives and supporters of 17-year-old student Kian Loyd Delos Santos, who was allegedly killed by police, participate in his funeral march in Manila on Aug. 26, 2017.

After a scheduled interview with Mendoza was cancelled, he told TIME by email that he was “very sorry” for Siapo’s loss but denied Amo is propaganda or that the government had a hand in making it.

“My job is to engage my audience intelligently on what they are watching. What I want is for my audience to have their own take on the subject matter, have a healthy discussion among themselves, to scrutinize the show if they don’t agree on what they see,” he writes.

To be sure, Amo does show corruption in both the rank-and-file and the upper echelons of the PNP. The first half of Amo focuses on high school student Joseph (Vince Rillon), who is introduced as a drug runner and then gets sucked deeper into the trade, supplying designer narcotics to Manila’s elite. To research the role, Rillon tells TIME near his house in Mandaluyong, he talked with high school students in slum areas that actually pushed drugs. The second half of Amo dramatizes the real-life killing of the Korean businessman Joo. In Mendoza’s telling, the victim — rendered as a Japanese national — is involved in the drug trade.

Some local critics have complemented Mendoza’s breathtaking “guerilla-style handheld camera work.” Others, however, have derided the series for its flat characters, the lack of cohesion across its 13 episodes, and the fact women are rendered almost exclusively as either grieving partners or prostitutes.

‘It’s justifiable to exterminate them’

It is easy to see why Mendoza made Amo, and why Netflix commissioned the series. Though the rate of killings has slowed in recent months, the first year of the drug war exerted a grotesquely cinematic pull. Manila’s rain-slicked streets looked like a wet-down set. TV crews’ rigs and police lights rendered murder scenes in vivid high contrast. And the president — true to his nom-de-guerre, Duterte Harry — would speak straight to camera, dragging his finger across his throat as he threatened to kill criminals. There were curbside bodies in B-movie poses. Blood pooled on asphalt and smeared over linoleum. There were heads bound with yellow duct tape along major boulevards, and bodies bagged in cobalt plastic or strewn with cardboard signs.

Images associated with the drug war inevitably penetrated popular culture. In Navotas — the Manila neighborhood where Raymart Siapo was killed — a restaurant named its dishes after police kill methods. Last November, Apple removed mobile phone games from its App Store that allowed users playing as Duterte and Police Chief Ronald Dela Rosa to kill drug addicts, the BBC reports. “Murder has been reduced to a meme,” journalist Patricia Evangelista wrote after reporting on a series of killings in which killers had scrawled attempted witticisms on signs strewn over the dead; over the duct-taped head of one cadaver, they had drawn eyes, a nose and a grinning mouth.

Read More: Photographs From The Front Lines of Philippines’ Drug War by James Nachtwey

Activist filmmaker Kiri Dalena tells TIME such cruelties are calculated. When she documented the killings of leftist rebels known as the New People’s Army in the Philippine mountains years ago, she says, their maggot-infested bodies were often left rotting in the sun with locals afraid to move them.

“It’s a sort of warning that you do not join the New People’s Army, otherwise this will happen to you,” Dalena says, adding that a similar strategy may be at play in the way police display the bodies of drug suspects and readily tip off Manila’s press corps. “People always assume when people die a gruesome death it has something to do with drugs; when there’s torture it has something to do with drugs.”

Amo is propaganda in that it reinforces the idea of the Philippines as so irredeemably corrupted by “the drug menace” that it requires Duterte’s savage solution. But even if the country is far from the most egregious example of global drug use, saying so is dangerous. In May last year, Duterte fired the Chairman of the Dangerous Drugs Board, Benjamin Reyes, for hewing to the findings of the Philippines’ last household survey on drug use (1.8 million users) rather than the parroting the 3, 4, or 7 million addicts Duterte and Cayetano have variously claimed.

Reyes’ successor resigned after suggesting a new 10,000-bed “mega drug rehab” facility was a mistake, urging community-based treatment instead. Duterte’s most ardent critic, Leila de Lima, has now been in jail for 14 months. The Philippines top lawyer called Vice President Leni Robredo “treasonous” for publicly condeming the drug war. Critical journalists are accused of “destabilizing” the country, deemed by Duterte legitimate targets for assassination, harassed by state-sponsored cohorts of online trolls and banned from covering government events.

As Duterte’s sky-high approval ratings attest, his portrayal of the Philippines as a crime-ridden, near narco state enjoys popular support. The president’s statement that he is “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts has met with horrified reactions overseas, but did not significantly dent his popularity at home.

“The middle class already had issues regarding the urban poor encroaching upon the cities, and then you have the drug addicts who are unproductive and become snatchers,” says Dalena. “A lot of Filipinos have been persuaded that there’s no hope for these people and that they are no longer human beings. Therefore they no longer have human rights and it’s justifiable to exterminate them.”

Ezra Acayan—Reuters Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte listens to Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Ronald Dela Rosa at the presidential palace in Manila, Philippines on Jan. 29, 2017.

How then, should filmmakers engage? Rather than calling for the censorship of pro-government voices like Mendoza’s, Dalena’s collective RESBAK — a local slang term for fighting back with reinforcements — attempts to reflect the experience of urban poor communities that have been most terrorized by the drug war. In December 2016, the group filmed a powerful alternative version of a popular Filipino Christmas song, with relatives of drug war victims holding up cardboard signs bearing empowering messages. Other works include a dance performance called 15 Minutes of Your Time mocking the government’s attempts to cure addicts with Zumba classes. Then there’s the mural on the side of Manila’s Baclaran church, for which RESBAK-affiliated artists sought mosaic contributions from drug war victims who were seeking sanctuary there.

Of Mendoza’s assertion that his series presents the drug war from different angles so that the viewer can decide, Dalena says: “Perhaps in a different time, maybe it would have worked, [but] this is not a time to be ambiguous or to be safe. What is his stand? For the killings? I haven’t heard any opposition from him.”

A few nights before PNP Chief Dela Rosa retired from his post with “no regrets” to take a new job at the head of the Bureau of Corrections, the presenters on local radio station Wave 89.1 did their best to soothe the bumper-to-bumper drivers inching through the notorious Manila gridlock. Between slow jams, Wave’s hosts riffed on TV shows that Filipinos binge-watched at the expense of other tasks. One listener spent hours watching Friends 14 years after its finale, another had missed filing tax returns because of the American legal comedy Drop Dead Diva. Modern Family had meanwhile stood in for the real family of a woman working overseas. There was no mention, however, of Amo.

A few blocks east, a busking rap group comprised of Vincent, 15, David, 9, and Christopher, 8, plied their trade. Most of the nightly 300 to 800 Pesos ($6 to $15) they earn comes from tourists enthralled by their flow. The tourists are unaware that their upbeat rap, in Filipino, tells the story of Kian Loyd delos Santos’ killing.

“Hey fellow Filipinos, let’s go, let’s wake up,” it begins, before talking about being abducted then shot by police.

“Goodbye to all, take care,” Vincent raps in the voice of Kian: “Justice is all I need, and hopefully I’m the last.”

— With reporting by Martin San Diego / Manila

April 30, 2018 at 02:38PM ClusterAssets Inc., https://ClusterAssets.wordpress.com