#on a saturday even

[gawankeundco]

“sensation in the DEL2: contract negotiations with Philipp Grubauer” — “his salary expectations: interview with Philipp Grubauer” (and a modest bavarian only asks for a leberkäs to play for his hometown team) — “will the sensation happen? Starbulls double offer!” | via Starbulls Rosenheim instagram

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[phantomrose96]

Having a cat in winter time is very very dangerous they don’t warn you.

“It’s cold.” I knew that part. I’ve been through 27 “it’s cold”s in my life. “It’s cold AND there’s a soft little cat asleep on my bed with me”? Dangerous. Absolutely dangerous. You will never ever get up again.

[lifeinpoetry]

Sometimes, I cry so hard I can feel it in my ribs. / I feel like the real me is backed into a corner inside me

— Ama Asantewa Diaka, from "Saturday Evening WhatsApp Message," Woman, Eat Me Whole

[theorangepdf]

2020-2021 was rough time to be alive yes it’s true but it was a great time to be a tumblrina

[my-darling-boy]

Somehow my signaller idea turned into an old Saturday Evening Post cover. Why is a British soldier on an American magazine, We Don’t Know

[why-the-heck-not]

the saturday-sunday night diabolical "life is falling apart"- to do list followed by a mad scramble

[turtleblogatlast]

I love Raph and haven’t said that enough so to be more specific I love that Raph is a soft boy who loves bear plushies, a gross boy who eats an assortment of things that are definitely better left alone, a smart boy who is more than capable of taking down villains through planning and fortitude alike, a strong boy who is dedicated to training his muscles and fighting prowess, a teenage boy who loves his brothers but is more than happy to tease and roughhouse with them, an angry boy who sometimes lets his anger take a hold of him to cover the fear, a gentle boy who is generous with hugs and affirmations to those he loves, a capable boy who takes on more than should ever be expected of a teenager, a good boy who just wants to be a hero and slowly comes to realize the cost of that duty, a good boy who has no reservations about putting himself in the way of harm coming to his family, a good boy who’s a great brother and son and person and deserves only the best the world has to offer.

[jstor]

Happy Halloween from JSTOR! 🎃 👻 Wishing you a night full of sweet treats, spooky fun, and a little vintage charm. Image: Frederick Stanley. Untitled. November 2, 1935. Washington University in St. Louis.

[almondcroissantsandink]

Faux Leyendecker-esque cover in celebration of The Glass Scientists by @arythusa coming out in print! I got volume one for my birthday and it's crazy to be able to physically flip through a comic I've been reading on and off for years

[newyorkthegoldenage]

A 1947 edition of the Saturday Evening Post features a New Year's Day cleanup in Times Square. Cover illustration by Steven Dohanos.

Photo: Flickr

[forever70s]

illustration from the Saturday Evening Post (February 27, 1965)

[scrambler]

"Jury Room / The Holdout" (1959) by Norman Rockwell

[acis-arts]

Gays :D

Gays :D

[gameraboy2]

“God bless us, every one!” The Saturday Evening Post, December 15, 1934 Cover by Norman Rockwell

[eg515]

don't you just love it when a series has a good ending that takes care of all of its characters, shows how their futures will look like, ties up all loose ends, reminisces about old times, references important moments from before, and brings back elements of the very first episode, giving a nice frame to the whole series?