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richardmurray

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  1. A Tradition Going Strong: Brides Who Take Their Husbands’ Names
    The women least likely to do so tend to be liberal or highly educated or Hispanic, new data shows.

    By Claire Cain Miller
    Sept. 12, 2023

    When Irene Evran, formerly Irene Yuan, married Colin Evran three years ago — in a civil ceremony on Zoom during the depths of the pandemic — the decision to take his name felt like a natural one.

    Her mother had kept her maiden name, as is traditional in China, where they are from. But Ms. Evran thought it would be easier to share a name with her husband and their future children. It was important to him, she said, and she liked how his name sounded with hers.

    “It wasn’t a difficult decision,” said Ms. Evran, 35, of San Francisco. “There may be deep-rooted traditional influence, but it felt pretty simple and straightforward.”

    The bridal tradition of taking a husband’s last name remains strong. Among women in opposite-sex marriages in the United States, four in five changed their names, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center.

    Fourteen percent kept their last names, the survey found. The youngest women were most likely to have done so: A quarter of respondents who were 18 to 34 kept their names.

    Hyphenated last names were less common — about 5 percent of couples across age groups took that approach — and less than 1 percent said they did something different, like creating a new last name. Among men in opposite-sex marriages, 5 percent took their wife’s name.

    Marital naming has become yet another way in which Americans’ lives diverge along lines of politics and education. Among conservative Republican women, 90 percent took their husbands’ name, compared with 66 percent of liberal Democrats, Pew found. Eighty-three percent of women without a college degree changed their names, while 68 percent of those with a postgraduate degree did.

    The women who keep their names are likely to be older when they marry, research shows, and to have established careers and high incomes. They have invested in “making their name” professionally, said Claudia Goldin, an economist studying gender at Harvard who co-wrote a paper with that title with Maria Shim.

    People are marrying later than in previous generations, and highly educated people are more likely to marry. That would suggest that more women would be keeping their names, said Sharon Sassler, a sociologist at Cornell who studies young people’s transitions into adulthood.

    “However, we adjust to the gender norms of our time, which, ‘Barbie’ notwithstanding, is not a very pro-feminist time period,” she said.

    Also, she said, weddings are a time of highly gendered traditions: “I don’t think a lot of women want to talk about, ‘How is marriage a patriarchal institution?’ especially as they’re making the decision to enter into marriage.”

    Some younger women say the decision has become more practical than political — they find it easier to have the same name as their future children, and to simplify dinner reservations or utility bills.

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    Immigrants to the United States and Black and Hispanic women are less likely to take a spouse’s name. Eighty-six percent of white women did, Pew found, compared with 73 percent of Black women and 60 percent of Hispanic women. (It is customary to keep one’s name in many Spanish-speaking countries.) There were not enough Asian American women in the sample to analyze.

    When Olivia Castor, 28, a corporate lawyer in Chicago, married three weeks ago, she decided to take both routes. She is in the process of legally changing her last name to that of her husband, Austin McNair, but she will continue to use Castor professionally.

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    Left- Austin McNair and Olivia Castor at their August wedding in Chicago. She is changing her name to his, but will continue to use Castor professionally.Credit...Candace Sims Photography

    Right-Her parents, Aliette and Osner Castor, at their 1990 wedding, after they immigrated from Haiti. She took his name, as is traditional in both Haiti and the United States.Credit...via Olivia Castor

    She is the daughter of Haitian immigrants, and wanted to keep her Haitian last name and honor her family’s role in her education and career success.

    “It meant a lot to me to have that family name, a legacy of accomplishment in the U.S., and I didn’t want to let go of that,” she said. “But I also wanted to embrace the new life and family I’m starting with my husband.”

    Pew’s findings, from a poll of 2,740 married people, conducted in April, are consistent with other data showing that roughly 20 percent of women have kept their names since the practice took hold in the 1970s. But it’s hard to know how it’s changed over time because there has been so little research on it. (It’s seen as a “women’s issue,” and thus “not seen as valuable by people who fund research,” said Laurie Scheuble, a professor emeritus at Penn State who co-wrote a paper on name changing in 2012.)

    Pew’s survey did not include enough same-sex couples to draw conclusions. Some said that because of the lack of a tradition, same-sex couples felt freer in their choice.

    For Rosemary and Christena Kalonaros-Pyle — who work in marketing in New York and celebrated their July marriage with 115 family members and friends in Mexico — the solution was to hyphenate.

    “We wanted to both have the same last name as our children would have, just because legally it’s a lot more prudent, especially as a same-sex couple, where in certain states and certain countries things are recognized differently,” Rosemary Kalonaros-Pyle said.

    They also wanted to keep her Greek last name — and honor the last name of Christena Kalonaros-Pyle’s father, who died before her wife could meet him.

    “It was a little bit of legal logistics,” she said, “and a little bit of emotions.”

    URL
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/12/upshot/maiden-names-change.html


    What last name did you give your children? Some families break with tradition when it comes to their children’s last names. Please share your story. (The Times won’t quote you or refer to your submission in a story before talking to you first.) Email the reporter on this story, Claire Cain Miller.
    mailto:ccm@nytimes.com?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

     

    MY THOUGHTS

    Well, beyond the limited scope of the statistical graphic, it displays with the small count of women, heterosexual women, a simple truth. Three ways: Black women are the highest in sharing a last name. Mestizo+mulatto women are highest in keeping their own name. White women are highest in changing to thier husbands name. That shows three different approaches to males. They are all women but they are not the same. In AALBC forums, many have suggested that black men are being emasculated but based on this simple graphic i argue it is mestizo or mulatto men who are being emasculated. But said people in AALBC or media folk who chime  a similar tool say nothing. To me the answer is far simpler, couples need to talk to each other and know each other's honest opinions. The problem is many people don't communicate in the relationships they are in. they perform sexual or financial acts or perform public displays but rarely talk to each other in the way a relationship needs. 

  2. “Unbury the Future”: Martha Wells’ Full Speech from the 2017 World Fantasy Awards
    Martha Wells
    Tue Nov 7, 2017 10:00am

    now03.png
    The convention defines “secret history” as tales which uncover an alternative history of our world with the aid of fantasy literary devices. Like alternate histories or secret tales of the occult.

    A secret history might also mean a lost history, something written in a language that died with the last native speaker. It might mean something inaccessible, written in a medium too fragile to last. Like the science fiction and fantasy stories published in U.S. newspapers in the late 1800s. We know a few of those authors, like Aurelia Hadley Mohl [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmoae ]  and Mollie Moore Davis [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollie_Evelyn_Moore_Davis ] , but how many others were there? Those stories were proof that everybody has always been here, but the paper they were printed on has turned to dust.

    We might know that C.L. Moore [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._L._Moore ] wrote for Weird Tales, but I grew up thinking she was the only one, that a woman fantasy writer from that time period was like a unicorn, there could only be one, and that she was writing for an entirely male audience. But there were plenty of other women, around a hundred in Weird Tales alone, and many of them, like Allison V. Harding [ https://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2011/05/who-was-allison-v-harding.html ] and Mary Elizabeth Counselman [ http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blog/summer-of-unknown-writers-mary-elizabeth-counselman/ ] , didn’t bother to conceal their identity with initials.


    Weird Tales had women poets, a woman editor named Dorothy McIlwraith, women readers who had their letters printed in the magazine. There were women writing for other pulps, for the earlier Dime Novels, lots of them. Including African American Pauline Hopkins [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Hopkins ] , whose fantasy adventure novel appeared in a magazine in 1903.

    These women were there, they existed. Everybody knew that, up until somehow they didn’t. We know there were LGBT and non-binary pulp writers, too, but their identities are hidden by time and the protective anonymity of pseudonyms.

    Secrets are about suppression, and history is often suppressed by violence, obscured by cultural appropriation, or deliberately destroyed or altered by colonization, in a lingering kind of cultural gaslighting. Wikipedia defines “secret history” as a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or ignored by established scholars.

    That’s what I think of when I hear the words “secret histories.” Histories kept intentionally secret and histories that were quietly allowed to fade away.

    The women writers, directors, and producers of early Hollywood were deliberately erased from movie history. Fifty percent of movies between 1911 and 1928 were written by women. In the 1940s there were a last few survivors at MGM, but their scripts were uncredited and they were strongly encouraged to conceal what they were working on, and not to correct the assumption that they were secretaries.

    With the internet, it shouldn’t be possible for that to happen again. But we hear an echo of it every time someone on Reddit says “women just don’t write epic fantasy.”

    You do the work, and you try to forget that there are people wishing you out of existence. But there are a lot of means of suppression that are more effective than wishing.

    Like in 1974 when Andre Norton discovered the copyeditor on her children’s novel Lavender Green Magic had changed the three black main characters to white.

    Or like in 1947, when African American writer and editor Orrin C. Evans was unable to publish more issues of All-Negro Comics [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Negro_Comics ] because there was mysteriously no newsprint available for him to purchase.

    Or like all the comics suppressed by the Comics Code Authority in 1954, which acted to effectively purge comics of people of color and of angry violent women, whether they were heroes or villains, or of any perceived challenge to the establishment. Like the publisher Entertaining Comics, which was targeted and eventually driven out of business for refusing to change a story to make a black astronaut white.

    There’s an echo of that suppression when DC bans a storyline [ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/batwoman-authors-exit-claim-dc-621274 ] where Batwoman proposes marriage to her girlfriend. And again when Marvel publishes a storyline that makes us think Captain America is a Nazi. When we’re supposed to forget that his co-creator Jack Kirby was Jewish, that he was an Army scout in World War II, that he discovered a concentration camp, that he was personally threatened by three Nazis at the New York Marvel office for creating a character to punch Hitler. (Maybe the Nazis would like to forget that when Kirby rushed downstairs to confront them, they ran away.)

    There’s been an active level of suppression in movies since movies were invented. At least a white woman writer and director like Frances Marion [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Marion ] could win two Academy Awards before she was banished from history, but that wasn’t the case for her contemporary Oscar Micheaux [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Micheaux ] . An African American, Micheaux worked as a railway porter before he wrote, directed, and produced at least 40 films in the black movie industry that was entirely separate from white Hollywood.

    That kind of suppression is still alive and well, and we see it when the movie about the Stonewall riots shows the resistance against police attacks through the viewpoint of young white guys and ignores Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera [ https://sites.psu.edu/womeninhistory/2016/10/23/the-unsung-heroines-of-stonewall-marsha-p-johnson-and-sylvia-rivera/ ] . Or when Ghost in the Shell features a white actress [ https://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/why-are-we-still-white-washing-characters/ ]  instead of Japanese.

    We’ve forgotten Sessue Hayakawa [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sessue_Hayakawa ] , a Japanese actor who was one of the biggest stars in the silent film era of Hollywood, who was well known as a broodingly handsome heartthrob.

    Sometimes history isn’t suppressed, sometimes it just drifts away. The people who lived it never expected it to be forgotten, never expected their reality to dissolve under the weight of ignorance and disbelief.

    Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly unburied the history of the African American women of early NASA, of Katharine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughn and the hundreds like them. They were just forgotten over the years, as the brief time when women’s work meant calculating launch and landing trajectories and programming computers passed out of memory. Like the Mercury 13 [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13 ] , the “Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees” in the 1960s, all pilots, all subjected to the same tests as the men. They retired, they went away, everyone forgot them.

    Sometimes when they’re remembered, their contributions are minimized, like when a photo caption calls bacteriologist Dr. Ruby Hirose a “Japanese girl scientist” or labels Bertha Pallan, who was one of the first Native American women archeologists, as an “expedition secretary.” Like the photo post on Tumblr that over and over again, identified Marie Curie as a “female laboratory assistant.” Anybody can be disappeared.

    We think we remember them, but then we’re told over and over again, all over the internet, that women don’t like math, can’t do science. That’s the internet that’s supposed to preserve our history, telling us we don’t exist.

    Mary Jane Seacole was a Jamaican nurse who helped the wounded on the battlefields of the Crimean War, just like Florence Nightingale. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the mother of rock and roll. Sophia Duleep Singh was a prominent suffragette in the UK. They’re all in Wikipedia, but you can’t look them up unless you remember their names.

    The women who worked in the Gibson Guitar factory during WWII were deliberately erased, their existence strenuously denied, despite the evidence of a forgotten group photo that the company still would like to claim never existed.

    Jackie Mitchell, seventeen years old, struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game in 1931. Her contract was almost immediately voided by the baseball commissioner. Baseball was surely too strenuous for her.

    In 1994, Gregory Corso was asked, “Where are the women of the Beat Generation?” He said, “There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock.” Some of them survived, like Diane di Prima, and Hettie Jones.

    Book burning draws too much attention. In science fiction and fantasy, in comics, in media fandom, everybody was always here, but we have been disappeared over and over again. We stumble on ourselves in old books and magazines and fanzines, fading print, grainy black and white photos, 16 millimeter film, archives of abandoned GeoCities web sites. We remember again that we were here, they were here, I saw them, I knew them.

    We have to unearth that buried history. Like Rejected Princesses [ http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/ ] , by Jason Porath, which chronicles the women of history too awesome, offbeat, or awful to be animated. Or Nisi Shawl’s series the Expanded Course in the History of Black Science Fiction [ https://www.tor.com/tag/history-of-black-science-fiction/ ] . Or Malinda Lo’s LGBTQ YA By the Numbers [ https://www.malindalo.com/blog/2017/10/12/lgbtq-ya-by-the-numbers-2015-16 ] posts. Or Medieval POC [ https://twitter.com/medievalpoc?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor ] , sharing information about people of color in European art history. Like Eric Leif Davin in his book Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction. Like Cari Beauchamps’ book Without Lying Down, about the women writers, directors, and producers of early Hollywood. Like Catherine Lundoff’s series on the history of LGBT Science Fiction and Fantasy. Like Saladin Ahmed’s articles on the early history of comics or Jaime Lee Moyer’s article on the erasure of early women scientists[ http://www.jaimeleemoyer.com/we-all-know-what-they-did-to-witches/ ] . Like all the librarians and researchers and writers and archivists and fans who work to unbury our past so we have a chance to find our future.

    And we have to continue to move forward toward that future in the fantasy genre, like the nominees on this year’s World Fantasy Award ballot, like all the other fantasy novels and short fiction last year that pushed the envelope a little further, or pushed it as far as it would go.

    We have to break the barriers again and again, as many times as it takes, until the barriers are no more, and we can see the future our secret history promised us.

    Author’s note: I’d like to thank Kate Elliott for reading an early draft of this, and for her help, inspiration, and encouragement.

     

    Editor’s note: Martha Wells’ toastmaster speech was delivered at the World Fantasy Convention on November 5, 2017 and is reproduced here with the author’s permission; a few minor edits have been made and links have been added to the original text for additional context/clarity.

    Martha Wells is a science fiction and fantasy writer, whose first novel was published in 1993. Her most recent series are The Books of the Raksura, for NightShade Books, and The Murderbot Diaries for Tor.com. Besides many fantasy novels, she has also written short stories, media tie-ins for Star Wars and Stargate Atlantis, YA fantasies, and non-fiction.

     

    URL
    https://www.tor.com/2017/11/07/unbury-the-future-martha-wells-full-speech-from-the-2017-world-fantasy-awards/

     

     

    MY THOUGHT

    But I think the greater question is not about presence, but action. "We" have always been here is the truth but what do "We" do when lifetimes of merit don't force "Them" to honor or treat "We" at the least equally? 
     

     

  3. A Night with Dr. Charles Johnson and Steven Barnes

    Video + Transcript

     

  4. Ahsoka Tano the badass jedi superheroine we need
    My Reply
    Well... Disney-StarWars has made female strong characters in most of their recent work: star wars episode 7/8/9- ray who finally ends the emperors reign and stars a new era absent the sith or jedi; rogue one- the daughter of the death star engineer, absent any force, who sacrifices all and guides others to make important choices and sacrificial choices to do one good while very powerful deed;Mandalorian show- Boka Tan changes from a defeated isolated leader to a better communal leader, even getting guidance by a man plus older woman, still with great fighting skill, who succeeds in fufilling her goal of uniting her people; Book of Boba- fennec shand <I do enjoy her> survives being betrayed by a younger man and becomes the trusted second in command, while visibly more dangerous than her boss, an older m, to an independent underworld empire; Ashoka Tano- has Ashoka who: admits she was/is wrong, survive failure, is extremely skilled plus lethal, trusts others to help to a collective goal, and moves in a very non offensive way, and chooses to continue training a child, no one, not even a very experienced purely logical machine, thinks has a chance of finishing her education. And is accompanied by a green skinned female general who always seems level headed but never follows orders blindly and is very sharp minded. A female padwan with the least amount of obvious impressiveness, a sign of how self loathing moth gideon was, who is full of love, who finally accepts her mandalorian roots. With female strong villains in a grey haired witch who is strong and in charge, but not flashy, while a young female warrior dedicated to a master but with a honest cruel streak. So the writers at the Star WArs section of disney have been working on female strong characters from the Stars wars films for a while, and they seem to be getting better with age. And the quality of male characters to the writers credit don't seem to be getting worse but are staying with them. I think the problem with the hans solo movie or the obi wan kinobi show was the male leads. 

    https://aliciamccalla.com/blogs/blog/ahsoka-tano-the-badass-jedi-superheroine-we-need

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  5.  

     

    Eddie Mueller makes cocktails and talks Film Noir side Karie Bible of Hollywood Kitchen , come join a table at the Noir Bar < https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/eddie-muller-s-noir-bar >  

    3:40 
    sidestreets and backalleys was the earliest name of the Film Noir festival
    5:55 
    Talking of In A Lonely Place < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Lonely_Place >
    9:45 
    Kid Noir: Kitty Feral and the Case of the Marshmallow Monkey  and its easter eggs for adults < https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/kid-noir-kitty-feral-and-the-case-of-the-marshmallow-monkey >
    10:23
    Showcasing Kid Noir
    12:05 
    An explanation of Film Noir to children is in the back page of Kid Noir
    14:35
    September 19th is when Kid Noir comes out
    15:53
    Modern Access to films, including Black and White films, will help get the bug
    20:35
    Cocktail-> Mildred Pierce
    originally created by a mixologist named Abigail
    29:50
    Cocktail->Zeena
    based on the Joan Blondell cocktail in honor of the thespian, created in havana in the 1930s- originally with gin; named for Blondell's character in the film Nightmare Alley < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley_(1947_film)
    37:00 Cocktail-> The Horses Neck
    38:19 the secret to peeling lemon
    41:27 cocktail kingdom < https://cocktailkingdom.com/ >
    42:40 lemons vs limes in drinks
    43:31 lady of shanghai reading not to be,but one day
    45:00 closing fun

    URL
    https://filmnoirfoundation.tumblr.com/post/727917835098161152/fnf-prez-joins-karie-bible-on-hollywood-kitchen-to

     

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  6. Week 4 of the workshop with Betts on Tumblr

     


    Ma'am 
    based on Girl from Jamaica Kincaid
    https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/post/728165222399000576/narrative-writing-workshop-with-betts-week4
     
    The First Mass Of The Perihelion At Saint Lamma
    https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Title-The-First-Mass-Of-The-Perihelion-At-Saint-La-981961141

     

    Training Ground
    https://rmfantasysetpieces1.tumblr.com/post/728165870205009920/training-ground

     

    Complete writing workshop with Betts posts
    https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/tagged/tumblr writing workshop with betts

     

    Companion Deviantart folder
    https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/gallery/88882719/tumblr-writing-workshop-with-bettsfic

     

    The soccer blog workshop posts- for it I didn't do all the weeks
    https://rmfantasysetpieces1.tumblr.com/tagged/tumblr writing workshop with betts

     

     

    After discussion side a fellow artist. I made a father to son , son to father reflection of girl from Jamaica Kincaid

    Title: Boy

    Get up and dig a new latrine hole; Get up and clean the tide off the boat; Get up and get the thrush from the field; Get up and clean the hotel's lawn; Get up and search for crabs; Get up gather and remove the hotel's trash; Get up and clean the hotel floor; always work with your head down; always go where Mr. White tells you to; never steal Mr. White's sugar; use your shirt to wrap the cane if no more cloth; when carrying fish don't trip up or no one will want you to carry their fish again; It is best to sweep the hotel at night when the customers are sleep; Is it true you fought in Sunday school?; don't sing songs on the road, people will not hire you; on Sundays act like a good man and be quiet and not the bums you learned those songs from; Don't fight in Sunday school; you musn't speak to those village girls, not even to give directions; don't eat in the street- people will think you are a bum; but I only fight the teacher on Sundays and always after class;  this is how to make a reel; this is how to make a hook for the reel; this is how to fish so you will not be a bum singing all over the place; this is how to you repair the roof of my house; this is how you repair the wall of my house; this is how you throw a net; this is how you reel in a net; this is how you clean out a net; remember never smile when you accept a delivery; remember never smile when you complete a delivery; remember never to smile when you confirm a delivery; never sing at any time during a delivery or people will think your a bum; don't sing with that voice or people may think your a girl; don't hang around in groups - a good worker never has time for partying; don't touch people's cars, you might dirty them; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; you have to start fishing in the morning; you have to keep fishing in the afternoon; you have to stay fishing at night; if you don't feel good , keep fishing; only sleep with dem village girls at midnight; never trust dem village girls , never say their kid is yours; if the kid is yours , teach it what  i taught you; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doens't fall on you; always spend your money cause you can't save it anywhere; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of man who the baker won't let near the bread? 

     

    Title: Sir

    Why do mornings stink? why are mornings salty? Why do mornings cut my feet? Why do mornings make me cough? Why do mornings make me tired? Why do mornings never have breakfast? Why do mornings make my skin bleach? Can I look up at a white cloud? Is Mr. White your father? Why can't Mr. White cut his own sugar? Why didn't you tell me the cane can cut my skin? Why didn't you ever help me carry fish? Why couldn't you ever help me sweep the hotel? Papa never helped you to. Why you hit me whenever I was happy. Why does nobody smile at church? Why do we live in homes like the village people? why does no one have anything to eat ? My father loved me like I love you, the best love is the love you don't know.  why didn't you go out to sea with me? why didn't you fish with me? Why didn't you ever smile when you caught fish, or show off fish? Why do you always grunt to Mama? Why don't you ever smile to Mama? Why didn't you throw a net with me? Why didn't you reel a net with me? Why didn't you clean out a net with me? Why can't I want to do what I do? Why can't I like what I do? Why can't I love what I do? Why can't I tell people I am happy? Why do people think I am a girl if I am happy? Why don't you have any friends? Why can't I have a morning off? Why can't I have an afternoon off? Why can't I have an evening off? Why do you not sleep at home at night? Why do you never trust what mama say? Why is all your money spent on rum? Why did you never let me squeeze bread around you? I  don't need your help. So after telling me what do to all the time, you never cared what I did?


     

    URL 

    https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/post/728754332023029760/boy-and-sir

  7. The only government that has global reach is the usa. so what is afria's role in the usa'a scheme. 

    The USA, like all empires before it and after, fears every other government.

    All the governments in Africa have a high level of impotence, but it isn't from a one size fits all narrative. The reality is, from a solely African lens, modernity, circa 2023,  is merely a continuation of the european imperial age. The only difference is the usa is in the place of western europe. 

    As a region Africa joins LAtin America, joins Southern ASia, as regions where the USA doesn't have any militaristic rivals< usa/china > or satraps< germany/japan>. Merely a collection of weak governments whose allegiance is always wanted by the usa but whose impotency or dysfunction makes them unable to be rivals or satraps. 

    Now things do change, that must be said. But  I can't see the future, to say when/how/why.

     

    Original question

    #Africa, a continent of 54 countries and a population of about one billion people,  accounts for just 3% of global GDP and global trade. How important is #Africa in the #global scheme of things? Discuss…
    https://twitter.com/osasuo/status/1700500796813529458
     

     

     

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  8. The Mystery Behind ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Cover Art Is Solved

    Sleuths have wondered for years who made a striking cover for Madeleine L’Engle’s novel. A podcast host and a blog writer who contacted hundreds of people figured it out.

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    By Amanda Holpuch

    Sept. 6, 2023

    For certain corners of the internet, a 1976 paperback edition of Madeleine L’Engle’s novel “A Wrinkle in Time” has been the source of an enduring mystery: Who was the artist behind its spooky, glowing-green cover art?

    After a few hours of research, the podcast host Amory Sivertson thought she had found the answer. She had emailed a gallery to ask if an artist it represented had made the cover and a worker said yes.

    She was wrong: A day later, the gallery worker apologized for the miscommunication. It would be two months, hundreds of emails and a number of awkward cold calls before she actually found the correct name.

    The mystery cover art shows a strapping centaur with delicate wings flying above a menacing green face with bright red eyes. Craggy mountains and fluffy dark clouds surround the haunting figures. The website Book Riot called the art “nightmare fuel.” The artist’s name isn’t mentioned anywhere in the book.

     

    Ms. Sivertson thought that finding the artist’s name and giving the person credit were important for a work that is “on people’s bookshelves and in their hearts and in their memories.”

    “This is one of the pieces that outlives him,” Ms. Sivertson said of the cover. “It’s just — you have to know. We have to find out who is behind it.”

    The mystery reached Ms. Sivertson because she is the co-host and senior producer of the podcast “Endless Thread,” which sometimes delves into mysteries. On the show — produced by Boston’s NPR station WBUR — Ms. Sivertson and her co-host, Ben Brock Johnson, find explanations for quandaries such as Geedis, a warthog-like character that dazzled the internet, and a pile of plates dumped in the woods in Pennsylvania.

    For the book art mystery, the podcast picked up where S. Elizabeth, who writes the blog Unquiet Things, had left off.

    Ms. Elizabeth said she had first developed an “idle curiosity” about the artist behind the “Wrinkle in Time” cover art in 2019. In 2021 and 2022, her curiosity increased as she worked on her latest book, “The Art of Fantasy,” a compendium that comes out on Thursday.

     

    In May, she described her search for the artist in a blog post, hoping it would generate new leads. She said that she had contacted people online who were connected to the novel, the fantasy art world and Ms. L’Engle. Ms. Elizabeth reached out to Ms. L’Engle’s granddaughter on the social media platform X to ask if she knew who created the cover, but the account responded with a shrug emoji.

    Ms. Elizabeth posted about the search on Reddit, and a commenter there said the mystery would be a good fit for “Endless Thread,” so Ms. Elizabeth shared her request for help on the podcast’s subreddit.

    Ms. Elizabeth didn’t have an especially deep connection to the book. When she first started looking for the cover artist, her primary memory of the novel was that the plot involved a liverwurst sandwich — “I’m a foodie,” she said — but she cares deeply about artists getting their due.

    The search for an answer resonated online with many, who sent Ms. Elizabeth guesses about the artist’s identity and tips for her search.

    “I think realizing that the artist was not so easily found — that just lit a fire under a lot of folks, because this book was so formative to so many people,” Ms. Elizabeth said.

     

    People had guesses (spoiler: Some were correct https://twitter.com/wallacepolsom/status/1663664852764618752?s=20 ), but Ms. Sivertson’s hundreds of calls ultimately led to an answer. “I really was sustained by people who would write back and say, ‘I have a few ideas, let me make a few calls,’” she said.

    Ms. Sivertson said these calls were “an industry coming back together,” with people who worked in publishing and illustration in the 1970s speaking with each other for the first time in decades.

    In late June, she was given the correct name: Richard Bober. Mr. Bober died last year https://www.wow-art.com/richard-bober, but Ms. Sivertson was able to speak with his relatives in early July, and she said they found proof that he had made the cover art.

    Ms. Elizabeth said that she wanted to burst into tears when the mystery was solved because even though Ms. Sivertson was tenacious, finding the answer had seemed like a long shot.

    Ms. Elizabeth had actually seen a work by Mr. Bober before, “Lady Vampire,” which she said depicts a vampire girl who looks “like a snotty, mean girl,” with a dog looking at her adoringly. “At the time I thought, ‘This artist is so cool,’” Ms. Elizabeth recalled.

     

    This cover art mystery appears to be solved, but Ms. Elizabeth has a long list of queries she would still like answers to, including who made a cover for the next book in Ms. L’Engle’s series: “A Wind in the Door.” Each year on social media, Ms. Elizabeth also posts a photo of a topless woman in an enormous headdress taken during what appears to be the 1920s, hoping someone will know who it is.

    “Everyone has tons of guesses,” she said. “And some people are like, ‘Definitively, yes, this is that person.’ But show me the proof of it.”

     

    URL

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/books/wrinkle-in-time-book-cover-artist.html

  9. Partnering with Black Women Photographers to Amplify Black Creatives

    now03.png

     

    Photo: © Edwina Hay (Flickr: eatsdirt < https://www.flickr.com/photos/eatsdirt/>)

    We’re excited to officially announce our second grant in partnership with the Black Women Photographers community! <<  https://blackwomenphotographers.com/ >>With this grant we hope to help a photographer from both the Black Women Photographers and Flickr communities to further hone their photography skills.

     

    The grant includes funds of $2,500 to be used by the recipient towards furthering their photography practice. It also includes a two-year Flickr Pro membership, as well as  a one-year SmugMug Pro membership. Ten additional recipients will each receive a one-year Flickr Pro membership and one-year SmugMug Pro membership. 

    In order to be eligible for the grant you must:

    Be a member of the Black Women Photographers community << https://blackwomenphotographers.com/join-the-community  >>

    Submit a photo aligned with the theme of “Light in Motion” to the Black Women Photographers group on Flickr <<  https://www.flickr.com/groups/blackwomenphotographers/ >>>(Explain how to be a member of the group < < https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404069536532-Add-or-remove-photos-in-Flickr-groups > >)

    Explain why the photo you chose stands out to you 

     

    Be an active member on Flickr (completing the step above fulfills this requirement!)

    Applications will close on October 6th, 2023. Please apply << https://blackwomenphotographers.com/smugmug-flickr  >> and spread the word before the deadline!

    This grant is open to Black women and non-binary photographers who are members – new and old –  of Black Women Photographers and Flickr. The grant recipient will be selected by  BWP founder Polly Irungu<<https://www.pollyirungu.com/>>, veteran BWP and Flickr member Edwina Hay.  Flickr Community’s MacKenzie Joslin < https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenziej/  

    SmugMug’s Senior Global Brand Manager & Head of Ambassador Relations Alastair Jolly https://www.flickr.com/photos/alastairjolly/

     and This Week in Photo’s Frederick Van Johnson. https://thisweekinphoto.com/author/frederick/

     

    We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

     

    Join the community

     

    Over the last two years, we’ve had the opportunity to work directly with Polly Irungu, founder of Black Women Photographers, as well as get to know members of the BWP community and learn more about their work. The collective’s mission is to help get Black women photographers hired and supports its members by promoting their work in an active database distributed to photo editors and art buyers. The collective also offers education and support for its members through regular programing like webinars, workshops, and portfolio reviews.

     

    If you’re a Black woman photographer looking to connect with a larger community, you can learn more and apply to be part of Black Women Photographers. And if you’re new to Flickr, we’re here to help you get started! Check out our Flickr FAQ series and say hello in the Black Women Photographers group.

    Note: The photo included in this blog post and in communications about this grant was taken by Edwina Hay, a music photographer and member of the grant panel. You can see more of her work on Flickr.

    en

     

     

    URL

    https://blog.flickr.net/en/2023/09/06/partnering-with-black-women-photographers-to-amplify-black-creatives/

     

  10. Writeup as I listened

    12:10 
    Secrets to writing great horror

    12:12
    He wrote the Kundalini equation < https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-kundalini-equation-1 >

    originally wrote to have a best seller and increase his career. A white guy was put on a peers cover. The firms back in the day to the original publication was not willing to look at their own responsibility. 
    True, the white audience in modernity is used to 

    17:36 
    STeven sees the potential to do something unique to him. He will rewrite a former novel and turn it into something it should had been, and he will collaborate with Tananarive in the script form. He wants to use Tananarive practical historical smoothing.

    18:46 
    People suggest Tananarive Due is one of the greatest horror writers alive. 

    20:10 
    what makes a great horror story?

    22:06
    What is the greatest extent, what is the most extreme moment?
    There is a point where it is too much or that is not enough. A symphony of different emotions to feel the experience. Using vision boards matters.  You can feel your way before you write it. 

    23:50 
    Now that a cardboard treatment, and now a written treatment and ask what is the experience of this movie be.
    What is the difference between action or horror movies?
    In action movies, people are getting hurt in a sequence, like in horror. 
    For Tananarive, the difference is the depth of characters.
    For example, a horror movie about a bunch of college students on a ski trip. She can relate to college students through friends who like skiing.
    Then a mercenary on a mission is on a ski lift. She can't relate to a mercenary or being on a ski lift. 

    26:31 
    Horror needs a relatable character who is experiencing fear, a haunted house is not enough. You need a customer who has never been in that haunted house and something goes wrong. A couple for example trying to work out their stuff and it makes the external side internal.

    27:41 
    Tananarive has a template. 
    If she has to write a horror story and has three weeks.
    ->What scares you?
    She uses survivor horror as that is scary to her and she has been camping, rafting. 
    ->How do you make the story yours? 
    So more than bears, it becomes about a cult. Stephen King was a teacher growing up
    ->Believe in the characters
    Suffered a trauma, and committed a transgression is common among writers of horror. Grief is common , the one horror no one overcomes. 

    31:29 
    All horror is about surviving what you are in.
    Imagine Get Out if Chris wasn't in grief over the lost of his mother.
    Steven makes a point, deer antlers were used as a symbol to defend himself, which is like the deer he hit in the beginning of the film.

    32:37 
    Tananarive, she weaponized his Grief, and by the end, he has weaponized his own grief. To make it his strength and overcome. 

    34:09 
    Tananative You can make "Get Out" a drama. Is Chris in love with the secret psycho white woman? 
    Peele discussed Guess who is coming to dinner in the early screenplay version of "Get Out" 
    < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpGmCLcqgAw >
    < https://www.shadowandact.com/what-is-black-horror-the-sunken-place-professor-tananarive-due-explains

    36:27
    Peele started with social anxiety. It wasn't about phenotypical frictions, merely the frictions of the stranger among a group of friends and amplify it. 
    Turn it up to 11. 
    Tananarive isn't into human horror. She is triggered by Human horror and make it a journey. It is a journey of self revelation. 

    37:39
    Liam Neeson, eyes in the grey.
    She loves that film, for not about the wolf winning but standing up. Even though many call the end a downer. The film is about who the character becomes. 

    38:44 
    Tananarive considers gaslighting her least favorite horror. PArents or spouses gaslighting children or spouses in her opinion is poor storytelling. Is it going to kill your character to cut on a flashlight in the dark room? She feels it is overdone. She calls it an artificial conceit. She loves Miles in the good house. Miles doesn't believe but stands by the female character. 
    < https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-good-house-2

     

    40:47
    You want psychological realism, nothing breaks more than when people act away from common responses. If you do not pick up a weapon going to a dark place you are an idiot.

    41:36
    STeven Barnes, asks is that why meetings are the best part in horror to Tananarive. 
    Tananarive loves the meeting in horror.  

    42:40 
    Steven talks of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, people of normal intelligence with no idea what is about to happen. In alien, normal people of normal intelligence. Whereas in prometheus, they were scientist and should had known better. 

    43:57
    Steven, Difference between action in horror, something killing you in the dark is horror, in the light as a tiger is action. 
    Horror is unknown, playing on the minds ways to whatever the truth is in the darkness. Action is more strategic, allows for knowable assessment. 
     
    45:20 
    Tananarive, the feeling of fear is different in action. 
    Steven, it will be interesting to take a liam neeson skill set taken man into a situation where he finds himself in a situation beyond his comprehension that he realizes. 

    46:42
    Tananarive, war time horror is like that. ala Predator. 

    47:25 
    Steven, talks of Prey, the predator underestimates the human female lead. 

    48:25 
    Elegance usually takes years. Steven says, the best pieces of horror were not primordial, they evolved. 

    49:33 
    Tananarive, Think about the antagonists too. Make sure their is logic to Zombies. What is different in the way you write zombies?
    < https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/devil-s-wake


    Put your own unique spin. For example, the reason for haunting of ghost matters. 
    The interaction between characters side antagonist matters. 
    Steven, your god of the universe in your story
    Alot of readers like the antagonist more than anybody else in the story, make it pop ,and don't repeat things. 

    52:55 
    September 23rd 5-8 on the east coast , 
    3 hour workshop. It is 197 dollars. If you can't afford it. You can email us and ask for a lower price.
    how to format screenplay, all the hacks. 
    www. hollywoodloophole.com
    < https://store.payloadz.com/details/2686637-other-files-arts-and-crafts-10-secrets-of-hollywood-writers-live-zoom-workshop.html


    They want engaged people. 

     

     

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