#Penn State University Press

[pennstateuniversitypress]

COVID-19, Anosmia, and the Importance of Smell

Hannah Gould and Gwyn McClelland, editors of Aromas of Asia, discuss anosmia as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tricky nature of olfaction, and where the phenomenon of smell as transnational exchange began.

Of the many serious, and still emerging, impacts of infection with COVID-19, anosmia, or a loss of the sense of smell, is less often discussed. Yet the condition is said to affect almost half of all diagnosed patients, and although most people regain olfaction within a month, for some, anosmia lingers, transforming how they eat, drink, and interact with the world. People may also experience a condition of paranosmia, or phantom, and often unpleasant, smells. 

In the introduction to our new interdisciplinary edited collection, Aromas of Asia: Exchanges, Histories, Threats, we discuss how this phenomenon speaks to the tricky nature of olfaction: its profound impact in shaping one’s everyday experience of the world and the popular dismissal of its significance. For, perhaps it is only in losing a sense that we are troubled and thus realise its significance. Anosmia is a condition that demonstrates how smell (or its lack) moves between bodies and traverses scales, as an intimate, personal experience of the world created by the transnational movement of pathogens within a global pandemic.

Smell is thus a particularly generative phenomenon to draw upon when theorizing the dynamics of transnational exchange. And this particular transnational exchange of the pandemic, of course, began in Asia.

Western cultural hierarchies and intellectual traditions have tended to elevate the importance of vision, or hearing, while marginalizing senses including smell, taste, or touch. With a few notable exceptions, contemporary scholarship still remains strongly wedded to English-language or Western scholarly concerns and contexts.

Our new collection of essays relocates the discussion of olfaction to the Asian region, considering how the mobility of olfaction makes social worlds, identifies prejudices or threats, and implements power games of scent and odor. Wherever smell is interpreted as threat, and has potential to be used to violently enforce differences in ethnicity, gender, caste, and class, questions of smell can have serious implications.

We were concerned in this work to critique sensory colonialist tropes that align Asia and its peoples with more “debased” senses, thus resisting a dichotomy of “West-vision-logic” and “Asia-smell-emotion.” Where associated with smell, Asian peoples and cultures have been historically cast in two extremes: on the one hand heavily perfumed or “stinky,” and on the other overly sanitized, odorless or antiseptic. While examining and critiquing these sensory stereotypes, our collection engages with Asia as a heterogeneous and changing complex of scentscapes that have blended together and come apart throughout history. The boundaries of this region are not presumed to exist before olfaction but rather emerge through histories of sensory exchange.

Our contributors consider periods from antiquity to the present and examine various transnational contexts across East, Southeast, and South Asian regions. We do not claim the spread as representative or exhaustive, but the chapters provide a robust cross section of the “scentscapes” that traverse the region. Thus, incisive essays and careful research was essential to achieve the methodological richness and conversation between disciplines evidenced in this book. Besides the editors, the authors, in order of their contributions, are Lorenzo Marunucci, Peter Romaskiewicz, Qian Jia, Gaik Cheng Khoo, Jean Duruz, Gwyn McClelland, Shivani Kapoor, Aubrey Tang, Saki Tanada, Adam Liebman, and Ruth E. Toulson. The disciplines brought together in this volume include anthropology, history, film studies, fine arts, food studies, literature, philosophy, political studies, and religious studies.

Strong-smelling miasmas, or drifting clouds of noxious air, have been central to human understandings of disease transmission. Well after the emergence of germ theory, fear of smells in the form of miasma continues to this day. Some commentators used olfactory evidence in positioning Chinese “wet markets” as the site of origin for COVID-19 virus. For example, in one paper in The COVID-19 Reader (2021), the writer suggests that “a lack of hygiene [at wet markets] was obvious from the smells and scattered wastes.” From this olfactory experience, the authors describe their lack of surprise that a pandemic might emerge from this place. We compare this in our introduction to another study of 2020 that shows how freshness is constructed and valued in sensory experiences of markets within China. Perceiving smells or odors as threats can reinforce, especially during the pandemic, the alterity of Asia as the other to the West. COVID-19 illustrated how olfaction is an intimately embodied, individual experience, but also a social phenomenon traveling between bodies and communities—and around the globe. In our collection, Aromas of Asia, we focus on the interconnections of sensory worlds, but we do so by offering a transnational and located approach to scentscapes in Asia, even as they are founded on mobility and exchange.

Aromas of Asia: Exchanges, Histories, Threats is now available from Penn State University Press. Learn more and order the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09541-7.html. Save 30% w/ discount code NR23.

#COVID-19 #COVID 19 #COVID19 #Pandemic #Smell #Anosmia #Miasma #Olfactory #Scent #Asia #China #PSU Press #Penn State University Press #Penn State

[jewishbookworld]

Jews of Iran by Hassan Sarbakhshian, Lior B. Sternfeld, Parvaneh Vahidmanesh

Jews of Iran by Hassan Sarbakhshian, Lior B. Sternfeld, Parvaneh Vahidmanesh

A Photographic Chronicle Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination This book reveals one of the most beautiful and complicated untold stories of our time. Westerners often imagine Jews in Iran as a captive and oppressed community, alienated within their home nation yet restricted from leaving it. The reality is much more complex. Jews of Iran is a photographic journey through…

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#Hassan Sarbakhshian #Lior B. Sternfeld #Parvaneh Vahidmanesh #Penn State University Press

[redmyeyes]

Fellow Travelers Timeline

(as comprehensive as i can make it. corrections/additions welcome)

1919-20 (?) - Hawk is born

based on tennis trophy which shows year 1936, and hawk's statement that he and kenny were on the tennis team in 11th grade (16/17 years old).

also date on the paperweight (1937) that hawk says kenny picked out on their senior trip. spring or fall though? if spring (usual for a senior trip, just before graduation), it would mean hawk graduated HS in 1937, b. 1919. (thanks, @lestatscunt!)

June 6, 1930 - Tim is born, on Staten Island, NY

birthdate/place shown on army application in ep 5

Gemini, with moon in Libra

>>> With a Gemini Sun Libra Moon, emotional equilibrium is hard for you to maintain in a world of constant flux and tension. Since you are not responsible for the woes and upsets of those around you, you should not feel so duty-bound to assuage their wounds or mediate every conflict that happens to come your way.

>>> your natural diplomacy, extraordinary perception and insight can all be applied creatively in such fields as politics, social work, and the mass media.

>>> your extreme open-mindedness would probably enable you to almost any life-style. You have a universal quality about you that transcends culture, religion, ideology, or any other barrier that divides mankind.

Fall 1937 - Spring 1941 - Hawk attends "Penn", presumably the University of Pennsylvania. (assuming hawk b. 1919)

(this is very very long, the rest is under the cut)

December 7, 1941 - bombing of Pearl Harbor, US enters WWII

??? - Hawk joins the army (along with Kenny), and is sent to Europe.

January 9 – August 15, 1945 - Battle of Luzon, where Kenny dies.

September 2, 1945 - Japan surrenders, US exits WWII

February, 1949 - Hawk starts working at the State Department

Hawk says in 1x04 (Dec 1953) that he's been working at the State Dept for "four years and ten months".

"I came out of the war with four assets: degree from Penn, a hero's war record, no particular political ideology, and a passing acquaintance with three languages. Throw in a talent for prevaricating and a taste for travel and fine clothes, you have the makings of a competent, mid-level Foreign Service bureaucrat."

Fall 1948 - Spring 1952 - Tim attends Fordham University, graduating with a degree in political science and history.

1951 - Hawk starts work for the Bureau of Congressional Relations

Tim mentions Hawk's been working there for two years during their meeting on the bench.

1952 - Tim works "the New York campaign" (presumably for Eisenhower).

1952/3? - Tim interns for three months at the Star, in the mailroom.

November 4, 1952 - Election Night, Eisenhower (R) wins the presidency. Tim/Hawk first meet and are instantly smitten. (ep 1)

February 16, 1953 to March 10, 1954 - McCarthy Hearings, part 1.

The first consisted of a series of hearings conducted by McCarthy, as the subcommittee’s chairman, throughout 1953 and early 1954 in which McCarthy alleged Communist influence within the press and the federal government, including the State Department, the U.S. Army, and the Government Printing Office.

March 5, 1953 - Stalin dies.

Late March, 1953 - Hawk/Tim second meeting

After Hawk meets Tim at the park bench, he attends a hearing where Marcus says Cohn has brought David Schine on, and then later at their lunch Senator Smith says, "McCarthy is sending Cohn and his sidekick to Europe..." This article, dated April 19, says that Cohn and Schine have been in Europe for two weeks.

Hawk mentions that it's near the end of the month, police need to make their quotas.

April 27, 1953 - Executive Order 10450 signed. Hawk goes to Tim's apartment and tells him about Kenny. (ep 1)

June 6, 1953 - Tim's 23rd birthday (Hawk 'misses' it because they weren't talking for 4 weeks. belated celebration in ep 3.)

June 15, 1953 (?) - date of the newspaper Tim is reading just before he goes to visit Hawk in ep 2, where Hawk makes him write the letter to Mary. I'm choosing to believe this is a mistake on the show's part, because this would mean that Hawk has already missed Tim's birthday.

June 19, 1953 - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's execution. Hawk comforts Lucy about this at the end of ep 2. So, likely Hawk and Tim had their big fight very shortly before Tim's birthday, and weren't talking from end of May - end of June.

End of June, 1953 - at the end of ep 2, Tim says it's been 4 months since his last confession, making his last (proper) confession the end of Feb or beginning of March. (ie, before he meets Hawk again).

End of June or beginning of July, 1953 - weekend trip to Rehoboth Beach (ep 3)

November 1953 - G. David Schine drafted into the army (ep 3)

Christmas 1953 (ep 4)

March 16 to June 17, 1954 - Army-McCarthy Hearings (part 2) (ep 5)

The second phase involved the subcommittee's investigation of McCarthy’s attacks on the U.S. Army. Known as the “Army-McCarthy hearings,” they were broadcast on national television and they contributed to McCarthy’s declining national popularity. Five months later, on December 2, 1954, the Senate censured McCarthy.

June 6, 1954 - Tim's 24th birthday

June, 1954? - Tim/Hawk break up, Hawk proposes to Lucy (ep 5)

I believe this happens at the tail-end of the Army-McCarthy hearings, so before June 17th.

Fall, 1954 - Sen. Smith's funeral

based solely on fall foliage in this screenshot:

Late Nov / Early Dec, 1954 - Tim enlists in the army

based on army application: birthdate 6/6/30, age: 24 years, 6 months

Late Nov / Early Dec, 1954 - Hawk/Tim last meeting in the tower

based on the radio program Tim is listening to, which says, "Chief Counsel Roy Cohn has resigned from the committee. And Senator McCarthy, his approval ratings plummeting, faces censure or even expulsion from the Senate."

Tim leaves for Fort Dix, for training, but is later stationed at Fort Polk, in Vernon Parish, LA. (thanks, @jesterlesbian!)

December 2, 1954 - the Senate censures McCarthy.

Summer or Fall 1956? - Tim's letter (that lucy burns) (ep 6)

Flashbacks, for context:

"Since he's giving up his apartment, Hawk insists on having a lair in the woods." // "I'm surprised that he finally agreed."

Lucy lets contractor go. // "Give me a baby."

Hawk is reading the Bristol Daily Courier, a paper located in Bristol, PA, a town in Bucks County, outside Philadelphia. I can't find any info on the one headline I can read though ("Heath Carlson breaks arws deadlock, locals proud"), so can't date this properly.

Lucy cleaning out Hawk's apartment, finds paperweight, sees Tim drop off letter.

"I went into the Army to get away from you. I thought time and distance would help. But it hasn't." If Tim sends the letter in summer 1956, it's been a year and a half since he enlisted.

Biggest question here: did lucy ask for a baby before or after she read Tim's letter??? the flashbacks don't answer this definitively.

October, 1956? - Lucy becomes pregnant with Jackson (see note under April 1957)

October 23 – November 4, 1956 - Hungarian Revolution of 1956

October 23, 1956 - April 30, 1957 - Hungarian Refugee Crisis

November 8, 1956 - Operation Safe Haven commences

President Eisenhower declared that 5,000 Hungarians would be awarded visa numbers remaining under the 1953 Refugee Relief Act

Spring 1957? - Tim sends telegram. It looks like 05-??-???? to me, which doesn't really make sense if McCarthy died on May 2nd, but it's hard to make out. or maybe telegrams used the date format dd-mm-yyyy.

April 1957? - Tim/Hawk first meeting, Lucy at least 5 (or 6? or 7?) months pregnant

You should feel your baby's first movements, called "quickening," between weeks 16 and 25 of your pregnancy. If this is your first pregnancy, you may not feel your baby move until closer to 25 weeks. 

25 weeks ~= 6 months, and it still seems novel to her, so let's say she's approx. 6 months pregnant here.

May 2, 1957 - Joe McCarthy dies.

May 6, 1957 - McCarthy's funeral. Tim's first visit to Hawk's apartment (ep 8)

June 6, 1957 - Tim turns 27.

June or July, 1957 - Jackson born (based on dates above)

1958? - Kimberly is born. (estimated bc she looks the same age or older than Jackson, so assuming she's a year younger at most.)

August, 1965 - President Johnson signs a law making it a federal crime to destroy or mutilate [draft] cards. 

October 15, 1965 -David Miller publicly burns his draft card, becoming the first person to be prosecuted under that law and a symbol of the growing movement against the war.

May 17, 1968 - the Catonsville Nine took 378 draft files from the draft board office in Catonsville, Maryland and burned them in the parking lot. (inspo for Tim & co. thanks @brokendrums!)

November 1968 - ep 6. Hawk is 48, Tim is 38, Jackson is 11.

based on this newspaper screenshot when Hawk is talking to Marcus on the phone about Tim

November 1968 - May 1970 (earliest) - Tim in prison. (he says in ep 7 he was in prison for a year and a half. this assumes he went to prison right away, but it could have been several months later if he was awaiting trial/sentencing.)

1970? - After prison, Tim moves to San Francisco and gets his counseling degree.

Mid-late 1970s - Tim earns his C-SWCM qualifications, requiring:

A Bachelor’s degree in social work from a graduate program accredited by the Council on Social Work Education

Documentation of at least three (3) years and 4,500 hours of paid, supervised, post-BSW professional experience in an organization or agency that provides case management services

Current state BSW-level license or an ASWB BSW-level exam passing score.

nb. because Tim already had his bachelors (from Fordham, majoring in history), I could see him entering a much-accelerated BSW program, transfering a lot of credits from his previous degree. That would give him maybe 2 more years of university, plus the required 3 years of post-BSW work = 5 years minimum before he earns that business card.

February 4, 1977 - Fleetwood Mac's album Rumours is released, including the 1970s Tim/Hawk anthem, Go Your Own Way

October, 1978 - Jackson dies

November 27, 1978 - Harvey Milk assassinated

May 22, 1979 - Harvey's 49th birthday (celebrated in ep 7)

1986 - ep 8

how long was Hawk in San Francisco? Timelines for the events below may be fudged in the show, bc I doubt he was there for 5 months.

March, 1986 - Roy Cohn's 60 Minutes interview, which the gang watches in ep 4.

April 15, 1986 - US bombs Libya. in the first episode you can hear reference to this on the radio, before Hawk leaves for San Francisco. (thanks @aliceinhorrorland93!)

July 27, 1986 - In California, Gov. George Deukmejian vetoes a bill that would have defined AIDS as a physical handicap calling for entitlement to protection under the state's civil rights laws.

August 2, 1986 - Roy Cohn dies (ep 8)

Late 1986? - the fundraising gala that Tim crashes, shortly after Cohn's death.

September 1986 - The State Legislature has passed another bill [in addition to the one vetoed on July 27]. Mr. Deukmejian, a Republican running for re-election, has indicated that he will probably veto the bill. (nb, this is likely the bill that Tim & co want to pressure the governor to sign).

October 11, 1987 - AIDS memorial quilt first displayed (ep 8)

--

this was a collaborative effort! many thanks to @ishipallthings for many of these details, as well as @startagainbuttercup , @alorchik, @itsalinh and others in the FT discord!

#fellow travelers #timeline #reference #i made this as comprehensive as i could but i would LOVE feedback/corrections #esp re: anything in 1956-1957 era #jackson's birth? and the date of that letter???

[fatehbaz]

Organizing more notes. Some recent-ish books on German colonialism and imperial imaginaries of space/place, especially in Africa:

----

German Colonialism in Africa and its Legacies: Architecture, Art, Urbanism, and Visual Culture (Edited by Itohan Osayimwese, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023)

An Imperial Homeland: Forging German Identity in Southwest Africa (Adam A. Blackler, Penn State University Press, 2023)

Coconut Colonialism: Workers and the Globalization of Samoa (Holger Droessler, Harvard University Press, 2022)

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884-1905 (Matthew Unangst, University of Toronto Press, 2022)

The Play World: Toys, Texts, and the Transatlantic German Childhood (Patricia Anne Simpson, 2020)

Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919 (Erik Grimmer-Solem, Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Violence as Usual: Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa (Marie A. Muschalek, 2019)

Revenants of the German Empire: Colonial Germans, the League of Nations, and Imperialism (Sean Andrew Wempe, 2019)

Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories (Edited by Tiffany Florvil and Vanessa Plumly, 2018)

German Colonial Wars and the Context of Military Violence (Susanne Kuss, translated by Andrew Smith, Harvard University Press, 2017)

Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Germany (Itohan Osayimwese, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017)

---

German Colonialism in a Global Age (Edited by Bradley Naranch and Geoff Eley, 2014) Including:

"Empire by Land or Sea? Germany's Imperial Imaginary, 1840-1945" (Geoff Eley)

"Science and Civilizing Missions: Germans and the Transnational Community of Tropical Medicine" (Deborah J. Neill)

"Ruling Africa: Science as Sovereignty in the German Colonial Empire and Its Aftermath" (Andrew Zimmerman)

"Mass-Marketing the Empire: Colonial Fantasies and Advertising Visions" (David Ciarlo)

---

German Colonialism and National Identity (Edited by Michael Perraudin and Jurgen Zimmerer, 2017). Including:

"Between Amnesia and Denial: Colonialism and German National Identity" (Perraudin and Zimmerer)

"Exotic Education: Writing Empire for German Boys and Girls, 1884-1914" (Jeffrey Bowersox)

"Beyond Empire: German Women in Africa, 1919-1933" (Britta Schilling)

---

Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany (David Ciarlo, Harvard University Press, 2011)

The German Forest: Nature, Identity, and the Contestation of a National Symbol, 1871-1914 (Jeffrey K. Wilson, University of Toronto Press, 2012)

The Devil's Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (George Steinmetz, 2007)

[yamayuandadu]

Which books would you recommend for studying the history of Mesopotamia and the ancient Middle East? I am currently reading ‘A History of Babylon 2200 bc–ad 75’ by Paul‐Alain Beaulieu, and ‘The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East’. I would like to know if you have any suggestions.

The Amorites. A Political History of Mesopotamia in the Early Second Millennium BCE is pretty good and goes into more detail than the Oxford series does. I would say the latter is atm the best starting point so you're on good track overall. Make sure to look through the bibliography section, check the other works of the contributors to this series as well. If you want to go beyond Mesopotamia, Archi's Ebla and Its Archives. Texts, History, and Society and Potts' The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State come to mind as instant recommendations. Buck's The Amorite Dynasty of Ugarit. Historical Implications of Linguistic and Archaeological Parallels is worth checking out too. Most other recommendations heavily depend on what interests you - economy? Religion? Literature? Astronomy? Dynasties? Or, alternatively, which time period? If you're not sure yet I recommend looking through series like Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records (De Gruyter), Mesopotamian Civilizations (Penn State University Press), Culture and History of the Ancient Near East (Brill) or Cuneiform Monographs (Brill) and checking what catches your attention.

#mesopotamian miscellanea

[kemetic-dreams]

Land taken from African Americans through trickery, violence and murder

For generations, African American families passed down the tales in uneasy whispers: "They stole our land."

These were family secrets shared after the children fell asleep, after neighbors turned down the lamps -- old stories locked in fear and shame.

Some of those whispered bits of oral history, it turns out, are true.

In an 18-month investigation, The Associated Press documented a pattern in which African Americans were cheated out of their land or driven from it through intimidation, violence and even murder.

In some cases, government officials approved the land takings; in others, they took part in them. The earliest occurred before the Civil War; others are being litigated today.

Some of the land taken from African families has become a country club in Virginia, oil fields in Mississippi, a major-league baseball spring training facility in Florida.

The United States has a long history of bitter, often violent land disputes, from claim jumping in the gold fields to range wars in the old West to broken treaties with American Indians. Poor European landowners, too, were sometimes treated unfairly, pressured to sell out at rock-bottom prices by railroads and lumber and mining companies.

The fate of African American landowners has been an overlooked part of this story.

The AP -- in an investigation that included interviews with more than 1,000 people and the examination of tens of thousands of public records in county courthouses and state and federal archives -- documented 107 land takings in 13 Southern and border states.

In those cases alone, 406 African American landowners lost more than 24,000 acres of farm and timber land plus 85 smaller properties, including stores and city lots. Today, virtually all of this property, valued at tens of millions of dollars, is owned by Europeans or by corporations.

Properties taken from Africans were often small -- a 40-acre farm, a general store, a modest house. But the losses were devastating to families struggling to overcome the legacy of slavery. In the agrarian South, landownership was the ladder to respect and prosperity -- the means to building economic security and passing wealth on to the next generation. When African American families lost their land, they lost all of this.

"When they steal your land, they steal your future," said Stephanie Hagans, 40, of Atlanta, who has been researching how her great-grandmother, Ablow Weddington Stewart, lost 35 acres in Matthews, N.C. A European lawyer foreclosed on Stewart in 1942 after he refused to allow her to finish paying off a $540 debt, witnesses told the AP.

"How different would our lives be," Hagans asked, "if we'd had the opportunities, the pride that land brings?"

No one knows how many African American families have been unfairly stripped of their land, but there are indications of extensive loss.

Besides the 107 cases the AP documented, reporters found evidence of scores of other land takings that could not be fully verified because of gaps or inconsistencies in the public record. Thousands of additional reports of land takings from African American families remain uninvestigated.

Two thousand have been collected in recent years by the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, S.C., an educational institution established for freed slaves during the Civil War. The Land Loss Prevention Project, a group of lawyers in Durham, N.C., who represent blacks in land disputes, said it receives new reports daily. And Heather Gray of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Atlanta said her organization has "file cabinets full of complaints."

AP's findings "are just the tip of one of the biggest crimes of this country's history," said Ray Winbush, director of Fisk University's Institute of Race Relations.

Some examples of land takings documented by the AP:

After midnight on Oct. 4, 1908, 50 hooded European men surrounded the home of a African farmer in Hickman, Ky., and ordered him to come out for a whipping. When David Walker refused and shot at them instead, the mob poured coal oil on his house and set it afire, according to contemporary newspaper accounts. Pleading for mercy, Walker ran out the front door, followed by four screaming children and his wife, carrying a baby in her arms. The mob shot them all, wounding three children and killing the others. Walker's oldest son never escaped the burning house. No one was ever charged with the killings, and the surviving children were deprived of the farm their father died defending. Land records show that Walker's 2 1/2-acre farm was simply folded into the property of a white neighbor. The neighbor soon sold it to another man, whose daughter owns the undeveloped land today.In the 1950s and 1960s, a Chevrolet dealer in Holmes County, Miss., acquired hundreds of acres from African American farmers by foreclosing on small loans for farm equipment and pickup trucks. Norman Weathersby, then the only dealer in the area, required the farmers to put up their land as security for the loans, county residents who dealt with him said. And the equipment he sold them, they said, often broke down shortly thereafter. Weathersby's friend, William E. Strider, ran the local Farmers Home Administration -- the credit lifeline for many Southern farmers. Area residents, including Erma Russell, 81, said Strider, now dead, was often slow in releasing farm operating loans to Africans. When cash-poor farmers missed payments owed to Weathersby, he took their land. The AP documented eight cases in which Weathersby acquired African-owned farms this way. When he died in 1973, he left more than 700 acres of this land to his family, according to estate papers, deeds and court records.In 1964, the state of Alabama sued Lemon Williams and Lawrence Hudson, claiming the cousins had no right to two 40-acre farms their family had worked in Sweet Water, Ala., for nearly a century. The land, officials contended, belonged to the state. Circuit Judge Emmett F. Hildreth urged the state to drop its suit, declaring it would result in "a severe injustice." But when the state refused, saying it wanted income from timber on the land, the judge ruled against the family. Today, the land lies empty; the state recently opened some of it to logging. The state's internal memos and letters on the case are peppered with references to the family's race.

In the same courthouse where the case was heard, the AP located deeds and tax records documenting that the family had owned the land since an ancestor bought the property on Jan. 3, 1874. Surviving records also show the family paid property taxes on the farms from the mid-1950s until the land was taken.

AP reporters tracked the land cases by reviewing deeds, mortgages, tax records, estate papers, court proceedings, surveyor maps, oil and gas leases, marriage records, census listings, birth records, death certificates and Freedmen's Bureau archives. Additional documents, including FBI files and Farmers Home Administration records, were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The AP interviewed black families that lost land, as well as lawyers, title searchers, historians, appraisers, genealogists, surveyors, land activists, and local, state and federal officials.

The AP also talked to current owners of the land, nearly all of whom acquired the properties years after the land takings occurred. Most said they knew little about the history of their land. When told about it, most expressed regret.

Weathersby's son, John, 62, who now runs the dealership in Indianola, Miss., said he had little direct knowledge about his father's business affairs. However, he said he was sure his father never would have sold defective vehicles and that he always treated people fairly.

Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman examined the state's files on the Sweet Water case after an inquiry from the AP. He said he found them "disturbing" and has asked the state attorney general to review the matter.

"What I have asked the attorney general to do," he said, "is look not only at the letter of the law but at what is fair and right."

The land takings are part of a larger picture -- a 91-year decline in African American landownership in America.

In 1910, African Americans owned more farmland than at any time before or since -- at least 15 million acres. Nearly all of it was in the South, largely in Mississippi, Alabama and the Carolinas, according to the U.S. Agricultural Census. Today, Africans own only 1.1 million of the country's more than 1 billion acres of arable land. They are part owners of another 1.07 million acres.

The number of European American farmers has declined over the last century, too, as economic trends have concentrated land in fewer, often corporate, hands. However, African American ownership has declined 2 1/2 times faster than white ownership, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission noted in a 1982 report, the last comprehensive federal study on the trend.

The decline in African American landownership had a number of causes, including the discriminatory lending practices of the Farmers Home Administration and the migration of Africans from the rural South to industrial centers in the North and West.

However, the land takings also contributed. In the decades between Reconstruction and the civil rights struggle, black families were powerless to prevent them, said Stuart E. Tolnay, a University of Washington sociologist and co-author of a book on lynchings. In an era when African Americans could not drink from the same water fountains as European and African men were lynched for whistling at white women, few Africans dared to challenge Europeans. Those who did could rarely find lawyers to take their cases or judges who would give them a fair hearing.

The Rev. Isaac Simmons was an exception. When his land was taken, he found a lawyer and tried to fight back.

In 1942, his 141-acre farm in Amite County, Miss., was sold for nonpayment of taxes, property records show. The farm, for which his father had paid $302 in 1887, was bought by a European man for $180.

Only partial, tattered tax records for the period exist today in the county courthouse; but they are enough to show that tax payments on at least part of the property were current when the land was taken.

Simmons hired a lawyer in February 1944 and filed suit to get his land back. On March 26, a group of Europeans paid Simmons a visit.

The minister's daughter, Laura Lee Houston, now 74, recently recalled her terror as she stood with her month-old baby in her arms and watched the men drag Simmons away. "I screamed and hollered so loud," she said. "They came toward me and I ran down in the woods."

The Europeans then grabbed Simmons' son, Eldridge, from his house and drove the two men to a lonely road.

"Two of them kept beating me," Eldridge Simmons later told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "They kept telling me that my father and I were 'smart niggers' for going to see a lawyer."

Simmons, who has since died, said his captors gave him 10 days to leave town and told his father to start running. Later that day, the minister's body turned up with three gunshot wounds in the back, The McComb Enterprise newspaper reported at the time.

Today, the Simmons land -- thick with timber and used for hunting -- is privately owned and is assessed at $33,660. (Officials assess property for tax purposes, and the valuation is usually less than its market value.)

Over the past 20 years, a handful of African families have sued to regain their ancestral lands. State courts, however, have dismissed their cases on grounds that statutes of limitations had expired.

A group of attorneys led by Harvard University law professor Charles J. Ogletree has been making inquries recently about land takings. The group has announced its intention to file a national class-action lawsuit in pursuit of reparations for slavery and racial discrimination. However, some legal experts say redress for many land takings may not be possible unless laws are changed.

As the acres slipped away, so did treasured pieces of family history -- cabins crafted by a grandfather's hand, family graves in shaded groves.

But "the home place" meant more than just that. Many Africans have found it "very difficult to transfer wealth from one generation to the next," because they had trouble holding onto land, said Paula Giddings, a history professor at Duke University.

The Espy family in Vero Beach, Fla., lost its heritage in 1942, when the U.S. government seized its land through eminent domain to build an airfield. Government agencies frequently take land this way for public purposes under rules that require fair compensation for the owners.

In Vero Beach, however, the Navy appraised the Espys' 147 acres, which included a 30-acre fruit grove, two houses and 40 house lots, at $8,000, according to court records. The Espys sued, and an all-white jury awarded them $13,000. That amounted to one-sixth of the price per acre that the Navy paid European neighbors for similar land with fewer improvements, records show.

After World War II, the Navy gave the airfield to the city of Vero Beach. Ignoring the Espys' plea to buy back their land, the city sold part of it, at $1,500 an acre, to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1965 as a spring training facility.

In 1999, the former Navy land, with parts of Dodgertown and a municipal airport, was assessed at $6.19 million. Sixty percent of that land once belonged to the Espys. The team sold its property to Indian River County for $10 million in August, according to Craig Callan, a Dodgers official.

The true extent of land takings from African families will never be known because of gaps in property and tax records in many rural Southern counties. The AP found crumbling tax records, deed books with pages torn from them, file folders with documents missing, and records that had been crudely altered.

In Jackson Parish, La., 40 years of moldy, gnawed tax and mortgage records were piled in a cellar behind a roll of Christmas lights and a wooden reindeer. In Yazoo County, Miss., volumes of tax and deed records filled a classroom in an abandoned school, the papers coated with white dust from a falling ceiling. The AP retrieved dozens of documents that custodians said were earmarked for shredders or landfills.

The AP also found that about a third of the county courthouses in Southern and border states have burned -- some more than once -- since the Civil War. Some of the fires were deliberately set.

On the night of Sept. 10, 1932, for example, 15 Europeans torched the courthouse in Paulding, Miss., where property records for the eastern half of Jasper County, then predominantly African, were stored. Records for the predominantly white western half of the county were safe in another courthouse miles away.

The door to the Paulding courthouse's safe, which protected the records, had been locked the night before, the Jasper County News reported at the time. The next morning, the safe was found open, most of the records reduced to ashes.

Suddenly, it was unclear who owned a big piece of eastern Jasper County.

Even before the courthouse fire, landownership in Jasper County was contentious. According to historical accounts, the Ku Klux Klan, resentful that African were buying and profiting from land, had been attacking African-owned farms, burning houses, lynching African farmers and chasing African American landowners away.

The Masonite Corp., a wood products company, was one of the largest landowners in the area. Because most of the land records had been destroyed, the company went to court in December 1937 to clear its title. Masonite believed it owned 9,581 acres and said in court papers that it had been unable to locate anyone with a rival claim to the land.

A month later, the court ruled the company had clear title to the land, which has since yielded millions of dollars in natural gas, timber and oil, according to state records.

From the few property records that remain, the AP was able to document that at least 204.5 of those acres had been acquired by Masonite after African American owners were driven off by the Klan. At least 850,000 barrels of oil have been pumped from this property, according to state oil and gas board records and figures from the Petroleum Technology Transfer Council, an industry group.

Today, the land is owned by International Paper Corp., which acquired Masonite in 1988. Jenny Boardman, a company spokeswoman, said International Paper had been unaware of the "tragic" history of the land and was concerned about AP's findings.

"This is probably part of a much larger, public debate about whether there should be restitution for people who have been harmed in the past," she said. "And by virtue of the fact that we now own these lands, we should be part of that discussion."

Even when Southern courthouses remained standing, mistrust and fear of white authority long kept Africans away from record rooms, where documents often were segregated into "white" and "colored." Many elderly Africans say they still remember how they were snubbed by court clerks, spat upon and even struck.

Today, however, fear and shame have given way to pride. Interest in genealogy among African families is surging, and some African whispered stories.

"People are out there wondering: What ever happened to Grandma's land?" said Loretta Carter Hanes, 75, a retired genealogist. "They knew that their grandparents shed a lot of blood and tears to get it."

Bryan Logan, a 55-year-old sports writer from Washington, D.C., was researching his heritage when he uncovered a connection to 264 acres of riverfront property in Richmond, Va.

Today, the land is Willow Oaks, an almost exclusively European American country club with an assessed value of $2.94 million. But in the 1850s, it was a corn-and-wheat plantation worked by the Howlett slaves -- Logan's ancestors.

Their owner, Thomas Howlett, directed in his will that his 15 slaves be freed, that his plantation be sold and that the slaves receive the proceeds. When he died in 1856, his European relatives challenged the will, but two courts upheld it.

Yet the freed slaves never got a penny.

Benjamin Hatcher, the executor of the estate, simply took over the plantation, court records show. He cleared the timber and mined the stone, providing granite for the Navy and War Department buildings in Washington and the capitol in Richmond, according to records in the National Archives.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, the former slaves complained to the occupying Union Army, which ordered Virginia courts to investigate.

Hatcher testified that he had sold the plantation in 1862 -- apparently to his son, Thomas -- but had not given the proceeds to the former slaves. Instead, court papers show, the proceeds were invested on their behalf in Confederate War Bonds. There is nothing in the public record to suggest the former slaves wanted their money used to support the Southern war effort.

Moreover, the bonds were purchased in the former slaves' names in 1864 -- a dubious investment at best in the fourth year of the war. Within months, Union armies were marching on Atlanta and Richmond, and the bonds were worthless pieces of paper.

The Africans insisted they were never given even that, but in 1871, Virginia's highest court ruled that Hatcher was innocent of wrongdoing and that the former slaves were owed nothing.

The following year, the plantation was broken up and sold at a public auction. Hatcher's son received the proceeds, county records show. In the 1930s, a Richmond businessman cobbled the estate back together; he sold it to Willow Oaks Corp. in 1955 for an unspecified amount.

"I don't hold anything against Willow Oaks," Logan said. "But how Virginia's courts acted, how they allowed the land to be stolen -- it goes against everything America stands for."

#afrakan #african #kemetic dreams #africans #afrakans #european american #european #europeans #land grab #land

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photo by Ken Page manager

* * * *

"Empty mountain, no man is seen. Only heard are echoes of men’s talk. Reflected light enters the deep wood And shines again on blue-green moss."

Wang Wei (699–751 AD) has often been called “the Buddha of the Poets.” Sparse invocations of empty mountains, reflected light, and echoes of voices permeate his poetry, which centers almost exclusively on nature. According to Rafal Stepien, an expert on Chinese literature and philosophy, Wang Wei’s poetic impulse sprang from a deep engagement with Buddhist ideas, particularly the concept of emptiness.

The Imagery of Emptiness in the Poetry of Wang Wei (王維 699–761) By: Rafal Stepien Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2014), pp. 207-238 Penn State University Press

[Red Pine (translator) :: Bill Porter (author)]

#Ken Page #Red Pine #Bill Porter #Rafal Stepien #Wang Wei #poem #Buddhist #poetry

[psalm22-6]

The Exhibitors Herald, June 1926

The first of the deluxe presentations was at the Forrest theatre, Philadelphia, Thursday evening. The audience was composed largely of members of the Advertising Clubs of the World, which was holding an international convention in the Quaker City, and the members of the Poor Richard Club. There were also present a large turnout of society, official and judicial life of Philadelphia. The other audience, which included Mrs. Coolidge, members of the diplomatic corps and Washington newspapermen, as guests of the National Press club, viewed the picture at a special screening Friday night at Poli’s theatre in Washington. General W. W. Atterbury; Senator-elect [and notorious political boss] Wm. S. Vare; Senator [and law professor] George W. Pepper; Lieut. Commander Geo. B. Wilson, U. S. Navy [not to be confused with the character from the Great Gatsby] ; Mrs. Barclay Warburton [civil rights supporter and journalist] ; Major Norman MacLeod; E. T. Stottsbury; Paul Thompson; Alexander Van Rensselaer; Mrs. Charlemagne Tower; Dr. H. J. Tily [department story owner, mason] ; Mr. and Mrs. Theodore W. Reath; Frank Smith; Mr. and Mrs. Jos. N. Snellenburg [merchant in clothing trade] ; Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Block; Mr. and Mrs. Jules E. Mastbaum [movie theater and department store magnates] ; George Nitsche [possibly an affiliate of U. Penn]; Josiah H. Penniman [Provost of U. Penn] ; J. Willis Martin [a judge]; H. S. McDevitt; John J. Monaghan. Judge Buffington, of Pittsburgh; Thos Finletter [could be one of a a number of lawyers with this name]; Mr. and Mrs. A. L. Einstein; Maurice Paillard, French consul; Robt. Von Moschzisker [justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania]; Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick; Geo. H. Elliott, director of public safety; Chas. B. Hall, president of City Council; Dr. Charles Hart; Rev. Wm. H. Fineschriber; Chas Fox, district attorney [could be a coincidence but Charles Fox III and IV are both currently lawyers in Pennsylvania]; John Fisler, president Manufacturers Club [golf afficianado]; Albert M. Greenfield [real estate broker and developer]; Jos. P. Gaffney; Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gimbel [department store owner]; Daniel Gimbel [brother and co-owner along with Ellis]; J. D. Lit; Richard Gimbel [son of Ellis Gimble]; Benedict Gimbel [brother of Ellis and Daniel]; Colonel Robert Glendinning [banker]; Benjamin Golder [member of the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives], Agnew T. Dice [President of Reading Railroad]. Dr. Leon Elmaleh [founder of the Levantine Jews Society of Philadelphia]; H. Gilbert Cassidy [a judge]; Utley E. Crane [author of Business Law for Business Men]; Cyrus H. K. Curtis [magazine publisher]; Chas. S. Caldwell; G. W. Cole; Hampton L. Carson [lawyer, professor, state Attorney general]; A. Lincoln Acker [Philidelphia port collector]; Max Aron [lawyer]; Eugene C. Bonniwell [a judge]; Chas. L. Brown; Edward Groome; Chas. L. Bartlett; Edward Bok [editor of the Ladies Home Journal]; Mr. and Mrs. Geo. H. Lorimer [editor of the Saturday Evening Post]; Edw. Bacon; Chas. Curtis Harrison [a judge]; Samuel S. Eels, Rev. J. J. O’Hara [future Archbishop of Philadelphia], and Bishop Thos. J. Garland, D. D. [Episcopalian bishop]

There were a bunch of Universal employees in attendance too but that's less interesting to me. Let's see who went to the Washington show

Both showings were under the auspices of Ambassador Henri Beragner of France and Marcel Knecht, French publisher and trade representative. Dr. Ferdnand Heurteur, leader of the orchestra of the Paris Opera House, came to the United States to conduct the orchestras at these two showings. Among the distinguished guests at the Washington showing were: Don Juan Riano, Spanish ambassador; Senor and Senora de Mathieu, Chilan ambassador; Raoul Tilmont, secretary, Belgium embassy; G. H. Thompson, second secretary, British embassy; A. J. Pack, British embassy; Eduardo Racedo and Madame Racedo, first secretary, Argentine embassy; Conrado Traverso, Argentine embassy; Dr. and Senora Velarde, Peruvian ambassador; Dr. and Madame Santiago F. Bedoya, secretary, Peruvian embassy; Senor and Senora Tellez, Mexican ambassador; Senor and Senora Castro, secretary, Mexican embassy; Ambassador de Martino, Italy; Colonel Augusto Villa, miltary attache, Italian embassy; Count and Countess Sommati di Mombello, Italian embassy; Signor Leonardo Vitetti, Italian embassy. Baron and Baroness Ago Maltzan, German embassy; Mr. and Madame Matsuidaira, Japanese embassy; Mr. and Madame Gurgel de Amaral, Brazilian embassy; Senor and Senora de Sanchez Aballi, Cuban embassy; Senor Don Jose T. Baron, secretary, Cuban embassy; Brigadier General Georges A. L. Dumont, military attache, French embassy; Mr. Jules Henry, first secretary, French embassy; Major and Madame Georges Thenault, French embassy; Captain and Madame Willm, French embassy; Mr. A. Konow Bojsen, secretary, Danish legation; Mr. and Madame Marc Peter, Swiss ambassador; Mr. Andor de Hertelendy, Hungarian embassay; Senor and Senora Ricardo Jaimes Freyre, Bolivian embassy. Mr. and Mrs. Timothy A. Smiddy, minister, Irish Free State; Mr. and Madame Simoposilis, Minister from Greece; Mr. and Madame Prochnik, Austrian ambassador; Mr. and Madame Charles L. Seya, Latvian embassy; Mahmoud Samy Pasha and Madame Samy Pasha, Egyptian embassy; Mr. Zdenek Fierlinger, Minister from Czechoslovakia; Mr. Simeon Radeff, Bulgarian embassy; Mr. and Madame Jan Ciechanowski, Polish minister; Senor don Manuel Zavala, Nicaragua embassy, and Mr. and Madame Bostrom, Swedish ambassador.

#les miserables #lm 1925 #fans through the ages #the longest fucking list #losing my mind

[thebirdandthebee]

Easy As

A Carmen Berzatto Universe

A/N: Okay I don’t think this is EXACTLY what my anon had in mind, but I think it still scratches the itch! Pure smut below 18+ only.

Vanessa Monaghan is the breath of fresh air that Carmen had been gasping for.

Page 18: Drew Barrymore

It was a slow Sunday morning that started out early. Body attuned to a different time zone after traveling for work, Vanessa woke up at 7 a.m. and got a jumpstart on the day.

First, she tossed in a load of laundry, picked up the living room from where they crashed on the sofa to watch Stranger Things and ate pad thai the night before, then she headed into the guest room to straighten up her work from home area.

By the time Carmen rumbled around at 8 a.m., she’d already flipped her laundry, febreezed the couch and was puling out the items to make eggs in purgatory for breakfast.

“You feedin’ me?” Carmen mumbled, pressing several kisses into her shoulder.

“Yeah baby, why don’t you go back to sleep?” She asked, turning her head to kiss his cheek.

“I can help,” he insisted, walking over to get the round of sourdough bread, heating up a pan on the stove to toast it.

“It’s a lil cold in here,” Vanessa said as she dropped three eggs into the bubbling pan of tomatoes and spices.

“Ness, you’re half naked,” Carmen grinned softly, his free hand squeezing the back of her thigh where it stemmed from her oversized Penn State T-shirt.

“True,” she shrugged, killing the heat on the pan as soon as the eggs were firm enough. They carried their plates back to bed and she snugly sat between his legs, leaned back against his chest she fed both Carmen and herself. It wasn’t even 9 a.m. and she already felt accomplished, happy to flip on the bedroom TV and lose her mind a bit in some pointless TV.

It wasn’t long until their plates were forgotten on a nightstand and Vanessa was cuddled tightly against Carmen, her body notched snuggly between his legs, with her head on his chest. Carmen trailed his hands up and down the center of her back, exhaling softly as she kissed her way up from the hollow of his chest to the dip beneath his ear. Vanessa sucked on the delicate skin there, her hand cupping the other side of his neck gently.

“Ness,” he warned, feeling his arousal pooling in his cock. “Don’t give me a hickey,” he pleaded softly. He’d never live it down against Richie.

“Carm,” she smiled against his skin, hand sliding up from his neck to the back of his head, freshly manicured nails scraping gently against his scalp. And there was his erection. She knew he loved to have his head scratched, like a big, pale puppy. She noticed, just barely, as he pressed up against her in shallow movements of his hips.

“I think moving in together might have been a bad idea,” he sucked in his breath as she pinched his nipple through his T-shirt. Vanessa laughed a puff of air against his neck. In a smooth maneuver, she shifted her weight, her body moving from between his legs, to straddling his outside hip.

Running a hand down Carmen’s chest and stomach, she teased her fingertips across the top of his boxers, feeling the tip of his cock sitting just below the elastic waistband.

She palmed his length through the cotton. Vanessa loved Carmen’s dick – and that wasn’t a joke. It was thick, the perfect length and had veins in just the right places. She was going to marry this dick.

“Ness,” he wheezed, thrusting gently into her hand. She dipped into the boxers, a pair she picked up for him from Lulu Lemon, giving his blunt head a swipe across the top. He bucked.

“Bear?” She asked, nuzzling into his neck as her fingers encircled him, pumping him tenderly.

“Nessa,” he whined, sticking his face right down into her hair. She gently removed her hand from his boxers, sliding her hand back up his chest. He groaned softly, hips involuntarily pushing up to seek her heat once again.

“I want to see how you do it,” she whispered in his ear, lifting her leg so she was no longer straddling his hip, but still pressed closely to his body.

“Me?” He sucked in a breath.

“Yeah,” she nodded, propping herself up on an elbow for a better vantage point.

“Ness, can’t you help?” He said pathetically, shifting uncomfortably.

“No,” she grinned.

“Can I at least see your tits?” He countered, making her giggle. Sitting up fully, she peeled off her shirt, leaving her just in a pair of grey panties. She rest back on her folded legs, sitting on her heels near his calves – running a hand up the inside of his knee comfortingly as Carmen reached into his briefs.

“Ah, ah,” she tisked, reaching up and pulling his boxers down past his feet and tossing them off the bed. “I wanna see,” she added.

“You’re sick,” he narrowed his eyes.

“Truly,” she grinned, adjusting so she sat between her own heels, legs folded on either side of her body. “Now, let me see,” she practically salivated.

Carmen gave himself two quick tugs with a flick of his wrist, his arms breaking out into goosebumps. It had been a while since he needed to jack off. He tucked his other hand behind his head, showing off his arms for Vanessa, which he knew she liked. He passed his thumb over the tip, where he was already shiny with precum thanks to Vanessa’s ministrations.

“How’s it feel?” Vanessa purred, eyes transfixed on his hand as it pumped up and down.

“Good,” he nodded weekly. His eyelids felt heavy for a moment, but he caught himself, willing them back open as he watched Vanessa caress her own chest. He wanted to be the one to do that.

“Come on, Carmy, I want to see you make yourself cum,” she said breathily.

“I need a little something on here,” he huffed out. Eyes wide, he gulped loudly as Vanessa gingerly reached for his hand, turning it palm up and licking it from heel fingertips several times over.

“Tell me what you think about when you do this,” she purred, leaning forward.

Carmen doubled-down on his efforts, pumping and twisting his hand up and down.

“Usually?” He asked, looking down at his cock before relegating back to Vanessa’s breasts, “that time we fucked in the hot tub at your Dad’s cabin,” he grinned.

“I remember that,” she returned the smile. “Slow down, baby, you gotta savor it,” she said, placing her hand over his and deliberately elongating his strokes. “There you go,” she cooed. “Doing such a good job,” Vanessa murmured, watching his stomach twitch at her words. “Such a good boy,” she purred.

Carmen watched as she guided his hand down further, rolling his balls in his palm.

“Isn’t that nice?” She asked, “I know you love it when I do this,” she winked. Carmen’s smile stuttered as he watched more clear precum escape his tip. “Take your time, Carmy,” she insisted.

“Ness,” he grit out, “I’m not interested in taking my time,” he groaned. She rubbed up and down his hair thigh as he returned to his length.

“After this I’m going to let you eat me out,” she smiled.

“That my reward?” He asked, feeling his balls draw tight against his body.

“Yeah, if you’re a good boy,” she purred, leaning forward and sliding her hand through his curls at the hairline. He was glad for the vantage point to nip at her breast. Vanessa could feel the mattress moving a little more intently underneath his elbow here he was now very seriously pumping into his hand.

Vanessa reached down once again, his brows furrowing as she took his hand off his cock. Guiding his fingers into her panties, she dragged them across her sex, collecting the moisture there before returning his hand to his dick.

“That help?” She asked innocently. Carmen nodded, hips snapping up into his hand. “Come on baby, go ahead and cum,” she said, scraping her nails across his scalp. It gave her sick pleasure to watch his small, pink nipples harden.

A few moments later, he was spilling out, cum dripping down his knuckles as he pulled every last drop out.

“Fw-fuck,” he huffed, pulling himself out with tight, long strokes. Satisfied he was empty, he flopped his head back onto his pillow.

“That was really hot, Bear,” Vanessa said leaning forward to kiss his hairline, which was just barely sweaty. “You did such a good job,” she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek as well.

“I feel like I’m in eighth grade again,” he laughed, chasing her lips into a firm kiss. “Except I get to knock one out to you and not Drew Barrymore,” he added, making her let out a peal of laughter.

“Drew Barrymore?” She asked, hair mussed and falling around her shoulders.

“I watched Charlie’s Angels a lot,” he justified.

“Fair,” she conceded.

“But I think I had a reward coming…” he trailed, tugging her on top of him.

“Feels a little more like I won.”

#carmen berzatto smut #carmen berzatto #carmy #carmy fluff #carmy berzatto #carmen berzatto x ofc #carmen berzatto x oc #carmen smut #carmy smut #the bear #the bear hulu #the bear fic #the bear fanfic #carmy x oc #carmy x ofc

[coochiequeens]

All but three were before 2017. Once it was 2018/2019 season the victories for transwomen exploded.

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

A biological male athlete who identifies as transgender as well as transgender activists recently stated grievances against sports-governing bodies like the NCAA for “regressing” from “efforts to create a safe and inclusive environment” for male athletes who identify as transgender. 

The complaints come despite an increasing number of girls’ and women’s sporting events being dominated by biological males.

The Washington Stand has found that there have been at least 28 separate girls and women’s sports titles that have been won by biological males (or have included biological men as part of a winning women’s team) in the last 19 years, with the trend accelerating exponentially in the past three years.

These events include:

— Downhill mountain biking Canadian National Championships in 2003.

— Long Drivers of America women’s competition in 2008. 

— Trofee Maarten Wynants cycling race in 2015. 

— 2018 and 2019 UCI World Masters Track Cycling Championships. 

— 2019 national championship for bench press. 

— Two Commonwealth Championships (2017 and 2019) and one Pacific Games championship (2019) in weightlifting.

— Division II NCAA championship 400-meter hurdles in 2019. 

— 100- and 200-meter high school Connecticut state championships in 2018. 

— 100- and 200-meter high school New England regional championships in 2018. 

— Two mountain bike New Zealand national championships in 2018 and 2019. 

— 100-, 200-, and 400-meter races at the Italian Paralympic national championships in 2020.

— Volleyball Brazilian Cup in 2022. 

— Six Ivy League swimming championship titles in 2022. 

— 500-yard Division I NCAA swimming championship in 2022.

These titles do not include the multiple second place, third place, and other finishing spots in women’s events awarded to biological males that would have been won by biological females had the events been for biological females only.

In one of the most recent examples, which many are seeing as a symbolically poignant moment that encapsulates the debate over the fairness of biological males competing in women’s sports, two men were pictured kissing each other on the winner’s podium for the women’s ThunderCrit cycling event in London on June 2. 

The men had placed first and second in the event, with a biological woman placing third. As reported by The Post Millennial, the male winner of the event had won male cycling competitions “as recently as February” 2022.

A growing number of female athletes are voicing their concerns about letting biological males compete in women’s events. Before University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas—who is a biological male who spent three years on the men’s team—won the women’s 500-yard Division I NCAA swimming championship in March, 16 women on Penn’s swim team wrote a letter saying that Thomas should not be allowed to compete women’s events.

“Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female,” the letter said.

Mary Szoch, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, agrees. 

“After three years of trying and failing to make the basketball team at the University of Notre Dame, finally, my senior year, I earned a jersey and the very last seat on the bench,” she noted. “Had the NCAA made ‘accommodations’ to allow men to compete in women’s sports, I would have never had the opportunity to accomplish my dream of playing for a National Championship. No woman should be forced to sit in the stands because a male takes her spot on the floor.”

Recent poll results indicate that the American public largely agrees with this sentiment. When asked in a poll commissioned by FRC Action if biological males should be allowed to compete against biological females in women’s K-12 and college sports, a significant majority (61%) disagreed, while just 18% agreed.

Originally published by The Washington Stand

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected] and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

#Women’s sports are for women #Title IX #conservative men don’t care about women #Conservative men just use fake concern over women’s spaces to attack the gender cult #But at least they acknowledge that men and women are different

[apilgrimpassingby]

The Night Hag

I'm going to go off-topic and talk about a topic that's pretty darn fascinating to me - sleep paralysis and the Night Hag.

For those of you who are unaware, sleep paralysis is a phenomenon that occurs after waking up that has (as defined by David Hufford in The Terror that Comes in the Night, a seminal text on it) four core characteristics:

You're paralysed (it's in the name).

You're awake.

You accurately perceive your real surroundings. (On the side, this is why I don't accept it as an explanation for alien abductions - seeing yourself in a UFO is not accurately perceiving your real surroundings).

You're afraid.

Common non-essential traits include:

A feeling - and often, the sensory perception, frequently with multiple senses - of a malign presence (this is the Night Hag).

A feeling of pressure on the chest.

A sense of the supernatural.

Less commonly, a fear of death.

Estimates for how common sleep paralysis is range widely - for his part, Hufford estimated that 15% of the population have experienced it at least once - but even at the lowest estimates, it is likely that you have experienced it, and near-certain that, whether or not you realise it, someone you know has. (People often don't talk about their experiences with it due to fear of being seen as crazy or simply not knowing how to describe it). It's what the word "nightmare" originally referred to (from the mære, the spirit credited with causing it) and was very probably the inspiration for Fuseli's famous painting The Nightmare.

It's associated with/the source for monsters in numerous folklores and mythologies - the Hungarian Lidérc, the South Carolinan Boo Hag, the Hmong Dab Tsog, the Scandinavian Mara/Mare, the Newfoundland Old Hag that inspired Hufford to write his book and possibly the shadow people of contemporary urban legend. But, as he noted, these incidents occur even in cultures, such as the 1970s and 1980s US he researched in, with no body of belief about it. And I want to be clear, this book isn't some sketchy thing by a woo-peddler. Hufford is emeritus Professor of Humanities and Psychiatry at Penn State University and got his book published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

And the interesting thing is that there's no known, or even particularly strong, scientific explanation. The standard one is that your brain wakes up during REM sleep (that's the dream state), but when your body is still paralysed to stop you acting out your dreams, and hallucinates to rationalise the fear you feel. But this explanation has a ton of holes.

To be clear, I'm not (or at least I wasn't for a long time; I'm not so sure about it now) the kind of person who sees demons in every corner. I effectively held a naturalist outlook until last year, and I'm pretty sceptical of most supernatural claims now. But, seeing as sleep paralysis is consistently associated with malign spirits and/or witchcraft and the cultural and scientific explanations are both seriously flawed, I really do believe it is an evil spirit behind this.

I want to close with a verbatim quote from Hufford's book I found particularly fascinating:

"Some readers may be considering whether they wish to elect to "go along with" a paralysis attack if they should have another one. I would advise strongly against it. Madge [one of the many interviewees whose accounts the book was analysing] is not the only one who has reported having regretted her "openness" to the experience. I have spoken with people who have reported years of anguish, some of it involving symptomatology much like some of the features of psychosis, after having intentionally cultivated this experience. On the other hand, I have never encountered anyone who resisted the basic Old Hag experience who seemed injured by it even if it frequently returned."

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

#sleep paralysis #supernatural #paranormal

[pennstateuniversitypress]

Q&A with Ignacio A. Adriasola Muñoz

The author of Fragment, Image, and Absence in 1960s Japan discusses the importance of art from this period how photography contributed to experimentation in art.

Why look at art from this period?

Fragment, Image, and Absence discusses artwork and critical debates emerging during Japan’s “long” 1960s. In this period—which extends roughly from the late 1950s and into the 1970s—Japan experienced massive political, social, economic, and environmental upheaval. These changes continue to inform Japanese society today.

As I show in my book, this was also a foundational moment for art. Prompted by these shifts, artists and critics explored different ways in which art could engage or resist such changes. In this context, Japanese artists turned to an intense interrogation of the very nature of the concept of the object, which is classically defined as a distinct, stable entity separate from other entities—including the subject. Instead, they posited a visual language based on ambivalence and ambiguity.

In articulating a new program through the denial of totality effected by fragments, the exploitation of the ambiguous relationship to reality inherent in the image, and the foregrounding of absence as a possible horizon for art, these artists developed an entirely original critique of modernity. This generation of artists and critics thus not only furthered the legacies of the historical avant-garde in the present but also extended and transformed them for the future.

How does photography connect to concerns in experimental art in this period?

One aspect that I have sought to highlight in the book is the overlapping conversations among different practices and media throughout this decade. This dialogue took place quite directly, through sustained collaborations, and also within discrete projects, such as publications, art festivals, and other events.

However, because of the weight of modernist criticism and its privileging of the figure of the “photographer-as-auteur,” there is still a sense that photography was mired in its own debate, separate and distinct from concerns in other visual arts media. Medium-specific histories have tended to deemphasize the relevance of these conversations to a broader debate on shifting aesthetic practices in the period. But photographers were interested in similar questions to those asked by other visual artists surrounding the nature of the object in art, such as how and whether it was possible to depict it in photography and what the status of the image is as a type of wayward object. They also had an interest in what I call the manifold “objectual” capacities of the photograph.

How do your own experiences and background inform your analysis of this type of work?

I first encountered some of this work while attending university in Japan in the early 2000s. I distinctly remember entering the permanent collection display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo for the first time and walking into a gallery that presented two works from the early 1960s by Miki Tomio and Kudō Tetsumi. The works were very different, even though they did seem to present a common affect, and I found it hard to square them with the critical paradigms I was familiar with at the time. As I moved through the galleries, I realized that these artists were all part of a broader conversation that extended even beyond visual arts—into stage practices, music, and literature. I became fascinated by the rich cross-pollination taking place and the overall coherence that could be seen in such formally distinct works. I then became concerned with how to describe this affect.

A particular problem that I felt at the time relates to interpretive claims surrounding the radicality of the artwork and its connection to the sphere of politics. When I was in graduate school, much of the discussion of Japanese art in the 1960s centered on a type of Zeitgeist claim, which reduced the artwork to the radical politics of the era. This struck me as lacking analytical nuance as well as being theoretically insufficient. The artwork I was interested in seemed to resist politics, at least as traditionally understood. That is, these artists rejected the notion that their work was or should be part of a clear and coherent discursive meaning. Rather, the artwork appeared to indicate a different space, marked by ambiguity. This intuition tempered some of the claims surrounding the location of “the political” in the work. It also raised a number of questions. What forms of politics were mediated by the work and, more importantly, how were those politics enacted? Was a claim of detachment from the social in itself political? If so, how?

My skepticism about a simplistic reading of politics in the work was informed by having seen the important uses of the opacity of art in different contexts, such as Chile, where I am originally from. There, some artists have relied on hermeticism and a similar interest in objective idioms as a means of challenging progress narratives and drawing attention to the whitewashing of the past. This similarity leads me to think more broadly of practices that resist the homogenization of the everyday in capitalism—and the “end of politics” through detachment. Such works exploit ambiguity as part of a critical stance toward the present. My book also shows how such a position connects to longstanding arguments for an aesthetics of refusal. By shedding light on this genealogy, the book invites us to reconsider the significance of modernist practices across widely divergent locales. I provide a new framework for thinking about divergent artistic moments as well, all of which could be revisited from the vantage point of a refusal to participate in the myth-making of the present.

Fragment, Image, and Absence in 1960s Japan is now available from Penn State University Press. Find more information and order the book here: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09290-4.html. Save 30% with discount code NR23.

#Art #Art History #1960s #1960s art #Japan #Japanese Art #Photography #Contemporary #Modern #Books #New Books #Penn State University Press

[ghostflowerdreams]

Research For What Did People Use Before Toilet Paper?

The reason this post on What Did People Use Before Toilet Paper? came to be was because I wanted to know how in the ancient times did people do their business so that my story would be more accurate.

This of course led me down a rabbit hole and I ended up finding out a lot more. I thought to myself I should make this a post because I might need this info again. It’ll also be convenient to have it all in place. However, at the time I forgot to include sources so I can’t recall all of them exactly.

But I do know that it was a mixed of articles on artifacts, historical documents and old texts, such as literature, personal accounts like journals and so on, because they contained brief mentions of what the people used as toilet paper in them, etc.

Sapien.org - What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

The Washington Post Company - Ever Wondered about the history of toilet paper?

Phys.org - What toilets and sewers tell us about ancient Roman sanitation

Farmers' Almanac - The Hole In The Farmers’ Almanac

Liberty Hall Museum - The Colonial Privy (Toilet) at Liberty Hall Museum [PDF]

University of Nebraska Press: Center for Great Plains Studies - Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition | A Natural History | Chapter 2

North Carolina Cooperative Extension: Hoke County Center - Cowboy’s Toilet Paper

Smithsonian Magazine - These Archaeologists Were Looking for Tombs, But They Were Totally Psyched to Find Toilets

ResearchGate - Toilet hygiene in the classical era [PDF]

The University of Texas at Austin - American Wasteland: A Social and Cultural History of Excrement, 1860-1920 by Daniel Max Gerling [PDF]

Cottonelle - What Did We Use Before Toilet Paper?

Living History Farm - 1930s Farm Life: Indoor Plumbing

Lancaster Farming - Pondering the Privy: A History of Outhouses

National Park Service - Outhouse-Sauer Beckmann Farm [Picture]

Penn State University Libraries - The Greatest Missed Luxury: Scott Toilet Tissue

Ancient Accounts of India and China by Eusebius Renaudot [Book]

Ars Technica - 2,000-year-old toilet paper gives us a whiff of life on the Silk Road in China

Archaeology Southwest - Of Poop, Toilet Paper, and Worms…

The Plumber - Toilet Paper: The History ‘Behind’ It

Medievalists.net - The Medieval Invention of Toilet Paper

World History Encyclopedia - Toilets in a Medieval Castle

Corinium Museum - Roman Toilet Paper

The Vintage News - What Did People Use Before Toilet Paper?

CBS News - Toilet Paper Factoids

Kapiolani Community College - Where’s The Toilet Paper?

Wellcome Collection - How Brits went soft on toilet paper [Pictures]

Smithsonian Magazine - Ancient “Poop Sticks” Offer Clues to the Spread of Disease Along the Silk Road

Dig It With Raven - What Did We Use Before Toilet Paper?

Scientific American - Toilet Issue: Anthropologists Uncover All the Ways We've Wiped

Italy Magazine - Ancient Romans May Have Used Flat Stones As Toilet Paper

Vintage Ad Browser - Toilet Paper

Discover Magazine - What the Earliest Toilets Say About How Human Civilization Has Evolved

Japan This! - Japanese Toilets

The Archaeology of Sanitation in Roman Italy: Toilets, Sewers, and Water Systems (Studies in the History of Greece and Rome) by Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow [Book]

BBC - A potted history of the toilet

JSTOR - The Early History of Human Excreta

Popular Science - Nature’s best toilet paper substitutes

The Mariners' Museum and Park - A Head of Its Time: A Brief History of Going at Sea

Museums Victoria - Immigration: Journeys to Australia - Privies & Hygiene

RealClear Science - What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?

The University of New Hampshire (UNH) - Ancient Toilet Hygiene [Video]

The Open University - Health and Wellbeing in the Ancient World: What did the Romans use for toilet paper?

National Geographic - What did people do before toilet paper?

National Museum of American History - Toilet

Berkeley University of California: Archaeological Research Facility - The Archaeology of Toileting

Ancient Origins - No Toilet Paper! Do Any of these Ancient Methods Work for You?

LiveScience - What did people use before toilet paper was invented?

HISTORY.com - All the Ways We’ve Wiped: The History of Toilet Paper and What Came Before

Youtube - The Remarkable History of Toilet Paper | Told by The History Guy | History at Home [Video]

Country Life - Curious Questions: What did people use before toilet paper?

Reader’s Digest - This Is What People Used Before Toilet Paper Existed

Free Library of Philadelphia - Unrolling the History of Toilet Paper

Hearthstone Historic House Museum - Flushed with Success: Milestones in Toilet Paper Development

Academia - Evolution of Toilets Worldwide Through the Millennia [PDF]

Ohio State University - Common Mullein- Mother Nature's Answer to Our Toilet Paper Shortage?

Gastrointestinal Society - The History of Toilet Paper

Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences: Powerhouse Collection - Toilet roll made in Australia

Minnesota State University: Centennial Student Union - Potty Talk: Understanding International Bathroom Etiquette

Health Digest - What Did People Use Before Toilet Paper?

BidetGenius - Complete History of the Bidet (Infographic)

Religion Unplugged - Islamic And Hindu Customs Wipe Out Need For Toilet Paper

Science Daily - Biblical Latrine: Ancient Parasites Show That Cleanliness May Have Been Next To Sickliness

#writing research #research #history #toilet paper #writing help #writing #writing reference #writing references #writing fanfiction #fanfiction help #toliets #bathrooms #time period #what did people use before toliet paper

[sharpened--edges]

Transforming historical images of containment associated with the sonnet, [Sean] Bonney’s Commons [2011] translates the prison cell and pastoral sheep pen into the barricades, pickets and kettles of riot and protest: ‘so, I’ve been in the penn / with the rough & rowdy’ [p. 68]. While referencing the enclosure of the police kettle (the forced imprisonment-in-place of demonstrators), the ‘penn’ is also a space for holding sheep before shearing, as well as slang for a prison in US English. Equating protestors with livestock subject to […] pastoral discipline […] makes a formal equivalence between containing units that index urban social unrest and a ghostly agrarian past. If we are encouraged to see the protesters as sheep, the police kettle’s coercive enclosure ironically forges solidarity in a temporary and contingent collective space, where there is no alternative to sharing that experience and being changed by it.

Indeed, transformational collective experience of protest and state repression explains Bonney’s ‘rough & rowdy’ image of the ‘penn’, which reflects particular struggles: the autumn 2010–spring 2011 protests against UK Coalition-government proposals to treble university fees and scrap the EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance), which allowed low-income people to access further education, and the riots in the summer of 2011 following the police killing of Mark Duggan in Tottenham. The energy’ of these events informed Bonney’s poetry after 2010: ‘You can’t get ridden down on by police horses, or watch the cops breaking people’s heads’, he reflected early in 2011, ‘without it getting into the work. Impossible’ [‘Interview with Sean Bonney’].

Daniel Eltringham, Poetry & Commons: Postwar and Romantic Lyric in Times of Enclosure (Liverpool University Press, 2022), p. 192.

#daniel eltringham #sean bonney

[mysmorgasbordoffantabulosa]

Favourite LGBTQ Authors: Patricia Nell Warren

Patricia Nell Warren (June 15, 1936 – February 9, 2019), was an American novelist, poet, editor and journalist. Her novel, The Front Runner (1974), was the first work of contemporary gay fiction to make the New York Times Best Seller list. Her third novel, The Fancy Dancer (1976), was the first bestseller to portray a gay priest and to explore gay life in a small town.

A gay woman, Warren was politically active since the 1980s, helping to set up several LGBTQ projects that benefited queer youth. She was also, heavily involved in a legal case (through her self owned publishing company, Wildcat Press, against internet censorship particularly of queer content.

In her witness testimony to SCOTUS, she stated, "What I'm concerned about is that certain people in this country will perceive the entire area of gay literature to be indecent or patently offensive."

Her most famous works:

Harlan's Story Series:

The Front Runner

First published in 1974, The Front Runner raced to international acclaim - the first novel about gay love to become popular with mainstream.

In 1975, coach Harlan Brown is hiding from his past at an obscure New York college, after he was fired from Penn State University on suspicion of being gay. A tough, lonely ex-Marine of 39, Harlan has never allowed himself to love another man.

Then Billy Sive, a brilliant young runner, shows up on his doorstep. He and his two comrades, Vince Matti and Jacques LaFont, were just thrown off a major team for admitting they are gay. Harlan knows that, with proper training, Billy could go to the '76 Olympics in Montreal. He agrees to coach the three boys under strict conditions that thwart Billy's growing attraction for his mature but compelling mentor. The lean, graceful frontrunner with gold-rim glasses sees directly into Harlan's heart. Billy's gentle and open acceptance of his sexuality makes Harlan afraid to confront either the pain of his past, or the challenges which lay in wait if their intimacy is exposed.

But when Coach Brown finds himself falling in love with his most gifted athlete, he must combat his true feelings for Billy or risk the outrage of the entire sports world - and their only chance at Olympic gold.

Harlan's Race

After his young athlete lover is struck down on the Olympic track in Montreal, coach Harlan Brown is forced to enter the race of his life. To survive the hate and violence that threaten his chosen family: Betsy, valiant lesbian mother; Vince, angry activist seeking revenge; Chino, Vietnam vet with a wounded heart; and the secret child of Billy Sive.

Billy's Boy

Billy's Boy is a first person story, about a teen's passionate search to know more about his dead gay father, his lesbian mother's past…and his own sexual destiny.

John William, 14, describes himself as "the science geek from hell." He loves astronomy, dreams of exploring the universe as a NASA astronaut. But lately his attention is focused on Earth, his best friend Shawn, and his own awakening body. New in L.A., he hangs out with his straight girl buddy Ana and two Latino club kids, Teak and Elena, that he just met. William is sure he's straight, and he is irritated by Teak's effeminate attitude.

Her other famous works:

Fancy Dancer - A young Catholic priest in a small Western town is compelled to recognize that his vocation is at risk as he finds himself attracted to one of his more problematical parishioners.

The Beauty Queen - Beauty queen Jeannie Colter is a born-again politician who wants to crush homosexuals. William Laird is her devoted father who has kept a secret from his fanatical daughter.

The Wild Man - Antonio, a disillusioned bullfighter, loves Juan, an idealistic peasant migrant. Jose, a feisty woman journalist, loves Serafita, a sheltered upper-class girl. They call themselves the "heretic quartet." In fascist Spain of the 1960's, these four lovers struggle to keep their secret amid brutal family clashes and terrifying religious repression.

Her books can be purchased from the following locations:

Amazon UK | Amazon

#favourite lgbtq authors #gay novels #gay books #book covers

[martinvshoot]

Artist Research

Cianni, Vincent. We Skate Hardcore: Photographs from Brooklyn’s Southside. New York University Press, 2004. 

The book We Skate Hardcore by Vincent Cianni, a photographer, was published by New York University Press, New York, and London. According to the webpage bio, he is a documentary photographer who graduated from Penn State University, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and SUNY New Paltz. It said he lives in Newburgh, NY, and teaches photography at Parsons The New School of Design, NYC. Throughout art museums and galleries Cianni had visited, his selections of photographs have already been displayed and represented in abundant public and private collections in museums of art and other fine arts recognized in certain areas in Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, and more.

In his documentary work from the book, he made We Skate Hardcore, in which he explores the community and shares record memories of human conditions, situations, and/or circumstances of the urban areas which he uses not only colorless and or low-quality a few blur images but the text within next most of the pictures in the behind scenes. Along with the quotes that were handwritten in cursive by him and his colleagues. Within the quotes, there are sentimental, cherished memorable, and gloomy that happened at the moment or events. One of the quotes “…My dad is My Best friend and father. We fight But never forget what we have.” I find it touching what difficult outcomes, issues, or problems they had, they are grateful for what they had. One of the photographs he presented in the published printed book is a soft expression of the life of a skater. On the left is what appears as a squirrel on a thick branch and on the right is a person holding and carrying what seems to be a dog. Seeing as misunderstanding seeing skaters in a gang aren’t all jerks, though, and I suppose misinterpret out in the public street.

Interestingly, the photographs are arranged in chronological order from the start in colorless images and written historically about the community of skaters foretold by the perspective view shot by the author and handwritten text by the in-line skaters' still life about his friends and family. The later pages revealed the color of low quality and a few blurred images that are narrated by skaters and other prospectors who interact with them in the dialogue. In the beginning, the pictures were shown in good quality in black and white color taking place during the 1990’s when Cianni moved into New York at Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. He portrayed skaters who live their lives on the street roaming free as they want without trouble. However, there weren’t many women, or girls, at that time which the photos have shown roaming in public freely except a few appeared. The level-class viewing above the urban neighborhood within the city seems common. The feeling delivers the emotions he has in connection with his friends and family. Shown there isn’t much they have but grateful for what they have and each other within their conditions and the struggles dealt with situations that opposed skaters.

Source:

“Bio.” VINCENT CIANNI — PHOTOGRAPHY, WordPress, vincentcianni.com/home/about. Accessed 13 Apr. 2024.