this is so important to tell older women. i never let older ladies talk down on themselves near me, it breaks my heart how they don't see their beauty just because of their age
Last week, I spent several days at the @SchomburgCenter, going through photographs of James Baldwin as part of my work as a consultant for a forthcoming exhibition curated by the phenomenal Karen Van Godtsenhoven.
One of the highlights was this snapshot of Baldwin and Toni Morrison in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Unlike the carefully staged portraits that helped construct Baldwin's public image, this photograph feels deeply personal. It wasn't made for publication. It looks like the kind of photograph that might have been processed at a local drugstore and tucked into a family album.
Here are two of the most important American writers of the twentieth century, not performing literary celebrity, but simply enjoying one another's company. There is something wonderfully ordinary about it.
As I think through Baldwin's self-fashioning, this photograph reminds me that public intellectuals are not made through ideas alone. Their lives are sustained by friendships, intellectual communities, chosen families, and private moments of joy. Sometimes a casual photo can reveal more than a professional headshot.
J S Celestine Edwards is regarded as the first known Black newspaper editor in England. Celestine was known for running the London based publications Lux, a weekly Christian Evidence journal.
Celestine was born in Dominica 🇩🇲 and received his education at a chapel school in Antigua 🇦🇬.
After heart surgery, the parents of a 13-year-old girl were told that their daughter was dying, and that they should start making end-of-life decisions, including donating her organs.
Upon transferring their daughter to another hospital however, they were told that doctors at Oregon Health and Science University had installed her new heart valve upside down.
“Doctors at Seattle Children's removed the inverted valve and replaced it with a different one, properly positioned. Her heart promptly began to function correctly. She was successfully taken off cardiac bypass and no longer required ECMO.
Her condition continued to stabilize over the following days in Seattle Children's ICU. After more than a month in critical condition, she was able to return home with her parents.”
Best ways to use Venus conjunct Jupiter in Cancer:
- purchase a new car
- sign a new housing agreement
- apply for a property lease
- tell my husband I want to stop working
- have a courthouse wedding
- open a daycare or restaurant
- order takeout
- buy new home decor
- take a drive around my city
- socialize with family
- buy a new book or bible
- apply for a school or a scholarship
- manifest relationship improvement
- sign a modeling or beauty contract
- take my dog for an extra walk
- sit all comfy on the couch and eat snacks
Casting Jack Nicholson’s son Ray Nicholson in SMILE 2 (2024) almost feels unfair. The smile alone does half the work. The movie knew exactly what it was doing.
Most people don't know this, but Salvador Dalí built his entire career on tapping into his unconscious mind on purpose.
Dalí's most famous trick was a micro-nap he called "slumber with a key." He'd sit in a heavy Spanish-style armchair, head tilted back against the leather, both arms hanging completely limp off the armrests, and in his left hand he'd hold a heavy metal key pinched lightly between his thumb and forefinger.
Directly under that hand, on the floor, he'd place an upside-down plate. He'd then let himself drift into sleep. The instant he actually fell asleep, his muscles would go slack, the key would slip out of his fingers, hit the upside-down plate, and the clang would jolt him awake.
The whole nap was meant to last less than a quarter of a second. He called that half-second window the "taut and invisible wire which separates sleeping from waking," and he'd immediately sketch the hallucinations he saw in that flash.
The melting clocks, the elephants on stilts, the burning giraffes, a lot of that came straight out of those quarter-second naps. He picked the trick up from Capuchin monks and wrote it down as one of his "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship."
I'm finally reading Dune. This quote, which is in the first few pages, hits hard:
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
In 1761, a French ship wrecked and abandoned 60 slaves on Tromelin Island, a tiny sandbank with no trees. Forgotten by the world, they kept a fire burning and built a coral micro-society for 15 years, until only 7 women and a baby were finally rescued.
In 1761, the French vessel Utile was traveling illegally with enslaved Malagasy people when it struck a reef and wrecked off the coast of a barren sandbank in the Indian Ocean. The crew managed to build a makeshift raft and escape to Madagascar, but they left behind 60 enslaved people with nothing but the promise that they would return. That rescue never came.
For fifteen years, these survivors were completely abandoned by the world. They faced extreme heat, devastating cyclones, and a total lack of natural resources on a tiny speck of coral. Despite these conditions, they did not give up. They built a functioning society from the ground up, crafting tools from shipwreck debris, securing water, and somehow keeping a fire burning for over a decade. When they were finally reached by a French vessel in 1776, only seven women and an eight-month-old child were still alive. Their resilience in the face of such calculated betrayal remains a powerful testament to the strength of the human spirit and the history we must never forget.
If you love our content and would like to support the page, you can buy us a coffee here: https://t.co/K1AhtZuOFs