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  3. blackbeautyro:

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    Cicely Tyson (1924-2021)

     
  4. 70sscifiart:

    Oliviero Berni

     

  5. serendipitouscrafts:

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    I just placed an order for the fabric for the Night Owl quilt I am making for my cousin’s impending baby.

    I ended up grabbing some dusty blue in addition to the colors indicated above and I had to swap out the denim for hyacinth because the store I was ordering from didn’t have any denim.

    I ended up ordering from the Fat Quarter Shop because they let you order in increments as small as 0.5 yards. Most other places that I found that carry Kona Cotton solids require at least a one yard cut.

     

  6. Death could not hold You, You are Victorious

    In 1998, I got a temp job through a staffing service at a speaker’s bureau, which represented celebrities and other known people for personal appearances, ad campaigns, spokesperson gigs, all things that a film and TV agent doesn’t have the time for.  A few months later, I was hired permanently.  I was only 21; she would have been 74 at the time.  A few months after that, her usual travel companion was not able to go with her to a speech—Dallas, I think, or Indianapolis, honestly I can’t recall the first one—and she asked if I would go with her.  I spent the next almost 7 years in that job, and we talked every day.  Getting that deeply into the minutiae someone’s life, while not being a friend exactly, is a little strange, and fame warps people, both the famous and those around them—the best times we had together were at restaurants when no one recognized her.  “Fame is not charisma, it isn’t something you have,” she told me once, “It’s something people give to you.”  But we got along; I think we just liked each other.

    We had meals together on planes (CT always in seat 1A, always,) in hotel rooms (24 hour room service was a requirement,) and in Limousines going down the freeway in Oklahoma, or Jacksonville, or Atlanta.  (Ps, *no white limousines.*  If a white limo appears, I promise you, no matter how late or how important, she is not getting in it.)  We watched a lot of TV together in hotels, whatever was on, she’d tell me stories about playing cards with Truman Capote when he was in the hospital, about 100 other things.  She lived a big life.  I helped her fill out her Oscar ballot every year.

    Very early in her career a press tour reporter said that she didn’t find the love relationship between the characters on screen to be real—because Black people surely didn’t love each other that way, the way she had seen white people loving each other.  “I knew in that moment,” Cicely would say in her speech, “That I did not have the luxury of just being an actress; I had something I wanted to say about the world and I would use my career as my platform.”  I loved hearing the speech, even though I’d heard it 100 times.

    She always started with the photos.  After some formal introduction that we provided (which I had written at some point,) they sometimes played a series of film clips, or maybe not, and then she’d come to the podium and the audience would already be going crazy.  “I’m going to give you to the count of three, to take any and all photos you want to take of me up here,” she would say.  “I know they told you you are not allowed to take pictures, but I’m telling you, you can take them, but only until the count of three, then I’m going to ask for your respect and after three, no more photos.”  The audience would rummage through their purses—this was back when people had actual cameras!  “One,” Cicely would say; and a few flashes.  “Two,” she would cheat out to the other side of the audience, or rest her chin in her hands.  People held their cameras in the air.  Cicely would step to the side of the podium and lean back to the mic “Two….and a half….” And she’d strut down the stage, or the aisle, stopping back a the mic, “Two and three quarters…..”  The audience would be screaming with laughter—literally screaming and running to the edge of the stage.   “Three,” she would finally say, and then she was serious.  She ended with a series of poems, some Langston Hughes and then finally Maya Angelou’s “I’ll Rise,” holding out the last ‘Rise’ with great breath and an almost ghostly terror.  It was an incredible feat I never over seeing her do it.  Everyone in the room smiling, raising their arms; everyone’s faces in tears.  She could destroy a room with that poem, leaving them torn apart and rebuilt and better and stronger.  Then we’d get back in the car, she’d say “That one went okay, dontcha think?”

    For most of those gigs she sent the honorarium directly over to the Cicely Tyson School of Performing Arts, a public school in New Jersey, helmed by the incomparable principal, Laura Trimmings.  Even when Cicely wasn’t working very much, when the bills were piling up and the money wasn’t coming in—some days we just opened residual checks and photocopied them and called to see when others were coming.

    In 2006, we had a disagreement that was ostensibly about laundry, but it was really about boundaries.  Her manager at the time, who was paying my salary and housing my desk, and she decided to amicably end their relationship, and then I was out of a job.  I started at the farmer’s market for a few weeks, thinking I’d eventually get another assistant gig.  I interviewed with a few people but nothing ever worked; I was falling deeply in love with the market, and I’m still there, 15 years later.

    Cicely shopped at Union Square often and about a year after our split, I stopped her in the aisle, and we hugged and smiled, like nothing had happened.  She was like that, she could just let it go.  Once she said, “Every time I see you, it’s like there’s two of you.”  I didn’t understand what she was saying, “You mean I have a twin somewhere?”  “No,” she said, “You’re getting so fat, it’s ridiculous!  You need to lose some weight, or start moving or something!”  I tried to give her an out: “Well, it’s cold out here, I’m wearing five layers….” “Don’t tell me what you’re wearing tell me when you’re gonna get into that old suit you bought for me when you were 20 years old,” and we laughed.  It’s true, the only suit I have is the one I bought to go places with her.

    I went to see A Trip to Bountiful, her return to stage acting after thirty years of doing only film and TV; and honestly, I was a little scared she wouldn’t be able to do it.  I had taken care of her for what felt to me like so long, all the small things, making the arrangements and making the hard things invisible—but up there she’d be taking a big leap alone.  She was incredible in it, of course—transcendent and beautiful.  It’s not in the script, but at some point Cicely, in character, started singing Blessed Assurance as she waited for the bus, and then the audience started singing along.  It became a thing, every night.  “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, O what a foretaste of glory divine.”

    The next Friday she was shopping at Greenmarket and I ran over and we talked a little about how thrilling it all was, there was already whispers about the Tony Award, which she did win, weeks later.  We were holding hands and I was so excited and overcome, and I started crying and then she laughed and then she started crying.  “I’m so proud of you,” I told her.  I was.  I am.

     
  7. smithsonianlibraries:

    From Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Vlyssis Aldrovandi philosophi ac medici Bononiensis historiam […]  v.3 (1673): An illustration of a pelican feeding its young with its own blood, an old  European belief about pelican behavior with no basis in reality. You may also note that the pelican in the illustration has a small sharp beak instead of the long beak and throat pouch that typifies real-world pelicans.

     
  8. ein-bleistift-und-radiergummi:

    ‘Sea Holly’ Linocut print, 2018.

    (via 077tilly eBay)

     
  9. ein-bleistift-und-radiergummi:

    ‘Le Verre Francais’ Glass Vase - Made by the Schneider Glassworks in France between 1918 and 1932) ca.1920.

    (Source: carters.com.au)

     
  10. (via 9eyes)