background preloader

Love

Facebook Twitter

Inside the literary magazine helping homeless writers be heard. Down in the basement of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul on Tremont Street in Boston, a towering man with a graying blond ponytail approaches me. “You need to know something,” he begins. “If James Parker were a woman, he’d be having my baby.” The man, whose name is Phil, writes for The Pilgrim, a five-year-old literary magazine created by members of Boston’s homeless community. It was founded by James Parker, a contributing editor and culture columnist for The Atlantic, who is beloved by the writers he coaches, counsels, and edits. Advertisement On this April morning, those voiceless have an issue to produce. Today, Parker, in a red Arsenal soccer club warm-up jacket, bearhugs the writers as they trickle in and hands each a yellow legal pad, a black Bic pen, and a printout of the previous week’s writing.

Craig walker/globe staff Front row, from left: writer Joseph Haddad, James Parker, and writers Bryant Draycott and Sabrina Davis. Others write for their own reasons. Amazon Tribe Creates 500-Page Remarkable Natural Medicine Encyclopedia. By Jeremy Hance | Mongabay In one of the great tragedies of our age, indigenous traditions, stories, cultures and knowledge are winking out across the world. Whole languages and mythologies are vanishing, and in some cases even entire indigenous groups are falling into extinction. This is what makes the news that a tribe in the Amazon—the Matsés peoples of Brazil and Peru—have created a 500-page encyclopedia of their traditional medicine all the more remarkable.

The encyclopedia, compiled by five shamans with assistance from conservation group Acaté, details every plant used by Matsés medicine to cure a massive variety of ailments. “The [Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia] marks the first time shamans of an Amazonian tribe have created a full and complete transcription of their medicinal knowledge written in their own language and words,” Christopher Herndon, president and co-founder of Acaté, told Mongabay in an interview (in full below). Medieval Pet Names. People in the Middle Ages did keep pets – dogs, cats, birds, monkeys and many other kinds of animals. Although they often had particular duties – i.e. hunting or catching rats – there are many accounts that showed affection and love between these pets and their owners.

Scattered in various texts and remains from the Middle Ages, and the research by Kathleen Walker-Meikle has uncovered several examples of medieval pet names: Medieval Dog Names In England we find dogs that were named Sturdy, Whitefoot, Hardy, Jakke, Bo and Terri. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Nun’s Priest Tale has a line where they name three dogs: Colle, Talbot and Gerland. Meanwhile, in Switzerland a list of 80 dogs that took part in a shooting festival in the year 1504 has been preserved. The 14th century French knight Jehan de Seure had a hound named Parceval, while his wife had Dyamant. There was a certain castle whose lord had a baby son from his wife. Medieval Cat Names Click here to read the poem Pangur Bán Sources:

Making Your Own Interactive Cat Feeder – Katzenworld. Just a couple of years ago few of us had heard of interactive cat feeders, but now pet stores seems to be awash with an amazing array of innovative feeders, usually marketing them as ‘interactive cat toys’. As a Cat Behaviourist I’m a huge fan of these – not only do they provide natural stimulation for cats by encouraging them to forage for their food, but they can also slow down the food intake of cats who are prone to obesity. Here are some examples of shop-bought feeders: However, you don’t have to spend a fortune on an expensive state-of-the-art feeder. With a little bit of imagination you can make your own as the following examples show! About The Author Clare Hemington is a Cat Behaviourist helping owners of cats that are displaying problem behaviours. Clare is also author of the recently published ‘The Hairy Tails of a Cat Sitter‘. Like this: Like Loading... Related Oliver & Nubia: The SureFeed microchip pet feeder!

Hi everyone, (This post is also available in German by clicking here.) A Woman Is Posting Feminist Messages Written On Period Pads All Over Her City. Feminism is always worth talking about, but it’s hard to grab people’s attention. Elonë, a woman in Karsruhe, Germany, solved this problem by using a controversial medium – period pads – to drive home her message about gender equality and the elimination of rape culture.

She chose International Women’s Day (March 8th) as the perfect day to reveal her message. She has already attracted the attention of thousands of supporters and critics alike from around the world, including people who want to apply her project in their own cities as well. Some of her most popular photos with the pads have been shared thousands of times. She says she was inspired to create the series by a tweet that read “imagine if men were as disgusted with rape as they are with periods.” Despite the critics that have bombarded her with messages, she insists that her message is one of “equality, not men hate.”

More info: Tumblr | Instagram (h/t: elitedaily) Elonë’s message is clear – it’s time to stop rape culture. Dealing With Psychological Burden of Knowing Things Our Culture Doesn't Want us to Know - Era of Wisdom. All the uncomfortable truths are delegated to this ridiculous-sounding “/r/conspiracy” which drives people away who are on the fence. These things that are often talked about on this sub are conspiracies, but they’re also news, they’re speculation or facts about how the world actually works beyond the face of things as we see them. This label of “conspiracy” is a form of censorship in itself, it pushes all the big deal stories to this one small corner of reddit. If you’re newer to reddit, 4 years or less, I bet there was one day when you found this sub.

I bet you went through the frontpage of this sub and couldn’t believe what you were reading. You probably thought “Why aren’t these things being discussed on the news subreddit or the politics subreddit, if they are true?” This article (Dealing With Psychological Burden of Knowing Things Our Culture Doesn’t Want us to Know) is free and open source. The Boy Who Could Change the World review – the writings of Aaron Swartz, genius programmer and campaigner for internet freedom. In his introduction to this anthology of blog posts and speeches by the late web pioneer Aaron Swartz, ethics professor Lawrence Lessig wrestles with the question of whether it’s fair to anthologise a lifetime’s worth of any person’s writing.

He goes on to wonder whether Swartz would have approved of the publication of the volume he’s introducing, and tells a story about Swartz getting upset with him for describing one of his blog posts to some friends when he was a student at Stanford. The celebrated activist, who spent much of his short life promoting the theory that ideas should be freely available online to everyone, admonished Lessig for recapitulating his post to an audience of outsiders, telling Lessig: “That was private.” What Swartz meant, Lessig goes on to say, was that the anecdote was intended for readers of his blog, not “random” people. It’s a justifiable concern. Some of these pieces make the transition from screen to page with grace. One Man’s Impossible Quest to Read—and Review—the World. The Complete Review, “a selectively comprehensive, objectively opinionated survey of books old and new,” sits on the margins of the literary world, where it has flourished for sixteen years.

As of last Friday, according to an analog counter on the site’s decidedly unglamorous homepage, it had reviewed three thousand six hundred and eighty-seven books, from a hundred different countries, originally published in sixty-eight different languages—an average of two hundred and thirty books a year. Virtually all of this criticism, and everything else on the Complete Review, is the work of Michael A. Orthofer, a fifty-one-year-old lawyer who was born in Graz, Austria, and brought up in New York City. Orthofer built the site—it took about five months; he coded it with basic HTML—on a P.C. at his home, in Manhattan, in 1999. “I’ve been reading since the age of six,” Orthofer told me on a visit to the Metropolitan Museum this fall.

“I can’t imagine not doing it,” Orthofer told me. Jean’s Yurt. One Man’s Impossible Quest to Read—and Review—the World. This Is How Sand Looks Magnified Up To 300 Times. Comparing something to a grain of sand is usually supposed to mean that it’s small or insignificant, but Dr. Gary Greenberg’s microscopic photography aims to turn this stereotype on its head. His photographs of miniscule grains of sands magnified up to 300 times reveal that each grain of sand can be beautiful and unique.

Greenberg’s story is a fascinating one. First of all, he invented the high-definition 3D microscopes that he takes his pictures on, resulting in 18 U.S. patents under his name. He was a photographer and filmmaker until age 33, when he moved from LA to London and earned a Ph. D. in biomedical research. This seems to have given him a unique appreciation for biological and scientific curiosities and for the optical technologies he would need to document them.

Sand composition can vary drastically depending on where it’s located. Source: sandgrains.com We’d like to thank our reader Lukas Palaitis for the tip! Loving & Understanding an Empath. Get elephant's newsletter Empath’s are unique personality types, their sensory levels are always on high alert, they are incredibly intuitive and their awareness and sensitivity to the energy levels that vibrate around them are extremely high. If an empath senses something, they are not often wrong. If they think someone’s lying or that something is just “not right” you can bet your last dollar that they are not wrong. Therefore, a basic understanding of this mystical and quite magical creature is highly beneficial. Empaths have quite a few little quirks, traits and characteristics that are worth knowing about, and gaining a better understanding of, so that any relationship that is formed has a strong survival chance and also so that it thrives.

Empaths can be deeply misunderstood. Love with an empath will be intense as they are energetically sensitive, therefore they will pick up on everything and anything that is happening around them. Empaths like truth. Author: Alexsandra Myles. Photos de la publication de Mascot Media Ltd - Mascot Media Ltd. Lawrence Merz - Timeline Photos. Lawrence Merz - Photos du journal. Robert Smalls: An American Hero. Robert Smalls began life as a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina. Born on April 5, 1839, he taught himself to read, and was later briefly allowed to attend school. In his early 20s he was assigned to work as a deckhand on a small cargo ship, and within two years he was the ship's pilot.

As the American Civil War raged, he led a plot that stowed his family and several other slaves aboard the vessel, and steered the ship into Union waters. Surrendering to Union authorities, Smalls and the other slaves were freed, the ship was used to transport Union troops and supplies, and Smalls enlisted in the Union Navy, serving as a pilot. After the war, Smalls was granted a small fortune by Congress for his heroics, and purchased his former owner's home in Beaufort, South Carolina, where he opened a general store. He was elected to the South Carolina House, then the State Senate, and to the US House of Representatives in 1874. Video source: The African Americans - Many Rivers to Cross, PBS.

Animal Communicators Prove it’s Possible to Hear an Animal’s Thoughts. Makia Freeman, ContributorWaking Times Many animal communicators have demonstrated that is is possible to fully communicate with animals (just as with people), hearing their words & thoughts in a telepathic or energetic way. Animal communicators are people who can fully communicate with an animal just as they would with a normal human person. The communication is telepathic and 2-way; the animal communicators can both “speak” (by sending thought out towards the animal) and “hear” (by receiving thought in from the animal). Animal communicators have most likely existed for a long time, probably in every single culture in the world. It is only in our modern Western materialistic culture, which has been influenced by mainstream institutions of religion and science based on perceiving a reality of separateness, that such a possibility seems so outlandish.

However, as the following examples show,animal communication, also known as interspecies communication, is a very real phenomenon. Sources: I love the Victorian era. So I decided to live in it. My husband and I study history, specifically the late Victorian era of the 1880s and '90s. Our methods are quite different from those of academics. Everything in our daily life is connected to our period of study, from the technologies we use to the ways we interact with the world.

Five years ago we bought a house built in 1888 in Port Townsend, Washington State — a town that prides itself on being a Victorian seaport. When we moved in, there was an electric fridge in the kitchen: We sold that as soon as we could. Every morning I wind the mechanical clock in our parlor. There are no modern lightbulbs in our house.

(Estar Hyo Gyung Choi) Our heat comes from 19th-century gas heaters and from an antique kerosene space heater. The author and her husband. I bake all our bread from scratch, using a sourdough culture I keep constantly bubbling in the back corner of our kitchen in a bowl that belonged to my grandmother. The process didn't happen all at once. It's hard to say who started it. Zygmunt Bauman interview: Zygmunt Bauman: “Social media are a trap” | In English. Zygmunt Bauman has just celebrated his 90th birthday and taken two flights from his home in the northern British city of Leeds to get to an event in Burgos, northern Spain. He admits to being tired as we begin the interview, but he still manages to express his ideas calmly and clearly, taking his time with each response because he hates giving simple answers to complex questions.

Since developing his theory of liquid modernity in the late 1990s – which describes our age as one in which “all agreements are temporary, fleeting, and valid only until further notice” – he has become a leading figure in the field of sociology. His work on inequality and his critique of what he sees as the failure of politics to meet people’s expectations, along with a highly pessimistic view of the future of society, have been picked up by the so-called May 15 “Indignant” movement in Spain – although he has repeatedly highlighted its weaknesses.

QUESTION. You have described inequality as a “metastasis.” Q. Iceland to Officially Worship Norse Gods Again. For the first time since the Vikings sailed, the Icelandic public are worshiping classical Norse gods like Odin, Thor, and Frigg at a public temple built in their honor. "The worship of Odin, Thor, Freya and the other gods of the old Norse pantheon became an officially recognized religion exactly 973 years after Iceland’s official conversion to Christianity. " An Icelandic association called Asatruarfelagid, which promotes faith in the Norse gods and is headed by high-priest Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, raised sufficient funds and received permission from the government to construct the first such temple in 1,000 years. Observers wonder how the rise of neo-pagan traditions will affect the reception of Christianity. Professor Luke Timothy Johnson of Emory University says early Christians frequently misinterpreted virtuous gods as demons: "Christian mission has always positioned itself as a rescue operation, that people were in desperate straits, were indeed under the influence of demons. ...

Ricky & Doris: an Unconventional Friendship in New York City. With Puppets! What It's Like to Be Noam Chomsky's Assistant. Sainsbury's Christmas Ad: Mog the Cat Nearly Ruins the Holidays. 6 Year Old Shelter Cat Waited for His Forever Humans. Now 8 Months Later... What Happens When A Wild Wolf Meets A Labrador. Fox go FLOOF. 11-year-old girl sings a hauntingly beautiful version of “House of the Rising Sun” with a voice powerful beyond her years.

World’s First ‘Phodographer’: Dog Wears Heart Rate Monitor With Camera That Takes Pics When He Gets Excited. In 1969, a Boy Snuck into John Lennon's Hotel Room with a Recorder. It Went Like This. Shake Your Silk-Maker: The Dance of the Peacock Spider. Black Bear Family Has The Best Summer Pool Party Ever! Black Bear Family Has The Best Summer Pool Party Ever! Circus Lion Freed From Cage Feels Earth Beneath His Paws For First Time. Stunning Photos Capture the Majestic Beauty of Ravens. Love Liberates. Tiny owl unfazed by road encounter with Colorado cop (PHOTOS, VIDEO) THIS Lion Was Bored So They Tossed Him a Toy. They Were Baffled By What He Did With It! Kitten And Owlet Become Best Friends And Nap Buddies. Video captures moment stowaway cat emerges on wing of plane in French Guiana. The Bizarre Tale Of Melanie Griffith And Her "Pet" Lion. Simple messages from the paddock in northern Tasmania aim to prevent suicide.

Incredible Nurse Cat From Poland Looks After Other Animals At Animal Shelter. Homeless Cat Sneaks Into Zoo And Becomes Friends With A Lynx.