Van Gogh’s Fruit

Why have I never seen Van Gogh’s paintings of fruit before? They’re lovely.

 

 

Loretta Lynn: Women’s Libber

A great hero, Loretta Lynn, lived to be 90 and died today. Here’s a repost from the very first week of this blog.

I was listening to KEXP in Seattle last summer, and a song came on that was pretty good; a very recently recorded pop tune, slightly distorted guitar, kinda fun. One of these bands made up of twenty or thirty-somethings that is KEXP’s most frequent fare. Then the singer’s voice came in, and I thought, Wow! Who is this? She was singing in a country style, and she had a powerful, belt-it-out kind of voice, but at the same time completely controlled and lilting over the top — what I call that high, lonesome sound. I got quite excited, and thought, whoever this is, I’ve got to get her album. She’s fantastic. At the end of the song, the DJ said “That was Loretta Lynn and the White Stripes”. So that explains it.

I particularly like Loretta’s women’s libber songs, and this is one of my favorites. Country songs from this era tackled social issues that were not addressed by other pop music of the day. The mainline pop and rock musicians had bigger fish to fry when it came to “topical” music: war, social justice, civil rights. The politics of country music of the 60s and 70s was more personal: home, work, relationships. While the country music establishment may have officially scorned the so-called women’s libbers, their female artists, and especially Loretta Lynn, created music that was all about liberating women, and fans ate it up.

More country music

~ by lolarusa on November 23, 2006.

Aria Bhatt in Gangubai

Dholida (Drummer) from the great Sanjay Leela Bhansali‘s newest film Gangubai.

It’s based on the life of prostitute and social activist Gaungubai Kothewali and stars Aria Bhatt.

Brave Women of Iran

Please take a minute to watch brave Iranian women stand up to their authoritarian, theocratic government.

Iranian women have had enough of the control and abuse and there are many Iranian men who are standing with them. @AlinejadMasih pic.twitter.com/Z2xJee90YW

— Yashar Ali 🐘 یاشار (@yashar) September 20, 2022

Billboard Hijackers

Art activists across Europe parody the green-washing in airline advertising.

Created by members of international artists’ collective Brandalism.

Happy Equinox

Autumn Effect at Argenteuil, Claude Monet

To Autumn

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
  Steady thy laden head across a brook;
  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Times Have Changed

Happy Labor Day

Huskie Smells Durian Fruit

Huskies are so dramatic.

Life Without Water

A Nepalese family has to move away from their village when the glacier that provides their water melts away. This is happening all around the world, and could happen here in Seattle.

Weird Carrots

Thanks, Nag