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Further Up Yonder
Film student Giacomo Sardelli:
"Pictures taken from the International Space Station to tell a story and share the message sent by the astronauts who worked on the station in the last 11 years."
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5 - Portraits of Albanian Women Who Have Lived Their Lives As Men
“Burneshas,” or females who have lived their lives as men in Albania society to escape the old codes that governed the tribal clans, with women as the property of their husbands, are captured in the moving portraits in the series Sworn Virgins of Albania, by photographer Jill Peters.
Peters:
I learned that the Burrnesha are well respected within their communities. They possess an indescribable amount of strength and pride, and value their family honor above all else. Their absolute transition is wholly accepted, posited and taken without question by the people among whom they live. But most surprising, is they have very few regrets for the great deal they have sacrificed.
The freedom to vote, drive, conduct business, earn money, drink, smoke, swear, own a gun or wear pants was traditionally the exclusive province of men. Young girls were commonly forced into arranged marriages, often with much older men in distant villages. As an alternative, becoming a Sworn Virgin, or ‘burnesha” elevated a woman to the status of a man and granted her all the rights and privileges of the male population. In order to manifest the transition such a woman cut her hair, donned male clothing and sometimes even changed her name. Male gestures and swaggers were practiced until they became second nature. Most importantly of all, she took a vow of celibacy to remain chaste for life. She became a “he”. This practice continues today but as modernization inches toward the small villages nestled in the Alps, this archaic tradition is increasingly seen as obsolete. Only a few aging Sworn Virgins remain.
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1 - Vibrant Rio Timelapse
Beautiful summery vibrant Rio de Janeiro in stunning colorful hyperlapse.
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2 - London Christmas Timelapse
Gorgeous hyperlapse of London during a gorgeous time of the year.
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3 - Ice Record
Swedish indie rockers Shout Out Louds wanted to make a splash to introduce "Blue Ice," the first single off their upcoming Optica. The worked tiwhTBWA Stockholm, to make a kit that would make a playable record out of ice.
They sent out only 10 kits to fans and press. Fascinating idea.
Here is the full single.
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4 - Super Supercut of Cinema 2012
For the past five years, film student Kees van Dijkhuizen Jr. has made a supercut of the year in film. This is lovely and moving. Better in fact that a lot of the films he includes.
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5 - Icebergs of Greenland and Iceland
If there were a spectrum of the state of matter, icebergs would be about halfway between sky and stone. With a lot of the structure and scale of rock with the ephemeralness of water. These absolutely stunning images come from Nuremberg-based photographer Jan Erik Waider.
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POTD - The Sleepers - Parts 5 & 6 by Walt Whitman
5
Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,
Washington stands inside the lines, he stands on the
intrench'd hills amid a crowd of officers,
His face is cold and damp, he cannot repress the
weeping drops,
He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes, the color
is blanch'd from his cheeks,
He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided
to him by their parents.
The same at last and at last when peace is declared,
He stands in the room of the old tavern, the
well-belov'd soldiers all pass through,
The officers speechless and slow draw near in their
turns,
The chief encircles their necks with his arm and kisses
them on the cheek,
He kisses lightly the wet cheeks one after another, he
shakes hands and bids good-by to the army.
6
Now what my mother told me one day as we sat at dinner
together,
Of when she was a nearly grown girl living home with
her parents on the old homestead
A red squaw came one breakfast-time to the old
homestead,
On her back she carried a bundle of rushes for
rush-bottoming chairs,
Her hair, straight, shiny, coarse, black, profuse,
half-envelop'd her face,
Her step was free and elastic, and her voice sounded
exquisitely as she spoke.
My mother look'd in delight and amazement at the
stranger,
She look'd at the freshness of her tall-borne face and
full and pliant limbs,
The more she look'd upon her she loved her,
Never before had she seen such wonderful beauty and
purity,
She made her sit on a bench by the jamb of the
fireplace, she cook'd food for her,
She had no work to give her, but she gave her
remembrance and fondness.
The red squaw staid all the forenoon, and toward the
middle of the afternoon she went away,
O my mother was loth to have her go away,
All the week she thought of her, she watch'd for her
many a month,
She remember'd her many a winter and many a summer,
But the red squaw never came nor was heard of there
again.
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1 - Big Picture's Best Nature Photos of 2012
Boston.com's Big Picture blog, always a favorite, has collected some of their favorite nature photos of the year.
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2 - Grandma's Home Cooking from Around the World
Gabriele Galimberti's photo project, Delicatessen with Love collects photos and recipes from grandmothers all around the world. Be sure and visit the site for all the recipes and more info.
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POTD - The Sleepers - 2, 3 & 4 by Walt Whitman
2
I descend my western course, my sinews are flaccid,
Perfume and youth course through me and I am their
wake.
It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old
woman's,
I sit low in a straw-bottom chair and carefully darn my
grandson's stockings.
It is I too, the sleepless widow looking out on the
winter midnight,
I see the sparkles of star shine on the icy and pallid
earth.
A shroud I see and I am the shroud, I wrap a body and
lie in the coffin,
It is dark here under ground, it is not evil or pain
here, it is blank here, for reasons.
(It seems to me that every thing in the light and air
ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him
know he has enough.)
3
I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked
through the eddies of the sea,
His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he
strikes out with courageous arms, he urges himself
with his legs,
I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,
I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him
head-foremost on the rocks.
What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves ?
Will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him
in the prime of his middle age?
Steady and long he struggles,
He is baffled, bang'd, bruis'd, he holds out while his
strength holds out,
The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood, they
bear him away, they roll him, swing him, turn him,
His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it
is continually bruis'd on rocks,
Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.
4
I turn but do not extricate myself,
Confused, a past-reading, another, but with darkness
yet.
The beach is cut by the razory ice-wind, the wreck-guns
sound,
The tempest lulls, the moon comes floundering through
the drifts.
I look where the ship help lessly heads end on, I hear
the burst as she strikes, I hear the howls of
dismay, they grow fainter and fainter.
I cannot aid with my wringing fingers,
I can but rush to the surf and let it drench me and
freeze upon me.
I search with the crowd, not one of the company is
wash'd to us alive,
In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in
rows in a barn.
4 - Family Guy Voices Rap "Look at Me Now"
The voices of Family Guy give Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now" a new shine.
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5 - The United States of Pop - 2012 DJ Earworm
Dj Earworm takes Billboard’s weekly Hot 100 charts, and mashes some of the favorites into his “The United State of Pop (Shine Brighter),” 25 tunes into just four minutes.
Photo by flickr/ben▐
POTD - The Sleepers - Part 1 by Walt Whitman
The Sleepers
by Walt Whitman
1
I wander all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.
How solemn they look there, stretch'd and still,
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.
The wretched features of ennuyes, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists,
The gash'd bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door'd rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,
The night pervades them and infolds them.
The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,
The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully
wrapt.
The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son
sleeps,
The murderer that is to be hung next day, how does he
sleep?
And the murder'd person, how does he sleep?
The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,
The head of the money-maker that plotted all day
sleeps,
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all
sleep.
I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the
worst-suffering and the most restless,
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from
them,
The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.
Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,
The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not
the earth is beautiful.
I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the
other sleepers each in turn,
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other
dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers.
I am a dance--play up there! the fit is whirling me
fast!
I am the ever-laughing--it is new moon and twilight,
I see the hiding of douceurs, I see nimble ghosts
whichever way I look,
Cache and cache again deep in the ground and sea, and
where it is neither ground nor sea.
Well do they do their jobs those journeymen divine,
Only from me can they hide nothing, and would not if
they could,
I reckon I am their boss and they make me a pet
besides,
And surround me and lead me and run ahead when I walk,
To lift their cunning covers to signify me with
stretch'd arms, and resume the way;
Onward we move, a gay gang of blackguards! with
mirth-shouting music and wild-flapping pennants of
joy!
I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician,
The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in
the box,
He who has been famous and he who shall be famous after
to-day,
The stammerer, the well-form'd person, the wasted or
feeble person.
I am she who adorn'd herself and folded her hair
expectantly,
My truant lover has come, and it is dark.
Double yourself and receive me darkness,
Receive me and my lover too, he will not let me go
without him.
I roll myself upon you as upon a bed, I resign myself
to the dusk.
He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my
lover,
He rises with me silently from the bed.
Darkness, you are gentler than my lover, his flesh was
sweaty and panting,
I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.
My hands are spread forth, I pass them in all
directions,
I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are
journeying.
Be careful darkness! already what was it touch'd me?
I thought my lover had gone, else darkness and he are
one,
I hear the heart-beat, I follow, I fade away.
Whitman is one of those figures who arrives at your doorstep packed with some many other people's opinion about him, but once I finally unwrapped him I was struck by his inimitable spirit most of all.
1 - Uncanny Wood Carved Humans
Italian artist Willy Verginer carves and paints these incredibly precise surreal wooden statues.
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2 - Taiwan's Lit Cherry Trees
The Aboriginal Cherry Blossom Festival brings together a large number of visitors to the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village to see their 2,000 cherry blossom trees.
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3 - Lego Movie Scenes
Yeah these lego recreations of movie scenes and characters from 21-year-old Alex Eylar are so much fun.
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POTD - Gun Control by Carol Muske-Dukes
Gun Control
by Carol Muske-Dukes
1.
When the older brother, horsing around, opened fire
With the 12 gauge and shot his little brother in the back,
my Aunt Anna pressed her open
Hand over the wound, over the blown right lung.
Blood stuttered up
through her fingers. As he began to slide away,
she kept
her hand hard-flat against that death.
At Emergency, they had to pry
It away. He survived that night.
When he takes his shirt off today, at the lake,
You can see the bleach-white stretch where
No hair grows and the skin thins to
Her imprint—a hand-span—just under his shoulder
Where a wing, if we had wings, might begin to unfurl.
2.
I said, “He’s going to hurt someone”—and the Director,
As he had been instructed by those far above the precincts
of the Workshop, told me nothing could be done until he did.
So he wrote things that spun his hurt and jagged plan round
Each other like the knife feints of the blood-masked Jack
the Ripper—“surgeon in the bee-loud glade,” he wrote.
If the blood jet was Poetry, Jack would sip demi-liters from
My neck and the neck of the girl sitting next to him.
He shouted out in my class that we were married, he
Would prove it “someday.” Skipping his meds,
Flinging a lit smoke. At the campus bar, he
broke the bottle kept in his pack—vaulted
over to cut the bartender’s throat. They tackled
him. But he shook free, reached for the gun,
ready to open fire. They called the Psych
Center there “Workshop East”: I remember that.
3.
Late at a Hollywood dinner party, he leaned in to me,
Hair over one eye, smiling in that boyish seductive style,
So familiar from the Big Screen. Seriously drunk.
He was telling me what he feared most “on this earth”:
“Waking up in bed to find someone standing over me
with a gun.” Later I heard how he did it—
ln bed, pistol to his temple. When the man with the Glock
floated over him: he knew he was all he’d ever feared.
Muske-Dukes, a novelist and a poet, happened to be the judge for the first poetry award I won, a long time ago.
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4 - Distorted Time
Gideon van der Stelt collaged film fragments, superimposing them onto a paper model of the Dutch city of Utrect (where I was lucky enough to spend about half a year) in a video titled Verknipte tijden (Distorted Times).
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