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cdyssey · 9 months

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Abbott “Pilot” (1.01) Rewatch

Here we go. ☺️

Barbara’s “Pilot” wig always throws me off-guard because it’s so different from her usual hairstyle, lmao.

The first cold open is so good for establishing what Abbott is systematically up against—little funding for the school and a lack of support for the teachers. It’s also just funny SNDNSNSNS. Ending on that kid pissing.

“Like a Xanax… like a huge Xanax for kids to sit on.” [Janine squints.]

“It’s like ‘Back that Azz Up’ for kids.” ANQKWJSNSNSNWKS.

Barbara’s first talking head is just pitch perfect. Sheryl nails the essence of who she presents herself to be right off the bat: the sternness, the respectability, the elegance. “I am Barbara Howard, woman of God.”

“No! It must have gone to spam!” / “It’s so crazy how my emails do that with you and nobody else.” ALQKSNDJWNS. It’s fun seeing the distance between Barb and Janine now, knowing just how far they’ll have come by the time we reach “Mom.”

“Okay, you guys workin’ with the cops ‘cause you gotta tell me.”. Love that she was flirting with the cameraperson seconds before that.

“And you can’t class up a rug like you can a couch with a nice cat of plastic.” Abbott really is one of those rare pilots that just GETS its characters right out of the gate.

I just clocked that Ava is wearing an Eagle shirt under her white blazer WNDNSNSN.

“And, yet, Barb, one of our best and almost senior teachers here, she never complains. What is your secret, Barb?” / “Knowing there’s not much you can do, Ava.” [Barbara smiles widely.] AKQKQKSOWKSKSJSJ. PILOT BARB WAS SO RNSNDNSNS.

“My support was gonna do about as much as that five-year old bra you’ve got on right there.” QOQKSNDIWJWNSJDJS. PILOT BARBBBBBBVH.

Barb smirking when Melissa is explaining how she’s got a guy for everything. ☺️

“Melissa is resourceful, capable.” ☺️☺️

“Why does Jacob here need a smoking break every five minutes?” Omfg, I forgot that he smoked.

“I switched to an herbal vape.” AKQKQOANNS

“Jacob, what did I say about, like, not talking about your time in Africa?” ANDNDNDNS. Listen, Chris Perfetti nails white male liberal twink perfectly. <3

“I wonder if she tried counting.” FFHDJSNDJSN. GOD, I LOVE HER

“Oh, forgive me. I thought one of my colleagues here hired a stripper for me.” good god ansjjwsjsjsj.

Gregory and Janine’s first meeting in the bathroom is soooooo good. So much clumsy chaos and then that undeniable spark of something.

“And I think the job is working with what you’ve got so you don’t get let down!” Ugh, such a painful line, but it’s so true for so many school systems in the States, where a lack of everything has continually beaten its educators down.

“I mean, am I even a Sagittarius?” WNDNSNS. Janine is sooooo a Sagittarius.

I’ve always loved the detail of Melissa loudly going “Excuse me?” when Ava starts going in on Janine.

The pathetic, little square pizza….

Barbara’s face journey of being indignant at what Ava was doing to moved and concerned by Janine’s speech is so, so wonderful. SLR is masterful at those microexpressions.

“Janine, ignore Ava. Big feet are a sign of fertility.” HELFPDNSNSJWJSS HELP ME.

Barbara’s dialogue about how teachers have to be it all. Ugh. This show gets it.

“Mhhhm. I can make more working the street—easy.” KQKQKWJDNW

“Hey, thank you so much. What’s your name?” / “I got no name.” / “He doesn’t got a name.” ALQOQOPWDIDOSJS

That small smile Gregory gives Janine when she walks away… he’s already a goner. 😭

Barbara silently bringing in the cleaner. 😭😭 Work Mom!!!!!

Oh, I love this show so freaking much.

#abbott elementary #s: abbott elementary #maggie blogs #abbottrw #not sure if I’m gonna blog all of them like this but I def wanna do it for the majority of them!!

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lboogie1906 · 2 months

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Harriette Cole (born March 14, 1961), is a life stylist, author, nationally syndicated advice columnist, motivational speaker, media trainer, magazine editor, lifestyle writer, wife, and mother.

She attended Towson State University and completed her college education at Howard University where she became a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

She worked for Congress Barbara Boxer. She freelanced as a runway model. She became an assistant editor at Essence Magazine. She became the editor of that section. She traveled all over the world documenting cultures of people of African descent. Her travels took her to the Ivory Coast in West Africa, Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, Bahia, Brazil, Paris, France, throughout the Caribbean, and the US. She left Essence and launched her own media company, Harriette Cole Media.

She has written several books including How to Be: A Guide to Conscious Living, Choosing Truth, Vows, and Coming Together. She has helped to launch several magazines such as American Legacy Woman, Savoy, and Uptown. She led the visual transformation of Ebony magazine and served as editor-in-chief of the magazine. She produced covers featuring Barack and Michelle Obama before he announced his run for the presidency, Barack Obama days after he was elected, Michael Jackson for his final photo shoot and interview, and Prince.

She has provided media training, presentation training, and/or fashion styling for many clients including Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys, Carl Thomas, JoJo, Shontelle, and Hal Linton.

She has provided presentations and empowerment workshops for businesses and institutions, including Speaking of Women’s Health, Kraft, the Saralee Corporation, Cornell University, the National Urban League, National Action Network, Jack and Jill of America, Delta Sigma Theta, and more.

She hosted Perfect Match New York, and Pulse. She has written the nationally syndicated advice column “Sense & Sensitivity”.

She has been a guest on the Today Show. She was featured on Access Hollywood, The Insider, MSNBC, LXTV, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Rachael Ray, NPR, BET, and TVOne. #africanhistory365 #Africanexcellence #deltasigmatheta #womenshistorymonth

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fearsmagazine · 4 years

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Classic Euro Horror from Masters of the Macabre: Mario Bava, Jean Rollin & Jess Franco Now Available Digitally on Kino Now

With October upon us, Kino Now brings you a selection of Euro Horror classics from three masters of the macabre: Mario Bava, Jean Rollin, and Jess Franco.

These stylish horror auteurs each brought a unique approach to the genre that transformed it in exciting new directions. Bava’s colorful, lurid tales of terror have been cited as an influence on everyone from Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola to Quentin Tarantino and Tim Burton. Rollin’s dark, dreamlike fantasies pioneered the erotic vampire genre and Franco’s uncompromising exploitation films had a major impact on slasher movies to follow.

Get ready for Halloween with these and other Euro Horror cult favorites listed below! Available on KinoNow.com

Kill, Baby...Kill! Directed by Mario Bava In a turn of the century Transylvanian village, a doctor arrives to investigate a young maid’s mysterious death, only to learn the legend of a deceased girl whose ball-bouncing ghost may be driving the locals to suicide… With its hallucinatory colors and sinister moods, this is the pinnacle of Gothic Euro-horror, an influence on Scorsese, Lynch, Fellini, Argento, del Toro, and countless others, and the ideal entry point into Mario Bava’s body of work.

Black Sunday Directed by Mario Bava After being crucified for devil worship, Barbara Steele, in her breakthrough role, is brought back to life to haunt her 19th-century descendants, and sets her sights on possessing young Katia (also played by Steele). Adapted from a Nikolai Gogol short story and filled with cobwebs and blood, Bava’s first on-screen directorial credit defined Italian Gothic and remains a richly atmospheric masterwork.

Fascination Directed by Jean Rollin Inspired by a purportedly fact-based Jean Lorrain short story, one of Jean Rollin’s most-admired works showcases his frequent collaborator Brigitte Lahaie (at the time France’s top adult-films star) and discovery Franka Mai (later a novelist). It’s the early 20th century, and thief Jean-Marie Lemaire double-crosses his partners in crime and hides out in a château, confident he can handle chambermaids Lahaie and Mai But all bets are off, even before the sun goes down.

The Iron Rose Directed by Jean Rollin Eerie and sensual, this love story finds Jean Rollin in a particularly contemplative mode. Françoise Pascal (later a UK sitcom star) and Hugues Quester (later of Kieslowski’s Blue) catch each other’s eye and flirt their way into a graveyard frolic. After canoodling in a tomb, they emerge into a nighttime world and find themselves lost and disoriented, with the sinking feeling of a no-exit scenario. Rollin trouper Mireille Dargent appears—as she often would for him—in clown makeup.

Female Vampire Directed by Jess Franco Channeling his deepest libidinal desires and darkest fears into films, with no apparent concern for narrative convention or the boundaries of mainstream taste, Jess Franco is a cinematic iconoclast. Here, his wife Lina Romay stars as the mysterious Countess Irina Karlstein, a beautiful vampiress who feeds on victims at their moments of sexual climax. Because she destroys those whose essence she consumes, Irina is doomed to a life of solitude, wandering through the Western Coast of Europe in a dreamlike state, shrouded in a lush musical score by Daniel White.

The Awful Dr. Orlof Directed by Jess Franco Jess Franco’s career was launched by what is generally considered the first horror film produced in Spain. Cloaking the story in the visual style of the British gothic film, Franco injected Orlof with the kind of morbid eroticism that would quickly become his signature. Howard Vernon stars as a diabolical surgeon who, with the help of his blind minion Morpho (Ricardo Valle), lures beautiful women into the operating room of his stone castle, so they may provide the raw materials for a series of experimental face grafts for his disfigured daughter.

#film news #movie news #streaming #Horror movie #kinonow #classic horror #euro horror

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toldnews-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/united-states-of-america/howard-thurman-the-overlooked-civil-rights-hero/

Howard Thurman: The overlooked civil rights hero

“Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, and go do it,” Thurman told him. “Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.”

Thurman’s response went viral before the term was invented. It’s been cited by everyone from cultural icon Oprah Winfrey to countless inspirational speakers. It’s even become an internet meme. But what makes those words stick is that Thurman validated them by the way he lived.

Thurman forged a connection between Mohandas Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that gave wings to the civil rights movement. He wrote a bombshell of a book that revolutionized the traditional portrait of Jesus. And he still inspires leaders as diverse as civil rights icon John Lewis, the Democratic congressman from Atlanta, and Barbara Brown Taylor, a celebrated author and speaker.

“Howard Thurman was a spiritual genius who transformed persons who transformed history,” is how Luther E. Smith, Jr., author of “Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet,” once described him.

Now a broader audience is being offered their own chance to meet Thurman. Starting Friday, PBS stations will air “Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.” The 55-minute film explores how Thurman went from a lonely African-American boy who talked to an oak tree for companionship to a man who still speaks to spiritual seekers nearly 40 years after his death.

Martin Doblmeier, the film’s director, said Thurman’s voice is needed even more today because of pervasive political and religious tribalism. Thurman constantly sought common ground with people who were different.

He calls Thurman the “patron saint of those who say I’m spiritual not religious.”

“He can put angry hearts at ease,” he says. “You can’t read Howard Thurman and come away with an angry heart.”

Thurman’s deep connection with MLK

He also took risks.

He was the first pastor to co-found an intentionally multiracial and multifaith church in the United States.

He was the first African-American pastor to travel to India and meet Gandhi. (Gandhi ended their meeting by asking Thurman to sing a Negro spiritual).

And he was one of the first pastors to inspire King to merge Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance with the civil rights movement.

Thurman’s connection with King went way back. He was a classmate of King’s father, “Daddy King,” at Morehouse College. And he became dean at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel while King was enrolled at the university. While King was studying for his doctorate at the university, he would attend chapel service and take notes while Thurman preached.

King would often stop by Thurman’s house on Sunday afternoons for another ritual: watching Jackie Robinson play baseball on TV.

“There’s this fatherly sense, this spiritual mentorship that Thurman provides to Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Doblmeier says.

King quickly got a chance to apply the lessons he learned from hearing Thurman preach. Six months after earning his doctorate, he led his first nonviolent mass protest in Montgomery, Alabama. Thurman’s concepts about nonviolence and Jesus are peppered through some of King’s writings.

“One cannot understand King’s philosophy and theology without first understanding Thurman’s work and Thurman’s influence on King and other civil rights leaders,” says David B. Gowler, co-editor of “Howard Thurman: Sermons on the Parables.”

Gowler called Thurman one of the overlooked heroes of the civil rights movement. Yet he wasn’t a traditional preacher-activist. One pastor in the film quipped that many expected Thurman to be a Moses, but instead they got a mystic.

The essence of Thurman’s message

Thurman embodied what some call a “prophetic spirituality.” He talked constantly about the “inward journey.” But he wasn’t interested in any theology preoccupied with the self. He thought personal transformation should be accompanied by a “burning concern for social justice.”

Gowler calls Thurman a “spiritual activist.” So was Thurman’s wife, Sue Bailey Thurman,

“He was fundamentally both a teacher and pastor to others in the civil rights movement,” says Gowler, a religion professor at Oxford College of Emory University in Georgia.

Thurman was also another type of pioneer, the film shows. Long before the term “interfaith dialogue” became common, Thurman worshiped with people of other faiths and warned about the dangers of religious fundamentalism.

He once told the BBC that “theologies are inventions of the mind” designed to “imprison religious experience.” But the religious experience itself will always be one step ahead of dogma because it is “dynamic and fluid.”

“Whether I’m black, white, Presbyterian, Baptist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim — in the presence of God all of these categories by which we relate to each other fade away,” Thurman says during another interview in the film.

The film also explores Thurman’s best-known work, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” which was published in 1949. The book was a condemnation of an “otherworldly” Christianity, which Thurman said was far too often “on the side of the strong and the powerful against the weak and oppressed.”

A person can’t grasp Jesus’ message without first understanding the anger and fear that he grappled with as a member of a despised minority under Roman occupation, Thurman argued in the book.

“Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was a poor Jew. Jesus was a poor Jew from a minority group. Thurman makes the point that if Jesus were kicked into the ditch by a Roman soldier, he would be just another Jew in a ditch,” Gregory Ellison II, an activist who is working on a book on Thurman, says in the film.

The ‘sound of the genuine’

Thurman knew what it felt like to be despised. He was born in 1899 in Daytona Beach, Florida, during the “nadir” of race relations in post-Civil War America. Lynching was common, discrimination legal and the Ku Klux Klan was so popular it held a massive march on Washington when he was a young man.

He was 7 when his father died. He was raised in part by his grandmother, Nancy, who had been enslaved. She was illiterate, but he saw her as his first spiritual genius.

“I learned more, for instance, about the genius of the religion of Jesus from my grandmother than from all the men who taught me all … the Greek and all the rest of it,” he once said.

Despite Thurman’s influence, he’s not commonly known today. Many classic civil rights books and documentaries fail to mention him. Part of that may be because Thurman was so hard to define. Even his preaching style was unconventional. He didn’t throw down like a traditional black pastor with foot-stomping and shouting.

In the book, “Howard Thurman: Essential Writings,” Smith describes Thurman’s peculiar preaching style:

“He was a master in the use of silence. At times, he would be so overwhelmed by an understanding that he seemed to be in a trance.”

Thurman’s relative obscurity is part of what drove Doblmeier to make his film.

“My big fear is that Howard Thurman’s name might get lost in history,” he says. “We want to use this moment in history to get the word out.”

Others are taking up Doblmeier’s cause. The director Arleigh Prelow is nearing completion of another film on the minister and mystic entitled, “The Psalm of Howard Thurman.” And a biography, “Against the Hounds of Hell: A life of Howard Thurman,” is set to be published next year.

Thurman may finally get mass recognition. Not that it would matter to him, though. He was interested in something else.

In 1980, a year before he died, he gave a commencement address at Spelman College in Atlanta, where he talked about what he called “the sound of the genuine.”

He described it as something that “flows through everyone” but can be rendered mute by ambition, dreams and the daily tumult of life.

“You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all of existence,” Thurman said. “And if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

So what is the sound of the genuine? The meaning is elusive but tantalizing, like much of Thurman’s work. Ask four Thurman scholars and you’ll get four different answers.

But virtually all of Thurman’s devotees agree on one point. The Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a civil right activist, says it best near the end of the film.

“If you are a serious person about your own journey,” Moss says, “especially if you are in the struggle for human rights, then you’ve got to meet Howard Thurman.”

#Howard Thurman: The overlooked civil rights hero - CNN #united state news #US #us headlines #us latest news #us local news #us national news #US news

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bklnpoet · 3 years

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2020 NBCC Winners

This past winter I was one of 30 judges of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for a first book. In March NBCC announced that the book I voted for, Luster by Raven Leilani, won the Leonard Prize. One of my fellow judges, Natalie Bakopoulos says, “On behalf of the NBCC membership, we are honored and delighted to present the John Leonard Prize to Raven Leilani for her brilliant novel, Luster. Luster’s artistry, wit, and narrative surprises make it a tremendous achievement, and its tender and raucous prose mirrors the narrator’s tender and raucous self.” Leonard judge Adam Dalva adds, “Luster is a compulsive book—compulsive to read, with compulsive, complex characters—that brilliantly captures the essence of its lead, Edie. She is a wonderfully depicted swirl of painting, video games, and longing.”

Other 2020 NBCC winners include Nicole R. Fleetwood, who won the criticism award for Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Harvard Univ. Press). Committee chair J. Howard Rosier calls the book “Profoundly revisionist,” as it “identifies the conditions under which incarcerated persons create art and taxonomizes its making.”

francine j. harris was awarded the poetry prize for Here Is the Sweet Hand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which, judge Megan Labrise says, gives the reader a “gentle caress, a gut punch, a come-hither curved finger, a rib-tickler, and a stop-sign palm,” sometimes “all five at once.” By “exploring femininity, blackness, queerness, nature, and institutions (political, academic, and disciplinary),” Labrise says, these poems “have the power to move.”

Cathy Park Hong won the prize in autobiography for Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (One World). Committee chair Marion Winik says, “Hong’s endlessly interesting blend of personal storytelling and cultural criticism digs into the personal to find the political, untangling the knots of privilege, envy, dissatisfaction, humiliation, and difference.” The winner in the fiction category is Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (Knopf), in which the author imagines Shakespeare’s son Hamnet’s death from bubonic plague, lonely and agonizing yet marked by courage. O’Farrell “brings the boy so vividly to life the reader is stricken by his loss,” says judge Colette Bancroft.

The biography prize went to Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World by Amy Stanley (Scribner). “Through the life of one persistent, defiant woman, Amy Stanley reveals the sweep of 19th century Japan, how the tiny fishing village of Edo became the global city Tokyo,” says committee chair Elizabeth Taylor.

Nonfiction recipient Tom Zoellner’s Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire (Harvard Univ. Press) “engagingly excavates shrouded history,” says judge Carlin Romano, to show how “heroic Jamaican freedom fighters catalyzed the end of slavery in the British Empire,” and in the process “restores these martyrs to their rightful place in the pantheon of justice.”

The recipient of the 2020 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, given to an NBCC member for exceptional critical work, was Jo Livingstone, culture staff writer at the New Republic, where they primarily contribute book criticism in addition to film and music coverage. Their writing has also recently appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and Bookforum. Committee chair Colette Bancroft says, “Livingstone submitted a collection of three reviews of books that ranged from Samantha Irby’s earthy and hilarious personal essays to Christopher Chitty’s deeply researched history of the relationship between sexuality and capital, with a bounce into the thorny autofiction of the latest Martin Amis novel. In each case Livingstone brought to bear keen intelligence, wide-ranging knowledge, surprising perceptions and beautiful writing.”

The recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award was The Feminist Press. For 50 years, the Feminist Press has been at the forefront of activism for women’s equality. The Feminist Press started by publishing influential works that had been out of print, including, crucially, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper, now widely considered a classic of American literature. Over the years, they’ve published books by Anita Hill, Grace Paley, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Pussy Riot. They also publish Women’s Studies Quarterly, the influential journal that was established by the press in 1972. They remain on the vanguard of the feminist movement, and continue to publish essential works of American and international literature, including recent critically acclaimed books by Emily Hashimoto and Juliana Delgado Lopera, an unearthed classic by Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West, and one of this year’s finalists in the NBCC’s criticism category, Grieving by Cristina Rivera Garza. Committee chair Michael Schaub says: “[The Press’s] mission statement reads, ‘Celebrating our legacy, we lift up insurgent and marginalized voices from around the world to build a more just future,’ and that’s exactly what they’ve done. Their literature over the past five decades has made the world a better place for everyone.”

All 2020 NBCC prize winners are listed here: https://www.bookcritics.org/awards/ #Bookcritics.org #leonardprize

#nationalbookcriticscircle #books #awards #john leonard prize #raven leilani #luster

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thelegacyproject · 3 years

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Chloe Howard - STAND Beautiful!

Chloe Howard was born with a clubfoot. This meant enduring much corrective surgery and not growing up walking and running freely with her peers. From a young age, Chloe learnt to deal with physical and emotional suffering. Her parents wisely instilled in her the belief that she was born special and that God has a beautiful plan for her life.

With the love and support of her family and community, Chloe shone her special light despite her difficulties. This was until she was subject to the injustice of physical assault and bullying from fellow teenagers. Stripped from her position of security with her unique being, her confidence in herself and her faith in people fled in a simple day. Clouds settled over her bright self as she processed her experience and learnt that the very thing that made her special was in fact what made her feel ashamed.

Standing beautiful comes naturally to this wonderful youth and Chloe reveals, that despite being born with a congenital deformity, she has tapped into what makes a person beautiful. An inspirational meeting with Bono of U2, encouraged her to use her voice. He helped her understand that when she speaks truth, her voice will be supported by the voices of many. Making herself available for God’s work enabled her healing to begin, her confidence to return and gave her the strength to tell others her story.

We are privileged to share the story of this brave young woman, whose courage and wisdom is beyond her years. She helps us remember that whether we are born with or without a blemish, with or without a defection or deformation, true beauty radiates from within. Thank you Chloe for the essence of you that you share with our readers here:

About my Life Mission:

“To help others embrace their uniqueness and STAND Beautiful.”

My Definition Of Success:

“I think success is standing beautiful and celebrating your uniqueness wherever you are. When we are able to embrace ourselves in whatever state we are in, we learn to love ourselves and that leads to emotional healing and, ultimately, leads us to living a more successful life. Success is trying something that is out of your comfort zone and believing you can achieve whatever you put your mind to. I grew up really shy, so I consider it a success that I was able to give my TEDx Talk. However, I believe that I still have so much to learn so I continue to strive to speak my truth which has helped others on their journey of transformation.”

My Highlights:

“As a freshman in high school, I was victim of assault due to a congenital deformity I was born with. I began to see myself as imperfect and powerless. However, I was able to prove that I am stronger than my perpetrators when I testified in front of a judge, the perpetrators, and their families, and I began to feel empowered by speaking the truth. Also, I managed to give a TEDx Talk as a sixteen year old – before I even got my driver’s license. I was the only youth chosen to speak at TEDx Santa Barbara and also was honoured to be the keynote speaker and kick off the day.”

Principles, Values and Ideologies I Live By :

“Since my assault, I’ve been living based on the idea that we are all beautiful and special not despite our differences, but because of them. I believe this is a valuable concept because it completely changes our perception of both ourselves and of others. When we start living like we were meant to live – embracing the way we are formed – we reach our full and complete potential. I’m also a Christian, so I believe that Jesus loves me and died for me and that when He puts obstacles in our lives, He equips us. God tells us that we are made for a reason, and I am doing my best to live that out.”

Dealing With Doubt:

“I deal with self-doubt, fear, and negativity by choosing to overlook my imperfections and instead see myself as beautiful and imperfectly perfect. I doubted myself after I was assaulted and felt useless, worthless and powerless. However, I slowly was able to see myself as beautiful, and worth so much more than how my perpetrators made me feel. I started writing the word “beautiful” over one of the scars on my foot, and in doing so made the choice to redefine how I saw my foot and myself. I wrote the word on myself so often that I began to associate my foot with beauty, and slowly began to believe it. In this way, I was able to conquer self-doubt.

There has been a positive knock-on effect from turning my doubt around. I have received numerous emails from others stating how my story helped them get through a rough patch in their life. For example, after speaking at one of the churches I was invited to, a young girl with a Clubfoot came up to me with tears in her eyes and told me that hearing my talk inspired her to stop hiding her foot from people.

Now? I want to change one more person on this Earth, and then another. There are 7 billion people right now on this Earth that feel broken and alone and imperfect – so I’m going to do what I can to reduce that number. I want to reach as many people as I can.”

The Best Advice I’ve Received:

“I had the opportunity to meet Bono of U2 the summer after I was assaulted, and I worked up the courage to tell him my story. In response, he told me that my voice is powerful, and that whenever I speak I become the voice for those that cannot speak for themselves. This advice changed my life, as Bono inspired me to become the budding activist that I am now.”

I Am Inspired By:

“I’ve always been inspired by Bethany Hamilton and her story. She is a professional surfer who was bitten by a shark and lost her arm, but didn’t let that stop her; she went back in the water and is now not only a professional surfer but also a motivational speaker. Her story, in a way, inspired me to “get back in the water” in my own life: start speaking about the very thing that had made me feel so powerless.”

#chloe howard #inspiration #motivateyourself #stand beautiful #the legacy project #heskethmedia #wespeakglobal

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orendarecords · 5 years

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Los Angeles Vocal Group Voxfire Re-Invents Medieval Music On Their Latest Release "Fontis"

Take songs from the Middle Ages and present them using the heavenly voices of three female singers plus a pair of musical-genre-crossing instrumentalists and you have the group Voxfire and their new modern-meets-medieval-mashup recording, FONTIS, on Orenda Records.

FONTIS represents a novel collaboration that stretches back ten centuries to reimagine words and music from the chapels, churches, courts and countrysides of Spain and France in the Middle Ages, by spotlighting today’s technologies and instrumentation. The result is a timeless trip allowing listeners to enjoy the essence of passionate music from nearly a millennium ago transposed into a relatable contemporary musical setting.

The members of Voxfire are founding-vocalists Samela Aird Beasom, Christen Herman and Susan Judy, plus instrumentalists and arrangers Nick DePinna and Ross Garren. On FONTIS, each of the vocalists sings lead or solo on a pair of tunes, but also sings in unison or harmony on other pieces, as well as supplying a dash of instrumental support here and there (there is one instrumental track). DePinna performs on trombone, ukelele, piano, synthesizer, percussion, live effects processing and more. Garren plays piano, harmonica, electric piano, organ, synthesizer, accordion and other instruments. The group is joined by special guests Hitomi Oba on saxophones and flute, Jens Kuross on drums, Noah Meites on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Mark Beasom on percussion. FONTIS was produced by Grammy®-Award-winning Peter Rutenberg.

“We’re not musicologists,” explains Susan Judy, “but we do all have a love for what is usually described as ‘early music,’ and all three of us singers have studied and researched early music and performed it in a variety of groups and contexts. We really enjoy presenting music that most people do not commonly or ever get to hear. ‘Once a good song, always a good song’ – as the saying goes – and we feel it is worth revisiting some of the greatest songs that originated hundreds and hundreds of years ago.”

The 13 tunes of FONTIS are sung in several medieval dialects that were spoken in Spain and France in the 12th-to-14th-centuries – Latin, Galician-Portuguese, Provencal-Occitan, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), and Arabic. The songs include church chants, secular troubadour tunes, music pilgrims might sing on religious treks, and romantic compositions – some with known, but more often, with anonymous writers. Lyric translations and details about each piece are available at the Voxfire website. But the appeal to modern listeners is much more direct and comes from the incredible beauty of the voices of three women soaring together and separately in a manner that evokes the passion, fervor, drama and deep-rooted feelings that the composers and singers imbued into the music in the distant past. Backed with modern sophisticated instrumentation, the music is elevated to a new level and becomes more universal in its appeal as elements of jazz, folk, classical, pop-rock, new age and avant-garde are heard.

More information on Voxfire is available at their website (voxfire.band) and their record company’s site (orendarecords.com). Their FONTIS CD and digital download tracks from that recording are available at online sales sites such as CDBaby, Amazon, iTunes, eMusic and many others. The music also can be heard (and Voxfire can be followed) at many major streaming platforms such as Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, Google Play and more.

Founded as a soprano trio, Voxfire has performed extensively in concerts and festivals throughout the United States. The trio was initially inspired by the meaningful words and transcendent melodies of the 12th-century abbess and composer Hildegard von Bingen. Their earliest appearances presented music by von Bingen, Machaut and other medieval composers, later broadening to include the Baroque Era, often using instrumental accompaniment of each period. Two Voxfire recordings emerged from this repertoire – Songs to the Virgin and the live-performance collection Echoes.

In concerts Voxfire also has explored 20th-century repertoire, with performances of virtuosic pieces, such as Steve Reich’s Tehillim, as well as compositions written specifically for them. Eventually Voxfire expanded their focus to include non-western instruments and world music. In a Maria Rosa Menocal-inspired exploration of the Arab-Andalusian era, Voxfire collaborated with the Kan Zaman ensemble to do a series of concerts featuring songs from 14th-century Spain highlighted with Middle Eastern instruments including oud, Turkish clarinet and hand-drums.

“We have an affection for the 14th-century songs from that concert series,” says Susan Judy, “because the songs came from an interesting era, a time of relative religious tolerance, a mixing of cultures and a flourishing of the arts. They also lend themselves to improvisation, because so much of what they actually sounded like is shrouded in mystery and up to the modern performer to interpret, and we thought the music would make a good recording.” “We also felt we had to take the next step in our evolution as a group which was to make the music even more enjoyable for today’s audiences by using modern instrumentation and increasing the level of improvisation,” adds Samela Beasom.

“In 2015,” says Christen Herman, “we began working with two excellent musicians -- Ross Garren and Nick DePinna – who were versatile in a wide variety of styles, which was just what we needed. I always loved these ancient tunes in their original forms, and I was excited to see what would happen when we put them into the hands and minds of Nick and Ross. Nobody had ever done this before. Turns out what they created totally blew my mind! As we began collaborating, they expanded our arrangements and shattered the boundaries of what was possible for us. The culmination of this was an explosion of ideas, a new sound and a new album, FONTIS.”

Ross Garren continues, “This project allowed Nick and me to stretch in all sorts of unexpected directions. With a primary focus on ‘reinvention’ and only a handful of constraints, we went wherever our instincts took us. This has to be the most eclectic concept record I’ve ever been a part of and I’m thrilled with what we’ve created!” Samela Beasom laughs and adds, “Yes, and you can’t just listen to the first 30 seconds, because you never know what’s going to happen – each track is a seven-course meal!”

The five members of Voxfire each bring a wealth of musical background and exemplary prior performances to the group. In fact, the singers had often performed with one another in pre-Voxfire settings.

Samela Aird Beasom began her career as a soloist in Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, touring extensively throughout the United States and Japan with the Roger Wagner Chorale. She has since been featured with numerous other Los Angeles-based ensembles, including I Cantori, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group, and L.A. Opera, for whom she has performed in over 100 productions. Beasom has been a featured soloist at the Carmel Bach, Santa Cruz Baroque, Corona del Mar Baroque, and Ojai Festivals, and was one of the founding members and primary soloists of Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra. Her extensive studio work includes sessions for composers Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, James Newton Howard, Thomas Newman, and John Williams.

Christen Herman has appeared as a soloist with numerous ensembles including I Cantori, Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, Paulist Boy Choristers, Los Angeles Cambridge Singers, Millennium Consort, and Artists’ Vocal Ensemble. She was featured in Long Beach Opera’s production of Charpentier’s The Imaginary Invalid, and in I Cantori’s production of Hildegard von Bingen’s chant-drama Ordo Virtutum in the lead role of The Soul. Recently, she performed with Tonality, a new vocal group dedicated to promoting social justice. Festival and series appearances include the Ojai, Santa Cruz Baroque, and Los Angeles Bach Festivals; Music at St. Matthew’s; Music at Armand Hammer Museum; and the Colly Soleri Series at Arcosanti. In addition to film score solo and ensemble singing, she has performed and recorded premieres of works by Steve Reich and Joan La Barbara.

Susan Judy has appeared as soloist at a variety of festivals and series including the Ojai, E. Nakamichi, Santa Cruz Baroque, and San Luis Obispo Mozart Festivals; Berkeley Festival and Exhibitions; the famed Monday Evening Concerts at Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Skirball Center and Diljian Chamber Music Series. She has debuted a number of new works, including west coast premieres by Steve Reich, John Adams, and Otto Luening, and as a soloist with the California E.A.R. Unit. She performed for many years with Los Angeles-based ensembles Musica Pacifica, I Cantori, and Musica Angelica as a soloist, and as a principal in staged productions of medieval and Baroque works. More recently, she sang with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Millennium Consort, the Los Angeles Chamber Singers & Cappella, and American Bach Soloists.

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Nick DePinna studied music composition at UCLA and completed his M.A. there. He counts James W. Newton, Paul Chihara, David Lefkowitz, and Kenny Burrell among several important mentors. DePinna’s compositions and arrangements are performed with regularity by professional ensembles and universities across the country. His independent film and commercial scores are frequently heard on HBO, NatGeo WILD, Fox Sports, VH-1, and CMT. In addition, his orchestrations and music productions air on the Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Lifetime, and ABC. A versatile trombonist, Nick has performed and/or recorded with many top artists including Brian Setzer, Kenny Burrell, Gerald Wilson, Jon Jang, John Daversa, Long Beach Opera, Pasadena Pops, Moses Sumney, Jerry Lee Lewis, Kenny Loggins, Dream Theater, and M83.

Ross Garren – best-known as a pianist, harmonicist, and composer – received his B.M. from USC where he was named Outstanding Graduate in Composition. He is a member of the duos Garren & Cohan and the Sheriffs of Schroedingham, and has his own solo project, Taggart. Named a Sundance Institute Music and Sound Design Fellow, Ross has also been awarded three ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Awards. He has arranged for B.B. King, Haim, and Lyle Workman, and has performed on numerous recordings with artists such as Kesha, Ben Folds, Lupe Fiasco, Jim Keltner, Benmont Tench, and for composers Marco Beltrami, Alf Clausen and Mark Mancina. Ross has served on faculty at the Musician’s Institute and as an expert guide on David Barrett’s Bluesharmonica.com. Ross’s film score work includes CMT’s series Sun Records, and Love and Crashing on Netflix.

“Expanding the group to five members was the perfect move for us,” says Samela Beasom. “Especially entering the realm of improvisation was new and exciting. Because Ross and Nick have a lot of jazz improv in their souls and seldom play a solo exactly the same way twice, the way in which we prepared and rehearsed for the recording was fresh and challenging. On some of the tunes we tracked parts separately, but on others we all laid it down live in the main studio.”

“Finding working scores for this music is easier than it used to be,” Susan Judy explains. With today’s internet breadth and access, transcriptions can be found now that everyone used to have to dig up in dusty corners of university libraries. Over the years, we’ve done a lot of transcriptions and transpositions ourselves from updated ancient chant notations, for example – but we’ve left instrumentation up to the players, who generally must create their own accompaniments based on their own research.

“Regarding the instrumentation,” Nick DePinna muses, "Ross and I are both performers and producers/arrangers, so naturally, we each play a LOT of different instruments. It was really fun to go through our studios together to pick out the most mismatched and goofball combinations of instruments to use on these arrangements of very old and very beautiful songs. One of my favorite moments is on "Tu Secreto" where Ross had the idea for me to pick up a pair of plastic toy trombones to create some really zany sounding parts sliding around all over the place."

The FONTIS album begins with the title track and its lyrics are a riddle-like text describing a ruler’s strong leadership flowing from a source of wisdom that must be tended with care. “Vella e Mina” and “Sen Calar” are ancient Christian praise songs honoring the “Holy Mary.” “Ondas” is a lament sung as if by a mournful maiden asking the sea if her loved one will ever return. A noble lady with a broken heart and wounded pride rebukes her faithless lover in “A Chantar.” “Laudemus I,” “Polorum” and “Rosa das Rosas” were all sung by travelers making pilgrimages to shrines of the Virgin Mary, often using the simple techniques of call-and-response and round singing. “Esta Montana” chronicles a heartbroken woman sitting on a mountainside growing more and more desperate, despondent and, at last, sorrowfully resigned. “Laudemus II” revisits the melody of the original vocal version in a new and mysterious telling and serves as the only instrumental tune on the recording. “Ya Viene” tells the sad tale of a group of slaves being led away with the procession going by one slave girl’s home where her mother wails in agony. “Tu Secreto” (originally in Arabic, and also translated into the Judeo-Spanish language of its time) has its message sung by a group of courtesans saying: “Don’t divulge your secret because the enemy is watching you.” The album ends with the timeless story of “Por Deus” in which a young girl pleads with her parents to allow her to go to town with her girlfriends in hopes that she will be chosen by the man of her affection and will live happily ever after.

“The title FONTIS means ‘source’ in Latin,” according to Christen Herman. “It also means ‘water source’ or ‘fountain,’ and we all loved that metaphor for the music on this recording. For us the meaning of FONTIS as an album title is that it represents the source of the ancient words and melodies now pouring forth in a new way into a new era.”

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bookloversofbath · 7 years

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Unknown Colour: Paintings, Letters, Writings by Winifred Nicholson by Winifred Nicholson soon to be presented for sale on the excellent BookLovers of Bath web site!

Published: London: Faber & Faber, 1987, Hardback in dust wrapper.

Contains: Black & white photographs; Colour plates;

From the cover: Throughout her life Winifred Nicholson (1893 -1981) was always closely involved with the world of art and artists, both as a distinguished artist herself and as a writer and thinker As a child, she received encouragement from her grandfather; George Howard, Earl of Carlisle, a painter friend of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1920, she married Ben Nicholson, beginning a creative artistic relationship that lasted, in spite of separation, for sixty years and generated the absorbing correspondence that occupies a substantial part of the book. Both Winifred and Ben were active members of the 7 and 5 Society which had Henry Moore, Ivon Hitchens, John Piper Christopher Wood, Barbara Hepworth and David Jones among its members. After their separation, Winifred lived for most of the 1930s in Paris, where she became part of the artistic circle that included Mondrian, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Gabo, Brancusi and Arp. Shortly before war broke out, she returned to Cumberland to her stone farmhouse high up overlooking the Pennines. Kathleen Raine, the poet was a close friend, with whom Winifred went painting in the Hebrides in the 1950s and 1960s. Her life of painting led to a deeper exploration of the colours at the edge of the rainbow.

Unknown Colour brings together all Winifred Nicholsons writings for the first time and reproduces in colour the wide range of her paintings, conveying in words and images the essence of her art which is light, colour and radiance.

Introduction by: Sir Norman Reid

Very Good in Very Good Dust Wrapper. Price Clipped. A little rubbing to the edges of the dust wrapper. Text complete, clean and tight.

White boards with Silver titling to the Spine. 271 pages. Index. 12″ x 9¼”.

Of course, if you don’t like this one, may I captivate you with this splendid selection from my Art Individual Artists catalogue?

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