Tuesday is International Women’s Day
CELEBRATE accordingly!!!
- 1. This Ukrainian Artist’s Work – Maria Prymachenko’s artwork are cheery and colorful but some of the pieces are darker, which is not surprising considering what the Ukrainian people have been through over the past decades.
[Found on Kottke.org]
- 2. This Website – The V&A Museum kept quite busy in 2020 and 2021, and through social media and online activities they kept their patrons informed and engaged during the pandemic. I follow them on Facebook and get their newsletter but somehow I missed this.
- Luckily a friend of mine’s daughter is dressing up as Marie Antoinette for school and while I was looking for this picture to show both of them I found this fun page.
What we have is an interactive site that allows you to create your very own Marie Antoinette style wig! You can make it as small or as LARGE as you like (I discovered that depending upon the way you swoop you can even create braids). After you’ve made your wig you can decorate it with a various feathers, flowers, pendants, and other items (note the ship). Last, but not least, you can powder it to your heart’s content (there are some lovely colors to choose from.)
I always love learning new things, especially history. This was particularly fun. Is seems the wigs got pretty out of control for a while. Men’s wigs were as big a deal as the women’s wigs.
[Found on Dazed Digital]
3. This Mom’s Sense of Humor – Kayla Marie Sullivan used her skills from when she was a reporter to convey the difficulties of parenting a two-year-old.
It’s H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S.
4. This Historic Mystery Solved! I have loved the Venus of Willendorf (sometimes called the Woman of Willendorf) since the first time I saw it. I mean, what’s not to love – they worshiped a voluptuous babe!
The Venus is estimated to be around 30,000 years old and made from oolite limestone. It’s called the Venus of Willendorf because it was found in 1908, somewhere close to the banks of the Danube River near Willendorf, Austria. But they’ve never know her origin.
Researchers led by Gerhard Weber, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Vienna, believe they have matched the figurineās limestone with a location near Lake Garda in northern Italy, revealing the likely origin of āone of the most famous signs of early modern human symbolic behavior,ā according toĀ a study published on MondayĀ inĀ Scientific Reports.Ā
The new research suggests that the crafters of this iconic object, a hunter-gatherer culture known as the Gravettian people, traveled hundreds of miles across the treacherous landscape of Europe before the last ice age, though the team noted that itās unclear what might have prompted such a journey.Ā
From “Scientists Solve 30,000-Year-Old āVenusā Statue Mystery, Study Says” by Becky Ferreira; March 1, 2022; Vice-motherboard
[Found on VICE]
5. This Crowd-Sourced History Project – Charles Dickens is well-known for his literary genius but one lesser known element of his life is that as a younger man he taught himself a form of shorthand using Thomas Gurney’s 18th century manual onĀ Brachygraphy. The word Brachygraphy means “a system of writing using abbreviations or special characters” – in other words, shorthand.
There are several documents that Dickens wrote using brachygraphy that scholars have been struggling to decipher, some with success. But the one that has been most elusive is the Tavistock letter.
Two Dickensian scholars, Claire Wood of the University of Leicester, and Hugo Bowles of the University of Foggia, decided to create the Dickens Code Project in the hopes of getting assistance from puzzle experts and code breakers around the world. They ended up with sixteen full submissions, none of which were complete.
Shane Baggs, a computer technical support specialist from San Jose, California, won the overall contest, while a college student at the University of Virginia named Ken Cox was declared the runner-up.
Since then, Baggs and Cox have managed to finished deciphering nearly 70% of the letter, far more than they ever expected. You can see a line-by-line translation here.
6. This Inspiring Article – With all that is going on in the world we need some positivity and hope. Here ya go.
[Found on Harper’s Bazaar]
7. THIS Postmodern Jukebox Video – I was lucky enough to get to go to a REAL concert last week. I saw one of my favorite bands – Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox (PMJ). And man, I was not disappointed!
PMJ does covers of songs in a variety of styles, such as the roaring twenties, sixties girl group, swing, jazz, gospel, and “film noir.”
This video is one of the songs sung at the concert – you will recognize it right away. We didn’t have this many performers but some of them – like Tia Simone (wow), LaVance Colley (wow), and Olivia Kuper Harris (beautiful) – were there on Friday!
Click on the photo below to see the video.
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