(That’s all. I just wanted to say that because it makes me so. goddamn. happy.)
Death to Squirrels
by Iris Vander Pluym
(That’s all. I just wanted to say that because it makes me so. goddamn. happy.)
Happy birthday to my godless mentor, esteemed FTB comrade, and beloved friend, PZ Myers.
At my old blog, I would throw a virtual birthday party for him every year on this date, and celebrate with a collection of quotes, quips and bon mots that he’d written on his blog over the previous year. When his obsession was strictly cephalopods, it would look like this:
In 2016 I served fried calamari and Barchetta’s Spezia cocktails, made with vodka, caper brine and squid ink, with whole caperberry garnish. (I’ll have to come up with a spider-themed menu… hmmm.)
These days I’m not up for throwing a big bash, not even a virtual one. But I do want to celebrate PZ’s completion of another orbit around our sun. So today, I thought I’d share a quote from PZ that has long inspired me.
The general context of the quote is this. Back at ScienceBlogs in The Year of Our Lard 2009, PZ wrote a scathing, righteous screed about an apparently very terrible book by some Christian apologist named Terry Eagleton. PZ was stuck on a plane for 8 torturous hours with nothing to read but a SkyMall catalog (which, ♥♥♥! cultural anthropology FTW!), and a copy of this Eagleton book someone (evil?) had just given him in New York. He read the fucking thing twice.
As he was wrapping up, he wrote this:
Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. The day was first professed by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, the idea arising from women’s rights movements in industrializing nations around the turn of the last century. Its purpose is to celebrate the achievements of women throughout history, as well as engage in the ongoing struggle for gender equality.
March is also Women’s History Month. <-That is a website curated by the U.S. Library of Congress that showcases women’s battles and triumphs with interesting and informative stories, audio, video and still images.
If you are a dude and still reading this post: here, have a cookie. (I baked them myself.) That’s for seeing the word “women’s” and not immediately deciding to GTFO.
However, if you are a dude blogger, social media influencer, or a Big Willie with a platform of any kind? [Read more…]
URGENT REMINDER: The fundraiser for reopening the National Black Doll Museum ends TONIGHT. If you are able to donate a few dollars please do, and either way, please share the fundraiser link as widely as you can. Many thanks! ☮️ -Iris.
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Today, the last day of Black History Month, we’re going to listen to Black people speak about Black joy.
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10 exceptional people who are using Black joy as a form of resistance: Black joy is about “manifesting the joy that you need, deserve, or desire,” says Kleaver Cruz of The Black Joy Project.
Kleaver Cruz of the “Black Joy Project” is just one of many who have been encouraging Black people to choose joy as a form of resistance.
Cruz notes that Black joy is a type of “internally driven” happiness that can happen when someone consciously chooses pleasure as a way to combat the traumas of racism.
(image: The Black Joy Project via Instagram)
URGENT REMINDER: The fundraiser for reopening the National Black Doll Museum ends February 28. If you are able to donate a few dollars please do, and either way, please share the fundraiser link as widely as you can. Many thanks! ☮️ -Iris.
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Since before I started this Black History Month series, one of my ideas for a post has been the Harlem Renaissance. I’ve been collecting snippets, links, materials, even writing a few words here and there, but I’ve come to realize there is so much material to cover, and from so many potential perspectives (culturally, politically, artistically etc.) that I have come to realize a blog post would invariably give short shrift to a subject of majestic depth and brilliance. Further, so much work has already been documented that the world reeeeally doesn’t need a white blogger regurgitating the words of Black historians, or worse, the words of the people who actually lived it.
Instead, I will post some resources that I found especially informatve. Whether you want to take a deep dive or stick a toe in the water is up to you. Just know that the legacies of those who lived and worked in Harlem during the 1920s are still very much with us today, so broad and profound was their impact, even on a white supremacist society.
BlackPast on the Harlem Renaissance. BlackPast’s mission:
“is dedicated to providing a global audience with reliable and accurate information on the history of African America and of people of African ancestry around the world. We aim to promote greater understanding through this knowledge to generate constructive change in our society.”
There is so much material here. It is an excellent resource and repository for Black history, not just USian but the African global diaspora as well. This is the kind of work I think of when I look for potentially powerful antidotes to erasure – provided white people and especially educators avail themselves of it.
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Louie Armstrong, circa 1938
(image: William P. Gottlieb Collection / Library of Congress)
URGENT REMINDER: The fundraiser for reopening the National Black Doll Museum ends February 28. If you are able to donate a few dollars please do, and either way, please share the fundraiser link as widely as you can. Many thanks! ☮️ -Iris.
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Today is Reparations Awareness Day. Below is an email on the subject I received this morning from Black Lives Matter Global Network. Please sign on to support this crucial initiative. If you need a reminder of the reasons why you should sign on, please see the link to the Equal Justice Initiative’s Segregation in America report (and more about that project) after the email.
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Iris,
Reparations means repair, and encompass the full range of past and ongoing harms to Black people.
Reparations Awareness Day is about increasing awareness of the need and demand for reparations to repair the historical and ongoing damage to descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States.
Today I turn this space over to my esteemed Freethought Blogs comrade Abe Drayton, who writes at Oceanoxia. Abe posted today about a Black history issue that is both important and urgent, and deserves the widest possible audience. It is posted here in its entirety, with Abe’s kind permission.
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(image: National Black Doll Museum of History & Culture)
“The National Black Doll Museum has a three-fold mission: to nurture self-esteem, to promote cultural diversity, and to preserve the history of black dolls by educating the public on their significance.” – Mission statement of The National Black Doll Museum of History and Culture
I only recently learned about this interesting museum, The National Black Doll Museum, that used to be housed in Mansfield, MA. For all I lived in Massachusetts for 12 years, I rarely explored the many small and unusual museums in the area. The NBDMHC has a collection of over 7000 Black dolls, and the oldest dolls are from the late 18th century. This isn’t just about the past, however, as these dolls are equally loved and displayed with Black Panther action figures. Although many doll museums include Black dolls in their collections, prior to 2020, this museum was the only physical museum in the US dedicated to Black dolls specifically.
The museum got its start from the personal collection of the founder, Debra Britt, who used to take her private doll collection on tours to women’s shelters or community centers to share the history and communal heritage as the Doll E Daze Project. The museum, which is a 501(c) 3 non-profit, still supports this community outreach as well as a number of workshops and educational resources. The workshop on the Power of Play looks at the impact of Black dolls on the self-pride and explores the stories of Black activists post-Reconstruction through today; The workshop on African wrap dolls works to preserve this important cultural handcraft; and the museum offers support and assistance for geneology research as well. For a project focused around children’s toys, the staff involved have found ways to connect with many aspects of the Black community at all stages of life.
But, unfortunately for the project, 2020 was a difficult year for them, like so many others. With the lack of school engagements, workshops, or in-person celebrations, the museum lost their space in Mansfield due to lack of funding. However, all is not lost! Attleboro, MA has set aside land for cultural development and is interested in working with the National Black Doll Museum to relocate to the new area. But they need funding to do so. The current phase of fundraising has a goal of $100,000 and a deadline at the end of the month — February is Black History Month after all! So I hope that you, much like myself, find the concept exciting and the project worthwhile, and will help to make the new location a reality. Let’s let this understudied aspect of history have a chance to shine again!
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Today we all get to STFU and maybe look a little more than listen. This post is about a piece of Black history being reclaimed and revived, and it is also about that revival being beautifully documented by photographer Justin Hardiman.
Okay, quick: what’s the first image that comes to your mind in response to the word cowboy?
For me, it’s some hybrid of Clint Eastwood in one of his Western films, sitting high on a horse with a squint and a snarl, and some white dudes with unkempt facial hair, iconic cowboy hats, and conspicuous holstered guns doing “cowboy things” (I guess?) like sitting around a campfire passing whiskey, riding horses to round up cattle, or small groups of these men on horseback traversing the mountains and deserts of the Western U.S.
For Black photographer Justin Hardiman, a “cowboy” looks a lot more like him.
Justin Hardiman
Photographer & Cowboy
(image via justinhardimanvisuals.com)
Today, we get to listen to recording artist Stevie Wonder from back in 1973.
Stevie Wonder Innervisions
album cover art
As I’ve immersed myself in this Black History Month project, I’ve had some memories surface from long ago. I now view those experiences through a very different lens than I did at the time.
I was was a young child when Innervisions came out in 1973. As I got a little older and gained a musical awareness, singles from Innervisions were still in occasional rotation on the radio. They weren’t current top 40 hits by any stretch, but still, I knew these songs.
I remember one day finding Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions album in the stacks of my father’s records. I was not allowed to touch them – nor his turntable or tuner – but he was rarely ever around. All I had to do was wait until my mother was scarce, and I could pretty much have at it.
I played that record, both sides, straight through. And played it again. And again. I even dug out daddy’s 100% off-limits headphones so I could listen to it louder and with more clarity, alone inside my own head. Sure I was just a kid, but I got lost in that record. Musically and lyrically, Innervisions transported me to another world, one very different from my own. A Black world.
The music was positively bursting, full of struggle and pain, of power and pride, of musical exuberance and originality, of yearning and hope, of politics and poverty, and of characters and stories unlike anyone or anything I had known. And that was by design, by the way: I knew only a very insular, sheltered, and blindingly white world.
Innervisions gave me my first glimpse into Blackness. Now, looking back, I can see that was where my Black history lessons first began.
Of all the tracks on the album, Living for the City hit me the hardest, touched me the deepest. Here are two versions of it, plus a link to the album in its entirety. It changed me. I think it’s worth honoring and celebrating what is arguably Stevie Wonder’s finest work this Black History Month.
This is the radio edit (3:39):
Full-length version (7:22) from the album:
The whole album (nine tracks) can be played on YouTube here.
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Day 1 of Black History Month 2022 (Lori Teresa Yearwood) is here.
Day 2 (Mallence Bart-Williams) is here.
Day 3 (Emmett Till) is here.
Day 4 (A Tale of Two Citizens) is here.
Day 5 (Trayvon Martin) is here.
Day 6 (Franchesca Ramsey) is here.
Day 7 (National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and the Black Aids Institute) is here.
Day 8 (extreme racial disparities in marijuana arrests) is here.
Day 9 (Summer of Soul/1969 Harlem Cultural Festival) is here.
Day 10 (current and historic racist domestic terrorism, Steve Phillips/Democracy in Color) is here.
Day 11 (Gee’s Bend Quilters) is here.
Day 12 (egregious anti-Black (& anti LGBTQ+) behavior at a NY State high school is here.
Day 13 (Erin Jackson, 1st Black woman to win Olympic gold medal in speedskating) is here.
Today, we get to be a part of witnessing and celebrating Black history being made, and I am so here for it! Erin Jackson of the United States has just become the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal in speedskating!
Also, I found so many fierce, beautiful and badass pictures of her in Beijing, I’m just going to intersperse them throughout this news article which contained only one (albeit my favorite of the lot).
Via New York Daily News:
Erin Jackson victorious at Olympics, becomes 1st Black woman to win speedskating gold
By PAUL NEWBERRY
Associated Press | Feb 13, 2022__________
Erin Jackson of the United States competes in the speedskating women’s 500-meter race at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Sunday, Feb. 13, 2022, in Beijing.
(image: AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)BEIJING — Erin Jackson became the first Black woman to win a speedskating medal at the Winter Olympics.
A gold one, at that.
