“Zelda just wasn’t afraid of anything, of boys, of being talked about; she was absolutely fearless. There was this board rigged up at the swimming pool and, well, almost nobody ever dived from the top. But Zelda did, and I was hard put to match her. I really didn’t want to. She swam and dived as well as any of the boys and better than most of us. She had no more worries than a puppy would have, or a kitten….But she did have a bad reputation….There were two kinds of girls, those who would ride with you in your automobile at night and the nice girls who wouldn’t. But Zelda didn’t seem to give a damn.”
She wore a one-piece flesh-colored silk jersey swimming suit that summer. There were stories that she swam in the nude, which she laughed at but did not deny. She was sharply aware of the criticism that was being leveled against her. Later in her life she wrote about Alabama Beggs, the heroine of her intensely autobiographical novel Save Me the Waltz: “She’s the wildest one of the Beggs, but she’s a thoroughbred,” people said. “Alabama knew everything they said about her — there were so many boys who wanted to “protect” her that she couldn’t escape knowing….’Thoroughbred!’ she thought, ‘meaning that I never let them down on the dramatic possibilities of a scene — I give a damned good show.’”
In July 2009, when his presidency was only six months old, Barack Obama delivered a powerful speech at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, the point from which millions of African slaves were shipped across the Atlantic. He called on African countries to end the tyranny of corruption that affects so many of their populations, and to build strong institutions that serve the people and hold leaders accountable. The speech seemed to extend the message of his much-discussed Cairo address a month earlier, in which he called for a new beginning for Muslim relations with the West, based on non-violence and mutual respect. Many thought that the policies of the new president, himself of Kenyan descent, would depart from those of the Bush administration, which provided a great deal of development aid to Africa, but paid scant attention to human rights. After more than four years in office, however, Obama has done little to advance the idealistic goals of his Ghana speech.
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art: photo of Barack Obama after making speech to Ghanian Parliament at the International Conference Center in Accra, Ghana on July 11, 2009
“But she was seventeen now and not actually dumb. She knew that you could love somebody more than anything and still not love the person all that much, if you were busy with other things.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
“Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel… that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.”
― Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Eartha Kitt, back in the day on her bicycle. As she would say “Purrrrr……”
“Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke
(Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall. Photo by Ron Galella)
Got A Girl
CrushObsession On: The Forgotten Lumberjills of WWIILike the many other amazing heroines of their time, the ladies of the Women’s Timber Corps, aka the Lumberjills, stepped into unconventional britches in order to keep the industry, and country, moving while the men were off at war. Of course, there was also some major stereotypes being chopped down along the way:
They faced prejudice from the male forestry workers, as this was pure manual labor and they weren’t expected to be tough enough. Needless to say, they proved them wrong. Their hands became calloused, they developed strong muscular arms and legs - not traits of a “real lady” at the time, but they relished the freedom and fresh air even if it did cause many aches and pains! I can imagine that many were unwilling or uncomfortable to return to indoor-domestic lives IF their husbands returned. For those who joined when young, or if widowed and having to start afresh, I believe it gave them a strong core confidence, and the toughness to go on alone.
Seriously, though. When someone inevitably makes a movie out of this, will someone please get a hold of me? I need to raid the wardrobe (I also can throw a mean knife).
Read more about the Lumberjills here!
