Amanda Palmer: The art of asking | Video on TED.com
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via Amanda Palmer: The art of asking | Video on TED.com.
This is probably one of the most terrifying ideas I’ve ever encountered. The utter fearlessness and vulnerability that comes from asking people to support you without the framework of retail stickers or even a hard product. Music, art, blogging, connections that are made and lost in an instant – all of those things are beautiful.
But they are terrible too; in the true sense of the word. The idea of being vulnerable in front of thousands (I am not Amanda F’ing Palmer) shakes me to my core.
I’ve been flamed on-line for having opinions. I’ve been flamed for posting stories – free and clear without even a tip jar.
And at the same time, I have been praised and moved to tears by some of the responses to my work I’ve experienced.
So, I guess the bottom line is whether I’m going to let fear stop me.
Filed under Uncategorized
Victorian Job – Tosher (Sewer-Hunter)
“men who made it their living by forcing entry into London’s sewers at low tide and wandering through them, sometimes for miles, searching out and collecting the miscellaneous scraps washed down from the streets above: bones, fragments of rope, miscellaneous bits of metal, silver cutlery and–if they were lucky–coins dropped in the streets above and swept into the gutters. –
the toshers sometimes worked the shoreline of the Thames rather than the sewers, and also waited at rubbish dumps when the contents of damaged houses were being burned and then sifted through the ashes for any items of value. They were mostly celebrated, nonetheless, for the living that the sewers gave them, which was enough to support a tribe of around 200 men–each of them known only by his nickname: Lanky Bill, Long Tom, One-eyed George, Short-armed Jack. The toshers earned a decent living; according to Mayhew’s informants, an average of six shillings a day–an amount equivalent to about $50 today. It was sufficient to rank them among the aristocracy of the working class–and, as the astonished writer noted, “at this rate, the property recovered from the sewers of London would have amounted to no less than £20,000 [today $3.3 million] per annum.”
-Henry Mayhew
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/06/quite-likely-the-worst-job-ever/
Filed under Victorian London, Victorian London
Poverty in Mexico
They live in what Mexicans call a “jacal,” a homemade shanty of scrap wood and tarpaper. Boulders keep the corrugated tin roofing on in case of high wind. An outhouse is a few feet away. Next to it is a washing machine set on pallets in the open air. A broken stove also lies outside, hollowed out and jerry-rigged to serve as a barbecue. A makeshift electrical line brings power from a neighbor’s house. A homemade pipe brings water from a different direction
Forty percent of Mexico’s 47 million workers are covered by union contracts, but few feel any benefits. “There are workers who don’t even know they belong to a union,” said Maria Xelhuantzi Lopez, an expert on collective bargaining at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Taking Belladonna
Once we’d swallowed our poison, we decided to go into the store for some snacks to wash away the taste. Things seemed pretty normal and I picked out a package of chocolate Hostess cupcakes that used to be so popular – the ones with the white squiggles down the middle. I reached out to grab it off the shelf, but the cupcakes jumped away, eluding my grasp. The little white squiggles had turned into eyes, nose and mouth. The cupcakes laughed at me.
Somehow I made it out of the store. I can remember walking for maybe two blocks, carrying my hippie mocassins. At some point I just winked out. Even today, I still have some sense, or recollection, of what my hallucinations were like – I experienced a flash of recognition a couple of years later. When I saw Munch’s The Scream, it resonated – not just the face and the distortion but the sense that one is surrounded by some unfathomably horrific presence that probably hides an infinity of other unfathomably horrific presences both within and beyond it, endlessly layered. I also remember seeing my father sitting in a chair and smoking his pipe, disappearing slowly from his feet to his head while asking me what was wrong. Two cops found me staggering down Main Street, eyes without irises – just big pools of black. I writhed and struggled and screamed and vomited as the officers tried to restrain me. One cop wanted to take me to jail, but the other one recognized the need to rush me to the hospital and he prevailed.
From : The Belladonna Shaman (Mondo 2000 History Project Entry #20)
Filed under Drugs, Hallucinogens
Oh! Hi!
What is this? Who am I? What will you find here?
My name is Kate Ressman. I’m a writer and a bunch of other things, but it’s the writer part that’s important.
This is where I’m starting. My first, very own, blog under my own name. With my own domain and everything.
What you will find here: my research. This may be anything from first person reflections on the Japanese internment to the mythology of djinns. These are things I’m researching for books that may never be published, short stories, or books that *are* published. It may be dull at times, but there might be a gem in here for you to use.
What you won’t find here: me writing about writing, me writing about publishing (beyond “yo, here’s my book”), or writing about agents, or business, or anything having to do with Amazon.
I won’t promise that there won’t be a bit of politics or religion mixed in, but for the most part, this is about knowledge. Expanding my knowledge, passing on interesting tidbits – whether it’s the best way to roast dormouse or the fact that finding djinn mythology is a pain in the rear – is really what this is all about.
Oh, and comments policy. I’m going to start this one off right. Comments will be moderated until I know I can trust you. Spam will be canned. Flamers will be banned. And if you say anything offensive – racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc? BANNED. There will be no passing go. And your comments will not post up before I see them. This may slow down the commenting here, but I’m not going to let this turn into some den of iniquity with shady characters selling “tasty prawns” in my comments or people being hurtful. I’ve been burned before and I’m not going to let it happen again.
So, there’s that taken care of.
See you on the flip side!
Filed under Uncategorized
BitterSuites 