"This photograph captures William Edwin Jones as he pushes his daughter Renee Andrewnetta Jones during a protest march on Main Street in Memphis, Tennessee, in August of 1961. The father and daughter walk past a car full of white policeman who appear to be watching the protest. In a later interview, 8-month-old Renee who grew up to be a pediatrician, recalls that day as passed down by her parents to her. She noted that the protesters on that particular day were all fathers with their daughters. The mothers and the sons were to remain home in case violence broke out, in order to protect at least half of each family." (via)
Ernest Columbus Withers (1922-2007) was a photojournalist who documented the Civil Rights Movement and captured the segregated South. Withers was known for travelling with Martin Luther King, Jr. and for covering the Emmett Till murder trial (via).
“A veteran freelancer for America’s black press, Withers was known as ‘the original civil rights photographer,’ an insider who’d covered it all, from the Emmett Till murder that jump-started the movement in 1955 to the Little Rock school crisis, the integration of Ole Miss and, now, the 1968 sanitation strike that brought King to Memphis and his death.” (via)
The root of the word "oppression" is the element "press". The press of the crowd; pressed into military service; to press a pair of pants; printing press; press the button. Presses are used to mold things or flatten them or reduce them in bulk, sometimes to reduce them by squeezing out the gasses or liquids in them. Something pressed is something caught between or among forces and barriers which are so related to each other that jointly they restrain, restrict, or prevent the thing's motion or mobility. Mold. Immobilize. Reduce.
Frye, 2000:11
- Frye, M. (2000). Oppression. In A. Minas (ed.) Gender Basics: Feminist Perspectives on Women and Men (10-16). Wadsworth.
- photograph (woman selling balloons on a Chicago South Side street corner at Sox Park Baseball Field, June 1973) via
Do you think that your child will be living through the revolutionary years?
"I don't know, love. Whatever it is she's going to have pride in her own blackness. She's going to have a chance to be more than just somebody who's on the outside looking in. Like it's been for most of us, and my parents before me, but she may see more bloodshed than I've ever even dreamed of. I have no way of knowing that evolution. The cycle goes round and round. It's time for us."
"It's a good time for black people to be alive. It's a lot of hell, a lot of violence, but I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live as I've dreamed." (via)
After six years, 895 postings and 9.001.362 views, another big thank-you to my 6.731 subscribers. I would like to particularly thank those who in the past six years kept dropping by leaving lovely comments. Thank you ever so much and live long and prosper!
Spockified photograph by Paperwalker, original Spock painting via
“An ageing population means more older workers may take on caring responsibilities, particularly for a parent. We have shown that working and caring is being combined, particularly by women who are twice as likely than men to combine working and caring.”
Sarah Crofts
People in their 50s and 60s have the most caring responsibilities, particularly if they are women. According to a report published by the Office for National Statistics, there are some distinct gender differences when it comes to caring: Male carers are less likely to work than men without caring duties, women are equally likely to be in work whether they are carers or not, older female workers are twice as likely as older male workers to be informal workers, men tend to care for a spouse or the parents, women often care for a broader range including people who are non-relatives.
Alongside 6.5 million personal stories of the frustration, despair, satisfaction and joy of caring, caring is also rapidly becoming one of the biggest political challenges of the 21st century.
Caring can be rewarding but it may also force carers into "ill-health, poverty and isolation". In fact, 65% of carers in the U.K. aged 60 to 94 have either long-term health problems or disabilities (via).
Dave Brubeck (1920-2012) was six years old when he was on a cattle-buyer trip with his father, Pete, and saw "something that would haunt him for the rest of his life". Pete Brubeck asked a black cowboy called "Shine" to come over and greet his son Dave.
Pete Brubeck then asked Shine to open his shirt. Brubeck, then only 6, watched as Shine unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a brand on his chest: He had been marked like cattle. Shine was the first black person Brubeck had ever seen. A furious Pete Brubeck told his son that "something like this never should happen again."
Later, Dave Brubeck said in an interview that it had an impact on him he would never forget. "I thought, 'What can I do about this?' It's like my dad (was) telling me to do something about it."
Dave Brubeck was more than a jazz legend and the "Ambassador of the Cool"; he was also a champion for civil rights. And, as John Blake writes, Brubeck "was bigger than all of that".
Brubeck and other white jazz musicians joined a community where they were the minority, where their skin tone was not the norm. At the beginning, the black experience was foreign to Brubeck but differences were something he did not find threatening but inspiring.
Brubeck was a champion for democracy as well as jazz. It's often forgotten that many of the exotic rhythms he infused into his music came from tours his quartet took of the Middle and Far East. The State Department sponsored these tours to promote democracy during the Cold War. Brubeck often compared jazz to democracy, saying both challenged individuals to express their freedom while being disciplined enough to respect the freedom of others.
Unsquare Dance:
One day, Brubeck heard a knock on his hotel door. He opened it to find Ellington, smiling and holding several copies of Time magazine. Brubeck was on the cover. His heart sank. Ellington was his friend. He knew that Time had also been interviewing Ellington, and Brubeck thought the jazz composer deserved the honor over him.
"I wanted to be on the cover after Duke," Brubeck told the narrator in Ken Burns' epic documentary on jazz. "The worst thing that could have happened to me was that I was there before Duke, and he was delivering the news to me." (via)
During World War II, Brubeck's Wolfpack Band was the only integrated jazz band in the army. In the 1950s, the Dave Brubeck Quartet became the most famous jazz group in the U.S. Nevertheless, they were turned away from hotels, and not only in the South. The South was "the worst trouble" which did not keep Brubeck from leading his integrated band "through the South in the tumultuous years between the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Freedom Riders, refusing to compromise the group's identity for the prejudice of Jim Crow" (via).
Brubeck refused to compromise. He cancelled gigs at Georgia Tech, Memphis State, and elsewhere. He took a similar stand on the Bell Telephone Hour, a musical TV program, when the producers made a similar ultimatum. "I told him that we weren't going to change," Brubeck recalled. "And, they said, 'Well, then we can't have you.' And I said, 'All right, I'm not going to do your television show.' (Later, he refused $17,000 to play in South Africa under apartheid.)
"Jazz stands for freedom," Brubeck said. For him, it also stood for loyalty and principle.
In 1960, after colleges demanded again that Brubeck substitute a white bassist for Wright, Brubeck cancelled 23 of 25 dates on a tour of Southern universities, a decision that cost the group an estimated $40,000. (The average annual U.S. income at that time was around $5,000.)
Another time, also in the South, before a gym of college students whose enthusiasm was approaching a riot, the governor and the college president came to a last-minute agreement to allow the band to play. "Now you can go on with the understanding that you'll keep Eugene Wright in the background where he can't be seen too well," the governor said to Brubeck, making sure the bassist's mic was off.
But Brubeck had other ideas: "I told Eugene," he recalled in conversation with Hedrick Smith, "You gotta come in front of the band to play your solo." The crowd went crazy.
"Nobody was against my black bass player," Brubeck said. "They cheered him like he was the greatest thing that ever happened for the students."
"We integrated the school that night." (via)
"A young boy with Down syndrome runs away to fulfill his dream of becoming a professional wrestler" (via).
Zack Gottsagen is an actor, recipient of 2018 Quincy Jones Exceptional Advocacy Award and the first person with Down syndrome to be fully included in the Palm Beach County School district (via).
In the movie, Zak escapes his residential nursing home to follow his dream of training under his professional wrestling idol. Along the way, Zak encounters Tyler, “a small-time outlaw on the run”. The pair work their way through a series of obstacles while convincing Eleanor, the nursing home employee tasked with bringing Zak back, to join the adventure.
“The Peanut Butter Falcon,” written and directed by Michael Schwartz and Tyler Nilson, was created for Gottsagen. Schwartz and Nilson met Gottsagen at a disability acting camp. Gottsagen challenged the filmmakers to create a role for a character with Down syndrome since initially, they said they didn’t see any films that starred people like Gottsagen. (shortened version, via)
Mr Newman is 82. He has lived through several regimes. He graduated from university and became an expert in his field. With is wife he raised three children...
Commercial for "Diakonie", a charity helping the elderly in Czech Republic.
Nominated for the Young Director Award, Cannes Lions 2011
Winner, Best International Idea, Golden Stiletto Awards 2011
Winner, Most successful campaign, Zihadlo Marketing Awards 2011 (via)
In 2012, Nike launched the "Find Your Greatness" campaign showing "everyday athletes around the world training, playing and competing" (via).
One of the many messages: "If we think greatness is supposed to look a certain way, act a certain way and play a certain way, we certainly need to rethink some things."
Just when I thought I couldn't be a bigger fan of the Mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala posted this photograph on Facebook pointing out that Pride will be starting tomorrow and that Milan is a city of human rights and duties (via).
