Neatorama |
- Duck Hunting Club
- Tile Array
- Clever! A Fishing Pole Picture Frame Hanger
- How Well Do You Know Time Travel Movies?
- Map: Areas within a Texas-Length Distance from Texas
- What It Feels Like to be Hit by a Train
- "Why I Rank My Friends by Income, IQ, and Hotness"
- Happy Birthday Grumpy Cat!
- Baby on Board
- Runaway Truck
- The C-3PO Electric Guitar and Other Surprising Instruments by Marc Potter
- The Badass
- The Cheerleader Who Sued
- Afflicted
- Last Chance to Win a Captain America Mystery Box and Other Goodies
- The Idiot's Guide to <i>Game of Thrones</i> (Season 3)
- 16 Fun Facts About Hedgehogs
- A Wine Map for <i>Game of Thrones</i>
- Cat Rescued from Sofa Five Days Later
- A Colorful Stop Motion Short Featuring Storms Of Paint
- Can I Park Here?
- How Many People Would It Take to Colonize Another Star System?
- Gotta Derp 'Em All!
- The Great Leap Upward
- The Surreal And Absurd Photography Of Martin Kollar
- A New Geep in Ireland
- Pop Culture Workout Routines
- Willie Is Better Than Your Cat
- 18 Kids Beds You Wish You Could Have As An Adult
- 4 Gertrudes Who Changed the World
| Posted: 05 Apr 2014 04:00 AM PDT Now this is a design that makes us want to bring our light zapper gun down from the attic! Oh, what happy memory! One thing's for sure: if you don't get this nifty T-shirt by Azafran, the Laughing Dog will make fun of you. Check out Azafran's official Facebook page, then visit his NeatoShop for more awesome designs:
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!  | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 05 Apr 2014 04:00 AM PDT Joshua McGee created Tile Array, an application that makes a mosaic out of any image. The tiles are images from Wikimedia Commons, but only square images are used, so most of them are album covers. You can upload your own pictures and make them mosaics, just like I did with this familiar robot. At the Tile Array gallery, you can enlarge the tiles in the Neatoramabot to see the images it is constructed from. I also did a picture of myself, and was tickled to find some of my favorite albums among the "pixels." -via Metafilter | ||||||||||||||||
| Clever! A Fishing Pole Picture Frame Hanger Posted: 05 Apr 2014 02:00 AM PDT I like what Suzann Sanders did with this old fishing rod and reel. She replaced the line with cotton cord and added a few picture frames to create a perfect space in which to share family fishing trip photos. This would be a great use for a treasured fishing pole that is no longer serviceable. -via Unconsumption | ||||||||||||||||
| How Well Do You Know Time Travel Movies? Posted: 05 Apr 2014 12:00 AM PDT There are more movies about time travel than you may realize, because not all of them are under the science fiction label. There are also comedies and romances and horror films and children’s movies. Dan Meth created a dozen charts that diagram the time that is traveled in a movie. Your job is to select one of four films that matches each chart. There were a couple in which I had not seen any of the four options, but was able to figure out the correct answer anyway. Try it yourself! | ||||||||||||||||
| Map: Areas within a Texas-Length Distance from Texas Posted: 04 Apr 2014 11:00 PM PDT Texas was once an independent nation. After the United States initially rejected our generous offer of admission into the union, we considered remaining independent permanently. Many of us considered expanding westward, all the way into what would become California. What would a Greater Texas have looked like then? Probably not quite as big as this map created by redditor Armeleon. At its greatest width, Texas is 791 miles across. So Armeleon created this map of all land within 791 miles of the borders of Texas. -via 22 Words | ||||||||||||||||
| What It Feels Like to be Hit by a Train Posted: 04 Apr 2014 10:00 PM PDT Liza Dye is a 25-year-old homeless standup comic in New York. In February 13th, she fainted in a train station and fell, and a train ran over her leg. Firefighters had to lift the train to get the wheel off her.
So far, Dye has undergone eight surgeries, but the alternative was amputating her leg. Since she is uninsured, every procedure gives her added worry about the cost. The comedy community has raised $64K so far for Dye’s medical expenses. She tells her story at Bedford & Bowery. -via Digg | ||||||||||||||||
| "Why I Rank My Friends by Income, IQ, and Hotness" Posted: 04 Apr 2014 09:00 PM PDT
Each member has a relative value to Yiannopoulus's life assessed by certain criteria. He explains the system in The Kernel:
-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: Le Web | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 08:00 PM PDT The little cat we know as Grumpy Cat (formerly Tardar Sauce) became an internet sensation suddenly on September 23, 2012. She was barely out of kittenhood at the time, but her facial expression made her appear to have an attitude problem. Since then, she’s been on everything from TV to coffee cups, and her fame is in no danger of fading. She turned two years old today. | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 07:00 PM PDT What do you think of first when you see those "Baby on Board" sign on the car in front of you? Mother-in-Law in Trunk? Or the Baby On Board song from The Simpsons? Well, perhaps this image will be the basis of your new thought. Technically, it's correct (yes, it uses a baby doll - because planking a real child would be illegal, not to mention cruel). | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 06:00 PM PDT A FedEx delivery driver was recorded on a home’s security camera as he experienced a little mishap. The dogs were delighted! They have a thing against delivery men, you know. It’s a good thing that this neighborhood had no traffic that day. -via Tastefully Offensive | ||||||||||||||||
| The C-3PO Electric Guitar and Other Surprising Instruments by Marc Potter Posted: 04 Apr 2014 05:00 PM PDT Marc Potter can turn anything into a stringed musical instrument. We’ve already seen his banjo made with a bedpan, which commenter barryNE amusingly suggested could be used to make “chamber music.” Potter has been very productive since then, as you can see from these selections from his Etsy shop. The best of all is this electric guitar made with a C-3PO collectibles case. Hawaiian Punch Lunch Box Ukulele Playskool Play Telephone Guitar -via Technabob | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 04:00 PM PDT Sweet chimichangas! NeatoShop artist ddjvigo has made you an offer you can't refuse. Isn't that cool? See, your common sense is tingling. Visit ddjvigo's Facebook page, then head on over to his NeatoShop for more badass designs:
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama! | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 04:00 PM PDT
She filed a lawsuit against the Raiders for paying cheerleaders less than minimum wage, and for other infractions of the California labor code. Some argue that she signed a contract, and that’s it. Others say that employers must follow the law, regardless of whether a worker is willing to accept less. Lacy T. has received both support and criticism for her lawsuit. There’s a lot more to the story that you can read at ESPN. -via Digg | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 03:00 PM PDT What do you get when you combine a horror movie with a travelogue? Today, Sony and Yekra is releasing Afflicted, an intriguing horror thriller shot in the "found footage" documentary style, online as a video on demand. The movie is about two best friends Derek and Clif (played by real life besties Derek Lee and Clif Prowse as themselves) as they embark on a trip around the world. Somewhere in Paris, they encountered a beautiful woman and their vacation takes a dark turn as Derek wakes up with a mysterious affliction. The pair, now thousands of miles from home in a strange land, have to race against time to figure out the source of the diease before it fully consumes him. The micro-budget film, Lee and Prowse's first (and as thus charmingly stars their friends and family, and even has clips of their high school home movies), got quite a warm welcome by horror fans in Canada and abroad. Afflicated won Best Picture (Horror) at Austin's Fantastic Fest, as well as awards of recognitions from the Toronto International Film Festival. Check out the trailer - if this is your cup of tea, then you can stream it directly here (note: you can view it at full monitor size. Yekra, the clip provider, shares a portion of the proceed with this blog). | ||||||||||||||||
| Last Chance to Win a Captain America Mystery Box and Other Goodies Posted: 04 Apr 2014 02:00 PM PDT Hi guys - just a friendly reminder that this is your last chance to enter our Win A Captain America Mystery Box & $100 Amazon Gift Card contest (in collaboration with our friend Today I Found Out) The Captain America Mystery Box, courtesy of our pals at Hasbro, is filled with goodies from the upcoming movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier (which opens today! Can't wait to see it!). In addition to that (and the $100 Amazon gift card), you can also win t-shirts and hoodies from the NeatoShop and the Today I Found Out Shop. What are you waiting for? The contest ends tonight at 11:59 PM PST, so don't miss out! | ||||||||||||||||
| The Idiot's Guide to <i>Game of Thrones</i> (Season 3) Posted: 04 Apr 2014 01:00 PM PDT Screen Junkies has a complete recap of season three of Game of Thrones so you can refresh your memory and be ready when season four begins Sunday night. A similar recap for seasons one and two is available, so if you are like me and don’t watch the show, you can still know everything that happens. Yes, three years of HBO can be consumed in about half an hour. Warning: NSFW language, and duh, this contains spoilers if you’re not current on the series. I feel like I’ve just saved myself a lot of time. -via Laughing Squid | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 12:00 PM PDT It was only about ten years ago that I learned that hedgehogs and porcupines were different animals. After all, they are not native to America. Now thanks to YouTube, hedgehogs are a lot more familiar, but there’s still much to learn. In Europe long ago, they were the spring weather forecasters, but when Germans immigrated to America, there were no hedgehogs to be found. So the American groundhog was enlisted to announce when spring arrived instead. Neccessity is the mother of invention, you know, even when it's a tradition that evolves into something as silly as an animal seeing its shadow. That’s the kind of fun fact you’ll learn in this list from mental_floss. | ||||||||||||||||
| A Wine Map for <i>Game of Thrones</i> Posted: 04 Apr 2014 11:00 AM PDT Sunday is the big day! Game of Thrones is returning to television. So uncork a bottle of wine, sit down in front of your screen and enjoy watching your favorite characters get suddenly and inexplicably killed. Which wine should you drink? In the world in which Game of Thrones is set, the seasons are highly irregular, so quality and type vary widely. Thankfully, Vinepair created this map showing the most popular wines of every region. You can view a larger version here. It reflects the studious efforts of King Robert Baratheon, a man who was clearly a connoisseur of the fruits of the vine. He suggests a Cabernet from the lands of House Lannister. I'll start with that, since I have unwisely taken a liking to Tyrion. -via VA Viper | ||||||||||||||||
| Cat Rescued from Sofa Five Days Later Posted: 04 Apr 2014 10:00 AM PDT Pauline and Bill Lowe of Corringham, England, donated two couches to the St Luke's Hospice charity shop in Grays, Essex. One of the couches had to be disassembled to get it through the door, and reassembled after it was outside. The Lowe’s cat Crockett was soon noticed missing, but they couldn’t figure out where he might have gone. The sofas went to the shop, and one was bought four days later.
The ten-year-old cat appeared to be in good condition, and by contacting the thrift shop, Crockett was soon reunited with the Lowes. -via Arbroath | ||||||||||||||||
| A Colorful Stop Motion Short Featuring Storms Of Paint Posted: 04 Apr 2014 09:30 AM PDT April showers are refreshing, acid rain may turn your hair green, and hailstorms really hurt, but if the clouds opened up and started raining paint we’d all turn a muddy shade of gray. Paint Showers is a colorful animated short by Miguel Jiron, and it’s one of the most relaxing abstract stop motion animated shorts you’ll ever see! Miguel created the short by applying paint to a pane of glass in a process similar to the one used to create psychedelic graphic projections for concerts back in the good ol' days of rock 'n' roll. Have a nice trip! -Via Laughing Squid | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 09:00 AM PDT This parking sign was spotted in Portland, Maine, and posted by redditor middleclassjobs. Can you make any sense of it at all? You have to wonder how many times traffic gets backed up because someone had to pull out their mobile device and look up a calendar, and spend time figuring out whether that parking space is empty because it’s illegal to park there, or because no one can figure it out. It appears that the bottom sign may contradict the middle sign, but what do I know? When you negate the convenience of parking on the street with the headache of reading the signs, a few dollars to park in a garage may be a better option. And certainly the cost of a parking ticket would be more headache than all those options. Good luck fighting that ticket in court. | ||||||||||||||||
| How Many People Would It Take to Colonize Another Star System? Posted: 04 Apr 2014 08:30 AM PDT
Assuming that faster-than-light travel is physically impossible, humanity's options for colonizing other star systems are limited. A multi-generation starship or one in which the settlers are traveling in some form of suspended animation both entail a one-way trip for the colonists. The settlers are on their own, starting a new civilization. If that civilization is going to be healthy, it's going to need genetic diversity in order to avoid the problems that come with inbreeding. In 2002, an anthropologist named John Moore determined that such a colony would need at least 150 people in order to maintain a healthy genetic diversity. But Cameron Smith, an anthropologist at Portland State University, says that Moore's number is way too low. He and a colleague named William Gardner-O'Kearney created mathematical models to project the viability of different populations. Smith concluded that in order to be genetically healthy in the long run, a human space colony would need at least 10,000 members. Ideally, though, Smith would suggest a colony of 40,000 humans to be on the safe side. This number would also protect the colony's genetic diversity if it lost significant numbers during the interstellar journey or early colonization period. Sarah Fecht explains in Popular Mechanics:
-via Glenn Reynolds POLL: If you had the opportunity to be part of such a colony, would you go?
| ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 08:00 AM PDT When NeatoShop artist and animator Aniforce said he'll derp 'em all, he wasn't kidding! So far, he's Derp-ified 151 of your favorite video game characters. These are just a few of his Gotta Derp Em All designs, available from the NeatoShop:
Don't forget to visit Aniforce's official website, new Facebook page, Twitter and deviantART, too!
Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama! | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 08:00 AM PDT It’s Superdog! Able to leap tall buildings… I mean, the couch… I mean, sometimes. A majestic approach leading to a ignominious derailment does not slow this cute little pooch down at all. You can’t help but laugh, but he doesn’t care, he just gets back up and sticks the landing on the second attempt. The video goes from glorious to goofy to glorious again, and you just want to to give him a good cuddle for his ambition and fearlessnes. That’s a good dog. -via Uproxx | ||||||||||||||||
| The Surreal And Absurd Photography Of Martin Kollar Posted: 04 Apr 2014 07:30 AM PDT You should take Martin Kollar seriously as a photographer and artist, even though his photos tend to be anything but serious in tone. Martin’s unique photographic vision reveals the absurd side of human life, depicting people lost in thought during in-between moments, as they wait for something to happen while interesting things are happening all around them. The Czech photographer has a knack for capturing subjects in the raw, and he has a clever way of juxtaposing his still human subjects with eye catching elements which beg to be the subject of each scene. -Via Juxtapoz | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 07:00 AM PDT The Irish Farmers Journal reports on a strange baby born on Paddy Murphy’s farm. New lambs were being born, but one looks like a goat. The goat-sheep cross, or “geep” is a week old and already showing nubs where his horns will grow. The lamb-kid may look like a goat, but his mother loves him. According to Wikipedia, such hybrids happen, but are usually stillborn. Sheep have 54 chromosomes and goats have 60. In the few rare cases of surviving crosses, the hybrid had 57 chromosomes. No doubt scientists will want to take a look at Paddy Murphy’s new geep. -via Metafilter | ||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 04 Apr 2014 06:30 AM PDT Neila Ray is a fitness expert who knows how to motivate geeks to get in shape. She has an ongoing series of workout routines that require no equipment but a serious connection to at least one fandom. There’s no My Little Pony workout yet, but there are workouts for fans of 300, Batman, Firefly, and more. Conveniently, there’s a workout that can be done without leaving the couch. There’s one that I can do. Well, right after I get bored of Netflixing tonight. -via Incredible Things | ||||||||||||||||
| Willie Is Better Than Your Cat Posted: 04 Apr 2014 06:00 AM PDT How many times have you seen a video of a cat unrolling the toilet paper roll? Many. How many times have you seen a cat re-roll the toilet paper after he’s unrolled it? This may be a first. Michael Thompson‘s cat Willie unrolled all the paper, then re-rolled it back again! Maybe he just didn’t like the way the roll was loaded. Now it’s just the way he wants. -via Say OMG | ||||||||||||||||
| 18 Kids Beds You Wish You Could Have As An Adult Posted: 04 Apr 2014 05:30 AM PDT When I was a kid, I always longed for a racecar bed. I'm pretty much over that now, but after writing about the amazing beds you can get for your kids these days, I really want a viking ship bed now. Though I'd also be happy with this castle Murphy bed. And while I feel a little too old to sleep in a Batmobile bed, I can't help but feel a little jealous of those awesome little kids who do get to have one. What about you guys, would you get these beds in adult sizes if they were available or are you too grown up for that? 18 Utterly Awesome Kid's Beds | ||||||||||||||||
| 4 Gertrudes Who Changed the World Posted: 04 Apr 2014 05:00 AM PDT
1. Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell: The Gertrude Who Built IraqThere's an old photo of 1921’s Cairo Conference that perfectly captures the era’s colonial mood: Three dozen mostly white men are positioned, formal-portrait-style, around a set of stairs, their serious mugs framed by a backdrop of lush palm fronds. Out front, a supine lion cub swats at a blurry shape, possibly a hyena. The conference had been called out of necessity. One year earlier, unhappy Iraqis had set aside their Sunni and Shia differences to stage an uprising. The revolt was unsuccessful, but the fracas proved expensive enough that the British decided to rethink their Middle East strategy. Delegates to the summit included luminaries such as then-Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill and his special adviser T. E. Lawrence. Born in 1868 to the sixth-richest family in England, Gertrude Bell displayed a fierce intelligence at a young age. At 17, the gutsy redhead was one of the few women admitted to Oxford University, where she became the first woman to earn a first-class-honors degree in modern history. After graduating, Bell traveled the globe hunting adventure. She found it, repeatedly. In 1902, she survived 53 hours hanging off a rope on the Bernese Alps’ highest peak during a blizzard. She taught herself Persian and trekked through Iran, taking photos and publishing a travel book about the experience. She picked up Arabic as she surveyed the Arabian Desert by camel, documenting ancient ruins and cultivating friendships with tribal leaders and kings.
Before long, the British government realized she could be an asset. The brassy adventurer had acquired an extraordinary amount of rare and valuable knowledge—from deciphering the region’s complicated tribal politics (something governments had been struggling to figure out) to mapping the land’s geographic features. In 1915, Bell became the first female officer hired by British military intelligence. Working under the vague title “adviser” and tapped to collect information as a British spy, she was placed on staff alongside T. E. Lawrence at the Arab Bureau in Cairo. Two years later, she was installed in Baghdad under British high commissioner Percy Cox—a position that would catapult her into the thorny task of nation-building. Bell was up for the challenge. In 1921, after the devastating Sunni-Shiite revolt, Bell and her former Arab Bureau colleagues found themselves at the Cairo Conference, where the chief goal was to determine the most British-friendly political and geographical structure for the country that would become Iraq. Bell led the charge, plotting territorial boundaries to fit British needs. The lines she drew respected tribal borders while ensuring the new state would be rich in oil. As she worked to finish the map, the conference handpicked the new nation’s first king: a non-Iraqi named Faisal bin Hussein.
Installing a puppet king proved disastrous. Despite ties to Mecca— his father was sharif of Mecca, and he hailed from a long line of Hashemite rulers—Faisal was regarded as little more than a foreign monarch installed by a foreign monarchy. In fact, prior to becoming king, he had never traveled to the region. He relied on Bell for explanations on everything from local business practices to the customs of Iraq’s nomadic tribes. Despite the obvious challenges, Bell defended the group’s choice, writing several months after the conference: “I don’t for a moment hesitate about the rightness of our policy. We can’t continue direct British control, though the country would be better governed under it.” Still, the work wore her down. For a plucky woman who’d spent her life breezing through challenges, waltzing through conflict-ridden deserts and holding her own in the company of fierce intellectuals, nation-building took its toll. As she told her father, “You may rely upon one thing—I’ll never engage in creating kings again; it’s too great a strain.” Instead, she turned her energy to another cause: preserving the region’s cultural heritage. Always an archaeologist at heart, Bell fought to keep Mesopotamian artifacts in Iraq instead of allowing them to be whisked off to foreign museums. She even created an endowment to fund future digs in Iraq. In 1926, Bell opened the Baghdad Archaeological Museum. That same year, she passed away at age 57. The shaky monarchy Bell helped install lasted two generations before being brutally overthrown in a coup d’etat in 1958. The lines she drew on maps lasted longer: The Iraq boundaries Gertrude Bell created are still used to this day. 2. The Gertrude Who Vouched for Picasso: Gertrude Stein
Stein, a Pennsylvania native who gained fame as a Left Bank lesbian, was in the vanguard of the avant-garde in the early 20th century. After moving to France at age 29, Stein began assembling one of the most important early collections of modern art. Today, many regard the tiny apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus as the world’s first modern art museum. But Stein was more than a collector and admirer—her force of personality was instrumental in fanning the fledgling movement. As a champion of experimental painting styles, as well as a gifted networker, she encouraged friends and people of importance to buy in. On Saturday evenings, she opened her apartment to international artists, dealers, and curious members of the general public, fueling enthusiasm and intrigue. Her one stipulation: Everyone was welcome so long as they came with a reference in hand.
Stein wasn’t simply a promoter; her writings played an important role in the modernist movement as well. In 1903, a decade before James Joyce began writing Ulysses, Stein started the first major modern experimental novel in English: the nearly 1,000-page masterpiece The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress. The book, which tells the story of a family without the use of plot, dialogue, or action, is often described as a literary companion to Cubism. In the words of Metropolitan Museum curator Rebecca Rabinow, “She began to deconstruct the written word in the way she felt that Picasso was beginning to deconstruct the visual motif.” That she wrote in longhand and never revised the work is indicative of Stein’s assuredness of voice and opinion. Stein passed away from stomach cancer at the age of 72, with her partner, Alice B. Toklas, by her side. Reflecting on her life, Stein said, “I always wanted to be historical, from almost a baby on.” Indeed, she was. Stein provided the fierce support the modernist art movement needed in its earliest stages. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first Picasso came from Stein’s collection. And while Stein’s legacy in the art world is undeniable, her impact on language is just as profound. Stein’s 1922 short story “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene” is generally thought to contain the first published instance (indeed, the first 136 published instances) of the word "gay" to mean homosexual. 3. Gertrude Chandler Warner: The Gertrude Who Made Boxcars Exciting
Born on April 16, 1890, Gertrude Chandler Warner grew up across the street from the Putnam, Conn., train station; the tracks were so close that her family’s windowsills were constantly covered in soot from the trains. As children, Warner and her two siblings spent their free time spying on trains from their windows, and they quickly became fascinated by the bare-bones living quarters housed in cabooses. By her sophomore year, Warner was forced to drop out of high school due to poor health. But during World War I, when many of her school district’s teachers were called to serve overseas, she was asked (“begged,” as she told it) to take up a position teaching first grade. Despite her lack of experience, Warner accepted the job and took to it well—so well she continued to teach for the next 32 years. It was the combination of all these things—Warner’s train-filled childhood, her love of teaching, and, most importantly, her recurring health problems—that led to the creation of one of the most beloved series of children’s books. The conceit of the Boxcar Children came to Warner one day when she was home sick from her teaching job. Confined to her bed, she decided to write a story to share with her students upon her return to class. Though she’d already published a few educational works, including a children’s astronomy guide, this time Warner decided to create a fictional world with young protagonists, and she crafted an adventure about four siblings who set up shop in a boxcar. To keep the kids’ attention, she did something bold: She cut out the parents.
The first version of Warner’s book was published by Rand McNally in 1924 as The Box-Car Children, but it wasn’t until 1942, when another publisher released a simplified version of the text—aimed at poor readers and children learning English—that the series took off. Today, there are more than 150 Boxcar books, including both mysteries and “specials.” Only the first 19 books in the series were written by Warner herself, each one personally revised by the author at least four times. A stickler for details, Warner kept editing until each book said just what it needed to. In 1979, Warner died in the same town she’d grown up in, unmarried with no children. Her book series lived on, Baby-Sitters Club–style, with story lines updated by a team of ghostwriters. In 2012, the Boxcar children even got their own after-the-fact prequel: the sign of a true literary juggernaut. 4. Gertrude Simmons Bonnin: The Gertrude Who Fought the System The details Bonnin, popularly known as Zitkala-Sa (“Red Bird”), was one of the first Native American authors whose work was published without passing under the pen of a white interpreter or translator. Throughout her life, Zitkala-Sa struggled with her mixed heritage. She was born in 1876 to a full-blooded Sioux woman and a white man. But it was more complicated than that: Zitkala-Sa was a Yankton Sioux born on a Sioux reservation, with a German given name and a Lakota nom de plume. At age 7, she was lured by Quaker missionaries (with promises of plentiful red apples) to White’s Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Ind. It was there that her long braids were sliced off—and that she learned to write in English. In 1899, after earning a scholarship to Earlham University in Indiana, where she studied violin, then spending two years at the New England Conservatory, Zitkala-Sa accepted a position as a music teacher at Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School. But she was horrified by the institution’s underlying philosophy. As the school’s founder Richard Pratt was spouting phrases like “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” Zitkala-Sa began writing political essays criticizing the practices.
In 1916, Zitkala-Sa was elected secretary of the Society of American Indians, the first self-run American Indian rights organization, and she quickly made her influence felt. She persuaded the General Federation of Women’s Clubs to establish an Indian Welfare Committee, and later cowrote an investigation into the government’s mistreatment of tribes. Not only did the group uncover vast mismanagement within the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but it revealed how corporations had been systematically defrauding American Indians in Oklahoma to gain access to oil-rich lands. The reports also harshly criticized the administration of the schools as “grossly inadequate.” Children were being abused for refusing to pray in the Christian way and punished for clinging to their heritage. Ultimately, the investigations inspired new school legislation and helped to give land management rights back to American Indians. But Zitkala-Sa knew she could do more. In 1926, she founded the National Council of American Indians to help lobby for American Indian legal rights. Zitkala-Sa’s lifework was dedicated to protecting and preserving native culture, while helping American Indians assimilate into the mainstream. But in all her activism, she never gave up music. Zitkala-Sa died in 1938 at the age of 61, the same year her opera “Sun Dance” debuted on Broadway. The show she cowrote, one of the first to spotlight American Indian themes, received critical acclaim. Today, she’s buried at Arlington National Cemetery, alongside her military veteran husband. _______________________
Be sure to visit mental_floss' website and blog for more fun stuff! |
View more designs by 
Milo Yiannopoulos (left) is an entrepreneur and the author of the book 
(
(
(Image: 
(
(
(
The name Gertrude sounds hard—and that’s intentional. It comes from the Germanic roots ger (“spear”) and þruþ (“strength”). No wonder ladies with the moniker are brutish, unapologetic enforcers! The next time you’re going into battle, make sure you have one by your side.
Future King Ibn Saud with Sir Percy Cox and Gertrude Bell in 1917. 
Gertrude Stein’s Paris apartment was “smaller than most people’s dining rooms.” Chairs littered the floors and lined the edges of tables. They were clustered in groups and shoved into corners. But all those chairs had a purpose—they let visitors know it was OK to linger, whether you hoped for discussion or simply wanted to savor the view. The walls, after all, were the real attraction. Walking into Stein’s dark living room, visitors were confronted with hundreds of paintings jammed frame to frame—all purchases, trades, and gifts from Stein’s friends. Since her apartment didn’t initially have electric lighting, visitors lit matches to catch a better glimpse of the artwork in the corners. Though many of the artists were unknown then, today the names—Picasso, Cézanne, Matisse, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec—carry a little more cachet.
And everyone came. As Stein once wrote, “Matisse brought people, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began.” Ironically, Stein did too good a job of promoting the modern art movement. As international dealers embraced the ideal, the prices of modern impressionist works rocketed. Before long, Stein could no longer afford to buy new pieces and was instead forced to hustle for additions to her gallery—acquiring paintings as gifts or through trade.
(Image source: 
This seemingly innocent act of editing brought plenty of ire. Librarians criticized Warner for glamorizing the mystery-solving lifestyle of unaccompanied minors. But Warner brushed off the remarks and stood firm. She knew a big part of the reason that children loved the books was that there were no pesky adults reminding Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny to wash their hands. Or to put on a sweater before going outside. Or to be careful when investigating that case of suspected arson near the family uranium mine (Boxcar Children #5, Mike’s Mystery).
in Gertrude Simmons Bonnin’s essay “The School Days of an Indian Girl” are brutal: “I remember being dragged out, though I resisted by kicking and scratching wildly. In spite of myself, I was carried downstairs and tied fast in a chair. I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids. Then I lost my spirit.”
She bristled at the notion of white educators forcing native children to relinquish their cultural identities. Unsurprisingly, her writings led to a strained relationship with the assimilation schools that had taught her to write in the first place. Her stint at Carlisle didn’t last, but her fury did.
The article above, written by Caity Weaver, is reprinted with permission from the 
| You are subscribed to email updates from Neatorama To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.