Bibliobutch
There is so much to be thankful for in the world. I collect "good things" and pleasant gestures throughout my day and I write them all down at night with a smile. :)
Josephine Baker, later known as ‘Bronze Venus’, ‘Black Pearl’ and ‘Créole Goddess’ was born in America in 1906 and later moved to France to become a singer, dancer, and actress. She was the first African-American woman to star in a major motion picture, and became famous worldwide.
Though she grew up as a maid in wealthy white households she eventually became an exotic dancer in France, famously appearing in next to no clothing, and became a French citizen in 1937.
Ernest Hemingway referred to Baker as ‘the most sensational woman anyone ever saw’ and she received approximately 1500 marriage proposals in her life time. She became a muse for Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Christian Dior. She had a variety of exotic pets including a cheetah named Chiquita, a chimpanzee named Ethel, a pig named Albert, a snake named Kiki, a goat, a parrot, parakeets, fish, three cats, and seven dogs.
When WWII broke out, Baker became a volunteer spy for France, and assisted the French Resistance by smuggling messages written in invisible ink on sheet music. She made great efforts to aid those in danger of enemy attack, sent Christmas presents to French soldiers, and smuggled information she gathered in Spain back to France by pinning notes containing the information on the inside of her underwear. She was awarded the Medal of Resistance with Rosette and later named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
Baker also aided many civil rights movements by refusing to perform to segregated audiences and storming out of a club in Manhattan with actress Grace Kelly after she was refused service. She worked with the NAACP and spoke at a Washington march alongside Martin Luther King Jr. as the only official female speaker. Baker was actually asked by Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow to take his place as leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, but Baker declined on the grounds her twelve adopted children ‘were too young to lose their mother’.
Baker died in 1975, four days after her final show, attended by such names as Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, and Liza Minnelli.
Oh and she was queer and had a relationship with Frida Kahlo. All around badass.
I’d like a movie about her life too, please.
Omg, I love her!!!
Whoa!
(via femme-in-floral)
worth scrolling all the way up to reblog
This went to a very different place then I though it would.
This is awesome/funny on one level and blows my mind on another
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Preparing to leave the place I’ve lived for the past six years. I think I’ll miss my sunny little balcony garden the most so I’m making some drawings to remember it by.
More original stuff here.
Female Mechanics in Senegal by Anthony Kurtz
Fatou Sylla and Fatou Camara run their own car repair business called Fatou Fatou Mercedes Garage in Dakar
glory
The books that will move you, inspire you, make you cry, make you think, make you laugh. Are there any books that you would add?
What do you guys think of this list?
Germane to the discussion of New Adult, methinks.
Hey 20 somethings, how many have you read?
Cross a couple off this list, we have most of these titles at the library!
High-speed photographs of ink mixing with water by Alberto Seveso
Via
(via sircle)
U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.
In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)
