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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … FEBRUARY 24

1836 – Winslow Homer (d.1910) was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. One of the most prolific and important American painters and printmakers of the second half of the nineteenth century, Winslow Homer created a distinctly American, modern classical style.

Homer dealt with many of the same themes that writers such as Henry Thoreau, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman did, including the heroism displayed by ordinary individuals, when confronted by seemingly insuperable difficulties; the camaraderie and friendships enjoyed by soldiers and working men; and the isolation of the individual in the face of the "Other."

Born in Boston on February 24, 1836, Homer was initially trained as an artist by his mother, Henrietta Benson Winslow, who successfully exhibited watercolors of flowers and other still life subjects throughout her adult life.

Between 1855 and 1857, he was apprenticed to John H. Bufford, a nationally prominent commercial artist, based in Boston; with this training, he began to do free-lance work for Harper's Weekly and other magazines.

In 1861, Homer was commissioned by Harper's Weekly as a special artist/correspondent to record the events of the Civil War. Homer failed to produce the heroic battle scenes that his editors had wanted. Yet his images of the daily lives of ordinary soldiers greatly appealed to the magazine's readers and helped to establish his reputation.

Among other subjects, he represented guard duty (A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty, wood engraving, 1867); punishments for minor infractions (A Punishment for Intoxication, painting, 1863); medical care for the wounded (The Surgeon at Work at the Rear During an Engagement, wood engraving, 1862); and recreation (Soldier Dancing, drawing, 1862).

The Empty Sleeve at Newport

As the war ended, Homer revealed the personal "costs" of the conflict in such images as The Empty Sleeve at Newport (wood engraving, 1865), which represents a one-armed man, riding in a carriage with a sad, aloof well-dressed woman.

Very little is known about Homer's "private" life. He consistently refused to answer personal questions from critics and potential biographers, and he left no revealing diaries or other personal papers. His reclusiveness is indicated by the fact that he produced no self-portraits; in contrast, most American and European painters of the nineteenth century eagerly exploited the rapidly growing market for images of artists.

Most historians have adamantly maintained that Homer remained a bachelor because he was extraordinarily "shy" around women. However, it would seem more plausible to suggest that Homer simply may not have been interested in women sexually.

Constructing Homer as a solitary eccentric, who virtually withdrew from human society, most scholars have overlooked evidence of significant, intimate associations with other men.

One of his closest friends was Albert Kelsey, a fellow artist whom he initially met in 1858 in Massachusetts. In 1867, Kelsey traveled with Homer to Paris, where they lived together for the next two years.

A studio photograph, made while they were in Paris, mimics the conventions of marriage portraits, as do so many photographic portraits of male friends of this period. Kelsey inscribed the back of the photograph with the names "Damon and Pythias," famous ancient Greek heroes and lovers.In the 1890s, Homer remembered their friendship in the humorous and erotically suggestive drawing "Albert Kelsey riding a giant turtle in the Bahamas."

Homer's closest companion in the final years of his life was an African-American man, Lewis Wright, who worked as his servant and lived at his Prout's Neck, Maine estate from 1895 to 1910. There are indications that some of Homer's acquaintances were disconcerted by the apparent closeness of his friendship with Wright. While most "negative" reactions involved race, other "unmentionable" factors may also have been involved.

The Herring Net

Throughout his career, Homer created images that celebrated diverse aspects of male friendships. Thus, he depicted soldiers, unified in melancholy longing for peacetime home life (Home, Sweet Home, 1863); wilderness guides enjoying the beauties of nature (Two Guides, 1871); and fishermen laboring together (The Herring Net, 1885) and coping with dangerous storms (The Signal of Distress, 1890).

Homer died on September 29, 1910 in Prout's Neck, Maine.

1852 – The Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist, George Moore was born on this date (d.1933). Moore came from a Roman Catholic landed family. He originally wanted to be a painter, and studied art in Paris during the 1870s. There, he befriended many of the leading French artists and writers of the day.

As a naturalistic writer, he was amongst the first English-language authors to absorb the lessons of the French realists, and was particularly influenced by the works of Émile Zola. His writings influenced James Joyce, according to the literary critic and biographer Richard Ellmann, and, although Moore's work is sometimes seen as outside the mainstream of both Irish and British literature, he is as often regarded as the first great modern Irish novelist.

According to Brian Lacey's new book, Queer Creatures: A History of Homosexuality in Ireland, Moore outed his good friend, the artist Edward Martyn, in his three-volume masterpiece Hail and Farewell (published between 1911 and 1914). Moore, who was attracted to the handsome young Yeats, later fell in love with the celebrated French painter Edouard Manet, who painted three portraits of him. Moore was influenced by the homosexual Oxford critic Walter Pater, and Moore's 1879 work, "Flowers of Passion," already contained references to Lesbianism. Moore's 1887 novel, A Mere Accident, also has a homosexual theme and its central character is again based on Martyn.

1868 – The first parade to have floats is staged at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Louisiana.

1938 – A California appellate court upholds an oral copulation conviction of a man in a hotel after naval investigators listened in and heard his bed squeaking.

1939 – Doric Wilson (d.2011), the American playwright, was born on this date. Some people write for the "alternative" theatre because they aren't good enough for Broadway. Doric Wilson wrote for it because he was too good for the Great White Way. Wilson was one of the first playwrights at NYC's legendary Caffe Cino, his comedy "And He Made A Her" opening there in 1961. Other Cino productions followed, including "Now She Dances!" (one-act version), "Babel Babel Little Tower " and "Pretty People" .

Street Theater, Wilson's best-known play, is a fictionalization of the Stonewall riots, an event in which Wilson took part. Using satire and exaggeration, Wilson recreates the milieu of street culture in Greenwich Village in the late 1960s, presenting characters variously described as "heavy leather, keys left," "a flower child," and "a street queen." The characters are archetypes representing both the disparate groups involved in the riot and also real people Wilson knew. A complex parody of Wilder's Our Town and Crowley's The Boys in the Band, the play is both deeply literary and deeply rooted in a particular time and place.

A veteran of the anti-war and civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s-mid 1970s, Wilson was a participant in the Stonewall Riots. An active participant in the early gay liberation movement, Wilson was a member of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). He helped support himself as a bartender and manager of several bars and clubs that sprouted up in the wake of Stonewall, including such institutions as Spike, Ty's, and Brothers & Sisters Cabaret. Wilson's activism and his thorough immersion in New York's gay community are reflected significantly in his work.

In 1974, Wilson (with Billy Blackwell, Peter del Valle and John McSpadden) formed TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), the first professional theatre company to deal openly and honestly with the gay experience. The company featured new plays and revivals by such writers as Brendan Behan, Noël Coward, Christopher Hampton, Charles Jurrist, Joe Orton, Terrence McNally, Robert Patrick, Sandra Scoppettone, Martin Sherman and Lanford Wilson. In June, 2001, Wilson, and directors Mark Finley and Barry Childs resurrected the company as TOSOS II. The original TOSOS and its production of Doric Wilson's play The West Street Gang are featured in "Perform", the new permanent exhibit on theatre at The Museum of New York City.

A pioneer in the Off-Off-Broadway movement, he was completely committed to alternative theater and over the past 25 years has written, directed and produced more than a hundred productions. Such plays as Forever After, A Perfect Relationship , and The West Side Gang made him not only "one of a handful of leading contemporary playwrights who deal frankly with the Gay experience," but a satirist of the first water whose targets - hypocrisy, cant, and simply human foibles - are universal.

1975 – Gary Lane and Larry Lane, born in Goldsboro, N.C., are identical twin actors, models, film producers and screenwriters. They are both gay. The twins have appeared in feature films and national TV ads and are three-time grand prize champions of reality TV competitions. They are best known for a film they co-produced and appeared in, Hollywood to Dollywood, a feature-length documentary released theatrically in 2012. The film, about their quest to personally deliver a screenplay they've written to singer-actress Dolly Parton, played at 60 film festivals and won 24 festival awards.

Since the early 2000s, the Lane twins have appeared in feature films, TV programs, reality TV shows and TV commercials. As teenagers, they appeared on several episodes of Dawson's Creek and played twin colonial flag bearers in the Mel Gibson film The Patriot (2000). Other film appearances include Zoolander (2001), New Best Friend (2002), Spider-Man (2002), The Girl Next Door (2004), Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat (2009), and Jack and Jill (2011)

The Lane Twins talk of their life

The twins have competed on and won $50,000 on NBC's Fear Factor; beat out 24 other contestants for the grand prize of $50,000 on ABC's Winter Wipeout; and won $125,000 on the reality TV competition Set For Life. Gary Lane said their goal for appearing on these shows was to win money to pay for music rights and production costs associated with their documentary Hollywood to Dollywood. "For every wipeout, I would say, 'that was for Jolene, and for every ouch, 'that was for Coat of Many Colors!,'" Gary Lane said, referring to the need to raise money for licensing rights to hit Parton songs.

The Lane twins wrote a screenplay, Full Circle, which includes a role tailored for Dolly Parton. They submitted the script to Parton's management, but Parton's managers returned it as "unsolicited material." The twins decided to drive from Los Angeles, where they live, to Parton's theme park in Tennessee, Dollywood. The goal was to try and hand their script to Parton during one of her appearances at Dollywood's 25th anniversary celebration. In addition, the documentary explores the Lane twins' concerns about their Southern hometown's potential reaction to the film (and to the brothers' homosexuality) and their desire for acceptance from their Southern Baptist mother. Also on the journey is Gary's partner, Michael Bowen, who has crafted a birdhouse for Ms. Parton. The journey to deliver their screenplay is the focus of their documentary feature, Hollywood to Dollywood, which played at 60 film festivals throughout 2011 and 2012, winning 24 awards.

Parton makes an appearance in the film. After viewing the documentary, she gave the twins rights to use her music and likeness in its promotions. The Lane twins donate 10 percent of each Hollywood to Dollywood DVD sold to Parton's Imagination Library, an organization that provides free books to young children and is part of the Dollywood Foundation.

Today's Gay Wisdom:

George Moore

Faith goes out of the window when beauty comes in at the door. - George Moore

The mind petrifies if a circle be drawn around it, and it can hardly be denied that dogma draws a circle round the mind. - George Moore

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. - George Moore

A great artist is always before his time or behind it. - George Moore

I am filled with pride when I think of the noble and exalted world that must have existed before Christian doctrine caused men to look upon women with suspicion and bade them to think of angels instead. - George Moore

The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the plague that will sweep away and destroy civilization; man will have to rise against it sooner or later. - George Moore

The difficulty in life is the choice.

- George Moore

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Neo-Griot

Kalamu ya Salaam's information blog

HISTORY: Indians, Slaves, and Mass Murder: The Hidden History

Indians, Slaves, and

Mass Murder:

The Hidden History

by Peter Nabokov

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 431 pp., $30.00

 

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 by Benjamin Madley Yale University Press, 692 pp., $38.00

Carl Lumholtz: Tarahumara Woman Being Weighed, Barranca de San Carlos (Sinforosa), Chihuahua, 1892; from Among Unknown Tribes: Rediscovering the Photographs of Explorer Carl Lumholtz. The book includes essays by Bill Broyles, Ann Christine Eek, and others, and is published by the University of Texas Press.

1.

The European market in African slaves, which opened with a cargo of Mauritian blacks unloaded in Portugal in 1441, and the explorer Christopher Columbus, born in Genoa ten years later, were closely linked. The ensuing Age of Discovery, with its expansions of empires and exploitations of New World natural resources, was accompanied by the seizure and forced labor of human beings, starting with Native Americans.

Appraising that commercial opportunity came naturally to an entrepreneur like Columbus, as did his sponsors’ pressure on him to find precious metals and his religion’s contradictory concerns both to protect and convert heathens. On the day after Columbus landed in 1492 on an island in the present-day Bahamas and saw its Taíno islanders, he wrote that “with fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” Soon the African trade was changing life in Spain; within another hundred years most urban families owned one or more black servants, over 7 percent of Seville was black, and a new social grouping of mixed-race mulattos joined the lower rungs of a color-coded social ladder.

Columbus liked the “affectionate and without malice” Arawakan-speaking Taíno natives. He found the men tall, handsome, and good farmers, the women comely, near naked, and apparently available. In exchange for glass beads, brass hawk bells, and silly red caps, the seamen received cotton thread, parrots, and food from native gardens. Fresh fish and fruits were abundant. Glints in the ornaments worn by natives promised gold, and they presumably knew where to find more. Aside from one flare-up, there were no serious hostilities. Columbus returned to Barcelona with six Taíno natives who were paraded as curiosities, not chattel, before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

The following year, Columbus led seventeen ships that dropped 1,500 prospective settlers on Caribbean beaches. As they stayed on, relations with local Indians degenerated. What was soon imposed was “the other slavery” that the University of California, Davis, historian Andrés Reséndez discusses in his synthesis of the last half-century of scholarship on American Indian enslavement. First came the demand for miners to dig for gold. The easy-going Taínos were transformed into gold-panners working under Spanish overseers.

The Spaniards also exploited the forms of human bondage that already existed on the islands. The Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, a more aggressive tribe, regularly raided the Taínos, allegedly eating the men but keeping the women and children as retainers. A similar discrimination based on age and gender would prevail throughout the next four centuries of Indian-on-Indian servitude. As Bonnie Martin and James Brooks put it in their anthology, Linking the Histories of Slavery: North America and Its Borderlands:

North America was a vast, pulsing map of trading, raiding, and resettling. Whether the systems were pre- or postcontact indigenous, European colonial, or US national, they grew into complex cultural matrices in which the economic wealth and social power created using slavery proved indivisible. Indigenous and Euro-American slave systems evolved and innovated in response to each other.*

Taínos who resisted the Spanish were set upon by dogs, disemboweled by swords, burned at stakes, trampled by horses—atrocities “to which no chronicle could ever do justice,” wrote Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, a crusader for Indian rights, in 1542. Against the Caribs the Spaniards had a tougher time, fighting pitched battles but capturing hundreds of slaves as well. Columbus sailed home from his second voyage with over a thousand captives bound for slave auctions in Cádiz (many died en route, their bodies tossed overboard). He envisioned a future market for New World gold, spices, cotton, and “as many slaves as Their Majesties order to make, from among those who are idolators,” whose sales might underwrite subsequent expeditions.

Thus did the discoverer of the New World become its first transatlantic human trafficker—a sideline pursued by most New World conquistadors until, in the mid-seventeenth century, Spain officially opposed slavery. And Columbus’s vision of a “reverse middle passage” crumbled when Spanish customers preferred African domestics. Indians were more expensive to acquire, insufficiently docile, harder to train, unreliable over the years, and susceptible to homesickness, seasickness, and European diseases. Other obstacles included misgivings by the church and royal authorities, which may explain Columbus’s emphasis on “idolators” like the Caribs, whose status as “enemies” and cannibals made them more legally eligible for enslavement.

Indians suffered from overwork in the gold beds, as well as foreign pathogens against which they had no antibodies, and from famine as a result of overhunting and underfarming. Within two generations the native Caribbean population faced a “cataclysmic decline.” On the island of Hispaniola alone, of its estimated 300,000 indigenous population, only 11,000 Taínos remained alive by 1517. Within ten more years, six hundred or so villages were empty.

But even as the Caribbean was ethnically cleansed of its original inhabitants, a case of bad conscience struck Iberia. It had its origins in the ambivalence of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella over how to treat Indians. In the spring of 1495, only four days after the royals advised their bishop in charge of foreign affairs that slaves “would be more easily sold in Andalusia than in other parts,” they ordered a halt to all human enslavement until the church informed them “whether we can sell them or not.” Outrage was more overt in the polemics of Las Casas, who had emigrated to the islands in 1502. He had owned slaves and then renounced the practice in 1515. After taking his vows as a Dominican priest, he helped to push the antislavery New Laws of the Indies through the Spanish legal system in 1542.

Slaving interests used a succession of verbal strategies for justifying and retaining unfree Indian labor. As early as 1503 tribes designated as “cannibals” became fair game, as were Indian prisoners seized in “just wars.” Hereafter labeled esclavos de guerra (war slaves), their cheeks bore a branded “G.” Automatic servitude also awaited any hapless Indians, known as esclavos de rescate (ransomed slaves), whom Spanish slavers had freed from other Indians who had already enslaved them; the letter “R” was seared into their faces.

In 1502 Hispanola’s new governor, Nicolás de Ovando, made use of an old feudal practice for ensuring control over workers’ bodies. To retain native miners but check rampant cruelty, Ovando bestowed on prominent colonizers land grants (encomiendas) that included rights to tribute and labor from Indians already residing there. Although still vassals, they remained nominally free from “ownership.” They could reside in their own villages, were theoretically protected from sexual predation and secondary selling, and were supposed to receive religious instruction and token compensation of a gold peso a year—benefits that were often ignored. Over the next two centuries the encomienda system and other local forms of unfree labor were used to create a virtually enslaved Indian workforce throughout Mexico, Florida, the American Southwest, down the South American coast, and over to the Philippines.

The story of Native American enslavement told by Reséndez becomes confused by the convoluted interplay of indigenous and imported systems of human servitude. Despite his claim of uncovering “the other slavery,” when speaking of the forms of bondage imposed on Indians he fails to acknowledge that there was no monolithic institution akin to the “peculiar” transatlantic one that would become identified with the American South, which imported Africans auctioned as commodities. Even the distinction some scholars draw between such “slave societies” and “societies with slaves” (depending on whether slave labor was essential or not to the general economy) only partially applies to the highly complex, deeply local situations of enslaved American Indians. For these blended a dizzying variety of customary practices with colonial systems for maintaining a compulsory native workforce. If Reséndez is claiming to encompass the full tragedy of Indian slavery “across North America,” he does not distinguish among the different colonial systems of Indian servitude—enabled by Indian allies of the colonizers—that existed under English, French, and Dutch regimes.

During the seventeenth century, as some Spaniards continued to raise the question of the morality of slavery, silver mines opened in northern Mexico, and the demand for Indian manpower increased. This boom would require more workers than the Caribbean gold fields and last far longer. Now the physical effort turned from surface panning or shallow trenching to sinking shafts hundreds of feet into the ground. More profitable than gold, silver was also more grueling to extract. Miners dug, loaded, and hauled rocks in near darkness for days at a time. Around present-day Zacatecas, entire mountains were made of the gray-black ore.

To meet the growing labor demand, Spanish and Indian slaving expanded out of the American Southwest, sending Pueblo and Comanche slaves to the mines, and seizing slaves from the defiant Chichimec of northern Mexico during particularly violent campaigns between the 1540s and the 1580s. From the beginning of the sixteenth century to the first decade of the nineteenth, twelve times as much silver was extracted from over four hundred mines scattered throughout Mexico as was gold during the entire California Gold Rush.

At Parral, a silver-mining center in southern Chihuahua and in 1640 the largest town north of the Tropic of Cancer, over seven thousand workers descended into the shafts every day—most of them enslaved natives from as far off as New Mexico, which soon became “little more than a supply center for Parral.” After the state-directed system for forcibly drafting Indian labor for the Latin American silver mines, known as the mita, was instituted in 1573, it remained in operation for 250 years and drew an average of ten thousand Indians a year from over two hundred indigenous communities.

As Reséndez shifts his narrative to the Mexican mainland, however, one is prompted to ask another question of an author who claims to have “uncovered” the panoramic range of Indian slavery. Shouldn’t we know more of the history of those Indian-on-Indian slavery systems that Columbus witnessed and that became essential for delivering workers to Mexican mines, New Mexican households, or their own native villages? Throughout the pre-Columbian Americas, underage and female captives from intertribal warfare were routinely turned into domestic workers who performed menial tasks. Through recapture or ransom payment some were repatriated, while many remained indentured their entire lives. But a number were absorbed into their host settlement through forms of fictive kinship, such as ceremonial adoption or most commonly through intermarriage.

Among the eleventh-century mound-building Indian cultures of the Mississippi Bottoms, such war prisoners made up a serf-like underclass. This civilization collapsed in the thirteenth century and the succeeding tribes we know as Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and others perpetuated the practice of serfdom; Cherokee war parties added to each town’s stock of atsi nahsa’i, or “one who is owned.” The custom continued across indigenous America, with child-bearing women and prepubescent males generally preferred. Their husbands and fathers were more commonly killed. Reséndez hardly mentions the subsequent participation of those same tribes in the white man’s race-based “peculiar institution.” They bought and sold African-American slaves to work their Indian-owned plantations. Once the Civil War broke out there was a painfully divisive splitting of southern Indian nations into Confederate and Union allies.

As with Carib predation upon the Taíno, it was not uncommon for stronger tribes to focus on perennial victims. In the Southeast, the Chickasaw regularly took slaves from the Choctaw; in the Great Basin, the Utes stole women and children from the Paiute (and then traded them to Mormon households that were happy to pay for them); in California, the northeastern Modoc regularly preyed upon nearby Atsugewi, while the Colorado River–dwelling Mojave routinely raided the local Chemehuevi. These relationships between prey and predator might extend over generations. Only among the hierarchical social orders of the northwest coast, apparently, were slaves traditionally treated more like commodities, to be purchased, traded, or given as gifts.

Indirectly, the Spanish helped to instigate the next upsurge in human trafficking across the American West. Their horses—bred in northern New Mexico, then rustled or traded northward after the late seventeenth century—made possible an equestrian revolution across the plains. In short order the relationships between a few dozen Indian tribes shifted dramatically, as the pedestrian hunter-and-gatherer peoples were transformed by horses into fast-moving nomads who became dependent on buffalo and preyed on their neighbors. In white American popular culture the new-born horse cultures would be presented as the war bonnet–wearing, teepee-dwelling, war-whooping stereotypes of Wild West shows and movie screens. Among them were the Comanches of the southern plains and the Utes of the Great Basin borderlands.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the Comanche military machine had put a damper on Spanish expansionism. Their cavalry regiments of five hundred or more disciplined horsemen undertook eight-hundred-mile journeys northward as far as the Arkansas River and southward to within a few hundred miles of Mexico City. The slaves they plucked from Apaches, Pueblos, and Navajos became their prime currency in business deals with Mexicans, New Mexicans, and Americans. At impromptu auctions and established crossroads, Native American, Mexican, and Anglo slaves were being sold, some undergoing a succession of new masters. Until the US government conquered them, the Comanches held sway over a quarter-million square miles of the American and Mexican borderlands.

Reséndez argues for continuities in this inhuman traffic right down to the present day. But his abrupt transition to the present after the defeat of the Comanches only reinforces our sense that his effort has been overly ambitious and weakly conceived, as if achieving the promised synthesis for so complex and persistent a topic has simply (and understandably) overwhelmed him. His treatment of the multinational practices of Colonial-period slavery is spotty, and the ubiquitous traditions of native-on-native enslavement seem soft-pedaled.

Reséndez loosely estimates that between some 2.5 to five million Indians were trapped in this “other slavery,” in which overwork and physical abuse doubtlessly contributed to the drop of 90 percent in the North American Indian population between Columbus’s day and 1900. But somehow little of all that torment comes across vividly in The Other Slavery. We are told that Navajos called the 1860s, when their entire tribe was hounded for incarceration in southern New Mexico, “the Fearing Time.” Aside from that hint of the collective emotional impact from the victims’ side, we get few testimonies that reflect the anxiety and terror behind Reséndez’s many summaries of human suffering, tribal dislocations, furtive lives on the run, and birthrights lost forever.

A more convincing sense of the racial discrimination and hatred that bolstered and perpetuated the slavery systems discussed in Reséndez’s book comes from even a melodramatic film like John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), while the terrors of surviving in the late-eighteenth-century West amid roving bands of merciless slave raiders are better evoked in Cormac McCarthy’s Grand Guignol masterpiece Blood Meridian(1985). Reading Reséndez’s account one hopes in vain for something similar to Rebecca West’s quiet comment in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), her chronicle of Yugoslavian multiethnic animosities: “It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of a skunk.”

2.

Indian slavery becomes a contributing factor in An American Genocide, the UCLAhistorian Benjamin Madley’s extensive argument that genocide is the only appropriate term for what happened to native peoples in north-central California between 1846 and 1873. For American Indians, slavery in the New World took many forms that persevered over four centuries while changing according to local conditions, global pressures, and maneuvers to evade abolitionist crusades. Genocide—the elimination of entire groups—might seem easier to evaluate. Yet which historical episodes of mass Indian murder qualify as genocide has become a matter of debate.

Madley shies away from the hyperbolic accusations of genocide or holocaust often made in simplistic discussions of American Indian history. The definition that he invokes with prosecutorial ferocity is the one produced by the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, which defines genocide as, first, demonstrating an intent to destroy, “in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” and, second, committing any of the following acts: killing members of a group; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; inflicting conditions that are intended to cause their destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures to prevent births within the group; and transferring children of the group to another group. Whereas the large unspecified “group” referred to in this post–World War II statement was, of course, defined by the Nazis, Madley’s is smaller and, even then, it is composed of many hundreds of indigenous units, each an autonomous, small-scale cultural world that was decimated or destroyed.

Madley has documented his charge of genocide by years of scrolling through local newspapers, histories, personal diaries, memoirs, and official letters and reports. These revealed what many indigenous groups endured at the hands of US military campaigns, state militia expeditions, impromptu small-town posses, and gold miners, as well as ordinary citizens who hunted natives on weekends. Most western historians and demographers could agree that genocidal behavior toward a North American Indian population occurred during the nineteenth century. But Madley has concentrated on the killing in California during the bloody years between 1846 and 1873.

Edward S. Curtis: Mosa—Mohave, 1903/1907; from Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks. The book is by Christopher Cardozo, with contributions by A. D. Coleman, Louise Erdrich, and others. It is published by Delmonico/Prestel and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography.

The factors that led to this American tragedy are worth recalling. Many Indian communities had already been defeated in their resistance to servitude during the Spanish Mission and Mexican Rancho years. The United States victory over Mexico in early 1848 opened the way to the last great American land rush. Until California became the nation’s thirty-first state in 1850, there were two years of lawlessness. The Anglo-American settlers whose wagons began rolling into the region carried anti-Indian attitudes imported from colonial times. The discovery of gold in early 1848 multiplied that immigration and aggressive settler colonialism. There was pervasive racism toward the state’s diverse and generally peaceful native population. They were denigrated as animal-like “Diggers”—a pejorative term based on their food-gathering customs. Political, military, journalistic, and civic leaders favored creating a de facto open season on its native peoples.

When the state’s first legislature convened, it passed a number of orders that, according to Madley, “largely shut Indians out of participation in and protection by the state legal system” and granted “impunity to those who attacked them.” The legislature funded, with $1.51 million, state vigilantism coupled with exhortations from top officials, including two state governors, to war against Native Americans. Near the beginning of this campaign, California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, pledged that “a war of extermination will continue to be waged…until the Indian race becomes extinct.”

At the time of first contact with whites, the native California population amounted to some 350,000, perhaps the densest concentration of Indians in the country. But they were divided into at least sixty major tribes that, in turn, were made up of scores of small, independent, autonomous villages that spoke upward of a hundred separate languages. After the epidemics, mission programs, land losses, and peonage of the Spanish period, about 150,000 Indians remained on the eve of the US takeover. By 1870 the number of California Indians had been cut to under 30,000, a population loss that would continue until it bottomed out at under 17,000 by the turn of the century.

When gold was struck near present-day Sacramento in January 1848, Indians were occupying some of the most desirable natural environments in North America. The size of these Indian groups ranged widely. The proximity of so many autonomous villages made bi- or even trilingualism not uncommon. But especially in the north-central region—with its abundant acorn groves, salmon-rich rivers, valleys plentiful in fruits, roots, and seeds, foothills teeming with game, plentiful marine life, wildfowl and associated plants along the sea coast and wetlands—their small, self-governing and self-sufficient villagers could thrive in their homelands. However, the combination of Spanish and American invasions would cost the Indians and their fragile ecologies dearly. Meadows bearing life-giving nutritious seeds and roots were put to the torch for conversion into agricultural fields and cattle pastures, streams were poisoned by the sludge from mining, and forests were cut for lumber.

To characterize these fairly self-contained worlds, the dean of California Indian studies, anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, coined the term “tribelet.” But when it came to describing the sufferings of these California tribelets during the Gold Rush, Kroeber wrote dismissively of their “little history of pitiful events,” which, as an ethnographer drawn to “millennial sweeps and grand contours,” he felt unable to comment upon.

That did not stop one of his colleagues, the anthropologist Robert Heizer, from doing so. Heizer’s revelatory They Were Only Diggers (1974), along with his other anthologies, compiled newspaper clippings and reports on the myriad killings and other brutalities experienced by the region’s Indians. Together with a state demographer, Sherburne Cooke, he began documenting the unpublicized story of the California Indian catastrophe. Now Benjamin Madley, building upon the ethnohistorical work of Heizer and Cooke, has delved more systematically into the outrages of the period.

His chronicle opens with accounts by Thomas Martin and Thomas Breckenridge, members of John C. Frémont’s early expedition, which invaded what was still Mexican-held territory. In April 1846, along the Sacramento River near the present-day city of Redding, Frémont’s troops encountered a large group of local Wintu Indians. With the command “to ask no quarter and to give none,” his troops encircled the Indians and began firing at everyone in sight. Breckenridge wrote: “Some escaped but as near as I could learn from those that were engaged in the butchery, I can’t call it anything else, there was from 120 to 150 Indians killed that day.” Martin estimated that “in less than 3 hours we had killed over 175 of them.” A third eyewitness account found by Madley raised that estimate to between six hundred and seven hundred dead on land, not counting those, possibly an additional three hundred, slaughtered in the river. “The Sacramento River Massacre,” he writes, may have been one of the least-reported mass killings in US history, and “was the prelude to hundreds of similar massacres.”

So begins Madley’s calm, somber indictment. One after another he describes the cultures and the histories of tribes that were victimized, and he profiles the victimizers. Many of the atrocities were committed not only by US soldiers and their auxiliaries but also by motley companies of militiamen that murdered young and old, male and female indiscriminately—and often with an undisguised glee that comes through in Madley’s abundant selection of quotes.

Rape was rampant, and natives were intentionally starved, tortured, and whipped. Under the new California Legislature’s Government and Protection of the Indians Act of 1850, any nonworking, publicly drunk, or orphaned and underage Indians could become commodities in an unfree labor system that was tantamount to slave auctions. The act’s impact on the young meant that ten years after its passage, thousands of California Indian children were serving as unpaid “apprentices” in white households.

For over a quarter-century, Madley shows how the region became a quilt of many killing fields. Of the estimated 80 percent decline in the California Indian population during these years, around 40 percent has been attributed to outright “extermination killings” alone. Yet each of these tribes and tribelets functioned as an independent cultural world. Each was knit together by strands of kinship and deep attachments to place, as well as oral traditions about both that were passed on from generation to generation. Strewn across California were not only human bodies, but entire worldviews.

At the start of the Gold Rush, the Yuki Indians who lived at the heart of the region had well over three thousand members; they were reduced to less than two hundred by its end. The same decline occurred among the Tolowa Indians to the northwest, while the Yahi people were practically wiped out altogether.

In the hateful rhetoric of many nineteenth-century military, religious, and bureaucratic hard-liners quoted by Madley, the word “extermination” was often used. Yet this outcome was considered no great tragedy for an entire people who were uniformly and irredeemably defined as savage and subhuman.

Madley’s nearly two hundred pages of appendices are the most complete incident-by-incident tally ever compiled of Indian lives lost during this terrible period. Asking for names would have been impossible; instead we get numbers of deceased and places where they perished—one or two with brains smashed on rocks on a particular day over here, thirty to a hundred shot to death and left floating in a river over there. This scrupulously detailed epilogue is the equivalent of a memorial wall that we are visiting for the first time.

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Inspired by Movies Masterlist

Links last checked: May 5th, 2024

Bahamas And Butterbeer (ao3) - fourthingsandawizard

Summary: Tired of hiding his magic from his Muggle viewers at Playlist Live, Dan decides to take a spontaneous trip and tweet about it, much to Phil’s exasperation.

Be My Muse (ao3) - t_hens

Summary: Love, Simon AU

Blue’s Clues (ao3) - illbealonedancing

Summary: Phil had tried to keep his coming out as un-lifechanging as possible. But when, at the end of the day, he finds a note in his locker with an email address written on it, his life changes in the best way possible.

Circle The Walls And Claw The Dirt (ao3) - ShippingFangirl26 (IceQueenJules26)

Summary: Dan and Phil have lost a lot during the rebellion and everything seems dark, but not all hope is lost when they get to meet war heroes Peeta and Katniss...

Elenya (ao3) - parttimestoryteller

Summary: Lord of the rings AU!!) A stable boy from Rohan with a sword thrust into his hands meets a Galadhrim Elf head-on in the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Phil finds himself saving young Dan time and time again, but before the battle ends Dan will find his feet (and his sword grip) and return the favour. Can a light spark in the darkest of nights?

Halloweentown - doomedhowell

Summary: Halloween is Dan’s absolute favorite holiday, unfortunately his mom doesn’t allow he and his sister to celebrate it. Dan’s grandmother comes to visit and Dan’s Halloween doesn’t go quite as plan, in the best possible way.

Heroes (ao3)- kitchen_sinks

Summary: Based on The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky exploring the relationship between Dan (Brad) and Phil (Patrick), two high schoolers who could only be together behind closed doors and found love at the bottom of a glass.

Let The Games Begin - doomedhowell

Summary: The Hunger Games is happening once again. Phil Lester has never been interested due to his grandpa shielding him away from most of it. But now, Phil wants to learn more about the Games. Then, he meets a boy from District 6 who has been chosen to take part in The Hunger Games. Phil becomes attached, and he’ll do anything to help keep this boy alive.

Life Finds A Way - doomedhowell

Summary: Dan and Phil in the Jurassic Park world! With a genderswap twist. Daisy and Penelope are sent to Isla Nublar to check out the upcoming Jurassic World amusement park. Daisy wanted a nice trip, wanted to see some dinosaurs, and hang out with co-workers. Nothing more, and nothing less. Unfortunately, a dinosaur breaks out of containment and all hell breaks loose.

Lightyear Groovin' (ao3) - Tarredion

Summary: In a galaxy far, far away, there’s an abundance of 70s clubs. On Krithoo, local party freak Dan Howell works as a waiter at an often overcrowded cantina, Virgo Volans. And maybe, just maybe, has an infatuation with the extraterrestrial dj frequenting their stage.

Our Souls Are Never Lost (wattpad) - simpleskies

Summary: Phillip Michael Lester was soon to become Phillip Michael Howell. So him and his future husband Daniel James Howell were planning a romantic getaway on the unsinkable ship before there big day, but their holiday doesn’t quite go to plan.

Secret Admirer - helloanonymouswriter

Summary: Dan’s in Slytherin. Phil’s in Ravenclaw. Dan fancies Phil.

Skin and Scales (ao3) - iihappydaysii

Summary: Phil is the velociraptor handler at Jurassic World and he has a very special connection with the park’s male raptor, Dan.

take a picture, it'll last longer. (ao3) - eftychja

Summary: when new opportunities arise, you take them. no matter the cost, no matter the "what ifs". but when met with an attractive and obnoxious asshole, are you supposed to say no?

OR

dan howell is a photographer for a luxury fashion brand + magazine, phil lester is their star and most prized model. however, he's sassy and not at all compatible to work with. when they start working together, what will come of it?

To Dwell on Dreams (ao3) - carltzmann

Summary: "Taking in the whole image, though, it hardly hurt. Watching this perfect version of himself smile and wave and talk to his friends, bathing in success and appreciation, Dan suddenly started to believe that maybe all that was possible, even with the confirmation of a terrifying secret."

Dan and Phil meet at the Mirror of Erised.

Up Close And Personal - dxnhowell

Summary: Dan is a famous dinosaur expert who has been studying dinosaurs his whole life, and gets the opportunity to work at Jurassic World (he works exclusively with the raptors). Phil is a very smart guy, like a genius, and he’s close friends with Louise who works at Jurassic World so he gets to go to Jurassic World and gets behind the scenes VIP treatment. There, he meets Dan. Unfortunately for Phil, things go wrong while feeding the raptors and an accident happens.

You Forced My Hand - xinyanhowell

Summary: Dan and Phil are Jedi apprentices at the Academy. Things get… interesting when a training duel gets out of hand…

[raynerpenar]

115-70. Venezuela domina a Bahamas y se acerca a la clasificación del Mundial - Michael Carrera de Venezuela intenta hacer una canasta durante un partido entre Venezuela y Bahamas por la sexta y última eliminatoria de América para la clasificación a la Copa Mundial FIBA 2023 en Japón, hoy, en Caracas (Venezuela). Venezuela, guiado por 16 puntos del base David Cubillán, derrotó este jueves 115-70 a Bahamas, con lo que se mantiene a las puertas de la clasificación al Mundial de Baloncesto 2023. EFE/ Rayner Peña R. - Michael Carrera from Venezuela tries to make a basket during a match between Venezuela and Bahamas for the sixth and final qualifying round for America to qualify for the FIBA World Cup 2023 in Japan, today, in Caracas (Venezuela). Venezuela, guided by 16 points from point guard David Cubillán, defeated the Bahamas 115-70 this Thursday, thus remaining at the gates of qualifying for the 2023 Basketball World Cup. EFE/ Rayner Peña R. #Venezuela #Bahamas #FIBA #PoliedroDeCaracas #Poliedro #sportphotography #sport #baloncesto #FIBAWC #FIBAWC2023 #RaynerPenaR #Vzla #Vinotinto #JuntosAlMundial #Basketball #canon #photo #photographer #fotoperiodismo #photojournalism (en Poliedro de Caracas) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpB5cmrsixv/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[t1deleuthera-blog]

Trouble in Paradise

This blog post will explore Intersectionality, especially through the work of June Jordan, a writer, and poet from New York City, who has written extensively on her personal experiences as a black bisexual woman in America. According to The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics, “Intersectionality is a term that has been increasingly applied to knowledge projects whose purpose is to understand all dimensions of power relations, including race, class, gender, and sexuality. Intersectional knowledge projects have reconceptualized these phenomena as mutually constructing systems of power.” (pg. 59) Intersectionality explores how people can be discriminated against not just for their race or sex, but for both along with other marginalization. Jordan takes a lot of time in her report to discuss Olive, the maid she had at the Sheraton British Colonial. Olive’s experience as a marginalized black woman is different because she lives in The Bahamas obviously, yet, there are similarities between the two women’s lives in terms of discrimination. Because they both are facing issues, Jordan begs the question, “Why should she give a shit about mine (rights) unless I do something, for real, about hers?” (pg. 41)

In The Bahamas, power is based 100% on race. White oligarchs have held and continue to hold significant economic and political power. Because of its history, the Bahamas has always had a small white minority population, usually clustered in settlements away from black Bahamians. The white minority in the Bahamas, who had completely consolidated power ever since they brought the first African to the islands, was propped up by the colonial government. They ruled the majority-black country through long-standing colonial rules and regulations that ensured black people were disenfranchised and undereducated. Black people mostly worked menial labor jobs and lived in shanty towns away from white settlements. To this day, white Bahamians mostly own hotels and restaurants, black people just work unskilled labor jobs for them. Jordan illustrates this demeaning power dynamic right off the bat, telling us about one of the photographs advertising the hotel she was staying in. “The place displays a middle-aged Black man in a waiters tuxedo, smiling. He is so delighted to serve you he will wade into the water to bring you Banana Daiquiris while you float!” The image is demeaning and says a lot about the advertising that will entice tourists to visit. Jules’s Jordan explores Intersectionality before the term was even coined! In her article, a Report from The Bahamas, she explores her experience being a middle-class black woman from Brooklyn visiting a colonized country with a predominantly black population. She begins by copying a message written from the Ministry of Tourism in her hotel room. The message details the history of the Bahamas, from a Eurocentric point of view, which disregards Afro-Bahamians. She explains in regards to the message, “There it is again. Something proclaims itself a legitimate history and all it does is track white Mr. Columbus to the British Eleutherians…..nobody saying one word about the Bahamian people, the Black people, to whom the only thing new in their island world was this weird succession of crude intruders and its colonial consequences.” (pg. 40) What the message also fails to mention is anything about independence from Britain! The Bahamas gained their independence in 1976, six years before this report was written. However, that was conveniently left out of the history. It also fails to mention anything about the culture, on purpose. This report gives the impression that the predominantly white tourists would rather not pay attention to anything other than the beach, the only black people they care about are the ones making their drinks. As the daughter of a hotelier in The Bahamas, therefore someone who has spent a lot of time with tourists and locals, I can absolutely speak to this fact as being true.

In conclusion, people must discuss the intersections of identities if we are to have a real conversation about the institutions that keep people down. Not just in The Bahamas but everywhere.

[hannahshumblog]

Happiness Manifesto

Everyone wants a life full of happiness, love and good times. Although some people may have more happiness then another person may have, that doesn't mean that a person doesn't deserve happiness and the feeling of being loved by people that surround them. After I have viewed all of my blog posts I realized there is one major theme between multiple of my posts and that is, what makes me happy. For example in my posts Eiffel Tower, Domesticated Architecture, and Traveling Photographs, the end result is always how it makes me feel happy. I feel as I was submitting these blogs I did not realize I talked alot about what makes me happy but looking back I see that there are many things that can make me feel happy. 

First off, in my blog about the eiffel tower I talk about my grandma and how the two made me feel when I thought about them and the plan my Grandma had for us. I find myself thinking about the eiffel tower a lot because of the happiness it brings me. Thinking about my Grandma and how it made her feel makes me happy knowing that the same thing that makes me happy also brought her lots of joy and happiness throughout her life. Although I am devastated I never got the chance to visit Paris with my Grandmother. It makes me very happy to know one day I will make it there and live my Grandma's dreams. I know she'll be looking down on me smiling with joy. 

Secondly, the blog about domesticated architecture opened my eyes to how much a space can make my feel and sense of happiness. There are many different types of architecture and depending on how they are decorated and kept it can make someone feel a certain way. In this blog I shared a picture of my house and my friend's grandparents house. In the images you can see a distinct difference. My house feels more warm and welcoming and in my friend's grandparents house it has a cold feeling and sort of like no one lives there. Houses where I feel welcome and can immediately tell that a family lives there and is loved in that house makes me feel happy. Of course people have different senses of style and what makes me happy may not make someone else feel happy, it is just based on opinions. But for me personally I want a room or piece of architecture that is warm, welcoming, lived and loved in. This makes me feel happy in a way of knowing people are loved by others and welcoming me and other people into their home. 

Lastly, traveling has always been very important to me. Although I have not been to very many places I am still grateful and happy I have gotten to visit the places I have. In the Traveling Photographs blog I have explained some images from certain places I have visited. It is just something about seeing how other people live and go about their everyday life that makes me feel grateful and happy to be able to do something like that. Whenever you travel you get to experience many different things that you would not normally experience in your everyday life. New experiences make me full of joy because I get to learn and see new things. For example when I visit Georgia I get to see mountains, when I visit North Carolina I get to see waterfalls and when I visit the Bahamas I get to go to the pig beach and just simply see how different people from different places live, which is truly a blessing. 

In conclusion, there are millions of things in this world that anyone can look to for happiness whether it be being with friends and family, going on vacations, or having a self-care day. There is something for everyone to allow everyone to feel a sense of happiness. I feel many people look for the bad in things instead of looking for the good. If everyone were to take time and just seek the good in the world, everyone would have a happier life filled with love and overall blessings. Without even noticing it many of my blogs were based around what gives me a sense of happiness and what makes me happy. Looking for the good can improve the happiness of people overall.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.18 (after 1940)

1940 – World War II: The British liner SS City of Benares is sunk by German submarine U-48; those killed include 77 child refugees. 1943 – World War II: Adolf Hitler orders the deportation of Danish Jews. 1944 – World War II: The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoes Jun'yō Maru, killing 5,600, mostly slave labourers and POWs. 1944 – World War II: The Battle of Arracourt begins. 1945 – General Douglas MacArthur moves his general headquarters from Manila to Tokyo. 1947 – The National Security Act reorganizes the United States government's military and intelligence services. 1948 – Operation Polo is terminated after the Indian Army accepts the surrender of the army of Hyderabad. 1948 – Margaret Chase Smith of Maine becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate without completing another senator's term. 1954 – Finnish president J. K. Paasikivi becomes the first Western head of state to be awarded the highest honor of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin. 1960 – Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations. 1961 – U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in an air crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 1962 – Burundi, Jamaica, Rwanda and Trinidad and Tobago are admitted to the United Nations. 1962 – Aeroflot Flight 213 crashes into a mountain near Chersky Airport, killing 32 people. 1973 – The Bahamas, East Germany and West Germany are admitted to the United Nations. 1974 – Hurricane Fifi strikes Honduras with 110 mph winds, killing 5,000 people. 1977 – Voyager I takes the first distant photograph of the Earth and the Moon together. 1980 – Soyuz 38 carries two cosmonauts (including one Cuban) to the Salyut 6 space station. 1981 – The Assemblée Nationale votes to abolish capital punishment in France. 1982 – The Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon comes to an end. 1984 – Joe Kittinger completes the first solo balloon crossing of the Atlantic. 1988 – The 8888 Uprising in Myanmar comes to an end. 1988 – General Henri Namphy, president of Haiti, is ousted from power in a coup d'état led by General Prosper Avril. 1990 – Liechtenstein becomes a member of the United Nations. 1992 – An explosion rocks Giant Mine at the height of a labor dispute, killing nine replacement workers in Yellowknife, Canada. 1997 – United States media magnate Ted Turner donates US$1 billion to the United Nations. 1997 – The Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention is adopted. 2001 – First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks. 2007 – Buddhist monks join anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting what some call the Saffron Revolution. 2011 – The 2011 Sikkim earthquake is felt across northeastern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and southern Tibet. 2012 – Greater Manchester Police officers PC Nicola Hughes and PC Fiona Bone are murdered in a gun and grenade ambush attack in Greater Manchester, England. 2014 – Scotland votes against independence from the United Kingdom, by 55% to 45%. 2015 – Two security personnel, 17 worshippers in a mosque, and 13 militants are killed during a Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan attack on a Pakistan Air Force base on the outskirts of Peshawar. 2016 – The 2016 Uri attack in Jammu and Kashmir, India by terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed results in the deaths of nineteen Indian Army soldiers and all four attackers. 2021 – A ferry capsizes in Guizhou province, China due to bad weather, leaving ten people dead and five missing.

[beyvsl]

“Let the waves hit your feet, and the sand be your seat.”

[creativemorningsmiami]

Miami Artist Spotlight

Photo credit: Phoebe Fitz

Each newsletter will feature a Miami-based creative individual sharing their craft with the world. Today we spotlight Dr. Shireen Rahimi.

Dr. Rahimi is an Iranian/American award-winning underwater filmmaker, photographer, marine anthropologist, freediver, and National Geographic Explorer. As a marine anthropologist, Shireen studies how people make sense of, interact with, and adapt to changing oceans. While studying for her PhD, Shireen realized that her films were effective in getting people to care about ocean conservation. Upon completing her degree in 2020, she started Lightpalace and began her career as a professional filmmaker, infusing her scientific expertise into all of her work.

With Lightpalace, Shireen has been featured as a contributor on National Geographic Sharkfest, was named Nautica’s newest ocean conservation Wavemaker, and has had her work featured in The Miami Herald, National Geographic, Sierra Magazine, The New Tropic, and film festivals around the word. With her team of some of Miami’s brightest creatives, Lightpalace delivers high-end production services, helping their clients bring compelling and memorable visual stories to life.

As a marine anthropologist, how do you describe your personal connection to the ocean and marine life?  

As a marine anthropologist, I study how everyday people relate to and adapt to a rapidly changing ocean. That could mean freediving with spearfishers in The Bahamas, diving for trash on a coral reef with children in Cuba, or listening to an indigenous Polynesian elder describe their mythological understandings of the water cycle. In this work, I have to be utterly present, both with my study participants and the ocean itself, paying attention to the significant and unremarkable details that make up an ocean-oriented life. The moment a fisher sticks his knife into the brain of a fish and the life leaves its eyes, the tender movements of a coral farmer’s hands as she tends to her underwater garden, or the way my skin tingles and I can’t help but smile after coming up from a deep freedive…my personal relationship with the ocean is a kaleidoscope of these shared moments. It’s also one of dependency–I can’t go more than three days without swimming in the ocean before I feel like something is missing in my life.

How does your scientific work inform your creative process, and vice versa? 

I infuse science into almost anything I create, even my most abstract work. I love the undeniable rigor that science adds to any creative project–it’s like a weapon that I can use to defend the legitimacy of the work and its potential for impact. Science needs art to communicate its importance into the hearts of everyday people, and art needs science to help it drive social change more effectively. 

They are beautifully compatible. 

Photo credit: Phoebe Fitz

What prompted you to move to Miami from California, and has the city influenced your work?

When I was getting into marine science during my undergrad, I remember seeing a video of a healthy coral reef in Cuba. Learning that they had some of the healthiest remaining coral reefs in the Caribbean and the complex sociopolitical reasons behind this, I immediately fell in love with the idea of working there. I applied to only one Ph.D. program: the Abess Center at the University of Miami under NatGeo Explorer, cave diver, and cultural anthropologist Dr. Kenny Broad (everyone told me to find an advisor I could look to as a role model, and this guy was a total weirdo, so it seemed like a good fit). I worked in Cuba for two years, studying the impact that Obama’s opening might have on the island’s reefs. Then Trump came into office, my research permits fell through, and I pivoted to complete my dissertation in The Bahamas. 

I tried to move back to California after my Ph.D., but I kept being drawn back to Miami. The city has definitely influenced my aesthetic: lots of blues, pinks, deep yellows, and a global feel. Miami has allowed me to develop my underwater photography practice–when conditions are right, I have a massive photo studio in my backyard: the ocean. To have that right off the shores of Miami, a diverse, global, vibrant, sub-tropical metropolis on the frontlines of climate change– there’s nowhere else quite like it.

Why did you start Lightpalace? And what is the significance of the name?

I started Lightpalace in 2020 after I finished my Ph.D. in the first summer of the pandemic. I was always terrified at the idea of starting my own production company. I knew how hard it would be and how much work it takes to build something from scratch. My loved ones believed in me. They encouraged me, and reminded me that I had all the skills to start my own business, so why rely on someone else? I’m glad I did it because now I work on my own terms, and although I haven’t realized all my dreams, I’ve built something that I can sustain myself with, which allows me to, for the most part, create freely and from the heart. 

I named the company “Lightpalace” as a reference to the way light moves through water to create prismatic light waves, the way light moves through all life on Earth to create more life, and homage to mid-century Iranian mirror mosaic work that covers the walls of Iran’s most iconic palaces. It was more than a year after I named the company that my dad was reading me a Farsi poem, which mentioned a “palace of light.” He told me that the “palace of light” motif in Persian poetry symbolizes the dwelling of truth. The purpose of my work, as with all art and science, is to highlight and amplify the truth. It was one of those special moments.

What projects are you most proud of to date?

There are very few projects that I’m really proud of because, as an artist, I’m still finding my voice and developing my craft. But one of them has to be the short film called “Niyayesh” or “نییایش.” It’s a piece I put together documenting my mom’s journey from Iran to America, using footage from my grandfather’s 16mm film camera footage of 1970s Iran, my family’s camcorder footage from the 90s and early 2000’s in the U.S. I made it for her one mothers day. When I showed it to her, we sat there, watched it together, and cried the entire time. I haven’t been able to make anything so emotionally impactful since, but it’s my goal to bring that level of emotional impact to all of my creative work.

Photo credit: Phoebe Fitz

How does your Iranian heritage inform your work?

As a dual-national Iranian/American woman, growing up in California sometimes felt isolating. As a result, I love co-creating with people who similarly have felt left out of the dominant narrative, people from diverse cultural and indigenous perspectives. This is especially the case because I can’t cover these topics in my homeland, given the high risk of imprisonment.

Persian poetry and artistry have profoundly impacted not just my work but how I move through the world. In Iran, poetry is embedded in the fabric of Persian culture. When my father was young and wanted to leave home to travel the world, my grandfather recited to him no more than a couple of lines of a poem, infusing worlds of meaning into just a few words. When I was 18 and wanted to do the same, my dad recited to me the same exact poem, telling me that after all my travels, I would find that the answers to my questions lie within my heart. Poetry in Iran is inseparable from life.

I infuse these ancient traditions into my work. My “Kaleidoscapes” series references Persian mirrorwork, and also the intricate and biluminous nature of life. Many words in Persian poetry carry multiple meanings, fractalated and laying on top of each other to create not just one message but a mosaic of meanings. The “Kaleidoscapes” suggest that you can say the same for nature. My upcoming short narrative underwater film, “Letter from the Age of Ecocide,” draws directly from ancient Persian texts to tell a story of grief and acceptance around climate anxiety. The Persian poets are my favorite therapists (Dr. Welch: if you’re reading this, you’re great too).

In the same topic, how are the devastating events in Iran impacting you and your work?

The last month has been emotionally exhausting. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be in Iran for this.

I have been inspired by the courage of Iranians of all backgrounds, overwhelmed by how the entire nation and diaspora have come together in this revolution, saddened by the bloodshed, and encouraged by international support. I was always proud of my people, but to see young schoolgirls flipping off the Supreme Leader in their classrooms and taking to the streets as if they were part of some badass school field trip is shockingly impressive. And the support from Iranians in the U.S. has been really cool to see. I’ve connected with more Iranians in Miami than ever before by attending events and protests, and I’ve grown closer to the Iranian friends I already have. Many non-Iranian friends have reached out to me, asking how they can help. It shows that humanity is one big tree–if one of the leaves fall, the rest feel it.

As a dual-national, my ability to travel back and forth to Iran has always been tenuous. The regime highly targets dual nationals as political pawns. They will accuse you of espionage and put you in prison for years, just in case you will serve as useful leverage in negotiations with the West. Being listed as a National Geographic Explorer online exposes me to some risk, even if I don’t enter the country with a camera. Iran is very sensitive to environmentalists because they know their conservation track record is horrendous given many corrupt dam projects leading to widespread droughts, and the near extinction of the Asiatic cheetah. So if I had any hope to return, my internet advocacy during this revolution might have been the final nail in the coffin. This has been difficult to come to terms with.

At the same time, not going to Iran is an act of resistance against the regime. Their persecution and murder of their women, children, and brightest political and environmental minds is disgusting. A former classmate of mine, Canadian dual-national Niloufar Bayani, is facing a 10-year sentence in Evin Prison (the prison where fire and explosions took place this past weekend), for her camera trap work on the endangered Asiatic cheetah. She has been tortured and sexually harassed and held in solitary confinement for eight months. She has seven years left in her sentence. This is how the Iranian regime treats conservation biologists.

For a long time, I kept my environmental work and my cultural identity separate–I couldn’t think of an organic way to meld the two. These events have awakened a new, burning motivation in me to incorporate the voices of my oppressed brothers and sisters in every way I can. I started “Letter from the Age of Ecocide” long before this revolution began, but it couldn’t have come to fruition at a better time.

What do you wish more people knew about what is happening in Iran? 

I cannot speak for what it’s like to be on the ground in Iran right now. Or even to live there long-term (I've only ever visited for months at a time). But in the time I have spent there, I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like to be treated as a second class citizen in your own homeland. When I was eight years old, I was chastised for not wearing my headscarf properly at the airport. When I was 18, I wasn’t allowed to enter a government building until I removed my nail polish. Every aspect of your life there is policed, and it is exhausting. It has made me so grateful for our freedoms here. I don’t have to be afraid of being imprisoned for speaking my mind on an Instagram post.

I want everyone to know that what’s going on in Iran isn’t only important to Iran or Iranians, it should matter to everyone. It’s an assault on democracy, women’s rights, and human rights. If we don’t stand up against it, we are sending the message that we will not be outraged if the same human rights abuses are inflicted upon us. We have to stand up for Ukraine, Iran, Palestine, and all the countries facing oppression from internal and outside powers.

Two very effective things you can do to help the situation in Iran are 1) contact your representatives. You can go to the following link to find their contact info and a prepared statement: https://lightpalaceproductions.com/iran and 2) continue to post on social media using the hashtags #mahsa_amini #opiran #iranrevolution #womenlifefreedom. Attention spans are alarmingly short these days, and we need to send the message to our elected leaders (and the mainstream media) that we’re serious about this and that we demand action to support the Iranian people.

What are the best places to go freediving in Miami?

If you don’t have access to a boat, I love going out to the South Point Jetty and the Jose Cuervo Tiki Bar, which is just out from the third lifeguard stand by the swim buoy on South Beach. The rocks at South point attract lots of fish, rays, squid, and often manatees! It doesn’t get super deep, but if you take a dive flag out, you can go past the swim buoy into deeper waters. Just be careful not to get swept into the cut. Jose Cuervo also is about 20ft or so (as deep as it gets off of the beach, really), but it’s a cool structure, and there are always lots of fish, tarpon, and sometimes nurse sharks. As always, make sure you go out on a day with low wind and waves, so there’s good visibility!

What are you currently working on, and where can people learn more about it?

I’ve been pulling all-nighters working on this short film, “Letter from the Age of Ecocide.” It’s a film about a woman’s journey through the stages of grief as she begins to lose her underwater home. This film is intended not to educate or diagnose the climate crisis, but to illustrate healthy coping with the emotional dissonance that pervades our lives in this age of ecological destruction. I wanted to send the message that we must maintain focus in our fight for environmental justice, and simultaneously accept our brave new world and the aspects of it that we cannot control.

The film is supported by Oolite Arts, Ivan Williams of Eco ArtLab, and The Standard Hotel Miami Beach. You can catch it at Oolite Arts’ public screening on December 15th at Soundscape Park on Miami Beach. You can learn more about the film here: ageofecocide.com

instagram.com/ageofecocide

And you can follow along with my work here: instagram.com/lightpalac.e

[sanjosenewshq]

Shakira To Face Trial Over Tax Fraud In Spain

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A Spanish decide on Tuesday accredited a trial for Colombian pop singer Shakira on costs of tax fraud. Spanish prosecutors accused the entertainer in 2018 of failing to pay 14.5 million euros ($13.9 million) in taxes on revenue earned between 2012 and 2014. Prosecutors are searching for an eight-year jail sentence and a hefty fantastic if she is discovered responsible of tax evasion. Shakira, 45, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and rejected a cope with authorities to keep away from going to trial. Her public relations agency has mentioned that she has already paid all that she owed and a further 3 million euros ($2.8 million) in curiosity. The court docket primarily based within the city of Esplugues de Llobregat close to Barcelona mentioned that Shakira will face six counts of tax fraud. The date for the trial has but to be set. A Spanish decide on Tuesday, Sept. 27, accredited a trial for Colombian pop singer Shakira on costs of tax fraud. AP Photograph/Daniel Cole, file The case hinges on the place Shakira lived throughout 2012-14. Prosecutors in Barcelona have alleged the Grammy winner spent greater than half of that interval in Spain and will have paid taxes within the nation, though her official residence was within the Bahamas. Shakira, whose full title is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, has been linked to Spain since she began courting soccer participant Gerard Pique. The couple, who’ve two kids, used to dwell collectively in Barcelona however lately ended their 11-year relationship. Spain has cracked down on soccer stars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo over the previous decade for not paying their full due in taxes. They had been discovered responsible of evasion however each averted jail time because of a provision that enables a decide to waive sentences below two years in size for first-time offenders. Originally published at San Jose News HQ

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Attending a Wedding Masterlist

A Little Space (ao3) - macdell

Summary: Phil gets invited to a cousin's wedding. Dan comes, too.

An Alternative Bahamas Incident (ao3) - Do_it_with_the_Howell_Lesters

Summary: This fic is a re-write of one of our favorite fics, The Bahamas Incident. It was written almost two years ago now and we have improved in our writing since then. So as a little experiment we decided to re-write it. So we hope you like it!

Phil is set to be the best man at his brother's wedding, but his mother insists on him bringing a real date. So obviously he asks Dan to be his fake boyfriend for the week. But can Phil’s heart really take that? Can Dan’s?

break and burn and end (begin again) (ao3) - twoheadlights (fizzfic)

Summary: where dan is a wedding photographer and phil is the really cute best man who wants to take him out.

Fake Boyfriend - youcouldcallitphanfiction

Summary: phil is invited to a wedding and asks dan to pretend to be his boyfriend for the time being.

Flower Boy (ao3) - ForeverAndAlways

Summary: (at a wedding) "I'm so sorry I kissed you but my homophobic relative wouldn't stop talking about gay's and you were the first (cute) boy I saw please tell me were not related so we can do that again"

friends don't treat me like you do (ao3) - internetakeover (nymhciv)

Summary: Why had Dan agreed to this? Pretending to be Phil’s boyfriend at his ex’s wedding had seemed like a nice idea at first, a way to meet some of Phil’s old university friends while helping him avoid humiliation, but already Dan’s on edge. If Dan allows himself to relax for a day, lets himself watch Phil as much as he wants, touch Phil as much as he wants, carry on their flirtatious banter when normally he’d laugh it off... he’s worried about what Phil might see.

FYI my date is a boy (ao3) - imnotinclinedtomaturity

Summary: "Cassidy said you could bring a date to the wedding. If you’re seeing someone, you could bring them. Although, if you’re not seeing anyone, my friend Jodie has a daughter that is starting at Manchester in the fall I think you’d get on with well. She reminds me a lot of Sarah.

“First off, Mum, seeing as Sarah is my ex-girlfriend, similarity to her isn’t exactly a selling point. Second of all, I am seeing someone, so I’ll have to turn down the awkward blind wedding date.”

Shit. I just told my mom I'm in relationship and I haven't even told her I'm bisexual. Now what?

Hey, Mr Piano Man (ao3) - Uchistyx

Summary: Phil is invited to his brothers Weding. He is very cynical about them until he meets a talented pianist.

It's cool, we're just friends (ao3) - sierraadeux

Summary: A romantic getaway for two, a beautiful Greek island, the wedding of everyone's dreams - what more could any couple want? Well, for Phil, maybe just for his date to not be his best friend.

or, the one where dan is an idiot, phil is an idiot, and the street cats of Santorini are incredibly cute.

its just a dance, lover (ao3) - lilyxxxooo

Summary: When at his brother's wedding, Phil can't help but feel sad that he has no one to dance with. Briefly based off "Lover" by Taylor Swift

Into The Night (ao3) - dip_the_pip

Summary: Only being 4 months into the relationship, Phil doesn't know if he should bring his new boyfriend to a friends wedding that he was invited to. He ends up bringing him, and Phil doesn't think he'll ever forget such a fun night.

looking through the lens (ao3) - CallofTheCurlew

Summary: Dan is volunteered to be the camera man at Martyn and Cornelia's wedding. He has a lot of feelings.

One Day (ao3) - Broganwritesfanfics

Summary: Phil and Dan get invited to a wedding of Phil's relative, and Dan's having doubts. Then he remembers that he loves Phil and there's nothing to worry about.

plus one (ao3) - animad

Summary: Dan tells his family he's bring a date to his cousins wedding. Except Dan doesn't have a date to bring. Luckily Phil is there to help.

Say You Won't Let Go (ao3) - Phantasticbeasts

Summary: Based off of the song Say You Won't Let Go by James Arthur. Dan and Phil meet at a wedding and it is disgustingly fluffy.

Shut Up and Dance (ao3) - spacemanlevi

Summary: Dan finds a beautiful man at a friends wedding, he just hopes he can work up the courage to ask for a dance.

Song Stuck In My Head - xinyanhowell

Summary: Phil’s best friend is getting married. How can one song change so many lives forever?

The Bahamas Incident (ao3) - Do_it_with_the_Howell_Lesters

Summary: Phil is set to be the best man at his brother's wedding, but his mother insists on him bring a real date. So obviously he asks Dan to be his fake boyfriend for the week. Old memories and feelings are dredged up, and it may not go as smoothly as they planned.

The Greatest Thing (ao3) - Phanarchy

Summary: Phil attends his family wedding alone, and spends the very awkward day trying to ignore the fact that he wishes Dan was with him. But he can’t be. Because who brings their best friend to a wedding?

The Wedding Date (ao3) - AnotherPhanficWriter

Summary: With the wedding of his older brother, Martyn, fast approaching, a lonely Phil faces the undesirable prospect of traveling alone to sunny Florida for the ceremony and staying there for two whole weeks surrounded by happy couples. While this is bad enough, everyone is convinced Phil is going to die lonely, and he has been forced to lie his way through this by telling them he had a boyfriend. Which landed him an extra invite for a plus one, one he could not shake off or he'd look like the lonely man he actually is. Determined to show everyone - most of all Stupid Martyn - that his life is not boring and dead end, Phil hires a failing actor, Daniel Howell, to play his committed boyfriend. Well, it was only for a few days, right? What could go wrong?

Things that can't be said (ao3) - winstonlives

Summary: Phil is anxious about going to a big family wedding because there are a lot of people who don't know about him and Dan. It's not new news but he is afraid too many people will know by the end and it will get out. He is afraid of all the questions from people he hasn't seen in over a decade.

Two Strangers at a Wedding (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Wedding receptions, in Dan's opinion, are the absolute worst. Unless of course, he meets a handsome stranger on the dance floor.

Unveiled (ao3) - intoapuddle

Summary: Dan has been invited as a plus one for a friend to a strangers' wedding.

He's sure he'll feel out of place all night until he meets a handsome stranger at the bar.

“It’s a wedding. It’s the weirdest situation to meet anyone and it never ends with two people getting together. Let’s just be honest and say that we’re both feeling lonely."

Spanning the events of one eventful evening.

words i never got to say (ao3) - dvp_95

Summary: There are a lot of people that Dan would hate to run into at this wedding, but he'd forgotten to prepare for his old best friend being there.

[jobnewstoday]

Daring diver ‘hypnotizes’ 7-foot shark into trance for a full minute - g...

Daring diver ‘hypnotizes’ 7-foot shark into trance for a full minute.

Is this guy our last hope against the US shark scourge?

Sharks may inspire most people to keep a wide berth. However, one diver displayed nerves of steel while holding a monstrous shark for a full minute after hypnotizing it, as seen in nerve-wracking video.

In one of the clips, shared to Instagram by Florida-based underwater photographer Tanner Mansell, his friend and fellow diver, named Chang, can be seen cradling a 7-foot Caribbean reef shark — which can grow to 10-feet long — in Nassau, Bahamas, the Mirror reported.

[equatorjournal]

Nicolas Popov, School at sea, 1985. "In June 1985, college graduates Dragan and Nicolas Popov established Island Expedition. With two donated Nautica inflatables and several small university grants the team set off from its base in Nassau to explore the communities of the northern Bahamas. Armed with basic provisions, tents, photographic and recording equipment, the team began documenting the fascinating lives of Bahamian people in areas still largely untouched by the modern world." From "Children of the sea: exploring the marine diversity of the Bahamas and the Caribbean" by Nicolas and Dragan Popov. https://www.instagram.com/p/CTIMFzUtQRw/?utm_medium=tumblr

[fallingsunflower]

Idk if you've heard about this yet but basically, DM had the guy who runs CDAN on her podcast and they were discussing celebrity couples like Kim and Pete, whatever situation Chris Evans is in, and then Holivia was brought up. DM was complaining about how everyone thinks that so many celebrities are in PR relationships, like Harry and Olivia, when the CDAN guy, Enty, immediately said that he believed they were definitely PR so DM got defensive. She started saying how Olivia is so in love with Harry and head over heels for him. Enty then brought up how Harry never acknowledges her, she does everything for him, and how she spent all her money to buy his merch 💀. He then asked if DM thought that Harry was in love with Olivia and DM couldn't answer and went silent for a couple seconds trying to defend the relationship.

She also called Olivia a random person and asked why Harry would date her if he didn't actually like her since he apparently gets nothing out of this relationship (her ignoring the fact that its kept his name in the press and Olivia does all the promotion for him without him having to lift a finger or come out of his privacy bubble). The Enty flipped the question on her and asked what Olivia gets out of this relationship and DM admitted she gets a lot from it. DM and Enty both agreed that they don't think the relationship will last but do both hope for the best for Harry and Olivia.

This is a side note, but I find it funny how DM was so adamant Pete and Kim were not PR and actually serious but they just recently posted how they don't believe that anymore since they got information about their Bahamas vacation and how Pete and Kim stayed separate until the cameras were present to photograph them. Not to mention, if you do a comparison between Kete and Holivia timelines, they are very similar. Even the articles about both relationships, down to them mentioning the children being involved, sound like copy and paste.

Imagine getting humiliated by CDAN… ehhh

I heard this vaguely but didn’t pay attention, but thank you for outlining the whole thing!

Deuxmoi is very obviously being promoted to sell the whole holivia thing. And I say that based on their bias and the stupid shit they post about it. So unsurprising they’d get so defensive.

I love how it was an “argument” though lmao I really should listen to it because it sounds good. And the fact Deuxmoi called Olivia a random person is SENDING me 💀💀

The stunt is designed for Olivia. Harry isn’t benefiting like at all. And I know some people will use that as “proof” it’s real but look at every single thing Cockburn has gained. She’s using Harry like a doormat and wiping her dirty shoes all over him.

Kim and Pete is so weird to me lol also MGK and Megan…can we talk about them because wtf lmao