On the Origins of Comics:
New York Double-takeBRIAN BOYD
Comics can have almost no mass and yet be the most mass of mass arts: Garfield has had up to 263 million readers a day. Comics constitute a new art, just over a century old, and usually an unusually accessible one. So what can evolution…
“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” - C.S. Lewis
It has taken a long time for me to believe this statement. I grew up surrounded by well-meaning and wonderful family who constantly remarked that I was “beautiful” or “gorgeous” or “a knockout” or that I should model. I loved these comments. I came to depend on them for self-confidence, for reassurance. And maybe everything would have been okay had I been a cookie-cutter adolescent, a cheerleader, or good at something that impressed my peers. But I wasn’t. I was WEIRD. Super weird. The kid that talked to trees weird! I preferred reading over recess. I loved answering questions in class. Sometimes my mom put my (clean) gym socks in my lunch box for convenience. None of that was cool and all of it contributed to making me the focus of much teasing and torment well into my final year of high school.
Shouldn’t my family’s kind words have created a sort of forcefield against the cruelty of teenagers? Quite the contrary actually. Being pretty “enough” became my only concern. I said to hell with enough sleep, good grades, speaking my mind— nothing was more important than impressing the popular kids. I desperately wanted to win admiration from EVERYONE, but not admiration for me— admiration for my appearance. I believe I wept every single day from the time I was eleven until I graduated high school. I was scared to death of someone thinking I wasn’t pretty, or that I was too weird, or too smart or too SOMETHING.
The idea had been put into my head that my outer beauty was all-important. That it could be measured by some mysterious hotness scale. That I was my eyes, my nose, my big front teeth, my hips and thighs, knobby knees, love handles. And that I’d better hope they were as sexy or as minimal or as phenomenal as can be, or I was, essentially, worthless.
Then I attended college. And I found myself surrounded by people who truly cared for me. I did more and I saw more and I “put myself out there” as my mom always encouraged. (Speaking of my mom…she is always right. Those kids ARE jealous of you, no matter how silly it sounds to you. Trust her.) I “walked in like I owned the place” as she had always instructed me to do in situations that made me uncomfortable. I became comfortable with my personality, which in turn, made me question how much my outer appearance mattered, beyond hygiene. I had always heard that when you love and accept yourself on the inside, you’ll be happy with who you are on the outside. Never believed it for a second.
It’s true. For me. And many others, I think.
I have come to realize that my body is simply a vessel. I am Kendra. I have a smile that is out of control (that for years, I tried to tame and make “prettier”). I am much, much curvier than I was two years ago, and I would like to trim down and tone up soon, but no longer to meet some outrageous standard— only for health, only for me, only to see the strength my body is capable of. I have oddly shaped, fat fingers that make me laugh. My skin is not dainty porcelain, yet it refuses to tan. I love to write, and act, and dance with my niece, and laugh with these friends who love me, and listen to beautiful music and read books and see things that open my eyes to the world around me. That is what my body is for. Loving, breathing, changing, moving, experiencing. The same goes for every person reading this. You are a beautiful, wonderfully unique creature. People who do not agree are lost in their own chaos— that saying is true also— “It’s their problem.” I didn’t believe it at first, either. You deserve all the best the world has to offer. You deserve real love and true friendship, and please, please don’t ever settle for less. Being alone is always better than being treated badly. Sometimes you have to be your own ally. (Or, shoot me a message, and I will be yours as well.)
I’ve decided that I refuse to spend the indefinite amount of time that I have on this earth lamenting the parts of my physical appearance that don’t measure up to a standard I had nothing to do with setting.
No matter what you’re going through, no matter how much you weigh or what that girl said to you or how you think that top looked on you or what you’ve done or said or how far you have to go— You. Are. Lovely. You are deserving, you are capable, and your story is still unfolding. Embrace it with passion :D
“I’ll make the most of it— I’m an extraordinary machine”
A little over a week ago, for work, I wrote a quick SXSW recap post involving Odd Future — which wound up being trimmed down to a post about Odd Future, and then, after more editors went over it, an article about Odd Future, and then eventually I started to feel like whatever vague point I’d had might have wound up dulled and unclear. So here’s a clearer thought, which is not about Odd Future’s music or Odd Future as people or the value of their work, but more about my relationship with the process of maybe-liking Odd Future.
Because there are a lot of things I love about Odd Future. Some of the albums coming out of the collective actually remind me of listening back to hip-hop from the late 80s and early 90s, when you can actually hear the joy of people creating music because it doesn’t exist yet, and they need it to; Earl’s record in particular has that feeling, a certain playfulness and vitality. And I’m compelled by Tyler’s charisma. I was a sulky teenage boy in the 1990s; of course I can connect with all his grim dark grumbling. As can teenagers today. When I saw the group in Austin, the energy surrounding them was fierce and sort of beautiful. A crowd of kids stood around chanting “FUCK STEVE HARVEY” in an effort to lure the group onto the stage. These were not kids whose lives I imagine being much impinged upon by the existence of Steve Harvey. Was there some point I missed where white Texan parents started boring their kids with his radio show on long drives? On one message board I read, there was a poster who thought “Steve Harvey” might be made up, just an imaginary object of Odd Future’s scorn. This has to say something about the lure of this group, that people want to join them in telling Steve Harvey to fuck off—just because the energy is right, not because they actually care so much who Steve Harvey is.
But then the next night, Odd Future cut short a set at a Billboard showcase—they stormed off after three songs—and I was surprised to see some fans on Twitter grumbling about it, feeling aggrieved or let down. These were people who liked the group’s energy. They just turned out not to like it so much when it was pointed at them and inconveniencing them—when it came off like a fuck-you to them instead of someone else. That’s not surprising: Most everyone wants to be inside the circle of this kind of massive energy, not excluded by it. What’s surprising is that some of these people were less than receptive, months and months ago, when a whole lot of other women and men gave a listen to music from Tyler and Earl and felt excluded by the end of the first verse—because all the ghoulish taunting about raping, kidnapping, or assaulting women wound up disinviting them from the get-go. In fall, Jon Caramanica asked Syd—the woman whose production and DJing underpin a lot of the group’s music—about that. Her answer: “Actions speak louder than words, and they treat me as an equal.” This isn’t exactly a full endorsement of those lyrics; it’s more like a way of saying she feels fully invited within the circle of energy. She’s included.
It’s those taunts in particular that ensure lots of people will never be able to feel entirely included here. There’s been plenty of discussion of the moral dimensions of that fact. Here’s another dimension to consider, though: Doesn’t that just kind of suck, that this group would turn out a lot of fantastic music that unnecessarily dis-includes a big chunk of listeners?
Trying to get my head around all this rioting in England… I grew up in a West Midlands housing estate, I went to a comprehensive school, I’ve worked in a warehouse, worked in pubs and taught 16+ year olds at a college - I’ve seen these dormant rioters, I’ve seen their lack of reason, their lack of…
Read to Me is an engaging site where kids can listen to books told by celebrities.
#elemchat #spedchat #hearingimpaired #ebooks #audiobooks #videobooks
The celebrities are all Las Vegas performers and are pretty entertaining. Kids may recognize some of them but probably not all.
Printable PDFs of lesson plans are available as well as the author’s site, celebrity reader’s site and publisher site. Stories can be viewed full screen.
I watched a couple and they were very good, something I think students will enjoy. The Read to Me videos took a bit of time to load so I would suggest loading them before showing to students.
Notice in the screenshot above that they even have one in Spanish. Would be great if they added a few more like this. They also had a few for students who are hearing impaired, which uses American Sign Language.
Added to
Awesome Audio Stories and more! Great educational, student-friendly websites for listening centers, quite times, story time, etc.
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Children Audio Books and Tapes (Kids Audio Books, Free Kids Audio Books and other resources)
