"He describes this painting as "a group of them [cypresses] in the corner of a wheat field on a summer’s day when the mistral is blowing. […] enveloped in blue moving in great circulating currents of air." It is one of his works with the most impasto. The trees are made up of curly, flame-like brushstrokes and all the surrounding vegetation is also full of life, as though the mistral is raging violently.

#Arts

Van Gogh finds the dark cypresses with their flaming silhouettes so characteristic of Provence, "as regards lines and proportions, like an Egyptian obelisk. And the green has such a distinguished quality. It’s the dark patch in a sun-drenched landscape, but it’s one of the most interesting dark notes, the most difficult to hit off exactly that I can imagine.

WORD OF THE DAY:

Navel

Definition: (noun) The mark on the surface of the abdomen of mammals where the umbilical cord was attached during gestation.

Synonyms: bellybutton, omphalos, umbilicus

Usage: The first-graders were awed by Tom's navel, which protruded outward in classic "outie" fashion.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY:
"True happinessConsists not in the multitude of friends,

FACT OF THE DAY:
The world’s worst soccer riot occurred in Peru in May 1964 during a Peru vs. Argentina match in Lima, after an unpopular decision by a referee. In all, 300 fans were killed and more than 500 injured.

#Haiku

Jul 14, 2024 | Author, Nina Kovačić

Sunday rest
on grandmother’s slipper
dozing cat

Already
you are learning the off-stage rules
about who gets rescued. Who throws
flowers, who catches them.

The boy
was careful not to bring flowers
but you can feel his eyes bending around
the shoulders, clavicle, and neck you forgot
existed. When these minutes end,
these minutes of spinning his eyes
in their own pirouette, the world
won’t allow you to leave in his red Bronco,
not anymore. Already, hope sounds like
the adult word for magic. Relevé
meaning how much choreographed
relief a kingdom tolerates.

Lift your head along with the heel.
A boy your mother says is not a boy
follows your pirouettes from the balcony.
Already a wondering, rise to what.
The ballet can’t perform without
fairy tale. The stage is safe for magic,
or at least pretend. Almost everyone gets
a solo in Sleeping Beauty, so no surgeon’s
daughter has hidden your pointe shoes
in the dressing room couch.

You enter the stage as Lilac Fairy
& fairies make critical things happen,
though underneath your tulle brushing
sleep over a kingdom, you’re a mouse
who gets eaten every night.
No audience wants to see that. Not
the barbed feathers tucked in your
mother’s cardigan. If you pretend
rescue is coming, it might.
Relevé meaning rise & also relief.

#Poetry

Sleeping Beauty
BY K. IVER

You’ve never seen a lilac in Mississippi.
Backstage you wear lotion laced with
its chemical imitation. A ballet mistress
says relevé always as command: lift
onto the toe using only the heel.
Your ankle’s bewilderment
old as the horned owl gaze from
your mother hunched in the audience.

#Maze

#WordSearch

#History

Bastille stormed by Paris mob
On this day in 1789, a mob advanced on the Bastille in Paris, demanding the arms and munitions stored there, but, when the guards resisted, the crowd captured the prison, an act that symbolized the end of the ancien régime.

#Biography #CoSoMusic

Woody Guthrie
American singer and songwriter

Born
July 14, 1912
Okemah, Oklahoma
(Birthday)
Died
October 3, 1967 (aged 55)
New York City, New York

During this era, many white Americans throughout the U.S., including in Northern states like New York, openly supported and fought for racial segregation. As this event helps to illustrate, many white people considered even socializing between races to be fundamentally incompatible with American life.

To learn more about racial segregation’s long history and enduring legacy, read EJI’s report Segregation in America.

Within a day, on July 14, the fashion show’s organizing committee announced that it would be removing each of the racially integrated scenes, effectively eliminating the Black models from the show. A spokesman for the show added that the organizers had not yet decided what, if any, future role would exist for the Black models—who were only 3 of 47 total models involved in the show.

Immediately after the previews, over 40 of the fashion editors in attendance signed and circulated a petition demanding that the committee remove three staged wedding scenes that showed racially integrated groups interacting with one another, claiming the scenes were not “representative of the American way of life.”

The fashion show, which was sponsored by the U.S. State Department and meant to illustrate daily American life, was to be exhibited in Moscow 10 days later. Before the exhibition opening, the organizing committee for the show hosted previews in New York, which dozens of American fashion editors were invited to attend.

Racial #History

On this dayJul 14, 1959

Black Models Cut From Planned Scenes in Fashion Show After Dozens of Editors Organized to Ban Display of Racial Integration

On July 14, 1959, a New York committee organizing a fashion show for the American National Exhibition in Moscow, Russia, announced it would be removing three scenes that featured Black and white models together after dozens of fashion editors protested the representation of racial integration.