A Thousand Days to Morning

* This is because you can type faster than you can handwrite. When it's possible to keep up with the speaker and type verbatim notes, that's what students do: but when using a ponderous pen or pencil, they have to develop alternative strategies to prioritise, organise, abbreviate and structure what they hear. This in turn leads to much better learning.

Stephen Slaughter (British, 1697–1765). Two Women Gathering Fruit, ca. 1750. 

From the Fashion Institute of Technology NYC:

"We assert... that this [portrait] depicts a Black sitter treated as equal to a white sitter in an 18th-century continental European context. A similar piece dating to the 1760s of gentlewoman Dido Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray is also lauded as such, but this painting may actually be more representative of an equal or near-equal relationship. While Dido’s painting feeds into old tropes of servant-and-master portraiture . . . this painting avoids almost all of them. And uniquely, the Black sitter in this image is looking at the viewer while the white sitter is looking over at her rather than also confronting the viewer. The agency and perspective in this painting seems to be the possessions of the Black sitter. Both women are holding fruit, rather than having one gift it to the other as a sign of bounty and subservience (Waterfield 144).

"[The Black woman] also is the one with more lavish lace and jewelry – usually a symbol of greater standing – and the only indication of exoticism is her small matching turban. Everything else she wears is just as fashionable as what her companion wears, if not more. This is rare; Black women and servants usually are dressed more simply in comparison, or dressed entirely in fantastical clothing that resembles Ottoman Turkish or Asian styles (Waterfield 144).

"While the Wadsworth has chosen to confine this painting to the genre of master-and-servant portraiture, we venture to say that it is a more unique and respectful depiction of a Black sitter than the famous double portrait [of Belle and Murray] and gives life to research proving that slavery and servitude were by far not the only lot of people with darker skin tones in the 18th century (Bindman 12). Other respectful depictions of Black people around this time in Europe existed in life sketches and genre paintings.

Who, even in heaven, wouldn’t want to wear, for awhile, such a seed-face

and brave spine a coat of leaves with so many pockets— and who wouldn’t want

to stand, for a summer day, in the hot fields, in the lonely country of the wild-haired corn?

This much I know, When I see the bright stars of their faces, when I’m strolling nearby,

I grow soft in my speech, and soft in my thoughts, and I remember how everything will be everything else, by and by.

Shadows lengthen across green fields. Chill evening air reminds us earth's wheel forever turns,

spirals to new knowing.

Art of David A. Hardy

I’m sorry but that’s thinking way too small, hear me out:

We need to have Miss Piggy as Odysseus, and Kermit as Penelope.

Think about it… who’s the more fickle, prideful, warlike one in that relationship? Who is absolutely ready to go ham, at a moment’s notice?

Spaceballs