#february notes

artwork by walter t. crane

Hi guys! February is here already. How have your new year promises gone? Did you give yourself a new beginning? Are you succeeding with that? Or did you fail? You know it’s never too late to give yourself a new start, right? Never too late to start loving yourself?

In February we want you to make notes about love! Messages about love, from you to you, or to somebody else. Leave the notes anywhere people can find them! How do you imagine a stranger would feel if they found a sweet note when they least expected it? How do her eyes look? How is his smile? How can you make someone happy this month? (This includes yourself, to make yourself happy is the most important task of them all!)

*Remember to take a picture of the note and comment on where you left it!*

Tag the post #psfebruary and we will reblog the love! You may also submit the piece if you want.

Looking forward to seeing your great contributions!

Assalamualaikum Wr Wb

Hai Guys, lama nggak nulis di tumblr. Wah nggak terasa sekarang sudah masuk bulan Februari, semakin dekat nih dengan ujian nasional. Habis Try Out UN tahap dua rasanya semakin siap buat menghadapi ujian akhir lepas dari almamater SMA. Nggak terasa udah hampir tiga tahun menuntut ilmu di Sekolah Menengah Atas. Banyak suka dukanya, nggak bisa diceritakan dan diungkapkan dengan kata - kata. Ingin sih buat sebuah buku yang didedikasikan buat masa SMA-ku dan teman-teman, pasti seru. Berharap dan berusaha aja deh, semoga bener - bener terwujud apa yang aku harapkan. Amin. 

Oh ya, bulah ini mulai pengisian pilihan SNMPTN Undangan nih, Bismillah aku ambil SNMPTN di Universitas Diponegoro, Semarang dengan jursannya Teknik Elektro dan Teknik Informatika. Doakan ya semoga sukses dan lolos seleksi, hitung - hitung kalo keterima bisa ngurangin beban orang tua kan? Selain biaya lebih murah nggak ada rasa was - was mau kuliah dimana kalo sampai nggak lolos. (astagfirullah, jangan sampai Ya Allah). Semoga Allah SWT selalu memberikan kemudahan untuk umat-Nya yang mau berusaha, berdoa dan selalu mengharap pertolongan-Nya. Amin ya Rabbal' alamin.

Oke deh cukup sampai disini dulu buat kutipan hari ini. Lain kali kita sambung lagi dengan tulisan - tulisanku yang lain. Chao^^

Somehow this stayed in my drafts, but it was supposed to be the first of my black history notes last week!

So night before last I started running my mouth off about my uneasiness with Black History Month. I meant everything I said about it, but I also challenged myself to learning about and posting notes on something related to black history every day for the rest of February. No bother, I’m up for it. First up: small-scale slave rebellions chronicled in The Black Book. I have a couple pages copied out of The Black Book about slaves rebelling against their overseers or masters. The Black Book is an amazing huge textbook/scrapbook that Toni Morisson put together years ago of tons of primary sources, photos, leaflets, songs, etc. of black history; for a little more about it click here. Here are some of the snippets from that section that I have in my cool shit folder:

Too poor in his youth to own slaves, Stonewall Jackson made bargains with the slaves that belonged to his uncle. The servant was to furnish him with pine knots by the light of which he could prepare his lessons for the entrance examination to the military school he had selected. In return he agreed to teach the slave how to read and write. As soon as the black man was confident of his skill to compose, he wrote his own name to a pass and slipped off to the Underground Railroad.

One day when an old woman was plowing in the field, an overseer came by and reprimanded her for being so slow--she gave him some back talk, he took out a long closely woven whip and lashed her severely. The woman became sore and took her hoe and chopped him right across his head, and, child, you should have seen how she chopped this man to a bloody death.

She didn't work in the field. She worked at a loom. She worked so long and so often that once she went to sleep at the loom. Her master's boy saw her and told his mother. His mother told him to take a whip and wear her out. He took a stick and went out to beat her awake. He beat my mother till she woke up. When she woke up, she took a pole out of the loom and beat him nearly to death with it. He hollered, "Don't beat me no more, and I won't let 'em whip you." She said, "I'm going to kill you. These black titties sucked you, and then you come out here to beat me." And when she left him, he wasn't able to walk. And that was the last I seen of her until after freedom. She went out and got on an old cow that she used to milk--Dolly, she called it. She rode away from the plantation, because she knew they would kill her if she stayed.