Under Construction

5. Walk with your keys in your hands and keep a key between each finger

6. If they put you in the trunk kick out the headlights

E.g.

If your gut is telling you to cross the street or change your path, do it. Don’t risk it. Your body knows.

If you can, buy a large umbrella and walk holding it. Studies say that predators are less likely to attempt an attack on someone that could fight back. Keys around your knuckles is fine but you’ll need to get very close to do damage. Umbrellas are more precise.

Avoid wearing headphones if you are alone on an empty street. Look aware.

Again: Stay. Away. From. Walls.

Entering an uber alone? Call your father (or anyone you trust) and say “hey dad! Yep, I’m almost there, I’m sending you the route.” outloud. Then proceed to send them the route so they can follow the uber drive. This will most likely intimidate the predator.

If you see someone in an uncomfortable or possibly dangerous situation, walk up to them and say “Betty, oh my god, I haven’t seen you in so long!”. If she gets slightly confused, you can whisper and let her know you’re trying to help and that she should follow along. Walk together to another station or away from where you are. The man will most likely not follow. I have done this one 2 times and can be very helpful.

If you are unsure she needs help, you can pass her a note saying something like “hey, I noticed this man beside you is making you uncomfortable. If you’d like help, fake a sneeze right now and I will come up to you and pretend we are friends.” This is a long note, but its an example. Be discrete. If she follows along, proceed with the previous tip. This is helpful when you’re in a crowded train and you notice harassment.

So I was casually reading “The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation” by David Whitley.

When suddenly…

For anybody wondering just how incredible Skylar’s ability is, the character in this clip who’s dancing a pas de deux alone is facing off against a prima ballerina—a master—who’s also benefiting from magical enhancement. AND EVEN SHE THINKS IT CAN’T BE DONE. This show was made with a ton of research and input from real ballerinas and ballet teachers; much of what you see in it, from a technical perspective, is completely accurate, including how the steps are done and how positions are held. So when Kraehe says “she couldn’t be doing that,” that’s the opinion of actual dance professionals. What Princess Tutu is doing—which is what Skylar does in the first video—is supposed to be impossible.

Explain the science of taste buds to children, tell them it’s okay they don’t like certain tastes because it means their body is trying to keep them safe, and tell them they might want to retry foods throughout their life because they’ll taste different as they age. Every single time I’ve done this the child has been excited to retry foods as they grow

Also undiagnosed allergies and especially intolerances are a thing.

Philly’s Acori Honzo couldn’t find figurines of Black folks, so he started sculpting them  

“Shortly after the 2008 death of actor Heath Ledger, Philadelphia artist Acori Honzo studied the intricate details of a 12-inch figurine of Ledger’s Joker character from The Dark Knight. His wife had purchased the figurine while shopping at Comic Universe in Delaware County. 

Inspired, Honzo decided to start collecting figurines. He wanted to include Black characters and celebrities in his collection, but when he searched for them, he couldn’t find any. So he bought sculpting supplies to create his own…“

Keep reading at inquirer

Meet Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the black woman who invented that rock and roll sound 

You know what’s sad, before I even read this article I was ready to refute this because I grew up believing Chuck Berry created Rock and roll. It’s said how so many knew of this great woman yet none spoke on her greatness.

I also discovered Big Mama Thornton, who’s another hugely influential early inventor of rock and roll — I’m pretty sure Hound Dog was originally popularized by her, before Elvis stole it.

Love Sister Rosetta Tharpe! #BlackGirlMagic

A few of her performances:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeaBNAXfHfQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9bX5mzdihs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR2gR6SZC2M

Also I heard she was bisexual…

Calm Harm can be tailored to your needs and will provide strategies to help you get past those crucial moments of wanting to harm.

It’s also totally FREE.

It has a safety net feature where you can put in your contacts and call them from inside the app

It also tells you about the different kinds of anxiety so you’re not confused on what kind of anxiety you have

Think of Tolkien as weaving a tapestry and Lewis as creating a mosaic. It’s just as intricate but the effect is completely different. AND it’s meant to be. Tolkien is trying to create this lived in history/mythology of a world. It stands on its own and you’re meant to read it and feel like it could be a real history that you’re seeing. While Tolkien wants his world to feel real, Lewis does not – he wants his world to feel fantastical. Because Middle Earth stands on its own, but Narnia exists alongside the real world. and while Middle Earth is meant to continue on past the end of Tolkien’s writing, Narnia is only ever meant to be glimpsed in these little windows we’re given. Its meant to be smaller in a sense– it’s entire history is contained within Diggory’s lifetime– because unlike Middle Earth there’s interaction between Narnia and our world, and seeing Narnia’s entire history play out within the arc or the books contributes to theme.

In creating this entirely fantastical world, Lewis makes much greater use of symbols and iconography. If you think the symbolism of Narnia goes as far as “the lion symbolizes Jesus, the Stone Table represents the cross” and stops there, you’re dead wrong. For one thing because Aslan doesn’t symbolize Jesus, he is Jesus (i could show you where this is evident in the books but I leave it at “Lewis said so” for now). And there are different levels to the symbolism. On one hand you have symbolism thats very simple to understand, even if only implicitly, because the books are for children and Lewis does a marvelous job communicating on their level. The witch turning people to stone, the Neverending winter, Aslan breathing life back into people– that’s all symbolic and even if you are young and can’t express WHY you still get it.

But there’s also other layers of symbolism that you do really have to sit down and work through but once you do it’s really masterful. An Oxford researcher named Michael Ward wrote a book arguing that the underlying symbolism is framed around medieval cosmology (something that is explicitly present in Lewis Space Trilogy) and that is used to reflect back on the central purpose of exploring the character of Christ. The book is called Planet Narnia but the much shorter lay version is called The Narnia Code and I highly recommend it. Wards work actually was partially inspired by the question of why Father Christmas was included (short answer: LWW is saturated with Jove imagery, and Father Christmas is a jovial symbol, all of which contributes to the central thematic characterization of Aslan and therefore Christmas as king). If you think this sounds far fetched, for one thing there’s an entire 350 page thesis that lays it out much better than I can, and the author also went and ran it by one of Lewis’s close friends and that guy said “that sounds JUST like something Jack would do”.

That symbolic and thematic resonance IS there. And whats more there is a very clear order to the way magic works in Narnia, its just a much freer system than Middle Earth. Even the vast differences in each book contribute to theme because as Aslan tells us “things never happen the same way twice” and thats the point.

You can also see Lewis’s philosophical and theological understanding come to bear on Narnia. For instance, the way the Wood Between the Worlds exists outside of time is directly the result of Lewis’s understanding of how God relates to time which he writes about in another of his books, and in light of that the way that Narnian time doesn’t sync up in any clear relation to real world time makes total sense. Other influences are clear as well– both Lewis and Tolkien have their worlds come into being through music which in both instances comes from the concept of the music of the spheres.

Also key to the workings of Narnia is Lewis’s concept of the True Myth– an idea he originally got from Tolkien and which both Narnia and Middle Earth play out in different ways.

The theology behind Aslan is also a whole lot deeper than just “he’s called the Lion of Judah so I made him a lion” and the writing of Aslan is actually brilliant and difficult.