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love is stronger than death
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| I've had a really sore back since yesterday - its time to harvest garlic, which means pulling them right out of the ground, which means leaning over lots. I also planted about a billion fennel plants today (definitely around 250), and I've still got about 600 left to plant. Goodness.
I can't stop listening to Maxwell's new song, and that damn "ego" remix by Beyonce on is fuckin' repeat (the video is pretty sexy too). This is the time of year that I work from 7am until 7pm or later and listen to jams all fuckin' day.
Pretty Wings (uncut) - Maxwell
Also, I'm really tired of white people trivializing the career of Michael Jackson. Seriously? Shut the fuck up and don't come to me talkin' about them fuckin' kids. My friend Ashalyn said something pretty good:
The only reason so many people assume Michael Jackson is a child molester (besides the sleepovers he had with little boys) is because he doesn’t FIT. He doesn’t fit a gender, he doesn’t fit a sexuality, he doesn’t fit a racial category. Obviously he molested little kids, the reasoning goes, because he’s a freak. That’s just the type of thing someone like him WOULD do.
Whether he did it or not (I wouldn’t be terribly surprised either way), there’s some serious homophobia going on there.
Racism too, in my opinion.
I found out that the last child that accused MJ of molestation admitted to lying, to being pushed by his parental units for money. That kids' family got paid off, and think about it: if your child was molested, which would you want as a parent, a paycheck or jail time for the perp? | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment   |
| | My show opened tonight! It was wonderful, I feel so loved and supported. I could cry when I think about all the great folks that came out to check out my art and support me - its hard being away from my family, but living at Blueberry Hill makes it alot easier. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| i'm sure you're heard this shit, right?
Always Strapped - Birdman Ft. Lil Wayne
nevermind my excitement - lil wayne's verse is boring (it just sounds good) and birdman's verse is excellent. i wish they hadnt opened the track up with that garbage - i'd rather hear about cars than listen to a black man call me a 'bitch' repeatedly. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So the deal is that I'm being called a race traitor by a girl I barely ever spoke to in high school, a girl that never knew me and still doesn't know me. She called me this because, after finding out that a predominantly white contingent of our graduating class has planned a separate reunion, I refused to write them off as racists and snobs. Here's the email I sent to the stupid heifer:Subject: at our reunionDon't talk to me or acknowledge me whatsoever - I'll do the same for you. You make me sad, sad, sad. Did you know that I go to Howard, the number 1 black school in America? I'm getting a masters' degree in Art. Felicia Rashad, Thurgood Marshall, and Taraji P. Henderson all graduated from Howard. My most serious relationship was with a black man - I was pregant for a short while even, thought I was gonna have a beautiful chocolate family. At Howard, there are so many different types of people there and its been such a wonderful experience to be accepted and loved by all of them regardless of how many white friends I have had in the past or whatever music I like or clothes that I wear. When you talk the way you do, you make me so happy to be out of high school. We were never friends in high school, I always thought of you as a bully, and I was hoping that you'd changed over the past ten years and that maybe we could really get to know each other and maybe start being friends. I've changed my mind now, you're just as immature and short-sighted as you were when you were 15 and teasing me in the cafeteria for being myself. Were you jealous that I was brave enough to do what I wanted? I don't have to listen to your ridiculous garbage and I know that you're wrong about me. I know more about what it means to be black than you will EVER know. I am more connected to my people and my heritage than you will EVER dream of being. You should be ashamed of yourself. -Rachelle The truth is that I barely remember her from high school. Honestly. All I remember about her was that I thought she was pretty (she still is) and that she always had her hair done and she was really mean and got suspended for fighting alot. I realize that she grew up without her natural father and wasn't involved in any extra-curricular activities in school: no band, no ROTC, no clubs. I also think that she got beaten by her mom alot. It makes me sad to see a black woman act out like she does, it makes me angry to see how economic hardship can breed jealousy and divide communities. Why in the world do black people put so much pressure on each other to conform to the ridiculous stereotypes created by white people? It's amazing to me, absolutely amazing. And of course I understand that she's not entirely reacting to me - she's reacting to her past and her present situation. She's never left Mississippi. She's a single mom and I think she dropped out of cosmetology school. I have to understand that when she starts going on and on about how I was "lame" in high school and how she doesn't care if I come to the reunion or not because she's sure she "aint missin' shit", that really she's just hurting when she sees my facebook page full of colleges and traveling and lovers and friends and experiences. I'm really sad for her, I really am. And I'm done with class reunions - like Shun said, this is my first and my last. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| so the rain has finally chilled out and we've been planting like crazy on the farm - lettuce, chard, me' quing choi (tiny bok choi), LOTS of lettuces, onions, basil, tomatillos. the palettes outside of the greenhouse are overrun with stuff to plant as well - my favorite is the lime basil; our CSA customers are so lucky!
i've taken a longer lunch break than i'd planned - i usually give myself a half hour, and now i'm at 45 minutes. naughty!
it did rain last night, all night, and the ground sucks. i'm talking slippery muddy, but we're still planting. time to finish up these lettuces before I head out to the farmer potluck in beautiful loudoun county.
have i told you how happy i am to be done with school and farming again?
my vacation home is gonna be the best - i'm gonna bring pepper plants for my grandmother and lots of hugs for everyone else. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| the weather has finally lightened up - the past few days only had light showers and yesterday was completely free of rain during the day. it did rain last night, or early this morning (not quite sure), which made it far to wet to plant or work outside at all, really. The greenhouse was hot as fuck, so I spent today weeding snow peas and cabbage, two vegetables I that I'm very much looking foward to eating, same with sweet onions. rainy weather does make for an abundance of wind, and there's no way I'll complain about a breeze.
i've been feeling great lately, since i'm done with school and only committed to PVF. I am very tired these days though, and I think that its because of my period. this months' cycle has been really intense physically and emotionally - the thought of my parents not being at my art opening has been bringing me to tears, and I've had the worst time of getting out of bed in the AM.
i did, however, recieve the best email today:
Rachelle,
I don't want to work for paper--
money or phds
I want to paint.
I want you to hold me in your pocket
when i make prints
happy birthday
my ego is bullshit
i love your art
i think your beautiful
and strong
and smart
and wonderful
if that's not love i don't know what is
-jn
jn = jenell nyberg = bok choy | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Its hard to roll my eyes at all this 'swine flu' hysteria when there have been two cases at the University of Maryland and now one case at Howard. Good thing my final final is tonight. Party on! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| It's rainy today. Not heavy, but it hasn't let up since last night, just a steady downfall. I worked for a little while this morning in the greenhouse, spotting lettuce. The place was so incredibly humid and it seemed like someone had just watered all the flats. Doing greenhouse work was pretty cumbersome, considering how muddy I felt (as opposed to dirty, which I can work through without a problem). There was just water everywhere, and too much of it. Water was dripping from the lettuce roots, the soil in the bin was clumped together like someone added way too much water to it, which made me grumble. Spotting lettuce was annoying instead of relaxing - the roots kept sticking to my fingers and wouldn't stay in the soil. I turned my one flat of lettuce seedlings into 5 flats of lettuce seedlings, finishing up all the jamai (yummy delicate and rich red lettuce - eat it) and started looking forward to planting and eating them one day. After shaking the mud from my hands for the millionth time and cursing whoever overwatered everything, I decided to pack it in and go grocery shopping, pay my rent, and vacuum my floor. On my way home I stopped in the hoop house and cut some salad and spinach - I forgot to get cherry tomatoes at the grocery store, but good greens don't need much. I did get two gigantic red peppers and some hummus, so this salad will be fierce, no doubt. I also bought some air freshener, but I got it from the dollar store and it smells like a cheap hotel. Its been a lazy Sunday, and I'm glad for it. Now I just gotta finish this presentation for my Trends and Ideas in African American Art final and then I will be free to focus on my show and our farm. I planted so much parsley yesterday - easily 500 plants, knocking on 600. There are still about 300 left to plant and I can knock that out in an hour and a half. Yesterday I gave my sister some red cross lettuces (oh so yummy red lettuce - EAT IT) and cilantro for her yard. The other day I gave a date a rosemary plant. The tomatoes are getting big and Alyssa will be home soon, Stephen too.
Farming season, ready? set?
GO
I love my job.
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| I got it! I'm gonna be apart of a group show called "Sculpting Time", that's showing at the Visual Arts Center in Rockville, MD, May 21 - July 26th!
YES!
THANK YOU! | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| I have a meeting with a gallery director tomorrow.
I WANT THIS SHOW.
Please, please, say prayers, light candles, offer tobacco to the spirits, do whatever you do to give me some good juju! | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| American Apparel is selling scrunchies now.
There are some things that should stay in the past, for real. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I had amazing dreams last night, I can hardly believe it. There were travels and friends and trying to find my way around a strange house, but the best part was a long slow walk that I took with Qwita. We were somewhere amazinginly beautiful, with greens like Mississippi and Arkansas - delta like those places too, but with gorgeous hills way way in the distance and farms and animals. The sun was setting and there were tons of flowers out, pretty things to be seen and talked about. We were walking on a dirt path, looking at people working down the way from us and I was explaining why I'm so attracted to landscape and why I love farm work so much. Then my cell phone rang and it was this guy I went out to dinner with last week, telling me excitedly that he found some book he lost. Having him show up in my dream really threw me for a loop, so I was able to wake myself up, for the first time ever!
I was supposed to start working for PVF this morning, but a soggy walk through a deserted farm let me know what to do today:
reapply for my HU scholarship
update my resume (goddamnit, why do scholarship committees need resumes?)
go to the studio and make some tall cup sets and a few more mugs, maybe a jug or two or a bowl or two
make/eat good food
go to DC for this old time music show
I'm ready for my change of pace, someone tell the Universe to cut the crap. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I watched The Torch Song Trilogy last night after coming home from Easter dinner with my neighbors. Dinner was great - yummy baked ham, potatoes au gratin, asparagus, and my famous lemon dill green beans.
I really wish that gay movies today were as smart as the Torch Song Trilogy. I'm so tired of watching twinks make out. Beautiful Thing, that was a good one though. And Nowhere. I think it was good for me to watch the Torch Song Trilogy, considering all the thinking I've been doing in relation to relations. The moral of that movie is keep your head up, love yourself, create the life you want. Got it. And its not a story about gay people really, its a story about love and honesty and not being scared to love someone and being strong enough to reject the people that don't love you like you deserve. Yeah, it's a movie about strength.
I'm also finished with my second essay for this Trends and Ideas in African American Art class. I realize that my art history education since I started at HU has revolved almost entirely around West African pottery - I gotta spread my wings, open my mind, and oh goodness, do I love Augusta Savage. Romare Bearden. Aaron Douglas. William Colscott, Gordon Parks. Elizabeth Catlett.
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| woah, i'm blowin up livejournal.
Gemini Horoscope for week of April 9, 2009
Verticle Oracle card Gemini (May 21-June 20)
During my daily bicycle jaunts, I have on occasion ridden by a certain construction site, observing as workers took several months to erect a home where once there was dirt. It turned out to be too monstrously big for my tastes, but I admire its craftsmanship, and the landscaping is impeccable, too. Today I saw that the workers had completed one last task: pour the cement for the driveway. But something went awry. The lip of the driveway is a foot above the level of the road. There's no way a car could make the transition without being damaged. Make sure that nothing similar happens in your sphere, Gemini. Maintain your concentration right to the end of the process you've been carrying out. Finish your masterpiece with a precise flourish.
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Hmmm. It's referring to my thesis work, right? School and stuff, gotta be. The renewal applications for my scholarship, yes? Making sure I'll be working as a GA next semester?
And GODDAMN if I don't love that new Ginuwine. The video is off the chain too - Lisa Raye is too gorgeous and her weight gain looks super fine. All that "oooh yeah" at the beginning is so old school r&b, I love it. And dammit, the dancing. Love it. Ginuwine, never leave me.
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| Have you read this? As a Southerner, its humiliating. I swear, sometimes the South can seem so fuckin' ass backwards, even though I still haven't seen a place more beautiful to me (probably because of my personal history inherent to the landscape).
What a crummy day. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| So I didn't get the scholarship to Penland this summer, which is really disappointing. I like to believe that things happen for me, not to me, so I'm looking forward to being available for the entire summer season and not missing two weeks of paying work. When I got back from Penland last year, the stand had opened and the tomatoes were ripe - everything seemed so different. Two weeks is a long time in the farming world, especially in the dead of the season, so it will be nice to not have to readjust and reintegrate the way I had to last year.
And perhaps I'll just try for a 2 month winter program at Penland now. Or maybe I'll look towards Haystack in Maine.
Or not.
Did I tell you that the other day I had another Twin Oaks dream? This one was a straight up nightmare - I was a sanctioned guest for some reason or other. My sis wasn't with me, and I was walking around somewhere at TO, maybe even indoors, and an alligator started chasing me. A big, scary, toothy alligator, and I remember tossing in my sleep and trying to wake myself up, to no avail. Eventually I lost the gator, or maybe things just stopped, and I was in some crowded kitchen where no one would look at me. Marielle was there, and she was wearing my clothes, specifically a pair of jeans I found while I lived at Twin Oaks, a pair that were too small for me. Finding fitting clothes was always hard for me at Twin Oaks - most of the folks there are thin, and the people that organize the communal clothing area don't really seem to care about having larger clothes that aren't totally hideous. At one point in my tenure there, I wanted to ask the Planners for $40 or something so I could buy a bra and some jeans, and Marielle told me that she didn't think I deserved community money for new clothes because 1) I was leaving, and 2) I was in the labor hole. Eventually I just went home to MS and had my mom buy me a bra and some jeans. I would also use money from my off-the-farm job to buy clothes, when I would go to Charlottesville and the like on day trips. Her top was this wool hoodie that I bought at the Harper's Ferry flea market in October, and she wouldn't look at me. I never saw her face actually, she was just looking into a bowl of food with her back to me and my clothes on. The dream ended with the cops showing up to arrest me for trespassing, Aubee called them.
Just writing that last part makes me laugh.
So here's a video of Bok Choy on a visit to the emergency room during a manic episode. Her first episode was triggered at Twin Oaks, where she was first admitted into inpatient psychiatric care after being told a lie about going to the hospital to "get some sleep". I think she's always been bipolar, but the spiral she entered into after leaving Utopia has never seemed right. She just can't seem to get well and stay well.
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| Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays sounds fine. We are still working as the weather allows – rainy days we do non-farm things, beautiful days we work. Anyway, we don’t have to talk about anything until you start working, and mostly I was just telling you that we would be taking your more seriously (offering feedback) than we might have last year. Like, if we think it can be done faster and better, we’ll show you what we mean. Then you might feel a little criticized but you’ll try to see whether any of our comments can be incorporated into your work patterns, and then you’ll get faster, or some general scenario like that. Every business depends on productivity and efficiency, and we do make allowances for people to learn and find their way, but we also hope for a steady learning curve. And you are a prime candidate because you have already demonstrated an openness to learning and listening, and do not respond as if you already know everything.
Anyway, that’s what I meant. We will be glad to have you back. So far we’re just muddling along, waiting for consistent farming weather.
Hana Newcomb
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love is stronger than death
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porelsocialismo's journal
