My friend Arden just released her first EP! Listen to it on your preferred platform by following this link, or stay right here!

A quote from Howard University’s removal of classics is a spiritual catastrophe by Cornel West and Jeremy Tate. Published in full here by the Washington Post.

From The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende:

"His father... ordered Nicolás to take a bath and put on some normal clothes if he wanted to stay in the house, but Nicolás stared at him without seeing and did not reply. He had become a vegetarian. He did not eat milk, meat, or eggs. His diet was the same as a rabbit's, and his anxious face gradually came to resemble the face of that animal."

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

~ from The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

This map is one of my biggest projects. Click on the full screen button for a better viewing interface in a new tab. I am still adding details and photos to this map - if you have something for me to add, let me know!

From Napoleon Dynamite

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At my family’s small lowbush blueberry farm in late July and early August, the energy is festive. Over a thousand customers come from around the valley with their friends and small children each year to participate in harvesting the year’s blueberries, and most of them have a personal connection to the farm and the land, if not to my family directly. The blueberry sorting barn is filled with the roaring of fans and conveyor belts as the fruit is winnowed and packaged into boxes of five, ten, or twenty pounds and sold directly a few yards away; out in the picturesque fields, customers pick their own berries alongside local teenagers harvesting thousands of pounds of blueberries each day for what is often their very first job. The fruit is firm and sweet, easily surpassing in quality the conventionally grown lowbush blueberries, usually from Canada or Maine, found in the frozen section at supermarkets; and healthy-minded mothers excitedly discuss the antioxidant properties of the lowbush variety while tussling the blueberry-stained hair of their toddlers.

12/18/52

The loaf felt soft in his hand. Not soft and soggy like the stale bread crusts he had eaten all his life became when it rained—it was warm, and fresh. And the smell! It was the same smell that had made his stomach rumble every time he walked down the alley behind the tavern’s bakery—but now he experienced it a completely different way, knowing that the sweet smell was his, that he would sink his teeth into that warm, soft loaf. He looked behind him with a fearful grimace, but wild and delighted. No one in the busy street was looking at him. He reached up and over an edge in the wall, an edge he was too short to see but which his fingers knew perfectly—and he swung himself onto the tavern’s roof.

By Satya Benson

Lying in bed, imagining all the wonderful creations
To come, crying tears inside because they won’t, I can’t fight,
I am too weak even though I can be strong and eat the fruit
Of labour I won’t, I will not though I want, though I must walk,
But on the outside, where I can see, I don’t yet drink
Those tears, those bitter tears, not till I’ve pushed through the thick