The humble humanist

A Fall From Grace

He fell so gracefully
for a moment it looked liked he meant it.
The fall was perfectly balanced like the sweep of a dancer’s arm in reverence
or the endless curve at the base of a spine inviting the hand or head to seek asylum.
The fall from grace can be subtle, a flower following the sun
or sudden as the jerk of the rope.
I never learned what caused his fall
something simple, a mere turn of the screw
or complex as the port de bras.
For me it was the arch of an eyebrow
and blindness in a careless moment.

rs

promotingpeace: “I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will be still rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. … When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” -Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967.

promotingpeace:

“I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will be still rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. … When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967.

(via )

heterogeneoushomosexual: Carrie Mae WeemsYou Became a Scientific Profile / An Anthropological Debate /A Negroid Type / & A Photographic Subject, 1995-1996 Four framed monochromatic color coupler prints with sand-blasted text on glass in artist frames.____________________________ “Harvard threatened to sue me for use of the first photographs that I showed you. And I thought, “Harvard’s going to sue me…for using these images of black people in their collection. The richest university in the world. I think that I don’t have really a legal case, but maybe I have a moral case… that might be really useful to carry out in public.” And so after worrying about it and thinking about it I called them up and I said “I think your suing me would actually be a really good thing…you should. And we should have this conversation in court.” I think it would be really instructive for any number of reasons. Certainly for artists that are engaged in the active appropriation, who think that there is a larger story to tell.” Ironically, Harvard ended up purchasing the entire series for their permanent collection.____________________________

heterogeneoushomosexual:

Carrie Mae Weems
You Became a Scientific Profile / An Anthropological Debate /
A Negroid Type / & A Photographic Subject, 1995-1996

Four framed monochromatic color coupler prints with sand-blasted text on glass in artist frames.
____________________________

“Harvard threatened to sue me for use of the first photographs that I showed you. And I thought, “Harvard’s going to sue me…for using these images of black people in their collection. The richest university in the world. I think that I don’t have really a legal case, but maybe I have a moral case… that might be really useful to carry out in public.”

And so after worrying about it and thinking about it I called them up and I said “I think your suing me would actually be a really good thing…you should. And we should have this conversation in court.” I think it would be really instructive for any number of reasons. Certainly for artists that are engaged in the active appropriation, who think that there is a larger story to tell.”

Ironically, Harvard ended up purchasing the entire series for their permanent collection.
____________________________

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We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.

the more things change…

—T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) via charlesbivona

(Source: charlesbivona)

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

—Harry S. Truman (via abaldwin360)

(via )