I have several of these. Pretty cool sound.
Source: Ancient Aztec ‘skull whistles’ found to instill fear in modern people
Category Archives: History
“Here I Gather All the Friends”: Machiavelli and the Emergence of the Private Study — The Public Domain Review
I quite like this short essay/biography of Machiavelli. The author of The Prince. (free ebook) Or Barnes & Noble
Chutzpah, perhaps? Entitlement, even? Or maybe just an ironic contrast to Vettori, who has access to the real halls of power? Probably all of the above, but it is above all a performance. Machiavelli here uses an ancient rhetorical technique called prosopoeia. From the Greek prósopon (“face, person,” and poiéin “to make, to do”), it is a trope of personification. As the Roman orator Quintilian explains, prosopoeia is used “to introduce conversations between ourselves and others. We are even allowed in this form of speech to bring down the gods from heaven or raise the dead.”8 This is exactly what Machiavelli is doing: he conjures the souls of the dead. After all, every time we read, we breathe into texts whose afterlife exists because of us. We revivify figures that are no longer here. But we are dependent on them in turn — they give us a storehouse of language and ideas, and we make them live again through our own words and voices. Reading as necromancy, then.
W. E. B. Du Bois may have been thinking about Machiavelli when he wrote in The Souls of Black Folk (1903): I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn or condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.9
Mutual Aid
Mutual Aid as a concept was first broached by Peter Kropotkin in 1902 (although the concept is older than that.) in a book of Essays called Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution is a 1902 collection of anthropological essays by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. The essays, initially published in the English periodical The Nineteenth Century between 1890 and 1896,[1] explore the role of mutually beneficial cooperation and reciprocity (or “mutual aid“) in the animal kingdom and human societies both past and present. It is an argument against theories of social Darwinism that emphasize competition and survival of the fittest, and against the romantic depictions by writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought that cooperation was motivated by universal love. Instead, Kropotkin argues that mutual aid has pragmatic advantages for the survival of human and animal communities and, along with the conscience, has been promoted through natural selection.
Mutual Aid is considered a fundamental text in anarchist communism.[2] It presents a scientific basis for communism as an alternative to the historical materialism of the Marxists. Kropotkin considers the importance of mutual aid for prosperity and survival in the animal kingdom, in indigenous and early European societies, in the medieval free cities (especially through the guilds), and in the late 19th century village, labor movement, and impoverished people. He criticizes the State for destroying historically important mutual aid institutions, particularly through the imposition of private property.
Many biologists[3][4] (including Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of his generation) also consider it an important catalyst in the scientific study of cooperation.[5]
He argued against Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory, and this has become somewhat of a tenet among anarchists.
You can buy a beautiful copy of it here: https://blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/peter-kropotkin/#mutualaid
Get a free copy here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution
Or buy it on B&N:https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin/1101158703?ean=9780241355336
Also there’s a new book titled Mutual Aid by Dean Spade.
Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.
Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.
This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.
Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.
You can get it wherever fine books are sold. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin/1101158703?ean=9780241355336
Here’s him talking about it, and organizing.
Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.
Organizing is what mutual aid is about, and it’s easy to do. You can just help your neighbor with a project, that is mutual aid. (The Amish know how to do this.) Start, or contribute to, a community garden, or a community tool share. Small things as well as big things.
Here’s a link to Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, which is helping in the wake of the devastating hurricanes, down south.
I’m going to close this here, I think I’ve given plenty of links to get you started with this. Good luck.
Solidarity not charity.
Happy birthday Ken Kesey
Early Bookcases, Cupboards & Carousels – Lost Art Press
I LOVE books ,and here’s a wonderful history of book shelves. My shelves are overflowing, although I think they are failry neat.
Scholars, translators, transcribers and writers have always needed to have multiple books and other resources within easy reach. Illustrated manuscripts give
Source: Early Bookcases, Cupboards & Carousels – Lost Art Press
Why I Joined the Industrial Workers of the World
So I joined the wobblies. You can too. If you sign up and pay your dues (which are sliding scale, based on your income), someone will be in touch with you to talk about what’s happening locally and how you can get involved.The preamble of the constitution of the IWW was written by Thomas Hagerty, an itinerant Catholic preacher who was kicked out of the church for his political organizing and wound up a mystic on the streets of Chicago. How can I not love it? The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the evergrowing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.. Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system.” It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
Happy May Day
Did you know the May Day is actually two different holidays in one? Well it is.
The tradition of May baskets and May poles come from the celebration of Beltane and Walpurgis, ancient “pagan” holidays to celebrate the beginning of summer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Day
It is, also, International Workers Day (ie. Labor Day). The US and other countries don’t celebrate it as such an that stems “from a resistance to emboldening worldwide working-class unity”.
Read more here : https://www.npr.org/2022/04/30/1095729592/what-is-may-day-history
So whether you’re a pagan, or a Wobblie; Happy May Day!
Girl Gangs of New York and the Godmother of Gotham Crime
Girl Gangs of New York and the Godmother of Gotham Crime – Inspiration Vault – Messy Nessy Chic
Source: Girl Gangs of New York and the Godmother of Gotham Crime
If you were a late 19th century sex worker, shoplifter, gangster, confidence artist, or petty thief, chances are your path would have crossed with the high priestess of misdemeanour, Old Mother (‘Marm’) AKA the ‘Queen of Fences’ Mandelbaum and her curated network of wickedly skilled criminal hostesses. Each of these crafty operators had carved out a lucrative niche for themselves in the American underworld, especially in New York’s buoyant and duplicitous Lower East Side.
The explosive expansion of New York City from 1820 created the perfect environment for gang culture. Awash with poor disgruntled immigrants, the different ethnic and language groups sought their own in the frenzied urban sprawl. Overcrowding, poverty, protectionism and identity glued this converging mass in the young city. And as ever, in turbulent times there are always those who’d spot a ‘business’ opportunity – and take advantage.
Fort Marion and Beyond: Native American Ledger Drawings, 1865-1900 – in collaboration with Donald Ellis Gallery – Exhibitions – David Nolan Gallery
Featuring works by Richard Artschwager, Chakaia Booker, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Julia Fish, George Grosz, David Hartt, Mel Kendrick, Barry Le Va, Jonathan Meese, Rodrigo Moynihan, Ciprian Mureșan, Jim Nutt, Paulo Pasta, Christina Ramberg, Dorothea Rockburne, Eugen Schönebeck, Jorinde Voigt, and Ray Yoshida.
Via: https://hyperallergic.com/872801/a-shameful-us-history-told-through-ledger-drawings/
Hippy, capitalist, guru, grocer: the forgotten genius who changed British food | Food | The Guardian
The long read: Nicholas Saunders was a counterculture pioneer with an endless stream of quixotic schemes and a yearning to spread knowledge – but his true legacy is a total remaking of the way Britain eats
Source: Hippy, capitalist, guru, grocer: the forgotten genius who changed British food | Food | The Guardian
1. All food must be prepared or at least packed on the premises.2. The ingredients must be “wholefoods” ie pure, without any additives, such as flavouring, colouring or preservatives. Highly refined ingredients must be avoided.
3. Prices must be reasonable.4. Descriptions (both verbal and written) must be straightforward, down to earth and objective. Persuasive, enticing or glamorising descriptions must not be used.
5. The size and style of notices must be simple – not attention-seeking, enticing, image-building or making any use of advertising or merchandising techniques.6. “Point of sale aids” must not be used.
7. Information about recipes, ingredients, quality and suppliers must be freely available. 8. The neighbours must be given consideration and cooperation.
9. All staff must be free to see the accounts and attend meetings where they can freely express their views.10. Jobs should be rotated as far as possible, and in particular no one should be left with the unpopular jobs.
11. Outside contractors should be avoided if the work can be done by the regular staff.12. In the event of a business growing, it should not expand or set up branches, but instead assist and encourage some of its staff to split off and start another independent business.