so my eye is swollen and i still have to go to work fml
A lion decides he’s had enough of being photographed - and tries to steal a photographer’s camera. The lion and his pride had been followed by a film crew in Okavango Delta, Botswana, for days - and obviously decided it was time to have his turn behind the camera. The lion broke away from the pride and ran up to the camera before trying to drag the camera and tripod away. The photo was taken by British photographer and tour guide John Sobey, who runs horseback safaris for photographers throughout Botswana. He said: “He had a good look down the lens and we watched, amazed. It was only when he decided to try and bite them camera that the film crew got worried, and shouted at the lion, scaring him away.”
While Brazil’s national identity seemingly prides itself in its mixed race heritage, it is important to realize that the goal of elites in the 19th century was not the complete mixture of the population but rather the complete whitening of the population. This white dream is captured perfectly in 1895 painting entitled A Redenção de Cam (The Redemption of Ham) by the Spanish artist Modesto Brocos. As the old Bible myth declared descendants of the character Ham to be cursed, this painting can be interpreted as such:
The black grandmother on the left had had a relationship with a white man, which produced her mulata daughter sitting next to her. The mulata daughter had a relationship with the Portuguese immigrant sitting next to her that produced the phenotypically white baby that sits on her lap. The grandmother gives thanks and praise because the “black stain” has finally been removed from the family. The palm leaves behind her are a symbol of hope.
Thus, today it should not be surprising that black exclusion, murder, anti-African sentiments, racism and an obsession with whiteness continue to be blatantly present in Brazilian society.
It is a part of the nation’s very history.
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I will never forget one day in St. Louis in 1992 when I was walking from my hotel to the health food store to purchase some vitamins. I heard a voice say: “Hey boy! Come here.” It was a White police officer. I thought he had to be putting me on as he placed his hand on his gun and said it again. “Boy I said come here.” I thought I was going to die, because I knew I wasn’t going to walk to him. Which meant he was going to come and get me. I threw my hands in the air and said, “First, I’m not your ‘boy,’ and if you want me, come and get me.” My mind was racing and I just kept thinking back to the movement. Death is better than being reduced to a boy by this racist White cop, I told myself.
He came over and handcuffed me. Then he shoved me in the back of the police car and drove me to the health food store across the street. A crowd gathered, and another cop came along and recognized me. They walked away and talked briefly, and then the cop who recognized me walked back to the patrol car. What he said made me madder than the actions of the first cop who arrested me.
”Mr. Gregory, I’m sorry about this. It was a mistake and you can go now.” “Go?” I responded. “he has arrested me and I am not going anywhere.”
By now more cops are on the scene and two of them went inside the store, where they got a White stock boy to say that I was the shoplifter they were looking for. The stock boy came out to the car and identified me. “Boy,” I said, looking him dead in the face. “You know damn well I’m not who they are looking for. I’m Dick Gregory, and I have products in your store. If you want your job, you’d better tell them the truth.”
To my surprise, he was not afraid of the cops. “Mr. Gregory,” he said, “I’m sorry they did tell me to lie.” He walked away.
After I refused to get out of the car, they had no choice but to take me to jail.
When I got to the jailhouse, a Black female clerk at the desk said to her redneck colleague who had arrested me: “Oh, you have fucked up now!: They all had a good laugh, but it wasn’t funny to me. When they were through laughing, they put out a story that I was arrested for shoplifting and the story went all over the world. When I got out of jail, boy, did we go to war! With the support of the Black churches, Black radio and civil rights leaders in St. louis, we came up with two plans of action. First, Jet magazine and the St. Louis Dispatch printed the trite story about what had happened. Second, because of the police’s vigorous actions towards me, Black people in St. Louis started protesting, something that mostly White men in St. Louis had enjoyed for the last fifty years, the Stroll, a fifty-two-block area in our Black neighborhood where prostitutes sold their bodies daily…Snippet
Chapter 27 Nothing from History: Callus On My Soul
Inside an Ancient Mayan house discovered just recently in Xultún in Guatemala is a mural of a king, a man kneeling in front of the king and his 3 “mysterious” attendants. These “mysterious” attendants according to LiveScience, a science news website are 3 men seated wearing white loincloths and medallions around their necks and a head dress bearing another medallion and a single feather.
They are painted Black, different from the kneeling man and king who are depicted as brown. The art and writings were left by the Maya some 1,200 years ago. Artist Heather Hurst recreated the design and colors of this original Maya artwork at the site. A NEW EXAMPLE OF THE AFRICAN PRESENCE IN THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS….Darrin Burgess
Pictures above by Stephen Alvarez
Tsingy de Bemaraha (Stone Forest) - Madagascar
The Tsingys are karstic plateaus in which groundwater has undercut the elevated uplands. Because of local conditions, the erosion is patterned vertically as well as horizontally. In several regions on western Madagascar, the superposition of vertical and horizontal erosion patterns has created dramatic “forests” of limestone needles. The species of flora and fauna are not to be found anywhere else in the world like the Decken’s Sifaka pictured above.
Below you can see an illustration from The National Geographic explaining these formations. (click image to enlarge)
Pictures Below by Emma Smart
This is Africa, our Africa
OMGGG the Earth is amazing
somethin as soft as water can penetrate somethin as hard as rock
