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University of California Television (UCTV)

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If You Can't Be Free Be A Mystery:  The Poetry of Rita Dove

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Rita Dove, former Poet Laureate of the U.S. and recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, is one of the most honored figures in modern American literature. Among Dove's many honors is the 1993 NAACP Great American Artist Award.

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"How 12 Years a Slave Gets it Right:  By Getting it Wrong

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"How 12 Years a Slave Gets it Right:  By Getting it Wrong

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The Atlantic

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At the beginning of 12 Years a Slave, the kidnapped freeman Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), has a painful sexual encounter with an unnamed female slave in which she uses his hand to bring herself to orgasm before turning away in tears. The woman's desperation, Solomon's reserve, and the fierce sadness of both, is depicted with an unflinching still camera which documents a moment of human contact and bitter comfort in the face of slavery's systematic dehumanization. It's scenes like these in the film, surely, that lead critic Susan Wloszczyna to state that watching 12 Years a Slave makes you feel you have "actually witnessed American slavery in all its appalling horror for the first time."

And yet, for all its verisimilitude, the encounter never happened. It appears nowhere in Northup's autobiography, and it's likely he would be horrified at the suggestion that he was anything less than absolutely faithful to his wife. Director Steve McQueen has said that he included the sexual encounter to show "a bit of tenderness ... Then after she's climaxes, she's back ... in hell." The sequence is an effort to present nuance and psychological depth - to make the film's depiction of slavery seem more real. But it creates that psychological truth by interpolating an incident that isn't factually true.

This embellishment is by no means an isolated case in the film. For instance, in the film version, shortly after Northup is kidnapped, he is on a ship bound south. A sailor enters the hold and is about to rape one of the slave women when a male slave intervenes. The sailor unhesitatingly stabs and kills him. This seems unlikely on its face-slaves are valuable, and the sailor is not the owner. And, sure enough, the scene is not in the book. A slave did die on the trip south, but from smallpox, rather than from stabbing. Northup himself contracted the disease, permanently scarring his face. It seems likely, therefore, that in this instance the original text was abandoned so that Ejiofor's beautiful, expressive, haunting features would not go through the entire movie covered with artificial Hollywood scar make-up. Instead of faithfulness to the text, the film chooses faithfulness to Ejiofor's face, unaltered by trickery.
It seems quite likely that the single most powerful moment in the film was based on a misunderstood antecedent.
Other changes seem less intentional. Perhaps the most striking scene in the film involves Patsey, a slave who is repeatedly raped by her master, Epps, and who as a consequence is jealously and obsessively brutalized by Mistress Epps. In the movie version, Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) comes to Northup in the middle of the night and begs him, in vivid horrific detail, to drown her in the swamp and release her from her troubles. This scene derives from the following passage at the end of Chapter 13 of the autobiography:

Nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see [Patsey] suffer, and more than once, when Epps had refused to sell her, has she tempted me with bribes to put her secretly to death, and bury her body in some lonely place in the margin of the swamp. Gladly would Patsey have appeased this unforgiving spirit, if it had been in her power, but not like Joseph, dared she escape from Master Epps, leaving her garment in his hand.

As you can see, in the book, it is Mistress Epps who wants to bribe Northup to drown Patsey. Patsey wants to escape, but not to drown herself. The film seems to have misread the line, attributing the mistress's desires to Patsey. Slate, following the lead of scholar David Fiske (see both the article and the correction) does the same. In short, it seems quite likely that the single most powerful moment in the film was based on a misunderstood antecedent.

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How 12 Years a Slave Gets History Right: By Getting It Wrong

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At the beginning of 12 Years a Slave, the kidnapped freeman Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), has a painful sexual encounter with an unnamed female slave in which she uses his hand to bring herself to orgasm before turning away in tears.

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sonnetwriters.com - Domain Name For Sale | Dan.com

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I found a great domain name for sale on Dan.com. Check it out!

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(Boston, February, 1782)
To the honorable Senate and House
of Representatives of this Country,
new born: I am Belinda, an African,
since the age of twelve a Slave.
I will not take too much of your Time,
but to plead and place my pitiable Life
unto the Fathers of this Nation.

Lately your Countrymen have severed
the Binds of Tyranny. I would hope
you would consider the Same for me,
pure Air being the sole Advantage
of which I can boast in my present Condition.

As to the Accusation that I am Ignorant:
I received Existence on the Banks
of the Rio de Valta. All my Childhood
I expected nothing, if that be Ignorance.
The only Travelers were the Dead who returned
from the Ridge each Evening. How might
I have known of Men with Faces like the Moon
who would ride toward me steadily for twelve Years?

"Belinda's Petition" from The Yellow House on the Corner, Carnegie-Mellon University Press, Pittsburgh, PA. © 1980 by Rita Dove. Reprinted by permission of the author.

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(Boston, February, 1782) To the honorable Senate and House of Representatives of this Country, new born: I am Belinda, an African, since the age of twelve a Slave. I will not take too much of your Time, but to plead and place my pitiable Life unto the Fathers of this Nation.

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ookaboo.com -&nbsp Resources and Information.

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ookaboo.com is your first and best source for all of the information you're looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, ookaboo.com has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for!

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Related Entries: * David Walker's Appeal * Editorial Regarding "Walker's Appeal" * Richard Allen in Walker's Appeal * Eric Foner on David Walker * David Blight on David Walker * William Scarborough on David Walker

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Follow the accomplishments of civil rights activist Rosa Parks, and learn how her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus helped end public segregation, at Biography.com.

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The story of the abduction of Persephone is more a story about Demeter than it is about her daughter Persephone, so we're starting this re-telling of the rape of Persephone beginning with her mother Demeter's relationship with one of her brothers, her daughter's father, the king of the gods, who refused to step in to help -- at least in a timely manner.

Demeter, goddess of the earth and grain, was sister to Zeus, as well as Poseidon and Hades.

Because Zeus betrayed her by his involvement in the rape of Persephone, Demeter left Mt.Olympus to wander among men. Hence, although a throne on Olympus was her birth right, Demeter is sometimes not counted among the Olympians. This "secondary" status did nothing to lessen her importance for the Greeks and Romans. The worship associated with Demeter, the Eleusinian Mysteries, endured until it was suppressed in the Christian era.

Demeter and Zeus Are Parents of Persephone

Demeter's relationship with Zeus had not always been so strained: He was the father of her much-loved, white-armed daughter, Persephone.

Persephone grew up to be a beautiful young woman who enjoyed playing with the other goddesses on Mt. Aetna, in Sicily. There they gathered and smelled the beautiful flowers. One day, a narcissus caught Persephone's eye, so she plucked it to get a better look, but as she pulled it from the ground, a rift formed....

Demeter had not been watching too carefully. After all, her daughter was grown. Besides, Aphrodite, Artemis, and Athena were there to watch -- or so Demeter assumed. When Demeter's attention returned to her daughter, the young maiden (called Kore, which is Greek for 'maiden') had vanished.

Where Was Persephone?

Aphrodite, Artemis, and Athena didn't know what had happened, it had been so sudden.

One moment Persephone was there, and the next she wasn't.

Demeter was beside herself with grief. Was her daughter dead? Abducted? What had happened? No one seemed to know. So Demeter roamed the countryside looking for answers.

Zeus Goes Along With Persephone's Abduction

After Demeter had wandered for 9 days and nights, searching for her daughter as well as taking out her frustrations by randomly torching the earth, the 3-faced goddess Hekate told the anguished mother that while she had heard Persephone's cries, she had not been able to see what had happened. So Demeter asked Helios, the sun god -- he had to know since he sees all that happens above the ground during the day. Helios told Demeter that Zeus had given their daughter to "The Invisible" (Hades) for his bride and that Hades, acting on that promise, had taken Persephone home to the Underworld.

The imperious king of the gods Zeus had dared to give Demeter's daughter Persephone away to Hades, the dark lord of the Underworld, without asking! Imagine Demeter's outrage at this revelation. When the sun god Helios insinuated that Hades was a good match, it added insult to injury.

Demeter and Pelops

Rage soon reverted to great sorrow. It was during this period that Demeter absentmindedly ate a piece of Pelops' shoulder at a banquet for the gods.

Then came depression, which meant Demeter couldn't even think about doing her work. Since the goddess wasn't providing food, soon no one would eat. Not even Demeter. Famine would strike mankind.

Demeter and Poseidon

It didn't help when Demeter's third brother, the lord of the sea, Poseidon, turned against her as she wandered in Arcadia. There he tried to rape her. Demeter saved herself by turning into a mare grazing along with the other horses. Unfortunately, horse-god Poseidon easily spotted his sister, even in mare's form, and so, in stallion form, Poseidon raped the horse-Demeter. If ever she had given a thought to returning to live on Mt. Olympus, this was the clincher.

Demeter Wanders the Earth

Now, Demeter was not a heartless goddess. Depressed, yes. Vengeful? Not particularly, but she did expect to be treated well -- at least by mortals -- even in the guise of an old Cretan woman.

Gecko Killing Pleases Demeter

By the time Demeter reached Attica, she was more than parched. Given water to drink, she took the time to sate her thirst. By the time she had stopped, an on-looker, Ascalabus, was laughing at the gluttonous old woman. He said she didn't need a cup, but a tub to drink out of. Demeter was insulted, so throwing water at Ascalabus, she turned him into a gecko.
Then Demeter continued on her way about another fifteen miles.

Demeter Gets a Job

Upon arriving at Eleusis, Demeter sat down by an old well where she began to cry. Four daughters of Celeus, the local chieftain, invited her to meet their mother, Metaneira. The latter was impressed with the old woman and offered her the position of nurse to her infant son. Demeter accepted.

Demeter Tries to Make an Immortal

In exchange for the hospitality she'd been extended, Demeter wanted to do a service for the family, so she set about to make the baby immortal by the usual immersion in fire and ambrosia technique. It would have worked, too, if Metaneira hadn't spied on the old "nurse" one night as she suspended the ambrosia-anointed infant over the fire.
The mother screamed.
Demeter, indignant, put the child down, never to resume the treatment, then revealed herself in all her divine glory, and demanded that a temple be built in her honor where she would teach her worshipers her special rites.

Demeter Refuses to Do Her Work

After the temple was built Demeter continued to reside at Eleusis, pining for her daughter and refusing to feed the earth by growing grain.

No one else could do the work since Demeter had never taught anyone else the secrets of agriculture.

Persephone and Demeter Reunited

Zeus -- ever mindful of the gods' need for worshipers -- decided he had to do something to placate his raging sister Demeter. When soothing words wouldn't work, as a last resort Zeus sent Hermes to Hades to bring the daughter of Demeter back up to the light. Hades agreed to let his wife Persephone go back, but first, Hades offered Persephone a farewell meal.

Persephone knew she couldn't eat in the Underworld if she ever hoped to return to the land of the living, and so she had diligently observed a fast, but Hades, her would-be husband, was so kind now that she was about to return to her mother Demeter, that Persephone lost her head for a second -- long enough to eat a pomegranate seed or six. Perhaps Persephone didn't lose her head. Perhaps she had already grown fond of her implacable husband. At any rate, according to a covenant among the gods, the consumption of food guaranteed that Persephone would be allowed (or forced) to return to the Underworld and Hades.

And so it was arranged that Persephone could be with her mother Demeter for two thirds of the year, but would spend the remaining months with her husband. Accepting this compromise, Demeter agreed to let seeds sprout from the earth for all but three months a year -- the time known as winter -- when Demeter's daughter Persephone was with Hades.

Spring returned to the earth and would again every year when Persephone returned to her mother Demeter.

To further show her goodwill to man, Demeter gave another of Celeus' sons, Triptolemus, the first grain of corn and lessons in ploughing and harvesting. With this knowledge, Triptolemus traveled the world, spreading Demeter's gift of agriculture.

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Greek Goddess Demeter and the Abduction of Persephone

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The story of the abduction of Persephone is more a story about Demeter than it is about her daughter Persephone, so we're starting this re-telling of the rape of Persephone beginning with her mother Demeter's relationship with one of her brothers, her daughter's father, the king of the gods, who refused to step in to help -- at least in a timely manner.

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Get the story of Rafael Trujillo, the ruthless dictator of the Dominican Republic for much of the mid-20th century, on Biography.com.

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Coin was minted between 1916 and 1945, these coins are 90% silver so the melt value* for a Mercury Dime is currently $1.27, but the coins may be worth more to a collector. The 1916 D's are worth between $300 to $400 as they were minted in limited quantity.

The Winged Liberty Head dime is most commonly referred to as a mercury dime. Most people assume the coin contains an image of mercury the greek messenger and god of trade. The figure is in fact lady liberty with winds on her head. The wings represent freedom of the mind or freedom of thought depending on what story you read.

Irregardless of what it's called the coin has become a huge favorite in the coin collecting community.

Due to the age and coin lifespan these coins are usually very well worn down, and one in good condition can fetch double or triple the price easy.

Current silver melt value* for a Mercury Dime is $1.27 and this price is based off the current silver spot price of $17.59 This value is dynamic so bookmark it and comeback for an up to the minute silver melt value.

* Notice as of December 2006 it is illegal to melt down US Minted Pennies and Nickels, and there is a $10,000 fine to help enforce the law. It is legal however to melt down silver dollars, half dollars, dimes, quarters for their content.

Copy the html above to display the graph on your website!

Mercury Head Dime Values

All US Dimes

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Mercury Dime Values (1916-1945) | CoinTrackers.com Project

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Coin was minted between 1916 and 1945, these coins are 90% silver so the melt value* for a Mercury Dime is currently $1.27, but the coins may be worth more to a collector. The 1916 D's are worth between $300 to $400 as they were minted in limited quantity.

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The Statue of Freedom , also known as Armed Freedom or simply Freedom , is a bronze statue designed by Thomas Crawford (1814-1857) that, since 1863, has crowned the dome of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Originally named Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace , a U.S.

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Greek Mythology Link - a collection of myths retold by Carlos Parada, author of Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology.

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Catherine of Alexandria

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Article on the virgin and martyr. In the Middle Ages, one of the most popular saints

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Catherine of Siena

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Third Order Dominican, hermit, reformer, mystic, d. 1380. Biographical article by Edmund G. Gardner

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In 1968 two tombs were found in present-day Mancheng County in Hebei province (review map). The first undisturbed royal Western Han tombs ever discovered, they belong to the prince Liu Sheng (d. 113 BC), who was a son of Emperor Jing Di, and Liu Sheng's consort Dou Wan.

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Frida Kahlo - The Complete Works - frida-kahlo-foundation.org

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The complete works of Frida Kahlo. Large resolution images, rating, ecard, download possibility.

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With slim sable brushes, Frida Kahlo painstakingly rendered her bold unibrow and mustache in dozens of self-portraits. This same Frida also shaved three years off her age, claiming 1910 to be the year she was born in Coyoacn, Mexico, instead of 1907.

Vanity? Hardly. Frida, always her own favorite model, was not about preserving youthful beauty so much as identifying herself with Mexico, her beloved homeland. Frida's "acquired birth year" just so happens to coincide with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution (1910) and the overthrow of President Porfirio Diaz.

If her glaring lie seems jarring and incongruous disturbing, even, in the face of her usual unabashed candor reflect for a moment on the juxtaposed images that characterize her paintings. Frida never allowed apparent facts her own birth certificate, for instance to get in the way of a higher truth; the truth in this case being that she and modern Mexico were inextricably bound in both revolution and renaissance.

An understanding of Frida Kahlo, the person as well as the paintings, requires a setting aside of conventional thoughts and dates, as the case may be. At the same time, paradoxically enough, it requires the context of history. She was a revolutionary artist born amidst political chaos in her homeland; born in the year of its own bloody rebirth, give or take a couple years. That image, according to the artist, is more truthful than fact itself. It would be quibbling to disagree.

An Unconventional Union

No matter whether she was in Paris, New York or Coyoacn, she clothed herself elaborately in the Tehuana costumes of Indian maidens. As much as Frida's country defined her, so, too, did her husband, the celebrated muralist, Diego Rivera. If Mexico was her parent, then Rivera 20 years her senior was her "big-child." She often referred to him as her baby. She met him while still a schoolgirl and later, in 1929, became the third wife of a man who gaily accepted the diagnosis of his doctor that he was "unfit for monogamy."

Needless to say, theirs was an unconventional and problematic, if passionate, union that survived numerous affairs (on both their parts), separations and even a divorce in 1939 and subsequent remarriage in 1940. Their love proved hardy, like the roots in Frida's painting "The Love Embrace." But Frida's hold on Diego as a husband was tenuous. Marriage was hardly a salve for the suffering that had characterized Frida's young life a horrific trolley car accident left her broken as a youth and debilitated throughout much of her adulthood. Diego's incorrigible philandering once with Frida's own younger sister, Cristina only exacerbated her pain. "I suffered two grave accidents in my life," she once said, "One in which a streetcar knocked me down The other accident is Diego."

As a couple, the Riveras remained childless; this, as much as Diego's infidelities, was a source of great anguish for Frida for whom Diego was everything: "my child, my lover, my universe."

As individual artists, the pair was wildly productive. Each regarded the other as Mexico's greatest painter. Frida referred to Diego as the "architect of life." Each took a deep, proprietary pride in the other's creations, drastically different as they were in habit and style.

On a high scaffold in the outdoors, the driven Diego painted for days on end. He loved painting as obsessively as Frida loved him, rendering grand public murals with political themes. Frida, meanwhile, was often immobilized in a cast in her bed, or confined to a hospital room, either anticipating a surgery or recovering from one. She alternately languished and painted intensely personal works. About a third of her entire body of work about 55 paintings consists of self-portraits. In some, she stares out, willfully impassive, her face mask-like; in others, graphic depictions of her internal bodily organs reveal corresponding states of mind. She shied away from nothing, revealing indeed, reveling in the indignity of heartbreak, as well as the gut-wrenching pain of abortion and miscarriage.

Diego, a social realist, actually welled up with tears of pride when Picasso once admired the eyes in a painting of Frida's. And he wrote this glowing recommendation to a friend about an early exhibition of her work: "I recommend her to you, not as a husband but as an enthusiastic admirer of her work, acid and tender, hard as steel and delicate and fine as a butterfly's wing, loveable as a beautiful smile, and profound and cruel as the bitterness of life."

Frida the Surrealist?

Although Frida's work, often fantastic and sometimes gory, has been described as surrealism, she once wrote that she never knew she was a surrealist "until Andr Breton came to Mexico and told me I was one." ("The art of Frida Kahlo is a ribbon about a bomb," Breton wrote, admiringly.) However, Frida eschewed labels. Diego argued that Frida was a realist. Her principal biographer, Hayden Herrera, seems to agree, writing that even in her most enigmatic and complex painting, "What the Water Gave Me," Frida is "down to earth," having depicted "real images in the most literal, straightforward way." Like much of Mexican art, Frida's paintings "interweave fact and fantasy as if the two were inseparable and equally real," Herrera adds.

"Really I do not know whether my paintings are surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the frankest expression of myself," Frida once wrote. "Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself."

A Lust for Life

Frida, the person and her art, defy easy definition. Rather, they lend themselves to ambiguous description. Often volatile and obsessive, Frida was alternately hopeful and despairing. She loved dancing and crowds and flirtation and seduction and was often miserably lonely, begging friends and lovers to visit, not to "forget" her. She had a ferocious and often black sense of humor, as well as a sharp command of wit and metaphor. She took great pride in keeping a home for Diego and loved fussing over him, cooking for him and bathing him. She delighted in pets mischievous spider monkeys and dogs and adored children, who she treated as equals. She loved nonsense, gossip and dirty jokes. She abhorred pretension. She treated servants like family and students like esteemed colleagues. Frida Kahlo embodied alegra, a lust for life. She valued honesty, especially to self.

She once wrote to a former lover (who allegedly had jilted her because of her physical infirmities), "you deserve the best, the very best, because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts."

When Frida Kahlo died at the age of 47 on July 13, 1954, she left paintings, each of which corresponds to her evolving persona, as well as a collection of effusive letters to lovers and friends, and colorfully candid journal entries. All are irrefutable evidence that her life was nothing less than a quest to be honest to herself 1910 birthday and all.

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The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo . Life of Frida | PBS

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With slim sable brushes, Frida Kahlo painstakingly rendered her bold unibrow and mustache in dozens of self-portraits. This same Frida also shaved three years off her age, claiming 1910 to be the year she was born in Coyoacn, Mexico, instead of 1907. Vanity? Hardly.

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Jazz has been called the purest expression of American democracy; a music built on individual and compromise, independence and cooperation. Join us for an exploration of jazz, America's greatest cultural achievement.