A Lion Among Men.

"Can those tarnished by infamy escape their sobriquets—cowardly, wicked, brainless, criminally earnest—to claim their own histories, to live honorably within their own skins before they're skinned alive?"

This line (from the author's summary of A Lion Among Men) alone makes me fall in love with the book.

Cette ligne (du resume de l'auteur de Un Lion Parmi les Hommes) seule me fait tomber amoureux avec le livre.


P.S. I have this problem where I read the first few letters of a word or phrase and guess at what the rest is... I kept reading the title again and again to be "Life Among Men." I might like that one more though...


P.P.S. I highly recommend checking out L. Frank Baum on Wikipedia if you are unaware of his famous editorials days after Sitting Bull was killed and then the day after the Wounded Knee Massacre.

"The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at best, is a disgrace to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster.
The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.
An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre."

cancerous tasmanian devil proof fence

"Australian scientists say they want to build a fence on Tasmania to prevent the spread of a cancer that threatens the Tasmanian Devil with extinction. "


What is it about Australians and fences?
Qu'est que c'est des Austrailians et les clotures?

Story from BBC.

about (what is it about)
fence=la cloture

my mom is a washcloth

This is from a series of photographs of skateparks. The few photos of the skaters themselves showed boys, some as young as eight or nine and none over sixteen or so, wearing tattered shorts and their brothers' shoes.
Ca c'est au une serie des photographs des skateparks. Le peu des photos des skateurs leur-memes montrent les garcons, un peu avaient huit ou neuf ans mais personne n'avais plus de seize ans, portaient les shorts dechire et les chausseurs de ses freres.
(gosh that was a horrible translation)
Photograph from Polar Inertia.
as (some as young as)

trapped in a snowglobe

Well! This is just wonderful.

Eh bien! Ca c'est juste mervielleux.

Photograph from Foto Decadent (Vogue, 1950's)

the riots.

The blood drips from a protester's hand.
Le main d'un manifestant sainge.

Mannequins burn in a torched storefront.

Les mannequins brulent dans une devanture flambeau.

Photographs from The Boston Globe

burn (not as "I burned it", but rather "it burned")

protester=manifestant(e)

from MISI-ZIIBI, ojibwe for great river

This is a map of the flooding of the mississippi over a number of decades. I think it's the most beautiful thing that I've ever seen.
Ca c'est un carte de la inondation de la mississippi avec les temps. Je pense qu'il est le plus belle truc que j'ai jamais vue.

from my new favourite blog, strangemaps.

eugene hutz and my grandma when she was twenty

I always find it hard to explain how attractive ugliness can be. I work at a daycare in the afternoons and none of the children could understand why I purposely made my crayon drawing of a narwhal so damn ugly. I think that beauty needs to be blemished, tainted. If not, it's just.. boring.
Je toujours trouve-il difficile explique la beaute de la laideur. Je travaille a une garderie dans l'apres-midi et acune des enfants peuvent comprendre pourquoi j'ai fait mon dessine d'un narval cette laide intentionnellement. Je pense que il faut que la beaute est defaut, entachee. Si pas... il est enneuyeux.

'NYU couple" by the sartorialist

how (how attractive it can be)
tainted