Time to throw off that gray modesty, sorry Hugo Ball.
It is a beautiful Autumn morning in Wisconsin and Donald J. Trump is our new president. Last night, I watched in horror as this state, like so many others, turned red. This morning, I see more sadness, outrage and fear than I’ve ever seen in my adult life.
There is a lot of (I hope) hyperbole flowing right now amid high emotions, and the servile and conflict-averse are trying to tell everyone to calm down. It isn’t a matter of whether anyone has a right to be afraid, but how afraid they need to be.
Don’t let anyone take your anger. Don’t let anyone scream “I told you so” about their magical candidates. Everyone who did not actively try to stop this is complicit in it. We will feel the effects of this dark decision for decades. It’s okay to be angry. You should be angry.
What we do at Dirge is more important than ever. This morning, I gathered my heartbroken staff, and said, “What can we do?”
We have to be even more visible for our vulnerable readers, which is probably most of you, now. We have to be a weaponized platform for your voice. We have to be more critical, more aggressive. We have to take a stand anywhere and everywhere.
We have to be an unassailable fortress for weird people. We have to be an institution that does not submit to rule by the least of us.
I have your backs more than ever. I don’t know what the next four years will bring – no one does, and that uncertainty is fueling a lot of this fear right now – but Dirge will continue to be a platform for us. We will continue to fight for our culture, our way of life, and stand defiant against misogyny and racism.
As our managing editor Matt O’Connell said, “We have to get louder and weirder.”
I used to eat lunch/cry behind sunglasses on my lunchbreak near this lady.
The statue of suffragist Lucy Stone (the first woman in Massachusetts to earn a college degree) on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall was freshly bedecked with flowers yesterday, as Leslee captured.
The tire tracks in this parking lot make a tree pattern in the snow, a self-producing infographic of the cars’ collective pathway to their parking spaces. It’s fun to trace individual tracks — I’m fascinated by the one that comes in, starts right, turns back to the left, then heads back down before turning toward the left again into a space.
The photo was taken in a Shell Centre parking lot near Waterloo Station in 1963. Photographer unknown. (via @robnitm)
Update: A reader randomly picked up a copy of a book recently called The World From Above, “a pretty brilliant collection of aerial photographs, mostly black and white, published in the mid 60’s” and the parking lot photo was in it. No photographer listed, but the photo is credited to dpa, the German Press Agency. (thx, david)
It sounds like the start to a horror movie. Scientists (it’s always scientists, isn’t it?), studying machine learning algorithms, grow bored of teaching their computers to find cat videos on the internet or to beat humans at board games. It just happens to be October, so rather than setting their sights on solving actual real-world problems, they decide that the totally normal, sane, scientific thing to do is to teach our future AI overlords TO SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF US. Thanks, science. I’m sure that will come in handy for them.
You can check out the images generated by MIT’s Nightmare Machine, and even vote on which images are more frightening to help fine-tune the terror. And, as a reward, it will custom-generate a gallery of scary faces tailored to your personal taste in terror.
After World War II, the helmets of German soldiers were refashioned into colanders, pots, and other kitchen utensils. This video from the British Pathé archive shows how the repurposing happened.
Kenny, is this true? Give us the property management dirt.
There's been an ownership change
Boston hasn’t seen the last of a specialty food store that papered over its windows last week. As it turns out, Bee’s Knees Supply Company in Allston is only temporarily closed, and as the business moves forward following ownership changes, it will undergo some renovations and menu changes, according to Elliot Kim, who is the Allston store's general manager.
A Twitter post from the company last week that announced the closure of the Allston location was apparently sent by someone no longer affiliated with Bee’s Knees, and it has since been removed, Kim said. "That was not the ideal way for us to share with the community, as far as us going through renovations," Kim told Eater.
Moving forward, Kim said, Bee’s Knees will focus on delivering the same high-quality products and food to the Boston area, but the team will do some renovations to the space and redevelop the menu. "So this is actually a really good restructuring," he said.
"There’s a lot of moving pieces, obviously right now. Those need to be solidified before we give any kind of time projection," Kim said. "There’s a lot of things that may be entertained." Bee’s Knees will have the same concept and same quality, as well as a renewed commitment to serving the neighborhood, according to Kim.
Dear Bee's Knees family, we are currently closed for renovations and we are coming back with revamped menu and grocery offerings soon!!!
— Bee's Knees Supply (@BeesKneesSupply) July 6, 2016
so i'm going to by the hocus pocus one of course. kenny, you need the nancy one
Rejoice! It’s October, and you know what that means: Halloween. Of course, for the weirdos and witches of the world, we live every day like it’s All Hallow’s Eve. But for the next month, the rest of the world has caught up with our darkling ways. Ghosts, ghouls, black cats, and Jack-o-lanterns are everywhere, and it’s time to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year.
These pins capture all the spoopy excitement of Halloween, but of course, we’ll be wearing them all year round.
The Sanderson sisters seem to have cast a spell on all of us; a spell to keep us strangely attracted to Sarah Jessica Parker’s witchy wiles and coming back for nineties nostalgia year after year. It’s just a bunch of Hocus Pocus, and it isn’t Halloween without it. Cavity Colors//$13
We’ll admit it, sometimes we can’t resist a little kitsch. A chubby-faced kewpie doll dressed as a black cat carrying a smiling jack-o-lantern is the perfect ode to cutesy vintage Halloween. Lady No Brow//$10
Mad Monster Party is the severely underrated spooky cousin to Christmas classics like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. The familiar animation style of Rankin/Bass combines with our favorite monsters to bring us this red-headed bombshell of a creation, Francesca. Nadafinga Pins//$10
It’s not just a costume, it’s a way of life. Your monstrous ways extend far beyond October 31st, as does your love for all things black and orange. The Creeping Museum//$8
Everyone’s favorite misspelling turned viral meme, the term “spoopy” somehow envelops the silly fun of Halloween even better than its real word counterpart and we’re not ashamed to use it. Bombasine//$11
The wolfman is a beloved classic monster, so wear this pin to all your Halloween movie viewings, and hold onto it to whip out around that special time of the month (the full moon; a Dracula pin might be more appropriate for that other time of the month). Monster Club Co//$12
The nineties was a great time for witches, and Nancy is no exception. Sure she’s crazy, but we’ll be stealing her eyeliner and choker game for the rest of forever. “Relax, it’s only magic.” Eat Her Brains//$7
Nothing says Halloween quite like a classic Jack-o-lantern. This one has a vintage look, and appears to have seen a ghost. Or perhaps he’s a bit concerned about the pumpkin spice everything craze. Creepy Co//$11
“Vladislav used to be extremely powerful. He could hypnotize crowds of people. Great orgies. 20-30 women. He could turn into all sorts of animals. But now he never gets the faces right. He would kill anybody. Men, women. Children. Burning… everything. It was totally great.But he suffered a humiliating defeat…at the hands of his arch-nemesis…The Beast. And, he’s never been the same.” We feel you Vlad, we feel you. Staring Yeti//$10
Haleigh is a lover of all things magical, mystical, haunted, and historical. She is a buyer at Gypsy Warrior and co-founder of Babe Coven. When she's not doing one of those things, you can probably find her exploring the woods, lurking in a cemetery, or petting a cat. You can follow her on Instagram if you want to see pictures of her doing those things.
The Illustrated Book of Poultry by Lewis Wright, first published in 1870 and revised several times in the decades following, was “regarded as the most desirable of the English poultry books”. Poultry was very popular in Victorian England and the book housed a tremendous amount of practical poultry knowledge. From a Harvard Library blog post:
“Hen Fever”, as it became known during the Victorian Age, was an unprecedented obsession with owning, breeding, and showing the finest chickens in the world. The genesis of the poultry fancier owes much to Queen Victoria and her royal menagerie. In 1842, she acquired exotic chickens from China, and whatever the Queen did, the public would soon try to imitate and incorporate at home. The Illustrated London News reported “Her Majesty’s collection of fowls is very considerable, occupying half-a-dozen very extensive yards, several small fields, and numerous feeding-houses, laying-sheds, hospitals, winter courts, &c.”. From this point forward, poultry was no longer viewed as common farmyard critters, but valued and appreciated throughout the classes of Victorian Britain. The import and breeding of poultry was not just a leisurely hobby, but a profitable endeavor with sky rocketing price tags for the finest examples.
But the books also contained many wonderful illustrations of the finest examples of chickens and other poultry in the style of Audubon. The different breeds have amazing names like Buff Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks, Dark Dorkingtons, and Gold Pencilled Hamburghs.
Please welcome S. Elizabeth to our growing team of staff writers! Sarah is no stranger to Haute Macabre, having contributed as a guest blogger many times over the years. She was a contributing writer for our friends at CoilHouse Magazine, on the BloodMilk Blog, Death and the Maiden, and was the creative force behind Skeletor Is Love. View her previous contributions to Haute Macabre here, and visit her personal blog at UnquietThings.com.
The Gift
The discovery of Darla Teagarden’s mixed media photography and conceptual self-portraiture was a thoroughly unexpected pleasure and a bit of a revelation to me when I initially became introduced to her work a few years back.
First, I suppose, because the image I chanced upon was a portrait of a friend, Angeliska Polachek–small world!–and secondly, although I knew my friend to be quite beautiful, Darla had transformed her into an otherworldly enchantress, a shimmering, splendid, utterly sublime creature. I’m not even the slightest bit embarrassed to admit that this was the very same way I pictured her, when I conjured the lovely Angeliska’s reflection in the mirror of my imagination!
As a fantasist who doesn’t quite always see things as they are, I view our world through a splinter of glass in my eye, a feverish vision of of circumstances and scenarios, slightly distorted and different. Darla Teagarden’s surreal photographic narratives, which walk that delicate line between fable and reality, resonated very deeply with this dreamer in me.
Angeliska Polachek as Titania
For the richly detailed imagery that comprises the highly atmospheric vignettes that she photographs, Darla draws on an intriguingly varied background consisting of experiences as a stylist, model, production designer, vintage clothes buyer and cabaret dancer. Through these myriad lenses, her projects are deeply imbued with fragile secrets and intense emotion, and I’ll confess, I have been following her subsequent work quite closely since the beauty of that first tremulous photo captured my heart.
Read further for this extraordinary artist’s insights and inspirations regarding her creations, as shared with Haute Macabre.
Poem for the Unnamed Witches
Haute Macabre: You provide the viewer with a narrative through photography; it shares a story, tells a tale. While I understand that you don’t wish to convey utter reality, I would also hesitate to call your work fiction or fable. Would you say that your photos then inhabit the space in between? And why do you think that space is such fertile ground for your work? We all sort of live between fable and reality, anyway. There’s that side of us which walks into a misty forest, let’s say, and in an instant we make the moment richer in relation to our own experience. Connecting our inner lives to day-to-day situations is a way we can better understand ourselves. Cinema has allowed us new emotional access, and photography is related. I guess what I’m saying is, photography helps me understand myself and my issues.
Widow
…and as a visual story-teller, what are the kinds of stories you like best to share? I love sharing symbolic insight and abstraction. I’ve always maintained that when I go into a concept it has to be succinct, like a poem. I love the challenge of being succinct while conveying something that could, if given the opportunity, fill a an entire film. I guess I like stories about survival most. We are all going to die, yet we still have to make choices.
SHE
I have enjoyed reading about your perspective on failure. Fail big and often, you seem to say–don’t be a giant, fragile weenie, just go out there and do the thing! I’d love to hear about your inspirations and influences in terms of Doers of Things and Fabulous Failures. I have always surrounded myself with people who seemed to care less about the perceived consequences of failure and more about the need ‘to do’. The need to do should outweigh fear or else you’re going to be paralyzed. Of course, this is a goal and not always the case, but I try to accept possibility either way before I try something new. When I first began doing my photo projects, I knew I would suck. I did, and the proof is floating forever in the ethers of the web. However, I knew I had something to say. I knew I had to do something that made me less miserable, something that could alleviate injury… and, If i get better at it along the way, great. My inspirations have always been friends who need, not want, to express themselves because, I need it too. I guess it’s a tribe.
Ghosts
“Altars” was a collection of self portraits about living with mental illness, inspired both by your own life as well as the lives of friends and family members. Was your intent to educate or advocate, or perhaps to confront and work through some of your own struggles? I would like to say my intention was to educate and advocate, but in the end, it was really just therapy for me. Yet, by coming from a singular place, it becomes broad and easily shared. It feels good when someone says, oh! I know this ! It’s a feeling of unity.
Mr. Goff
Mr. Goff, Guru of Grief, is a series that appears to be dealing with themes of mourning and loss. Can you speak to how this series came about, and who Mr. Goff is to you? That series was in two parts, Mr. Goff and The Lamentation of Mrs. Fly. ( one of him alone and one with both of us).Mr. Goff is among the very few people I’d known in my youth, which is a big deal for me because I’ve lost so many friends to drugs, suicide, AIDS, mental illness, and the pure need to distance myself for survival. Anyway, he and I share the love and experience of one person named Nick Bohn- a visionary young man who died from a drug overdose after years of severe, poorly treated schizophrenia. He got me to move to New York were he was working with Kembra Pfahler, Little Annie and other like New York artists as a filmmaker. His life was frightening and chaotic but amazing, and inspired me to grab my own piece of New York. Mr. Goff and I reconnected recently and I felt to need to be with him in a piece of art to mourn Nick, but to also celebrate our survival in a simple visual poem. It’s in the shape of a fable but it’s all about mourning people who are gone , people who shaped you. Friendship.
Vesper (White Bat)
And most recently, your Noble Creatures series, can you tell about that? Noble creatures is about being misunderstood. For whatever reason I find it difficult to express what I’m about and what I need from people in real life. I just suck at it, but I keep trying nevertheless. These creatures are saying, “give me a chance or leave me alone.” It’s just a simple nod to people doing their best to be who they are without beating themselves up to fit somebody else’s ideas. I don’t mean to be precious–I am saying with a certain amount of humor, I’m pretty OK with myself these days, “Here’s my wings, here’s my many eyes, here’s my shell, my burdens, my dangerous bits… deal.”
Refuge
Much of your work, though certainly abstract and surreal, is considered self portraiture. I’m curious as to where you see such your art as it relates to the “selfie society” that we’re thought of as living in today? It’s the same in that the ‘selfie generation” is merely looking back at themselves to see themselves and hope others see them too. I am here! See me! But, there are rather significant differences in self portraiture, generally. Conceptual self portraitures are deliberate stories in relation to space that may or may not require the focus to be on the performer. My body and those of my collaborators are catalysts for story telling. I don’t require my ‘image’ to be the story but that of the environment created around the body. Selfies say, ”see me, I’m REAL !” Conceptual portraiture says, ”Feel this ghost”.
Lineage
Any fantastical ideas percolating that may manifest soon? Any future projects on the horizon? I want to explore the idea of being saved. We’ve all been saved and maybe even saved somebody. I like the idea that we have the capacity to save someone, from death, from despair, from going down the wrong path, from being blind, loneliness, obscurity, from illness, others, from ourselves. I like how vulnerable we really are. I love that, even with all the casual cynicism, we are still unreasonable romantics.
Thank you kindly, Darla, for giving your time to answer our questions.
See more of Darla Teagarden’s work on her website or follow her on Instagram for news and updates.
Bryn Perrot‘s amazing woodcuts are my new droolworthy-thing-I-seriously-need. You can’t really get a sense of scale from the photos, but these are all nice big wall hanging pieces, not wee little rubber stamps. Although they would make AMAZING rubber stamps.
well sometimes you don't get to choose, motherfucker
“do not choose the lesser life. do you hear me. do you hear me. choose the life that is. yours. the life that is seducing your lungs. that is dripping down your chin.”
― Nayyirah Waheed
A new street food shop in Chinatown opened earlier this month, serving decadent crepe concoctions and frozen treats. The self-proclaimed "Japanese snackery" Sakura Sunakku opened up at 42 Beach St. with a lengthy menu of ice cream-filled crepes, non-dessert crepes, and some novelty snacks.
"Our mission is to bring the most popular street food to our customers and delight their taste buds," the business’s website reads. Those foods include piles of shaved ice, parfaits, rock salt milk tea, and more.
The sweet crepes include a crispy banana crepe, a fruit crepe, and a matcha cocoa crepe, which is served with strawberries, cookies, red bean, chocolate drizzle, and more. The lunch and dinner crepes are filled with everything from shrimp and salmon to chicken teriyaki and assorted vegetables, and the shaved snows and parfaits have a create-your-own option in addition to the set menu selections.
Sakura Sunakku grandly opened on August 6 and is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Love 'Untitled Feast' even if I think a great Hemingway pun was missed.
Israeli sculptress Ronit Baranga creates wonderfully unsettling clay sculptures that exist in a liminal realm where determining what is alive and what is inanimate is a hazardous guess at best. For series such as The Feast, Untitled Feast, and Breakfast, Baranga sculpted nimble human fingers and sensuously open mouths emerging from porcelain and ceramic tableware.
Baranga delights in turning inanimate dishware, both fancy and humble, into something visceral and unpredictable. When describing her tableware to Hi-Fructose, she said:
“I took the simple utensil- the utensil we take for granted, the passive utensil- and I gave it the limbs with which we use it. So, now the utensil is in a different place. It is active. It can decide whether to use itself, whether to allow me to use it, or whether to run away.”
‘The Feast,’ Ronit Baranga, 2014
Self-aware and aware of its surroundings, Baranga’s surreal dishes and cups are active participants at mealtime. Sure, you’re hungry, but your plates are too. So dine with care or perhaps learn to share with your china, lest you lose a finger.
‘Breakfast,’ Ronit Baranga, 2014
Sitting down to afternoon tea sounds like a perfectly cordial and mundane event until the teapot starts to wander off, your saucer refuses to let go of your biscuit, or your teacup tries to kiss you.
In 2015 Baranga participated in Banksy’s Dismaland Bemusement Park projectin Somerset, England. Her Untitled Feast was exhibited inside a small circus tent on a large wooden dining table surrounded by 10 chairs.
Assembled around the table, as though about to participate in the wayward feast, was a motley gathering of fantastic creatures, each created by different artists. Among their number was Damien Hirst’s preserved “unicorn” (The Dream), Dorcas Casey’s Dream Beasts, a taxidermy mount created by Polly Morgan, one of Scott Hove’s Cakeland scupltures, and Banksy’s own envoy, a rabbit sitting upright inside a magician’s top hat holding a broken wand.
‘Untitled Feast’ in the Circus Tent at Dismaland
Was Lewis Carroll born too soon or Baranga much too late? Either way, the Hatter’s tea party from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would’ve been an even more chaotic and deranged affair had the guests included these 3 masked ladies and their dextrous china.
The odds are good this grabby teapot would’ve simply eaten the somnolent dormouse.
‘Embraced, #1,’ 2016
Sentient tableware is only part of Baranga’s fascinating oeuvre. With an educational background in psychology and literature, she uses her relentless drive to create with clay in order to explore both herself and human nature on a larger scale, the intimacy of relationships, or sometimes simply to seek out the humor in the grotesque.
“My art expresses my life as it is at any given moment. It emphasizes my thoughts and feelings at the time. Some sculptures deal with feelings of lost or unused abilities – of which only the remains can be framed for display.” (Public Republic)
No matter what’s on her mind when she’s working on a sculpture, Baranga’s primary goal is to provoke an emotional response from her audience, be it positive or negative.
“Viewers of my work almost instantly react: they are either enthusiastic or appalled, but never indifferent. I hope that their harsh physical reaction stimulates them to think about the ideas and content that’s derived from my art.” (PUBLIC REPUBLIC)
‘My Artemis,’ 2016‘I am a Jewel,’ Ronit Baranga, 2014‘Grave Watchers’ Childhood,’ Ronit Baranga, 2015‘Unaware,’ Ronit Baranga, 2014
Visit Ronit Baranga’s website or follow her on Instagram or Facebook to view more of her provocative sculptures and keep up with her latest creations and upcoming exhibitions.
Maika is a bird-mad bibliophile and professional seeker of all things eldritch and awesome. When she isn't buried in books and cats, creating tentacular curiosities, or building her witchy wunderkammer, she’s wandering forests, cemeteries, and beaches of the PNW with a satchel full of toy cameras and expired film, tossing peanuts to attentive crows. She's co-editor of Archie McPhee’s Endless Geyser of Awesome and can be found haunting Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, and possibly the trees in your backyard.
From 1971, here's Jessie Jackson on Sesame Street doing a call-and-response with the children of the poem I Am - Somebody.
I Am
Somebody
I Am
Somebody
I May Be Poor
But I Am
Somebody
I May Be Young
But I Am
Somebody
I May Be On Welfare
But I Am
Somebody
It's difficult to imagine something like this airing on the show now. Sesame Street was originally designed to serve the needs of children in low-income homes, but now the newest episodes of the show air first on HBO...a trickle-down educational experience. (via @kathrynyu)
The Feral collection by Rituel de Fille has filled the void in my life of a perfectly wearable grey lipstick. Strange Creature has just enough of a saturated undertone that it pairs impeccably with the Viscera Ash and Ember Eye Soot, a metallic blood red.
Rituel de Fille is now offering sample palettes, so you can test out their products before purchasing the full size (which I guarantee that you will).
This hut is easy to build and houses a large volume. The shape is wind resistant and strong for it's materials. Gaps can be seen in the thatch but not if viewing from directly underneath meaning that it should shed rain well. A fire should be possible in the hut as long as it's small and kept in a pit in the center.The reason the hut took so long is due to the scarcity of grass on the hill. It could be built much quicker in a field.
"About sixty percent of police-citizen conflict starts in a traffic situation. It's easier to stop a person on the pretext of a traffic violation than to stop him on the street. It's a lot easier to say, "Your tail light's out." "Your plate is dented." "You didn't make that turn right." You can then search his automobile, hoping you can find some contraband or a weapon. If he becomes irritated, with very little pushing on your part, you can make an arrest for disorderly conduct. These are all statistics which help your records.
Certain units in the task force have developed a science around stopping your automobile. These men know it's impossible to drive three blocks without committing a traffic violation. We've got so many rules on the books. These police officers use these things to get points and also hustle for money. The traffic law is a fat book. He knows if you don't have two lights on your license plate, that's a violation. If you have a crack in your windshield, that's a violation. If your muffler's dragging, that's a violation. He knows all these little things....
So if they stop the average black driver, in their mind the likelihood of finding five or six violations out of a hundred cars is highly possible.... After you've stopped a thousand, you've got 950 people who are very pissed off, 950 who might have been just average citizens, not doing anything wrong - teachers, doctors, lawyers, working people. The police don't care. Black folks don't have a voice to complain. Consequently, they continue to be victims of shadowy, improper, overburdened police service. Traffic is the big entree."
And on the type of young white male that the job was attracting at the time:
A large amount of young white officers are gung ho. It's an opportunity to make a lot of arrests, make money, and do a lot of other things. In their opinion, black people are all criminals, no morals, dirty and nasty. So the black people don't cooperate with the police and they have good cause not to. On the other hand, they're begging for more police service. They're over-patrolled and under-protected.
The young white guys turn out to be actually worse than their predecessors. They're more vicious. The average young white policeman comes from a working-class family, sometimes with less than a high-school education. He comes with built-in prejudices. The average young white cop is in bad shape. I think he can be saved if a change came from the top. If it could be for just eight hours a day. They may still hate niggers when they got off duty. They may still belong to the John Birch Society or the Ku Klux Klan. So what? They could be forced to perform better during the eight hours of work."
Reading about this stuff, I keep going back to the 9 principles of policing drawn up by London's Metropolitan Police in the 1820s in which the power of the police comes from the people, force is to be used minimally, and the efficacy of policing is judged on the absence of crime, not on the number of arrests or people sent to jail.
It is not only white officers who abuse their authority. The effect of institutional racism is such that no matter what color the officer abusing the citizen is, in the vast majority of those cases of abuse that citizen will be black or brown. That is what is allowed.
And no matter what an officer has done to a black person, that officer can always cover himself in the running narrative of heroism, risk, and sacrifice that is available to a uniformed police officer by virtue of simply reporting for duty.
It’s been a long year of construction, but Idle Hands reopens today
The space is new, but the beer is not. Idle Hands Craft Ales Opens its bigger, better, and brand new brewing space in Malden today after many months of construction, preparation, and brewing.
"This project has been in the works for so long," founder Chris Tkach told Eater on Wednesday during the brewery’s soft opening at 89 Commercial St. Idle Hands hosted friends and family at the brewery the night before to celebrate the hard work to get to this point, and Tkach said now was the time to decompress before the rest of the work begins — construction may be done, but the task of running the brewery is certainly not.
"Now it’s just a different list," Tkach said.
During construction, Idle Hands did a small amount of tenant brewing at Night Shift in Everett. Both breweries were previously located next to each other on Charlton Street in Everett, but they were forced to change locations due to the impending Wynn casino build.
Since Idle Hands did not have a full brewing schedule, Tkach said there was "certainly a lot of free time for me to pay attention to the buildout" of the Malden space.
Dana Hatic for Eater
Idle Hands Craft Ales
The goal was to keep things on track as much as possible and to build a larger, more permanent brewing space than Idle Hands had in Everett, about which Tkach said, "it was very much a grassroots, cobbled together type of brewery." The Malden space was more thought-out and geared to be long-lasting. "There were things that we didn’t skimp on," Tkach said.
There were definitely some struggles, as with any building project, and Idle Hands didn’t get its certificate of occupancy until 40 minutes before opening for friends and family, Tkach said. Still, the trouble was worth it for the expansive space, which features seating for 60, a full bar, and functioning bathrooms (an improvement over the old bathroom situation), not to mention a 15-barrel brewing system, which Tkach estimates gives Idle Hands a 25-percent larger brewing capacity.
Idle Hands is bringing back some of its classic Belgian-style ales and adding some new hoppy beers that Tkach said seem to be driving the industry. The brewery is also getting rid of growlers and moving to the increasingly popular crowler, or 32-ounce can. It will likely begin retail sales of beer within the next couple weeks. Idle Hands brings in food from Mystic Station and will look to partner with food trucks in the future.
Tkach said having a taproom that is their own and created in their own vision makes all the difference. "That was a key thing when we were looking for a new location," he said — having a place to call home that provides the space to present the Idle Hands brand and beer.
Mega babe Heather Gabel has launched her all-black vintage shop, The Black Door. Curated with pieces that mix domme with ultra-femme, each find is a special treasure.
Telling left from right necessitates complex brain processes that include spatial perceptions, memory, language, and the integration of sensory information. The task is made increasingly complex when a person must identify laterality on someone else. Yoga teachers and other fitness instructors have it extra rough: While calling out to students to bend their left knee, the instructor has to raise their own right to mirror the class...
However, the field under the most pressure to avoid lateral confusion is medicine. In the dentist's chair, there's money wasted when hygienists x-ray the wrong tooth. It's even worse when a left-right-disoriented dentist pulls one or more teeth from the incorrect side of the mouth. It's even more serious in general surgery: A 2011 report estimates that there are 40 wrong-site surgeries done weekly in the U.S., and many of those involve mixing up a patient's left and right. This is a devastating problem: If a doctor removes the healthy kidney and not the cancerous one, the results can be fatal. Wrong eye? Now we have a fully blind patient.
This plays a little easier when you're playing off objects with fixed positions, like landmarks, or especially, the sun, than it does in big twisty-turny cities. But you could imagine in a world with ubiquitous handheld maps and compasses that a north/south/east/west orientation might make more sense.
What's more, some of the old tech people used to train themselves to distinguish or remember left and right -- miming handwriting, or wearing a wristwatch on one arm -- aren't as common or dominant as they once were. See also: distinguishing angular position by analogy with the face of an analog clock.
Either we come up with new tricks and new metaphors, or it's conceivable that what's seemed like an intuitive, natural way to think about the relative position of bodies in space could become a whole lot less intuitive for more and more people.
Linguistic experts say it is harder to change usage habits of words uttered frequently in speech, such as "she" and "he." But a realignment in honorifics may be more quickly achieved because courtesy titles are less often spoken than written, like in the completion and mailing of government, health care and financial documents, as well as in newspapers and other media publications.
This second story, quoting Oxford University Press's Katherine C. Martin, also notes that some of the earliest uses of "Mx." were in the 1980s, "when some people engaged in nascent forms of digital communication and did not know one another's gender."
Likewise, "Latinx" aims to be more comprehensive and more inclusive than the older terms Latino and Latina. "The 'x' makes Latino, a masculine identifier, gender-neutral," writes Raquel Reichard. "It also moves beyond Latin@ - which has been used in the past to include both masculine and feminine identities - to encompass genders outside of that limiting man-woman binary."
This lights up my amateur linguist brain in all sorts of ways, but here's one of them: the telescoping (maybe kaleidoscoping?) between usage, in all its messiness, and forms, in their desire for clear standards and finite options.
You can break that down further into usage within a community or group versus usage outside that community, and the formal protocols a publication like a newspaper or dictionary might follow versus paperwork or a database run by a business or government office. They all interplay with each other, and linguistic change happens or doesn't happen through all of them.
And I guess the last thought is about how digital culture, by expanding and transforming the kinds of communities, identities, forms, and publications that are possible, can accelerate those changes or hold them back.
This tweet by NBC News is a good example: the tweet uses "Latinx" (and "Hispanic") -- the linked story, like the name of the news vertical and twitter account, overwhelmingly uses "Latino," in both the body and the headline.
Or take Planned Parenthood. Many of the health provider's affiliates have updated their intake forms and other paperwork and communication. The new language is more gender-neutral, gender-inclusive, and more specific, separating anatomy, sexual activity, and gender identity. The national office is working on a new style guide to help other affiliates make their own changes.
Language about certain kinds of birth control has changed as well. "Male condoms" and "female condoms" are now referred to as internal and external condoms at Planned Parenthood of New York City.
"The language we're using today reflects the fact that gender is a spectrum and not a simple system, a binary system of male and female," says [PPNYC's Lauren] Porsch. "We really talk about having sexual and reproductive health services: women who have penises, men who have vaginas, and there are people with all different types of anatomy that may not identify with a binary gender at all," she says.
Again, while the changes eventually get reflected in Planned Parenthood's intake forms and other official language, it was implemented early in digital and social media -- specifically, in response to users on Tumblr.
"The Tumblr audience is smart. They understand feminism. They understand that sex ed isn't one-size-fits-all--even though that's what they were taught in school," says Perugini. "And they know that words matter. They didn't see themselves reflected in the language we were using on our social media pages or our website, and they let us know."
This is happening. It's happening in progressive, diverse, digital communities first. And for all their fractiousness, and the inherent difficulty in dealing with areas as complex and personal as identity, gender, and sexuality, it does feel like some standards are emerging. These are words worth watching. If you work with digital technology and people (and yeah, that's almost everyone), I hope you're paying attention.
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Dana Hatic for Eater
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Dana Hatic for Eater
