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These paintings focus not on bucolic images of farms, but rather on the farmers who work the farm. There were very few images of current farmers, I guess they are out of favor in the modern art world, so we see farmers laboring in older times.
The story is that in 1850s, in western Oklahoma, there were Choctaw Indians and white settlers in the area who started having problems with thieves. It started with the theft of food, moved onto cattle rustling, and eventually escalated to women and children gone missing. This enraged the Choctaws who raised a war party to track and kill the thieves.
They rode for a day before coming upon a forest clearing with a horrible stench coming from it. When they entered the clearing, they were horrified to discover it covered with the half-eaten bodies of their missing women and children. Standing over the bodies, they saw three gigantic hairy, humanoid creatures dining on the remains. Infuriated, the Choctaws attacked and a battle ensued. All the Bigfeet were killed with only the loss the Choctaw leader, Joshua LeFlore, who had his head tore off in the scuffle. They buried the bodies of the women and children and burned the Bigfeet carcasses. What became of LeFlore's headless body is lost to the mists of history.
Sounds totally plausible to me, especially since it was first revealed in Lyle Blackburn's highly reputable book Sinister Swamps: Monsters and Mysteries from the Mire.
However, I do have a few questions. Why is there no contemporaneous record of this event. One would think that an outbreak of giant carnivorous monkeys would generate considerable interest -- reports to the territorial authorities, newspaper accounts, and years of retellings of the story around general store pickle barrels, but all of that is curiously missing. I wonder why people lost interest in the matter from almost the first day.
Secondly, it took only a day for the Choctaws to track and locate the murderous simian beasts. What does that say about contemporary Bigfeet investigators? They've spent decades, and used all manner of high-tech equipment, and can find nary a clue (tuffs of hair, Bigfeet scatt, etc.) much less one of the big goobers, dead or alive. They certainly need to up their game a bit.
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Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900-1931) was a 20th century book illustrator whose work was in the realm of fantasy. Due to her contracting tuberculosis, she died young and only completed three commissions: Old French Fairy Tales, Tanglewood Tales, and Arabian Nights. Regardless of the brevity of her career, she was highly influential in the genre.
Her works featured large areas of color punctuated by flourishes of elaborate, and colorful, details. You can see echoes of her style in fantasy art to this day.
Get ready for a cessating weekend with LUX the band.
This is a video of a Tokyo restaurant that has been in operation for 162 years. For dinner they only serve food from the Edo period. The tables have an area, which is covered for lunch. During dinner it is opened, and charcoal is placed in it so dinners can grill their own skewers. It's a pleasant looking place.
For a Westerner it would be confusing as all hell to order food in the place, but Japanese food is quite tasty. You would just have to expect mildly aghast looks as you committed one dinning gaffe after another as you ate.
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| President Donald J. Trump |
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
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This post is for my northern visitors. Apparently, when it is cold enough outside to have that disgusting form of water known as snow littering the ground, they'll go out and bean each other with balls made from the snow. Sounds completely daft to me, but I guess we have to respect the traditions of primitive tribes. So, enjoy these paintings of the snowball fighting ceremony so popular in the frigid lands.
Earlier I did an art post about telephone poles and power lines. This video discusses how power is distributed down those lines in the most efficient manner.
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Slavery is extremely common throughout human history in one form or another. The most common form being chattel slavery, where the slave was considered property of another. Other common forms were/are bond slavery and forced labor. As we can tell from the prevalence of human trafficking in the news, we are still dealing with those issues.
These are paintings of slaves in the New World.
This is walk through downtown Singapore including its Chinatown district. He wanders through a lot of narrow side streets. A nice, well kept looking area. The murals are impressive.
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As I've mentioned I'm dreaming of the day we finally get conveyor belt sidewalks. However, in the meantime we need to rely on the antiquated method of getting about known as walking. These are paintings of people walking. Some towards us, some away, and some wandering hither and yon.
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Another new year, and another step towards a more glorious future for humanity. However, there have been a couple of hiccups along the way. For example, old-timey futurists promised a world full of conveyor belt sidewalks that, aside of an airport here and there, have failed to materialize.
I know I feel like a chump every time I have to move my feet to get from point A to point B. Come on, is this the Neolithic Age or the 21st Century? It is well past time that our engineers stop wasting their energy on rocket ships, quantum computers and robot sex dolls and get cracking on conveyor belt sidewalks. A brighter future for our children demands it.
