raptures from the ether

The Bolter by Frances Osborne
‘While her fellow Edwardian debutantes in their crisp white dresses merely contemplated daring acts, Idina went everywhere with a jet-black Pekinese called Satan.’

New Orleans (La.) City Insane Asylum Record of Patients, 1882-1884; 1888
Hallucinations, with Delirium of Persecution.
This lady reasons her case so very well as to induce the belief that she is not insane. A close examination will show her to be nervous, excitable, and will force her to admit that she is jealous of her husband, that she strikes & slaps her daughters (grown children); that she accuses them of attempting to poison her with Arsenic, and yet she is unable to give any reasons for such suspicions. She does not sleep at night; or but very little, scarcely eats through fear of being poisoned. She belongs to that class of insanity so well described by Trelat under the title of La Folie Lucide.  Members of her family are said to have died insane.

Moss Graffiti
Ummmm, yes. Font geekery + moss love == !(*&!^&!!! Shop signs, house numbers, reclaiming billboards, messages to the universe…endless possibilities.

(Image from Cross Hatchling)

Digger Archives
The Diggers were one of the legendary groups in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, one of the world-wide epicenters of the Sixties Counterculture which fundamentally changed American and world culture. Shrouded in a mystique of anonymity, the Diggers took their name from the original English Diggers (1649-50) who had promulgated a vision of society free from private property, and all forms of buying and selling. The San Francisco Diggers evolved out of two Radical traditions that thrived in the SF Bay Area in the mid-1960s: the bohemian/underground art/theater scene, and the New Left/civil rights/peace movement.

Fugitivus
Epic girl crush! Sometimes I get really sad and discouraged because it seems like today’s young ladies have no interest in women’s rights, or socialization issues, or sexuality, or gender politics, or fixing this broken little world we’ve got, but then I come across blogs like this and it makes me feel better and safer and like things will be okay, one day.

Which leads me to a non-internets thought – last night at Pegasus Books I came across this book called Daughter of Earth written in 1923 by Agnes Smedley – it looks amazing, I’m going to start it at lunch.

Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment. Agnes Smedley