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 |  A blog for all things personal, informational, educational, and fun. |
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Here at my personal blog Thoughts & Things, I share a wide variety of, you guessed it, thoughts and things. Anything that sparks my interest is up for discussion. For those who are uncertain of what that might cover, I'll generally talk about reading, writing, books, movies, music, games, history, current events, and feminism. I talk about my personal emotional and health struggles from time to time. I'm also a big fan of lists. This is the place here at WDC where you can get to know me best, as I talk about the things that interest me, impact me, and amuse me. |
| We all have our own little fears. Those irrational things that you can't help but be afraid of. Most of mine are medical fears, because why not? But then there are some things that are not even irrational, but deserve to be feared. These aren't the things that you think about when listing your main fears. These are the things that are just instinctively frightening. Here are five things that scare the pants off of me. Deep Sea Creatures Have you seen deep sea creatures? The ones that humans today have been able to catch a glimpse of are absolutely terrifying to behold. The knowledge of all the ones we might never see is even scarier. I don't need to see space monsters to be afraid. What other alien monsters lurk unknown right here on our own planet? We Are In An Ice Age. Right Now. Ice Ages tend to last millions of years. We are currently in the interglacial period of an ice age. This means that we are in a period of warmer temperatures considering that it is an ice age, but that does not mean it is any less of an ice age. The most recent "ice age" we are familiar with from 10,000 plus years ago is actually just the most recent glacial period of the current ice age. Mammoths and sabre tooth tigers lived during the same ice age we are in right now. Animals That Survived Extinction Events I'm mostly looking at you, crocodiles. During the K-T extinction event, most of the species on earth were wiped out, but some species survive today. Crocodiles survived what dinosaurs could not, despite looking remarkably similar to how we picture the dinosaurs having looked. Other animals that survived the K-T extinction event include the platypus, sharks, cockroaches, and others. Black Holes Nothing that gets near a black hole can escape. Nothing. Not even light. There is a supermassive black hole here in the Milky Way (there is one at the centre of every galaxy) called Sagittarius A. According to NASA, "It has a mass equal to about 4 million suns and would fit inside a very large ball that could hold a few million Earths." I want nothing to do with Sagittarius A, or any other black holes (especially those classed supermassive). The Destruction of Knowledge The loss or destruction of different forms of knowledge both breaks my heart and terrifies me. What are we as a species without knowledge? We have so much recorded knowledge that it is humbling to think about all the things that we know as a species but could never have the time to learn as individuals. Knowledge is either recorded or passed down verbally, but what happens to the knowledge we lose? So much of it is just gone. How much knowledge from a thousand or more years ago is just gone? How much knowledge that we have today will be gone in another thousand years? |
| As I post this final reading list for Black History Month 2018 (and I do hope to share a new series of reading lists in February of 2019 for Black History Month), the month is rolling over into March. That's okay. Black history is overlooked by most of the general public, and by many education systems. We take the shortest month of the year to acknowledge the history of millions of people, of millions of lives. February is a great opportunity to learn more about Black history, to learn things you might not otherwise learn. But if you are interested, if you care, you always have the option to read these books after February, or before February. So here is my final list for the month, running a little late, but as relevant as it was just minutes ago when it was still February. This reading list will include books about the arts communities. Music, film, visual art, comic books, photography, dance are all things that I have included. Additionally, the books included here might lead you to other media where people of colour are underrepresented. I hope that you find something here that interests you, and that you end up enjoying. Black Magic by Langston Hughes Encyclopedia of Black Comics by Sheena C. Howard African Canvas: the Art of West African Women with photographs and text by Margaret Courtney-Clarke; foreword by Maya Angelou Art of the South African Townships by Gavin Younge; foreword by Desmond M. Tutu African American Art and Artists by Samella Lewis Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America introduction by Mary Schmidt Campbell ; essays by David C. Driskell, David Levering Lewis, and Deborah Willis Ryan Blues legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis Blind Tom, the Black Pianist-Composer (1849-1908) by Geneva Handy Southall Kill 'em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism by Paul Youngquist Black Music by LeRoi Jones Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music by Frank Kofsky Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide: a Memoir by Darryl "DMC" McDaniels with Darrell Dawsey The Devil Finds Work: An Essay by James Baldwin Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood by Donald Bogle Alone With Me: A New Autobiography by Eartha Kitt True South: Henry Hampton and Eyes on the Prize, the Landmark Television Series That Reframed the Civil Rights Movement by Jon Else Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe In/sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present presented by the Guggenheim Museum, with contributions from Clare Bell, Okwui Enwezor, Olu Oguibe, Octavio Zaya Josephine Baker art by Catel Muller; written by José-Louis Bocquet Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina: My Story of Adversity and Grace by Misty Copeland, with Charisse Jones Dancing spirit: An Autobiography by Judith Jamison, with Howard Kaplan Previous posts available here: "A Black History Month Reading List: Introduction"  "Black History Month Reading List: Poetry" "Black History Month Reading List: Children's Books" "Black History Month Read List: Middle Grade Books" "Black History Month Read List: YA Books" "Black History Month Reading List: The Canadian Edition" "Black History Month Reading List: Adult Fiction" |
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I hate sad endings. They make the best stories though. I guess I'll make reading William Shakespeare my New Year Resolution for next year or something I'd write for Dear Me 2018.