ellobofilipino:

Mary and Joseph (2006). Oil on canvas. By Paul Stoub.

May this Christmas remind us to cherish the love of family, the company of friends and the gift of life.

Malipayong Pasko!

Maligayang Pasko!

Kawai!

yoga-body:

hotmyers18:

fuckthisworlditsfullofshit:

This is Grace my visually impaired sister. She was born with optic nerve hypoplasia which means that her left eye cannot see much (it’s like looking through wax paper) and her right eye everything is always blurry. She has never been able to have a birthday party with friends because she has never had any. She turned 17 Friday and has been through struggles all her life. She beats herself up all the time because no one wants to take the time to be her friend. She has an amazing gift for writing and creating stories. Has has a way with words since the age if five when she saw a dog sniffing grass and asked the owner if it was an herbivore. Her schoolwork takes her until midnight or two am to finish because most of the time she can’t see it.

She’s tried to hang herself and drink bleach to kill herself.
She’s beat herself up.

When she was 10 she was in a program for kids called kids in the park. The ladies bathroom door stuck alot. And two girls locked her in the bathroom all day.

Please I ask you please show her some love.

If this gets 5,000 notes shell know that 5,000 people care for her. If this gets 1,000 notes shell know that 1,000 people love her. If this gets 10 notes shell know that 10 people think she’s beautiful. Please help me, I can only do so much

I am never not reblogging this. No one should go through life thinking that nobody gives a damn about them.

She’s beautiful, and I’m sure she has a heart of gold

Blessed Solstice & Happy New Baktun, all. 


[Painting by Kevin McGeeney] 

fashionculturetravel:

Filipiniana dress, Aliwan Festival, Philippines 

laughingsquid:

SunCalc, A Sun Tracking Web App

utnereader:

In Taste, Memory (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012), author David Buchanan unravels the stories of his personal journey with slightly obsessive gardeners, passionate cooks, environmentalists and food activists—all  leaders in the movement to defend agricultural biodiversity. Discover how his own growing project in Portland, Maine, works to explore the balance between heirloom varieties and a healthy food system by matching plant and animal biodiversity with the demands of the land and climate. The following excerpt on the importance of biodiversity among our heritage foods is taken from chapter 1, “Seeds of an Idea.” 

I know a certain dad who’ll be getting this book for Festivus.

laughingsquid:

Thanksgiving Dos and Don’ts (From the Movies)

Watch before your guests arrive or before you head to your destination today.

vicemag:

We Just Spoke to People in Palestine and Israel About the Gaza Crisis

As you may have read on VICE.com this morning, last night Israeli fighter jets rained down missiles upon Gaza. The assault came in retaliation to a week of rocket attacks on Israeli territory by Hamas, to which Israeli forces responded by assassinating the leader of Hamas’ military wing, Ahmed al-Jabari, with a missile. The end result is that the Gaza Strip is likely to be plunged into war yet again, one that many other nations in the Middle East and beyond may find themselves getting dragged into. Since al-Jabari’s assassination, another 300 missiles have been fired into Israel from Gaza and Israeli missiles continue to bombard the Strip.

Hamas have long held off firing on Israeli capital Tel Aviv, aware that to do so may provoke a full-scale war between Palestine and Israel. However, a couple of hours ago, air raid sirens sounded in the city for the first time in two decades, forcing residents to take cover as Palestinian militants tried to hit Tel Aviv with missiles fired from Gaza. It appears that the missiles missed Tel Aviv, one landing in the sea and another falling short just outside the city, but as of yet, no one’s certain what effect that’s going to have on the conflict. You struggle to imagine that it’d be a positive one.

VICE currently has film crews in both Tel Aviv and the Palestinian West Bank, so they put us in touch with sources in both places to find out exactly what’s happening.

First up, an anonymous source in Tel Aviv, who spoke to us about the missile attacks that may or may not have been targeted at the city.

VICE: Does Tel Aviv feel like it’s under attack?
Anonymous source in Tel Aviv: It’s actually kind of fine here. We haven’t seen any damage, and when the press say “missile,” it’s not a missile, it’s really very crude. It’s not even a bomb; it’s something full of old bits of pipe and scaffolding that sort of falls and breaks. It will kill what it lands on, it might damage a house, but it’s not hugely dangerous. And they’re not targeted missiles, so they’re not very accurate either.

What’s the general mood on the street?
The attitude of the Israeli people seems to say: “Hamas think that’s gonna hurt us? They can’t touch us.” There’s actually a bit of Jewish pride and joviality about it, but mainly everyone’s been totally normal. There’s no hysteria, and whenever you ask people what’s going on, they’re just like “Look, they’re not really going to bomb Tel Aviv because Hamas knows that this is our Achilles’ heel and that would be it; we’d fucking nuke them.”

OK, well the BBC says they just did, or at least appear to have tried to.
Yes, but no one in Tel Aviv is taking those ones seriously. Like I said, Israelis are laughing because of how crudely designed, inaccurate, and harmless they are. They’re seen as pathetic, laughable, empty threats. That said, if they really start to cause damage then yes, the general opinion is that Israel will retaliate with a vengeance, AKA all-out war.

Jesus. Have you been told to go to a bomb shelter?
No, but if we do have to go to a bomb shelter, apparently there’s one about a minute-and-a-half away.

Have you seen more members of the Israel Defense Forces since the attacks?
No. The only IDF we have seen were just off-duty people, very casual, the girls have got their uniforms on with their handbags over it and stuff. Out of the IDF that we’ve seen, none of them have been engaged. You wouldn’t have known that there was anything going on, to be honest.

Do you think everybody’s so calm because they’re used to this kind of environment, or because they genuinely don’t feel threatened by Hamas?
Well that’s the thing, because they’re not used to it, and the last time anything like this happened was many years ago. So I don’t know, maybe people are a bit in denial, because they know that the rockets aren’t very effective. What’s clear is that they really believe the last thing that Hamas is actually going to do is fuck up Tel Aviv, because they know that that means out-and-out war.

How has it been over the past few days?
Last night when it was really kicking off, I sat outside a cafe and there were people smoking weed and cycling around on their bicycles with baskets full of grapefruits. Absolutely everything is carrying on as normal. Well, people are calling each other to make sure that everything’s OK, but that’s it. Of the rockets that came close-ish, one of them went into the sea and one of them landed in an undeveloped area. They’re not even explosive. We’ve been speaking to people about what they were going to do tonight. People still go out, the bars will still be open, clubs will still be full.

- - -

An Israeli air strike hits the earth in Gaza

Next we spoke to an anonymous source in the West Bank, who told us about the protests that have sparked up there in the past couple of days.

VICE: Hey, what’s happening over there? What are the repercussions of the Gaza attacks in the West Bank?
Anonymous source in the West Bank: We heard that everything had escalated in Gaza yesterday and that the Israelis were firing more regularly. The rockets kept coming in and people here in Ramallah felt the need to take to the streets, so a lot of people gathered in the main square and moved from there.

Where were they going?
They started chanting that they wanted to go all the way to Bethel, which is a settlement just outside Ramallah. On the way there, they were chanting that they want unity for the three factions in Palestine: Fatah, Hamas, and The Popular Front.

Who was marching?
Oh, it was everyone. Everyone was there together; men, women, the elderly, and children. It was quite fascinating to see everyone together like that on the streets. They kept walking towards Bethel and I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was kind of scared, because I knew if people actually did reach Bethel they’d have been met with Israelis firing live ammunition at them.

They didn’t make it there, though, right?
No, on the way—surely enough—the Palestinian Authority (PA) showed up like they always do, stopped the crowds, formed a line on the main road, and didn’t let anyone pass. The crowd stuck around, though. They were shouting at the soldiers and trying to humiliate and shame them, asking them whose side they were on.

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