People don’t often look back on the early 1900’s for advice, but what if we could actually learn something from the Lost Generation? The New York Public Library has digitized 100 “how to do it” cards found in cigarette boxes over 100 years ago, and the tips they give are so practical that millennials reading this might want to take notes.
Back in the day, cigarette cards were popular collectibles included in every pack, and displayed photos of celebrities, advertisements, and more. Gallaher cigarettes, a UK-founded tobacco company that was once the largest in the world, decided to print a series of helpful how-to’s on their cards, which ranged from mundane tasks (boiling potatoes) to unlikely scenarios (stopping a runaway horse). Most of them are insanely clever, though, like how to make a fire extinguisher at home. Who even knew you could do that?
The entire set of life hacks is now part of the NYPL’s George Arents Collection. Check out some of the cleverest ones we could find below. You never know when you’ll have to clean real lace!
What a peaceful and powerful moment Noto-san caught. When I first saw this somehow I had the image of a bodhisattva, or like he’s entreating a god. For all we know, he could be thinking about his StSq
The stark lighting and soft shadows creates such a clear image and strong atmosphere. It looks like a moment trapped in time. It feels impossible how he can skate on such a thin blade.
This chagrined smile is precious. And that waist is ridiculous!
It looks like a ghost, or spirit, or perhaps an angel staring back. It’s hauntingly beautiful.
Those edges, the turn-out of the hips– the lines he forms here along with the stark whites and blacks gives this photo such a clean look.
Say what you will of Vertigo but I like how carefree he looks on the ice here just doing toe steps.
I will never stop being in awe at how well photographers can capture such a clean snapshot. There’s no snow or ice chunks anywhere, so it feels like he just stepped on the ice and paused in place.
It looks like stars in the night sky with a large moon. It’s such a high quality photo. I feel like I could count each individual flake.
I keep coming back to this photo. It stunned me when I first saw it. He looks like he’s flying. How amazing that Noto-san caught this moment with the light shining straight down.
A master at work. It’s amazing how high he gets from a leap. I love how soft his fingers are. They feel delicate and balance the strong lines that his legs and outstretched left arm form.
There are so many gorgeous pictures in Yuzuru II. At first I was going to pick only a few particularly unusual shots to make a post, but then I picked some that stood out to me as particularly pretty, and then… well, it’s 142 pages of wonderful photos. I managed to limit it to 3 posts.
I’ve had two major encounters with Mists of Avalon.
1. I read the beginning as a young girl first getting into the Arthurian myths, but as a very religious Jew I got offended by the constant digs at monotheism and stopped.
2. As a teenager I watched some of the tv version with my mother, but something about Guinevere pissed my mom off. “I want Guinevere to have dignity!” she said, so we put on A Knight in Camelot (where Guinevere is actually evil but competent.)
I keep thinking I owe the book another try because it’s influenced so much modern Arthurian fiction, but what with all the revelations about MZB it’s hard to get excited about it. Also, correct me if I’m wrong about this aspect of the book, but I’m not sure how feminist it is to just shift the mantle of Bad Woman from Morgan to Guinevere.
You don’t owe that book anything! Worst “fake feminism” book ever.
It was the first arthuriana about female characters, so at least there’s that
I always thought Mists of Avalon was overrated. I liked MZB’s Darkover series and its women characters a lot more and was disappointed when Mists was touted as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The writing is somewhat less polished in Darkover series, but it’s not as though Mists of Avalon is fantastic writing either. But Mists was MZB’s attempt to break out of genre fiction into something she hoped would seem more respectable or even scholarly to a certain degree. But the Darkover books were more interesting in terms of originality and their exploration of sex and gender issues. They have same-sex couples, bisexuality, polyandry, telepathy, sex pollen, forest fires, human/alien species evolution, complicated history, Amazon guilds of women warriors, stress and drama caused by the interactions of a feudal society (in which gender issues are not straightforwardly modeled on romanticization of the Middle-ages but tease one with it) with a technologically advanced society which is not always more sympathetic but sometimes is! It’s invented history within an unusual sci-fi/fantasy context–sci-fi fantasy wherein she pushes and pulls with one’s best and worst instincts while contrasting the two. Requires some pretty strenuous suspension of disbelief relating to the science of its world, but, yeah, a lot of fun to read.
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