A really long time ago, Thessalos, the renowned son of legendary Hercules, while seeking his luck, came to our places The moment he crossed the mesmerizing Valley of Tempi, where Apollo, the God of Light lived with his beloved Daphne, in amazement saw a huge fully green valley ahead. Walking along the Pinios River's, which is rumored to be the son of Uranus and Tithia, he could never imagine he had reached his destination. This is - on the banks of Pinios - where 4000 years ago legendary Larissos built the town of Larissa, where our story takes place. On its right, Mount Olympus, the residence of the twelve Gods, reached the clouds, while on its left, Ossa - Kissavos did. On its cone, like a pyramid peak Mount Pilio was once put by the Giants, Ottos and Efialtis, who the only thing they wanted was to reach Olympus and dethrone Zeus- Dias, the king of the twelve Gods. Deeply in the horizon, even more mountains raised and then got lost again into the clouds It was Pindos one of them which gave birth to Pinios through her tears when Gods decided to take her away from her husband, Liggos, because they were jealous of their happiness. - I will stay here he thought. - I will call the magical land Thessalia * * * ... Whichever stone you pick up, you'll hear a story. Whichever twig the sweet wind moves, it will tells you a story. Such a story did we listen to from our grandpa when we were kids. A youngster, who could be any of us, while trying his luck, wants to learn, because he likes it, how to speak an unusual language He wants to learn the language of the frogs. I keep wondering ... will it be useful to him or totally useless? Who knows

Essays, theory, and articles by an american tattoo artist. Includes short fiction, color theory, tattoo ideas and information, and stories about the tattoo lifestyle, as well as personal reflections and wild-eyed rants.

The role of objects and images in everyday life are illuminated incisively in Material Vernaculars, which combines historical, ethnographic, and object-based methods across a diverse range of material and visual cultural forms. The contributors to this volume offer revealing insights into the significance of such practices as scrapbooking, folk art produced by the elderly, the wedding coat in Osage ceremonial exchanges, temporary huts built during the Jewish festival of Sukkot, and Kiowa women's traditional roles in raiding and warfare. While emphasizing local vernacular culture, the contributors point to the ways that culture is put to social ends within larger social networks and within the stream of history. While attending to the material world, these case studies explicate the manner in which the tangible and intangible, the material and the meaningful, are constantly entwined and co-constituted.

This book is a collection of Clown drawings that were composed in the local lunatic asylum, also called "Building 50." This place resides in the old Norristown State hospital grounds in Pennsylvania. The Artist was committed for six weeks, and in this time spent his hours drawing the sketches on typing paper, and with a pencil, without an eraser, and without photo references. These Clowns came from deep in the Artist's psyche, and maybe one of the most positive projects in his repertoir.

Since its origins in 1967, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival has gained worldwide recognition as a model for the research and public presentation of living cultural heritage and the advocacy of cultural democracy. Festival curators play a major role in interpreting the Festival's principles and shaping its practices. Curatorial Conversations brings together for the first time in one volume the combined expertise of the Festival's curatorial staff-past and present-in examining the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage's representation practices and their critical implications for issues of intangible cultural heritage policy, competing globalisms, cultural tourism, sustainable development and environment, and cultural pluralism and identity. In the volume, edited by the staff curators Olivia Cadaval, Sojin Kim, and Diana Baird N'Diaye, contributors examine how Festival principles, philosophical underpinnings, and claims have evolved, and address broader debates on cultural representation from their own experience. This book represents the first concerted project by Smithsonian staff curators to examine systematically the Festival's institutional values as they have evolved over time and to address broader debates on cultural representation based on their own experiences at the Festival.