Today in History: July 28

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

On this date in photographic history, two firsts took place: in 1851, a total solar eclipse was photographed for the first time, and on this date in 1858, Gaspar-Felix Tournachon, a French photographer who was known as “Nadar” and who was probably the first-ever photojournalist among many other firsts in his photography career, took the first aerial photograph.

The newspaper cartoon above, made by the famous Honoré Daumier, captures some of the excitement that Nadar brought to the French public in his career. The photo or photos that he took that day over the village of Petit Bicêtre no longer exist, however.
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July 28: Speak Out for Ashraf Fayadh

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In February, a court in Abha, Saudi Arabia, announced that it had retracted its November 2015 death sentence for the poet Ashraf Fayadh and exchanged it for a sentence of eight years in prison and 800 lashes with a cane. He must also make a public statement of repentance.

This new sentence switched his conviction from one of apostasy, or renouncing his religion, to one of blasphemy, insulting that religion and its leaders.

On Thursday, July 28, artists and activists around the world will speak out on behalf of Ashraf Fayadh by creating art, writing essays, joining a Tweetstorm, recording podcasts, and many other ways of showing support in a “Day of Creativity.” The website “Arabic Literature (in English)” published a list of ten suggestions in a recent post: “Make Noise & Beauty on July 28, a Day of Creativity for Ashraf Fayadh.” If you participate, please use the hashtag #FreeAshraf. Everything that follows below is my small contribution.

The Operating System, a small press, will be publishing a volume of Fayadh’s poems entitled Instructions Within, translated by Mona Kareem.
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Crisis Mismanagement

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

* * * *
“Take my advice—I’m not using it.” I can tell you to keep calm. At my worst, I might insist that you keep calm. But as someone who can introduce stress into the least stressful, sweetly innocuous, and even some of the more pleasant experiences in life, when I am confronted with the parts of life that others find truly stressful, I hunker down and find the effort deep inside myself to make them yet more stressful.

In one of my lesser achievements in the field of stress management, I gave myself a black eye while tying my shoes. These were boots with leather laces (I am not a cowboy) and such laces can take a little effort to yank into position. While securing my “half-knot” on my right shoe, the length of lace in my left hand broke and I clocked myself in the right eye. At the time, I was 34 years old, not 11.
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