I spit and chew and bite

[sovay]

This cat picture is not mine; it comes courtesy of of teenybuffalo, who found it on Tumblr:



I was prepared to love this image despite its likely origin as an outsider's sendup of the suffrage movement, but then it turned out to have been an actual suffragette Christmas card, which is even better. derspatchel says he can see "Hestia marching, festooned with violets, hoisting a banner aloft with her tail, ready to pounce on any police resistance." Mice and roses, they sing. Mice and roses.

(The actual song "Bread and Roses" causes me to tear up for reasons I do not entirely understand, because I cannot remember ever singing it as a child or communally, but it turned up as a spontaneous and formal expression of workers' solidarity in a scene in Pride (2014) and I disintegrated.)

Comments

[umadoshi]

Suffragette Christmas card.

*starry eyes*

[sovay]

*starry eyes*

I would send them to people for the holidays if they made them nowadays, yes.

[rydra_wong]

PRINT IT! Maybe a little light Photoshop/GIMP editing to remove the creases at the corners. But that is a quality card in any era.

off topic

[movingfinger]

nineweaving suggested I send this mask maker's Etsy page to you. I went to her open studio today. Mind blown, and possibly my disposable income budget for the foreseeable future if I ever dare...

https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheArtOfTheMask/reviews

Re: off topic

[sovay]

this mask maker's Etsy page to you. I went to her open studio today. Mind blown, and possibly my disposable income budget for the foreseeable future if I ever dare...

That's very beautiful work. I can't afford any of it, but I like that someone makes a mask of Vanth.

Re: off topic

[movingfinger]

There were silver sea-gods at the show, medusae and not-exactly-medusae, dragons, and a winter king and queen, and they were all breathtaking. Some of them looked dangerous and some were clearly in conversation with others. The Etsy page doesn't show as much as she had there, but it looks as though the crow mask is popular.

Re: off topic

[sovay]

There were silver sea-gods at the show, medusae and not-exactly-medusae, dragons, and a winter king and queen, and they were all breathtaking.

Did you or anyone else take pictures?

Re: off topic

[movingfinger]

I took a few, emailed them to nineweaving; I'll ask her to forward to you. After I started snapping with my phone I realized the artist might not actually like that and stopped, embarrassed (and it was crowded---these were the thing everyone wanted to stand in front of and stare at). The "sold" items area on the Etsy shop has some of the same masks I saw, but they aren't all there. There were several kinds of the "memento mori" mask with a skull and mottoes visible beneath a cracked face, a couple of commedia-esque faces, and one with a city-crown that seemed to be associated with the sea-people.

There was another guy there making waves and ripples out of wood. He doesn't seem to have a website and his work didn't photograph well, it was very tactile. It was a really interesting set of artists.

Re: off topic

[sovay]

I took a few, emailed them to nineweaving; I'll ask her to forward to you.

Thank you!

and one with a city-crown that seemed to be associated with the sea-people.

If it was a classical mural crown, you see it sometimes on rivers. (I associate it most with Tyche, but I am not the mask-maker.)

[kore]

MICE AND ROSES

[sovay]

MICE AND ROSES

Cats never settle.

[talia_et_alia]

In honor of your radical black cats, here is one of my prized possessions: direct action cat! I think it is the nicest design of this concept I have seen.

[sovay]

In honor of your radical black cats, here is one of my prized possessions: direct action cat! I think it is the nicest design of this concept I have seen.

That is magnificent. I envy your owning and wearing it!

[movingfinger]

I think that in the cat-suffragette genre, the cute cats (like the famous adorable black and white LOLkitten saying "I want my vote!" and the famous super-adorable cat in the hat and shawl) are actually PRO suffragette, because they are cute positive images, and the ugly ones are the antis. In other words that there was no single meaning for cat suffragettes.

Nowadays at least this would be confounded by our recognition that cats are at the center of everything.

[sovay]

In other words that there was no single meaning for cat suffragettes.

I assumed this one was mocking in part because of the secondary, more common meaning of "catty"; I was delighted that it was sincere.

[akycha]

I ADORE the reclaiming of the "crying kitten" anti-suffragette image. :)

[sovay]

I ADORE the reclaiming of the "crying kitten" anti-suffragette image.

Yes!

[robynbender]

"Bread and Roses" ran straight up my spine the first time I heard it (done by Judy Collins - recommended!). Still does it to me when I watch that scene in Pride, these 40 years later.

Thanks for the book link. I sometimes stare at a piece of suffrage ephemera, trying to decide if it came from the Pro's or the Anti's. Hard to be a tourist in Time - there are just subtleties about the landscape that you don't have access to.

[sovay]

"Bread and Roses" ran straight up my spine the first time I heard it (done by Judy Collins - recommended!).

I will listen to it. Somehow I missed her version as a child, despite not being able to remember a time when I didn't know "Anathea."

Thanks for the book link.

You're welcome. There are eras I am better at reading than others, but sometimes recent history is just close enough to be a false cognate.

I do not know if it was intended to, but your icon has gotten the Orgy song firmly stuck in my head.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Makes me tear up, too. (Bryn Mawr (college) sings it at thrice-yearly step sings, but I dissolved before that, too.)

[sovay]

Makes me tear up, too. (Bryn Mawr (college) sings it at thrice-yearly step sings, but I dissolved before that, too.)

That makes me feel less strange about it. Thank you for telling me.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

The history behind it is part of it, but the tune itself just touches something.

(And, you're welcome.)

[sovay]

The history behind it is part of it, but the tune itself just touches something.

I didn't know until yesterday that it was written by Mimi Baez Fariña in the 1970's. It sounds much older. And you can march to it. She did a good job.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

It helps that the poem *was* written way earlier (1911). But yeah, the marching part is one of the thing that's always struck me as a good touch.

(Judy Collins does a slightly different version that I don't like as well.)

[sovay]

It helps that the poem *was* written way earlier (1911). But yeah, the marching part is one of the thing that's always struck me as a good touch.

Right; I knew about the poem by James Oppenheim. I had just always assumed that the melody was contemporaneous. It wasn't, but it really, really works.

(Judy Collins does a slightly different version that I don't like as well.)

I'm not actually sure how I missed learning her version, considering how many of my folksongs came from Joan Baez and Pete Seeger and the rest of the American folk revival, but I did.

[gwynnega]

I used to work at a now defunct women's bookstore called Bread and Roses. It was a wonderful bookshop.

[sovay]

I used to work at a now defunct women's bookstore called Bread and Roses. It was a wonderful bookshop.

I'm glad it existed. Something with that name should have.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

At my mother-out-law's retirement party, which had probably 150 people, after everyone said lovely things about her leadership of the Women's Studies and German departments, they brought out two baskets, one filled with long-stem roses and one with baguettes, and the entire crowd stood up and someone started to sing Bread and Roses, and the whole hall joined in.

It was one of the most effective and theatrical emotional tributes I've ever seen pulled off in person.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Also, this.

[sovay]

At my mother-out-law's retirement party, which had probably 150 people, after everyone said lovely things about her leadership of the Women's Studies and German departments, they brought out two baskets, one filled with long-stem roses and one with baguettes, and the entire crowd stood up and someone started to sing Bread and Roses, and the whole hall joined in.

That is beautiful.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Awh.

I have nothing useful to say. (but that is very touching.)

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking Bird and Roses would be a better joke in one way, but not so quickly parsed, so maybe not.

[sovay]

I'm thinking Bird and Roses would be a better joke in one way, but not so quickly parsed, so maybe not.

"Bird and Roses" sounds more like a bar or a band to me at the moment.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love that it's an actual suffragette card (love that cat memes have been a thing forever)--good on teenybuffalo for discovering it, and thank you for sharing it!

[sovay]

I love that it's an actual suffragette card (love that cat memes have been a thing forever)--good on teenybuffalo for discovering it, and thank you for sharing it!

You're welcome! It makes me very happy.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

O yay, that's awesome! I have added the attribution and link to the Tumblr post.

[sovay]

O yay, that's awesome! I have added the attribution and link to the Tumblr post.

Excellent!

I am very tempted to make some up as actual Christmas cards this year. I mean, I don't even send people Christmas cards, but for Suffragette Kitty I could make an exception.