(of potential interest to collectors)

This blog attracts attention from a wide variety of folks (+/-10,000 unique visitors per month). Today I heard from a chap named Michael Tyler in Bath, UK, who writes: “I came across your blog which featured some Cuban propaganda art.  I have a small collection of OSPAAAL posters which you may be familiar with. I have been looking for collectors to trade as I have a number of duplicates… I’ve attached images of the duplicate posters I have to exchange. They are all original (some are very rare) and in excellent condition.”

Anyone who might be interested can connect with Michael via email at: m_w_tyler@hotmail.com

(from Outside magazine)

“We’ve scoured the gear archives and the history of sport across continents and eras to compile our first attempt at an authoritative list of the 100 most important outdoor inventions ever…” Link to the article here.

A spork? Really, a spork on the top 100 list?!

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(a nod to long-time inspiration and Icograda colleague Mervyn Kurlansky)

Frankfurt, Germany (a re-post from 2008)

Having grown up multi-lingually on several continents, I’ve never really been “at home” in any particular place, and have often felt a bit like a chameleon. I’ve also eschewed (mostly unconsciously) being woven into a single community or cultural fabric. This likely explains why I live in the woods (without neighbors or a local community), yet have spent my life heavily involved in professional and global peer networks, and seem to have an ongoing “restlessness to move” and travel on a continual basis. I’ve often used the ironic quip: “If you don’t care where you are, you’re never lost.” as a truism I can really relate to. While being rootless does have its advantages (one tends to be more tolerant of others; adapting to new environs is easier) this identity struggle also brings a raft of other social and psychological issues along with it in its sojourns, including reverse culture shock and a sense of disengaged melancholia.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered this phenomena has a taxonomy and name of its own—Third Culture Kids, often abbreviated “TCKs” or “3CKs” or “Global Nomads,” referring to “someone who, (as a child) has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture.” By definition, “the TCK tends to build relationships to all cultures, while not having full ownership of any,” and “develops a sense of belonging everywhere and nowhere.”

The concept of Third Culture Kids was introduced in the 1960s by Ruth Hill Useem (1915-2003), a sociologist who used the term to describe children who spent part of their developmental years in a foreign culture due to their parents’ working abroad.” Her work was the first to “identify common themes among various TCKs that affect them throughout their lives.” TCKs tend to have more in common with one another, regardless of nationality, than they do with non-TCKs from their own country—over the past decades, TCKs have become a heavily studied global subculture. (My cousin Faith, also a TCK, authored/edited the book Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing up Global, documenting “a life of growing up in multiple nations, cultures, and language regions.”)

Old photos: I always had this thing for small cars (perhaps in reaction to the hulking ‘Strassenkreuzer’ Studebaker my parents shipped over to Germany); on our Stettenstrasse front stoop, my first day of school in Frankfurt.

(That’s a lesson that my Daddy taught me [he just turned 92]… Respect!)

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Edgar Allan Poe married his 13-year old cousin Virginia Clemm in 1835 when he was 27. This image of Virginia was painted after her early death in 1847. Poe’s entire life-story reads (pretty much) as a cautionary tale…

Milan, Italy

Franco Brambilla likes to mix nostalgia from the past with cute aliens and beings from Sci Fi movies. See lots more of his creations in this genre here…

New York, USA

Bernarr Macfadden started Physical Culture magazine in March of 1899, his first publishing venture (based on a personal interest in bodybuilding)—it quickly became the most successful of a variety of new publications about health, fitness, exercise, and physical development. Magazine content included serious information, fads, fiction, attractive models in scanty sporting costumes, and pages of advertising aimed at “the active and those who wished they were.”

Shown above are some of the illustrated covers from the 1910s… view hundreds of others here.

(from a nice collection of German graphic art, found here)

London, UK

Mark Powell is an artist who draws with Biro pens (ballpoints) on old envelopes and such… he hails from Leeds and he often runs into the sea. That’s about all I know about him—other than that I really like his illustrative technique. See more of his Biro-portraits here.

(Thanks to Zelda Harrison for the link).