Some Ukrainian maps

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Some old maps are starting to appear on the internet.

They show Crimea as Ukraine, and much more.

This from 1919, just before Stalin’s Holodomor famine, the intentional mass starvation of Ukraine. [Source: Twitter]

Here is similar, from Wikipedia, “Ukraine according to an old postcard from 1919”. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Ukraine_(postcard_1919).jpg

And another in English, showing population decline after the Holodomor.

One in French, from here.

Jews in Ukraine is a whole other question, here is something with interesting maps. https://ukrainianjewishencounter.org/media/UJE_book_readerspreads_08_2019_Eng.pdf

Ah, I see Circassians in that second map, I believe they went to Turkey, where they became Moslem.

More, 1929-1931.

Maybe this is some kind of trial balloon.  Or maybe there’s nothing to it, and it’s just a map.

 

More Christine de Pizan

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Christine de Pizan of course is my avatar. There are newly digitized images available of her, thanks to the British Museum’s Medieval and Renaissance Women project. The book is Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the Queen (Harley MS 4431). https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2022/02/medieval-and-renaissance-women.html

You can also find the Book of Margery Kempe (Add MS 61823), the first autobiography in the English language, dictated to an amanuensis, and the Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich (Stowe MS 42), an anchorite known for the phrase “All shall be well”, who lived through the plague and wrote the first book in the English language.

The Book of the Queen was a collection of Christine de Pisan’s works made for the queen of France, Isabel of Bavaria. It has now been split into two volumes. Description of images: https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_4431

From the first volume, here is Christine with the Duke of True Love (143r), who commissioned her to write a romance, Livre du duc des vrais amans, based on his affair with a married cousin. Christine used the opportunity to excoriate the practice of Courtly Love, which I always thought was supposed to be an improvement over arranged marriages.

From volume 2, 189v, Christine and the Sibyl standing in a sphere of the cosmos, with the moon, sun and stars surrounding them. The sybil was a popular literary device back in the day, and there is quite a bit about the sybil appearing to Christine in a dream after her husband dies in the plague, showing her the ladder to heaven etc.

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Oh wait, those were already digitized, but for some reason I don’t remember ever seeing the sybil or the duke of love material before. Here is the newly digitized stuff, some wills that should be useful to historians, although I would rather see some of the stuff requested in the comments here. https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2023/03/where-theres-a-will.html

Arabia + art

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Here are a couple of recent finds from the art world.

Congressional Art Competition for the 14th District of New York (AOC’s district)

Sally Almaklani is a freshman at a New York high school. She has won an art competition with a portrait of a woman in a yellow hijab. It is perhaps typical of the kind of doodles 14-year-olds make in the margins of their homework when they are bored in class, but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi. The painting will hang in the capitol. It is only her third actual piece of art, so maybe it is too much to hope that she has the talent to paint more. In any case, it is exactly the type of thing the capitol building needs right now.

 

The title is ‘My hijab makes me powerful’. They are afraid of the men of course, and their hope is that the hijab will make them invisible so the men will leave them alone.  It does work too, after a fashion. 

Malak Mattar

Malak Mattar is a Palestinian abstract artist. She paints women in an expressionist style, and is the author of Sitti’s Bird, a book about war for children.

She grew up in Gaza during wartime, and started painting at the age of 14 as an escape from war. She started at school with watercolors,  and went on to acrylic on canvas. By 2016 she had an exhibit in Jerusalem, and her work was being smuggled out of Gaza through the tunnels, and exhibited in Spain, India, and England. Eventually she went to live in Turkey.

Here are a couple of art house type bios.

Some of these have examples of her work.

Worldcat

There don’t seem to be any associated VIAF numbers.

Social media

Egyptian goddesses

Nekhbet and Wadjet crown Ptolemy VIII (from Britannica) 

Some new images are emerging from the Temple of Esna in Egypt, some 30 miles south of Luxor, where the famous tomb drawings were found back in the 30’s in the Valley of the Kings.  There are several goddesses, but what is new is representations of Nekhbet and Wadjet, “also known as the ‘two ladies’ by the ancient Egyptians.” Wadjet, associated with Lower Egypt (downstream), is portrayed as a snake, and Nekhbet, associated with Upper Egypt, is portrayed as a vulture.

Interesting colors, no wonder deco was so big in the 30’s.

What is going on in Bryansk?

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Bryansk, Russia

TLDR: no one knows.

But everyone has reported on it, from the NYT to al Jazeera to the Washington Post.

Bryansk is in Russia, close to the Ukrainian border.

Something did happen.  It was probably Russians that did it, or didn’t do it, as the case may be. They probably went to Ukraine after whatever it was that happened, or didn’t happen.

Meanwhile, back on Twitter, there is all kinds of misinformation about Bakhmut.  Wagner forces have been taking a heavy causalities in the area, and a recent thaw means the area is covered in mud, but as late as yesterday Ukraine was saying they may have to withdraw from the city, to keep from being encircled.  Denys the Ukrainian pilot reports no official movements in the area, but he does say what the Russian telegram channels are saying about Bryansk. Denys says 90% of Russian troops are in Ukraine so it would be a piece of cake to march on a Russian city, or even Moscow.

And then there is this weird thing, claimed to be from the “Free Russia Legion”, which is a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Russia_Legion

https://youtu.be/0K1QVhE0uwg y
Meanwhile, back in Belarus, “what airdefence doing”?

Some reflections on Russia from the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

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Today Moldova voted to make Romanian, the language they speak in Moldova, the official language of government documents. There were demonstrations, by people bussed in who only spoke Russian.
It’s probably a better gig than being sent to the Ukrainian front.

Dzhokhar Dudayev, the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, was assassinated with laser-guided missiles on April 21, 1996 as he was speaking to a Duma deputy on his satellite telephone.  His location was detected by a Russian reconnaissance aircraft, which intercepted the phone call.

He had some interesting things to say about Russia.

But where are these places he talks about, that have experienced Russian interference?

Another Twitter thread on miscarriage

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There’s been a lot of these lately, women telling their horror stories about being in life-threatening situations, in hospitals. This is just one.

Someone on Wikipedia did a good job on the legal situation in Europe.  After the survivors of Bucha left Ukraine, I remember looking for the topic on Wikipedia, and it was obvious the ones who had gone to Poland would not be able to get abortions. Some did opt for Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Europe

Right here in the U.S. we had a 10 year old who traveled out of state for an abortion. Ohio did that. The child had to go to Indiana. How would you even find that on Wikipedia?

And of course they went after the doctor who (legally) helped the child and not the rapist. And it was not even the only ten year old who had been raped and impregnated in that state that year, because I looked it up.  No hue and cry about predators who target children. They didn’t even bother to check. But that is a different story.

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Speaking of the SCOTUS the Ginni Thomas voicemail is apparent genuine. According to Wikipedia, Ginni’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Central is defunct.

Looks like she’s still on the trust fund board of the Library of Congress tho, https://www.loc.gov/programs/support-the-library-of-congress/about-this-program/governance/

Video series: the collapse of the USSR

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“Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985%E2%80%931999:_TraumaZone

This is a BBC documentary by Adam Curtis, about the events leading up to Putin, but you can’t watch it outside of the UK on their website.

Here is the first one in the series.

Wait, what is this? And who do we know that is interested in both ‘country balls‘ and Russia? And who are Vlad Vexler and Ivan Ilyn? And the former Russian propagandist Dima Vorobiev, who seems to have disappeared from the internet in the last year.

~ “The Ideology of Putin’s Russia” https://youtu.be/sdFtqa54TuM

Shalimar Gallery finds a new Marjorie Miller piece

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The Shalimar Gallery got shut down by Facebook a long time ago, but I have just discovered them. At the time they couldn’t get any answers from Facebook as it was most likely done by a bot. I totally sympathize, Facebook did the same thing to me when I crossed into Canada for Wikimania in Montreal.

Marjorie Miller drawing, 1928

In any case they posted a drawing by Marjorie Miller that no one knew about. And now I see they posted a lot of drawings, and quite a few of them were by relatively unknown women. Whoever is doing the ‘women in art’ stuff for Wikipedia should take a look.

Or you could also just look at the site and enjoy it. A lot of people were following it — they had 23K followers when they were shut down — and taking inspiration from the art that was posted each day.  https://www.facebook.com/Thecuriosityshopbridgnorth

Try an image search for some of these:

Kate Larsson

Washington state.  https://wsmag.net/people-and-places/2022-09-08/a-successful-artist-inspires-others/

William Morris

Okay I know it’s a guy but it’s William Morris, besides, this is probably one of his wallpaper designs which were done anonymously by women.

Marina Belova

It’s down…ah, Kaliningrad. https://web.archive.org/web/20220926021010/http://ross-fineart.com/2017/11/traveling-kaliningrad-amazing-flowers-artist-marina-belova-64248536/

Helen Jacobs  (1888-1970)

https://ukcomics.fandom.com/wiki/Helen_Jacobs_(1888-1970)

Mia Taney

~ https://www.pinterest.com/pauletteza/mia-taney-paintings-rug-inspiration/

That’s just a taste.

Some of these are being sold at Sotheby’s. Surely that must count for something.

And I stumbled on this resource, The Dictionary of British Women Artists
By Sara Gray. It seems to be searchable.

The fashion of Asya Khamsin

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Robinson Njeru Githae, Ambassador of Kenya to the U.S. with Asia Idarous Khamsin in Fairfax, Virginia 2017

Asya Khamsin (Asia Idarous Khamsin) is a Tanzanian designer known for organizing fashion shows that showcase new designers. She is regarded as the mother of Tanzanian fashion, “mama wa mitindo” . She is a director of Fabak in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and runs the annual Lady in Red and Kanga Za Kale fashion shows. [1][2]

She received the Humanitarian Award at Swahili Fashion Week 2012, the most respected female designer award at Sanaa Awards (Mwanamke anaheshimika zaidi kwenye fashion industry Tanzania), and she is the 2015 Swahili Fashion Week Lifetime Achievement Award winner. [10] or more probably 2014 (in Swahili. with pics) (tuzo=award in Swahili)[13][14]

Asia Idarous with Lifetime Achievement Award

Khamsin came to international attention when original fashion design samples she had reported missing at a Washington D.C. airport in 2018 were discovered in a Vanity Fair article, being worn by former U.S. official Sam Brinton.  The article, “All the style of Sam Brinton” appeared in the Italian edition in February 2022. The photos showed Sam Brinton, a former official of the Office of Nuclear Energy, at a Trevor Project event in 2018, wearing an original design that had been in the missing bag. Brinton has been arrested for baggage theft at two other airports.

Khamsin had reported a bag containing at least 30 original designer outfits that disappeared at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on March 9, 2018.  The designer outfits were to be displayed at a show, but when the outfits were not recovered, Khamsin had to withdraw from the show. [3] [11]

She has continued to post on Twitter photos of her designs from the missing bag.

Here she is at some events, some with her husband.

Some of her designs.

Awards

Personal life

She is married to Khamsin Alkaag, Chairman of Fabak Fashions, who lives in the U.S. [4]

She lives in Houston. [12]

Fabak is located in Msasani, in the neighborhood of Kwa Mwalimu Nyerere in Dar es Salaam. The 2014 Lady in Red fashion show was the tenth anniversary of the event. [5] [8]

Twelve years ago (2010) she was a model (Swahili “mwanamitindo”) [9]

Five years ago Asia announced she would no longer be a model at the Lady In Red event. [6]

The tenth anniversary of Lady in Red fashion show was on Feb 14, 2014. Admission, which included entertainment by Babloom Trio and Wanne Star, was 30,000 shs for normal seats and 50,000 for special seats  (50,000 Kenyan Shilling equals 394.01 United States Dollar) [7]

Social media

Twitter https://twitter.com/asyakhamsin1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asyakhamsin/?hl=en

Facebook: (Lady in Red) https://www.facebook.com/people/Asya-Idarous-Khamsin/100034759886580/?locale=en_GB

References

[1] Swahili Fashion Week 2013. https://www.swahilifashionweek.com/public/designers/Asia%20Idarous%20(Tanzania)/designer_info.php

[2] Fashion Week Zanzibar 2019. http://www.fashionweekzanzibar.com/Designer-Asia-Idarous.php

[3] SK Pop, Feb 24, 2023. https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/who-asya-khamsin-sam-brinton-luggage-theft-revealed-vanity-fair-features-fashion-designer-s-stolen-dress

[4] “Tanzania: Lady in Red Fashion Thrills Dar Revellers”, by Muhidin Issa Michuzi, Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam),  7 February 2010. https://allafrica.com/stories/201002081621.html

[5] (in Swahili) https://issamichuzi.blogspot.com/2014/02/shukurani-za-asia-idarous-khamsin-kwa.html#

[6] Interview with Michuzi TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25DUv9dsQeo

[7] http://www.mtaakwamtaa.co.tz/2014/01/wabunifu-mbalimbali-kupamba-onyesho-la.html

[8] Similar to [5] http://www.zanzinews.com/2014/02/asia-idarous-awashuku-wadau-kwa.html

[9] Interviewed as “fashion model”, Washington DC, Nov 24, 2010. https://youtu.be/4qd0FtBoMh0

[10] https://huntnewsnu.com/45381/lifestyle/african-fashion-takes-center-stage/

[11] https://nairobifashionhub.co.ke/african-fashion-designer-asya-khamsin-who-lost-her-luggage-at-an-airport-in-2018-claims-she-recognizes-her-clothes-on-former-nuclear-waste-expert-biden/

[12] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/article/houston-designer-says-ex-biden-staffer-stole-17803723.php

[13] (in Swahili) party to congratulate the mother of fashion Asia Idarous Khamsin for winning the LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 2014 in the international platform Tanzania Swahili fashion week http://lightphotostudio.blogspot.com/2014/12/asia-idarous-khamsin-mama-wa-mitindo_12.html

[14] (in Swahili) “Mama wa Mitindo Asya Idarous wa Khamsin akitoa neno la shukrani kwa Mwenyezi Mungu baada ya kupokea tuzo yake ya LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD ” Mother of Fashion Asya Idarous of Khamsin giving a word of thanks to Allah after receiving her LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD https://issamichuzi.blogspot.com/2014/12/mnuso-wa-kumpongeza-mama-wa-mitindo.html

Sources

Here is Wanne Star, a performer of traditional song and dance who performed at the 10th annual Lady in Red Fashion Show.