Hotspur🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦 / is on Nostr

Middle-aged gay nerd. A country boy currently based in #Baltimore, currently working in public transit advocacy. A poet with a mean right cross. In a long-distance relationship, reads too much, wondering where life will go from here. Anxiety sufferer. He/him.

Last Notes

2024-11-15 14:02:52

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@nprofile…x9jw Happy Birthday and thank you for providing this service and giving us a safe, welcoming space.

2024-11-05 23:33:35

"Votes for Women," Bertha Margaret Boyé, 1911.
There's not much information about Boyé (1883-1930) except that she was a California native who entered this as part of a competition to design a poster to help for the campaign for women's suffrage in California. The Art Nouveau/Arts and Crafts style is lovely, and that's the Golden Gate behind her, so it makes it a uniquely Californian image. And California gave women the vote in 1911, so the poster was successful.
This appears to be her only notable work; she died at the age of 47 in Europe, having gone there to continue her studies.
From the Arthur & Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Cambridge, MA.
#Art #AmericanArt #WomenArtists #WomenInArt #ArtNouveau #ArtsAndCrafts #WomensSuffrage #Vote
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/113/432/910/243/459/945/original/60e0d78c38976f14.png

2024-10-31 22:17:17

"Be Cheerful, Enjoy Your Life," Unknown Artist, 3rd Century BCE.
This cheerful skeleton was unearthed in 2016 in the Greek/Roman city of Antiocheia, in modern-day Turkey. While the lettering is commonly translated to mean, "Be cheerful; enjoy your life," some sources claim it actually says, "You get the pleasure of the food you eat hastily with death."
Happy Halloween, friends!
#Art #RomanArt #Skeleton #Halloween #Mosaic
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/113/404/328/840/718/979/original/ffcfeb43b9df1bca.png

2024-10-28 21:57:16

Stopped on my way home from work and voted.
#IVoted #VoteBlue #voteblue2024protectdemocracy #harris_walz2024

2024-10-26 00:30:04

"Death and Life," Edvard Munch, 1894.
Norwegian Munch (1863-1944) is almost insanely famous for one painting, "The Scream," (which has become one of the art world's most parodied and marketed images) but there's so much more to him and his work.
His early life was often touched by illness and death, and he himself feared inheriting a mental illness that ran in his family. He took to painting to deal with his dreads.
He traveled around Europe, meeting people like Van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and even playwright August Strindberg. When WWII came, his work was banned by the Nazi party, and some of it seized, but most survived (a handful are still missing), securing his legacy.
He experienced mental health troubles, exacerbated by drinking, but with therapy and treatment he powered through and became more optimistic and bright in his outlook. He died during the Nazi occupation of Norway, and the party orchestrated his funeral and tried to hint that he had become one of them at the end, but nobody bought it.
This vision of a woman and a skeleton embracing reflects one of his common themes, the mingling of love and death, Eros and Thanatos. And it's seasonal.
From the Munch Musem, Oslo
#Art #NorwegianArt #EdvardMunch #Expressionism #ErosAndThanatos
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/113/370/841/730/412/598/original/ae48b2117239b647.png

2024-06-29 00:22:41

Musical Interlude: Soprano Jody Karin Applebaum did a series of cabaret CDs with her then-husband Marc-Andre Hamelin. This paean to summer is a comedic riff on a traditional song...
"Summer is A-Coming In," performed by Jody Karin Applebaum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nneVfHHJ4Gc&list=OLAK5uy_lwElL1i3RpKrecBipE0G6OVX0lyfQQQSI&index=6
#MusicalInterlude #JodyKarinApplebaum #SummerIsAComingIn #Comedy #Cabaret

2024-06-26 13:32:19

Good morning Mastodonians! It's an effort for me to say that, I slept very badly last night, but I'm tryin' my best here to fake it till I make it.
Part of my problem is the time of year...my body doesn't like going to bed until it's been dark for a while...
Anyway, how're all my friends & followers today?
#GoodMorning #WednesdayWisdom #Tired

2024-05-29 22:36:25

Musical Interlude: The troubled Susannah McCorkle had a wonderful voice and terrific musical taste. She was an adroit translator of foreign-language music, as she demonstrates here on a Brazilian bossa nova tune.
"P'rá Machucar Meu Coração (The Day We Said Goodbye)", performed by Susannah McCorkle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xUdVRJ_EEA
#MusicalInterlude #BossaNova #Brazil #SusannahMcCorkle #Jazz

2024-05-29 22:36:25