tiny tales

This week wonder | wander | world picks Laura Gibbs' Tiny Tales. 100-word stories inspired by traditional folktales. So far Gibbs has completed ten books of Tiny Tales, each containing 200 stories - not so little a compilation after all.

Here is a sweet sample: "Sita Rewards Hanuman"

Hanuman watercolor

After Rama's coronation, Sita honored Hanuman with a pearl necklace.

Hanuman started biting the pearls, cracking them open and looking inside.

"What are you looking for?" Sita asked, laughing, and all the people in attendance laughed too.

"I am looking for you," said Hanuman, "and for Rama. Without you inside, these pearls are useless."

"Rama and Sita are on their thrones!" the people shouted. "How could they be in the pearls?"

"In the same way they are in my heart," Hanuman replied, tearing open his chest; everyone could see Rama and Sita there. "Are they not in your hearts also?"

There's also an audio version to listen to - available on SoundCloud. 

tree of life

As we keep our hope afloat in these tumultuous times, wonder | wander | world looks to modern science to bolster our faith in the evolution of humankind as our faith is tested by the seeming devolution of humanity. 

If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted.

jumping genes, aka transposons, help to explain octopus intelligence

Scientists in Darwin’s time and through most of the 20th century could only work out the branches of the evolutionary tree of life by looking at the structure and appearance of animals and plants. Life forms were grouped according to similarities thought to have evolved together. 

Oscar Howe | art retrospective

The Yanktonai Dakota painter Oscar Howe, who died in 1983, is the subject of a remarkable retrospective at the National Museum of the American Indian. ~ The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl 

“Dance of the Heyoka” (1954) 

"Dakota Modern,” crisply curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby, consists almost exclusively of works in tempera, watercolor, gouache, or casein on paper. The execution is phlegmatically deliberate. Photographs of Howe, always neatly dressed and placidly industrious, usually seated at a table, consort oddly with the power-packed compositions and aggressive hues of his pictures. 

The upshot is a channeling of sheer, visionary imagination, as if the artist were taking dictation from an unseen demiurge. Do some of the effects seem cartoonish, with figuration that anticipated popular styles of graphic fiction which took hold in the nineteen-seventies? Perhaps. 

Oscar Howe, photographed on March 30, 1958

Still, generic characters in melodramatic poses strategically depersonalize subjects to the benefit of thematic punch and decorative finesse. The results exalt audacity and breathe beauty. Howe seldom repeated himself. Each work can feel one-off, fulfilling a special mission to a fare-thee-well. If any quality is consistent, it’s suddenness. 

1st Cebu Art Book Fair

In 2019, the Philippine city of Cebu was declared a UNESCO Creative City of Design, part of a global network of cities sharing culture and creativity for the betterment of the world. Cebu certainly lived up to its award: in 2022 several prominent Cebuano designers organised the Cebu Art Book Fair.

Cebu Art Book Fair

the cost of independence

When it comes to American sovereignty, freedom has never been free. Freedom in the United States of America has come at great cost. We live in a society where things are made so much harsher than they need to be. All because of our divisiveness and intolerance.

It is unfortunate that that too many lives have been lost defining freedom and independence. How does its corruption alter the way we view the magnificence and miracle of July 4th?

iStock image

Focusing in on a system of hierarchy that was enshrined in this country, going back to the 17th century, that created a hierarchy that put primarily British people at the very top.

Anyone who looked like them at the top and at the very bottom were people who were brought in to be enslaved and indentured to build this country for free. A programmed hierarchy that continues to this day.