June 30 – Anniversary of a Very Sweet Art Show

Posted on June 30, 2015

There is an Australian artist who doesn't paint with oils or watercolors. She doesn't paint with acrylics or pastels. She doesn't paint with paint!

Instead, she “paints” with candy and candy-colored sugar!

Tanya Schultz, under the name Pip and Pop, sometimes alone and sometimes with other artists, creates pictures or 3-D “sculptures” using candies. Her art is colorful and fantastical and fun. It's like wish-fulfillment meets magic meets sweet-tooth paradise!


Today is the anniversary of the 2014 start of her art installation in a museum in Amsterdam. A week later, the artwork was complete; this is called the “sugar finissage.” It was followed by a “ruination ritual.”


How fun would THAT be??!!?

Apparently, during Schultz's ruination rituals, the audience ritually takes the landscape she built apart and “cleanses” the museum of the sugar; some people make their own sugary mini-artworks in jars, drink sweet drinks, and eat cotton-candy.



I would just LOVE to see one of her pieces!


 
 



This piece was made with artist Nicole Andrejivic.


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June 29 – International Mud Day

Posted on June 29, 2015


This is a perfect day to put on your crummiest clothes before going outside to play – because today is the day to celebrate, not just the outdoors, but the messier parts of outdoors – water and dirt and mud!

You can gain some inspiration from photos on the World Forum Foundation's Facebook page – and you can share your own mud-spattered fun by posting photos!

My kids used to love going to Adventure Playgrounds, where they could zip line over a muddy lake, use poles to navigate the lake, ride a slide down into a muddy pit, and shower off right there, outdoor, before getting in the car to come home. Good times! Check out your neck of the woods to see if there is something similar!


Or gain muddy inspiration from Pinterest, Growing a Jeweled Rose, and Happy Hooligans. 


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June 28 – Carolina Day

Posted on June 28, 2015

What happens when an unfinished American fort made out of palmetto logs and sand – a fort with just 31 cannons – was attacked by the British Royal Navy with their 270 cannons?


 The Americans withstood the attack and held onto the fort!

On this date in 1776 – just a week before the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress – a fort on Sullivan's Island in South Carolina was attacked from the sea by a fleet of British ships and from the land by 2,000 British soldiers.

How-oh-how, you might ask, did the greatly outnumbered Americans win?

The American forces had 780 sharpshooters to defend the fort. The channel between Long Island, where the British troops had landed, and Sullivan Island was too deep for the land forces to wade across. And they couldn't come across by small boat without getting picked off by sharpshooters. 

In the meantime, the British had miscalculated the depth of the water, so some of their ships ran aground. With those ships stuck or damaged, the others couldn't organize a proper attack. 

Finally, the ships that fired cannons at the fort made very little impact, because the palmetto logs were sort of spongy; they absorbed the impact of the cannon balls without affecting the fort or its occupants. On the other hand, the cannon fire by the Americans badly damaged the British fleet.

After about nine hours, the British withdrew. They didn't attack any harbor or city in South Carolina again until 1780.

By the way, the Liberty Flag used during this battle to rally the troops later served as the inspiration for South Carolina's state flag. It makes a lot of sense to me, now, that the palmetto tree appears on the flags – because the palmetto really did safeguard the Americans against the British attack!

The anniversary of this first American victory in South Carolina, during the Revolutionary War, was celebrated the next year as Palmetto Day. Eventually, it became Carolina Day.

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June 27 – Happy Birthday, Helen Keller

Posted on June 27, 2015

One of the most famous blind people in the world was also deaf.

One of the most famous deaf people in the world was also blind.

Of course, I'm talking about the same person: Helen Keller, who was the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor of arts (university) degree. She became an author, lecturer, and political activist. She worked on behalf of workers' rights, women's right to vote, and other causes.

The story of her teacher Anne Sullivan breaking through Keller's isolation as a child, allowing her to communicate, to learn, and to blossom into a contributing member of society, was immortalized in the play and film The Miracle Worker. Keller's birthplace, the town of Tuscumbia, Alabama, has been turned into a museum, and Helen Keller Day is celebrated by the state of Pennsylvania, Tuscumbia, and others. 

Keller has been inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame and appears on the Alabama state quarter. (That quarter is the only circulating U.S. coin to feature braille.) Hospitals, streets, and schools have been named for Keller – and not just in Alabama or even the U.S.; there are streets named for her in at least Switzerland, Spain, Israel, Portugal, France, and the U.S.!

Learn from Helen Keller today:







Learn more about Helen Keller. Try this or this video. 


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June 26 – Happy Birthday, Charles Messier

Posted on June 26, 2015

Every once in a while you see a gorgeous nebula, sprawling galaxy, or sparkling star cluster referred to as Messier object number such-and-such. More often, you see more cryptic identifiers like “M3,” “M64,” “M110.”

Messier's Catalog during his own time, above,
and now, below.


Today's famous birthday was able to put his stamp on astronomy by creating a catalog of astronomical objects – from M1 to M110 – so that comet hunters could tell the difference between smudges of light that were always in the sky from smudges of light that are new and different!

Charles Messier himself was a comet hunter, of course, and that is why he realized that such a listing would be useful. He discovered 13 comets in his lifetime.
Charles Messier was the tenth of twelve children, born in France on this date in 1730. He saw a spectacular comet in 1744, when he was just 14 years old, and he later saw an annular solar eclipse – and he was intrigued. He wanted to know more, search for more, discover more of these beautiful, rare sights.

Messier was one of the people who pushed forward our knowledge of the universe, and we who live so much later are the lucky ones who get to pore over modern Hubble images of all the marvelous Messier objects!




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