la vie en violet

mountainmanapproved:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen” and he would have meant the same thing.
― John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

<3 <3 steinbeck. this is one of the most gorgeous openings to a book.

(via classicsreader)

(via creatingaquietmind)

Chris Cobb, an artist based in San Francisco, has created an amazing installation in bookshop called Adobe Books- he catalogued every single one of the 20,000 books by color. The project is titled There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World. They were arranged by hand over a 10 hour period, and he enlisted the help of 16 volunteers. Such beautiful results, they transformed the bookshop overnight.

(via)

(Source: showslow, via englishmajorsaftergraduation)

yeahwriters:

jirasol:

it’s called AAVE, you [oh let’s censor this]

I hate how people here think that “proper general English” is the only way to speak English and all the others are considered “idiocy” like if language has anything to do with intelligence. I’m not even from the U.S. and I know this better than most of you.

Below is a list of all English dialects in North America:

American English - Standard American English is the general form

• Cultural
  • African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)
  • Chicano English
  • New York Latino English
  • Pennsylvania Dutch English
  • Yeshivish
  • Yinglish

• Regional
• New England English
  • Boston accent
  • Boston Brahmin accent
  • Hudson Valley English
  • Lake Dialect or Lake Talk
  • Vermont English
• Inland Northern American English (includes western and central upstate New York)
  • Northeast Pennsylvania English
• Mid-Atlantic dialects
  • Baltimore dialect
  • Philadelphia dialect
  • Pittsburgh English
  • New York dialect
  • New Jersey English dialects
• Inland Northern American English (Lower peninsula of Michigan, northern Ohio and Indiana, Chicago, part of eastern Wisconsin and upstate New York)
• North–Central American English (primarily Minnesota, but also most of Wisconsin, the Upper peninsula of Michigan, and parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa)
  • Yooper dialect (Upper Peninsula of Michigan and some neighboring areas)
• Midland American English
  • North Midlands English (thin swath from Nebraska to Ohio)
  • St. Louis
  • South Midland (thin swath from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania)
• Southern English
  • Appalachian English
  • Tidewater accent
  • Virginia Piedmont
  • Virginia Tidewater
    
    • Coastal Southeastern (Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia area)
    • Cajun English
    • Harkers Island English (North Carolina)
  • Ozark English
  • Southern Highland English
  • Gullah or Geechee
  • Texan
  • Yat dialect (New Orleans)
  • Ocracoke
• Western English
  • California English
  • Boontling
  • Pacific Northwest English
• Hawaiian Pidgin

Canada

Canadian English:

• Newfoundland English
• Maritime English
  • Cape Breton accent
  • Lunenburg English
• West–Central Canadian English
  • Northern Ontario English
  • Quebec English
  • Ottawa Valley Twang
  • Pacific Northwest English

Bermuda

Bermudian English

Native/American indigenous peoples

Native American/indigenous peoples of the Americas English dialects:

• Mojave English
• Isletan English
• Tsimshian English
• Lumbee English
• Tohono O’odham English
• Inupiaq English

From the New England accents Wiki:

Some speakers of the Western New England dialect—especially those from the region surrounding the major cities of Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut, along theConnecticut River—replace “t” with a glottal stop and replace “-ing” with “in’”. This would mean that those who do such would pronounce (for example) “sitting” as “sih-in’”, New Britain as “New Brih-nn”, and Clinton as “Clin-nn,” etc. T-glotallizing is found in other parts of the country as well, to varying degrees; however, it is prevalent in Southwestern New England.

I totally do this. I can’t say “mountain” or “kitten”; I say “mau-in” and “kih-en”. My parents always give me a hard time and it’s SO FUCKING ANNOYING. One time my stepmom told me that it made me sound less smart, which is ironic because I’m the most educated person in my entire extended family, and I wouldn’t think that a speech affect that makes you sound like you’re from Connecticut would dumb you down.

Seriously though, I met so many ultra-intelligent people with thick Southern accents when I was at UNC, and met so many idiots with perfect British accents when I lived in London. The accent=intelligence stereotype has totally been broken for me, which I’m quite thankful about.

Okay sorry /end rant.

chromocrochet:

 So I’m back from my trip to visit my college roommate. It was incredibly fun for many reasons, but one of the coolest things that happened there….

…was learning a new style of crochet from her 90-year-old Portuguese grandmother.

This woman was incredible. Sharp as a tack, and incredibly dexterous even now with her hook - a minuscule 1 mm, in comparison to my favorite 5 mm. Her house was full of incredibly elaborate lace towels and tablecloths - I found something new and incredibly impressive every time I turned around.

Although she spoke no English and I spoke no Portuguese, through patience and demonstration she taught me this simple pattern for a tiny towel edging. The yellow is hers, and the beige is mine. As you can see, I started out pretty wobbly, but by the end I was improving a lot.

It was really amazing learning from her, and I feel very lucky to have crocheted with a master :)

my grandma & miss chouette both make me so proud & happy. :)

loukizavrr:

reading

beautiful.

(via thesecretbooksociety)

r5r5lynch:

Holy moly!!! Aaron Tveit & Darren Criss!!! 

OHMYGOSH … i have so many ideas for musicals starring these two incredible men. i just … there are too many feelings right now.

cinderellainrubbershoes:

-Joyce Carol Oates

(via teachingliteracy)

teachingliteracy:

agusshadowhunter:

Drink coffee

Read books

Be happy

coffee & books = happiness.