Twins by LeftyRodriguez on Flickr.
Soldaderas were female soldiers who went into combat alongside men during the Mexican Revolution, which initially broke out in opposition to the conservative Díaz regime. The term comes from the Spanish word soldada which denotes a payment made to the person who provided for a soldier’s well being.[1]The majority of these women led ordinary lives, but took up arms during the war to fight for freedom. Among the soldaderas, Dolores Jiménez y Muro, Margarita Neri, and Hermila Galindo are often considered heroines in contemporary Mexico.
Today, the term La Adelita is used with pride among Mexican women. La Adelita was the title of a Corrido (folk ballad) about a soldadera named “Adelita”, and became one of the most beloved songs to come out of the Revolution.
“Soldaderas,” camp followers in the revolution, cooked, nursed, and provided sexual and emotional comfort. Some fought and were executed in the course of battle. The image of “la soldadera,” the woman fighting on behalf of the Mexican community, was praised as a national symbol of strength and resistance. Yet it was an ambivalent image: praised within the context of an often mythicized revolution, the “soldaderas” were criticized for their relative sexual freedom and independence. The term “soldadera” became double edged. When used to describe an individual women, it could be synonymous with “whore.” source reference -by Devra Weber Oral History and Mexicana Farmworkers
The glowing “firefly squid” of Toyama, Japan. Each tentacle contains a photophore which produces light to attract small fish for the squid to feed on.
San Alfonso del Mar resort in Algarrobo, Chile, is home to the world’s largest swimming pool. The 3,324 feet long pool that is set on 19.8 acres can fit up to 6,000 normal sized pools within it.
Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.
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| — | William S. Burroughs, Letters to Allen Ginsberg: 1953-1957 (via honeyforthehomeless) |
This Land Bridge, designed by Seattle firm Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architecture, connects Historic Ft. Vancouver, Washington to the Columbia River waterfront in the U.S.
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50 Things a Man Does Not Have to Do Before He Dies
42. RUN WITH THE BULLS
Sometimes it’s the fate of a good writer to bear the blame for what he inspires a bunch of idiots to do. Hunter S. Thompson is on the hook for a generation convinced it’s charming to be a drug-addicted asshole. Jack Kerouac spawned a million annoying vagabonds. And then, of course, there’s Ernest Hemingway, who has to answer not only for reams of bad, muscular prose but also for turning the San Fermín festival, celebrated in the town of Pamplona, Spain, into a three-minute institutionalized rite of passage, offering a frisson of real danger to the proceedings without being automatically fatal. It’s worth remembering, though, that courting death is not, ipso facto, cool. If there were a contest in Toledo where you drank a bottle of Drano and saw what happened, would you be proud to tell stories about it over dinner?
