Artist Su Blackwell illustrates books. That might not sound very unusual, but Blackwell's illustrations turn books into detailed, haunting scenes -- quite literally. That's because the art she creates is made using the books themselves, the pages cut, folded, and pasted into intricate, three-dimensional scenes that capture not only the narrative, but the feeling of the books.

Using strategically placed lighting, the scenes glow with inner light that's at once warm and lonely. Blackwell is drawn to solitary places, like the forests, coastlines, and isolated houses that make up so many folklore and fairy tale stories. She uses minimal color to emphasize certain items, but for the most part, the images keep the black and white print pattern, with shape and texture identifying them. Wires hold up some pieces, making them appear to float in midair.

If her work seems a bit unsettling, it's because Blackwell intends for it to be so, and strives to capture the full range of emotion covered by the stories. "I tend to lean towards young girl characters, placing them in haunting, fragile settings, expressing the vulnerability of childhood, while also conveying a sense of childhood anxiety and wonder," she explains. "There is a quiet melancholy in the work, depicted in the material used, and choice of subtle color."


To Kill A Mockingbird, 2015


Red Riding Hood, 2010


The Master and Margarita, 2014


Matilda, 2014

An attorney for Deputy Clerk Brian Mason said Friday afternoon that Rowan County clerk Kim Davis removed her name from the county's marriage license forms, disobeying a federal judge's release order, the Associated Press reported.

BREAKING: Lawyer for Kentucky deputy clerk: Kim Davis disobeyed judge's order by altering forms.

Mr. "Not My Job to Fact-Check" Chuck Todd will be starting his newest gig at MSNBC daily, beginning September 28 at 5 pm Eastern. Kate Snow will anchor the 3-5 pm slot with supposed "hard news."

We shall see.

From Phil Griffin's memo:

Starting next week, we’ll welcome two new anchors to our afternoon lineup, as we draw on our best breaking news talent from across MSNBC and NBC News.

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Then, on Monday, September 28, Chuck Todd’s new show will debut at 5pm. MTP Daily will bring the insight and power of Meet the Press to our air every day of the week. We hope it will become the daily cable news show of record for the 2016 campaign.

Black Violin's new album is called Stereotypes.
Lisa Leone/Courtesy of the artist

Kevin Sylvester says that when most people see a 6'2", 260-pound black man, they don't expect him to also be a classically trained violinist. A recent exchange with a woman in an elevator, when he happened to have his instrument with him in its case, drove that point home.

"She's like, 'What do you play?'" he recalls. "I'm like, 'I'm a violinist'. And she was like, 'Well, obviously you don't play classical, so what kind of style do you play?'"

Sylvester says he explained that while he does have a degree in classical music, he plays all kinds of styles. "She didn't mean it maliciously," he says, "but I hope she gets to see us in concert and we can change her perception."

Moments like this inspired Sylvester and his partner, violist Wilner Baptiste, to call their new album Stereotypes. It's the latest release by their duo Black Violin, whose seeds were planted years ago when the two met as high school students in Florida.

A Swedish retirement home may seem an unlikely setting for an experiment about the future of work, but a small group of elderly-care nurses in Sweden have made radical changes to their daily lives in an effort to improve quality and efficiency.

In February the nurses switched from an eight-hour to a six-hour working day for the same wage – the first controlled trial of shorter hours since a rightward political shift in Sweden a decade ago snuffed out earlier efforts to explore alternatives to the traditional working week.

“I used to be exhausted all the time, I would come home from work and pass out on the sofa,” says Lise-Lotte Pettersson, 41, an assistant nurse at Svartedalens care home in Gothenburg. “But not now. I am much more alert: I have much more energy for my work, and also for family life.”

The Svartedalens experiment is inspiring others around Sweden: at Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska University hospital, orthopaedic surgery has moved to a six-hour day, as have doctors and nurses in two hospital departments in Umeå to the north. And the trend is not confined to the public sector: small businesses claim that a shorter day can increase productivity while reducing staff turnover.

At Svartedalens, the trial is viewed as a success, even if, with an extra 14 members of staff hired to cope with the shorter hours and new shift patterns, it is costing the council money. Ann-Charlotte Dahlbom Larsson, head of elderly care at the home, says staff wellbeing is better and the standard of care is even higher.

Carer Lise-Lotte Pettersson dances with a resident at Svartedalens care home. “I used to be exhausted all the time… But not now,” she says. Photograph: Daniel Breece for the Guardian

“Since the 1990s we have had more work and fewer people – we can’t do it any more,” she says. “There is a lot of illness and depression among staff in the care sector because of exhaustion – the lack of balance between work and life is not good for anyone.”

ARLINGTON, Va., – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday joined civil rights demonstrators on the last leg of a 860-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to call on Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act.

Sponsored by the NAACP, the “Journey for Justice” crossed Memorial Bridge into Washington, D.C., and ended on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Sanders denounced “cowards” in Statehouses who enacted new laws designed to suppress turnout on Election Day by making it harder to register to vote. Republican state lawmakers have exploited a Supreme Court ruling that gutted the landmark Voting Rights Act.

“We are a few steps from Arlington Cemetery where people fought and died for democracy, not to make it harder to vote,” Sanders said before the last leg of the march began. “Our job is to make it easier to vote. Our job is to try to increase voter turnout. And these Republican governors are afraid when people get into the ballot box and they don’t want them to vote. We’re gonna change that.”

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I would summarize the Keynesian view in terms of four points:

1. Economies sometimes produce much less than they could, and employ many fewer workers than they should, because there just isn’t enough spending. Such episodes can happen for a variety of reasons; the question is how to respond.

2. There are normally forces that tend to push the economy back toward full employment. But they work slowly; a hands-off policy toward depressed economies means accepting a long, unnecessary period of pain.

3. It is often possible to drastically shorten this period of pain and greatly reduce the human and financial losses by “printing money”, using the central bank’s power of currency creation to push interest rates down.

4. Sometimes, however, monetary policy loses its effectiveness, especially when rates are close to zero. In that case temporary deficit spending can provide a useful boost. And conversely, fiscal austerity in a depressed economy imposes large economic losses.