I don’t remember how I came up with this idea, but since all these signs have been around for a few years, I need to talk about it now. My topic today is ‘Cities in Bloom’ in France.

These blooming cities emerged as a consequence of a competition called ‘Concours des villes et villages fleuris’, which for the first time was held as early as 1959 (!), and which was intended to extend the green space within the cities. The competition concerns the whole of France, and every municipality can take part and show its green thumb as a means to gain a friendlier character. Rating is done from one to four flowers.

Participation has been subject to different requirements over the years, and today environmental aspects are as important as bio-diversity and sustainability. Winning is conditional to a variety of topics, as for example maintaining the geographical heritage (which e.g. means that trees get a fair shot), or that the municipality spends money on making the place worth living in to a higher degree, or that the touristic appeal experiences a boost (let’s say by planting more flowers, bushes or trees).

Cities bloom, and other things, too…

Next to blooming cities there are also blooming Internet cities (for real!). There is an association, which rewards online communes fostering democratisation and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). A city can get a maximum of 5 @s, for example for offering a public ICT access, user friendly administration structures or municipal administration offering digital media.

The first time I heard about Internet cities I was just off on a walk through Anglet and Biarriz, and I realised that Anglet is indeed a blooming Internet city! And then there is an award for the most sporty city, a competition which was first awarded in 1937 by the daily paper l‘Auto, and later organised by the newspaper L‘Equipe. It is not for me to say whether this is because we usually don’t do all to well at the Olympics… But I’d say we’d do much better if there was a good old-fashioned gastronomy competition somewhere, so that we could go on the scrounge for a chef’s hat award! J Or how about an award for the dirtiest town? Then the award would be a rubbish bin. Not a bad idea maybe to remind people that they should assign their rubbish to a place where it belongs…

There are, however, a host of different kinds of rankings worldwide already that e.g. award the nicest city in the world, the French city with the best quality of living, and the city with the most attractive cultural life. You can even find awards for the most violent and dirtiest cities in the world (a fair issue to be raised to get ecological programs under way in France – Nath 4 President!!!)

To get back on topic with our cities in bloom – let’s have a look at a city awarded with 4 flowers: MEAUX! Why do I mention this? Because it is my hometown, the place where I was born, where I grew up and where I spent all of my school days. In case you’ve never heard about Meaux, maybe you have heard about brie (cheese) or mustard from Meaux (yes, really, even if Dijon keeps claiming the crown for the city of mustard).

And how many flowers does your town have? And would it qualify as an Internet city?

It’s starting to get cold out there. No worries, that’s what warm clothes are for!

We haven’t even officially reached winter, but we’re already getting the shivers. We here at laFraise don’t want to leave you out in the cold, so how about a sale on hoodies?

From today until Sunday 18 November we’re giving you 10% off all laFraise hoodies. Just type in LFHOODIE12 when leaving the t-shirt online shop. You’ll add a little warmth to your style and save at the same time!

Enjoy the sale – winter is coming …

Your laFraise Team

Rockers!

Incredible Discovery by Vinsse

Lord Of The Rings by Harantula

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We also liked the following designs! That´s why we are giving away a little Brouzoufs present to the designers.

Second place : 2600 brouzoufs

Fearless by Di.Jay

Third place : 1300 brouzoufs

No Spam! by Kreadid

•••

Congrats to the winners and thanks to all participants!

Last Wednesday (17 Oct), the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) launched the Global Day Against Pain for a fourth year. Reason enough to tackle this the topic in this blog post, I believe. We all know what it’s like to suffer physically or mentally, and we also know what severe and consistent pain can do to us.

Pain: A Definition

Pain is an unpleasant feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli, such as stubbing a toe, burning a finger, putting alcohol on a cut, and bumping the “funny bone.” The International Association for the Study of Pain’s widely used definition states: “Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”.

Read more about pain.

Physical vs. emotional pain

There are different types of pain: acute pain, chronic pain, neurogenic pain and psychogenic pain.  Pain restrains your wellbeing, and depending on its extent, it can have a major influence on your psyche as well. This is especially true for chronic or psychogenic pain.

If for example you squeeze a finger, you feel acute pain that is merely a reaction to an outer stimulus.

Pain is chronic, if it does not go away for months (e.g. migraine or or rheumatism). Consulting a doctor is a necessity in these cases. Pain can cause great exhaustion and even depression. Suffering pain can be annoying, tedious and troublesome. Most people know what it’s like to lie awake with a pounding toothache, so just imagine how bad severe migraine must feel. And we probably all know somebody who is suffering from chronic pain.

Psychogenic pain has not been entirely explored yet as the human psyche is harder to research than the body. These range from heartache (love sickness) to real physical pain resulting from stress or other psychological strain such as psychosomatic conflicts. Sometimes we fail to take pain for real, even though it is very present. Those of you who have experienced emotional pain will probably agree that it is indeed to be taken seriously, and it should be recognised and treated accordingly.

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A few interesting quotes

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The pain of our soul is worse than the suffering of our body. Publius Syrus

Nothing let’s us grow more than severe pain. Nobody gets to know himself unless he has suffered immensely. Alfred de Musset

Tears are the silent language of suffering. Voltaire

Suffering and Art?

Franz  Xaver Messerschmidt

Bust by Marsyas – 1680-85

In the exhibition: Pain

Max Beckmann, Afternoon.

Cying Woman by Dora Maar

Guérin. 1799. Le Retour de Marcus Sextus.

Rodin

Francis Picabia, Paroxysme de la douleur, 1915

Diane Moreau, À bruit secret comme la douleur

Justin Craun

Oceanna Solloway

Further Links

Link Painexhibit

About the exhibition Pain

Hey friends & fans!

We have had some technical problems with the currently running “Armageddon” contest. Submissions could not be sent, that´s why several designers tried to upload their designs into our “out-of-competition” or “classic” contest.

I will reject those submissions for formal reasons. Don´t panic!

Please feel free to resubmit at the “Armageddon” contest!

best,

Thomas

We’ve finally released a brand new layout for our newsletter! A simple look, a bit shorter, but still filled with the most important information about laFraise t-shirts and contests.

On Mondays, you’ll find out what new shirts we’ve added to the shop and the winners of the contests.

On Thursdays, you’ll get info about our new promotions, special selections of t-shirts and a new section that will bring you right here onto the blog.

Speaking of the blog, we also brought back the designer interviews – read the first many to come in the interview with Walzaman1.

For those who received the new newsletter on Monday, what do you think? Do you like the new format? Register on the website and subscribe to our newsletter to receive all information about our shirts and graphic designers.

Looking forward to hearing from you! Have a nice strawberry day!

Last Thursday on 11 October we were celebrating International Coming Out Day. A nice occasion to shed light on this topic. A few keywords: Outing, Homosexuality, being different and tolerance.

Coming out: Definition

Coming out (of the closet) is a figure of speech for people’s disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of the closet is described and experienced variously as a psychological process. Author Steven Seidman writes that ‘it is the power of the closet to shape the core of an individual’s life that has made homosexuality into a significant personal, social, and political drama in twentieth-century.’ Outing is the deliberate or accidental disclosure of a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, without his or her consent. By extension, outing oneself is unintentional self-disclosure. Lastly, the glass closet means the open secret of when public figures’ being is considered a widely accepted fact even though they have not “officially” come out.

More about coming-out

Coming out – A Long Story

In 1869, one hundred years before the Stonewall Riots, the German homosexual rights advocate Karl Heinrich Ulrichs introduced the idea of self-disclosure as a means of emancipation. Claiming that invisibility was a major obstacle toward changing public opinion, he urged homosexual people to reveal their same-sex attractions.

The first prominent American to reveal his homosexuality was the poet Robert Duncan. In 1944, using his own name in the anarchist magazine Politics, he claimed that homosexuals were an oppressed minority.[8] The decidedly clandestine Mattachine Society, founded by Harry Hay and other veterans of the Wallace for President campaign in Los Angeles in 1950, moved into the public eye after Hal Call took over the group in San Francisco in 1953, with many gays emerging from the closet.

With the spread of consciousness raising (CR) in the late 1960s, coming out became a key strategy of the gay liberation movement to raise political consciousness to counter sexism by heterosexuals and homophobia. At the same time and continuing into the 1980s, gay and lesbian social support discussion groups, some of which were called “coming-out groups,” focused on sharing coming-out “stories” (experiences) with the goal of reducing isolation and increasing LGBT visibility and pride.

More info about:

Coming out

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs

Is it natural for people to be different?

Joan Roughgarden thinks Charles Darwin made a terrible mistake. Not about natural selection – she’s no bible-toting creationist – but about his other great theory of evolution: sexual selection. According to Roughgarden, sexual selection can’t explain the homosexuality that’s been documented in over 450 different vertebrate species. This means that same-sex sexuality – long disparaged as a quirk of human culture – is a normal, and probably necessary, fact of life. By neglecting all those gay animals, she says, Darwin misunderstood the basic nature of heterosexuality.

Darwin’s theory of sex has been biological dogma ever since he postulated why peacocks flirt. His gendered view of life has become a centrepiece of evolution, one of his great scientific legacies. The culture wars over evolution and common descent notwithstanding, Darwin’s theory of sexual selection has been thoroughly assimilated into mass culture. From sitcoms to beer ads, our coital “instincts” are constantly reaffirmed. Females are wary, and males are horny. Sex is this simple. Or is it? Indeed, biology now knows better. Nobody is hornier than a female macaque or bonobo (which mount the males because the males are too exhausted to continue the fornication). Peacocks are actually the exception, not the rule.

Read this article on a gay flamingo couple (in French)

Homosexuals who dare.

Ellen De Generes. The American stand-up comedian, television host and actress (who also provided the voice of Dory in the Disney-Pixar animated film Finding Nemo), came out as a lesbian in 1997 in the TV show Oprah. That same year, she began a romantic relationship with bisexual actress Anne Heche.[33] The bold disclosure of her sexual orientation sparked clamorous interest by American tabloids.[34] The contentiousness of the media coverage stunted DeGeneres’ professional career and left her “mired in depression”.[34] The couple ended their relationship in 2000.

Sir Elton John. The famous singer came out as bisexual in a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone. He married a German woman in 1984, with speculation that the marriage was a cover for his homosexuality. But after his divorce from her in 1988 he told the magazine that he was “comfortable” being gay. John has been associated with AIDS charities since the deaths of close friends. To raise money for his AIDS charity, John hosts annually a glamorous White Tie & Tiara Ball, to which many famous celebrities are invited. In 2006, a ball raised £4.6 million for his AIDS Foundation.

Ian McKellen. Sir Ian Murray McKellen is famous for his role as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. In 1988, he came out to the general public, in a programme on BBC Radio 3. The context that prompted McKellen’s decision — overriding any concerns about a possible negative effect on his career — was that the controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Bill, simply known as Section 28, was under consideration in the British Parliament.

In a 1998 interview that discusses the 29th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, McKellen commented, “I have many regrets about not having come out earlier, but one of them might be that I didn’t engage myself in the politicking.” McKellen claimed that when he visited Michael Howard, then Environment Secretary (responsible for local government), in 1988 to lobby against Section 28, Howard refused to change his position but did ask him to leave an autograph for his children. McKellen agreed, but wrote, “Fuck off, I’m gay.”

McKellen is a co-founder of Stonewall, a LGBT rights lobby group in the United Kingdom, named after the New York Stonewall riots in 1969.

Read more about McKellen

Frank Kameny, was instrumental in the American gay rights movement. In 1957, Kameny was dismissed from his position as an astronomer in the U.S. Army Map Service in Washington, D.C. because of his homosexuality, leading him to challenge the establishment that would lead to a new period of militancy in the homosexual rights movement of the early 1960s. Kameny sued the U.S. Civil Service Commission, but although the court denied his petition, it is notable as the first civil rights claim based on sexual orientation. In 1968, Kameny, inspired by Stokely Carmichael’s creation of the phrase “Black is Beautiful”, created the slogan “Gay is Good” for the gay civil rights movement

Read about ‘Mattachine Society’ that was founded in 1950

Read about same-sex marriage

More on global acceptance

Of course there is still religious discrimination against homosexuality, and political prosecution in many countries of this world. And this is quite a shame! I have put together a few stories from all over the world that show a mixed bag of emotions for gay people all over the world:

A few headlines from 2011

6 July 2011: A revision court in San Francisco decided that a prior decision disallowing gay people to join the army is to be revoked with immediate effect (Don’t ask, don’t tell)

24 June 2011:   A small majority in the senate of New York brought under way by Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo implemented a law that allowed homosexuals to get married in the state of New York. “”New York has finally torn down the barrier that has prevented same-sex couples from exercising the freedom to marry and from receiving the fundamental protections that so many couples and families take for granted… With the world watching, the Legislature, by a bipartisan vote, has said that all New Yorkers are equal under the law. With this vote, marriage equality will become a reality in our state, delivering long overdue fairness and legal security to thousands of New Yorkers.”

28 January 2011: In France, a constitutional court ruling decided that same-sex marriage does not impinge the constitution. On the same day, 4 gay haters are sentenced to serve prison sentences between 16 and 20 years.

More info and current trends can be read here

Celebrate your coming out!

Gay Pride is THE party for most gay and transsexuals. Gay Pride is a political demonstration, which has been around since the 1970s. Whether you are gay, lesbian or not, whether you have homosexual friends or whether you just feel like joining the party – everyone has a great time at Gay Pride!

A short overview of the world’s most important parades:
– Berlin (16–23 June) Pride Festival celebrates a week full of concerts, films, parties and cabaret. Christopher Street Day Parade in Berlin (Saturday, June 2010) finds hundreds-of-thousands of people in the centre of Berlin to demonstrate and celebrate equality and rights for homosexuals and heterosexuals. 

- New York (16. – 23 June) During the New York Pride, New Yorker homosexuals in Manhattan celebrate their culture and being different with parties and rallies, which are open to everyone who is open for it. This Sunday parade on 5th Avenue is simply magnificent. A million people or more in colourful and und sexy outfits are on a roll and having the time of their life.

- London (23 June – 8 July) This was the place to celebrate Gay Pride 2012. The traditional parade on 7 July, which is attracting about 1 million people now, is organized by Pride London. There are about 80 enouncements that made celebrating this cultural festival for gay pride such a big success.

- San Francisco (29 July) Thanks to a substantial gay and lesbian community on Castro Street, San Francisco Pride with its hundreds-of-thousands of people streaming into the city is one of the most important events of its kind in California – not only for homosexuals.

Here for a summary of all gay pride parades

Read more on Gay Pride

Do dare come out!

Coming out is very important for you as it is part of your personality. More than anything it will give you freedom. But the right moment should be chosen with great care, and al possible consequences should be taken into consideration. Coming out means learning to accept yourself and your homosexuality. Everyone should be encouraged to do so, because they are worth it! Choosing International Coming Out Day is a great occasion, to let it out and scream it at the world – at least as long as you are ready for it!

Here is a short clip by psychoanalytic Serge Hefez, who will explain how a coming out can be designed:

And the art?

Depiction of homosexuality in art is very much widespread. Here you can see some illustrations:

David and Jonathan

Painting by Aleksander Kiselew

Swimming by Thomas Eakins

Two Arabs in love, painting by Al-Wâssiti of Bagdad, 10^th century

Renaissance – The Last Judgment by Michelangelo

Patrice Monnerie

Bacon – Duas figuras

Amadou Fatoumata BA, called Amefoxy

Did you know?

Batman might come out soon

Source

Hitch by Marcin

Dead Man Walkman by Letter_Q

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We will offer all second and third place designs a print-on-demand contract!

Second place : 1 free t-shirt

Mess 2 by Nicor

Third place : 1300 brouzoufs

Angry Panda by eggzoo

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Congrats to the winners and thanks to all participants!