Salvador Dalí’s Christmas Cards Are Better than Yours

Rebecca M. Bender, PhD

Over the weekend, while attempting to get into the holiday spirit by setting up my table-top fiber-optic Christmas tree, baking cookies, and watching the snow fall in sub-zero temperatures, I discovered that one of my favorite Spanish artists, Salvador Dalí, designed 19 unique Christmas cards between 1958-1976 for the Barcelona-based company Hoechst Ibérica. While I knew that Dalí had created artwork for advertisements (Bryan’s Hosiery) and magazine covers during the mid-20th century, I had never seen his unique portrayals of Christmas. So like any good academic on winter break, I put off my Spring syllabus-planning to do some frivolous investigating.

One of the earliest Dalinian images used for commercializing the holiday season was actually a sketch for a cover of Vogue magazine in 1946. This image (below) exhibits  tell-tale characteristics of Dalí’s surrealist style, including the barren, expansive landscape and the incorporation of double-images (which also characterize his depiction…

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Life Through a Lens

Beacon

With hindsight everything looks so much easier and better. It’s ever so easy to say how things would be different had you just done x – but you have to ignore these feeling and get on with life. Things don’t stand still – learn from the past and live the present.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam quis est nulla. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Phasellus eu interdum neque. Etiam ligula arcu, porttitor a elit nec, sagittis interdum tellus. Praesent ligula odio, imperdiet a nibh non, gravida aliquam purus. Suspendisse ornare, nulla et semper lobortis, dui lectus sagittis lectus, eget malesuada lacus purus sed orci. Praesent ornare nulla et dolor viverra facilisis. Integer tempor libero eu leo ultrices sodales. Maecenas lectus turpis, facilisis a eleifend et, congue id sapien. Donec pellentesque pharetra metus ac accumsan. Mauris commodo pharetra rutrum…

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Meditate

Beyond Meds: Alternatives to Psychiatry

Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at the bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Paying attention can be a very difficult feat in a culture where we are taught to deny so much of our being. Finding ourselves again, though, is incredibly well worth the time and effort put into learning to do so.

Posts on Beyond Meds that explore the nature of meditation:

●  The foundation of healing mental distress and of becoming a mature human adult – I’ve collected posts on this page that speak to embracing the full spectrum of our emotional inheritance as human beings. I’ve found that without acknowledging and integrating the darkest part of our psyches we cannot heal. We also cannot become fully mature adult human beings. One need not be labeled “mentally ill”…

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Teen community service

Global Routes: Summer Teen Community Service

Windsor , New Hampshire – Summer Program – (1 reviews)
Our international high school programs provide students with unparalleled opportunities to immerse themselves in small, rural communities through volunteer projects and homestay experiences. Students develop … (more)

Lo que pienso de Prezi

Diseño de presentaciones

Como lo prometido es deuda, después de probar Prezi puedo comentarles mis impresiones sobre este original programa de presentaciones.

La interfaz

Una de las cosas que sorprende al abrir el programa por primera vez es la limpieza de la interfaz. Nada de una pantalla atiborrada de menúes, cintas y barras. En vez de eso, mucho espacio en blanco y una invitación a hacer clic en cualquier lado para agregar una idea en un lienzo infinito. Para controlar todo tenemos una serie de círculos concéntricos llamada zebra (aparece al hacer clic en un objeto), una barra de zoom, otra barra superior y unas burbujas a modo de menú.

A pesar de estar en inglés, esta interfaz tan espartana es fácil de dominar. Gracias a un tutorial propio y un poco de ensayo/error, en poco tiempo estaremos armando nuestro primer prezi.

Los prezis

Así como la interfaz destaca por lo particular…

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The Eightfold Path

Buddhism now

The Eightfold Path

Right View

Right Purpose

Right Speech

Right Action

Right Livelihood

Right Endeavour

Right Mindfulness

Right Concentration

…

THE GREAT FORTY
being a discourse on The Eightfold Path

Thus have I heard. At one time the Lord was staying near Savatthi in the Jeta Grove in Anathapindika’s monas­tery. While he was there the Lord addressed the monks, saying, ‘I will teach you the ariyan [noble] right con­centration with the causal associations, with the accompaniments. Listen to it, attend carefully and I will speak.

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The Financing of China’s “Tibetan Development Fund”, Ropka International, and the Recruitment of Akong Rinpoche

Tinfoil Ushnisha

I submit for your consideration, the following, again, from “Buddhist Soft Power, Chinese Style”, the 1983 turning of Akong Rinpoche, from founder of the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West, Samye Ling, in Scotland, recently murdered, or, at least according to his brother, “assassinated”, by a Tibetan, in China, supposedly, with links to Situ Rinpoche’s monastery, (Akong Rinpoche’s murderer was apparently a monk at said monastery), to, by Rinpoche’s own admission, a “patriotic” Tibetan, China’s asset, the man responsible for making his Karma Kagyu sect the wealthiest of all Tibetan Buddhists sects today.

The calculation was simple: because Buddhists have always ranked among the most influential Taiwanese business people, they were given incentives to invest heavily in the Motherland, with the help of the senior Taiwanese abbots already accredited by Beijing. Among these, Master Hsing Yun, founder of the very powerful Fo Guang Shan School with millions of…

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