Posts by Thea Aguiar

Did you see Gloria Steinem hanging out in the Blue Room? Monday’s event “An Evening with Gloria Steinem” featured a screening of the new HBO documentary “Gloria: In Her Own Words” followed by a conversation between President Simmons and Steinem. The documentary acts as a biography of Steinem’s life, successes and trials, as well as an account of the history of women’s liberation and feminist movements in America.

In her talk, Steinem spoke about some of her first real experiences with gender inequality, such as when she moved to New York and was told she couldn’t rent an apartment on her own because the only women able to support themselves financially were probably hookers. As Steinem says in the film, women at the time didn’t feel they had a right to be equal or angry. But that slowly began to change, and Steinem was a key player in the still-ongoing fight for women’s equality.

For those of you unable to attend, Blog rounded up the top ten best Steinem quotes and moments of the night. Some warrant laughs, some sighs and others snaps (of which the audience gave many): [Read more →]

Not to get mushy or preachy, but this is the kind of story that makes us smile. We willfully admit that all three of us are currently in the Mande class, but note that we’d be happy to have written this article sans names attached. We’re not vying for credit (it’s mandétory S/NC anyway) or anything like that. This is a really great story about Brown students using their voices to do something for a greater good, the artists, the festival, the students and for the love of Mande (yes!).

“The Malians say that one bird is silent; a flock of birds make a lot of noise,” says Sophie Shackleton ’09, organizer of this weekend’s Rhythm of Change Festival. Well, in this story, Brown students, faculty and alumni gathered in a flock and made a whole lot of noise—helping to bring three Malian artists to Brown to share their work in the festival.

The Rhythm of Change Festival is, as its poster reads, “a festival for performing arts & social change in Africa & its diaspora.” The festival, organized primarily by Shackleton with the support of TAPS Lecturer Michelle Bach-Coulibaly of the famed Mande class, is set to start off tonight, Friday, March 2, with the Communal Bowl meal and continue throughout the weekend with workshops on dance, drumming, singing, music and social justice work. Lecturers include guests from other Universities and institutions, artists from across the country, and three artists who have come all the way from Mali to share in cross-cultural exchange. Two of these artists had never been to America, one of whom had never left West Africa.

It is within the tale of Djibril Coulibaly, Sali Soumaré and Alhassane Sissoko, the three visiting Malian artists, that an amazing story emerges. As of Feb. 7, Coulibaly and Soumaré were effectively blocked from coming to the US from Mali because their visas were denied. A press release for the Festival explains, after the jump: [Read more →]

A couple weeks ago, we told you that we would be collaborating with Brown’s new fashion magazine Unhemmed. In case you forgot, this means that we’ll be posting a preview of the Street Style photos that will be featured in Unhemmed’s upcoming issue (which, in this case, will be released today at noon). So now, presenting, our BlogDailyHerald + Unhemmed Street Style preview.

We know it’s finals and many of you are probably forgoing your most stylish apparel and opting for Brown sweatpants, but some of your peers are still out and about looking fashionable on campus, and Unhemmed was there to take their photos.

Chairs for Ai Weiwei on the Main Green

If you’ve been on the Main Green at all today, you probably noticed the 20 white chairs lined up in the middle section of the green. And no, the University didn’t decide to put these out to encourage us to take time out from studying to hang out on the Main Green and relax.

In fact, the chairs are part of a worldwide ‘peaceful protest’ promoting the release of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The text next to the chairs reads,

“On April 3, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport while en route to Hong Kong, and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound. Ai’s whereabouts remain unknown and he has been denied due process under Chinese law.   [Read more →]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of months, you know that today was the Royal Wedding. But chances are you weren’t up at 6am to catch the actual live coverage of the wedding. Luckily for you, it’s 2011, and you can pretty much get everything you need to see to be up on your water-cooler talk online.

For the official stuff, Gawker is offering footage of the ceremony, in addition to some great quality photos. And for everything else, Buzzfeed has you covered: a photo of the dress, another of the pretty awesome train of the dress, and finally the ever important and also entertaining ‘best 18 hats’ of the wedding.

Image via buzzfeed.com.

Ratty Date: [RAH-TEE DAYTE]  (n.) A pre-arranged social appointment set for a particular time in the Sharpe Refectory with a person of salacious interest.

It’s the end of the year, and whether or not you’re a senior, you still have have the urge to get scrambling. Plus, chances are, you’ve got some leftover meal credits that you may as well use up. So what better way to combine the two than the Ratty Date?

Ah, the Ratty Date — it has a lot of potential to be casual, comfortable, and/or confusing, and at some point during your Brown career, at the end of the year or not, you just might encounter it. If it sounds confusing, scary, or even strange, fear not. BlogDailyHerald is here with some helpful tips for how to face this prospect.

1. Clarify that it is, in fact, a date. It’s the Ratty, not Al Forno, so it’s entirely possible that when that cutie in your Bio class asks you if you wanna hit the Ratty after class for lunch, it’s just friendly. But don’t be too discouraged; just because it’s at the Ratty, it doesn’t mean that it’s not necessarily a date. [Read more →]

Just a few weeks ago, Brown’s first full-fledged, online, student-run fashion magazine, entitled ‘Unhemmed,’ was launched. The magazine’s content includes profiles on stylish students, artwork and design features by students, style columns, and trend reports. And, of course, the magazine prominently features a section on Street Style, which could perhaps also be called Campus Style, as it largely features Brown students looking good around campus.

Street style fashion photography blogs like The Sartorialist and Jak & Jil have risen to quick fame throughout both the blogosphere and fashion worlds over the past several years. This reality, combined with the facts that Unhemmed is pretty freakin’ awesome and that Brown’s campus has no lack of stylish students walking around, leaves no doubt that the Street Style section of Unhemmed will soon be a campus staple.

So, we here at BlogDailyHerald along with the Unhemmed editors thought it would be a great idea to get together and form a regular collaborative series. It will feature selected preview images of what’s going on behind the lenses of Unhemmed’s Street Style and on campus in terms of style and fashion.

Luckily for us all, Unhemmed will be hosting a Street Style event this Friday afternoon on the Main Green where they’ll be looking for people to photograph for their series. (Ehem–something to keep in mind when getting dressed on Friday morning.) Who knows, maybe you’ll be getting photographed, in which case you had better check back here or on the Unehmmed website to see if you’ve made it into their Street Style selects.

The computer: helping college students procrastinate since 1990.

Attention Brown Students: It’s about to be finals period, and chances are, you’re looking for a new way to put off writing those 10-15 page final papers and contributing to group Google Doc exam study guides. As if they knew it was crunch time on college campuses, according to recent articles from the New York Times’ Bits blog and The Wrap, YouTube and Facebook —probably some of the most frequented procrastination sites–are both about to expand their services by launching new ventures that may look somewhat familiar.

According to the The Wrap, YouTube has plans to offer instant movie streaming services, much like Netflix Instant or Apple movies. Depending on how it goes, our Netflix Files may be turning into YouTube Files.   [Read more →]

Eat free or dine trying.

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Earth Week Archaeology Lecture
RI Hall, Room 108
12 pm

Join senior Archaeology and the Ancient World concentrators Harrison Stark and Jonathan Migliori for an Earth Week talk today on “Hot Rocks: Archaeology, Climate Change, and Protecting the Past for the Future” as you dig in (ha) to some free pizza and soda!

Compost Event
Main Green
4 – 7 pm

Okay, so it’s actually the reverse of consuming free food, but this Earth Week event asks you to bring your leftovers and food waste to be composted.

Feeling stressed by upcoming finals? Head on over to the Main Green today between 11:30 am and 1 pm.  Lucky for us, ‘Heavy Petting, A Stress Relief Event’ sponsored by the Health Education center is back. And no, it’s not what you’re thinking. Brown faculty and their dogs will be on the green for you to play with in hopes of reducing your stress level. And from past experiences, it (for the moment, at least) works!