Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

A vivid vermilion caracal sits among hydrangea blooms. I call her Hortensie. There are three layers to the painting. The blue hydrangea was a real silk hydrangea sitting in front of me while I painted. The caracal was my drawing from a photo in a library book. The background was my drawing of a still image from a Vine video that I made of cut hydrangeas for sale at my local Trader Joe's store. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

I use randomizers to select my subjects and colors. My main color was Hortensie, a shade of light blue and color # 522 in Naomi Kuno's Colorscape book. My secondary color was vermilion. The Hortensie color name provided one of my subjects; "hortensie" is the German word for "hydrangea". My other randomly selected topic was African wildlife. When I studied African wildlife books, I liked the lesser-known caracal (Latin name Caracal caracal, nice and easy to remember...). Caracals are not superstars like lions, leopards and cheetahs, but they have a very distinct and memorable appearance with their flamboyant, lynx-like ear tufts. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

"3 quick bullet-points that almost anybody could agree on maybe= -holding a gala during a time of austerity and normalized decline is a weird thing to do. -organizing a gala just so musicians can compete against each other for a novelty-sized cheque doesn’t serve the cause of righteous music at all. -asking the toyota motor company to help cover the tab for that gala, during a summer where the melting northern ice caps are live-streaming on the internet, IS FUCKING INSANE, and comes across as tone-deaf to the current horrifying malaise." - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

"There are plenty of scientific reasons why skyscrapers don’t—and probably won’t—have trees, at least not to the heights which many architects propose. Life sucks up there. For you, for me, for trees, and just about everything else except peregrine falcons. It’s hot, cold, windy, the rain lashes at you, and the snow and sleet pelt you at high velocity. Life for city trees is hard enough on the ground. I can’t imagine what it’s like at 500 feet, where nearly every climate variable is more extreme than at street level." - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

They've been pushing this idea for a decade. It makes no sense. - Akiva

You draw gooder - Mo Kargas

Why, thank you. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

Hmm it looked different when De Niro was on it in Cape Fear. - Steve C, Team Marina

pretty sure i had this back in the early 70s. loved it. - Big Joe Silenced

A very bizarre sort of Chinese plant with fruits that look like strings of beads. I couldn't find much information in English with a quick Google search, but I found out that the genus is in the family Annonaceae, or the custard apple family. Custard apples are related to cherimoya fruits, which look a little like tightly closed artichokes. Nothing at all like these strings of beads. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

Ohh i like that one - Steve C, Team Marina

thanks :) - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

This article has more of the American commenters. More outrage about this shameful situation. I'm deeply troubled by all of this. Several problems that have been knocking around in my mind finally came to a head when I heard about the proposed food stamp cuts. Donating to and volunteering at food banks is just one part of the solution in my mind. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

I want to go deeper. To the point of growing food. Not just gardening for fun but really making food available in a serious way. Pretty much farming. I've thought about this before, but this is becoming more urgent, I realize. I've been disheartened by a report I listened to on NPR about how hard it is to get any help with becoming a small farmer. All the subsidies are helping giant corn and soybean farms and factory production of meat. We are really and truly screwing ourselves. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

Now this crap is spreading from the US to the UK. I know that it might not be that simple, but some of the UK policies have clearly been inspired by the cruel US system. People were in an uproar over the adoption of food stamps in the UK instead of emergency loans of cash. All the political crap and environmental problems, etc. are truly global now. The people in power float around above us all, policies in one country influence policies in another. We can't afford to be ignorant of what's going on. But it's so hard to pick out the signal from the noise sometimes. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)

Not to minimize how awful it is, but just from the first paragraph, I think if this guy lived in the U.S., he'd be dead, because they would've cut off his health insurance as soon as he stopped working. - Victor Ganata

I'm distracting myself for a short time, but my fury about the proposed food stamp cuts is still there. I have to think some more about what to do. - Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)