The third edition of the Lenormand Revolution deck is now available!  Click here to order! And here’s a preview of the new box design featuring Eugène Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People—a hint at one of the surprises in the latest edition.  The new deck, at 2.5” x 3.5” is larger than previous editions, a change many of you asked for.  A fantastic improvement! For those of you interested in the history behind our bold cover, read on! Liberty Leading the People or La Liberté guidant le peuple was painted by Eugène Delacroix in 1830 and celebrates the French…

Here’s a preview of Le Soleil or the Sun card from The Lenormand Revolution deck (La Révolution Lenormand), for which I’ve done the art in co-creation with the illustrious Carrie Paris. If you’re new to the Lenormand, it’s a card divination system popularly believed to have been designed by the French cartomancienne Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand (1772–1843), who was counsellor to Joséphine de Beauharnais, Empress of France (the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte).  She also claimed to have advised several leaders of the French Revolution, including Robespierre and Marat. Lenormand historians assert that the 36-card Lenormand deck, known as le petit jeu de Lenormand was, in fact, created…

One afternoon, you’re shopping for furniture when you happen upon a half-insane, poverty-stricken, poetess/carpenter in her rickety Victorian house with oddly picturesque water-damaged drywall.  The woman who lives here appears to have fashioned a delightful little chair, almost as if by mistake.  Madly, she calls it her “Something’s Afoot Chair” and wiggles her eyebrows at you as she presents it, unadorned, in a glare of natural light.  You’re captivated.  It’s perfectly bespoke, a one-of-a-kind piece of furniture with humor!  You must have it! A wooden hanger, complete with its metal hook, forms the top brace of a sloppily whitewashed chair-back.  A wooden…

Listen, I’m voting again for President Obama mostly because 1) reproductive rights are cool and 2) I never thought he was the second coming in the first place.  But, have you seen the Obama Store?  There’s something deeply wrong with a nation when its president attempts to sell branded consumer loot through an online catalog as a part of his fund-raising and messaging strategy. Mouse over “Collections” to choose consumer products designed expressly for you!  What target market do you fall into? Women for Obama, African Americans for Obama, Latinos/Hispanics for Obama, AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) for Obama,…

In their 2001 bibliographical essay, “Cultural Studies and Composition,” Diana George and John Trimbur contribute to the text A Guide to Composition Pedagogies (Tate, Rupiper & Schick) by chronologically mapping the rise and themes of cultural studies in the composition classroom.  They end with a call to hold a key contradiction in sight as cultural studies within the field of composition studies continues to develop: contributors, such as the authors, who create theory and methods for teaching writing through cultural critique engage in “the production of scholarly commodities” at the same time that their work aims to critique the rhetoric…