Stephen Vollo (American) - Strainer, Paintings: Oil on Canvas on Panel
I used to have that exact strainer. It was in a box of hand-me-down kitchen things from my grandmother when I got my first apartment in 1996. It broke last year.
Anyway, this is a painting.
This is the best strainer in the world and i check the housewares aisle in every thrift store I visit hoping to find another one. No strainer has ever been able to live up to this icon, this superstar, this vision of grace and elegance.
It’s the two-quart Tupperware colander. The handle is large and sturdy but still comfortable to hold in your hand. The ridge on the end helps it fit on any size pot you need to rest it over. The little feet at the bottom let you drain directly into the sink without leaving the contents sitting in a puddle. It’s got a spout on both sides so you can pour comfortably from the left or right hand, towards or away from yourself as needed. The holes are at the bottom so you can control where strained liquids flow, large enough to drain quickly, small enough to keep from losing bits of food through them. The bright yellow colour is easy to spot in the back of a cupboard or dishwasher.
I am passionate about this specific strainer in a way that I am not passionate about anything else in my life. I would run back into a burning building to rescue this strainer. This strainer is my go-to wedding or housewarming gift. This strainer is my beloved family member. I have shared more meals with this strainer than I have with anyone else in my life. This strainer has never, ever let me down. It is the most perfectly designed item I have ever seen or handled in my life. Every aspect of this strainer is made to maximize convenience and functionality. It is flawless, a form of complete and total perfection. If you told me this strainer was the face of God, recreated on Earth in Their image, I would believe you.
Anyway, this is the best painting I’ve ever seen and they should take down the Mona Lisa so there’s an appropriate space to hang it in the Louvre.
Thank you for that eloquent review to go along with this impressive painting!
If anyone else is inspired to look up the two-quart Tupperware colander, I’ll save you a few keystrokes. Amazon has in stock (in several colors, no less). I imagine some other stores do as well.
Anyways, I already have two metal colanders that make a horrible mess every time they’re used, and I’m gonna buy myself a blue one of these. Thanks!
“In the same way that your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings, are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don’t, then it doesn’t.” – Brennan Lee Mulligan, D20, Fantasy High
I love stuff like this. Didn’t a tribe in Africa send America some cows after 9/11? Like this is holy and the most valuable thing we have. We hear your suffering and want to do anything in our power to help
It was not a potato famine. The famine didn’t happen because of the potato yeald failing. Ireland was actually producing more than enough food. However it was almost all land owned by Brittish landowners, who took all of the food out of the country to sell in UK. Potato was what the Irish farmers ate, because it was cheep and could be produced in worst parts of the land, where more profitable food couldn’t be grown. When there were no longer potatos, the decision for the farmers was to either starve and sent the food as rent to the landlords or loose their homes and then starve.
The Brittish goverment was unwilling to do anything for two reasons. First was the laissez-faire capitalistic ideology, that put the rights of property owners to make profits above human lives. Rent freeze was unthinkable and they even were unwilling to do proper relief efforts as free food would lower the cost of food. The second reason was distain for the Irish, and the thought that they were “breeding too much” and the famine was a natural way to trim down the population, aka genocidal reasoning.
This is why it’s important to stress it was not a potato famine. The potato blinght was all over Europe but only in Ireland there was a famine. The reasons behind it had nothing to do with potatos and everything to do with the Brittish.
Apparently what made Choctaw want to offer relief to Irish was the news about the Doolough Tragedy. Hundreds of starving people were gathered for inspection to verify they were entitled to recieve relief. The officials would for *some reason* not do that and instead left to a hunting lodge 19 kilometers away to spend the night and said to the starvqing people they would have to walk there by morning to be inspected. The weather conditions were terrible and many of them died completely needlessly during the walk thoroung day and night.
This apparently reminded the Choctaw of their own very recent (and much more explicit and bigger scale) experiences of ethnic clensing, where they were forcibly relocated. It was basically a death march and thousands of Choctaw died from the terrible conditions also completely needlessly.
In 2015 a memorial named Kindred Spirits was installed in Southern Ireland to commemorate the Chactow donation.
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