Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in Zundert in the south of the Netherlands. He was unlucky to live only for 37 years and to discover his love for art at the age of 27. Therefore, he worked as an artist for only 10 years of his life.

During the Enlightenment Age, emphasis on literature, philosophy, science, fine arts and music became more widespread especially with the growing middle class. This means that Vincent van Gogh had lived in a flourishing artistic movement, which was supposed to help him succeed as an artist and become rich. On the contrary, he did not win fame as an artist. Although Vincent painted 900 paintings and more than 1,100 drawings, his works remained unknown and unsold and his brother Theo supported him financially during his lifetime.

Perhaps one of the reasons for his failure as an artist is his clumsy behavior when he suffered from mental illness. Another reason is his short-tempered nature and rudeness which most of the time brought him bloody fights with his fellow Gauguin that ended up with cutting off Vincent's ears. Moreover, he was always dirty and not well-dressed, which made people avoid dealing with him and buying his artistic works. Furthermore, his poor health gave more blows to his life and caused an early death to such a great artist. But now in our age, his magnificent painting (Portrait of Dr: Gachet) is sold around 150 million dollars at auction.

Vincent van Gogh is just an example of the talented people who failed in their pursuit of glory.

As a teenager in the 1990s, Melissa Blake was interested in fashion. Unfortunately, fashion wasn't much interested in her. Blake, who has a bone and muscle disorder and stands a little under four feet tall, couldn't find jeans or dresses in her size. Looking through some fashion magazines, she didn't see a single person who looked like her.

“That would have been a game changer for me,” says Blake, who had 26 surgeries before age 17. “When you're a teenager — disabled or not — you deal with issues of self-esteem.”

Blake, 39, has spent her adult life trying to make up for that. She is a disability-rights activist as well as a writer, but she gained a national following after fighting back ugly comments about her online. She answered, “People said I should be stopped from posting photos of myself because I'm too ugly. So I'd just like to share these three selfies.”

Her fans went wild, calling Blake a powerful woman.

“I feel like every time I post a selfie or share something about my life as a disabled woman, that is to fight back,” Blake said.

Among her fans is Mindy Scheier, CEO of Runway of Dreams. Last fall, Scheier asked Blake to be one of the event's 24 models.

“Being able to put Melissa in the fashion event of the year just shows how important it is to expand the consumers in the fashion industry, or what we're really representing,” Scheier says.

“It was a little scary,” Blake says of modeling. But she's glad she took the challenge. “When disabled people are included, it sends a message that we deserve a seat at the table in all aspects of life.”

A small group of brave and curious young Irish musicians have taken it upon themselves to save a tradition of songs. Their project aims to put the elders of a nearly-past generation in front of a microphone, to protect their songs and stories for musicians to hear and study for all time.

Some experts often pass warnings about how much oral tradition the human race loses to modernity every year. In Ireland, a country famous for its singers, the Song Collectors Collective (SCC) celebrates that history by honoring the people who have kept its roots alive. Most of them are from the reclusive (隐居的) traveler communities. Rather than simply collecting words, each song can be accessed only by exploring the life and story of the person who sang it for the SCC, or the so-called “Tradition Bearer”.

Take Freda Black, for example, a great-grandmother in her mid-eighties. She kept so many songs that she admitted she couldn’t possibly count them. She would go on to feature in the recently released album by a modern folk singer and SCC member, Sam Lee. “I love spending time at the knee of these elders,” Lee said. “I am very lucky. I catch an end of an era.”

“It is a common request for the songs and stories to be recorded and shared as the old ways are not being passed on and this huge store of knowledge of an ancient way of life is forgotten. In the current era of accessible recording technology, there is no excuse for not documenting and sharing this rich but fragile (脆弱的) tradition,” wrote the SCC. Having collected hundreds of recordings from dozens of singers, the SCC is beginning to host educational events, featuring some of these Tradition Bearers, sharing their stories and singing voices for those interested in hearing them, as well as how people can become collectors in their own way.