A feeding ground for inspiration and innovation that is working to precipitate change......
Quote of the day
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” ~ Chief Seattle
Being able to laugh at ourselves and the stereotypes we create in our head....
I have been enjoying the song, "ONE DAY", by Matisyahu since it was continuously played during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa last summer. The chorus gets stuck in my head all the time:
"All my life I've been waiting for, I've been praying for, for the people to say, that we don't want to fight no more, there'll be no more wars, and our children will play....someday, someday, someday...."
This song is very reminiscent for me of a Reggae/Hawaiian Singer, named Fiji, that I listen to occasionally, and actually met on one random occasion while living in Hawaii. I'd never looked into who Matisyahu was, what his story was, where he came from. But from the easy reggae beats, the melodic harmonizing, the "exotic" sounding name, I always figured he was a Black African who had possibly experienced trauma in war in some far off African country, and had some tragic story centered in perseverance that brought him to the United States. And now he's spreading his mission of love and hope through a successful music career. la, la, la....another Emmanuel Jal or Knaan.
Nope.....Today I discovered that Matisyahu is not Black, not African. He's White.
He's white, and he's an American Hasidic Jew. That's right, folks. Hasidic Jew. From New York. He was born Matthew Paul Miller, but is better known as Matisyahu, his Hebrew name. He is a reggae musician, who has had the privilege to work with well known reggae producers Sly and Robbie.
This is all well and good, and maybe many of you are already aware of who this person is, but for me it was an AHA moment about the stories I create in my head, the assumptions I make. And I had to laugh at myself and recognize that we all make our own conclusions before learning the facts and becoming informed.....
I don't appreciate Matisyahu any less, quite the contrary. But I am reminded that people are very complex. And that no one fits into a box, a label, a preconceived idea of what they are "supposed to be". On the flip side, we often try to label ourselves, or put ourselves into one box or another, and by doing so we're just stifling our truest, complex, versatile and malleable selves.
Fiorenzo Omenetto shares 20+ astonishing new uses for silk, one of nature's most elegant materials -- in transmitting light, improving sustainability, adding strength and making medical leaps and bounds. On stage, he shows a few intriguing items made of the versatile stuff.
Imagine...coffee cups, nuts and bolts, tissue for the human body...ALL made of SILK.
Fiorenzo G. Omenetto's research spans nonlinear optics, nanostructured materials (such as photonic crystals and photonic crystal fibers), biomaterials and biopolymer-based photonics. Most recently, he's working on high-tech applications for silk.
Not your typical fiber artist, Fio is actually using the silk proteins as a material for building bio-compatible sensors that could be safely implanted in humans. Silk may seem like a strange material to use, however it has properties that allow biochemical components that are mixed into it to remain active. As a bonus, it can also be produced using a green, non-toxic and neutral pH process.
“I don’t decide anything,” he says. “I let the street speak to me, and in order for the street to speak to you, you’ve got to stay out there and see what it is.”
"We all get dressed for Bill," says Vogue editrix Anna Wintour. The "Bill" in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling...
"We all get dressed for Bill," says Vogue editrix Anna Wintour. The "Bill" in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirées for the Times Style section in his columns "On the Street" and "Evening Hours." Documenting uptown fixtures (Wintour, Tom Wolfe, Brooke Astor, David Rockefeller-who all appear in the film out of their love for Bill), downtown eccentrics and everyone in between, Cunningham's enormous body of work is more reliable than any catwalk as an expression of time, place and individual flair. In turn, Bill Cunningham New York is a delicate, funny and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.
”Fashion is the armour to survive the reality of everyday life. I don’t think you could do away with it. It would be like doing away with civilization.” ~Bill Cunningham
“A near Buddhist reflection on what it takes to fully engage Gotham, as well as an astute snapshot of its evermore avaricious soul… Tagging along with Cunningham is a bracing reminder of what’s been lost to the bottom line.”
