Powerful image by Johnny Nguyen during a Ferguson rally in Portland this week. Full story on this incredible image here.
It was only appropriate! Happy Thanksgiving folks — I know I’m thankful for the opportunity to share inspiring videos to the few and many that may frequent this end of the internet. Make sure you take some time out today to reflect on all of the things that make this life worth living 🙂
| In the year 1621, the Pilgrims held their first Thanksgiving feast. They invited the great Indian chief Massasoit, who brought ninety of his brave Indians and a great abundance of food. Governor William Bradford and Captain Miles Standish were honored guests. Elder William Brewster, who was a minister, said a prayer that went something like this: ‘We thank God for our homes and our food and our safety in a new land. We thank God for the opportunity to create a new world for freedom and justice.”
– Linus Van Pelt, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
(photo credit: Reuters)
——
“I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed–
I, too, am America.”
― Langston Hughes
It’s no secret of mine that most of my daydreams consist of the open air and everything that extends beyond it. This video made me feel small, but also made realize how incredibly large our world is, how insignificant some of our problems are in the big picture. Go ahead and turn the volume low on the video above, and pair it with this monologue by Carl Sagan. It’s said that he spoke these words after seeing this photograph of Earth, the farthest photograph ever taken of Earth, by the Voyager 1 space probe.
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
I came across this quote by T.S. Eliot recently and it got me thinking – specifically the lines I bolded above. So much information, but so little knowledge; so much Life, but so little living.
The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta is one of the largest hot air balloon events in the world that takes place each year, sending droves of hot air balloons into the open skies. This year Knate Myers was fortunate enough to capture the scene in an incredible timelapse that takes the experience to an entirely different level. Have a look!
The good folks over at The Do Blog put up this post sometime last year, but I only seemed to have stumbled across it recently. An incredible piece by the always ambitious, Google. Here’s to your inspiration for the week!
|Before you tell yourself that your idea is too ambitious, too unrealistic, too pie-in-the-sky; remember that once there were no planes. There were no rockets to take us into space. There were no computers.
Someone had to take the first leap. Someone had to build wings out of wood and try to fly. Someone had to look logic in the face and tell it to do one. That someone had the courage to try. And our world today is shaped by their efforts.