Tag: inspiring

Jane Goodall Retrospective

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It’s a funny coincidence that this should be up now, since I’m currently reading Jane Goodall’s book Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating–a book I received as a present some time ago, and only got to now–but I noticed on Boing-Boing’s Twitter feed regarding a link to a retrospective on her career and discoveries–titled “Being Jane Goodall”–at National Geographic, as well as a lovely cache of the photos contributed by her to the magazine. Both the article and the photos are worth your time, so go and check them out. The thing that’s fascinating to me about the …

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Bad Luck Comes in From Tampa…

gordsellar2 Comments

It turns out jbrandt was right. The Mountain Goats… very much my thing, and inspiring in a writing-wise sense: Also, tangentially, for some reason, this is the song I imagine Kenneth from 30 Rock starting his shows with when he starts going out and singing in smoky bars and clubs after he becomes fallen in New York City, takes to deep atheism and hard drink and crazy women, and then exiles himself to some shack in the depths of New Mexico for a few years till he can wean himself off nanodrugs and sexbots, and then finds the only thing …

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El Sistema, Musical Utopianism, and Social Change in Venezuela

gordsellar13 Comments

Have you ever wondered how to fix an unfixable mess? That’s the question that faced José Antonio Abreu, of Venezuela, except for one thing: he didn’t regard the mess that Caracas was in as unfixable. In 1975, he decided that there had to be a way to get kids off the street, away from the innumerable dangers vying for their attention, energy, and lives. He realized that there had to be a way to wake up families, to form communities, to give the handicapped and the poor a chance to be respected and shine. How? Music. I kid you not. …

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