culture and society
“Where is my cyanometer,” Thoreau exclaimed in his journal on a blue-skied spring day, referring to the curious device invented by the Swiss scientist Horace-Bénédict de Saussure a century earlier to measure the blueness of the sky.
Here are some of the most beautiful meditations on blue from 200 years of literature, including Thoreau, Goethe, Toni Morrison, Rachel Carson, Virginia Woolf, Rebecca Solnit, Georgia O'Keeffe, and other titans of the world in words.
The Lost Spells – from author Robert Macfarlane and artist Jackie Morris, a rewilding of the human heart in a lyrical illustrated invocation of nature.
However meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth… steps in and does something.
Layla’s Happiness – a serenade to the many meanings of happiness, its quiet everyday sources, and delight as a daily practice, from poet Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie and artist Ashleigh Corrin.
When I’m reading I consider it an activity as difficult as writing… It’s a challenge to your whole self. I love writing that is respectful of the human capacity to understand.
Enormous mural by San Francisco art studio Ink Dwell spotlights the bittersweet beauty of the Monarch butterfly and the urgency of its protection.
Complement with environmental movement pioneer Rachel Carson’s stunning existential letter about the Monarchs.
By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable system.
Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again. And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two makes four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel… You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything… And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work — we all must work — to make this world worthy of its children.
The brain does not simply represent the world in a disembodied way as an intellectual construct… Our mind is body-bound. We think, feel, and act with our body in the world. All experience is embedded in this body-related being-in-the-world.
Altered States of Consciousness – from German psychologist and chronobiologist
Marc Wittmann, absolutely fascinating read on a how the fringes of consciousness — deep meditation, depression, near-death experiences, creative flow, psychedelics — illuminate the centrality of time perception to what we call the “self.”
Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify. The good artist is a vehicle of truth.
brainpickings.orgBorderless Lullabies – musicians and authors stand up for refugee kids, with 100% of proceeds from the record benefiting KIND: Kids In Need of Defense – a wonderful nonprofit that partners with pro-bono attorney at law firms and law schools to represent unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children in their deportation proceedings – kids many of whom have fled severe violence in their home countries, and many have been abandoned, abused, or trafficked – to ensure that no child stands in court alone.
The record, which features Yo-Yo Ma, Esperanza Spalding, Meryl Streep, Rosanne Cash, Lizz Wright, and more, is available on a pay-what-you-can model. Download it here, and please share far and wide to help this massive labor of love travel on the wings of globe-spanning goodwill.
Original cover art by the wonderful Shantell Martin. All artists involved donated their time and talent to the project.
This country… needs… no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a [leader] whose eye reads the heavens, while his feet step firmly on the ground, and his hands are strong and dexterous for the use of human implements… a [leader] of universal sympathies, but self-possessed; a [leader] who knows the region of emotion, though he is not its slave
The trailblazing journalist, activist, and literary critic
Margaret Fuller, who laid the foundation for American feminism and who was born on this day in 1810, on
what makes a great leader – wisdom we’d be well advised to heed two centuries later as we head into the next election, of which women are this time a part, both as voters and candidates, largely due to Fuller’s legacy.
There isn’t actually a most beautiful person in the world, because there are so many kinds of beauty. Some people love roundness and softness, and other people love sharp edges and strong muscles. Some people like thick hair like a lion’s mane, and other people like thin hair that pours down like an inky waterfall, and some people love someone so much they forget what they look like. Some people think the night sky full of stars at midnight is the most beautiful thing imaginable, some people think it’s a forest in snow, and some people… Well, there are a lot of people with a lot of ideas about beauty. And love. When you love someone a lot, they just look like love.
